Blood and Salt (25 page)

Daria doesn’t speak at first. She looks at the walls for a long time, thinking of the fact that winter is coming and they must have shelter.

“Dobre,”
she says at last. “I will be able to use this place, but I still need to sleep outside for a while.”

Mykola nods. “I’ll change the way it looks outside too. Kupiak and I will lay sods along the walls from the ground to the roof, and I’ll plaster them too. And we’ll put sods on the roof. We’ll be warm in the winter.”

“I’ll be able to cook on this stove,” Daria says. “It’s not as nice as a
peech.
But it’s a good stove.”

The men’s bodies relax.

“What was it you gathered on the prairie?”
Taras asks.

“Buffalo chips,” Kupiak says. “In the old country, we used cow dung to hold the plaster together. Here we have buffalo chips.”

CHAPTER 15

The Orphan Boy

Taras comes slowly awake
in the early morning light and realizes the ground has sucked the heat out of him.
Yesterday was warm, but the night was cold enough that he can see his breath.
His back aches like hell. At home he never had reason to sleep on bare ground. It’s interesting in an unpleasant way.

He crawls out from under his blanket, tries to stretch the aches out of his body. Sees one black eye watching him. Kupiak gets up and they walk off a way, blankets knotted around their shoulders, to take a leak. Afterwards they go up the hill to the place where Taras saw a horse. He wonders if he’s always going see things like that. Horses made of half-remembered dreams, they must be. Or do horses run wild in this land?

They gaze out over the lines of hills.
The sight overpowers Taras with something like loneliness, yet better. He’s come to such a different place and seen things he could never have seen in the village.
The sun over the hills must be the same one as back home, but it looks different. Everything here seems stripped to its basic nature.
He knows they’ve lost many things, but in spite of this loss, something inside him is struggling to be said.
I’m not sorry.

Kupiak watches him, pats his arm. Talks about what comes next. By the time they come down, they have a plan. Daria has a pot of kasha simmering. She holds the sugar bag, weighing it in her hand, weighing today against future days. She shrugs and throws a handful into the pot.

“I’m going to town today with Mr. Kupiak,”
Taras says.

Daria looks puzzled. “Mis-ter?”

“It’s how Canadians speak,” Kupiak says. “Like
‘pahn’
in the old country, only everyone is mister, not just rich people. Mykola, you are Mr. Kalyna.”

“And me?” Daria asks. “Am I Mr. Kalyna too?”

Kupiak laughs. “Mister means a man. A woman is Miss if she’s unmarried and Missus if she’s married.
You’re Mrs. Kalyna.
Mis
-sus.”

“Mis-sus Kalyna.
Dobre.
So why, Mis-ter Taras, are you going to town today?”

“So I can look for work.” Daria starts to protest, so he hurries on. “Winter’s coming sooner than we think. We need money for supplies.”

Her face admits this is true
.
“And Halya? Are you going to look for her too?”

“Not yet. Later, when I can speak some English.”

They set out
at seven o’clock by Kupiak’s pocket watch. Taras finds it strange to see the town again; while he was busy digging the garden, it vanished from his consciousness. Now Kupiak points out places he needs to know about. Coaches him on what to say. First they go to the livery stable, where the owner grooms a horse with a stiff brush.

“You have work, please?
”
Taras asks.

The owner shakes his head. “Nothing here. You can try the hotel.”
Taras is amazed. The man said
hotel,
he’s sure of it. Hotel is the same word in Ukrainian.

The hotel desk clerk, barely older than Taras, also shakes his head. “Not enough business. You might try the brick plant.”

“Proshu.
Brick...plant?”

“Just south of town.” He points the way. “Give them a try.”

“Douzhe dyakuyiu.
Thank...you.” Outside Kupiak waits. He’ll take Taras as far as the brick plant.

The plant has many buildings,
some square, some round, in front of a range of rugged hills tall enough that Taras sees them almost as mountains. Near the entrance gate a large brick building stands, where he must ask for work. As Kupiak drives away he walks through the gates alongside twenty or thirty men on their way to work. He’s almost at the door of the building when a scowling red-faced man steps in his path.

“What the hell do you want?”

“You have work?”

“If we did, we wouldn’t be lookin for no bohunk.”
Taras doesn’t understand the words, but knows he’s being insulted.

A man in a black suit and matching felt hat rides up on a Thoroughbred stallion. At a hitching rail near the door, one hand on the pommel, he shifts his weight to his left foot and starts to dismount. A steam whistle shrieks to signal the start of the workday.

The horse shies, throwing the man to the ground, his boot caught in the stirrup. An iron-shod hoof grazes his head.
The horse rears again, trying to dislodge the weight, and the man jerks into the air, then slams to the ground.
The stallion rears again. Taras runs to him, grabs the bridle and pulls the bay down, lets it feel his strength and hear his voice, soothing
.
The Ukrainian words mean
good boy, good boy, it’s all right all right all right.
As soon as he can safely do so, he reaches back and releases the man’s boot. Tethers the horse to the rail.

The man who insulted him hasn’t moved.

Taras goes to the fallen man. His suit is dusty and torn, his forehead scraped where the horseshoe struck him. He gasps for breath, tries to move his arms and legs. Nothing seems to be broken.
Taras offers his arm and the man tries to get up. His right knee buckles, but he readjusts his weight and is able to rise slowly.
When he goes to brush the dust from his clothes, though, he cries out and clutches his collarbone on the left side. Taras supports him until the pain eases a little.

“Thanks.
”
Thanks is
dyakuyiu,
Taras learned it on the train.
The man offers his right hand. Says something about horses.
Taras hears him say “Brigadier.”
That seems to be the stallion’s name.

Taras takes the hand gently. “Taras Kalyna,” he says. This must be the owner. The
pahn.
Fancy clothes, good horse, who else would he be?

The man sees that Taras knows little English. “That was good work,” he says slowly. He goes on. Seems to be admitting he was in real danger.
Well, it’s true. He could have been injured. Or killed. But even when he’s thanking someone, he can’t help acting like he’s better than other people. He almost falls again but Taras steadies him.
“Well, if there’s ever anything I can do...”
The words mean nothing, but their tone says, Bye-bye, then.

“Please...you have work?”

“Uh no, I don’t.” He doesn’t need anyone.
Wait, though, he’s hesitating. He says a lot of other stuff that
Taras hopes could mean, “Looks like I owe you a favour.”

Taras understands the man is thinking about it.

The red-faced man pipes up. “We don’t need anybody, Mr. Shawcross.”

Mister Shawcross, that’s the
pahn’s
name. A sneer settles on his face. His next words probably mean, “Yes, thanks for helping me when the horse tried to take my head off,”
because the guy’s face looks even redder than before.

Shawcross looks Taras over, nods. Is he thinking of a job Taras could do? He turns to the red-faced man and gives directions. Points to the round buildings in the distance.
Kilns,
he calls them.

The red-faced man hesitates. Shawcross says,
“Now,
Stover.” So, Stover is the man’s name.

Taras notices that the
pahn
didn’t say
Mis-ter
Stover. And that he has not made a friend.

Shawcross holds up a hand and says something more to Stover. He takes Taras’s arm and limps inside, past an older man at a desk looking at columns of numbers on a sheet of paper – who looks startled to see his boss with a stranger – and through to a larger room. Oak desk and bookcase. Pen sitting in a marble base. Shawcross looks stunned, but manages to take a sheet of paper from a desk drawer, scrawl something on it and hand it to Taras.

“Thank you,”
Taras says, but he doesn’t know what to do next.

Stover hovers at the door.
“Take him to Moses,”
Shawcross says.

“Come on, bohunk,” Stover says. As they go out, Shawcross reaches into his desk and takes out a bottle of liquor and a small glass.
Taras hears him pour a drink.

Stover leads Taras through an iron door into the noisy plant. A worker grabs bricks off a press, two at a time, at great speed. Others take wheelbarrows stacked with the unfired bricks out the back door to the kilns.

Stover leads Taras into one of the round brick kilns.
A tall, powerfully built man in his late twenties loads bricks for firing. A man with dark brown skin and curly black hair. Taras tries not to stare. Stover greets the man as “Moses.”
The name Shawcross said.

“Dan,” the man says. “What can I do for you?”

Stover says something Taras can’t understand except for the word “work.” He grabs the note from Taras and hands it to Moses.

Moses asks a question. “Work at what?” maybe.

Stover shrugs. He’s obviously against Taras doing any work for Shawcross at all. He tells Moses something about “bohunk” and “horse.”
Telling what Taras did. Sneering as if it’s nothing. As if he’d have done it himself if
Taras hadn’t been in the way.

Moses reads the note and nods. He looks Taras over.
“Dobre dehn.”
Good day.

“You know my language?”
Taras is amazed.

“Speak white!” Stover kicks the dirt.

“Why should I? I’m black. Haven’t you noticed?” Moses says this in Ukrainian, and winks at Taras.

Stover starts to walk away. “Blackie and a bohunk,” he says under his breath but Taras hears. “What bloody next?”

“Ignore him,” Moses says, still in Ukrainian, “the guy’s got his head up his ass.
When he can get it out of the boss’s ass, that is.” Out of the
bossovi sratsi
is how he puts it.

Taras smiles but is careful not to look toward Stover.

Moses leads Taras to the back entrance of the yard and Taras helps him harness a couple of horses to a wagon. As they drive away,
Taras burns with questions. How is it you speak Ukrainian? Where do you come from? Are there other people like you?

Moses gets right down to business. Has Taras built anything before?
Yes, wattle fences and storage sheds. Thatched roofs.
Nice, but can he work with wood?
Yes, he makes carvings.
What about larger jobs? Carpentry?
Yes, he’s made benches and tables and helped repair the wooden church.
Bricklaying?
No.

Moses looks disappointed. Taras sees this will make it harder
for Moses to find him something to do. But he’s thinking, weighing
Taras’s skills.

“What did Stover mean, you did something fancy with the boss’s horse?”

“His horse bucked him off. I just calmed him down.”

Moses nods again. “So you’re good with horses?”

“Yeah, I know how to look after them. I learned in my father’s blacksmith shop.”

Moses smiles. “Can you shoe a horse? Mend harness? Drive horses?”

“Of course.” Finally, he’s said something that makes Moses happy.

Moses drives toward the centre of town, where, he explains, Shawcross Construction is building a school with bricks from the brick plant. On the way, he points out his house, which Taras realizes
is just over a hill from the brick plant.

“Come to my place after work. I’ll tell you about Spring Creek.”

The construction site swarms with men framing walls, hauling bricks, laying bricks. The hauling is done by enormous Clydesdales. Moses takes Taras to Rudy Brandt, the foreman, who speaks some Ukrainian.
Within half an hour,
Taras is busy in the site’s small smithy with the biggest horses he’s ever seen. Taking off shoes, trimming hooves, reshaping and reattaching shoes. The great horses stand calmly the whole time, so strong, so amazing they bring tears to his eyes. Rudy says
Taras can make new shoes for them another day.