Barkskins (64 page)

“Yes,” said James, “of course we want to get it onto the market as soon as we can, so drying sheds such as the men here are using for firewood are helpful to get your market lumber ready sooner rather than later. One of our problems with drying lumber on site is that when the cut is finished and the men move to another area the mill is usually dismantled and transported as well. Lumber thieves come and help themselves to untended drying stacks so we usually hire one of the shanty boys, an injured or older man not as strong as he was, to stay behind until we move the lumber ourselves.”

The stacker grunted.

“This is why some timbermen—not I—say it is better to move the logs to a permanent mill that is always guarded.”

They walked to the back of the mill and Lavinia glanced at a pile of something—shrieked and put her hands over her eyes.

“Great gods! Mr. Bouchard, come out here and explain this—this horror,” shouted James.

Joe Push hurried out, not knowing what they had found, a corpse or a ruined board, and then laughed. “That's all them snakes the boys got last week. Had a big parade of frogs and ever snake for ten mile around showed up to eat on 'em.” There were thousands of huge muscular snakes in a six-foot pile, now beginning to rot and give off a memorable stench.

“Better pitch them into the river, Joe, or you'll have a dozen bears on your hands.”

“Already shot two, but sure, we'll give 'em the heave-ho.”

•  •  •

On the way back Lavinia asked James why they did not have circular saws in the mill. “I have read or heard that circular saws cut much more quickly as they are continuous and do not have to be reset.”

“Why, you are quite right, and we have them on order, but it is not so easy to do everything at once. This mill was already in operation and we bought it from Joe Push, whom we now employ. There will soon be hundreds of sawmills in the Michigan woods if it is anything like Maine. This old gang rig will be sold and replaced with circular blades as soon as they arrive. I would like to put turbines in place for the extra power and really cut some wood. This rig can only produce about three thousand board feet a day right now and the shanty boys cut trees so fast the mill can't keep up—the weak link in the chain is the milling. I want to put a portable mill at every cut where it is convenient and transport lumber, not just logs. There is no reason why the mills cannot follow the lumber camps, cutting on site as we go. But a permanent mill near a town or city has several advantages beyond foiling thieves. Lennart and I once discussed someday adding a finishing mill to our operations that could sand planks smooth and even a wood-steaming oven to form stair balusters and such.”

Cyrus objected strongly to Lavinia's plan to visit the lumber camps, and when she persisted in writing to the jobbers—Hobble Peterson and Vernon Roby—announcing her coming inspection he said that although he was terrible busy he would put his work aside and go with her as her protector. “You cannot go alone,” he said. “You are too young and too—too womanly beauteous. You simply cannot go alone.”

Lavinia blushed scarlet. “Uncle Cyrus, I am no such thing. And I will go. I will ride Black Robin. She will see me through safely. I know I can do this.”

But James agreed with Cyrus. “It is not just the trails. There are roughnecks in the woods everywhere. There are men who would—harm you, renegades and low fellows as well as stray Indians. You must have someone—a man—with you. You must. I mean it, Lavinia. It may be different when you are older but now it is not. No argument. The travel is arduous. You do not know the way, you cannot build a fire in the wilderness, you cannot defend yourself against wild beasts or human beasts. Cyrus is needed here so I will find a steady woods-wise man to go with you.”

He inquired of the Detroit hostler Paul Roque about a suitable travel companion and protector. On the next afternoon Roque suggested his oldest son, Andre Roque, a competent hunter who knew the ways of the forest and who had worked in both of the camps Lavinia proposed to visit. He could speak French and some Indian. James met the young man, taller than his father, very bashful and shy. But he answered all of James's questions easily. Yes, the best way to make this journey was on horseback. His father, the hostler, could provide the best horses in the stable. They were used to the forest trails and so would be better than a Boston horse, however highly esteemed. He would cook all their food and serve it, groom and feed the horses, prepare the bedrolls and blankets, point out whatever local landmarks they passed. He would protect Lavinia with his life. He would do his best.

•  •  •

It was early October and the first inches of snow lay in the cold woods. The horses' breath, their own breath steamed. The endless procession of huge trees aroused a new sensation in Lavinia—a powerful sense of ownership; they were her trees, she could cause these giants to fall and be devoured by the saws. She regarded their monolithic forms with scorn. Her trees—well, her trees with James and Cyrus. And the birds that rested in them, her birds, her squirrels and porcupines; all of it.

At the end of the day Andre built a lean-to shelter with the fire in front of it, their separate blankets at each end and the impedimenta and saddles stacked between them. She was asleep before he finished rubbing the legs of the horses. But she woke in the night to feel the youth embracing her from behind, his breath on her nape, one hand over her left breast.

“What are you doing?” she said fiercely.

Andre Roque was silent, breathing slowly and regularly. Stiff with outrage she lay still and gradually realized that he was asleep, not plotting rape, but deeply asleep. Did he fancy he was protecting her, or was this how he slept with all his siblings in the home bed? She would explain in the morning that proper people of opposite sexes did not lie together unless they were married. And fell asleep herself. In the morning Andre was some distance away making a fire, fetching water for tea, cutting hunks of bread from the loaf, feeding the horses. He seemed his shy, quiet self and handed her a cup of hot black pekoe. He said nothing about his presence under her blanket and although she opened her mouth to begin, somehow she said nothing. The most troubling part of the experience was the depth of his sleep; when she spoke he should have awakened. Suppose hostiles or predatory beasts had been creeping toward them?—he would have slept blissfully on while wolves gnawed her arm. And what if the fire had gone out in the small hours—such a deep sleeper as he could not replenish it. Perhaps he was even feigning sleep. These possibilities were marks against him. Still, in a few nights it seemed quite the ordinary way to sleep and she was glad of his warmth and closeness when branches cracked in the darkness and the owl called, and he was always up and at work by dawn.

•  •  •

They reached Vernon Roby's camp in midmorning, the sun very bright in a cloudless sky, the river so brilliantly reflective the sun glint was painful. They came into a clearing surrounded by forest except along the shore, a landscape of stumps as far as Lavinia could see. There was no one around. They went to a shack with a sign saying
OFFICE
over the door; it was empty.

“Hey-o,” called Andre and got a jay's call for answer. There was smoke coming out of a stovepipe from a log building. A door was ajar and Lavinia pushed in. A man slinging tin plates along an endless table was making such a clatter he did not hear her speak. She tried again.

“Sir.
Sir!
”

He turned and saw them, gave a high shriek and dropped the armful of plates. Lavinia rushed to help pick them up but the man motioned her away. “What you want? Who you are!”

“I want to see Mr. Roby. I am Lavinia Duke and I sent him a letter telling him I was coming to look at the cut.”

“Oh Christ! He's out with the boys.” He gestured at the stumps. “Bout two mile up the lake. Jesus Christ! He don't know you comin here.”

“I wrote a letter.”

“He don't read. He don't get no letter.”

Lavinia was annoyed. This was a charade. “Please go and fetch him. Right now.”

“Can't! I'm cook. Soon they come eat. Be mad if ain't on table.”

“Go now.
Now!
Or I will fire you from your job.”

The unfortunate man went out.

“We might as well sit while we wait,” said Lavinia to Andre. “Perhaps I had better see what he is cooking.” It was a great pot of stew. Biscuits rising but not quite ready to go in the oven stood on a table half-covered with a forest of sauce bottles. Lavinia, unable to sit and wait, stirred the stew, just beginning to catch to the bottom of the pot. She put a few sticks in the fire and opened the oven door to gauge the temperature. Hot enough for biscuits. They waited. The biscuits rose. Lavinia put the pan in the oven and noted the time on her little watch. Just as she was taking out the browned biscuits the cook came rushing in, his chest heaving with anxiety. He saw the hot biscuits, turned to the stew, which Lavinia had pushed to the back of the stove, where the heat was less. “I stirred it,” she said.

“Okay, okay. Good.”

Vern Roby came in a few minutes later. He was a short, heavyset man with an eye patch and thin scars on his face. He said nothing, just stared at her, then turned to Andre.

“What she doin here?”

“Mr. Duke sent her. She's his daughter. She come to see you, look over the cut.”

“A woman! This ain't woman's business.” He turned to Lavinia. “You better pack up your kit, miss, and skedaddle. Where's Mr. Vogel? Lennart Vogel, he's the one we work with for Duke.”

“I sent you a letter, Mr. Roby, explaining that my uncle Lennart Vogel died in a fire last year. I am assuming some of his duties. Knowing the men cutting for Duke and Sons is one of those duties. This gentleman is Mr. Andre Roque, who is accompanying me. Uncle Lennart is gone and whatever you may think of the arrangement I am taking his place. You may find me ignorant at first, but I hope we will get to know one another and be able to speak frankly and honestly. Perhaps you will tell me the situation. It looks like an extensive cut. I would like to see the landings and hear your plan for the spring drive. I would like to hear of any problems you have or anticipate, problems of any kind whatsoever. I am not here to interfere but to see what we may expect in the spring—precisely what Uncle Lennart would wish to know from you. And I have the authority to fire or retain you according to what I may find.”

Roby took a deep breath. Another. “Yes, ma'am,” he said, standing like a trained bear. He looked at Andre, tried to regain his command. “I remember you—worked horses for me last year, yah?”

“Yah,” said Andre in an insolent tone. No help for Roby there.

•  •  •

She wanted to see the choppers at work. Roby shook his head in disapproval but they walked along the edge of the icy skid road to a hillside where men chopped and the echoes flew back at them. A tree fell, axmen went at it, slashing the limbs, severing the top. The men glanced covertly at Lavinia. Hot breath puffed from their mouths. The air tingled with pine. The men hitched a chain around the log butt and jockeyed it onto a sled. Someone's foot slid, she heard a muffled curse.

Out of the corner of his mouth a man wearing a red tuque said to his fellows, “See that woman? That's the rich man's daughter of privilege there come to see the workin stiffs like a zoo, old Duke owns everything you see. He got it free from the govmint, the big giveaway, stealin public forest land, cut it down and get rich.”

“Save it for later.”

“Don't you worry, I will. Tell you how they get the power and legal rights, fix the laws, them takin everything got value—trees, copper, everything—for their selves. Workin man don't get nothin but older.”

Lavinia did not hear what he said but after her year in the English girls' school she was sensitive to the most subtle of oblique sneers, the hunched shoulder and lifted chin, and she felt his antipathy. Two could play at this game, she thought, and looked often in his direction, always finding his hard little eyes.

“One more question, Mr. Roby, who is the man, the chopper, in the red tuque?” He knew instantly who she meant.

“Heh. Rattle is what he calls himself.”

“I would like you to dismiss him.”

“Miss Duke, he is a bit of a talker but a good axman.”

“Dismiss him, Mr. Roby. Today.”

Horses drew the logs from the cut to a landing where Lavinia was startled to see a young woman, younger than she, a girl, come forward with a branding hammer and strike the D&S mark into the end of the log.

“That girl?” she asked Mr. Roby.

“That's Angélique, the cook's daughter.”

“Is he not concerned for her safety among so many rough men?”

Vernon Roby laughed for the first time that day, a great roaring hearty laugh. “No! She got seven brothers choppin here. See? Him, him over there, that one—” He pointed. “Nobody bother her they want to live. She most strong as a man anyway. She got that hammer. She break his arm.”

That was something new to think about as she made counts of the number and sizes of the logs. Lavinia determined to learn scaling; it was useless to say that you had five hundred logs with an average diameter of thirty-seven inches. How many feet of inch-thick boards would come out of that log? How did you allow for the bark, for the saw kerf, for the taper of the log? She wanted to learn the mathematics of scaling. She knew there were log rules that took all of these variances into account and let the scaler make at least an estimate of the number of boards in a single tree. How to learn the skill? She wished that Breitsprecher still worked for them—he had been a good scaler. Once Lennart had spoken of a minister turned schoolmaster at a female seminary somewhere in Ohio who was working out a detailed mathematical guide to estimate board feet in standing trees. One thing she knew from life was that nothing could be known precisely; no one could make a perfect rule to accommodate every tree, no one could know when a cat would knock over a candle. She had determined as a young child on her way to England not to be taken aback by the most untoward events. She might arrange a visit to that minister and beg him to show her the art of scaling, though a ladies' seminary seemed far from the right place for such instruction. But perhaps not—and because of Angélique and her hammer Lavinia entertained an image of an army of young women advancing into the forests with their scale sticks. In the afternoon, the light beginning to draw in like the neck of a sack, they left Vern Roby. Lavinia shook his hand, promised—threatened?—to come again in the spring for the drive, the log drive,
her
logs running to the mill. Roby caught her casual expressions of ownership. He knew which side was up, smiled, said he would look for her in spring. As they disappeared into the trees he beckoned to the man in the red tuque. He did not know how Lavinia had picked the one troublemaker in the crew, but she was right, somehow she could judge men. Rattle constantly stirred the boys up for higher wages, better hours, special food. “You, Rattle,” he called. “Pack your turkey and hit the road. Here's your time. The lady don't like your looks.”