Entry Island

POSTSCRIPT

I sit writing this tonight with fear in my heart. It is my first entry since arriving at the lumber camp four months ago. There has been no time to keep a record. Even if there had been, there is no privacy here, and anyway I’ve had little inclination.

We live in long sheds that make me think of the Lazarettos on Grosse Île, sleeping on two tiers of bunk beds that range along opposite walls. You can’t leave money or personal belongings here. Nothing is safe. You carry everything of value with you at all times.

In the time we have been here we have worked, eaten and slept. It is all we have done. Long, hard, ball-busting days felling and stripping trees, dragging them with teams of horses to the Gatineau River. For the moment the logs sit out on the ice. Great mountains of them. But in the spring the melting iceflows will carry them downstream to the big commercial sawmills at Quebec City.

They feed us well enough, at long tables like animal troughs. They need to fill our bellies to fuel the work we do. It is relentless, and the only day we have to ourselves is the Sabbath. A few of us who hail from the islands gather round on Sundays while I read from the Gaelic bible and we sing our psalms. The French think we are mad. An irreligious lot, they are. Catholics, of course.

The company provides alcohol, too. Their way of keeping us happy. But you daren’t drink too much during the week, or you’re not fit for working the next day. So Saturday night is the night for drinking. And pretty wild it can get sometimes, too.

From time to time the Scots organise a ceilidh. We have a fiddler among us, and one of the fellas has a squeeze box. No women, of course. Just drinking and gambling and some mad dancing once the booze starts to flow. Which is when the French join in. They’re pretty reticent at first, but once they get a drink in them they’re worse than the Scots.

There was a ceilidh earlier tonight, and I was sitting playing cards with a bunch of the boys in a corner of the recreation shed when I first became aware of the fight.

The place was heaving, music ringing around the rafters. The bar had been doing a roaring trade, and most of the men had a skinful. But there were voices raised now above the melee, angry querulous voices that cut through the smoke and the noise. A circle had formed, and men were pushing back from the centre of it on all sides. Me and several of the others stood up on the tables to see what was happening.

In the centre of the circle, two huge men were slugging it out. Big knuckled fists smashing into bloodied faces. One of them was Michaél. He’s developed a liking for the drink while we’ve been here, and after a few he gets argumentative, and violent sometimes. He has let his beard grow back, and his hair is longer again, and he presents a scary figure when he gets riled.

But he picked a brute of a man to get into a fight with tonight. A Frenchman called The Bear. At least, that’s what we call him. L’ours is the French name for him. A giant of a man with more body hair than I’ve ever seen, a big beard and a shaven head. In a fight with a real bear you wouldn’t bet against him.

I immediately jumped off the table and ploughed my way through the crowd. Me and several of the others grabbed Michaél and pulled him away from the swinging fists of The Bear, and the French did the same with their man, both combatants fighting against constraining arms.

Finally the struggle subsided, and the two men stood glaring at each other across the circle at the centre of the storm, breathing like horses after a gallop, steam rising off both of them, and blood on the floor.

‘We’ll finish this tomorrow,’ The Bear growled in his thickly accented English.

‘Fockin’ right we will!’

‘It’s the sabbath tomorrow,’ I said.

‘Fock the sabbath. We’ll settle this like men. The clearing at the far side of the old camp. Midday.’

‘It doesn’t make you men to fight,’ I shouted at Michaél. ‘More like schoolboys!’

‘You keep the fuck out of this!’ The Bear glared at me. Then he turned his loathing back on Michaél. ‘Midi it is,’ he said. ‘And you’d better be there.’

‘You can fockin’ count on it!’

I have tried everything I can to dissuade him. It seems to me that The Bear is the bigger, stronger man, and that Michaél is going to take a beating. And when the blood is up, men like that have no idea when to stop. But honour is at stake, and Michaél won’t hear of backing out, though I’m sure he’ll regret it in the morning when he sobers up in the cold light of day.

The truth is, I fear for his life.

The old camp is about a mile away from where they built the new one and there is a large cleared area on the far side of it. Just about every man jack of us was gathered there at midday on the sabbath. I went, not to watch the fight, but to look out for Michaél and try to prevent him from being too badly hurt. What a miserable bloody failure I was at it, too!

God only knows what the temperature was. Well below freezing. But the sun was up in a clear sky, and both men stripped to the waist. If Michaél had one advantage over The Bear, it was his intelligence. The Bear was a big, lumbering idiot of a man. Michaél was blessed with a sharp mind, and native cunning. And while The Bear was stronger, Michaél was faster, lighter on his feet. With space around him he immediately darted in to land a blow on the big man’s nose and leap back again before The Bear could swing a fist. Blood spurted from his busted nose and The Bear roared. But Michaél was in again to land two quick blows to the solar plexus and a high kick that caught the bigger man full in the chest and sent him staggering backwards before dropping to his knees.

The crowd was baying and shouting encouragement to both men and the clamour of it rose through the stillness of the trees.

The Bear got to his feet again, breathing stertorously, and shook his head like an animal. Then he advanced on Michaél, arms at his side, eyes fixed like gimlets on his opponent. Michaél retreated, skipping around the circle created by the crowd, darting in to land occasional blows which just seemed to glance off The Bear like water off oiled wood. Until he ran out of space and The Bear closed in on him, oblivious to the punches and kicks being thrown at him.

I barely even saw the glint of the blade as he slipped it from the belt behind his back. One arm closed around Michaél’s shoulder, pulling the Irishman towards him, and the other came up from his side in an arc and plunged the knife deep into his abdomen. I heard Michaél’s gasp, air escaping from his lungs in pain and surprise. He doubled over, and the crowd went suddenly silent as The Bear withdrew the blade before plunging it in again. Once, twice. Then he stood back as Michaél dropped to his knees, clutching his belly, blood oozing through his fingers, before he toppled forward, face-first into the dirt.

Shock spread through the crowd like fire, dispersing them in silent panic like smoke in the wind. The Bear stood over Michaél’s body, breathing heavily, his lip curled in contempt, blood dripping from the knife in his hand. He pulled a gob of phlegm into his mouth and spat on him as he lay on the ground.

His friends immediately grabbed him and pulled him quickly away as I ran to Michaél’s side. I crouched beside him and gently turned him over, to see the light dying in those pale-blue eyes I knew so well. ‘Focker!’ he whispered through the blood bubbling between his lips. His hand clutched my sleeve. ‘You owe me, Scotsman.’

And he was gone. Just like that. All that life and energy and intelligence. Vanished in a moment. Stolen by a brute of a man who knew nothing of human dignity. Of Michaél’s generosity or his friendship or his courage. And I wept for him, just as I had wept for my father. And I am not sure I have ever felt quite so alone in this world.

It didn’t seem right that the sun should shine so brightly, falling through the windows of the foreman’s office across his desk, reflecting a dazzle of light in our faces while Michaél lay dead outside. The foreman was about forty, and had spent all of his adult life in the lumber business. His jaw was set, and his lips pressed together in a hard line.

‘I’m not bringing in the police,’ he said. ‘We’d have to call a halt to production while they had an investigation. And you can bet your bottom dollar there’s not a man in the camp who’ll say he saw what happened. Not even your precious Scots.’

‘I will,’ I said.

He glared at me. ‘Don’t be a fucking idiot, man. You’d not live to testify.’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t afford a war breaking out between the Scots and the French. Nor can I afford any more delays in production. We’re behind as it is.’

He crossed the room to a small safe that stood against the far wall and took out a pile of notes tied in a bundle he’d already prepared. He threw it down on the desk. That’s your money. Yours and O’Connor’s. You can have one of the horses. Just take the body and go.’

So there was to be no justice. Not of the legal kind, anyway.

It was dark by the time I had sewn Michaél up in a canvas sheet and strapped his body to the back of the horse. The camp had been quiet all day, and no one said a word to me when I gathered together all our stuff, mine and Michaél’s, to pack into saddlebags. No one came out of the huts to shake my hand or say goodbye as I led the horse off along the lumber trail that tracked away from the river.

Inside I was as icy as I was cold on the outside. But not so numb that I couldn’t sense the fear that still hung in a pall over the lumber camp. I didn’t go far before I pulled the horse off the track and into the woods to tie her up to a tree.

I had thought long and hard about Michaél’s final words to me. You owe me, Scotsman. I owed him money, yes. The cash he had loaned me on Grosse Île to pay the keep of Catrìona Macdonald’s children. I had been going to pay it back out of my wages. But I knew that’s not what he meant. I knew, too, what I had to do. And I knew it was wrong. But Michaél was right. I owed him.

I suppose it must have been about midnight when I sneaked back into the camp. There was no light anywhere. Not a soul stirring. These men worked hard, played hard, and slept the sleep of the dead. There was a new moon in the sky, a sliver of light to guide me as I drifted like a ghost between the long sheds until I found the one where I knew the French slept. The doors were never locked, and the only fear I had was that this one would creak in the silence of the night and waken men from their slumbers. I needn’t have worried. It swung open soundlessly, and I slipped inside.

It was profoundly dark here, and I had to wait until my eyes accustomed themselves to what little moonlight fell through the windows before I moved along between the rows of bunk beds looking for the big, bearded face of The Bear.

His bed was second from the end, the lower bunk. The man above him was breathing gently, purring like a cat, one arm hanging over the edge of his bed. The Bear himself was lying on his back, snoring like the wild boar we hunted in the woods. He slept deep, without a conscience, without a second thought for the life he had taken so gratuitously that day. Of the seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years of accumulated experience that had made the man who was Michaél O’Connor. Flawed, yes. But a man of generous spirit and good humour, whose very existence he had erased from the face of this earth in the flash of a blade.

I felt anger and grief bubbling up inside me and knelt down beside his bald head. If I were caught, they would kill me for sure. But in that moment I didn’t care. I had one thought, one single purpose.

I drew out my hunting knife and clamped my left hand over the big man’s mouth as I drew the blade of it across his throat with all my strength. His eyes opened wide in an instant. Shock, pain, fear. But I had severed both the carotid artery and the jugular, as well as his windpipe, and the life fairly pumped out of him as his heart fought desperately to feed blood to his brain.

I clamped both hands over his face as I felt his hands grab my wrists, and summoning every ounce of strength in my body held him fast. His legs kicked feebly, and his eyes turned towards mine. I wanted him to see me. I wanted him to know who had killed him and why. I wanted to spit in his face, just as he had spat on Michaél as he lay bleeding on the ground.

But all I did was fix him in my gaze, and I saw in his eyes that he knew he was lost. The fight went out of him in a matter of seconds, and it was as if I were back on the Langadail estate, watching the life ebb away from the stag whose throat I had cut. His eyes clouded and he was gone. His whole body limp, his grip on my wrists slackening and falling away.

There was a huge amount of blood soaking into the blanket across his chest and staining my hands red. I wiped them off on his pillow and put away my knife, then stood to look down on his ugly, lifeless face before turning away to lose myself in the darkness.

Debt paid.

I have walked the horse through the night to put as much distance between the camp and myself as possible before they find the bastard. But I have stopped here, somewhere deep in the forest, now that first light has come. Not just to rest the horse, but to light a fire and warm my bones. I have never felt this cold, ever, and it is hard to hold my pen without my fingers trembling.

But I think the cold comes from inside, from the Arctic wastes that are my soul. I would never have believed it possible that I could take the life of another human being in cold blood. But cold it was, and calculated, and the only thing I regret is that Michaél is no longer with me.

I arrived home this morning. Rode through the village just before dawn, with Michaél over the back of my horse. He was frozen solid.

The cabin was bleak and cold when I got there, but pretty much as we had left it. I don’t think anyone has been in it during the four months we have been away. There’s nothing to steal anyway. The notice advertising jobs with the East Canada Lumber Company was lying on the table where Michael had left it, and I looked at it with a kind of rage inside me. That fate should have dealt us such a tragic hand. I could remember him returning with it from the Gould village store. Had he not chanced upon it that day and suggested it as a way of earning some cash during the winter months, he would still have been alive. We sow the seeds of our own destruction without even realising it.

I lit a fire and made some tea, to thaw out and steel myself for the job ahead. The Frenchman’s blood was still on my hands. Turned almost black now. I washed it off in ice-cold water, changed my clothes and lifted the pickaxe we had used to dig up roots, then led my horse off through the trees as the sun rose and angled its first warm light between the branches overhead.

It took nearly half an hour to reach Michaél’s plot of land, the notches he had made still there on the trees at the four corners of it. Somewhere near its centre I found a clear area big enough for my purposes and tested the ground. It was rock-hard, still frozen. And I knew it was going to be a long hard job.

After the first eighteen inches the ground began to soften as I broke through the permafrost. But it had taken me over two hours to get there, and it was maybe another three hours before the grave was dug. I had to dig it in an arc to accomodate the curve of Michaél’s frozen body, for there was no way to straighten him out. I lowered him carefully into the hole, still wrapped in canvas, and began shovelling the earth over him. When I had finished I laid one stone at his head, and another at his feet, comforted by the thought that at least he would spend eternity on land that was his. It had never been cleared, and probably never would be. But in some office in some city somewhere, this rectangle of land is registered as belonging to Michaél O’Connor. And in it he lies. Master of it for ever.

I stood then, among the trees, with the sun warming my skin, steam rising off me in the cold air, and I uttered my final farewell to him. ‘Cuiridh mi clach air do charn.’ I’ll put a stone on your cairn. Then I recited aloud from John, chapter 11, the verse that I knew so well by now. ‘I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die.’

As I sit here now, writing this, I want so much to believe it, just as I did when old blind Calum recited it over my father’s coffin. But I’m not sure that I do any longer, and all I know is that Ciorstaidh is lost, my family is dead, and Michaél is gone.