A Northern Light (15 page)

"Uncle Fifty, I didn't know you could cook," Abby said.

"I learn dis past weentair. Da cook on da Saint Regis job, he drop dead. Bad heart. All da lombairjock have to take turn cooking. I learn."

"You learned good, Uncle Fifty," Lou said, shoveling beans onto her plate. "You get an A-plus. Will you teach Mattie how to cook? She can only make mush and pancakes. And a pea soup that's so bad, it's more pee than soup."

Uncle Fifty roared. My sisters laughed. Especially Lou. Pa raised an eyebrow at her, but that didn't quiet her. She knew she was safe because our uncle was laughing.

"Don't mind them, Mattie," Abby said, petting me.

"You like my pea soup, don't you, Ab?" I asked, hurt.

She looked at me with her kind eyes. "No, Mattie, I don't. It's awful."

My family laughed harder then, even Pa cracked a smile, and I laughed, too, and then I ate until I thought I would burst out of my dress. And when we were all so stuffed that we were groaning, Uncle Fifty took a huge rhubarb pie out of the oven and we ate that, too, doused with fresh cream.

When dinner was over, my father and uncle went to sit in the parlor. Uncle Fifty took his whiskey bottle, his satchel, his Croghan boots, and a tin of mink oil with him.

Beth's eyes never left his satchel as he walked out of the room. "Do you really think he's got dirty clothes in there?" she whispered.

"I think the dishes need scraping," I said. "Get started."

We washed the dishes, wiped the table, and mopped the floor just as fast as we could so that we could go sit with our uncle. His visits were rare. He mostly lived in Three Rivers, Quebec, where he and my father were born, and only showed up every two or three years, when logging jobs brought him near.

By the time we settled ourselves in the parlor, Pa had made a fire in the cylinder stove. He was mending Pleasant's bellyband—he was always mending something Pleasant had broken—and Uncle Fifty was oiling his boots. My uncle is a riverman and a riverman's boots are his most prized possession. The soles, studded with calks—metal points—help him keep his footing as he walks on floating logs. The best ones are made in Croghan, New York. Pa used to tell Lawton never, ever fight with a riverman in the winter. If a man gets kicked by a frozen Croghan, he is a goner for sure.

Uncle Fifty drank his whiskey while he worked, and he told us stories—which is what wed all been waiting for. He told us how a bear got into his bunkhouse a month before and all the jacks ran out except a man named Murphy, who was sleeping off a drunk. As the rest of the jacks watched through the window, the bear sniffed him, then licked his face. And Murphy, still sleeping, smiled and put his arms around the bear's neck and called him sweetheart. He told us about the raging glory of the river drives, when the ice went out and a dam was opened and thousands upon thousands of logs were sent through the sluice and downriver, churning and rolling, crashing against rocks, plunging down falls. He said the noise alone would take your breath away. He told us about the jams and the danger of breaking them up and how he'd been on a jam when it suddenly gave way and then had to ride a log half a mile down the Saint Lawrence before he could leap to safety. And how two other men didn't make it and how their bodies looked when they were finally pulled out, all twisted and smashed. He told us that he was the number one champion birler on the Saint Lawrence, and that he could knock any jack off any log, any jack at all. Except for one—my pa.

It had been years since Pa worked a drive, but I could tell from the look on his face as my uncle talked that he missed it. He flapped a hand at the stories and tried to seem all disapproving, but I saw the pride in his eyes as Uncle Fifty told us that there was no one more skillful with a bateau, no one faster or more fearless. He said my pa was the most surefooted riverman he'd ever seen, that he stuck to logs like bark. He said he'd seen him dance a hornpipe on a log once, and do a cartwheel and a handspring, too.

They were whoppers, my uncle's stories, every one. We knew it and we didn't care. We just loved the telling. My uncle has a beautiful North Woods voice. You can hear the dry bite of a January morning in it and the rasp of wood smoke. His laughter is the sound of a creek under ice, low and rushing. His full name is Francois Pierre, but Pa told us his initials really stand for Fifty Percent, because you can only believe half of anything he says.

Pa and Fifty are four years apart in age. Pa is forty and my uncle thirty-six. They have the same rugged faces, the same blue eyes and black hair, but that is where the resemblance ends. Uncle Fifty is always smiling and my father is always grim. Fifty drinks more than he should. Pa only drinks on occasion. Fifty sounds like the Frenchman he is. My father sounds like he was born and bred in New York and has no more French in him than Barney the dog does.

I once asked my mother why Pa never spoke French, and she said, "Because the scars run too deep." I thought she must have meant the ones on his back. Pas stepfather put them there with a belt. Pas real father died when he was six. His mother had seven other children and married the first man who asked her, because she had to feed them. Pa never talked about his mother or his stepfather, but Uncle Fifty did. He told us that the man beat them and their mother for nothing. Because the supper was too cold or too hot. Because the dog was in when he was supposed to be out, or out when he was supposed to be in. He did not speak French and wouldn't allow it to be spoken in the house, because he thought his stepchildren would use it to talk behind his back. My father forgot once and that's how he got the scars. Uncle Fifty said their stepfather used the wrong end of his belt and the buckle took the skin clean off. I try my best to remember those scars whenever Pa is harsh. I try to remember that hard knocks leave dents.

Pa ran away from home when he was only twelve and found work as a chore boy in a lumber camp. He worked his way south, into New York, and never went back to Quebec. His mother died some years back, and his brothers and sisters scattered. Uncle Fifty was the only one he ever saw.

Our uncle kept us entertained with his stories for hours. But around eleven o'clock, Beth got sleepy-eyed and Lou started yawning and Pa told us it was time for bed. As we were all standing up to say good night, Beth cast one last, hopeful glance at our uncle's satchel. Uncle Fifty saw her do it and smiled. He opened the bag and said, "Well, I plaintee tired myself. I tink I get out my nightshirt now and ... ba gosh! Wat is in here? Where you tink all dese present come from? I don't reemembair to buy no present!"

Beth jumped up and down. Lou squealed. Even Abby was excited. I was, too. Uncle Fifty always gave the nicest presents. Pa said he drove the peddlers crazy, making them unpack everything, choosing this and that, then changing his mind and starting all over again. He never gave horrible gifts, like handkerchiefs or mints. He always picked out something special. That night he started with Beth and worked his way up, always pretending he'd forgotten to get something for the next one in line. It was agony waiting for your turn and agony when it came. We didn't get many presents and weren't used to the drama and anticipation. Beth received her very own harmonica with an instruction book and loved it so much, she burst into tears. For Lou, there was a carved wooden box containing a dozen hand-tied fishing flies. Abby was given a gold-plated locket, which made her flush pink with pleasure. And then it was my turn.

"Oh no! I forget someting for Mathilde!" my uncle cried, looking at me. He dug in his bag. "No, no, wait! I have someting..." He pulled out a dirty wool sock, which made everyone laugh. "Or dis..." Out came his red long Johns. "Or maybe she like dis..."

He placed a narrow ivorine box in my hands, and when I opened it, I gasped. It was a pen. A real honest-to-God fountain pen, with a metal nib and a silver-plated case and cap. It was as shiny as a minnow in its bed of black felt. I had never had a pen in my life—only pencils—and I couldn't even imagine what it would feel like to put words onto paper in rich blue ink instead of smudgy lead. I could feel my eyes welling up as I looked at the pen, and I had to blink once or twice before I could thank my uncle.

Pa was next—he got a new wool shirt—then Uncle Fifty pulled out a fearsome hunting knife and a pretty beaded bag. "For Lawton. And your mamma," he said. "Maybe you geev heem da knife when he come home, eh?"

"But Uncle Fifty, he ain't never...," Beth started to say. A look from Abby silenced her.

"And maybe you girls can share da purse."

We all nodded and said we would, but no one took the purse and no one touched the knife. We thanked our uncle again, and hugged him and kissed him, and then it really was time for bed. I picked up all the brown wrapping paper, smoothing it out for another use, as my sisters made their trips to the outhouse.

While I waited for my turn, I noticed the fire in the cylinder stove was low and went to fetch more wood for it. On my way back, just as I was about to push the parlor door open, I heard my uncle say, "Why you stay here squeezing cow teets all day long, Michel? Wat kine life dat be for a reevairman? Why you not come back and drive da logs?"

Pa laughed. "And let four girls raise themselves? All that whiskey's addled your brain."

"Your Ellen, she make you come off da reevair. Don't tink I don't know. But she gone now, and I tink da reevair be a better ting for you. You like dis farming?"

"I do."

I heard my uncle snort. "Now who tell da tales, eh?"

About ten years ago, my mother and father had had a terrible, terrible fight. We were living in Big Moose Station then. Pa had just come home from a spring drive. He had Ed LaFountain, another woodsman, with him. They got to drinking after supper and Mr. LaFountain got to telling stories and he told one about my pa working a bateau and how close he and his crew had come to getting swallowed up by a loosening jam.

Mamma went crazy when she heard it. Before Pa had left for the woods that year, she'd made him promise he wouldn't work the jams, that he'd stay on the shore. It was too dangerous, she said. Men were killed all the time. Jams tended to give way with no warning, and unless the oarsman could get his crew back into the boat and row clear in time, the boat would be pulled under. Pa apologized to her. He said he'd only done it for the money. Most woodsmen made less than a dollar a day, but a good oarsman got three and a half, sometimes four, and Pa was one of the best.

Mamma didn't want to hear any apologies, though. She was furious. She told him she wanted him to come out of the woods for good and work for her father in his sawmill. They could live in Inlet, she said, right in the village, near Josie. He'd make good money. The children would be closer to a school. Things would be easier for everyone.

"Never, Ellen," he'd said. "You know better than to ask me."

"Papa said he would forgive everything, Michael. He said he'd help us."

"
He
would forgive? Forgive what? Forgive me for falling in love with you?"

"For us running away. For not..."

"
He's
the one needs forgiving, not me. He's the one called me no-account French trash. The one who said he'd rather see you dead than married to me."

"What are you trying to do, Michael, make me a widow? I won't have you on a bateau!"

"I ain't working for your father, and I ain't—" Pa didn't get to finish his sentence, because Mamma slapped him. Good and hard. My mamma, who never even raised her voice to him. She slapped him and put on her coat and made us put on our coats, and she put us in a buckboard at the train station and paid the man to take us to Aunt Josie's.

We stayed with my aunt for three weeks, and she refused to let my father in for two of them. But then one day, Pa came to the door and pushed her aside and got my mamma to go for a walk with him. Lawton cried something fierce; he didn't want her to go. When they came back, Mamma gave Pa all her jewelry—all the pretty things her parents had given her before she married. Pa went to Tuttle's, a secondhand store in Old Forge, the following day and traded it all for cash money. And the next thing we knew, he was clearing trees on sixty acres of land he'd bought in Eagle Bay. He built us a house from the trees he felled—a real house, not some pokey log cabin with hemlock bark for a roof. He had the trees milled into planks at Hess's sawmill in Inlet, not at my grandfather's mill or my uncle's. He built a barn and a smokehouse and an icehouse, too. And though he did haul lumber out of the woods in the winter to make extra money, he never worked a river drive again.

"And someting else," my uncle continued, "why you don't teach your girls to speak French?"

"They have no use for it," Pa said gruffly. "And neither do I."

"Dey be French girls, Michel. Dey be Gauthiers"—he pronounced it
Go-chay—
"not Gokey. Gokey! Ba jeez, what da hell is Gokey?"

Pa sighed. "It's the way they say it here. The way they wrote it on the tax rolls. It's easier, Francis. I've told you all this before. Lord, but you're a pain in the ass. You never let anything go."

"Me? You a pot who tell da kettle he's black! She gone, Michel. Your Ellen, she dead."

"I know that, Francis."

"But you not let her go! You bleed for her in your heart. You make beeg sorrow. I see it in your face, in your eyes. How you walk. How you talk. She gone, but you still here, Michel, and your girls, dey still here. Don't you see dis?"

"Anything else you want to bust my nuts about, Fran?"

"Yes, der is. Why your son leave, eh?"

There was no answer.

"I tink I know. I tink because you wan miserable son-bitch, dat's why. I see dat you are. You never a barrel of monkey, Michel, but you better den dis. What da hell wrong wid you? Dose girls, dey lose someone, too. Dey lose der mamma, den der brothair. But dey not turn into miserable stinking ghost like you."

"You've had too much whiskey, Francis. As usual."

"Not so much dat I don't know what I see."

"There's plenty you don't see."

Pa came out then, on his way to the outhouse, and I pretended only to be bringing the wood and not eaves-dropping.