The Endearment (9 page)
"Ya, the oaks ..." Again he looked glad, and Anna liked him better that way. "Do you know that when you rive shingles from oak, there are natural and beautiful grains which catch the rain and send it running in channels as true as the course of a river over a falls? It's true. But when I need fence rails I use red oak. Once I made an axe handle of white oak, but it was not good. Too hard.
Hickory
is best for axe handles, but this I do not have here. But ash does almost as well. It is light and strong and springy."
"Springy?" James asked, mystified at the idea of wood being springy.
"It must be, to absorb the shock from the hands when it strikes the tree trunk."
"What other kinds of trees do you have?"
"Not too many dogwood here, but one here and there. With dogwood I make gluts and mauls. Willows I split into withes. Elder is for shade and beauty." Karl smiled. "We must not forget that some trees are given to us for nothing more than shade and beauty, and if this is all we ask of them, they are happy."
James smiled crookedly. "Aw, Karl, trees can't be happy." He leaned his elbows on his lap and peered around Anna at the blond man, who only grinned as if he knew something special. "Boy, Karl, you sure know a lot about them though," James said, sitting up again and looking around in a wide arc, wondering how a man could ever learn as much as Karl knew. And Karl was only twenty-five!
"Like I said, I learn from my morfar and my far in
Sweden
, which is much like
But James detected a teasing lilt in Karl's voice, which made him all the more eager. "So tell me more about the trees," he demanded almost giddily, getting caught up in the magic of learning, already catching the contagious love that flowed from Karl to the woods.
"Here are the pines, the best friend the axeman has."
"Why?"
"Because they save him trouble. Most trees have sapwood and heartwood that must be cut away before he can make boards. But the pine has only bark to strip off, then there lays the wood, ready to make a batch of fine boards. Have you heard of the brake and froe, boy?"
"No, sir," James replied, eyeing the lofty pines, which swayed with fairy-wing tips into the blue firmament above.
"I will teach you about them. They are the tools of shingle-making."
"When?"
Karl laughed a little at the boy's impatience. "In time. First comes the axe, and when you have mastered that you will be able to carve your way to survival in any forest. A man worth his salt can survive with no other tool but his axe in the deepest wilderness nature ever made."
"I never used one."
"Can you shoot a rifle, boy?" Karl asked, with a sudden change of subject.
"No, sir."
"Do you think you could if you had to?"
"I don't know."
Something made Anna look sharply at Karl now. The tone of his voice had not changed, but something told her that the last question was not as casual as the others had been. Sure enough--Karl's eyes shifted watchfully from side to side.
"What is it?" Anna asked, a tingle fingering its way up her spine.
"Boy, climb into the back," Karl said calmly but intensely. "There is a rifle there. Get it, but be careful. It is loaded."
"Is something wrong?" James asked.
"Your first lesson in this woods is that when I tell you to get a rifle, you move as if your life depended on it, because most often it does." James scrambled to the rear of the wagon without further ado, even though the words had not been harsh or critical. They were spoken with a quiet evenness while Karl cautiously continued to scan the woods. "Now come back up here, but point that rifle well away from our heads while you are climbing."
James did as he was told, quickly this time.
"What is it?" Anna insisted, growing nervous now.
"That smell," Karl answered. "Do you smell it? It is the scent of cat."
She sniffed repeatedly, tasting only the pleasant aroma of the pines. "I don't smell anything but pines," she said.
"At first it was the pines only, but now there is the smell of cat, too. There are cougars in these woods. They are wily, and leave their scent where the pines can disguise it. So we must be wilier and be ready if one of them stalks us. Keep your eyes on the trees ahead. When we break into the oak grove, we must be most cautious. The branches are high, and the cougar can perch there in wait to pounce on anything that moves below."
He spoke as calmly as he had when discussing the attributes of the trees that grew here. Even so, ripples of fear threaded through Anna's blood. She realized suddenly how totally dependent she and James were upon this man's knowledge of the woods.
"The gun will kick if you must shoot it, so remember to pull the stock up tight against your shoulder before you pull the trigger or you will end up with bruised bones. It is a good rifle. It is a Sharps breechloader--the best, made right here in
America
--
Windsor
,
The gun was sleek, simple, only the thumbnotch of the hammer breaking its long, smooth line as James lifted it to his shoulder. Anna heard his breath coming in short jerks, and sensed both excitement and fear emanating from him. She wished Karl would take the gun himself, but no sooner had the thought appeared than he said, "If you must fire the gun, be ready to hold tight, because at the report, the horses will panic. I can control them, but it is best if I keep the reins. Are you all right, boy?"
"Y ... yessir."
The horses nickered and Karl soothed them, "Shoo-ey, Belle. Shoo-ey, Bill. Easy does it." There was a jingle of harness, as if the horses understood and nodded their agreement. Again Karl cooed, "Eeeasy." Then he spoke to James. "Ease up on that gun, boy. You are wound up as tight as a three-day clock. When you do not know what is out there and you do not know how long you must wait to find out, you can get so tense that nothing works when you want it to. Relax a little and let your eyes do the guarding as much as the gun."
"But ... but I never saw a cougar before," James said, swallowing.
"We do not know if it is cougar. Could be lynx. If it is cougar it will be golden brown, like a nicely turned pancake, with a long graceful tail. If it is lynx he will be buff gray, spotted and harder to see up there in the dark green leaves. Sometimes we see bobcat here, too, with just a stub of a tail and reddish brown. He is much smaller than the cougar, but is harder to spy."
There was a sudden popping sound. Anna jumped!
"It is only acorns popping beneath the wheels," Karl explained. "We are in the oaks now. You can see what I meant about the high branches." James noticed the way Karl scanned left, then right, then above, studying the woods constantly. Karl sat upright, his entire body taut with caution. "Lots of oak woods here in
"Why don't you fence them in?" James asked.
Anna thought the two of them had gone crazy, talking of pigs and acorns at a time like this.
"In
"How do you know?" inquired James.
"By the squirrels. See the squirrels?"
Anna looked but didn't see any squirrels. "Where?" she asked, squinting.
"There." Following Karl's brown finger, she at last saw a bushy tail lithely leaping through the oaks. "The squirrels hide in their nests when cats are near. When you see the squirrels busy scampering free through the oaks, the threat is gone. Still, you will hold that gun for a while yet, but rest it on your lap now, boy. You did fine."
A thrill of pride such as he'd never before felt filled James' chest. The exhilaration caused by the danger was something new to him, too. It was totally different from anything he had experienced in his life. To hold the gun like a man, to be trusted enough by Karl to do this, to feel that if danger approached he would have been their defender--all this created a blossoming sense of maturity in the boy.
"And so you have learned your first lesson about the woods," Karl noted.
"Yessir," James replied, his cheeks puffed out.
"So, tell me what it is you have learned."
"To be careful in the pines because the cats use them to cover their scent. That the oaks are pretty good places for cougars to perch. To watch the squirrels and keep the gun ready till they show up again. And ..." James had saved the best for last, "that a lot of loud talking helps keep a prowling cat at bay."
Anna was amazed! Without it being said in so many words, James had learned such a lesson only from Karl's example. She had never before realized her brother was so quick-witted.
As if he read her mind, Karl praised, "You are quick with your wits, boy. Do you think your sister is as quick?" He glanced at Anna momentarily.
She cocked her head quite saucily his way, then aside to find more squirrels while she said, "She's quick enough to learn she'll probably have the insufferable job of chasing pigs through the woods when they need rounding up, and she'll be eating lots of turnips, which she despises."
For the first time Karl laughed without holding back. It was a sonorous, baritone sound that pleased and surprised Anna, and made James laugh, too. There had been so much strain between Karl and Anna, it was a relief to hear this first billowing laughter.
"In that case," Karl said, "we had better check the wild hops, so while James and I are eating turnips, his sister can eat bread, eh, James?"
"Yessir!" James agreed eagerly, then made them all laugh again by adding, "What for?"
Karl explained that hops were necessary for making yeast. Each summer he came to this spot to pick enough hops to last the entire year. "I think these are the longest hops in the world. I also think they will not be ready--it is early yet--but we will check them just the same, as long as we are passing. It will tell me when to come back for the picking."
Karl pulled to a stop at a point in the road that looked no different from any other.
"How do you know where to stop?" Anna asked.
Again he pointed. "By the notch," he answered. "I know enough to start looking for it just beyond the oaks."
A wide, white gash showed on a tree trunk, telling Karl the whereabouts of the hops, which could not be seen from the road. He led them into the brush, the gun cradled in the crook of his arm. He took them into fragrant shade, holding back branches now and then, turning to watch Anna dip her way through the thick press of elderwood, with its pink flowers that would turn to black berries come fall. She bent and led with her elbow, sidetracked a branch and looked up unexpectedly into blue eyes that were waiting for her to pass.
"Be careful," he said.
Quickly she looked away, wondering when was the last time anyone admonished her with the simple phrase that meant so much more than it said. "What are these?" she asked, distracted by her thought.
"Elderbrush."
"And what is elderbrush good for?"
"Not much," he answered, walking along behind her. "In the autumn it berries, but the fruit is much too bitter to eat. Why should we eat bitter berries when there are plenty sweet ones to be had?"
"Like what?"
"Many," he answered. "Strawberry, raspberry, blackberry, gooseberry, pincherry, grapes, blueberry. Blueberry is my favorite. I have never seen a land with so much wild fruit. The blueberries grow to the size of plums here. Oh, there are wild plums, too."
They arrived at the place of the hops then, twining vines that clung to the elderbrush and cascaded from it in grape-shaped leaves. Although they were not coming yet, Karl seemed pleased. "There will be plenty of hops again this summer. Perhaps my Anna will not have to eat turnips after all."