Blackwater Ben

by William Durbin

  Ben was proud that the push had thought of him until he saw Pa's grin. “That's a good one.”

  “I'll say.” The push slapped his knee and joined Pa in laughing. “You keep practicing with Old Dan, tadpole”— the push grinned at Ben—“and someday you'll be driving a real team.”

  “Old Dan ain't that easy to handle,” Ben said.

  “Sure, son. Well, I'd better make sure that the wood butcher and Needlenose have got the plow rigged.”

  A short while later Ben heard the jangle of chains. He looked out the door. Packy was pulling a V plow made out of two half-sawn pine logs joined by a cross brace. “Look, Pa,” Ben said. “They've rigged a six-horse hitch.”

  “We had a three-day blow over at Northome one year, and it took sixteen horses to pull the plow. The drifts got higher than the eaves of the bunkhouse.”

  As Ben watched Packy's team disappear, he recalled the push's laughter. Someday I'll show them, he thought.

  UNDER TAR PAPER AGAIN

  Pa woke Ben a half hour early so he could start shoveling. Ben lit a lantern, put on his mackinaw and wool cap, and stepped outside. He was glad to see that the storm had left less than a foot of snow. After he finished clearing the steps and the path to the root cellar, he put out his lantern and stood for a minute in the predawn stillness. The air smelled of birch smoke and ice. White starlight glinted off the rooftops and the snow-draped trees. The unbroken blackness in the east told Ben that sunrise was still a long way off, but Pa was already banging his pots and pans inside the cookshack. “Ben Ward,” he called,“it's time to get our oatmeal boiling in here.”

  New lumberjacks continued to arrive almost every day. Some of the fellows caught a ride to camp on the tote team-ster's wagon, but most of them walked the thirty-two miles from Blackwater. Every jack carried a white grain sack known as a turkey. The neck of the sack and one corner were knotted with a length of rope to make a carrying strap. Each turkey held a suit of woolen underwear, a pair of wool socks, a razor and sharpening strop, a towel, and a red or blue handkerchief.

  The lumberjacks all wore heavy wool caps, wool shirts, wool trousers, and rubber-soled boots. Their hands were protected by horsehide mitts and woolen liners. With the exception of Charlie, everyone started the season with new clothes.

  Before lunch a fellow named Poultice Pete walked into the cookshack. Though most of the jacks were husky fellows, Pete was rail thin. “Make sure you keep downwind of him,” Pa whispered to Ben.

  “How come?”

  “He sleeps with a poultice of turpentine and onions plastered across his chest.”

  “Howdy, Pete,” Windy said. “Looks like you ain't even worn out the creases in that shirt yet.”

  “I like to start out fresh in a new camp,” Pete said.“Why bother to patch up clothes when it's easier to toss the old ones out? Besides, I travel so light that a needle and thread would weigh down my turkey.”

  “Skinny as you are, you can't travel no way but light,” Windy said. “Didn't those farmers feed you nothing out in Dakota? A strong wind would blow you back to the prairie.”

  “We'll fatten him up,” Pa said. “The boys used to say Poultice was so thin that it took him ten minutes to cast his shadow.”

  Ben was amazed at how happy the men were when they arrived at camp. Before Pete left the cookshack, he said, “It sure feels good to be under tar paper again. These woods is heaven after a dusty summer of threshing grain. Ain't nothing sweeter than taking a big drink of Minnesota pine air and having fresh tar paper over my head.”

  Windy grinned at Ben. “Didn't I tell you that tar paper is the main ingredient of a lumber camp?”

  Ben nodded as Windy took a sip of swamp water. “This place is a lot fancier than the State of Maine camp I worked in when I was your age. A dozen of us slept under one big blanket. Only way we could keep warm was to bring the oxen inside at night. And every meal was the same—a bean pot cooked over an open fire.”

  “Wasn't it dirty living with animals?” Ben asked.

  “I'd rather bunk with oxen than some of these jacks.”

  “But your bunkhouse is clean,” Ben said.

  “You wait until the smell of that new tar paper wears off. We'll hatch out every breed of bug you can imagine. Our lice crop is getting healthier every day. It's the fault of them jacks.”

  “For not washing?” Ben asked.

  “Of course they don't wash, but that's not the main problem,” Windy said. “I always tell the fellows not to kill them lice, but they keep swatting 'em.”

  “What's wrong with that?” Ben asked.

  “Why, ain't you heard? If you kill one, a hundred more come to the funeral.” Windy laughed, his toothless mouth wide open, and slapped his knee.

  “I sure do wish I had me some sound choppers.” He rubbed his jaw. “When I get my store-bought teeth, I'm gonna bite off a hunk of beefsteak and chew and chew.”

  “Speaking of chewing,” Pa said, tossing Ben a stirring spoon, “If we don't give her tar paper—”

  Ben finished for him: “These jacks won't be getting no lunch.”

  THE PHOTOGRAPH

  After a week without Skip, Ben was dead tired. On Sunday he asked Pa, “Since the push has added so many men, you suppose he'd hire us a cookee?”

  “Let me know if you can't hold up your end.” Pa spooned some baking powder into a mixing bowl.

  “I don't mean that I can't do the work.”

  “Either a fellow can do a job or he can't.” Pa banged the baking powder can on the counter to break a clump loose. “And if you ever get to the can't stage, just let me know.” He shoved the spoon in hard.

  Why did Pa hate questions so much? From the time Ben was little, Mrs. Wilson had always encouraged him to ask how and why things happened, but Pa was more inclined to say, “Curiosity killed the cat.”

  When it came time to deliver Charlie's breakfast, Ben blurted out something he'd been itching to ask:“Is it true you haven't taken a bath for twenty-five years?”

  Charlie looked up from his misery whip. His eyes narrowed. Ben stepped back. His mouth had gotten him in trouble once again.

  Then Charlie smiled. “Those blinking jacks do love to exaggerate. As a matter of fact, it's been sixteen years and”—he paused—“three months.”

  “That's longer than I've been alive.”

  “I imagine it is.” Charlie turned back to filing the raker teeth.

  “So who is that lady?” Ben pointed to the last of the four photographs hanging beside the bookshelf.

  Charlie studied the angle of his file. “There's some things in life a man tries to forget.”

  “It was wrong of me to pry,” Ben said.

  “As a matter of fact,” Charlie said, “that picture is one reason why I turned against bathtubs.”

  Ben studied the photograph. The young woman's black curls were combed to one side. Though her mouth was small and serious, her dark eyes seemed to be laughing at something. Those eyes felt familiar.

  “I met Miss Lucinda on the first day I arrived in Grand Rapids.” Charlie set down his file. “I was at the depot waiting to change trains. I had a one-way ticket to a town called Pembina. That morning I'd asked the stationmaster in Duluth what place in Minnesota was the farthest from everywhere.

  “Since I had time to kill in Grand Rapids, I walked down to the bank of the Mississippi. I'll never forget how bright and blue that day was. After a winter of coal smoke and fog in England, I kept admiring the sky.”

  “But why'd you ever leave England after your fancy Oxford education?”

  “It was all on account of a lady.”

  Ben looked back at the photograph.

  “No, not her,” Charlie said. “She enters the picture later.”

  “Bennn …”

  Ben stuck his head out the door.

  Pa stood on the cookshack steps. “You know your holiday don't start until after we get things cleaned up.”

  “Sorry, Pa.”

  “He
sounds bollocking mad. Best get moving,” Charlie said.

  Though Pa's idea of a holiday wasn't much, he did allow Ben a couple of free hours on Sunday afternoons. The day began with Pa and Ben cooking breakfast and lunch, but for supper, along with the usual beans and logging berries, they served only cold cuts, fried spuds, and bread left over from their morning baking.

  Sunday was also the day that a few of the jacks went to the boiling-up shack behind the bunkhouse to take a bath and wash out their socks and underwear. They filled a washtub with water warmed on a barrel stove and used a wooden paddle to swish their clothes around. After they hung their clothes above the stove, they used the leftover wash water for bathing. Once a week Ben had to go to the boiling-up shack and wash out all the aprons and towels, and Pa insisted that he and Ben both take baths.

  After Ben finished the lunch dishes, he walked down to the bunkhouse to watch the fellows tease each other and arm wrestle and swap stories.

  The bunkhouse was a narrow log building with double bunks lining both walls. Though the top bunks were warmer, the fellows up there had to be careful they didn't rap their heads on the ceiling when they climbed in and out of bed.

  When Ben opened the door, he was surprised at the quiet. Normally someone shouted, “Hey, cookee,” or yelled about the draft. But everyone was clustered around the stove in the middle of the room. Windy had his watch open.

  Ben climbed onto a deacon's bench for a better view. Packy had his bare feet on a chair, and he was sitting on top of the woodstove!

  “What's goin’ on?” Ben whispered to Windy.

  Windy kept his eyes on his watch. “A stove-sitting contest.”

  Beads of sweat were running down Packy's forehead. Ben could smell burning wool. “He's close to the record,” Windy said.

  The fellows hooted and hollered.

  “What's his time?” Arno said.

  “One minute”—Windy studied his watch—“and forty-six seconds.”

  Arno slapped Packy on the back. “That makes you the winner by”—Arno subtracted in his head—“six seconds.”

  “I say he fidgeted,” Swede said.

  “You're a sore loser.” Packy grinned.

  Swede looked at Ben. “How about you, cookee? You're used to a hot kitchen. I bet you'd be a grand stove sitter. Come on,” he said, grabbing Ben's wrist with his huge hand. “How'll you know unless you try?”

  “I'd rather not,” Ben said.

  Swede was about to boost Ben up onto the stove when Windy said, “That's the boy's choice, Swede.”

  Ben was surprised at how fast Swede stopped. Though Windy wasn't as strict as Pa, he was the boss of the bunkhouse. The jacks knew that if they got on his bad side, they'd end up sleeping in the north corner, where snow sifted between the chinking.

  Once Windy assigned a fellow a bunk, he couldn't move without permission. A man's bunk, along with half the deacon's bench beneath it, was his private territory. If a jack so much as set his cap on another fellow's bunk, a fight could break out, and it was Windy's job to make sure that didn't happen.

  After Packy's pants cooled down, he picked up an ax and walked over to the grinding wheel. “How's that lump on your head, cookee?” he said as he pumped the big stone wheel with one bare foot.

  “The swelling's down.”

  “You're lucky it was only a branch that hit you.”

  “I'll say,” added Jiggers, who was whittling by the stove. “That pine coulda flattened you to a flapjack.”

  When Packy finished, he held the ax up for Ben. Packy prided himself on being a master axman, and he liked giving Ben tips on how to sharpen a blade and hang the ax, meaning how to fit the handle to the owner.“How's that for an edge?” Packy asked. The steel gleamed in the light from the skylight vent. He pulled a wooden match out of his pocket and shaved off slivers, counting,“One, two, three, four,” as the shavings curled and fell.

  Swede, who'd taken a seat at the card table, said, “That cookee has got way too much talent to waste his time ax-sharpening. He should become a jockey and train Old Dan. The two of them would be a terror on a racecourse.” Ben had to smile at the thought of himself riding a oneton draft horse down a racetrack.

  Windy said, “When I first saw that bump on your head, I thought maybe an agropelter had cracked you.”

  “What's an agropelter?” Ben asked.

  “You know what a widow maker is, don't you?”

  Ben nodded. Everyone knew about widow makers—dead branches that fell out of trees and killed or injured loggers.

  “Most folks think that when a branch hits a jack over the head, it's caused by the wind or an ax shaking it loose. But that ain't always the case. There's a critter called the agropelter that lives in these woods. Most of the time when a jack's killed by a stray limb, a 'pelter's to blame.”

  “Why haven't I ever seen one?” Ben asked.

  “They're real secretive. They live in hollow trees and feed mainly on hoot owls and woodpeckers. The only fellow I know who sighted one was Ole Pedersen. I was working with Ole off the Rat Tooth Trail in the fall of 1889. He was walking back from the cut when a branch knocked him flat.”

  “How'd he know an agropelter done it?” Jiggers interrupted.

  “I'll get to that, if you'll hold your breath long enough for me to finish,” Packy said. “Luckily, the branch that critter flung at him was rotten, and it shattered on top of his head. Ole was groggy, but he looked up in time to see an agropelter leaping through the treetops like a wild monkey. He said the critter was an ape-faced animal with big muscles and hairy, six-foot-long arms. Those arms helped him swing through the trees so fast that he was just a blur. That's why none of us have ever seen one. Ole figured that 'pelter was strong enough to hit a jack's cap at fifty paces.”

  Ben smiled at the tall tale. But as the men turned back to their card game and the north wind howled over the stovepipe, he couldn't help wondering if there might be a hint of truth in Packy's story. With the miles of wild timber in the north, who was to say what sort of creature might be lurking beyond the reach of the tote roads?

  NEVERS AND THE SISSY STICKS

  As more loggers hired on, the Blackwater Logging Camp shifted into high gear. The cooking was taking Pa and Ben longer every day. But whenever the push asked Pa if he needed help, he said, “Me and Ben are doin’ fine.”

  Ben felt like blurting out, “What about sleep, Pa? How am I gonna get breakfast on the table when the time comes that I'm still doin’ the dinner dishes at daybreak?”

  Things were so hectic that Ben never had a chance to listen to Windy's stories. And whenever Ben took Charlie his meals, he had to hustle right back to the cookshack.

  Luckily the push took it on himself to bring a cookee over one afternoon. “This boy stopped by looking for work, Jack,” the push said. “Since he's got cooking experience, I wondered if you wanted to try him out?”

  Before Pa could answer, Ben said, “An extra hand wouldn't hurt, Pa.” Then he crossed both fingers behind his back.

  Pa looked ready to snap at Ben, but he turned to the boy and asked, “How'd you get fired from your last job?”

  “I didn't get fired, sir.” The boy drawled out fired so it sounded like fard. “I quit.”

  “Who'd you work for?”

  “Matt Maki.”

  “He's a good cook.”

  “I know, sir,” the boy said. “But I got tard of eatin’ fish soup and boiled taters.”

  “Matt does favor fish stew. What's your name?”

  “Nathaniel Evers.”

  “Well, Nathaniel, we fry most of our spuds around here.”

  “I'd like that, sir.”

  “What do you say, Pa?” Ben asked, his fingers still crossed. Nathaniel was a short, skinny boy with thin blond hair and a chin that came to a sharp point. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other as he waited for Pa to answer.

  “You're a mite scrawny, but I suppose we could give you a chance. Let's see what kind of potato peel
er you are.” Pa tossed him a paring knife. “But I figure Nathaniel Evers is way too long a name for a toothpick like you. I say we make it Nevers.”

  “I reckon I bin called worse,” Nevers said, reaching for a potato and stepping up to the counter.

  Nevers grinned as the peelings started to fly. “What are you laughing at?” Pa asked.

  “I ain't laughin', sir.” Nevers drew out his words long and slow. “That's my natural look.”

  Ben started peeling, too. He was amazed at Nevers's hands. “Where'd you learn to peel spuds so fast?” Ben asked as a wet potato squirted out of his grip and rolled onto the floor.

  Still grinning, Nevers bent down and tossed the potato back to Ben. “If I wanted to eat, I had to work.”

  “Didn't your parents feed you?” Ben scratched his cheek with the back of his hand.

  “My mama died of a flu epidemic down in South Carolina two years ago, and the county put me in an orphanage.”

  “I'm sorry to hear that. Did your pa die, too?”

  “I don't rightly know where he's at. A few years back Daddy give up on tenant farming and went to work in a cotton mill.” Though Nevers talked slowly and deliberately, his fingers rotated the potato so fast that it blurred. “Mama warned Daddy those mill towns was fast places, but he wouldn't listen. At first he strutted home all proud and give us some money. Then one Saturday he didn't come home.” Nevers tossed the peeled potato into the pan and started on another one. “We never saw him again.

  “After my mama died, I was sent to the orphans’ home, but I run off. They brung me back three times, but the fourth time I kept on goin'. I'da ruther joined Mama in the cemetery than stay in that sorry place.”

  “How old were you?” Pa asked from the far end of the counter. Since Pa wasn't a good listener, Ben was surprised that he was paying attention to Nevers's story.

  “Eleven and a half.”

  “And you hiked all the way to Minnesota?” Pa asked.

  “I have to admit it warn't easy,” Nevers said. “I'm so little that every cop figured I was a runaway. The only way I got through was by hidin’ out near the railroad yards and ridin’ the freights. I panhandled a few crumbs of food and warmed myself by stealin’ kerosene out of brakemen's lanterns—a sand-filled pail makes a tolerable hand warmer on a winter night. My closest call came in Duluth. I'd just got caught borrowin’ a shirt off a clothesline, and a cop was set to haul me in. But an old jack walked up and said, ‘This boy's with me.’ Next thing I knew, I was on the train to Cusson. That same jack talked a clerk into signin’ me on at the Ash Lake Loggin’ Camp.”