The Haweaters Page 2

  Boyd stalls. Now surely that is meant to be a joke, for Bryan is well-known for doing exactly the opposite of what he’s now claiming. Boyd has seen it himself on many occasions and has heard about it even more from men who were spitting angry. But there’s no smile on Bryan’s lips nor anything else to suggest joviality. No, Bryan is simply drawing smoke deep into his lungs and exhaling it in long, turbulent clouds. He raises his hand in a half-hearted wave and calls out to his son, who is at the burn pile, unhooking the chains from the stump. “Enough for today, Charlie. Other things need doing before the sun grows old. I’ll finish up with Boyd here. Who knows, you may even escape this day without another fine.”

  Charlie looks up and locks eyes with Boyd. At first there’s a question on his face, but it’s quickly replaced by contempt. He turns back to the oxen and snaps the reins, steering the lumbering beasts in a wide arc that initially leads away from Boyd and the old man.

  The lawman turns back to Bryan, not at all sure if Charlie is obeying his father’s command or doing the opposite. “Do you think he heard what you said?”

  Bryan shrugs and once again exhales. This time the smoke comes out in a long billowing stream that undulates as he once again hails his son. “What’s say you head on down to Michael’s Bay and grab a sack of shorts. Still got credit down there. Don’t let the boys at the mill tell you otherwise. Just be back by sundown. Water still needs hauling.”

  Charlie makes a big show of looking between the reins clutched in one hand and the switch in the other. He drops them both and storms over to a cluster of saplings where he snaps up a burlap sack. Slinging it over his shoulder, he tromps off through the back pasture without once looking back. That’s typical of Charlie. If rage were a scent, the stench would be unbreathable.

  Boyd can’t help but comment. “I allow that boy’s got a mean temper. I know you know that, but it needs saying just the same.”

  Bryan’s eyes are on his retreating son, whose stride doesn’t vary regardless of whether his feet land on rocks or roots or level ground even though the soles of his tattered boots offer little protection. He might as well be walking barefoot through a field full of tacks for all the good they’re doing him.

  The old man turns and exhales smoke from his nostrils like some mythical dragon. He examines Boyd’s face with a practised slowness. “So now what’s the complaint? And who is the villain that spoke it?”

  Boyd takes a quick, tight breath. “I reckon that villain would have to be me and the complaint, as you call it, is about a handgun Charlie showed me a good six, maybe seven days past. And gave me to believe it will have Amer’s name on it soon. I told him then – and I’m telling you now – he needs to lose the weapon before it gets him into hot quarters. I’m duty bound to tell you it’s not legal for Charlie to have such a thing as that and it’s not wise either, not when you consider the acrimony between your two families.”

  Bryan leans in close to Boyd and Boyd leans away, but not because he feels in any way intimidated. No, it’s because Bryan’s breath reeks of sour milk, rancid meat, tobacco and something a little more ominous. Something only the devil himself can name. It rises to unbearable levels when Bryan speaks. “You’d be referring to the beating? The Amer boy had it coming. For what is no business of yours. Not really any business of mine, but unlike you I know why it happened and that beating was called for. Wasn’t never no need for the courts. Definitely wasn’t no need for the fine. No need for your involvement on any level.”

  Boyd suddenly realizes he hasn’t been drawing breath and gulps in air. “I couldn’t look the other way. Once the matter was brought to me formally, I was bound to see it through to the end.”

  Bryan yanks the pipe from his lips. “Looking away was exactly what you could’ve done. Had no problem looking the other way when Amer up and paid the boy’s fine. Don’t recall you once asking him nor Charlie nor anyone else why Amer would do such a thing, seeing as how he was the one who insisted on the charges being brought in the first place.”

  There’s a dangerous dare in Bryan’s eyes, one that Boyd tries to sidestep. “It’s not for me to know.”

  “That the best you can give me?”

  “What would you have me give you?”

  Bryan waves his pipe in the space between them. “How’s about some justice? How many times have I told you that Amer works on Sundays in violation of the law? Always chopping wood and pulling fish from the creek in full view of the bush families. Hunting, too. Not a Sunday goes by that we don’t hear the report of a firearm somewhere on his land. Anyone around here can tell you the truth of what I’m saying.”

  Bryan jabs the pipestem between his lips and takes several quick sucks.

  Boyd’s sigh is almost a laugh. “I’ll confess here and now that you never once struck me as a religious man, Bill Bryan.”

  Bryan waves him off. “Not about religion. About what the law allows and it don’t allow that.”

  Boyd considers biting his tongue, but words escape before wisdom can stop them. “It may dispirit you to know that the law you’re so blithely quoting also doesn’t allow for you to pasture your animals in your neighbours’ grain and yet I hear with alarming regularity that’s exactly what you’ve been doing more often than not.”

  Bryan gnaws on his pipestem, smoke leaking from his lips. “One of Amer’s many lies.”

  “He’s not the only one who’s been making the charge.”

  Bryan narrows his eyes and continues to study Boyd’s face. He gives his pipe a few sucks, which draw no smoke, then palms the bowl and frowns. “You should know by now not to trust a word that comes out of Porter’s mouth. Tells tales both sides of the fence. Wants violence. Won’t be satisfied ’til it arrives.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  “Some people don’t need no reason.”

  True enough. “Still, I’m hearing the tales from more than just those two. There comes a point when I’m bound to act.”

  Bryan’s eyes darken. “Is that what you’re doing here now? Acting?”

  Boyd raises his hands in mock surrender and shakes his head. “I’m here about the pistol, I told you as much already. The other is just me telling you what tomorrow brings should you see fit to not alter your conduct.”

  Bryan holds his pipe sideways and peers into the bowl. He knocks it a few times against the heel of his hand, turns it, then pulls out his flint. When he speaks again it’s with something akin to resignation. “Boy oversteps sometimes. Talk to him about it regular. Nothing more I can do than that. Got his own mind. Not like to be heeding me any more than a boy his age is ever likely to heed his own father. It’s the way of the world.”

  Boyd’s nod is a surrender. This is likely the best he’s going to get from Bryan and he knows it. Still, he’s said what he had to say and now he can head back home knowing he’s done his duty. Only that’s when he spots the thing he would rather not have spotted. Boyd hangs his head and points. “Then there’s that.”

  Boyd is pointing to where the blackened ends of the snake fence are resting awkwardly on the dividing line between Bryan’s property and Amer’s. Charred rails stretch along the ground a good twenty feet beyond the blackened fence end. Boyd might as well address that travesty while he’s here and maybe save himself a trip back this way in the near soonness. “The fire that burned straight through the boundary fence. Was that also Charlie’s doing?”

  Bryan doesn’t bother to look to where Boyd is pointing. He knows full well what the lawman is referring to, Boyd can see it in the way the old man is holding his face blank. Bryan gives an elaborate shrug. “Calm when the boy lit the burn pile. Wind went and whipped up something fierce and drove the flames clear into Amer’s field. Couldn’t be helped. No one present will ever say different.”

  No one present. Meaning Bryan and Charlie and not another living soul. The Lord himself would sob like an injured child when
faced with a man like Bryan. Boyd can’t disguise his irritation. “I’ll allow that maybe the wind couldn’t be helped, but what about Laban? Word is he nearly ran himself ragged hauling water up from the creek to douse those flames. Dash it, Bryan, didn’t it occur to Charlie or yourself to pitch in? You were the ones, after all, who started the conflagration. It seems to me you were the ones who were duty bound to help put it out.”

  Bryan changes his mind about relighting his pipe. Instead he taps out the spent tobacco on the choppy surface of a stump. “Not possible. Once the flames spread across the line, the whole thing became Amer’s problem. Wants to send his useless son to put it out, so be it. Though to my mind, sending his dog to piss on it would’ve been more effectual.”

  “There’s no need for the vulgarity.”

  Bryan stuffs his tobacco pouch into one pocket and the knife and flint into the other. “Me over there or Amer over here isn’t anything anybody should be encouraging. Especially when that anybody is claiming he wants to avoid bloodshed. That’s not a threat, mind you. Just an honest accounting of where things stand.”

  Boyd stretches the tension from his back. He really doesn’t want to be having this discussion and wouldn’t be having it except that he’d been on his way back to his homestead yesterday when he encountered Charlie for the second time in less than a week. The boy came striding out of the woods with a couple of rabbits slung over his shoulder and an aggression in his stride that would’ve made a wolf think twice. Although Boyd didn’t see the handgun that time around, those rabbits ended up dead somehow. The ensuing conversation had been troubling enough to prompt Boyd to leave off his morning chores and traverse the three miles between his homestead and here to make sure Charlie wasn’t about to do something that couldn’t later be undone.

  Boyd now regrets having made the attempt. He’d been appointed Justice of the Peace no more than a month past and these endless disputes are running him ragged. Seriously, how is he supposed to keep two families from killing each other when little else occupies their thoughts? He can’t be watching their every move. He’s got chores of his own to attend to, chores that aren’t getting done while he’s standing here like a fresh-born fool.

  Bryan breaks into his thoughts. “It’s my burn pile you should be considering, not some fence that can easily be repaired.”

  Boyd can’t help but wonder why. He turns to look at the burn pile and continues to wonder. Nothing about it strikes him as notable. No, it looks like the dozen or so he passed on his way over here. He looks back to Bryan, who’s being conspicuously silent as he saunters over to the abandoned oxen and reaches down for the reins. When he turns back, his thumb is pointing behind him. “You don’t see a single burn pile anywhere on Amer’s side, do you?”

  Boyd surveys what he can see of Amer’s land and has to admit that what Bryan is saying is true. Nowhere can he see any evidence of a burn pile, although the significance of that is currently eluding him.

  Bryan pats the neck of the lead ox. “And yet you know in your guts you should be seeing several of them, or at least black marks where those piles once were. That is, if Amer is doing what the law demands and burning all the wood extraneous to his needs.”

  This again. For all the trouble lumber has caused in Tehkummah, Boyd is rapidly coming to the opinion that the forests themselves ought to be made illegal. His response is terse. “That’s not necessarily the case.”

  “It necessarily is. Amer has cleared what? Fifty, sixty acres in the past two years. That house of his took a lot of timber to build, I’ll give him that. Barns, too. And his hired man has knocked together an impressive number of fences. But that still leaves massive amounts of wood unaccounted for.”

  “There’s nothing on the books that says he has to account for it.”

  Bryan’s face flames red and he looks for all the world as if he’s about to explode. Instead he snaps the reins and the oxen start to trudge, chains jangling on the ground behind them. The old man raises his voice above the racket. “You’re clearing your land same as me. You know how many trees you’ve downed and how many stumps you’ve pulled. And if you’re following the law you claim to uphold then you know what it takes to burn it all.”

  Boyd surely does, but he also knows that when Bill Bryan has worked up a full head of steam, stopping him is likely to be as successful as trying to stop a fully stoked locomotive with an outstretched hand. It’s best to just let the old man run himself dry.

  Bryan’s voice is almost a shout. “Now maybe you’re selling some of your crops to Lyon. I can see it. Sell my oats to him and was selling him my legumes previous to that. But timber is different. Once you pay the stumpage tax, there’s no profit in it. Certainly not enough to account for Amer’s grand estate. But then you know that, don’t you?”

  Know what exactly? Boyd’s temper is starting to get the better of him and he can see he’s going to have to end this conversation quickly before he says or does something that will place him in the awkward position of having to arrest himself. “What exactly is it that you’d have me do? Do you want me to swear out a warrant against Amer for avoiding the tax by selling logs illegally to Lyon? Is that it?”

  Bryan simultaneously raises his hand and shakes his head. “Didn’t say nothing about no warrant. Just impose a fine equal to the tax Amer would’ve paid had he been following the law.”

  Boyd uses the toe of his boot to work a rock out of the pitted ground. He lines it up, then kicks it at a stump not ten feet dead ahead. His aim is off. The rock clips the edge of the stump and ricochets down a gopher hole. Boyd tilts his head. “What proof do you have that Amer’s even doing what you say he is? And don’t say the lack of burn piles because that’s proof of nothing so far as the law is concerned. There is no blessed way to convict a man on what isn’t there.”

  The oxen abruptly jerk to the left and Bryan just as abruptly yanks them back in line. He’s surprisingly spry for his advancing years, Boyd has to admit that much, even if every day he expects to get word that some part of the old man has finally given out like machinery that’s been in service for too many years.

  But Bryan is in no mood to be pacified. “Lyon’s men were gossiping over Amer’s misdeeds at the lumber camp this past winter. Common knowledge amongst them. They tell you what they told me and you’ll know straight off I’ve been telling you the truth.”

  Boyd scans the terrain. Bryan’s land is dominated by sugar maples, basswood, ironwood, even some birch. There’s not much in the way of commercial value here. It’s Amer who has all the cedar and there’s no doubt the man has a dozen schemes for transforming all that viable timber into profit, some of which may even be legal. Boyd curses the sky. He thought being Justice of the Peace was going to be all about facts and reason and applying the law as it’s written. He’s quickly learning it has more to do with jealousy and pettiness and the inability of men such as Bryan to control their dark emotions.

  Well, Boyd has no intention of pursuing the old man’s accusations further. The question is, how best to tell Bryan that without further inflaming his ire? Let’s try this: “I didn’t think you were running afoul of the truth, but I can practically guarantee that if I were to track down every one of those lumbermen, to a man they’d say their memories aren’t so good on the subject. Sure, they may talk big in the camps, but when it comes down to it, not one of those men will be willing to go up against one of the few employers around here who can afford to hire them. And besides, the law you’re referring to was recently changed.”

  This is true. He should’ve said it straight off. It’s a testament to how tired Boyd is that he didn’t.

  Bryan stops coaxing the oxen forward. For a few seconds, this is his only reaction. Then he creases his brow and tugs the reins, moving in so close that Boyd would be able to testify to the exact shade of Bryan’s eyes should it ever come to that.

  “Changed how?”

 
Boyd stares at the lead ox as if intending to address his reply to it. One weary beast to another. Admittedly, that could be his best shot at a positive response. Here goes nothing. “The stumpage tax only applies to the selling of pine now, so although it may be a sore disappointment for you to learn this, Amer is free to sell all the non-pine logs he wishes to whomever he so pleases without being subject to any tax. Since I believe there isn’t much pine around these parts, I have no reason to believe Amer is breaking any law.”

  Boyd believes correctly. Pine accounts for maybe one out of every hundred trees in this township. Head north, there’s more. Now, if he were being totally honest, Boyd would admit that it’s come to his attention that speculators have been buying up those northern lots for the purpose of illegally profiting from the sale of pine logs – and he’d further admit that Amer was named as one of those speculators – but there’s no way Boyd is going to mention that to Bryan or anyone else until he’s had the chance to investigate the veracity of those claims.

  Bryan bends down and snatches his pipe from its resting place on the stump, dropping it into his pocket with the rest of his paraphernalia. His voice is thunder. “Since when?”

  “Since a few weeks past.”

  “This official?”

  “I saw the papers myself this Tuesday past.”

  Boyd’s eyes drift back to the lead ox. It’s the brass knobs covering the tips of the oxen’s horns that keep drawing his attention. They’re bold, ornate, even ostentatious, and not the sort of thing Boyd would’ve thought Bryan could afford. He wonders where they came from.

  “So he gets away with it.”

  Boyd snaps his attention back to the old man. “Dash it, Bryan, it’s not a matter of Amer getting away with anything. It’s a matter of a bad law changing for the good of us all. Surely you can see that.”