Sweet Song (16 page)

“How about the rest of her?” Leon said. He really didn’t care. He didn’t want to have his future planned. He was still adapting to his recent freedom. But it was nice not having to talk about himself.

“She thin like me. Strong though,” he said as if apologetic. “She could bare children. And her bosom would swell enough where she could feed ‘em too, I bet. My mama said my sister will fill out when her husband and her children need her to. Just like my mama herself.”

“What about your other sister?”

“She too young, still. You don’t need to think about her.”

“Well, it’s admirable that you think so highly of your family and that you want to help them out,” Leon said.

“I’ll get my own family goin’ too. Almost did once, but the girl’s family gone crazy. I’ll find another. Plan on having six little ones.” Jake pointed up toward where Jack and Harry made their plans. “I’ll be foreman some day. Either that or I’ll be teachin’ my own college classes. Mark my words, Leon.”

“I’ll mark ‘em.”

As Leon and Jake reduced their stack of timber, some of the other men created a new stack. Still others stacked the bark into a wagon. Leon noticed that the mill hadn’t put out any planks. “When’s this get going?”

“When the river’s clean of this run of timber. Maybe tomorrow. Yes,” Jake said, looking over the river, “tomorrow.”

As they ambled back to get the last log, Leon asked what they’d be doing while the mill was going.

“Strippin’ bark.” Jake pointed at the timber lying all around. “We got our work.”

Leon gazed at his prospective life for the next few months. Hard labor. At the moment there weren’t many choices.

When his work was finished, Leon followed Jake to the river and washed up.

“We’re lucky men,” Jake said.

“Why’s that?”

“We get more than beans and crackers.”

“Beans and crackers?”

“A lot of wood-hicks don’t eat so well.” Jake pointed into the river. “That’s all they eat. Nothin’ else on board those rafts.”

“I like being lucky,” Leon said.

The two of them meandered up the hill to the bunkhouse and the table of food. Other men had already assembled there. Still others were coming up the bank, some down the hill from the woods, others from town.

The sun, setting behind them, shined its final rays across the river and lighted the tops of the maple and walnut trees opposite them. Leon, sitting on the knoll, stared out across the river.

“Them trees won’t be there next year,” Billy said.

Leon looked over at the man.

“I was watchin’ you while you was lookin’,” Billy said in explanation.

“How do you know?” Leon asked.

“Been doin’ this a while now. Winter come, we go into the forest and cut. We bank the trees ‘til spring floods come along and drag ‘em downriver.”

“What about these logs?” Leon said.

“These the logs dropped ashore as the flood receded. Crews go up-river and drag ‘em in. Not many timbermen left after the first run. All the farmers go home, wood-hicks no more.”

“The rest of us either savin’ money or buildin’ homes,” Jake said.

“I’m goin’ to have me a feed store,” Billy said. “Buildin’ it now. When the logs not runnin’ and the mill not goin’.”

Leon felt happy for the conversation. He didn’t talk much, but listened and learned. Apparently he had arrived as the men who had gone upriver collecting bank-dropped logs were sending the timber down stream. The logs had been sitting on the banks of certain
creeks waiting for the next flood. There would be three or four summer runs, each spaced out so that the majority of the logs could accumulate for the town. Only a few percent of the original take was left behind. Towns such as this one were built from that small percentage.

Leon wiped his plate clean with the last of his bread.

Billy, as he talked, stared at Leon, but didn’t ask any more questions.

Jake talked about saving money for college again. Chuck and James discussed the homes they were going to build when the timber wasn’t running. Much of their work was apparently paid them in cut lumber. Others talked about a better life, women, moving on.

Leon got up and dropped his plate into the tub. He had decided he liked sleeping in the side shed, and walked down and around the mill and up the bank. His things were there. His knife and gun and book and burlap bag. And his new bedroll.

On his way down toward the river, Leon felt the intense stare of Billy aimed at the back of his head. But, on the way up toward the shed, no one could see him. His body relaxed once he stepped out of site, but his mind continued its journey. He was a fake. He knew that. But did anyone else? Did Billy suspect it? Was he talked about once out of earshot?

Fireflies lifted like magic from the ground. The darker the area became, the more flickers appeared.

Leon sat in the doorway of the shed. The sun had set. The river sloshed. Fish broke the surface.

A breeze, out of the woods, down the river, announced the end of summer. Already? Leon thought. What would fall bring?

He lay back on the floor. Shelves filled with supplies rose above him on all sides. He couldn’t read any of the labels in the dark. He’d try to remember to do so in the morning. If the right things were stored there, he could steal them and be on his way. Most of the men had been kind, but something about Billy bothered Leon.

The days wore on, similar duties, similar meals. Yet little things changed. Fewer logs came down the river and more building went on.
The mill started to produce planks. Bark was loaded onto wagons and driven away to be sold somewhere unknown to him.

Whenever he was able to hear Jack and Harry talking, he realized they were somehow making a lot of money from the mill. They were happier and more vocal as the days wore on.

No one said anything about Leon’s living quarters in the supply shed. That’s where mill supplies were kept: spare parts, grease, oil, even hand tools. If Leon found his sack had been moved he knew no one meant any harm, but that it was in the way when they were collecting supplies.

On occasion Leon read at night, by moonlight. Jake would come over to talk sometimes, too. They’d sit together and discuss what they were going to do with their wages. Leon learned to make things up, to think bigger than he had ever imagined he could. Yet, deep inside, his relationship with Jake gnawed at him. It was based on a false understanding of each other. Lies about family and growing up became easier to make up, but more difficult to live with.

Leon secretly relaxed whenever Jake left for the bunkhouse. One night, before leaving, Jake told Leon, “Billy’s been watchin’ you and says somethin’s up.”

“What’s he think is up?”

“Don’t know. He’s as mysterious as he is observant,” Jake said.

“Maybe he should pay attention to his work instead of watchin’ me.”

“He don’t mean no harm. Just tryin’ to figure things out.”

“Well there’s nothing to figure. I answered all the questions I’ve been asked.” Leon stood.

Jake looked across the river, then stood beside Leon. He didn’t look at Leon. “Well,” Jake said, “I’ll be gettin’ back.”

The next day, Leon and Jake dragged planks to the builders. They used mules and ropes to do the job. The work was easier and didn’t take the concentration that debarking took. After a while, Leon hummed.

“What’s that you hummin’ now?” Jake said.

“Don’t know it’s something I heard hummed once.” Leon’s thoughts turned to Martha and how she separated herself from the rest of the household. He understood how humming must have
resonated inside her head and eliminated many other sounds. As he hummed, the river-sound faded, hammering noises were reduced to the background, and mule grunts and farts disappeared.

Humming did something more for Leon. It kept his mind from wandering. As he hummed, he often sang words inside his head. Even if he didn’t know the real words, Leon made them up, as he’d been doing for years. Leon made up songs about building a new life as the other men were building a town. He made up songs about the river, and about sunrise and sunset. He remembered how Martha called sunset, the Lord’s sweet song into night, and used those words in a song. And that was exactly how Leon worked. He alternated between holding everything on the outside at bay, by singing songs to himself, and letting everything from the outside in whenever he didn’t sing to himself.

When he wasn’t humming, he heard the rhythm of the hammers, the swish and hiss of the river’s edge, the sliding of wood planks over the dirt, eagle calls, and men’s voices.

As Leon settled into one part of his new life, other parts became more difficult. He found that he was doing what the roamers had done. He made up a new life, one that wasn’t true, one that didn’t fit his shoulders, and one that was too long in the legs. But the most uncomfortable thought was that he couldn’t continue living like that. He knew he’d have to go.

“I grew up on a farm,” he told Jake one day. “I knew the hands left in winter for logging jobs, and the war, but never heard much more about it. Some returned the next spring and some didn’t.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t go. Or that they didn’t talk about it more,” Jake said.

Leon couldn’t tell Jake the truth as to why that was the case; he couldn’t say that he lived away from those men, in a white washed shack in the woods. He couldn’t tell Jake that he only worked with the farm-owner’s children, and wasn’t to talk much with them. There were a lot of things a Negro child didn’t learn because he wasn’t around the right people, because he was expected not to ask questions.

“Well,” Leon said, “they weren’t talkers like here.”

“Oh, I see.”

“So, how many mills are there on the river?”

“More every day, I suspect. There’s money in timber. There’s train tracks, buildings, rafts, iron factories, furniture. Everything’s wood. Pennsylvania White Pine. I hear there’s a millionaire made every week in Williamsport.”

“Where’s that?”

Jake pulled a mule back toward a load of planks, then stopped it long enough to look Leon squarely in the face. “Billy’s right about you. Somethin’s different.”

“I didn’t listen when going to school,” Leon said.

Jake shook his head slowly. “But you can read. And you speaks nice. You only listen when they teach readin’?”

“Pretty much.”

Jake shook his head again. “Williamsport’s upriver about a hundred miles. And on the other side of them mountains. They built a boom there that catches so much timber the whole town can live off it for ten years, except that instead some people gets millions and the rest gets jobs.”

“Don’t sound fair.”

“It sound fair if you the one gettin’ millions,” Jake said.

As they worked, Leon thought. “How do I get across that river?” he asked. The way he had gotten across before was not an experience he wished to repeat.

“Wait, and I’ll go with you,” Jake said. “We can talk tonight.”

For once Leon made a decision on his own. Instead of taking orders or wandering into the next situation, he had the opportunity to plan and decide. And Jake was smart. He would be a good partner for a while.

The rest of that day, Leon imagined all sorts of possible plans he and Jake could come up with, and each one ended in him becoming a millionaire, even though he couldn’t imagine what that might mean for him. Perhaps he could save his wages and buy a small mill or start one himself. He could impress the mill owners with his reading ability and rise to be foreman. He could hire men and be a house builder for the millionaires, siphoning off their money as his own. Or, like Jake, Leon thought of going to college and becoming a teacher of reading.

In the afternoon, during the last meal of the day, Leon sat with the other men on the knoll.

The river shined like a mirror in the morning in one spot and fell black as a moonless night in another. The mosquitoes weren’t so bad. A slight nip in the breezes pushed through the area. He knew the early signs of autumn as well as anyone. Not only did the air quality change, but its smell, temperature, and direction often made little shifts as if trying to sneak into fall without being noticed. Not so that evening. Leon experienced the telltale signs and that’s what encouraged him to expedite his plans for the future.

Billy watched Leon, which made him very self-conscious. As Leon cleaned his plate with a last piece of bread, Billy said, “Somethin’ about you.”

Leon nodded and pushed the bread into his mouth.

“White’s not an occupation.”

“Neither is Zimmermann,” Jake said.

“That there means Carpenter in German,” Billy said.

“So what,” Jake said.

“So,” Billy said, “if he’d a said his name was Black, I’d believe he was black. Since he say his name is White, he look white. Name of White makes me suspicious.”

“What you tryin’ to suggest?” James asked. “That Leon here is White ‘cause he say he is? And if he don’t say it then he’s black? That don’t make no sense.”

“Don’t matter,” Jake said, and Leon was happy to hear that.

“So what is it?” Billy asked.