Blackwater Ben

by William Durbin

  “You've done good by yourself,” Pa said. “Losing one parent is rough on a youngster, but losing both would test his mettle.”

  “Ben's lucky to have his family,” Nevers said.

  “All I got is Pa,” Ben said. “My ma passed away, too.”

  “That's a shame,” Nevers said.

  “We miss her a lot,” Pa said, scraping the side of his mixing bowl. Ben was hoping Pa would say more, but he looked at the half-filled pan of spuds instead and said,“You boys better give her tar paper if we're gonna get supper on the table before next week.”

  After hearing Nevers's story, Ben realized that his own life had been pretty easy. Pa and Mrs. Wilson expected him to work hard, but they'd always done their best to take care of him.

  The boys were just starting on the carrots when Windy stopped by. “How's our new cookee?”

  “I'm fine.” Nevers kept working on a carrot as he studied the bull cook. Ben noticed that Nevers's feet shifted nervously whenever he met someone new, like he was getting ready to run.

  “That's good,” Windy said. “These boys have been shorthanded since their last cookee decided to give Jack a syrup bath.”

  “Nevers is a fine potato peeler,” Ben said.

  Windy nodded. “I don't doubt that.” Then he looked Nevers in the eye. “You don't smoke, do you, boy?”

  “Why you askin'?”

  “I advise you to lay off the cigs at this camp. The two things the push—Collins is his name—hates more than anything else in this world are cigarettes and thermometers. He tolerates chewing tobacco and pipes, but he calls cigarettes sissy sticks. If he catches a man smoking, he fires him on the spot.”

  “Don't he warn 'em?” Nevers asked.

  “He figures fellows should be smart enough to know that much on their own. But the push has got such a soft heart that he won't send a man down the road by his lone self. He waits till he catches two of them sissy-stick puffers, and he fires them both at once. That way they can keep each other company on the way home.”

  “But why does he hate thermometers?” Nevers asked.

  Ben said, “The push claims if the fellows know how cold it is, they won't want to work. He only allows one thermometer in camp, and keeps it to himself.”

  “That's right,” Windy said. “The push never works the horses when it's colder than forty below. That can kill 'em, you know. But the men have to go out up to fifty below.”

  “Isn't he afraid of killing the men?” Nevers asked.

  Windy laughed. “I never saw a lumberjack die of the cold as long as he kept moving.”

  Pa picked up the vegetable pan and said, “Nevers has got the quickest fingers with a paring knife I've ever seen.”

  “It helps that my hands are small, sir,” Nevers said.

  “And you're polite, too,” Pa said. “I like a cookee who ain't always asking a bushel basket full of questions.”

  When it came time to serve supper, Nevers worked twice as quickly as Skip had. As he ladled up the beans with one hand and passed a loaf of bread with the other, Pa said, “I can see that you're one boy who don't let grass grow under his feet.”

  “I ain't never been accused of dillydallying, sir.”

  During the cleanup Nevers proved that he was a speedy dishwasher, too. But the thing that impressed Ben most was how quickly he set out the breakfast dishes. Nevers walked alongside the tables, plunking down each plate and centering a bowl and cup on top without breaking his stride.

  By the time they'd finished the tables, Ben was tuckered out. But Nevers was still grinning. “Don't you ever get sick of doing kitchen work?” Ben asked.

  “I'm used to being as busy as a stump-tailed cow in fly time. Besides, your pa's easy to work for.”

  “But Pa is always ornery.”

  “If you think he's ornery, you ain't seen many lumber camp cooks.”

  Ben looked doubtful.

  “It's true. Before I hired on with that Finn cook Maki, I worked for an old coot named Sorghum Sam. Got his nickname 'cause he flavored everything with sorghum and molasses. The only thing worse than his cookin’ was his temper. One day a green jack asked why the stew was so sweet. Without saying a word, Sam picked up the whole kettle and threw it at the door. The hinges busted, and carrots and spuds and moose meat flew all over. That jack never spoke in the cookshack for the rest of the winter.”

  The whole time Ben and Nevers were getting ready for bed, Nevers kept telling one funny story after another. Pa normally liked it quiet before bedtime, but he got a chuckle when Nevers told about a mean fellow in Ohio who'd hired him to dig a drainage ditch. “I worked three days,” Nevers said, “but instead of paying me like he promised, that good-for-nothing trash run me off with his shotgun. I got even by sneaking back that night and shoveling the ditch full again.”

  Once his story was done, Nevers fell asleep as quickly as he set tables. One minute he was jabbering full speed ahead. The next minute he was snoring like he'd been cracked with a brickbat.

  Pa was soon rattling the rafters, too. Ben lay for a long time trying to sort through his first afternoon with the slow-talking Carolina boy who never stood still. Skip had been mean and sneaky right from the start. Working with Nevers felt like it was going to be interesting, but more complicated.

  THE HOSPITAL FUND

  Though the lumberjacks were normally slow to accept a newcomer, the men took an immediate liking to Nevers. Even the plodding iron burner, Arno, was impressed with Nevers's serving speed at breakfast. “I used ta be able to empty a platter of flapjacks before a cookee could begin to fill it,” Arno said. “But ain't no way I can put 'em down as fast as that Nevers can pile 'em up.”

  “He must be greasing his boot heels to move that quick,” Packy agreed.

  Later that morning as they were making pie crusts, Pa held up Nevers's pie tin before he put it in the oven and said,

  “That's about the finest fluted edge I've ever seen.” Ben looked at his own tin, wondering what was wrong with his crust.

  Ben was ready to wish for Skip's return when Nevers finally showed he was human. As Ben and Nevers were picking up the baking pans, Nevers accidentally tipped over the garbage pail, and he let out a choice cuss word.

  Pa glared at Nevers. “What did you say?”

  Nevers repeated the word, and Pa said, “That'll cost you.”

  “Cost me what?”

  “See that kitty over there?” Pa pointed to a coffee can labeled HOSPITAL FUND next to the door. “You got to put a penny in that can every time you cuss in my shack.”

  “Don't I at least get a warning?”

  “Nope.”

  In the middle of the morning Pa came back from the clerk's office with a letter. “Evy Wilson's writing to you again.” Pa handed the envelope to Ben.

  “It's from our landlady,” Ben explained as he broke the wax seal and opened the letter.

  Nevers admired the perfect script of the address on the envelope: MASTER BENJAMIN J. WARD, BLACKWATER LOGGING CAMP. “That penmanship is fine enough for Mrs. Wilson to author herself a handwriting book,” Nevers said.

  “She prides herself on being neat. Her needlework is the same way—you'd think every stitch was done by a machine.”

  “So what did she say this time?” Pa asked.

  Ben skimmed through the letter and smiled.

  “Is it funny?” Nevers asked.

  “In a way,” Ben said. “Mrs. Wilson is a sweet churchgoing lady who'd never harm a soul, but she fixes on gore sometimes.”

  “Like blood and guts?”

  “And death and dying,” Ben said. “We had a man west of town fall in front of a hay rake last summer, and she wasn't content until she'd heard all the gruesome details.”

  “Let's hear it, then.”

  “First I should explain that Mrs. Wilson's closest friend is her neighbor, Maggie Montgomery, the preacher's wife. She's one of the few ladies in town who isn't a saloon gal.”

  “Get on with it,” Nevers
said.

  Dear Benjamin,

  Thank you so much for your letter. You be careful of that nasty horse, Dan, and don't let him run away from you again. Speaking of livestock, I read in the paper that the champion guernsey cow from Grand Rapids that we saw at the fair last summer fell and broke her hip. It's a pity that the owner had to put such a lovely creature down.

  Blackwater has been quiet now that most of the jacks are working in the woods like you and your pa. But we do have a few fellows passing through town. Sadly, a certain disreputable saloon owner—you know his name as well as I do—is still knocking jacks over the head and stealing their money. Bodies are turning up weekly. I certainly wish the authorities would do something.

  On Sunday morning poor Maggie Montgomery got the scare of her life when she discovered a corpse behind the church. She was carrying a bottle of communion wine, which she promptly dropped and broke. The dead man was lying right on the back steps and was bludgeoned so badly that positive identification was impossible. We all suspect the aforementioned bartender.

  Give my regards to your father, and remember your prayers.

  God bless,

  Mrs. E. Wilson

  P.S. Tell Mr. Charles Harrigan that if I want a literary analysis of my letters, I'll request one.

  “Is bludgeoned being hit over the head?” Nevers asked.

  “The same,” Ben said as he refolded the letter.

  “I can see where Mrs. Wilson likes her gore. We had a neighbor like that back home—Sally Hinricks. She was nice as pie, but nothing perked her interest more than hearing about a man falling into a vat at the tannery, or a two-headed calf being born.”

  As Ben folded the letter to put it back into the envelope, he saw that Nevers looked like he wanted to ask him a question.

  “You can read it again if you like,” Ben said.

  “It's your letter.”

  “I don't mind.” Ben handed the page to Nevers.

  “I can't read.”

  “What?”

  “None of the menfolk in my family can read. We were too busy farming to bother with school. I wasn't lucky like you.”

  “You call going to school lucky?” Ben asked.

  “It's better than pickin’ boll weevils offa cotton plants.”

  “Didn't you at least learn to read hymns in church?”

  “Our congregation couldn't afford hymnbooks,” Nevers said, “so our minister just sang the verses and we repeated them back.”

  Ben had never once thought of going to school as being lucky, but he couldn't imagine not being able to read a letter or follow along in a hymnbook.

  At lunchtime Ben found out that Nevers had another weakness. It happened when Pa asked Nevers to bring the lunch tray over to the dentist's shack.

  Ben and Pa were loading the swingdingle when Nevers came back. “Are you feeling poorly?” Pa asked Nevers.“You look a little green around the gills.”

  “I get a queasy stomach sometimes, sir. And I can't stand the smell of Charlie's ole shack.”

  “You'll get used to it,” Pa said.

  “I don't think so, if you'll pardon my back talk. It reminds me of the closed-up smell of the orphanage. They wouldn't never open the windows. Didn't matter if it got hot enough to melt candle wax.”

  Instead of hollering at Nevers for complaining, Pa said, “If the stink bothers you, I reckon there's other jobs around here.”

  Ben didn't mind delivering Charlie's lunch, but how come Pa had let Nevers off so easy? If Ben complained about a job, Pa made sure that he did it twice as often.

  Ben took his letter along when he went to pick up the lunch tray. Charlie would enjoy reading Mrs. Wilson's news.

  HIGHBALL LOGGING

  As the hauling season drew closer, the energy in the camp rose. By night the water tank crew kept building up the ice roads. By day the sawyers kept felling pine. Back in camp Arno checked the calk shoes on the horses, and the wood butcher worked extra hours finishing the twin-bunk oak sleds that had to be strong enough to haul a hundred tons of wood.

  Ben thought the new cookee might slow down after his first few days, but Nevers was forever drumming his fingers on a table or tapping his boot on the floor.

  “You got ants in your pants, boy?” Pa asked him three or four times a day.

  No matter how fast Nevers worked, his swearing was getting him on Pa's bad side. A cup of flour tipping off the counter or a spatter of grease hitting his arm was all it took to get the cuss words flying.

  At first Pa pointed to the kitty every time a swear word popped out, but after a while Nevers got so used to paying up that he walked over to the coffee can on his own and plunked in a penny. One afternoon Nevers even had to pay double when he caught his apron on the oven door, swore, and then cussed himself out for not being able to stop his cussing!

  “Maybe you should try to use a regular word in place of the bad ones,” Ben said.

  “Like what?” Nevers tapped the toe of his boot on the floor.

  “Instead of cussing, why don't you just say Shoot or H-E-double toothpicks or Petunias ?”

  “I gotta try something,” Nevers said, “or I might as well sign my whole paycheck over to the hospital fund.”

  Ben's plan worked at first. “Thanks, Ben,” Nevers would say, grinning each time he held himself in check. Then just before supper Nevers brushed his forearm against the stovepipe. He jerked back and swore a blue streak as he ran to the water pail and plunged in his arm.

  “Boy, you could make a sailor blush with that tongue of yours.” Pa shook his head as he rubbed some lard on Nevers's burn. “I counted a good nickel's worth that time.”

  Nevers lifted his arm carefully. “Would you settle for three cents?”

  The good thing about Nevers's foul mouth was that Pa had less time to holler at Ben. It was also entertaining. Nevers had a true gift for cussing, the likes of which Ben had never seen. While most fellows got red-faced and shouted when they swore, Nevers had an understated way of drawling out his words that took everyone by surprise.

  Windy said, “There's no question the boy's got a rare talent for swearing. The only fellow I ever knew who could match Nevers's style was an Irish pub master from Boston, and he had seventy years of practice.”

  Nevers's weak stomach also helped liven things up in the cookshack. One afternoon Ben and Nevers were trimming the wicks and washing the chimneys on the kerosene lamps. A chimney cracked in the dishwater, and Ben ran a sliver of glass into his finger.

  “Dang nab it,” Ben said as he pulled the sliver out.“Would you get me a clean handkerchief, Nevers?” Ben held his finger over the water and watched droplets of blood splash into the suds.

  “What in blazes!” Pa said behind him.

  Ben turned. Nevers had dropped to one knee, and he was white as a sheet. “I can't stand the sight of blood,” he said.

  “I might as well be working in an infirmary,” Pa said,“with all the bleeding and fainting around here.”

  Another time, when Pa asked him to empty the spit-toon, Nevers got so sick from looking at the gobby mess in the bottom of the can that he almost puked.

  Packy, who opened the door just as Nevers began coughing and gagging, laughed and said, “That's not a very good way to be advertising your cooking, boy.”

  As much as the jacks liked Nevers, once they found out that he was queasy, one fellow or the other was always teasing him. Packy would say, “What's that you got there, Jiggers?” and when Nevers turned, Jiggers would open his mouth wide to show his slimy tobacco chaw. Ben thought the teasing was funny until Swede got downright mean one evening and wedged a board against the outhouse door, leaving Nevers trapped inside for an hour. From then on Ben took Nevers's side.

  On the second Friday in December Windy opened the cookshack door and hollered, “They're here, boys.”

  “The four-horse teamsters?” Ben asked.

  “And the top loaders, too,” Windy said.

  Ben and Nevers ran outside to check
, for that meant that the most important work of the winter—loading the massive logs onto sleds and hauling them to the river-bank—was about to begin.

  That day the head teamster, Ed Day, and five other drivers checked in along with a half-dozen men in the loading and landing crews. The push also hired three road monkeys to help maintain the roads. Though two of them had experience, one of the boys was a gazebo named Ernie Gunderson. Gundy got lots of teasing. It started when the push asked him if he'd ever shoveled road apples. Gundy said, “Ain't it a little late in the season for apples?”

  The push shook his head when he told Pa about it.“What's this world coming to when a boy don't know the difference between apples and horse manure?” The jacks thought it was so funny they called him Gundy Appleseed.

  Ed Day was just the opposite. From the minute Ben saw him, he could tell that Ed was a teamster. He dressed in an ankle-length sheepskin coat rather than a wool mackinaw, and he wore four-buckle felt-topped overshoes, fur driving mitts, and a wool cap with earflaps. Ed was only average height, but he walked with a confident air that made him seem taller. Every other lumberjack in camp had a nickname, but the men simply called him Day.

  The teamster's word was so trusted that the jacks went to him whenever they had a question. “Day says …” was all it took to end a squabble. Ben hoped he could work for Day sometime.

  Day handled the horses with the same ease he had with the men. Ben had seen other teamsters whip their horses, but Day started his team by saying, “Walk, boys.” If he wanted them to pull extra hard, he'd call, “Give her tar paper, you hay burners,” and the horses would perk up their ears and lean forward.