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Authors: Linden McIntyre
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drive me home. Running interference. Telling them I’d been helping. Now and then he’d give me some change or a dollar so I could prove that I was really working with him. I watched Jack digging in for the long haul. Not counting on anybody.
I remember Uncle Jack saying that he wanted to get the mill running by winter. The best time for cutting and hauling logs. The earth was frozen. You could get the truck a long way back into the woods. People who lived out there would cut the logs for him and haul them to the woodroads with their horses.
I take the photo from Sextus. I haven’t looked at this stuff for a long time. Not since I culled just about everything with him or Effie in it. A wonderful purge. To look at him now in the photograph, I realize Jack always knew he was living short term. Maybe he got that way working in the mines. Mining exhausts itself. Miners are always moving. Standing beside the big saw, Jack could see the causeway. Once he remarked: Funny looking at something that permanent.
Roadway to a place called the future. A place that only exists if you do.
The old man would stop by the mill occasionally and watch. Even when Jack was setting it up, working alone, except for meand sometimes Sextus and Duncan. Helping. Setting up cribwork, machinery, his future. The old man would just watch Jack, hands on his hips. Jack would ask him if he’d like to take a turn running the carriage, making a cut on a log. He’d shake his head, kind of laughing. His face would be saying: This project is doomed. He was negative like that.
That didn’t bother Uncle Jack.
Angus showed up, asked Jack if he needed a hand. Jack said sure. Put him down at the end of the carriageway, on the trimmer. He’d take the slabs of wood that were cut away when the log was being squared and chop them into stove lengths. People would pay for them. Jack told him he could have anything they made from selling slabs. But Angus showed up pissed after about a week and almost cut his own hand off. Jack told him to stay away.
Even though Angus MacAskill was a veteran, he never had a steady job after the causeway. Because of the drinking. And he had some deafness, I think. From the big guns. In Italy. They’d be talking about Coriano Ridge. Ortona. I saw a movie about Monte Cassino once. They said Angus would eventually be stone deaf. Duncan wrote about it later.
Ma said it was a shame Angus couldn’t wear a hearing aid. He got one from Veterans Affairs. But he wouldn’t wear it. There was a roar in his head and the hearing aid would make it worse. Eventually the noise inside his head would drown out everything else.
“Angus is bad news,” Jack said once. The worst thing I ever heard him say about anyone.
Jack always made me feel equal, even while wrestling with the logs at one end of the mill. He’d flip them easily, pretending not to notice my struggle. As the winter settled in, the pile oflogs diminished and the piles of lumber and slab grew on the other end. Two-by-fours. Two-by-sixes. Only cutting boards when somebody would come asking for them.
Then Jack would shut down for a day or two, heading back to the woods with the truck, replenishing the pile of logs.
Always working alone, unless he had me with him. My father in the background, waiting, wearing his yellow power commission hardhat. Jack wore a ballcap.
4
Remembrance Days were bad. First, they were always grim looking. The sky thick with rain or sleet, cold. It was a day off back then. The old man would be up early. Barn chores done, he’d wash up and shave. When I was really small I loved to watch him shaving. He’d stand there in his barn pants and undershirt, his arms brown to the elbow. Then creamy white up over the shoulders. When he moved his arms, muscles would thicken and swell under the skin. When you stood on his left, looking at him standing sideways, you couldn’t see the mess on the right side of his forehead. I liked the smell of the lather. Hearing
I remember Uncle Jack saying that he wanted to get the mill running by winter. The best time for cutting and hauling logs. The earth was frozen. You could get the truck a long way back into the woods. People who lived out there would cut the logs for him and haul them to the woodroads with their horses.
I take the photo from Sextus. I haven’t looked at this stuff for a long time. Not since I culled just about everything with him or Effie in it. A wonderful purge. To look at him now in the photograph, I realize Jack always knew he was living short term. Maybe he got that way working in the mines. Mining exhausts itself. Miners are always moving. Standing beside the big saw, Jack could see the causeway. Once he remarked: Funny looking at something that permanent.
Roadway to a place called the future. A place that only exists if you do.
The old man would stop by the mill occasionally and watch. Even when Jack was setting it up, working alone, except for meand sometimes Sextus and Duncan. Helping. Setting up cribwork, machinery, his future. The old man would just watch Jack, hands on his hips. Jack would ask him if he’d like to take a turn running the carriage, making a cut on a log. He’d shake his head, kind of laughing. His face would be saying: This project is doomed. He was negative like that.
That didn’t bother Uncle Jack.
Angus showed up, asked Jack if he needed a hand. Jack said sure. Put him down at the end of the carriageway, on the trimmer. He’d take the slabs of wood that were cut away when the log was being squared and chop them into stove lengths. People would pay for them. Jack told him he could have anything they made from selling slabs. But Angus showed up pissed after about a week and almost cut his own hand off. Jack told him to stay away.
Even though Angus MacAskill was a veteran, he never had a steady job after the causeway. Because of the drinking. And he had some deafness, I think. From the big guns. In Italy. They’d be talking about Coriano Ridge. Ortona. I saw a movie about Monte Cassino once. They said Angus would eventually be stone deaf. Duncan wrote about it later.
Ma said it was a shame Angus couldn’t wear a hearing aid. He got one from Veterans Affairs. But he wouldn’t wear it. There was a roar in his head and the hearing aid would make it worse. Eventually the noise inside his head would drown out everything else.
“Angus is bad news,” Jack said once. The worst thing I ever heard him say about anyone.
Jack always made me feel equal, even while wrestling with the logs at one end of the mill. He’d flip them easily, pretending not to notice my struggle. As the winter settled in, the pile oflogs diminished and the piles of lumber and slab grew on the other end. Two-by-fours. Two-by-sixes. Only cutting boards when somebody would come asking for them.
Then Jack would shut down for a day or two, heading back to the woods with the truck, replenishing the pile of logs.
Always working alone, unless he had me with him. My father in the background, waiting, wearing his yellow power commission hardhat. Jack wore a ballcap.
4
Remembrance Days were bad. First, they were always grim looking. The sky thick with rain or sleet, cold. It was a day off back then. The old man would be up early. Barn chores done, he’d wash up and shave. When I was really small I loved to watch him shaving. He’d stand there in his barn pants and undershirt, his arms brown to the elbow. Then creamy white up over the shoulders. When he moved his arms, muscles would thicken and swell under the skin. When you stood on his left, looking at him standing sideways, you couldn’t see the mess on the right side of his forehead. I liked the smell of the lather. Hearing
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