White Pine (13 page)

Would it?
I felt downright
peculiar.

Hugh leaned close, his blue eyes bright with
excitement. “She’s here.”

“Who?”

“Adelaide Jaeger. She came with my sister.
They’re over on the other side of the house.

We ambled outside all casual like and there I
glimpsed Hugh’s sister Margaret and with her, sure enough, was a
girl with a familiar long blond braid. Adeleide. Suddenly, she
turned, saw me, and smiled. At me. Right at me! Out there, in the
sunlight, she looked as pretty as a picture. I didn’t realize I’d
been staring until I saw her blush. We both turned away at the same
time.

“She’s asked me about you a couple of times
this winter. You gonna talk to her?”

I couldn’t keep up with him. It was all too
much to take in. Adelaide may very well have come to see me, but I
didn’t know what to say to her, and having thought about her all
winter sure didn’t help.

Still I let Hugh drag me over to the two
girls. Before I knew what was what, I was standing right in front
of her and she was looking at me.

“Here he is,” Hugh announced.

I glared at him.

He cocked an eyebrow at me.

“Hello, Sevy,” Adelaide said, her voice soft
and sweet, just like I’d remembered it.

“Adelaide.” I nodded like Mr. Waters had.
“How’s your pa?”

“He’s just fine, thanks for asking.”

“How’s school?” I wanted to think of
something interesting to say, anything at all, but I couldn’t come
up with a thing.

“Good,” she said. Then, we both stood there
and stared at each other. I couldn’t think of a thing to say.

“Sevy, I want to hear all about what it’s
like, lumberjacking and running the river. All of it. Did you get
hurt? We heard a couple of fellas drowned during the river run this
year. Were you scared?” He didn’t pause, even to take a breath.

With Adelaide’s eyes on me, I started to
sweat. “Uh, there ain’t much to tell.”

“Come on, Sevy. I want to hear about
everything.”

I saw Margaret roll her eyes at Adelaide, but
still I couldn’t think of anything smart or interestin’ to say.

Then, Margaret waved to someone in the crowd.
“There’s Ellie. Come on, Addie. Bye boys. Hugh don’t forget to
check on Owen,” she said, referring to their younger brother before
tugging the other girl away.

I saw Adelaide steal a glance back at me.

“Were you scared much?” Hugh asked.

“What? Nah. She’s just a girl.”

“Not by Adelaide, by lumberjacking.” He
smacked me on the back of the head. “Did you hear the news about
the burling contest? There’s going to be one down on Half Moon
tomorrow afternoon, when we’re all done with church going. I heard
that the lumber companies put up the prize. A hundred dollars! I’m
thinking of trying myself, and I ain’t ever learned how.”

He kept rattling on, but I wasn’t listening.
A hundred dollars! If I won it, Pa might not have to go
lumberjacking next winter. If we were lucky, maybe we’d finally
have enough with what my folks had already saved to buy a farm of
our own.

I could see it all: me, winning the prize,
and everyone being there to see it. Maybe even Adelaide. She may
even get so excited that she’d hug me or give me a kiss.

“A hundred dollars?” I repeated. “For a
burling contest?” It didn’t seem possible.

“Yup. I told you,” Hugh nodded triumphantly,
excited to share the big news. “The lumber companies are putting up
the money. Now that the logs are in and the jacks are here, the
whole town’s celebrating.”

Every year, when the log run was finished,
folks let loose in Eau Claire. With the lumberjacks in town with
money in their pockets, the saloons stayed open late into the night
and streets were filled with folks during the day.

“What are you boys up to?” I felt a familiar
hand on my shoulder as my pa came up.

“I was telling Sevy about the big burling
contest on Half Moon Lake.”

Pa nodded, amused by Hugh’s excitement. “The
bosses think that the contest will be a good way to keep the
tensions down between the companies. They don’t want any trouble
this year. It’s a winner take all event. You know of any good
burlers from your outfit? Someone I should put some money on.”

Immediately, I thought of one particular
jack. But he wouldn’t be likely to enter a burling contest, would
he?

“I sure do, Pa. Put your money on me.”

Chapter
Fourteen

~ The Contest ~

The next morning, I was up before dawn. I was
tired, but had been unable to fall asleep for much of the
night.

Seeing me in my river rat gear, Ma just shook
her head, a small smile pursing her lips. “Haven’t you had enough
of it yet?”

“Just this one last time, Ma. Then it’ll all
be over with. You’ll come watch, won’t you?”

“Of course.” She hugged me tight. She smelled
like oatmeal and brown sugar and it felt good to be home.

In was near sunrise when Hugh and I got a
ride down to Half Moon Lake on a milk delivery wagon.

It was still early enough in the morning that
tendrils of steam were rising up off the lake. Men were already
moving around on the lake’s surface, sorting logs. A few town folk
were moving around the lakeshore as well.

Hugh was uncharacteristically quiet, which
was just fine with me, because I was looking for my crew. We found
them soon enough. The Push, Dob, the Swedish brothers, Bob Johnson
and Roget were all there.

“Sevy,” Dob greeted me. “Did they manage to
beat city back into you?”

“What?” I asked. That fella did say the
oddest things. I jerked a thumb at Hugh. “This here’s my buddy,
Hugh McLean.”

“We’re here for the burling contest. Sevy’s
gonna compete.”

Dob glanced over at me, his eyes sharp.

I nodded.

The fellas began to swarm around me, talking
a mile a minute.

“You think you can beat me?” Ole asked
thumping his chest. “How do you like that, Johan? The student tries
to beat the teacher.”

“Who are you kidding, Ole?” Bob Johnson
snorted. “It’ll be a miracle if you can even get up on that there
log after last night.”

“I’ll beat you both,” Johan announced.

“I’ll leave you young roosters to sort things
out. I haven’t had any breakfast yet. I could use a stack of
flappers and some black lead. Anyone want to join me?”

So, Dob headed off, and Johan and Ole went to
register for the burling contest. I had to register, too, but
everything was happening so fast that I wanted to catch my breath.
I told Hugh and the other fellas I’d be down in a minute.

I looked down over that log filled lake,
thinking about how I’d helped fell some of them. The logs were so
thick in the water that I wondered if I could walk across the lake
on them from shore to shore. It seemed impossible now that I was
back that all of it, my winter in the Northwoods, had really
happened.

“We did well this year.”

I turned. Roget had appeared right beside me,
looking down at the logs. “It was a good season.”

“Sure was.”

He looked right at me and, for the first
time, I realized I could look him in the eye. I was now as tall as
he was. He’d seemed like a giant to me when I’d first gotten to
camp.

“You been paid?” he asked.

“No.” I shook my head. “I ain’t gone down to
the office yet.”

He nodded. “Make sure they don’t cheat you.
You did a man’s work this winter. I’ll talk to the Push and make
sure that the company pays you right.”

“Thanks.”

Still, he stared at me, obviously wanting to
say something else.

“You’ll go back to school now?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” I exhaled slowly. Going
back to school. It seemed like another life. “Well, maybe I’ll see
you up north some time.”

“Non
.” Roget looked at me real intent.
“You don’t go back. You are not one of us and never will be. I will
talk to your father.” With that, he turned on his heel and walked
away.

I didn’t say a thing, just stood there and
took it. I was finally done trying to prove myself to Fabien Roget.
You can’t fix what’s wrong with other folks, as my ma always said.
Besides, it was time to go and sign up for the burling contest.

It was all set up right at Half Moon Beach.
Not far off the shore, a big, thick, near twenty-inch pine log
floated in a roped off area where I guessed the water was more than
waist deep. Though it was real early yet, folks were already moving
around. When I went and gave an official my name, I peeked over the
fella’s shoulder and saw that a lot of jacks were already entered.
It shouldn’t of surprised me. After all, a hundred dollars was at
stake, a fortune for men who earned a dollar a day risking their
lives in freezing conditions all winter long.

After taking care of business, I wandered
around. The beach felt like the county fair. By midmorning, just
before the contest got started, my folks found me. I waited with Pa
and Peter for my turn.

A burling contest worked like this: you had
two men, each standing and facing different directions on a log.
Each tried to get that log turning, rolling it in the water, so
that the other fella couldn’t keep up and fell off into the sink. A
good burler could speed a log roll up or slow it down, or even make
it change directions.

In the first rounds, I was lucky. My first
draw was against a thickset fella from the Knapp and Sons Lumber
Company. He was steady, but had slow feet, and I had him off the
log lickety split.

Next, I went up against a Danish fella, and
he was tougher to shake. He could go fast, but he lost his balance
on a direction change.

By my third go round, I was feeling cocky.
People were starting to shout my name when it was my turn to wade
out into the cold water of Half Moon Bay to belly up on a log.

One man yelled, “I got money riding on you,
boy. Don’t let me down.”

And sure enough, I didn’t. For once, it
seemed like things were going smooth for me, like I could do
nothing wrong.

I watched some of the other fellas have their
goes. There were a few who worried me: a German fella with tiny
feet who seemed glued to the log, an Ojibwe Indian who was so
smooth, he barely looked like he was moving up there, and Roget, of
course. But I didn’t watch his rounds.

By midafternoon, they were down to the final
twenty jacks. Womenfolk brought food down to the beach. The whole
thing was beginning to feel like a party, and I kept winning. I
wouldn’t have said that I was better than those other fellas,
because I wasn’t. Many were far more experienced burlers, but
somehow the rounds kept going in my favor.

“Young legs,” I heard one jack mutter as he
sloshed his way out of the lake after coming off. By afternoon, I
knew that I had made the finals. I didn’t know who I would be up
against. The final rounds weren’t set to start for another hour, so
that the judges could get a bite to eat. The folks and excitement
were getting to be too much for me. So, Hugh and I moseyed down the
beach a piece. I sat on a stump and looked out over the still water
of the little bay. Closing my eyes, I tried to remember how it had
felt burling in the backwaters, the quiet, my feet flying, my body
still. The not worrying, because no one was watching part.

“Nah, Adelaide. Sevy doesn’t want to talk
right now. He’s resting up for the finals.”

My eyes flew open.

“Just tell him... Tell him that I wanted to
wish him luck.”

I don’t know where the courage came from, but
I opened my eyes and said, “You can tell me yourself.”

Adelaide and Kate, who was again with her,
stood looking at me, but Hugh got the picture. He winked at me.
“Come on, Kate, let’s you and me have a look at that results
board.”

For once, she didn’t argue back, and that
left Adelaide and me standing there together and sorta alone. She
was so pretty, and she was looking right at me. I glanced away,
feeling sorta sick down in my stomach.

“This is for you.” She held out a carefully
folded bit of paper.

I reached out to take it from her and our
fingers touched. I swear I felt a shock coming from her to me. But
then she dropped her hand real fast, like she felt it, too.
Thinking it was a note, I began to unfold it.

“Be careful, you’ll drop it.”

I slowly opened that paper out the rest of
the way and found a dried and flattened bit of plant in it. I
looked up at her.

“It’s a four-leafed clover.”

I looked more closely at it, and, sure
enough, it was. We’d searched for them in the schoolyard when we
were younger, but I’d never seen a real one before.

“I found that one last summer.”

“And you’re giving it to me?”

She glanced back up at me and her eyes were
keen. “Now don’t you go getting a swelled head, Sevy Andersen. I’ve
found others before. In fact, I have a whole box of them at home.
Margaret says that they bring good luck.”