Tidings, page 9
‘I’m teaching Ben how to saw wood. He’s getting good at it; watch.’
They have their arms filled with packages from the car, things that must’ve been in the trunk. I check to see if they want to go up through the trap door, but with their arms so full, they’d be better going around by the dam. Nicole steps down into the cellar behind me.
‘So here we see the father-paternity figure passing on the secrets of his manly skills to his young son. How come you never taught us how to cut logs? Are we only supposed to set tables, help cook, make beds; woman things like that; is that it, huh? It’s not fair.’
Oh boy. Here we go. Ben is just about through his log. I rock back to open the cut and he goes through in two more strokes. We catch the ends of the logs.
‘Well, Nickie, I never knew you wanted to saw wood. I’d’ve been glad to teach you; I can use help any time I can get it. It just never occurred to me you were even interested. Gosh you and Peg always hated it here at the mill.’
Ben and I jam the logs between higher steps. I push them to the side in case the girls want to go upstairs that way. Ben picks up the saw again. Nicole reaches for it, he gives it to her.
‘Okay, folks; here I go, Paula Bunyan in the flesh. I’ll show you how strong I am.’
She’s put her things down on the doorstep. Maggie is still standing there, hugging herself. Ben comes around beside me, leans forward.
‘Watch out, Nickie, it’s sharp, it can really give you a good gash if you’re not careful.’
Nicole throws the end of her long scarf over her shoulder.
‘Don’t you worry there little brother, just watch the logs roll. Timmberrr!!’
‘Do be careful, Nickie. The main thing is nice long easy strokes. Strength has nothing to do with it.’
I’m holding on to one end, making sure the log’s wedged tight. Ben slides past Maggie to get more wood. Nicole starts sawing back and forth with short, quick strokes, her hand much too close to the blade in case it jumps out of the cut. I know she doesn’t want criticism, any help from me. She’s proving something.
‘I’ll show you what strength is. I’m little but I’m stronger than a lot of men.’
‘Be careful the saw doesn’t catch and jump out of the cut, Nickie, that’s the main thing. Your hand’s awfully close!’
Her scarf has come back over her shoulder and dangles so it gets snagged by a tooth of the blade, a loop of wool is pulled out, broken. She stops, puts down the saw, stretches the wool to pull the loop back into the knitting.
‘Damn! Amy Lou knitted this; gave it to me just as I was leaving, a Christmas present; goddamned saw!’
She unwinds the scarf from her neck, piles it with her other things on the doorstep. Ben passes behind her with a log; Maggie leans against the doorjamb. Nicole grabs the saw again; this time, her hand a safer distance from the blade but still too close. I notice for the first time that her pile on the doorstep includes two bottles of Chablis, one of them half empty. Loretta and I bought three bottles of Pouilly-Fumé and three of Sancerre in Nevers so we’d have enough white wine. I guess Nicole’s just making sure; she knows Lor prefers red.
‘Try easy strokes, rocking up and down as you go, so the saw won’t bind. When you see the cut start to open, go slowly, then the blade won’t go through and cut you.’
There’s no response, only a frantic hacking back and forth, almost a caricature of real sawing. Nicole’s working her way through this piece of wood by sheer strength and will power. Finally the log splits, breaks, falls. She stands up, the saw at her side, sweat on her forehead.
‘There it is; I knew I could do it. See, two logs for the price of one.’
Ben takes the saw from her hand. I lift another log in place. I’m hoping Ben won’t say anything to antagonize her. Actually he never would; it wouldn’t occur to him, only to me.
‘Well, you really cut through it in a hurry. At that rate, in a couple hours, we’d have enough to burn for a week.’
She picks up her things from the doorstep, wraps her snagged scarf around her neck. Maggie steps out the door.
‘Well, frankly, I’d rather help with Christmas cookies upstairs. This place gives me the creeps; all those wheels, cogs, the wet floor, the wet sawdust. Come on, Nickie.’
They leave, going around by the dam. I put Nickie’s cut pieces on the steps. Ben’s ready to saw again. Maybe I’ll never get a chance to cut wood any more; Ben’s taking over. I don’t think I’m about to cry over it but I think I could cry about Nickie if I let myself. We all have to live out our own lives and usually no one can help us. But it can be so hard just to stand by.
Ben and I get fifteen logs cut and pass them up for piling. We have a stack beside the fireplace, now, high as the mantle. I know it’s ridiculous but this gives me a feeling of security, like a refrigerator full of food.
Lor has been making dough for the Christmas cookies. She makes them from a recipe my mother always used. They’re walnut-flavored with a dab of strawberry jam on each one. But first, before baking, they need to be rolled in sausagelike rolls inside waxed paper and put into the refrigerator to harden for a few hours. Snitching some of the batter now, before it goes into the refrigerator, has been a favorite for me and all the kids every Christmas. Lor, who doesn’t like the batter herself, has set some aside for us.
My mother used to tell me I’d get a stomachache and pimples from eating raw batter but I ate it anyway, got both pimples and stomachache. I didn’t know much about self-fulfilling prophecies then, but this probably qualified.
Maggie’s standing by the door looking out on the back porch. The mill is down low enough so you can’t actually see out over the dam to the pond from the door.
‘Could we go up and look at my property, Dad? You sent me pictures of the work you’ve done but I’ve never actually seen it.’ As a wedding present, Lor and I gave Maggie and George a beautiful field, about an acre. It slants toward the south and east for maximum sun. On the near, high edge is the ruin of the first house in our town of Moulin de Tonnère. It’s even older than the mill itself.
But I mean this was a real ruin. Only a few stones actually still stuck above the ground. Originally, it’d been home to the person who controlled our pond for the flottage. The flottage was a unique system of getting wood that’d been felled here in the Morvan on up to Paris. This was when wood was the main fuel for heating there.
The farmers and foresters would cut and pile it along streams which led to the Yonne River and thence to the Seine. They’d put their mark on each log so it could be identified. At a given signal, the sluice gates of all ponds would be opened; the streams filled quickly and logs would rush the almost sixty kilometers to Clamecy. There, the individually marked logs would be counted and credited to the proper owner.
This house on Maggie’s property was lived in by the man who opened and closed sluice gates for several ponds in the vicinity.
We’d been told that, previous to World War II, a woman alone, whose husband had been killed in World War I, raised twelve children in that same house. It’s hard to believe thirteen people could live in such a small space.
Unearthing the remains of this house became a minor mania with me, as much an archaeological impulse as anything. Whenever friends would come visit or stay a few weeks, I’d force-labor them into my private folly. We ripped out all the bushes, roots, briar patches first. Then we dug into the space enclosed by the remnants of the walls, piling earth to make a terrace on the downhill side, facing the village; we dry-walled, fitting rocks tightly on the outsides of the terrace walls.
We dug down to the old tile floor and squared the corners. The measurement was exactly five meters by five meters. Even assuming a second floor (and the evidence was there had been one), the total was less than fifty square meters all together, that’s only about 450 square feet.
Imagine a family of twelve kids in that small space. This woman must have been the original Little Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe.
We recuperated the stone lintels for doors and windows, rebuilt these openings; we unearthed the old bread oven; it was made with interlocking tiles, and almost intact.
I gradually started rebuilding the walls, carefully fitting stones like a gigantic jigsaw puzzle, filling in spaces with the dampened earth I’d dug out, mixing it with lime; finishing with a mixture of earth and cement as a natural plaster. It was a great project, wonderfully meaningless, my private Holiday Spa, Vic Tanney gym, Jane Fonda workout, all in one.
After the walls were up eight feet, I abandoned the idea of truly reconstructing the house in the original form and spanned the walls with a series of four-by-ten rafters. I covered these with raw oak planking from the sawmill nearby, to make a terrace on top. I built stone steps from below and now we have a terrific sunning terrace up there.
I also built a waist-high wall around the terrace. There’s enough privacy for nude sunbathing and, more important, a reasonably quiet place away from fishermen for sleeping out summer nights. It’s also the main launching pad for Ben’s airplanes and the stand from which he likes to shoot his .22.
We developed our garden up there because the soil is so fertile and the sun orientation good; the Morvan is not known for quality or quantity of sunshine. I also built a hand pump to bring water for our garden up from the village well.
The best part is that, only a two-minute walk from the mill itself, we have a vastly improved view over the entire valley. Up there, I feel I’m on a flying carpet drifting low over the valley as in a dream. There’s magic about the place. As a serious philosopher, I guess I’m not supposed to believe in magic, but I do. I don’t think I could face life without it.
So, I’m really anxious myself to show it to Maggie, give her something upbeat to think about, something of continuity, perseverance, rebuilding. I’m still somehow capable of deluding myself into thinking these little background surroundings can influence behavior. I’m the classic reluctant, ongoing romantic.
We start dressing warmly. The temperature’s hovering at fifteen degrees below freezing. I constantly reassure Ben this might be snow weather but I’m beginning to lose confidence; it doesn’t smell right for snow. Maggie, who’s five-seven, is ducking to get through her own door.
It isn’t very impressive inside. I still haven’t done anything about the floor. The tiles are mostly cracked and pulling up. I should probably pour a new cement slab and reset the tiles, or, at least, put in a wood floor. I’m running out of steam for the job. There are two hardened sacks of cement and the wheel-barrow’s filled with cement-working tools and covered with a tarp. I’m feeling slightly apprehensive, not knowing what Maggie had been expecting. Maybe she thought it was all finished and ready to move into. We haven’t even put the door or any windows in the places we’ve roughed out for them. It’s very primitive.
‘Gosh, Dad, this is wonderful. If we really get stuck, Seth and I could move right in here. It shouldn’t take much to fix the windows, the door and that floor, then we could put a fireplace over there in the corner. We could live here just fine. We’d plant a garden and cut wood for the fireplace and I’m sure George would send us some money. We could be really independent.’
And she means it! I can see from her face. I can also, for the first time, realize how serious she is about leaving George. If our Maggie is willing to try living in a rocky dugout like this, it must be bad. I look over at Lor and she’s concentrating on Maggie, eyes narrowed. I’m sure Lor’s having the same kinds of thoughts. Neither of us had suspected how desperate things are. Nicole has moved beside Maggie and locked arms with her. It’s so great to see them friends; they were so competitive about everything when they were adolescents.
‘I’ll move in with you, Peg. Between the two of us, we could turn this room into a cozy nest, tell the whole world to go screw itself.’
Ben turns away and out the door. This has generally been his private place. He doesn’t enjoy sun or heat; so, in midsummer, when we might be down by the mill sunning and swimming or up on the terrace here sunning, listening to the portable radio, he’d come down into this room where it’s always damp and cool, to sit in the big cut window and read. There’s a beautiful view, almost like a painting, through that window. There are hills across the way and it looks directly down onto the field which came with the mill. There’s a stream flowing through this field and we can see a tree house I built for Ben, three summers ago, in a tree, on an island, in the middle of the stream.
Loretta and I follow Ben out, the girls file after us, up the rest of the stairs. I always feel an inside lift when I come up here. Maggie’s field is cut close and green, thanks to Pom Pom, eater of sugar corn and fruit trees. We go up four more steps, this time wooden steps, onto the platform. This oak-floored surface is ten meters by five meters, a really fine, flat place. Lor strolls across to the edge, looking down toward the village. The girls follow her cautiously. There’s a hip-high rail around the entire wooden platform.
It really is surprising, almost frightening, how, with so little effort, we’ve seemed to go up into the sky. Just then, the clouds open and strong rays of pale sunshine break through to light the whitened landscape around us. Magic is the only word for it; shadows of clouds are hopscotching over the patterned hills. Maggie grabs hold of the railing.
‘Gosh, Dad, this makes me dizzy. It’s like taking off in a 747 or looking down from a hang glider!’
I begin to hear my motorcycle coming along the Vauchot hill. The timing’s slightly off so it pops, backfires, when you don’t accelerate. I watch and catch glimpses of Mike through the trees, then he’s visible in the long clear part just before he comes into town. Maggie turns to me.
‘There’s Mike. Let’s go meet him. Maybe he’ll take us to his place in the woods.’
I look over at Loretta. Again, she seems miles away, not really with us. I try to generate enthusiasm.
‘Wouldn’t it be fun to pack a lunch and eat out there Lor? Maybe we can even get his fireplace going. I piled dry wood inside last summer when I hiked in and cleared brush. Ben and I put enough tinder in there for us to get a good fire going.’
‘It does sound like a wonderful idea, Will. But we’d better check with Mike first.’
Maggie’s face lights up.
‘I’d love to see Mike’s cabin. The last time I was there, it was only a muddy hole in the ground and some rocks piled in a circle in the middle. He and Debby were working like crazy people on it. By the way, whatever happened to Debby?’
Nicole pulls Maggie by the arm and they start toward the steps.
‘Geneviève is what’s happened to Debby. Or maybe some Tom, Dick, Harry or Harriette happened to Mike. Nobody knows about those things, big sister.’
They both laugh. Loretta and I follow them down. Ben comes behind us. He’s walking along reading. This is his way of being here and not here at the same time.
I’m spinning the damned ‘love’ question again. Is it only feeling good with someone, enjoying their company? Or is it more a feeling of responsibility, of caring? How much of it is possession and feeling possessed? I’ll never know.
4
Four Calling Birds
When we get down to the mill, Mike’s there and throwing more wood on the fire. He smiles at us, but this is his Buddha beatific smile, nothing real about it. He’s being nice, reassuring us that everything’s fine, nothing to worry about. His acting skills are about on a par with mine as diplomat. Maggie bursts right out with it.
‘Mike, would you take us to your cabin? Dad says there’s firewood there and Mom says we can pack a lunch and make a picnic.’
The smile disappears. Now he has to really think, bear down, decide. I know it isn’t so much our going out there he might resent as his going there with us. I think his feeling about the cabin is exclusive of our family and inclusive of something personal to himself. It can be uncomfortable. He sneaks a quick look at me, at Lor. Then he looks into Maggie’s eyes, sees the sincerity, the honest desire to share in something of his.
‘Sure, okay. That’d be fine. But I warn you, it’s damp and moldy. Not enough sun gets through all the trees in that wood.’
I’m slowly realizing what a wonderful way this will be to spend Christmas Eve afternoon. It can sometimes be a painful time of expectancy, of waiting. We can all take an invigorating hike out there, then come back to bake cookies.
‘We’d really appreciate it, Mike, thanks. Lor, you and the girls pack some stuff to eat. Ben, you look for a box of matches and bring along a couple old newspapers to start a fire. We’ll all need rubber boots to get across the muddy meadow from the west woods, it’ll most likely be iced over but you never know.’
I’m into planning a campaign, nobody’s paying much attention to me. I haven’t been out to Mike’s place since summer.
It isn’t long before we’re ready. We go out, Mike and Maggie in the lead, Loretta and Nicole after them, Ben and I bringing up the rear. The sun has definitely been covered by clouds and some more wind is blowing but the temperature has gone up. Now there’s some beginnings of snow smell but it’s still too cold.
‘You might get what you’ve been asking for for Christmas, Ben.’
‘I already got it, or I know I’m going to get it anyway, my Russian rifle. I dreamed about that rifle last night. I was shooting little white pigeons with it, like a shooting gallery and they must have been a hundred meters away but I was hitting every one. It was a great dream, they weren’t real pigeons, they were metal and went clang each time I hit.’
‘I mean snow. I think it could start snowing any time now if it only gets about five degrees warmer. We could have snow for Christmas after all.’
‘Oh, you say that every year, Dad. You’re just the perennial optimist.’
Another cliché out in the open. I swear it’s some kind of game he plays.
The route to Mike’s place takes us first up to the next town of Milé, about half a mile along the main road past the mill. Then we cut off to the right and up a hard, frozen, rutted dirt road. Runnels of ice are frozen in the ruts, cutting from left to right as the path makes its turns and tips on the way up. It climbs fairly steeply for another half kilometer. Then we take off away from it and into the woods, heading almost due south. At the place where we cut off the road and into the forest path, Maggie and Mike are waiting for us. They’ve each found a stick to use as a staff. Ben’s found one, too. It’s sort of a family custom. I’ve been drifting in my mind so I haven’t followed through.
