The Haweaters Read online

  Amer shrugs and heads over to the door. “Probably figured I already knew, seeing as how we’re so close.”

  Close? Amer must be referring to the proximity of their homesteads and not to some non-existent friendship. He heaves a sack of flour up onto his shoulder. “Close isn’t the word I’d ever use to describe you and myself, since you bring the matter up. No, sir, there’s a world of difference between you and me and God surely knows it, even if you don’t.”

  Porter heads out to the cart and somersaults the sack onto the pile his son has built in the back of the cart. Amer calls from the door. “You’re selling timber against the law, same as me. You may find comfort in telling yourself you have a higher motive, but when you get right down to it, we’re not so different.”

  They most definitely are. Porter may be illegally selling lumber, but that’s the sum of it and he wouldn’t be doing that if the law were in any way fair. Amer, on the other hand, has more schemes going than the devil himself. Land speculation, illegal timbering, money lending, usury. It’s shameful, all of it, and that’s only the stuff Porter has caught wind of. There’s surely worse that hasn’t yet hit his ears. “If I were you, sir, I’d spend more of my time worrying about what Bryan is saying to that lawman and less of it on whatever deals I may or may not be cooking up with Lyon. It’s plain to all and sundry that Bryan is out for your blood. There isn’t a man in Tehkummah who doesn’t know it, not even you.”

  Porter helps his son lift the last two sacks into the cart and secures the load, hoping that Amer will silently drift back into the barn now that Porter’s mind is clearly occupied elsewhere. No such luck.

  “For all his blustering and badgering, Bryan is nothing more than a snivelling failure. Let him waste his time with the law if that’s what gets him going. He’ll be off this island soon enough. Just you wait and see.”

  Porter tightens a rope. He considers letting that last comment slide, but his curiosity gets the better of him. He tries to sound casual. “What do you know about it?”

  Amer grinds his heel into the ground, satisfaction lighting his face. “Time’s running out for the old man to pay off his debt. Almost doesn’t matter how well his crops do this year. Unless he’s growing gold, he’ll be landless by fall with his future as uncertain as it was when he got here. Won’t be a problem for any of us after that.”

  So Bryan hasn’t been keeping up with the instalments on his land. There’s no great shock there. Many men around here have fallen behind and the authorities have so far looked the other way. Has something changed? Porter wants to ask, but no, that’d only prolong this conversation, so he climbs into the cart next to his son and snaps the reins. The horses jolt forward. Porter waves over his shoulder, not daring to turn around to see what expression his abrupt departure is leaving on Amer’s face. He doesn’t want to know. He has other things on his mind. Things that have nothing to do with that insufferable tyrant.

  3

  SOME WILD THING

  Charlie Bryan storms towards the mill at Michael’s Bay. He makes this trip far too often for his own liking and always to fetch shorts for his momma’s baking. What a waste. If they were anything but poor, he’d be on his way to get real flour right now and not by the sack. No, he’d be returning home with an entire wagonload, saving himself a whole lot of time and bother. He could have free time to do as he pleases without always having a tool in his hand or purpose in his stride.

  Strike that. If they were anything but poor, they’d have a millstone in their barn like that good-for-nothing Amer. Now there’s a dream. As it stands right now, his family doesn’t even have the barn to put one in. So Charlie’s rushing to the only mill within walking distance so he can collect a 100-pound sack of the husks that remain when wheat is ground into flour. What the locals call shorts. What Charlie calls other people’s leavings. Wretched stuff. The baking that comes of it is rank. Like someone pressed sawdust into a pan and heated it until it hardened into a brick. Bread, his momma calls it. That’s a laugh. All crust, no innards. You could build walls with the stuff with no fear of eventual decay. He’d be better off eating the slop that gets fed to the pigs.

  Suggest it and he’ll get the strap for sure. Not for disrespecting his momma’s baking, mind you. How could anyone respect her baking or anything else about that wretched woman? Always snivelling. Letting his poppa beat her and worse: letting him beat her children. So weak. So detestable. Has a duty to protect her children, but does she do it? No, she hides in the forest like a wounded moose instead. Every damned time.

  No, the strap won’t be for any insult to his momma. It’ll be for having the gall to imply the old man isn’t adequately providing for his family. Which he isn’t. Never has. Never will. An anchor pulling down his family and anyone else stupid enough to get too close to him. So his momma says. Daily. And she’s right. Cruel fate for Charlie to have such peasant for a poppa. The cruellest.

  So Charlie must succeed where his poppa constantly fails. And he must do more than that. He must save his kid brother from the worst of the poverty and the violence and the desolation. It’s a duty he feels deep in his bones as he hunts and fishes and bloodies his hands ploughing impossible ground.

  Charlie tries hard not to remember that while he and his poppa were working the logging camp this past winter, his momma and kid brother were forced to mash hawberries into birch syrup to stave off starvation. That’s his poppa’s doing. No two ways about it. When Charlie has a family of his own, he’ll make sure there’s always enough food on the table for ten grown men, a solid roof over his head, and so many clothes he can make a bonfire of them weekly if he so desires. Can’t call yourself a man if you can’t do all that. Not in Charlie’s book. Not in anyone’s.

  Charlie looks behind him as if fearful his thoughts may be the subject of a malicious eavesdropping. Silly. Superstitious. There’s no one behind him, not even his own shadow. He can let his mind wander to the cedar boughs. The rotting log. The suggestion of blue above the trees. He’s travelled this path so many times that everything he sees has become a landmark to help him judge his distance and pace, which today is a little faster than usual. That’s good. He’ll have time to drop a line in Blue Jay Creek and maybe pull out some fish. Or stop by the general store and pretend for a few minutes he has money to spend on calico for his momma or, better yet, a new blade for the plough instead of repairing for the umpteenth time the one his poppa broke on a rock not four days past. Old man can’t even plough a field right.

  Charlie huffs out his rage. Three times. Like a locomotive picking up steam. Still miles left to travel. Easy miles. Not like later when he’ll have a 100-pound sack pushing down on each shoulder. Those will be hard miles. It’ll be the sack that weighs him down at first, but soon it will be his back, then his legs. Makes him mad to think about it. Furious. Should be the old man making this journey. It’s his lifetime of failure that makes it necessary. Failed as a farmer in Ireland. Then came to this country and failed again, this time in Erin. Then he dragged them all up to this godforsaken island just so he could fail yet again in the back end of nowhere. And always someone or something else gets the blame. The cursed English. The even more cursed potatoes. The midges. The land speculators. The debt collectors. The government. The neighbours. The ancestors. The fates.

  No blame left for the old man himself. Not once has it ever been his fault. At least not the way he tells it. Charlie often wonders if his poppa will ever come to realize that the only common thread from one end of his life to the other is the old man himself. Likely not. The whole point of the whiskey, so far as Charlie can tell, is to poison all possibility of that sort of revelation straight out of the old man’s mind. It certainly poisons all possibility of salvation.

  A horse whinnies.

  Charlie dulls his footfall, silently chastising himself for getting so caught up in his poppa’s failings he forgot to keep an ear out for the stealth approach o
f enemies. He feels for his knife. Then grasps it. Hard. Best be prepared to defend himself against strangers and neighbours alike. You never know, after all, who your fate will come from. If he’s learned nothing else from all the dime novels he’s read, he’s surely learned that. Others may sneer at his choice of reading material. They may get all snooty and suggest he read the sort of books that will improve his mind. What those naysayers don’t understand is that he gains valuable insights from reading a few lines from those adventure stories between pulling stumps and fetching water and choking down unchewable bread. How else is he supposed to learn how to tame a charging bear or escape a murderous posse or creep up on an unsuspecting stranger, which is what he’s doing now?

  Charlie approaches the clearing not twenty paces ahead of him, his knife ready to stab. Slash. Gut. That’s when he sees Annie, daughter of that worthless ruffian Amer. As Charlie watches, she bends down to admire a cluster of wildflowers lurking several feet from the path. Her horse is roped to a sapling, content to feed on long, patchy grass while his mistress busies herself inspecting every flower she sets eyes on.

  Annie has been at this a while. Charlie can tell by the twists of green and yellow and pink circling her head like a halo. He could stab her if he wanted to. Slit her throat from ear to ear. Watch the blood spurt into the sky, then bury her body in a shallow pit set back amongst the bushes. Or maybe not so shallow. Depends on his mood. Whichever he chooses, Amer would never know what happened to his daughter. It would be well worth the hassle just to see the look on the tyrant’s face.

  Charlie smiles as he steps into the clearing, trying to look friendly. He scours the periphery for any signs of a chaperone stationed just out of view. It’d be just like Amer to set a trap, then pounce on any man who strays too close to his precious daughter. He guards that girl like she’s a hothouse flower at perpetual risk of frost. And Charlie is ice. He scans the shadows, listening for the softest of sounds, but no one else appears to be around. He could grab her by the neck. Stick a knife between her ribs. Pry them open. Now. Before anyone happens upon them. It would be easy. Like a passage he read in a story two books past. The one he traded away to one of the boys down at the mill for the novel he has in his sack now. Dog-eared. Stained. Read so many times the pages have come loose. His prized possession until he trades it for a new one. But not until he gets to the mill.

  Charlie clears his throat. Annie looks up, not changing the position of her body. Her face betrays no surprise and definitely no fear. How odd. A girl out here alone in the bush setting eyes on a man who is the avowed enemy of her poppa. She should at the very least flinch. If this was an adventure story, she’d most definitely scream.

  Instead Annie smiles and raises her hand to offer Charlie a hunk of bannock. Charlie shakes his head even though the only provision in his sack is a half loaf of brick-bread. He waves his blade at Annie. “Should you really be out here alone?”

  Annie looks puzzled. “That’s a fine way to greet a girl you barely know, but to answer your question, there’s no law against it so far as I’m aware. Besides, I’m not nearly as alone as you seem to think I am. I’ve got Crispin with me.”

  Annie points at her horse with the bannock. Charlie contemplates the beast as he tucks his knife into his waistband. Surely the silly girl understands he’s inquiring about a human companion. Fat lot of good a horse will do her if Charlie decides to strike. Or a wolf. Maybe someone should tell her this. “Not usual for a girl to be travelling unaccompanied through the bush. All manner of things could go wrong and you’d have no one to help you.”

  “I thank you kindly for the consideration, but I assure you that I need no one to help me.” Annie slips the bannock into the large pocket in the front of her apron and picks her way over to Crispin. The horse snorts and nods when Annie rests her hand on his back. Then she starts twisting flowers into his mane.

  Charlie stares boldly. He doesn’t know what to make of this girl. She’s not daft so far as he’s aware. Some have even described her as clever. Mrs. Sloan said something to that effect just the other day. And yet here she is picking flowers with no one but a horse for a companion. And she appears to be doing it for the fun of it. He’s not used to such blatant frivolity. Pleasure is something you hide. Or deny. His entire life he’s watched his momma and sisters scrubbing and chopping and churning. He can’t ever remember one of them doing a thing simply for the fun of it. It makes him uneasy to see it now. Like watching a boulder balancing on the edge of a precipice. No way to get comfortable. “Your parents know where you are?”

  Annie’s laugh is almost infectious. “Well, now, let me think on that a moment. I seem to recall it was Mother who ordered me to fetch the post from up Boyer’s place just past breakfast. She saw no reason to arm me or send some beastly man to guard me from all the troubles you see in your mind. Besides, forgive me, but I can’t help noticing that you’re speaking to me as if I’m a child. I’m no more of a child than Crispin here. I’ll have you know I turn fifteen next week.”

  And yet her skirt stops at her calves and her feet are bare. Surely those are the hallmarks of childhood. Although Annie may think of herself as a grown woman, safe to say no one will agree with her until her hem brushes the ground and her hands turn to women’s work. If those things ever happen. Her lack of wariness towards lone men in open fields is cause enough to believe adulthood may not be her fate.

  Charlie should lend Annie one of his books so that she can read for herself about the fate of young girls who wander in forests all alone. He raises his arm and points northeast. “Boyer’s farm is a good five miles thataway. And I see no post nor any sack for you to carry it in. Makes me wonder if what you’re telling me is strictly true.”

  Annie shrugs. “I see no reason why I would lie to you. I doubt you’re one of my father’s spies or I assure you I would’ve come up with a better tale than the flimsy one I just spouted. Some wild thing about a highwayman coming up behind me, guns drawn, leaving me no choice but to flee through the bush until I found myself in this field where I’ve been ever since, protected by the golden rays of the sun.”

  Charlie cocks a brow. “Highwayman? You can’t be serious. No such creature around here. Never has been. Wrong country. Wrong century. Wrong everything. You got that from a book, didn’t you?”

  Charlie is half-hopeful this could be true even though he knows in his heart that Annie’s reading material is most likely restricted to a better class of book than the ones he typically fills his mind with.

  Annie adjusts her wildflower halo. “Well, sir, I see you’re not the sort to let a thing go until it sits straight in your mind, so let’s just say my horse wandered well off course. I would’ve nudged him back in the direction we were supposed to be travelling, but I figured he was on the trail of something sweet and I was curious to discover what it could be.”

  Charlie thinks on this for a moment. He’s not sure how to react. This girl and her fanciful behaviour is confusing. Offensive even. If nothing else, it’s a luxury he can’t afford. His poppa knows the distance to the mill and back. He’ll demand explanations if Charlie is more than an hour beyond when his return is expected and they’d better be good ones. A strap hangs by the door for those times when his excuses are adjudged, rightly or wrongly, to fall short of the truth.

  Charlie clenches his teeth. Then he clenches his fists. What a creature Annie Amer is. She toys with nature. With her elders. With the rules. Sent to fetch something as crucial as the weekly post and she shirks the responsibility so she can frolic in a field with no apparent fear she’ll suffer consequences. Does she not know that her momma lives for those letters? All mommas do. Annie shouldn’t have to be told this. And Charlie definitely shouldn’t have to be the one to tell her. “Best not to blame your horse for your own wilful ways.”

  Annie pats Crispin’s neck and sighs. “I dare say there’s a long list of things it’s best for me not to do. It’s revie
wed with me regularly and I have to confess that not all of the things on it make sense. For instance, why can you be out here travelling alone through the bush without anyone so much as suggesting you need a chaperone and yet there’s an assumption some horrible fate will befall me unless I have one? Most of the things that could happen to me could happen to you and yet no one seems bothered one whit by that.”

  Charlie hears a snap. It’s faint, but it’s definitely there. What would Seth Jones, hero of the dime novel he read six books previous, have done in a situation like this? Just one thing. Charlie’s hand finds his knife. He grips it as he scans the surrounding trees, hoping to locate the source of the unexpected sound. It could be benign. Then again, it could be the first sign of an attack. One he’ll be ready for.

  Charlie continues to scan the trees as he points to Annie’s feet. “It’s the way of things. Where are your shoes?”

  Annie doesn’t look down. “Would it surprise you too terribly much if I tell you they’re back at home? I saw no need for shoes when riding a horse bareback. I should’ve thought that much would have been as obvious as the freckle on my chin.”

  To whom? And why would someone whose family can afford the finest tack be riding around the woods with no saddle or harness? Just a feeble rope looped around the horse’s neck that would hardly be sufficient should Crispin decide to buck or bolt or worse. This girl makes no sense.

  Charlie turns. He catches a look of amusement creeping across Annie’s face. Her lips part. Words will fall out if he lets them. Little-girl fantasies. But Charlie won’t let that happen. He holds up a finger to silence her. And she obeys like a hound or a gunwale-stunned fish. Charlie bends down and scoops up a rock, testing its weight. Its shape. Its general throwability. Annie follows his sightline. The intended target is strutting around in the tall grass at the edge of the clearing. Whether or not she sees it is of no concern to Charlie. His only concern is that she not speak or move until he’s finished, otherwise he’ll have to redirect the rock at her.