"Get over," Karl said to Bill. But the horse stood contentedly, waiting for more scratching. "Get over!" Karl repeated more sternly, wedging his body between the animal and the wall, giving Bill a solid slap that commanded but did not hurt. Bill moved over, while Anna marveled at the man's assuredness in putting his mere body between the awesome bulk of the horse and a solid barn wall.
Karl seemed unconcerned, confident. To James he said, "A horse who does not know what `get over` means, needs a wider vocabulary." But even as he said it, a smile
tugged his cheek, and his big hands smoothed the horse's hide affectionately. "Remember that, boy. And remember that you talk to a horse with more than words. Your terms are only as good as your tones. Tones say much.
"Hands talk most of all. A horse gets to trust a man's hands first, and the man himself second." All the while he spoke, Karl's hands rode the horse's hide, resting on the withers, gliding over the shoulders, patting the flanks, returning to the high poll. He looked Bill in the eye as he said, "You know what I am talking about, ya, Bill?"
He led the horse near the wall where the harnesses hung on two thick wooden pegs. "A horse is nearsighted, did you know that, boy? This is why the horse shies away from movement that is a ways off--because he cannot see it clear enough to trust it. But you show him what it is, up close, and he rewards you by being still.
"First comes the collar," Karl went on. He lifted the flanged leather oval. "This one is Bill's." At his name, Bill jerked his head and Karl spoke to the animal. "Ya, you know I am talking about you. Here is your collar, my curious friend." Patiently, he showed the animal the leather before placing it over the horse's head, all the while instructing the two novices. "You must make sure never to get the collars mixed up, for if you put the wrong one on a horse, he gets a sore neck and shoulders. A horse gets used to his own collar, just as you get used to your own shoes. You would not give a marching soldier someone else's boots now, would you, James?"
"Nossir, of course not," James answered, his eyes never leaving Karl as the man buckled the collar beneath Bill's neck, then slipped it firmly back against the percheron's massive shoulders.
Sliding his big hand between the horse and collar, he said, "It should fit snug. Make sure it is not too tight, for if it presses against his windpipe, the horse will choke. If it is too long, it will rub and chafe the poor boy and cause shoulder galls."
From two hooks on the wall, Karl withdrew the first harness, his muscles straining as he lifted it down. Approaching Bill from the left, Karl seated the hames on the collar, buckled the hame strap, walked to the horse's flank, adjusted the breaching seat. Then he walked forward again to connect breast strap to hame. Never did he move without first running his hand ahead of him along the horse's flesh or pacifying Bill with low words. The animal stood motionless, only a slow blink of his eyes indicating he was even awake.
Karl instructed the watching pair in the same tone of voice with which he spoke to Bill. Instruction and lulling words blended into a feeling of serenity. Next, he adjusted the belly band, and through it all, Anna found she was mesmerized by the gentle movements of his hands upon horseflesh, his voice in the animal's ear, in her own. She found herself thinking of the coming night, of what it would be like should he handle her as he now handled the horse. She came to with a start, realizing that Karl had put the bit into the horse's mouth. As he led the reins through the various checkrings, he was asking her if she thought she could do all that.
"I ... I don't know. I suppose if I could lift that heavy thing down from the wall, I could do the rest."
"I will have to feed you well to put some muscle on your bone," Karl said. She found he could look at her in an amused way that made his comment playful instead of critical.
But James was confidently boasting, "I think I could do it, Karl! Can I try?"
With a silent chuckle, Karl turned the job of harnessing Belle over to the lad. James struggled beneath the weight of the harness, but with a little help from his teacher, made surprisingly few mistakes in dressing the horse in its loggingwear.
"You have a quick memory," Karl complimented, when the boy had finished. James beamed at Anna as if he'd just invented the craft of harnessing.
Next, Karl patiently explained the why and wherefore of attaching the round oak singletree to the two smaller doubletrees. In the exact center of the doubletree went the clevis, and finally they were ready for the massive logging chain. It was an enormous thing.
Again, Anna realized the power behind the man as Karl hefted a coil of it and dragged it over to attach to the clevis. He knelt down, securing the slip hook up into a link of the chain. "When you are going out empty like we are now, never let the slip hook dangle at the end of the chain. It likes to catch on roots, and the horses can be
hurt that way." He rose, touching the nearest warm flank again. "Always, the horses must be your first consideration. Without them a man is powerless here."
"Yessir," James responded.
Karl's eyes touched Anna momentarily, and she gave a soldierlike salute, repeating, "Yessir!"
Karl smiled. She seemed a game thing, in spite of her narrow shoulders and willow thinness. Today she wore a dress no more suited to outside work than yesterday's had been. She would soon learn. Once the work began, she would realize that simple clothes suited best, and would choose differently.
Meanwhile, the moment Karl had dreamed of during the long winter alone had come at last--the time of turning toward his trees, husband and wife together, to work in the sun toward their future. The three of them headed out into the
and strut of the horses. There was a look of oneness about the man and his team, each of them well-toned and thick-muscled, with a big job to be done.
Anna, long-legged though she was, had to stretch her steps to keep up. Her long skirt swept the morning grass and soon was wet to the knees. She ignored it, listening, smelling, tasting the day. The morning had a music of its own, played out by the awakening wildlife, the squeak of leather, the chink of chains, the clop of the horses' hooves. The dew was still heavy, and the earth redolent with summerscent. There was the ever-present mustiness of leaves decaying, and the crisp flavor of vegetation renewing itself. Birch, beech, maple, black walnut, elm, poplar and willow burgeoned with life.
Karl pointed and named each tree, saying, "A wood for each purpose a man could have," as if he could never get over the bounty he owned, no matter how often he measured it.
"It's funny," Anna mused, "I always thought before that wood was just wood."
"Ah, how much you have to learn. Each wood has a personality. Each tree has a trait that makes it ... like a man, an individual. Here in
They came to the place of the tamaracks, tall, spindly pines with scaly trunks and tapering tips swaying into the morning clouds. "And these are my tamaracks," Karl said with pride, looking up. "A full sixteen feet of log before the taper begins," he boasted. "See what I mean? The best. Will a sixteen-foot cabin be big enough for you?" He eyed Anna sideways, wondering if she believed he could build her a house so big.
"Is that a big one?" she asked, leaning, also, to look at the top of the tamaracks.
"Most are twelve. Some fourteen. It depends upon the trees. Here, where a man has tamaracks ... here a man has plenty." Again Karl paused. "More than plenty."
Dropping her gaze down the tamarack trunks, Anna found Karl's eyes upon her. Something warm and expectant fluttered through her limbs, making her concur. "Plenty," she said softly. "Sixteen feet will be plenty."
Karl suddenly glanced at James, as if remembering he was there. "And plenty work.
Come, boy, I will show you how to fell a tree."
He took the broadaxe and approached a tamarack, walked in a full circle around it, gauging, reckoning the course of its fall, glancing up, then back down, checking it for weighty limbs. After some deliberation, he said, "Ya, this is a good one. It is a perfect fourteen inches in diameter. Remember that now, boy. It will make your task easier if each tree is the same size. Before you start, you must consider the wind."
James looked skyward, saying, "But there isn't any."
"Good! Now you have considered it. If there is wind, we must allow for it with the very first cut of the axe."
Anna watched and listened with only half an ear as Karl patiently explained the rudiments of tree-felling. She was far more taken by the effect Karl was having on her brother.
James doted upon his every word, even unconsciously imitating his wide-legged stance as the pair gazed up the towering trunk and planned the course of the fall. And when James asked a question,
Karl's boot scraped aside pine needles to clear a small spot on the forest floor. He broke off a sturdy twig and knelt down to make a rude drawing in the dirt.
Anna smiled as James again imitated the big man, kneeling on a single knee, leaning to brace an elbow on the other in manly fashion. But James' thin back looked all the thinner when posed beside Karl's as the pair hunched forward, studying the sketch. It showed the placement of the notches, which Karl called "kerfs." Karl explained that the first kerf they'd make would be on the opposite side of the tree from the direction of its fall.
Anna's attention to instructions suffered further as Karl reached to point, causing the back of his shirt to stretch so tightly it looked as if it would split up the center. Her eyes followed it downward to his waist, mesmerized by the sight of a tiny width of exposed skin where the shirttails had shinnied up. Karl's hips were narrow, but his thighs bulged, kneeling down that way.
He swiveled half around. Anna's eyes darted toward the tamaracks.
Just then James surprised Karl by pronouncing the word "kerfs" and asking where they should go and how deep they should be. Karl grinned at the boy, then lifted his glance to Anna while he teased and taught in one and the same breath.
"I know from cutting down many trees--many, many trees--in Sweden with my papa and brothers, and right here before you came. It takes much practice to know these things."
What patience he has, admired Anna. Even his voice and pose were patient, as well as the expression on his face. Even if she could read and write, she thought, any child would be luckier to be taught by a man like him. She herself had little tolerance. James' face radiated pure pleasure as he studied the rude sketch, committing Karl's instructions to memory.
Karl stood up, using the axe handle to push himself. When he moved, it was with easy grace, always with the axe an integral part of his pose. Anna was beginning to understand that where the man went, the axe went. He used it as a natural extension of himself.
The tool was terribly heavy, but even so Karl now held it straight out by the end of its handle, measuring the distance between himself and the bole of the tree as he took up a spraddled stance at a right angle to it. As he held the extended axe the veins along his inner elbow stood out like blue rivers, disappearing into a shirt-sleeve rolled up just above the elbow. The powerful muscles of the forearm appeared to have square edges as he poised. He explained that the first cut must be perfectly horizontal, at waist level, and he took a slow-motion swing, demonstrating. He swiveled at hip and shoulder, the muscles beneath his shirt tensing one by one while Anna watched, realizing what strength lay within the man's well-toned body.
Karl raised the axe and let its handle slip through his palm until the poll rested against the rim of his hand. He pointed with the honed edge. "Now take your sister over there. When a tree comes down, it can be a killer if you underestimate it. The trunk can snap and jump farther and faster than even a spry boy like you could get away from."
He turned his blue eyes on Anna, and she dropped her own and quickly followed James.
Once they were a safer distance away, Karl called across the cleared space words he had been hearing since he was only a tadpole. "A man who is worth his salt should know exactly where a tree will fall. Some say that you can set a spike in the ground and a worthy Swede can drive it clear in with the trunk of a falling tree."
He smiled teasingly, spotted a gnarled root and pointed at it, again with his axe. "See that root on that oak over there? It will break in half where it humps up out of the ground."
Again, he turned toward the tamarack. From his first movement, something magical happened within Anna. He hefted his axe, swung, first left, then right, while she looked on. With a fluid movement, he wielded the tool in perfect rhythm, his right hand slipping down to meet his left at the exact moment of impact. In a grace born of long practice, he shifted the bite of each swing, left and right, left and right, sending woodchips flying high into the air. The rhythm never slowed, and Karl's eyes never wavered from the trunk of the tree. The axe made a whistling song as it cut through the air, a thud of percussion as each measure ended with steel meeting wood.