August

Chapter 12

This morning before the mosquitoes got too bad, Mr. Kuzyk, his mother, Andrei’s mother, and Marie picked chokecherries. By nine o’clock Mr. Kuzyk’s mother insisted that Mama and Marie join them on a trip to Rosthern, to help choose a new suit for Mr. Kuzyk. Tato and Dido have gone again to the Klassen farm, and Andrei’s alone where Mr. Kuzyk’s left him to plough a field. He wants to earn enough money to buy the colt, but it may take more than this summer’s work. Mr. Kuzyk says that horses are very expensive in Canada, just like in the Old Country. The colt is from a fine line of horses. Its mother is Mr. Kuzyk’s pet. If he weren’t training a pair of two-year-olds for the buggy, he would have taken his favourite, the bay mare, to Rosthern today.

Andrei’s driving Mr. Kuzyk’s heavy horse team. The lines are tied, draped over his left shoulder, down across his back and looped around under his right arm. Both his hands are free to cling to the handles of the walking plough. Mosquitoes swarm around his head as he stumbles over the furrow. It seems almost a relief when one of the horses lifts its tail and releases droppings, as if the aroma kills mosquitoes. The plough snags on a root, the horses straining, jerking; and finally the root’s cut through. Relief comes only at every smouldering brush pile, the horses then reluctant to leave the smoke. Andrei urges them forward, and the hum of mosquitoes further drives the team onward to the next pile.

Mr. Kuzyk chopped the trees out two winters ago. He pulled the stumps in the spring and stacked them in piles. Early this morning, he set them on fire. This afternoon a flame flickers only now and then, but the smoke rises in a steady drift.

By late afternoon, when the mosquitoes are at their worst, the horses refuse to leave the smoke. Andrei wears trousers of coarse fabric, a shirt of Old Country heavy linen snug at his wrists and neck. Around his head he’s tied a scarf. The clothing’s soaked from his labours in the early August heat, but his discomfort concentrates only on mosquitoes. Mr. Kuzyk says it should be too late in the year for mosquitoes, but July has been hot and the bush seems always damp. He says that only a frost will finish them off, and that won’t be for at least another month. So far the nights have stayed warm.

Today Andrei can work no longer, and that’s fine because the horses won’t either. He unhitches the team. They’re willing to move now, sensing that Andrei will drive them to the creek and a drink, and from there to the shelter of the barn.

All Andrei hears is a snorting. He knows that the colt and its mother are pastured in the meadow where Mr. Kuzyk has finished the haying. The creek borders the south end of the meadow where the grass peters out, and the ground is sour, caked white where nothing grows. He hears more snorting. Far ahead he sees the colt running in small circles. It’s only then that Andrei spots the mare.

She’s bogged in a soap hole of slippery white mud. The mosquitoes are less abundant here; the sour smell of the salty muck must keep them away. But it must have attracted the mare. She’s sunk down past her knees. The more she squirms, the more her rump sinks down. Her head tosses, eyes white. Ears back. Her body is caked with the mud. She must have been rolling in it, crazy from mosquitoes. The colt flits nervously from one side of her to the other, edging closer into the muck, then backing away.

Andrei wishes Gabriel were here; he’d know what to do. Or Dido. But neither are here, so it’s no use to wish. He has the team. Thank goodness he’s had the full day to practice. He knows how to turn the horses, how to back them, keep them from running away, but if they decided to run, how could he ever stop them? Do the horses let him handle them because they know he likes horses? He has to try and pull the mare out of the bog with the team.

A rope is coiled around the hames of one of the horses.

“Easy, girl. Easy.” He shouldn’t have to worry; she won’t be going anywhere the way she is now. He pats the mare on her neck, working his way with his hands along her back. He tries to step lightly in the muck so as not to sink himself. Mr. Kuzyk would sink for sure. He shoves down in the mud with the rope, trying to force it through under the mare’s belly. He thinks he should pull her from the rear. The pull might be too hard on her neck. It might choke her, or a sudden jerk might break her neck. But try as he might, the mare’s hind quarters are sunk too far in. He can’t get the rope around her. He tries around her chest just behind the front legs, and even there she’s sunk too deep. She’ll have to be pulled from the neck.

But first he has to do something about the front feet. He looks about in the shrubs and finds a stout stick for digging in the mud. He breaks up clumps, lifting the wet muck out with his hands. He digs a hole all the way down to the mare’s front hooves. He finds more sticks and lays them in the hole, keeping the hooves free.

The colt stands off ten feet away. If Andrei didn’t know better, he’d say that it knows the mare’s in trouble, and that Andrei’s trying to help. He secures the rope around the neck. The mare snorts and waves her head sideways and up and down. Andrei lays the rope out and goes for the team.

“Easy, boys, easy.” The geldings stand, leaning forward in the harness, the rope tight. “Easy. Easy.” Andrei’s right by the mare’s head, the lines in his hands. He flicks them lightly. The horses pull.

The noose tightens and tightens around the mare’s neck. Andrei senses a sudden frenzy, both in himself, and in the mare; it seems that the whites of her eyes will shoot out of her head. The mare’s choking. Andrei backs the team. As quick as he can, he’s at the noose, prying it open with his fingers.

He needs something else to tie to the mare. Mr. Kuzyk’s stump-pulling chain is where he left it at the edge of the breaking, wrapped around the arm of a tree. Andrei leads the team to a spot by the creek away from the soap hole, where he ties halter shanks to willow shrubs, then runs non-stop for the chain. He runs as fast as he did in the races at Batoche, and five times as far, fast even on the way back dragging a chain.

With the chain fastened around the mare’s neck, hooked so that it can tighten no more, the horses pull again. The mare’s shoulders twitch and roll, her head and neck twisting under the strain. The hooves scramble in the sticks. A front foot plunges into the muck. The horse snorts and the foot springs back out with a smack of a sucking sound. The team steady in its pull. Snorts and sucks. Snorts and sucks. The colt flits again, back and forth, watching, ears laid back.

“Haahhh!” A yell comes, cursing in the name of diseases, “Cholera!” Shouts from a distance, “Cholera! Cholera!” Mr. Kuzyk swears in the Ukrainian practice of naming diseases. “Cholera! What are you doing with my horse?”

His bulk tumbles over the meadow, half running, half walking, all out of breath. He gets to the bog just as the mare’s emerging, free at last. Andrei hands the lines to Mr. Kuzyk then fall to his knees, sobbing uncontrollably.