The Haweaters Page 8

  Anne’s thoughts are interrupted by Laban’s snort. “I have no trouble reckoning it at all. It’s a long list and at the top of it is you cheating Charlie out of the money you owe him on account of leasing his back pasture.”

  George drops the maul and raises his voice. “And you believe that to be fact, do you? Got news for you: was Charlie who named the price. Didn’t bargain him down, which was my right. Gave him every cent he asked for, so if he’s not happy with what he got, it’s naught to do with me.”

  But Laban isn’t backing down. “He says you agreed to a price, then paid him less when the term came due. He says you take him for a fool.”

  Good heavens, where is this insolence coming from? For her sake, Anne hopes this isn’t rebellion suddenly taking root in her son and yet for Laban’s sake, she’s hoping that it is because otherwise she’s going to have to assume her son has been possessed by the devil and no good can come from that.

  George takes a step towards his son, his voice louder than Anne would prefer. “Were you there?”

  Laban’s gulp is perfectly timed with the shaking of his head. “No, Father.” That’s a positive sign that Laban’s newfound rebelliousness may be waning with a single booming challenge.

  Her husband appears to agree. “Then you have no idea what I did or did not agree to. Should’ve gotten the deal on paper. Knew that good-for-nothing Bryan boy would find a way to twist this whole thing to his advantage.”

  Now there’s an assertion only the devil himself would believe. Anne signals to her son to drop the matter, but Laban either ignores her or doesn’t catch her meaning. “It’s hardly to his advantage if he has less money in his pocket than he was expecting. It seems to me the advantage is all yours.”

  If Laban keeps this up, his mother will be forced to see him in a whole new light and so will his father, who is presently looking more than a little aggrieved. “Very much to his advantage to spread gossip that will set the bush families against me.”

  A series of emotions play across Laban’s face. He’s losing his nerve, his mother hears it in his voice and sees it in the way he addresses his next accusation to his fidgeting feet. “That would be more believable if he were the only one telling tales of you altering deals once they’ve been agreed. But he isn’t. It’s gotten so as no one who has a choice is willing to do business with you.”

  Cold amusement spreads across George’s face. “Then it’s a good thing most of them have no choice, isn’t it?”

  Laban flushes red. His resolve is falling like a hammer from a roof, but at least he tried. There’s hope for him yet. Anne just prays her husband will let his newfound insolence slide, choosing to see it as a rare folly in a boy who normally does as he’s told, but she might as well have been praying for snow in August.

  George leans back until his spine cracks. Then he leans sideways. “You seem to know a lot about what the Bryan boy thinks. Since when are you two on friendly terms? Seem to recall him busting you up so bad not even you could forget it.”

  Laban is a beet. “It has nothing to do with friendship nor the opposite. It has to do with whether Charlie has cause and it sounds like he does.”

  George turns away from his son, not because the argument has reached its conclusion, but because the time has arrived for him to help Sam load the split wood onto the wagon. “Cause? Boys like that always think they have cause. His father is a failure and his boy is following in his footsteps. Don’t kid yourself. There’ll always be strife between the Bryans and us because there’ll always be anger directed at those of us who succeed by those who fail. Best you learn that now.”

  Anne gestures Laban towards the cart to make amends. Her son looks set to resist but then relents, reluctantly joining in the labour while George continues to simmer. “Charlie is going to end up with nothing soon enough so you best be prepared for more violence. Men who are going down to defeat inevitably lash out at their superiors. Charlie is no better than the rest. That beating he laid on you was just the start.”

  Laban looks pained. “You don’t know that. Not for certain.”

  George chucks an armful of wood on the wagon. “I know he has a revolver. Never had one of those before. And I know he didn’t get it to shoot squirrels out of trees. Unless, of course, he considers me to be a squirrel.”

  Charlie Bryan probably considers him something far worse than that. Possibly a tornado or an infection or a wolverine, but it doesn’t matter. With this one revelation, George has won his son over. Anne can see it in Laban’s face. She aches to say something to win the boy back, but she doesn’t know what, and besides, it’s too late for her to stop what she inadvertently started by coming out here. She should’ve never left the kitchen, which George is now storming towards while calling over his shoulder to his son. “Come inside with me. I want to show you my old revolver. You’ll take it with you when you head out to the fields from now on. No arguments.”

  Laban jogs to catch up with his father. When you get down to it, he’s as obedient as a lap dog and always has been. He may have been atypically inspired to speak harsh words this day, but he’d never seriously challenge his father. He doesn’t have it in him and Anne has never been able to decide if that’s a good thing or a bad one. She won’t be deciding it now.

  Anne draws the bottle from her apron and takes a swig as she mulls George’s revelation about Charlie and the revolver and the threat to her husband’s life. Maybe it’s true. Then again, maybe it isn’t. Anne has heard no proof either way. She takes another swig. If George was truly in mortal danger, he would surely have said something to her before now, Anne is certain of that much. Just as she’s certain that when she returns to the house she’ll discover her wayward daughter has left off practising. She sighs. Forget the revolver. It’s that insolent nightmare of a girl who’ll be the death of them all unless Anne can find some way to rein her in.

  5

  WHISKEY IN A JAR

  Eleanor Bryan daubs the sweat from her brow for the third time in less than ten minutes and raises her eyes to the Lord, who she is certain is floating in the sky somewhere above the tattered, tilting roof. It would be a mistake to think she’s giving serious contemplation to affecting a conversation with the Man Upstairs on a day when it’s this blessedly hot and there exists in the world such a thing as a summer kitchen. Anne Amer has one and Eliza Porter and even that dreadful McPhail woman the next concession over. Not one of them knows the hardship of a wood stove belching heat within the confines of such a wretchedly small cabin on what is as yet the hottest day of year.

  Bill says Eleanor should consider it a blessing she has any stove at all when the fates themselves could have demanded she cook over a fire pit in the yard, but Eleanor would bet the stars her drunkard of a husband would think none too highly of those same fates were he the one who daily had the honour of feeling like an overcooked roast. And that’s if we’re telling the God’s honest truth about things.

  Eleanor groans into the back of her hand and takes a good look around her person, knowing as she does this that she’s going to see only such a sight as she’s seen a thousand times before, namely cabin walls that never have been properly chinked and whose logs are haphazard, mismatched and splintering. Bill didn’t so much as remove the bark before stacking the butchered trees one atop the other, the consequence of which is that her daily chores include peeling disintegrating bark from the smooth wood underneath and fearing with each tug that this day will be the one when those same said logs collapse in a heap on top of her.

  Eleanor would not be speaking false if she were to announce to the world that down to a man no one ever mistook her husband for a carpenter or an engineer or even a gentleman. And let’s don’t get started on his abilities as a farmer. There isn’t time enough for her to countenance her grievances on that score.

  Eleanor sets about settling her rambling mind, for it is surely threatening to gallop fo
rth like the most spooked of horses as her frustrations flare. ’Tis its nature when things go sideways, but it must be stopped cold in its tracks, something she sets out to accomplish by turning her mind to her youngest, Arthur, who is presently devoting the entirety of his strength and diligence to the task of grinding endless handfuls of oats in the very coffee mill his momma inherited from her own dear momma in the months before striking out from the mainland.

  Eleanor can’t help but wonder why her son is undertaking his task with a dull inefficiency that threatens to find dawn upon them before he is through. “Arthur, my sweet boy, if I told you once, I told you a hundred times that shifting the sack of oats to the other side of your person will enable your cranking with your right hand and feeding the hopper with your left. In such a way as that we’ll amass enough flour to make more than a piddly loaf during the weekly baking.”

  Eleanor peers into the crock although, truth be told, she in no way needs to do this to confirm the flour thus far ground is such a measly disappointment that it would not tempt even the most starving of mice. It pains her something awful to acknowledge that every last speck of that aforementioned flour has issued from oats the boy’s poppa grew with rude tools such as would be discarded by anyone with a proper choice. Oh, how she wishes her son was just now grinding wheat and not these maggoty oats that not even the oxen would eat if any other option made itself known.

  Eleanor eyes the sack of shorts Charlie slumped in the corner no more than a half hour past to her joy and surprise. She knows not what spirit possessed him to perform such a kindness and he told her not its inspiration. Not that this is a wonder. It’s surely not the boy’s way to speak unless provoked and then he speaks only the harshest of words. So be it. His momma long since stopped expecting words of hello or thanks from that cheerless boy. This solemn day he granted her not so much as that as he plucked the dipping bucket from beside the water barrel and beat a most direct path out the cabin’s one and only door. His momma can only guess his intent is to fetch some quantity of water for her domestic travails although nothing so much as that was said.

  Eleanor sheds her mind of Charlie as best she can, for an episode of fainting is upon her owing to the heat or the lack of water or the racing of her mind, some such thing as that. She cannot yet discard the possibility that the impending swoon is the product of endless disappointments that would have inspired her own sweet momma to label her a failure had that saintly woman been alive to witness the botchery her daughter has made of her life. It’s a testament to the Lord’s mercy that the ground did swallow up that industrious woman long before Eleanor became such a mockery to all that is good and holy.

  Eleanor can only wonder at her mind’s refusal to take the bridle. Can it not see there’s a mountain of work in need of doing and not a single soul present to do it but she, owing to her girls having been previously dispatched by Bill? Their eldest, Carrie, was married off quick as could be upon their arrival on this island. It was a dreadful business, but they could no more afford to feed that dear girl than to burn money in a ditch. Their youngest, darling Annie, though not yet fully a woman, is already off to live with their second child, Hattie, up in Green Bay, surrounded by a veritable army of Skippens. Good people if ever there were any, and kind as kittens to her precious girls. And though it had to be so, Eleanor wishes each and every second of each and every day that she’d been granted leave to press those cherished girls to her bosom until they were proper adults.

  Eleanor daubs the ocean of sweat leaking from her brow and surveys all that is yet to be done through her labours and those of her slow-cranking son. If they have any hope to succeed in finishing their tasks before the clock strikes a new day, a good story must surely be told lest boredom arrive to slay them both. “Sweet boy, do you remember a time long past when our lives were firmly rooted well south of here on that farm in Erin?”

  Arthur shakes his head. “No, Mama. I remember no place but here.”

  Eleanor takes to chopping radishes and onions and random herbs as she waits for her son to reconsider his answer as she knows he surely must. “But sometimes, if I try really hard, I think I can remember green.”

  Ah yes, green. Erin certainly was that, what with the mossy forests and the crystal-clear waters rushing forth along narrow creek beds. The trail to the church was an eternal favourite owing to it’s being lined with dark, cracked boulders that rose higher than she could raise her hand and which remained mercifully cool to the touch on even the hottest of summer days.

  Erin has been firing Eleanor’s mind these many days, yanking her thoughts back again and again to that verdant paradise, which shines ever so bright now that it resides such an impossible distance away. “I know exactly what you mean about the green, my sweet boy. I sometimes try to call Iowa to mind and find often my inner vision is met with the richest of golden yellows. I’ve come to believe that’s how the mind recalls a place when you leave it too young for the memories to fully stick.”

  Eleanor teases this thought around her mind as her hands cube the stale bread that Charlie saw fit to lug around in his natty sack for the best part of a week before announcing its rejection. It’s no matter to her since stale bread mixes with seasonings just as well as fresh and when rendered into stuffing, Charlie has proven time and again that he can no more recognize his rejects than grow whiskers on his chin.

  Eleanor smiles as she presses the stuffing into the cavity of the fresh-gutted pheasant Charlie had seen fit to fling onto the rickety table upon his brief and unexpected return. He did surely wear a glow such as befits a knight who has lately beheaded a slow-witted unicorn. There is a doubt nowhere in Eleanor’s mind that her son’s high self-regard is down to those wretched dime novels the boy peppers his mind with despite her counsel that the only book that ever needs reading is the Holy Bible.

  That being said, Eleanor would be perpetrating a falsehood if she did not now confess that it is most welcome to have more mains for the evening meal than the trout Arthur pulled from the river this morning past when he ought to have been plucking weeds from the garden.

  Eleanor leans forward and tugs a thread free from the edge of the oat sack with the one hand while sliding a needle from her waistband with the other. She labours to sew the bird’s skin-flap shut using the looping stitch passed on to her by her own dear momma. “I would be speaking false if I failed to admit that at times I remember more than just yellow. I think it is the little things that my mind dawdles over, such as how the long prairie grass felt brushing against my little-girl legs or how much more of the sky filled my eyes on the wide-open plains than it does here on this bunched-up wastrel of an island. All that vast blueness during the day burst open at night to display the broadest sweep of heaven you ever did see and every inch of it filled with glorious stars.”

  Eleanor rises and plunks the pheasant into the waiting pan that she slings into the oven with a certainty earned through practice. She returns now to the table, where the trout needs hacking, then plopping into the pot of water that’s been on the boil for longer than she would normally consider wise.

  Arthur halts his labour and a frown muddies his darling face. “I don’t remember nearly so much as you.”

  “Of course you don’t, my sweet. I was senior to you when I left Iowa with my momma and poppa. You were not but five when we dragged you from Erin on that rollicking lumber hooker that seemed dead-set on drowning us in waves, the likes of which I dread to ever experience again. Those few years of age were to my advantage, gifting me with more memories than your mind could ever have thought to hold at your modest age. But if I’m telling the God’s honest truth of the matter, I’ll admit that I do not have as many memories as I would’ve liked, given a proper choice. Keep grinding.”

  Eleanor brushes the dastardly heat from her arms before dipping her hand into a basket and extracting a pea pod that she pinches just so. Its spine pops open, putting a dozen plump peas on disp
lay for her thumb to eject. She flicks the empty pod into the bucket sitting heavily at her feet, surprised, as always, how effortless a chore becomes when you undertake it tens of thousands of times.

  Arthur appears most concerned. “Why did your parents ever leave the States? It’s so much more exciting there than it is here.”

  Eleanor grabs another pod and fails to stifle the most unmotherly of laughs. “What do you know of it, my sweet? Only what that brother of yours tells you, I wager, and what Charlie knows of it has its basis in tales told by boasters who themselves don’t know the half of it. Mind my words, those books Charlie devours speak falsehoods that will likely as not be the ruin of him.”

  Eleanor prays to the Highest Power that Arthur finds in her admonition the warning she intends. She has now several times caught the boy rifling through the weary pages of books Charlie has himself read so many times it would be no true challenge for him to recite entire passages from memory. It’s a mortal shame he cannot do the same with verses from the Bible.

  Arthur, bless his soul, has tried as only a schoolboy can to sound out the words in Charlie’s books. It’s as if they have near the same value to the lad as the lessons foisted on him in that sorry schoolhouse that rendered useless some perfectly serviceable farmland within this year past. Eleanor stands sure that memorizing his sums won’t lend the dear boy half so much good as learning to plough a straight row or to properly stook sheaves. Maybe that future land baron Andrew Porter feels dreadfully important consigning his children to a place such as that, but Eleanor sees more sense in a boy learning the ways of the farm. Charlie, for all his faults, never took to schooling as such and was as relieved as she when moving to the island meant he was bothered by lessons no more.