nine JACK

Jack tilted the bucket of water over his upturned face, his mouth open wide. Never in his life had he tasted anything so exquisite as the musky well water that trickled down his neck and under his shirt like tiny fingers. When it was empty, he set the bucket down by the base of the well and considered the plot of land the boys were clearing of maple trees. The stumps were putting up a fight. Edward had taken a break and was sitting in the dry grass, his head in his hands. Cecil was leaning on a shovel in front of a stubborn tree trunk, his face dripping with exertion. Quinn, a quiet boy who had come to the farm with them, stood a few feet away from Cecil, swinging an axe in a wide arc over his head, chopping a felled tree to pieces. His dark brown curls were pasted to his scalp, and sweat cut lines through the grime on his face. Quinn would chop that tree until he fell down himself, Jack thought.

Sunshine poured over the fields like honey, but there was no sweetness to it. During their first week on the farm, it had left the boys dizzy and sunburned and sick. Now, in their third week, their skin had toughened into a rugged shade of brown, but the sun continued to beam down on them as if it had a point to make. The wall of dark clouds brooding over the horizon were a welcome sight.

London had been shades of grey, her smells oily and urban, and the noise had been constant, whether from the screech and crack of engines or the yells and cries of the people living there. Here, the fields were a thirsty green, the trees still but many. The warm air was ripe with the fragrant perfume of crops and a hint of the coming storm. Jack found the constant quiet strange. He longed for the soothing familiarity of London’s chaos.

Where was Mary in all this? he wondered for the thousandth time. Was she anywhere nearby? He’d asked Mr. Keller where she was going when they left Toronto. He hadn’t known, but he’d promised to get word to Jack with any news. That was all Jack had to go on.

Edward got to his feet and waded through the grass toward Jack. “Never thought I’d wish I was back on that boat,” he said, lowering the bucket with a clunk down the well. “Don’t think I’ve ever been so tired in my life.”

“Maybe we’ll get used to it. We’re getting stronger, anyhow.”

“What good’s muscle when you can’t stand up any longer?”

“Shall we ask Warren?” Jack quipped.

Edward took off his cap and dumped the bucket of water over his head. “I’ll ask Warren.”

“Yeah, sure,” Cecil said, coming over. “Ask him real nice like. You’ll just get hit again.”

It had become obvious within the first few minutes of meeting Master Warren that the man’s main objective was to make sure the boys never forgot he was in charge. His beard couldn’t hide his permanent scowl, and the stick he used to punish them at will was always in plain sight. In the first couple of days, Jack had accidentally spilled a bucket of fresh milk, and Warren had descended on him with that stick. He’d borne those bruises for a week.

Since then, they’d all experienced Warren’s wrath. When his decrepit wheelbarrow cracked and fell apart, he punished Edward. Cecil had made the mistake of disagreeing with Warren about the most efficient way to clear the field, and he’d learned the hard way that Warren was not to be challenged. Quinn had done nothing wrong, but he moved too slowly for Warren’s liking, and his back had bled for it. They all lived in fear of Warren’s temper, and Jack suspected they weren’t the only ones. The boys only saw Mistress Warren at mealtimes, and that was enough to show them what kind of husband he was. The woman would have shied from her own shadow. None of them had seen any sign of children, which partially explained why the Home Boys were there.

“It ain’t right how he treats us,” Edward said. “We signed a contract, didn’t we? Didn’t he promise to take care of us?”

“You tell me. You’re the one who spent all day reading that paper.”

“It did say we could petition Barnardo’s if we weren’t treated well. They could send us somewhere else.” Edward combed his fingers through his wet blond hair. “Course we’d have to figure out how to petition first. We can’t even get our hands on paper since he ripped up those cards from Barnardo’s.”

“Think Warren can even read?” Cecil muttered.

A deep rumbling shuddered across the fields, and the boys’ attention went to the distant clouds. Jack’s skin cried out for the storm to come closer, to cool him, to clean him.

“We gotta figure something out,” Edward replied. “Do you want to stay here until you’re eighteen?”

“Don’t matter what the contract says, I reckon we don’t have much choice if we want to stay together,” Jack cut in. “I don’t think too many other folks are gonna want to take all three of us.”

The brothers fell silent. Out in the field, Quinn still swung his axe. Quinn was a big lad, and he could work like an ox without stopping, but something always seemed to be missing from his eyes. Edward figured Quinn had been born that way, that it could be his mother was a drinker or something had happened to him as a baby. He barely spoke a word—except in his sleep, and even then they couldn’t understand a thing he said.

Jack waved him over. “Come on, Quinn. Take a break.”

Cecil cooled himself down with the water then refilled the bucket. He handed it to Quinn, who poured it over his head then shook the water out of his hair like a dog.

“You don’t look so good, Quinn,” Jack said. “Where’s your hat?”

Quinn scratched his head. “Don’t know.”

“Take mine for now.” He passed his faded cap over. “It’ll keep the sun off your head.”

Quinn nodded a thank you.

“What home did you come from, Quinn?” Cecil asked.

“Weren’t no home. Workhouse, it was.”

The boys exchanged a glance. “Even Stepney’s better than that,” Cecil said.

“I reckon we had it pretty good at Stepney,” Jack agreed. “I never used to think so, but… three square meals, a comfortable bed, clean clothes, lessons. The chores were hard, but not like this.”

Edward grunted. “Never thought I’d miss those days.”

“I miss football,” Cecil said. “Ever play football, Quinn?”

He shook his head.

“Remember how they thought we was gonna run away that first time?” Edward mused. “How they stood around like bobbies, folding their arms all wary-like while they watched us play? Where did they think we’d go?”

“I would have run,” Cecil admitted.

Jack wasn’t surprised. Cecil’s first instinct was always to defy, to go head to head with any challenger, while Edward tended to wait things out and strategize the smartest move. Jack figured he fit in somewhere between the two of them.

“Maybe we should have,” he said.

The only thing about Warren’s farm that Jack was glad about was that he had the lads with him. On the day their train pulled into the station, they’d laughed at the irony: of all the places to end up in Ontario, they’d landed in a town called London. After they’d disembarked and claimed their trunks, a small, studious-looking man with a leather bag and a thin moustache had come out to meet them. He’d briefly introduced himself as Mr. Brown, Barnardo’s representative in the area, and he’d explained that the farmers would be there soon to choose the boys they wanted.

“So you’ll want to stand tall and show them you’re strong,” he’d advised.

When the farmers arrived, Jack stood with Edward and Cecil, his heart thumping as he waited for their futures to unfold. That’s when it hit him that this might be the last time he’d ever see the brothers. The thought made him feel very small, as if bits of him were being chipped off every time someone was taken away. What would be left of him when he’d lost them all?

On that day, they’d stood together like a battalion. The way they held themselves, he supposed, was why they were chosen. That, and the fact that of all the boys on the platform, they were the biggest and strongest. None of them had known if the stocky, bearded farmer striding toward them would be a good master, but they’d all tried to impress the man by puffing out their chests even as he sneered at them over the broken angle of his nose. He jabbed a thick finger into Cecil’s side as if he were a piece of meat, and Cecil grunted, startled, almost setting the boys off in nervous laughter. It was only natural that they all wanted to win this competition, but none of them had any idea what the prize would be. If he’d known then what he knew now, Jack would have curled up on the platform and whimpered like a child. Anything to stay away from Warren.

Warren had pointed at the three of them plus Quinn, standing on Jack’s other side. “I’ll take these four. I can send them back if they’re not good enough, right?”

“Oh, yes, sir. We want you to be completely satisfied,” Mr. Brown replied, holding out a handful of paperwork. “Here are the indenture papers for each boy, which we’ll need you to sign.”

One by one, Mr. Brown called the boys over to read and sign their papers alongside their new master, who already looked impatient to leave. They’d all been shown the contract—four typed pages—ahead of time, so they knew that Mr. Warren would be their legal guardian until they turned eighteen, and then they would be out on their own. Over the next two years, Mr. Warren would pay “$100 In Trust” to Barnardo’s for each boy, which they would receive when they were twenty-one. Working a farm wouldn’t have been Jack’s first choice of employment, but he reminded himself it was only for a time. And he’d admit it was a better, more respectable line of work than stealing from market stalls and running off with purses.

When Mr. Brown signalled to them, Edward went first, and as was his way, he took a considerable amount of time checking the pages to make sure nothing had been changed. Satisfied, he nodded at the others, then Cecil, Quinn, and Jack all signed as well.

Once they’d collected their trunks, they climbed into the back of Warren’s truck. Throughout the train journey from Halifax, Jack had seen farmland pass in a smooth, lulling landscape. Now they were in the very heart of it, riding the dips and jolting over bumps as the truck crested hills. After a while, Warren rolled off the main road onto a rough, two-track trail bordered by a leaning fence that corralled a herd of cows. The big black brutes stood like statues, staring at the truck with what Jack guessed was malevolence, based on their size alone. He had seen lots of horses in the streets back home, but those were small compared to these cows. He figured just one of their massive hooves could stomp him to death.

At the end of the road was an old grey house, its roof withered by weather. Off to the side stood a barn, and a couple of small sheds huddled under the shadows of maple trees. Warren stopped in front of the barn and got out of the truck. As he walked toward the house, he yelled over his shoulder, “Bring ’em in, get ’em milked.”

“Bring who in?” Cecil asked the other three.

Jack raised an eyebrow at the cows. “I reckon we’re about to become cowboys, mates.”

Ever since that moment when they’d first arrived on the farm, they hadn’t stopped working. They were up at four thirty every morning and closed their eyes somewhere after ten each night. They slept in what Warren called a bunkhouse, an old shed with four walls and a questionable roof. Each boy had a narrow wooden pallet with a moth-eaten blanket tossed on top. There were no windows, there was no light, and the mosquitoes were a plague that worsened after dark. The familiar, comforting sounds of Jack’s friends sleeping were forgotten when the whine of a bloodsucker sang in his ear. The creatures drove him mad, and he hunted blindly for them, occasionally crushing one between his palms. Until the morning light revealed proof, he wouldn’t know whether he’d gotten it before it got him.

When the day’s first round of milking had been completed, Jack and the others lined up at the door to the house, and Warren’s timid wife dropped a lukewarm lump of oatmeal into each boy’s bowl, her eyes never leaving the pot. The glutinous cereal sat like a ball in their bellies, and it had to tide them over until suppertime, when they lined up again for a dry biscuit along with some kind of meat in broth.

Almost everything the boys did at Warren’s farm was new to them. Barnardo’s had trained them to make boots and brushes, taught them metalwork and other trades, but no one had thought to tell them what would be demanded of them on a Canadian farm. Their hands and feet blistered as they slaughtered chickens, milked cows, built fences, pitched hay, chopped firewood, and dug out rocks, turnips, and tree trunks. The work took over Jack’s mind. Sometimes he forgot there was anything beyond the farm.

Now his gaze travelled to his shovel, the handle sticking up from the dry dirt like a flagpole. Thunder came again, closer this time, and he rolled his head around his neck, preparing to get back to work. Maybe they could finish clearing this one trunk before the rain came.

In the end, they cut down four more trees but could only pry out one trunk before the clouds finally burst and they finished for the day. They held their faces to the fat, warm raindrops, soothing their parched skin, but when lightning sliced through the air, they bolted to the farmhouse for their supper.

The door opened, and Jack caught a brief, pained expression on Mistress Warren’s face before her husband barged past her.

Warren took up the entire doorframe. “Those stumps ain’t dug out yet.”

“They’ll come out tomorrow, once the ground’s wet.” The words were out before Jack could stop them.

Warren strode through the door, forcing him backwards. “Did I tell you to take them out tomorrow? You saying I did, you lying limey bastard?”

“I didn’t. I just said the trees are stuck till tomorrow. The rain’ll help them loosen up.”

Warren’s fist caught Jack in the jaw, and stars exploded in his vision. He stumbled back and landed on the fresh mud.

“Master Warren!” Cecil shouted. “Leave him be.”

“Don’t tell me what to do, boy. Don’t forget who’s in charge,” Warren said, low and deliberate. He turned back to Jack, who tried to scuttle away, but he couldn’t get out of reach fast enough. He heard the whoop! of Warren’s stick as it cut through the air, and he braced just as it sliced down on his stomach.

“Get off him!” Cecil yelled.

The stick sang and snapped again. When Jack opened his eyes, he saw a bright red line cutting Cecil’s cheek.

“It ain’t right,” Edward said through his teeth. “It ain’t right how you’re treating us. We don’t none of us deserve this. You’ll never get away with it.”

“Is that right? Who’s gonna stop me?” As if to make his point, Warren wheeled on Jack again. “I’ll do as I please. I paid for you. You’re mine.”

Jack curled into a ball so the blows bit into his back rather than his front, wishing he was anywhere but right there, squirming in the muck. Anywhere—on the boat, in the Home, in the orphanage, on the streets of London, running free and happy with Mary, the two of them dressed in rags with barely anything in their bellies. Mary! he grasped for her name between flashes of pain. Was she all right? Was she safe? Was she alone? With every one of Warren’s blows he clung tighter to the hope that she and Winny had been taken together into a fine, caring home to be ladies’ maids. It was too much to imagine them alone and afraid in the pouring rain somewhere, lying in the mud at the whim of a cold, cruel master.

Be strong, he thought, as much for his sister as for himself. When this nightmare is finally over, I swear I will move heaven and earth to find you.