A Man in the Open. Roger Pocock
hearts—no need of teachers. It kills off the weaklings—no need of doctors. A school to raise men—no need of preachers. The law was "work or starve"—no place for lawyers. It's police, and court, and hangman all complete, fire and hail, snow and vapors, wind and storm fulfilling His word. Nowadays I reckon there'd be a cinematograph theater down street to distract your attention from facts, and you'd order molasses by wireless, invoiced C. O. D. to Torngak, Lab. Can't I hear mother's voice acrost the years, and the continents, as she reads the lesson: "'He casteth forth His ice like morsels: who can stand before His cold?'"
Father's home was an overturned schooner, turfed in, and he was surely proud of having a bigger place than any other Liveyere on the coast. There was the hold overhead for stowing winter fish, and room down-stairs for the family, the team of seven husky dogs, and even a cord or two of fire-wood. We kids used to play at Newf'nlanders up in the hold, when the winter storms were tearing the tops off the hills, and the Eskimo devil howled blue shrieks outside. The huskies makes wolf songs all about the fewness of fish, and we'd hear mother give father a piece of her mind. That's about the first I remember, but all what mother thought about poor father took years and years to say.
I used to be kind of sorry for father. You see he worked the bones through his hide, furring all winter and fishing summers, and what he earned he'd get in truck from the company; All us Liveyeres owed to the Hudson Bay, but father worked hardest, and he owed most, hundreds and hundreds of skins. The company trusted him. There wasn't a man on the coast more trusted than he was, with mother to feed, and six kids, besides seven huskies, and father's aunt, Thessalonika, a widow with four children and a tumor, living down to Last Hope beyond the Rocks. Father's always in the wrong, and chews black plug baccy to keep his mouth from defending his errors. "B'y," he said once, when mother went out to say a few words to the huskies; "I'd a kettle once as couldn't let out steam—went off and broke my arm. If yore mother ever gets silent, run, b'y, run!"
I whispered to him, "You don't mind?"
He grinned. "It's sort of comforting outside. We don't know what the winds and the waves is saying. If they talked English, I'd—I'd turn pitman and hew coal, b'y, as they does down Nova Scotia way—where yore mother come from."
There was secrets about father, and if she ever found out! You see, he looked like a white man, curly yaller hair same as me, and he was fearful strong. But in his inside—don't ever tell!—he was partly small boy same's me, and the other half of him—don't ever let on!—was mountaineer injun. I seen his three brothers, the finest fellers you ever—yes, Scotch half-breeds—and mother never knew. "Jesse," he'd whisper, "swear you'll never tell?"
"S'elp me Bob."
"It would be hell, b'y."
"What's hell like?"
"Prayers and bein' scrubbed, forever an' ever."
"But mother won't be there?"
"Why, no. It hain't so bad as all that. She'll be in Heaven, making them angels respectable, and cleaning apostles. They was fishermen, too. They'll catch it!"
Thar's me on father's knee, with my nose in his buckskin shirt, and even to this day the wood smoke in camp brings back that wuff, whereas summers his boots smelt fishy. What happened first or afterwards is all mixed up, but there's the smoke smell and sister Maggie lying in the bunk, all white and froze.
There's fish smell, and Polly who used to wallop me with a slipper, lying white and froze. And yet I knew she couldn't get froze in summer.
Then there's smoke smell, and big Tommy, bigger nor father, throwing up blood. I said he'd catch it from mother for messing the floor, but father just hugged me, telling me to shut up. I axed him if Tommy was going to get froze, too. Then father told me that Tommy was going away to where the milk came out of a cow. You just shove the can opener into the cow so—and the milk pours out, whole candy pails of milk. Then there's great big bird rocks where the hens come to breed, and they lays fresh eggs, real fresh hen's eggs—rocks all white with eggs. And there's vegi tables, which is green things to eat. First time you swell up and pretty nigh bust, but you soon get used to greens. Tommy is going to Civili Zation. It's months and months off, and when you get there, the people is so awful mean they'd let a stranger starve to death without so much as "Come in." The men wear pants right down to their heels, and as to the women—
Mother comes in and looks at father, so he forgets to say about the women at Civili Zation, but other times he'd tell, oh, lots of stories. He said it was worse for the likes of us than New Jerusalem.
I reckon Tommy died, and Joan, too, and mother would get gaunt and dry, rocking herself. "'The Lord gave,'" she'd say, "'and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.'"
There was only Pete and me left, and father wagging his pipe acrost the stove at mother. "They'll die, ma'am," I heard him say, and she just sniffed. "If I hadn't taken 'em out doors they'd be dead now, ma'am."
She called him an injun. She called him—I dunno what she didn't call him. I'd been asleep, and when I woke up she was cooking breakfast while she called him a lot more things she must have forgot to say. But he carried me in his arms out through the little low door, and it was stabbing cold with a blaze of northern lights.
He tucked me up warm on the komatik, he hitched up the huskies, and mushed, way up the tickle, and through the soft bush snow, and at sunup we made his winter tilt on Torngak Creek. We put in the winter there, furring, and every time he came home from the round of traps, he'd sell me all the pelts. I was the company, so he ran up a heap of debt. Then he made me little small snow-shoes and skin clothes like his, and a real beaver cap with a tail. I was surely proud when he took me hunting fur and partridges. I was with him to the fishing, in the fall we'd hunt, all winter we'd trap till it was time for the sealing, and only two or three times in a year we'd be back to mother. We'd build her a stand-up wigwam of fire-wood, so it wouldn't be lost in the snow, we'd tote her grub from the fort, the loads of fish, and the fall salmon.
Then I'd see Pete, too, who'd got pink, with a spitting cough. He wanted to play with me, but I wouldn't. I just couldn't. I hated to be anywheres near him.
"Didn't I tell yez?" father would point at Pete coughing. "Didn't I warn yez?"
But mother set her mouth in a thin line.
"Pete," said she, "is saved."
Next time we come mother was all alone.
"'The Lord gave,'" she says, "'and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord,' but it's getting kind of monotonous."
She hadn't much to say then, she didn't seem to care, but was just numb. He wrapped her up warm on the komatik, with just a sack of clothes, her Bible, and the album of photos from Nova Scotia, yes, and the china dogs she carried in her arms. Father broke the trail ahead, I took the gee pole, and when day came, we made the winter tilt. There mother kep' house just as she would at home, so clean we was almost scared to step indoors. We never had such grub, but she wouldn't put us in the wrong or set up nights confessing father's sins. She didn't care any more.
It was along in March or maybe April that father was away in coarse weather, making the round of his traps. He didn't come back. There'd been a blizzard, a wolf-howling hurricane, blowing out a lane of bare ground round the back of the cabin, while the big drift piled higher and packed harder, until the comb of it grew out above our roof like a sea breaker, froze so you could walk on the overhang. And just between dark and duckish father's husky team came back without him.
I don't reckon I was more'n ten or eleven years old, but you see, this Labrador is kind of serious with us, and makes even kids act responsible. Go easy, and there's famine, freezing, blackleg, all sorts of reasons against laziness. It sort of educates.
Mother was worse than silent. There was something about her that scared me more than anything outdoors. In the morning her eye kep' following me as if to say, "Go find your father." Surely it was up to me, and if I wasn't big enough to drive the huskies or pack father's gun, I thought I could manage afoot to tote his four-pound ax. She beckoned me to her and kissed me—just that once in ten years, and I