White Pine (11 page)

Dear Sevy,

How are you? We all miss you and can’t wait
to see you, in just a few weeks. Your father is doing well. He’s up
and around with only a little limp. He’s been doing some carpentry,
and that’s brought in some money, but he’s fit to be tied with
wanting to come up and get you.

I paused in my reading. I didn’t want my pa
to come get me, not now. It was not that I didn’t want to see him.
I missed him something fierce. But I wanted to finish out the
season. After all, I’d made it this far. Ma ended the letter with
the comment:

When you get home, we’ll go and talk with
Mr. Watters about getting you back into school.

It felt odd thinking about going back to
school. I’d grown up a lot over the winter. Grown men had treated
me like a man. And they’d expected me to behave like a man, too.
Sometimes their very lives had depended me. The idea of going back
to being just a boy in Eau Claire felt down right peculiar.

It was Ma’s letter and thinking about going
back that decided me. The spring log drive was coming up, and I’d
been listening to the other fellas talk about it for weeks. They
spoke of the adventures of the river rats and about what it was
like to ride into town with the logs. This might have been my only
chance to be a part of a river drive, and I wasn’t going to miss
it. It seemed like the most fitting end to my time in the
Northwoods. To be honest, I also kept thinking about how Adelaide
would look at me when she saw me coming down the Chippewa River on
a log raft with my peavey in hand, a real Northwoods hero like from
a penny novel.

So I sent a letter back to my folks telling
them that I would be a few more weeks and that I was going on the
river drive. I knew it might worry Ma. Each year, fellas died on
it. But I thought Pa would understand that I wanted to see it
through to the end.

Chapter
Eleven

~ River Drive ~

All through the winter, we’d stacked huge
piles of wood along the banks of the rivers that led into the
Chippewa. Now that they were running high, the river rats would
push the logs into the mix to be carried downstream to Eau
Claire.

I’d heard from the other fellas that the trip
would likely take us a little more than a week from where we were
to Eau Claire. In the final leg of the journey, flumes would carry
the logs down into the holding area in Half Moon Bay. Ever since I
was little boy, I’d watched the logs come through the flumes every
spring.

When I signed on as a river rat, I traded in
my clodhoppers for a pair of caulked boots with sharp points on the
soles. I got me some overalls from the wannigan and I cut ‘em off
half way up my calves. River rats did that so the cuffs of their
pants wouldn’t get caught between two logs and pull them down under
the water where they could drown.

I’d already headed out with the other river
rats when they closed the camp down for the year. I was glad not to
be there when the last of the fellas pulled out, leaving a camp
that had seen so much living all cold, empty, and dead. Before we
left, I said my goodbyes to the fellas I wasn’t likely to see
again. Then, I joined a crew of men including Roget, Adam, and the
Swedish brothers. Bart and Harold were coming along to man the
cookshack during the drive.

“The grub won’t be like the stuff you get at
camp ‘cuz we’re always moving,” Bart warned me. “It’ll be mostly
beans and soggy door knobs.”

“Oh you’ll be right grateful for any kind of
hot food,” Harold remarked.

I soon learned neither were blowing
smoke.

When I hefted my peavey for my first day of
river work, it was with considerable thought. It seemed so long ago
that I’d first held it in the general store with Hugh. I cringed to
think how green and foolish I must have seemed.

In the early days of the log drive, I learned
being a river rat was nowhere near as romantic as I’d imagined.
Sure, it was exciting, but exciting in a “you may be killed in the
next second” sort of way. Being a river rat meant being cold and
wet and worried all of the time, and when you weren’t worried, you
were all out scared. It was near impossible to put into words the
sound of thousands of log feet hitting water that was running high
and white.

Several crews worked the drive that spring
for the Daniel Shaw Lumber company. The first crew set off early.
They moved with the logs, but at the front, making sure that the
way was clear for the main body. The second and biggest crew went
with the logs, and a third picked up stragglers.

I travelled with the second group. And, of
course, Roget was our leader. He was a good lumberjack, but as a
rat, he was beyond compare. He had a real sense for how those logs
moved in the current. He could see a problem coming up in the bend
of a river and knew how to avoid it most of the time. Dangerous
work as driving logs down a river was, Roget had a reputation for
getting his men through it alive. Even the Johan and Ole didn’t
give him any guff.

I was wet, tired, cold, but alive. Every step
I took on those shifting logs could lead to death. And somehow,
knowing that made me feel more alive than I ever had before.

When we got near a town, the folks rushed out
to see us and they waved and clapped their hands, though we
couldn’t hear them over the roaring and grinding of thousands of
log feet riding the river.

We’d been on the log drive for a couple of
days when the Swedish brothers taught me how to burl. We were in a
backwater, pushing out a bunch of logs that had gotten hung up. It
was a crisp, cold sunny day, just hinting at the warmer weather
coming.

Johan got up on one of the logs first. “Eh,
look at me.” He balanced carefully on a log and toed it out into
the little bay, away from the other logs. It was a real thick log,
an easy eighteen inches. He sorta shimmied down the log, standing
sideways with his arms up for balancing. Then, he began to walk on
the log, making it turn, like I’d seen the burlers on Half Moon
do.

“Snabbare!
Faster!” Ole yelled.

Johan grinned and his feet in their hobnailed
boots began to move faster. The log was gaining momentum, turning
faster and faster still. Johan’s arms were outstretched, his arms
bouncing rhythmically with his movement.

“Bra jobbat
!” Ole said, laughing out
loud. “Good job. Keep going.”

Johan’s legs flew. Then, his torso began to
rock, forward, then backward. Then, splash! He was gone. He came up
laughing and choking, and splashed an armful of ice-cold snowmelt
up at his brother, who leaped backwards.

“You think you can do better?” Johan
challenged once he was back on dry land. Arms crossed, he shivered
something fierce.

“I know I can,” Ole responded, not at all
deterred by thought of being cold and wet in the frigid air. Still,
he carefully took his coat off and set it on the ground. After some
more joshing and horseplay, he got up on a log. But despite his
brave words, he didn’t last much longer than his brother had.

“Sevy, it’s your turn,” a dripping wet Johan
said after both Swedish brothers had been in and out of the drink a
number of times. Both were shaking near uncontrollably.

“Nah,” I said.

Johan smacked Ole on the back of the head.
“He’s no fool. Now the two of us are going to have to go and get
some dry clothes.”

“Yah, well he can’t be working alone now, can
he? He’ll be heading on back anyway. He might as well get in on the
fun.”

I was sore tempted. Just like any other kid
growing up in a sawdust city like Eau Claire, I’d dreamed of being
one of those champion burlers who won the prizes on Half Moon Lake.
But I knew that water was real cold, so cold it made your heart
feel like it was going to jump right out of your chest. I’d gone
ankle deep in it enough times to know. The two Swedes had blue
lips, and I’d seen those two fellas jump into snow banks in their
all togethers.

“Come on, boy. A little bath won’t hurt
ya.”

“Get rid of some of them bluebacks, so the
girls back home will think you’re a pretty fella.”

They kept at me, and it didn’t take much
convincing to get me up on a log. Not when secretly I’d been
hankering to give it a try. This was definitely the time and the
place. There was no one around but Ole and Johan. And, typical
Scandihoovians, those two weren’t the sort to tell tales. Maybe a
few slow moving musky or northerns might witness me falling into
the drink, but even the beavers were still in their dams.

Careful, real careful, with my heart
pounding, I stepped from the snarl of logs that had gotten stuck by
the shore out onto the log that the Swedish brothers had waded
waist deep into the water and held for me. Now, if this here had
been a real burlin’ contest, I would have had to get up on the log
from a straddle in the middle of some log holding pen. But since
this was my first time, those fellas were helpin’ me all they
could. And I didn’t want to get anywhere near that cold water until
I had to. I guessed I’d end up in it soon enough.

I stepped onto the log, and, keeping my knees
bent, I sorta half stood half squatted up. To my surprise, the
standing part was pretty easy, the calks in my boot soles dug me
right in.

“Good boy,” Johan said as he gently directed
the log away from the snarl and out into the open water.

I was too busy staring down at that log to
say anything back. Then, those fellas, who were at each end of the
log, began to turn it, real slow like. I sorta walked with the
motion to stay upright.

I was doing it! I was burling!

“This ain’t that bad,” I shouted.

“Keep your knees bent,” Ole instructed.

“Now go faster,” Johan yelled.

They began to roll that log so that I had to
sorta jog to stay up. The caulks in my boots were now proving more
of a hindrance than a help as the way that they dug into the pine
slowed down my feet.

“Faster,” Johan yelled again.

“No!” But my feet were flying. To tell the
truth, I loved it. I laughed out loud. It felt like I was dancin’
up there on that log. The next minute, one caulked book sorta got
stuck and I took a funny half step. The sky rushed down to the
water, and I was in the drink. Ice cold! So cold, it stole your
breath away. My heart exploded right out of my chest.

“Holy smokes!” It was only waist deep, but I
went scrambling right out onto the shore.

“Good ‘un, Sevy.” Johan raised a fist in the
air.

After that, the icy coldness of the water
didn’t stop me from getting back up and trying again and again.
Finally, none of us could take the cold anymore, so we headed out
to rejoin the others at the main drive. But I couldn’t stop
thinkin’ about the burling. I planned on practicing my burling each
and every remaining day of the river drive.

The cook shack was tied up on a narrow wooded
peninsula. The other fellas sat around a campfire eating their grub
when we came up. The three of us were soaking wet, near blue with
cold, but also smiling and laughing. Roget took one look at us,
didn’t saying nothing, just shook his head. We changed our clothes
and joined the others around the campfire. I got as close as I
could, and even set my boots on some cinders.

While we were wolfing down the beans and salt
pork, Johan started jabbering. “This boy,” he said, between
mouthfuls of chow, “he is a natural on the logs. Give you a run for
your money, Fabien. He has young legs.”

“Ja, and he doesn’t give up.” Ole reached
over and tousled my hair.

Roget grunted. “No wonder it took you three
so long to bring those logs in.”

“Tomorrow,” Johan said. “You come with us and
see him, Frenchman. He is a fine burler, a real river man.”

I puffed up at his words, but Roget deflated
me real quick. First, he eyeballed me with those cold blue eyes
that didn’t show a thing of what he was thinking. He stood, tossed
the remains of his tea on the ground, then said, “This boy, he is
not one of us.”

Then, he just walked away.

I stared after him, feeling like I’d been gut
punched.

No one said anything for a long moment.

I swallowed my mouthful of beans. I knew
there was nothing that I could ever do to prove myself to the
man.

Then, Dob spoke, “Sevy, don’t mind him.”

I nodded, biting the inside of my bottom lip
so they wouldn’t see my reaction. I wouldn’t tear up now, not in
front of these fellas, not like some little girl whose feelings had
been hurt.

Whiteside spoke up next. “Roget’s an odd
one.”

“What is his problem with the boy?” Johan
demanded.

“The problem isn’t with Sevy at all,” Dob
explained. “It’s with Fabien. But what he said wasn’t right. You’re
as much of a lumberjack and a river rat as any of us, Sevy, and
you’ve proven it again and again.”

The others nodded and grunted and said the
things that shoulda made me feel better, but they didn’t quite ease
the sting of Roget’s comment. I thought that he’d come around where
I was concerned. Guess I’d been wrong.

Chapter
Twelve

~ Logjam ~

The very next day of that river drive, the
one thing that river rats fear the most happened. A logjam. For
most of the morning, me and the Swedes had been travelling behind
the others again, picking up straggler logs. But by midafternoon,
we were all back together at the jam. It was a huge one; logs must
have been backing up there for days. Fellas from some of the other
companies were crawling all over it like ants. There was cursing in
many languages up and down both sides of the river. But those logs
weren’t budging.

Folks were talking and pointing and all fired
up about the unholy mess. Through the crowd, I spotted Dob.