“So, Uncle Jim, how’s it feel to be back here, away from all them pretty girls in the city?” John Alford, now fifteen, was driving a picket into the ground with a heavy mallet. “You miss all that?”
Old James was bent over, sharpening another picket with his axe while his son Jim and their neighbour’s son, Sam Nelson, carried a heavy rail over to the next panel. All around them in the damp cedar woods this hot spring day, snow was dripping. Sam and Jim had hung their coats on cut-off branches nearby while they slogged through the deep slush, working about ten feet back from the still frozen brook. They were running this fence along the boundary line between James and the Nelsons’, using rails floated down the brook last spring when it flooded. Below, the brook ran a couple of hundred yards down to the great pond formed by Manderson’s dam. Their own cattle and Nelsons’ would drink down there.
“Well, John, m’boy,” Jim said, “powerful pile of girls to be had up there. But if I was you, I wouldn’t want any one of them.”
His father looked up. The first hint — rejected love, just what Catherine had guessed. Jim and Sam dropped the rail onto its slot between two pickets to complete a panel. The old man felt gratified to have them all working together as a family once again. Much earlier, Janey’s baby brother, Joey, had been cured, of course, like others Catherine had seen to. Jim’s arrival had given James such a surge of elation and helped ease his pain over the continued failure of the school. He and Catherine even made love two nights in a row, a thing they had not done for years. Jim’s first day back, Catherine had made sure her son did nothing but rest after his trek home. They all needed a rest actually, for that first night, James had broken out the rum, a thing he rarely did, though he kept a stash in readiness.
“But lots of work to be had up there?” Sam Nelson asked. In his early thirties, brawny, he stood panting for a moment before going for another heavy rail to place at the bottom of the next panel. “We’ll need all o’ yez on this one, I guess. Bring the peavey, John.”
James put down his axe and crossed to help with the next rail. The four heaved up the great log, well over a foot thick.
“Well Sam, I could say the same about jobs,” panted Jim. “Lots of jobs, but none you’d be happy doing.” They dropped the log in place. John grabbed a picket and Jim hammered it into the ground.
“There must’ve been something ye liked about the big city,” John asked his uncle, holding the picket straight.
“Best thing I liked was the leaving of it.”
Good to hear, thought James. No worry now about the farm going on. Maybe now, he could focus on getting that school built.
“That’s good,” John said. “Never had no hankering to go myself, so I’m glad I won’t be missing out.” He stood back and surveyed the fence as Jim slogged through drifts to the next rail. “Terble pile o’ snow fell this winter.”
“How so?” Jim said. “Never seen much in Montreal.”
“Oh no? Here she came down all winter. Must be a lot different so far inland.”
“Yes, byes,” Sam countered, “gonna be a terble rush o’ water when this here brook goes.”
“Did ya get any logs cut this winter, Poppa? We gonna be floating some down when she breaks?”
James shook his head. Back cutting, James confessed he wasn’t as agile around the stumps and brushwood as before. In fact, he’d taken a couple of nasty falls, without letting on he’d been hurt. Next winter, he said he’d leave the logging to the others.
“These damn rails are sure heavy in the spring,” Sam grunted. “Maybe we should’a left them dry till midsummer.”
“Maybe,” James said, “but you’ll be pasturing your cattle here soon as they’re outta the barn in the next weeks, and mine too.” Great for grazing, the lush ground of the Hollow produced excellent grasses and hay, and of course all the water the cattle needed.
“Your father’s been doing some persuasive talking while you was gone, Jim.” Sam picked up the next heavy rail with the others.
“Just leave it lie!” James didn’t want to spoil the fun of them all working together.
“Don’t let it lie—I want to know what my father’s been up to.”
“Foolish ideas, if you ask me,” Sam blurted out. “Everyone’s talking. Seems he wants to build some damn fool school — excuse me, Mr. Alford — but you Protestants are getting yer dander up, I heard. Most everyone is against it, anyway.”
“I heard the talk too,” John put in. “Most farmers, they don’t see the need. Me, I’m even in two minds myself.”
“You’re what!” Jim went for another rail while James stayed sharpening a picket.
“Well, my grandfather here taught me all I need to know,” John replied, “and fun it was, most of the time. He learned me arithmetic, and reading and writing, and I don’t see no reason for a lot more.”
“What about children that don’t have parents to teach them?” Jim asked, eyeing Sam and John. “Lots of farmers don’t even know how to read or write themselves.”
“Well that’s true, for sure,” Sam said. “My poppa don’t.”
“And look how many children around Shegouac need schooling,” Jim went on. “My sister Mariah, she’s got three would go, sister Ann’s got two, Mary Jane two. And Sam, what about your sister-in-law, Sarah Nelson, over there?” He pointed. “She’s got five.”
“They’re Catholic,” James repeated grimly.
“Catholics,” John echoed, “they’re against it, too.”
“Catholics don’t go to Protestant schools on the Coast.” The old man wished the subject would go away. “They count on their own system.”
“Poppa, once you got that there school built, just watch them all come.”
“All the parents, they say, what’s good enough for us is good enough for the kids.” Sam stooped to take a drink of water. “What about how to grow wheat? What about how to birth a cow, what if the young pigs are born too early? A fella’s got so much to learn about farming — who’s got time for rubbish like reading old books? That never did no one no good.”
Jim was stooping to pick up another rail, but he stopped and stood up, hands on hips. “All right, you fellas, listen. You know, I worked on building some bloody great bridge across that St. Lawrence, a sonofabitch of a river, must’ve been over a mile wide from where we started. And every day, from morning till night, I worked —”
“And what d’ya think we do here?” snapped Sam.
“I know that, Sam,” Jim replied calmly. “But we’re working for ourselves, here. And our own work is different each day. There, I just carried buckets o’ gravel up and down ladders, up and down, I don’t wish that on the worst ox in Creation. And let me tell you, one day some fellow came and told us all we’d have to stop for the spring thaw. Clean-shaven he was, big bushy sideburns, all dressed nice in a black suit. If you’d have checked his hands, they be smooth like a woman’s. Now of course, he’d have his own problems — different sorts, I’ve no doubt. But no carrying buckets up and down ladders for him, no sir. And you know what made the difference?”
James watched. His son, having been to the big city, had gotten a real authority, holding forth like a man twice his age. Amazing what one trip could do to a person.
“Easy to see,” John said. “He was rich, and you’re poor.”
“Right you are, John. But why was he rich, and why was I poor? He didn’t start out rich. Probably started like me, but what made the difference? Education. He got to a big university, that’s what. And how? Some good school first. And he got himself a piece of paper that said he was an engineer. Or whatever it said, I don’t care. But he stood up there on the lip of the pit, talking down to us, very nice too. And we stood and listened beside our buckets of gravel, before we came up to get our last pay. That convinced me.”
James thought: better said than even I could’ve spoken. Quite a son!
Sam shook his head and sighed. “Well, Jim, I guess, maybe, you made a point! Yes sir.”
“And maybe,” John added, “maybe I’d be for a school now, too, though it don’t matter what I think.”
“Oh yes it does,” Jim said. “We all got to talk, we all got to help Poppa get his school.”
James broke into a grin. What a clear-headed and strong-willed advocate he now had! But how could one young nineteen year old, with city learning or no, ever change these toughened settlers firmly planted on their soil of Shegouac?