Blackwater Ben

by William Durbin

  “That would serve him right,” Pa said.

  “What's a weather boy?” Ben asked.

  “Before you start your morning cooking, you can check the temperature for me,” the push said. Ben wished he'd kept his mouth shut. “Can I show our weather boy my thermometer?”

  “Be my guest,” Pa said, nodding.

  The push walked to the clerk's shack with Ben trailing behind. The pencil pusher smirked as the push reached into a trunk beside his bunk and pulled out a black case.“You keep this hid”—he handed it to Ben—“except when you take it outside in the morning. Don't you ever let those jacks know the temperature or I'll skin your hide.”

  “Wake up, weather boy,” Pa said the next morning, instead of “Daylight in the swamp.” Ben yawned as he slipped on his pants. It was only twenty minutes earlier than he normally got up, but it felt like an hour. Nevers was still snoring in the next bunk.

  Following the push's directions, Ben took the thermometer and its metal stand out of the black case he'd stashed under his bunk. Then he pulled on his boots and shirt.“Happy temperature taking,” Pa said as Ben stepped outside.

  Woodsmoke trailed off the cookshack roof. Ben's boots squeaked on the hard-packed snow, and his nose burned in the cold. As the air rushed down his back, he wished he'd put on his hat along with his mackinaw. Squinting under the blue points of starlight, he checked his pocket watch. The push had told him to set the thermometer in the open and wait five minutes before he took his reading. Ben stomped his feet and looked up. He'd always enjoyed gazing at the stars. Now that Pa had told him the story about his mother cradling him under a full moon, he connected his love of the night sky to her. It fit Nevers's theory about Ben's having things in common with his mother. When the five minutes was up, Ben's toes were numb. He struck a match and crouched down. It was thirty-six below.

  As soon as the push arrived for breakfast, he stepped into the kitchen and lowered his voice. “You got some news for me, cookee?” He looked to make sure no one was listening.

  Ben told him the temperature, and he nodded.“That's plenty warm for highball logging.”

  When it came time for Ben to drive the swingdingle, he could understand the push's policy of keeping the temperature a secret. The whole way to the cut, all Ben could think of was the cold. The air burned his cheeks right through his scarf, and his eyelashes iced up so badly that he had to squint to see.

  “This weather ain't fit for man nor beast,” Packy said. Ben could tell Packy was about to complain more until he saw that Old Dan was frosted from his whiskers to his tail.“Would you look at that poor hoss? I'll blanket him while you get the lunch ready.”

  Everyone but Swede ate with his mitts on. No matter how close the jacks huddled to the fire or how quickly they spooned down their food, nobody could clean his plate before the last beans froze solid. “Listen!” Jiggers said, pounding on a frozen clump. “It sounds like I'm banging on metal.”

  “Nobody should have to work in weather like this,” Packy said. “All you do is break chains and smash your fingers. A fellow—”

  “A fellow should keep his trap shut,” Swede said. “You ladies might as well start a sewing circle.”

  Ignoring Swede, Day said, “Would you boys mind helping me break out my load?”

  Packy and Jiggers got up. Then Day turned to Ben.“Would the cookee trade his ladle for a maul?”

  “Sure,” Ben said.

  Packy and Jiggers hooked their skidding horses ahead of Day's leaders as a snatch team. Day handed a pry bar to the road monkey and a heavy maul to Ben. “You give the runners a whack while the monkey pries them forward.”

  Day took his driving stance. “Ready?”

  “Anytime,” Packy said.

  “Ho, boys,” Day spoke to his team. “Let's walk.”

  As Day's Percherons pulled, the snatch team jerked hard to the right. Ben pounded on the left runner while the road monkey pried from the rear. “Switch,” Day called, and while the team pulled to the left, Ben and the road monkey ran around and worked on the opposite runner.

  It took two jerks on each side before the runners broke free. With a shuddering creak the sled started forward. Packy and Jiggers kept their horses pulling for the first fifty yards. Then they stepped aside.

  The ice ruts were so cold that Ben could hear Day's runners squeaking the whole time he loaded his dishes. On the way back to the cookshack Ben had to fight a sharp north wind. He got so cold that he could barely pry his hands loose from the reins and climb down from the swingdingle.

  When Ben opened the cookshack door, he heard laughing. He figured it was Windy, but it was Pa slapping his knee and chuckling.

  Pa and Nevers didn't even notice Ben until they felt the cold from the door. “You back already?” Pa said.

  “I was just telling your pa about a fellow who owned a roadhouse restaurant back home, and he got caught selling barbecued groundhog as pork ribs.”

  “That must have been a rib tickler when the folks found out.” Pa laughed at his own joke.

  Ben tried to smile. If only Pa would kid around with him like that.

  Nevers said, “You look froze solid. Let me help you carry the dishes in.”

  They unloaded quickly. Nevers dumped the plates into the dishpan, saying, “We've got a heap of scraping to do.”

  Ben put on his apron and picked up a plate. “How much colder can it get?”

  “A fellow in my last camp claimed it's always the coldest in the low areas,” Nevers said, scraping a stubborn clump of beans.

  “Like right in this valley,” Ben said. He poured boiling water into the dishpan, and steam rose, making his frozen cheeks tingle.

  Nevers nodded. “Yep. We're in prime country for record-setting cold.”

  The next morning Ben was glad to see that it had warmed up to twenty-two below. When Ben took Charlie his breakfast, the dentist noticed Ben's face the minute he stepped inside the shack.

  “Why the hangdog look?” Charlie asked.

  “What do you mean?” Ben asked.

  “You look like you just lost your best mate.”

  “It's nothing.”

  “If that's the sort of face you make over nothing, I'd hate to see you sad.”

  Ben set down the lunch. “All Pa does is holler at me.”

  “Let me tell you something about fathers.” Charlie laid his file on the table. “Your pa's job is to toughen you up so you're ready for anything life throws your way. My father never coddled me. He worked as a longshoreman, loading cargo from the time he was thirteen until the day he busted his back forty years later. Your pa's too busy to be preening your feathers.”

  Just then Pa yelled, “Bennn…”

  That afternoon Windy stopped by the cookshack and said, “Ernie Gunderson's real sick. He's been clutching his stomach and groaning since breakfast.”

  Pa glared at Ben. “Don't look at me, Pa. Nevers and I have been washing our hands twenty times every day.”

  “The push figures it's appendicitis,” Windy said. “He's sending him to town with the tote teamster.”

  When the tote teamster arrived, Ben and Nevers unloaded the supplies, and then they helped Gundy into the back of the sleigh. “Thanks,” Gundy said in a weak voice. He groaned as he lay down in the straw of the wagon bed, and Ben covered him with a blanket.

  Windy walked over to the teamster and whispered something. The teamster grinned and spoke in a loud voice: “You got an ax handle, Windy?”

  “What for?” Windy asked.

  “I just need it for a minute,” the teamster said. “I can't stand fellows being in pain. I'm gonna crack this boy on the noggin so he'll rest easy while I'm driving back to town.”

  “What if you hit him too hard?” Windy asked.

  “We'll just have to fit him for a coffin, then.” The teamster picked up the ax handle and walked back toward the sleigh. “But that don't happen very often.”

  The minute the teamster put his hand on the side of the sl
eigh box, Gundy sat up. “I'm feeling better,” he said.

  The teamster laughed. “We figured you had a bad case of blanket fever. If you're just riding back to town to see that gal of yours, you might as well sit up front with me.”

  FELLED BY A BLUE BUTT

  The men had just returned from the cut when Ed Day walked into the cookshack. His face was pale. “Slim Cantwell was finishing off a load when the cross hauler's horse slipped on a patch of ice.” He stopped and lowered his eyes. “Slim never had a chance. The top log took his stems out from under him and crushed him flat.”

  Ben nearly dropped a gallon can of prunes on the floor. Not Slim! Not Slim, the surefooted loader. He could cap off a sled with a two-ton stick of pine and keep his pipe lit the whole time!

  Poultice Pete stood listening at the door. “Warn't nothin’ nobody could do. We hustled up to the top and hooked that log offa him, but it was too late.”

  Ben was numb as the rest of the lumberjacks filed in for supper with their heads down. Even Swede, who never complimented anyone but himself, said, “There weren't a finer man in the woods than Cantwell.”

  “He was the best I ever saw,” the push agreed, nodding. He sighed. “We put his body in the root cellar to cool. Now I got to write to Slim's widow and her seven little ones at home.”

  Everyone had a respectful attitude except Jiggers, who walked up to the push and said, “If you'll be needing a new top loader, I'd be willing to take the job.”

  Ben couldn't believe that Jiggers would be worried about a promotion at a time like this. That was like trying to pick Slim's pocket at his funeral.

  As the jacks were finishing their supper, Pa picked up an empty pitcher. “Why don't you fetch us some molasses, Ben. I'd like you and Nevers to teach me your scone recipe tomorrow.”

  “But—” Ben swallowed at the thought of the body in the root cellar.

  “Don't go worrying about Slim,” Pa said. “The poor fellow is doornail dead. The boys held a mirror under his nose and even poked him with a pin to make sure he was past helping. Here.” He tossed the pitcher to Ben.

  Nevers looked grateful that Pa hadn't picked him for the job, but Pa said, “You might as well go along, Nevers, and bring us back a bushel of spuds.”

  Ben lit a lantern and crept out the back door with Nevers at his side. “That cellar gives me the creeps on a sunny day,” Nevers said, “and now we gotta go down there in the dark with— It makes my skin all crawly.”

  “There's nothing to be afraid of.” Ben talked braver than he felt. As he swung the door open, a puff of wind blew out his lantern. When he knelt to relight the wick, Nevers said, “How come your fingers are shaking?”

  With the lantern casting flickering shadows on the walls, Ben led the way down the steps. As his boot touched the dirt floor, Ben expected to see Slim's pale face, but to his relief, the body was covered with a blanket. Ben took a breath and hung his lantern on a nail. He tiptoed to the molasses barrel and opened the spigot, while Nevers walked to the potato bin. Ben was wishing the pitcher would fill faster when he heard a whisper.

  “What'd you say?” Ben asked, bending down to shut the spigot.

  “I didn't say nothing,” Nevers said.

  The hair on Ben's neck prickled. The muffled voice came again. “I'm cold.”

  Ben whirled. Slim sat up with the blanket covering his face. Ben dropped the pitcher and screamed. Nevers bolted for the steps with Ben right behind him. They fell twice scrambling up the stairs, and ran to the cookshack. Nevers almost ripped the door off the hinges as he burst inside.“It's alive!” he yelled. “Slim's alive down there in—”

  The jacks stared at him. “Are you deaf?” Ben said, feeling like he was going crazy. Just then the door opened behind him.

  It was Slim, smoking his pipe and holding the pitcher in his hand. “I believe you dropped this, son,” he said.

  Then the men all roared at once. Ben looked at Pa. He and Jiggers were standing side by side, and Pa was slapping him on the shoulder. They'd all been in on the trick.

  In the morning Ben was glad to see that the jacks had forgotten the joke. They filed into the cookshack, took their seats, and started shoveling down food.

  When Ed Day raised an empty platter, Ben walked toward the table. “Hey, cookee. Is it true that you and Nevers are leaving camp and enrolling in undertaker's school?”

  Everyone laughed, and Pa hooted just as loudly as the rest of the jacks.

  After the men left, Ben said to Nevers, “We can't get riled over the teasing.”

  “That's for sure,” Nevers said. “A jack in my last camp wouldn't take his medicine after they played a joke on him. The more he complained, the more they picked on him.”

  “Unless we want to be called undertakers for the rest of our lives, we'd best laugh along.”

  “And being teased beats chopping cotton any day.”

  “Is chopping how you harvest the cotton?” Ben asked.

  “No.” Nevers laughed. “It's how you weed it. After my daddy left us, me and Mama tried to sharecrop on our own. I was only ten at the time, but I could chop cotton just fine and walk a passable furrow behind a plow. The landowner advanced us seed and fertilizer, and we promised to give him half our corn and cotton crops—we could keep all the taters—come harvesttime. After a hot summer of sweat and hope and weeding, it looked like we were gonna make it. That's when Mama took sick. Working as a cropper was a church picnic compared to being throwed in an orphanage.”

  “Weren't there any other relatives to take you in?”

  “Mama's kin were all dead, and the folks on Daddy's side cut me off cold just like he done.”

  “I guess I should be grateful for Mrs. Wilson.”

  “Count your lucky stars that you had your pa and a nice lady to look after you.”

  THE COLDEST DAY

  Awarm spell brought relief in mid January. But when Ben asked if he could quit taking the temperature, the push said, “You best keep after it. Even March can get cold up here.”

  That meant Ben would have get up early for two more months! Why had he gone and talked to the push about hating thermometers?

  The cold returned on January twenty-fourth, and for the next eighteen days it never got above zero, even during the day. When Ben recorded thirty-two below on the twenty-eighth, the push said, “If it's colder than forty below tomorrow, you'd best wake me so we can hold the horses back.”

  The next morning it was forty-eight below. Ben tried to be quiet as he crept into the clerk's office to wake the push, but as soon as the door creaked, he heard a pistol cock. A voice said, “Identificate yourself or die.”

  Ben had forgotten that the pencil pusher kept a loaded pistol under his pillow. Ben was ready to dive for the floor when the push spoke up. “It's all right, Wally. The cookee's bringing me a weather report. What's the verdict?”

  “Forty-eight below.”

  The push was surprisingly calm. He swung his feet to the floor and said, “I'll go tell Needlenose and Day myself.”

  The cold weather made the men extra grumpy again. Keeping the horses in meant that the teamsters had to help with the felling. And since Dan couldn't haul the swingdingle out to the cut, the men had to walk a mile and a half back for lunch. “I feel like a green road monkey having to hoof all the way in for my beans,” Packy grumbled.

  The next morning, even with his mackinaw buttoned up to his chin and his hat pulled down over his ears, the five minutes it took Ben to get a temperature reading left him shaking. Fifty-one below. When he delivered the news, the push yelled, “How's a fellow gonna get any wood put up in this doggone country?”

  The jacks went back to work the following day, but on February ninth Ben had to wake the push and tell him that it was the coldest day of the winter—fifty-eight below.

  “Dagnabit, cookee.” The push kicked a chair against the wall. “What kinda news is that?” Ben wasn't sure if the push was more angry at the weather or at his hurt foot. He limped back
to the bunk and rubbed his toes. “Go tell Windy and Day that we got to keep the men in along with the horses.”

  Everyone enjoyed having the day off except Swede, who growled, “Are we lumberjacks or grandmothers?”

  The cookshack had burned so much firewood overnight that Ben and Nevers had to make a trip to the woodpile after breakfast. When they stepped out back, the snow crunched under Nevers's boots with a high-pitched squeak. “Would you listen to that!” Nevers said. He waved for Ben to stop and walked a few steps ahead.

  Ben said, “I've never heard snow that loud.” The air was so cold that his eyes felt prickly and his lungs burned. When he stooped to gather an armload of split birch, he spit into a snowbank. To his surprise, his spit crackled and froze in the air.

  “Did you hear that?” Nevers said.

  Ben nodded. “This has got to be the coldest day ever.”

  “I'll say,” Nevers said, laughing as his own spit froze in midair. The boys spit again and again, giggling at the crackling.

  Just then Pa opened the door. “What in the Sam Hill is goin’ on out here! I thought I asked you boys to fetch some wood.”

  Ben and Nevers stopped laughing.

  Pa looked at Ben meanly; then he smiled.

  “What's wrong?” Ben asked.

  Nevers said, “You got a spit icicle hanging from your chin.”

  Ben wiped his chin with the back of his mitt, but he missed. “Over there.” Nevers pointed, but Ben missed the icicle again. Suddenly everyone was laughing together.

  “I only seen it this cold once before.” Pa stopped to catch his breath. “Let me show you something.”

  He went back inside and came out with a pan of steaming tea. He had a dipper in his hand. “Watch this,” he said. Scooping up a dipperful of tea, he flung it into the air. Ben was ready to cover up his head, but the tea turned to ice crystals and floated gently to the ground.

  Nevers said, “Can we try?”

  Pa nodded.

  Nevers handed the dipper to Ben. “You go first.” Ben tossed a ladleful up and watched it turn to instant frost flakes. The three of them oohed and aahed like they were watching a fireworks display.