The Last Supper on the Finmark Road
Anya looked at her husband as he gave the blessing before the meal, his head bowed almost to the wooden plate. Even with his eyes closed and deep in religious fervor, Fyodor looked drawn with worry, as if the dear God had not showered them with good fortune. She glanced up at the icon on the wall, their one treasure brought from Russia. “Blessed Mother,” she whispered, “You have helped us so far; help us farther.” The painted face with the golden halo smiled back at her. Her husband might be a mass of anxiety, she thought, but she, Anya, was calm as the steppes. She knew the Holy Ones were with them.
Indeed, God’s bounty was sitting on the table before them, the fruits of their summer labors: boiled jacket potatoes, eggs from their healthy flock of chickens and cabbage fried with onions. In pride of place, in the centre, sat a loaf of bread. She had made it from the flour that Fyodor had taken in trade for a rabbit at the near-by Ellis train station. The flour was pure as white snow, wonderful Canadian flour, the visible sign of their success in the new country, where even peasants like themselves could eat white bread. There was no butter because they could not afford a cow yet, but in the spring, after Fyodor finished up his job in Port Arthur, God willing, there would be a fine Canadian cow and a barn too.
Fyodor finished his prayer, crossed himself, and, picking up his knife and carved wooden spoon., smiled at her. She could read his worries as if they were her own. Should he go into Port Arthur when the snow came and take the job Father Constantine had found for him at the dairy? It would mean leaving her alone for the winter. She smiled back. “I’ll be fine,” she said before he could open his mouth to once again suggest selling the chickens and rabbits and bringing all the vegetables into town. “The icon will watch over me and, remember, we have a good neighbour.”
She was referring to the Mister Edvard, a community leader, who had given land for the local cemetery and who had visited twice with his wife Rosa, once bringing them a pail of lard and the second time, a basket of strange purple berries called Saks. Rosa had shown her where Sak bushes grew and she was grateful.
“Someone has to stay and guard the house,” she reminded her husband. Her thoughts momentarily flew to the unfriendly Ukrainians who also lived on the Finmark Road but near the highway. The Ukrainians, newly arrived like themselves, were a big disappointment as neighbours. The huge man with the black beard had run across the yard towards them when they came to pay a first visit. He was shaking his fist and swearing in Ukrainian, a language close to their own. “Your monster, Stalin,” he had shouted, “make such a famine in my country, millions died.”
Fyodor stood his ground and spoke with his calm deep voice. “My friends, we are refugees too. It is true we are Russian but we had to flee because of our religious beliefs. Stalin burned our church and took the priest away. When we tried to make a protest, they sent soldiers. But through the mercy of heaven, my wife and I escaped.”
“Get off my land,” the big Ukrainian shouted in his garbled dialect. “We don’t want to smell Russians shit around here,” and he reached for a big stick. She and Fyodor retreated down the path to the Finmark Road and sadly walked the six miles home.
“Perhaps,” she said as they trudged back in the August heat, “they did not understand our Russian.” Fyodor had just grunted.
She’d so longed for a woman friend to talk with even if they could not understand each other completely. She’d seen the Ukrainian wife standing in the doorway and she’d heard there were children too, so nice. But, in all fairness, the disastrous visit had been the only bad thing that had happened since the wonderful day last winter when Father Constantine had helped them sign the papers in the Port Arthur Land Office and, unbelievably, as soon as Fyodor made his mark, they had became land owners.
“Only a few months alone,” she said to her husband with a reassuring smile but these were her last words in her own house because, at that minute, the heavy wooden door crashed open, sending the holy icon tumbling from the wall. Four men in uniform rushed in, grabbed her husband and, just as she stood screaming, her own arms were pinned and she was dragged forward. Outside, she struggled with all her strength, aiming to run into the forest and hide, but they dragged her relentlessly along the trail to a truck parked at the road. Lying beside her husband in the back, her wrists and ankles tied, her mouth covered with a cloth, she could see in her mind’s eye, again and again, the falling icon, turning slowly in the air, landing on the floor.
Two years later, in September 1941, young Charlie Edwards, who had come out to Ellis Station to visit his aunt and uncle, was enjoying his last hunt of the partridge season, Tomorrow, he would catch the CNR back into Port Arthur and a week later, on his eighteenth birthday, enlist in the Lake Superior Regiment. He knew the first two years of the war had gone badly for the allies and every man in the Empire was needed to come to the aid of the Mother Country.
With his .22 over his shoulder, Charlie followed an overgrown path back from the Finmark Road and to his amazement, saw, deep in the spruces, the slanted sides of a roof sitting on the ground. An old root cellar? No, it was the top of a small cabin that had been dug almost completely into the soil. On the far side, a clearing about twenty feet across stretched into a grove of tiny poplars. The door was an excavated gaping hole and he lay down on the dry spruce boughs at the entrance to peer in. He could see a small wooden table in the middle of the floor, two rough benches on their sides and beyond, some boxes and what seemed to be a pole bed covered with rotten rags. He wiggled inside.
He picked up a short rusty knife lying on the table beside a rounded slab of wood that might have been a plate. He pocketed the knife along with a carved wooden spoon. There was nothing else of interest. He stared at the mess before him. The people must have left in a hurry for he could make out food on the plates, a mouldy mush and a green pile which may have been a loaf of bread. He kicked at the items on the dirt floor, a wooden ladle, some papers, more rags and bits of scrap wood.
That evening, his uncle, who had lived at Ellis Station since he was a boy, was able to clear up the mystery.
“They were Russians,” the uncle explained. “A young couple. They were taken away a few days after the war started. Russia was the enemy then. Stalin had signed a pact with Hitler but he sure learned different when the Huns invaded his country last year. Then the old fox switched to our side. Still, I don’t see those two youngsters as being any sort of menace. Your aunt Rosa and I visited them a couple of times. They were doing OK in that funny dug-out no bigger than a hen house. And the hens lived in there with them and some rabbits too. Still I never understood how they were any danger to anyone.”
“Where’d they go?”
“Who knows? An internment camp somewhere, I suppose. Maybe they were deported back to Russia. No use asking—probably all classified. We’ll have to wait till after the war. On the other hand, with Russia our ally now, they might show up any time”.
Charlie came back to visit his aunt and uncle six months later wearing his new kaki uniform and six weeks after that, he was shipped out to England and then Italy. He never returned to Port Arthur or Ellis Station. He was killed near Florence and buried in the Canadian cemetery at Rimini. Anya and Fyodor did not return either.
The little dug -out house on Finmark Road is still there, but lost in the bush and only the story remains.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
GREAT LAUNCH
A full house at Waverely Library heard from the authors of Thunder on the Bay, the new book from the Writers' Circle. This book is a compilation of short stories, creative non-fiction and poetry. Each author read a short excerpt. Cake and coffee followed.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
KAMINISTIQUIA TALES - TWO by Joan Baril
The End of the Trail
The mailman was confused. Confused and very tired. The snowfall of three days past made the snowshoeing heavy going and today, the second of March, 1930, the full mail pouch felt like an iron weight on his shoulders as he slugged across the ice of Dog Lake.
Every two weeks, he brought the mail to Koski’s Lumber Camp . Usually it was an easy treck walking on the tracks made by the horse-drawn sleighs. But now he was breaking trail through eight inches of fresh snow and huffing badly. He’d be glad of a good dinner in the cook shack, a smoke and talk with the guys and maybe some of the home brew hidden in the cook’s pantry before he turned in at the bunkhouse.
He stared ahead through the snow swirls and the dazzle from the western sun, checking out the decks of logs piled on the ice ready for the spring drive down the Kam River. The week’s work must have gone poorly, he thought. The size of the logs piles had not increased at all. At the half-way point, where he often spied the teamsters coming in with their loads, he saw only white as flat as a table. Usually, one of the drivers would spot him, let out a halloo and the guys would clamber to the top of the logs for a look and a wave. Everyone loved to see the mailman.
But today, only the snow devils were moving in the light wind. He could make out the tops of the three camp buildings behind the snow bank along the shore, but the welcoming smoke rising from the cook house was absent. As he squinted into the glare, he saw a dark movement on the bank. A dog? No, a wolf. Two wolves. He stopped in disbelief. Why would wolves be allowed so close to camp? He knew that the boss, Matt Koski, had a 30-30 hanging on the wall of the office shack and Matt, who’d been a sergeant in the Black Watch in the war, was a good shot.
The wolves were lolling on their haunches, their heads on one side, their expressions, even at a distance, curious and casual, as if they felt quite at home
“Hallooo,” the postman hollered and to his amazement and fear, a third wolf appeared to sit beside the others in the same relaxed, easy posture, as if it’d just stepped to the shore to welcome the visitor.
The postman felt fear trickle down his neck. He picked up a chunk of ice and threw it even though he was still a good two hundred feet away. The wolves looked at each other and seemed to shrug. They turned and trotted slowly back over the bank to the camp.
“Halloo-o-o.” He was answered by silence.
Twenty snow-shoe steps closer and the postman saw the sprawled black partially -buried shape. It was a man , half-dressed, face down. He ran to roll over the stiff body, a weight as dead as a log. The large mottled hands were clasped around the neck as it the man had been trying to strangle himself. The face was huge, the neck bulging between the fingers, the eyes covered in snow. The postman wiped them clear with his leather mittens. The skin of the cheeks was blotchy black as if, even in this freezing weather, putrefaction had set in.
The postman had seen plenty of corpses in France during the war. He’d seen faces like this at Vimy Ridge and Passchendale, the mouths contorted, the tongue showing, the dark patches of spittle and vomit. The wolves had not touched the body yet; there were no signs of a wound and, strangely, there was little clothing on the man, only the heavy melton cloth pants now frozen solid and the braces that crossed over the bare chest in a black X. He thought the dead man might be the camp owner, Matt Koski, but he could not be sure.
Then a terrible thought hit him and he leapt up, hastily shuffling his snowshoes backward. He dropped the mail pouch, and ran over the bank to the camp, pounding from one building to the next: bunkhouse, office shack and cook shack. They were all dead, all of them, a dozen men, frozen in various positions, some in their bunks, others lying in the snow in grotesque attitudes and all with the same puffed faces and neck, the bull neck that was the sign of diphtheria. Like all residents of Kam, he feared this disease which causes a leather-like skin to form in the throat cutting the airway and strangling the victim.
The three wolves raised their heads at the far side of the clearing. They had brought down one of the horses and were feeding on it but they only moved off a few feet when he yelled at them. None of the other horses was in sight.
He decided to move all the bodies into the bunk house to get them away from the animals but, as he reached for the jacket of the man lying in the path, he saw it was the young cookee, Bill Ranta, blue eyes wide open, blond hair frozen to the ground. He hesitated, his hand in the air. The postman had won the Military Cross for Bravery at the Battle of the Marne but his courage was deserting him now in the face of this invisible enemy.
He did not pick up the mail pouch as he fled back across the bay.
The mailman was confused. Confused and very tired. The snowfall of three days past made the snowshoeing heavy going and today, the second of March, 1930, the full mail pouch felt like an iron weight on his shoulders as he slugged across the ice of Dog Lake.
Every two weeks, he brought the mail to Koski’s Lumber Camp . Usually it was an easy treck walking on the tracks made by the horse-drawn sleighs. But now he was breaking trail through eight inches of fresh snow and huffing badly. He’d be glad of a good dinner in the cook shack, a smoke and talk with the guys and maybe some of the home brew hidden in the cook’s pantry before he turned in at the bunkhouse.
He stared ahead through the snow swirls and the dazzle from the western sun, checking out the decks of logs piled on the ice ready for the spring drive down the Kam River. The week’s work must have gone poorly, he thought. The size of the logs piles had not increased at all. At the half-way point, where he often spied the teamsters coming in with their loads, he saw only white as flat as a table. Usually, one of the drivers would spot him, let out a halloo and the guys would clamber to the top of the logs for a look and a wave. Everyone loved to see the mailman.
But today, only the snow devils were moving in the light wind. He could make out the tops of the three camp buildings behind the snow bank along the shore, but the welcoming smoke rising from the cook house was absent. As he squinted into the glare, he saw a dark movement on the bank. A dog? No, a wolf. Two wolves. He stopped in disbelief. Why would wolves be allowed so close to camp? He knew that the boss, Matt Koski, had a 30-30 hanging on the wall of the office shack and Matt, who’d been a sergeant in the Black Watch in the war, was a good shot.
The wolves were lolling on their haunches, their heads on one side, their expressions, even at a distance, curious and casual, as if they felt quite at home
“Hallooo,” the postman hollered and to his amazement and fear, a third wolf appeared to sit beside the others in the same relaxed, easy posture, as if it’d just stepped to the shore to welcome the visitor.
The postman felt fear trickle down his neck. He picked up a chunk of ice and threw it even though he was still a good two hundred feet away. The wolves looked at each other and seemed to shrug. They turned and trotted slowly back over the bank to the camp.
“Halloo-o-o.” He was answered by silence.
Twenty snow-shoe steps closer and the postman saw the sprawled black partially -buried shape. It was a man , half-dressed, face down. He ran to roll over the stiff body, a weight as dead as a log. The large mottled hands were clasped around the neck as it the man had been trying to strangle himself. The face was huge, the neck bulging between the fingers, the eyes covered in snow. The postman wiped them clear with his leather mittens. The skin of the cheeks was blotchy black as if, even in this freezing weather, putrefaction had set in.
The postman had seen plenty of corpses in France during the war. He’d seen faces like this at Vimy Ridge and Passchendale, the mouths contorted, the tongue showing, the dark patches of spittle and vomit. The wolves had not touched the body yet; there were no signs of a wound and, strangely, there was little clothing on the man, only the heavy melton cloth pants now frozen solid and the braces that crossed over the bare chest in a black X. He thought the dead man might be the camp owner, Matt Koski, but he could not be sure.
Then a terrible thought hit him and he leapt up, hastily shuffling his snowshoes backward. He dropped the mail pouch, and ran over the bank to the camp, pounding from one building to the next: bunkhouse, office shack and cook shack. They were all dead, all of them, a dozen men, frozen in various positions, some in their bunks, others lying in the snow in grotesque attitudes and all with the same puffed faces and neck, the bull neck that was the sign of diphtheria. Like all residents of Kam, he feared this disease which causes a leather-like skin to form in the throat cutting the airway and strangling the victim.
The three wolves raised their heads at the far side of the clearing. They had brought down one of the horses and were feeding on it but they only moved off a few feet when he yelled at them. None of the other horses was in sight.
He decided to move all the bodies into the bunk house to get them away from the animals but, as he reached for the jacket of the man lying in the path, he saw it was the young cookee, Bill Ranta, blue eyes wide open, blond hair frozen to the ground. He hesitated, his hand in the air. The postman had won the Military Cross for Bravery at the Battle of the Marne but his courage was deserting him now in the face of this invisible enemy.
He did not pick up the mail pouch as he fled back across the bay.
Friday, April 18, 2008
A GREAT LITTLE BOOK
The Writers’ Circle has put together a very interesting compilation in their new anthology, Thunder on the Bay (Launch at Waverley, 7 p.m., April 22). I particularly enjoyed the short story “North Line 12” by Michelle Tuomi, the creative non-fiction, “Air Raid Shelter” by Marianne Wahl, “The Rabbit Fur Coat” by Natalie Diakunchak and “The Hungry Man” by Kia H. Xiao.
Interesting poetry dots this book. I enjoyed Paul Gooding’s poem “Dad and I Dig up a Rock to Plant an Apple Tree.” But there were many other notable pieces.
The book looks good and feels good in the hand. Bravo, Writers’ Circle
Interesting poetry dots this book. I enjoyed Paul Gooding’s poem “Dad and I Dig up a Rock to Plant an Apple Tree.” But there were many other notable pieces.
The book looks good and feels good in the hand. Bravo, Writers’ Circle
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
KAMINISTIQUIA TALES, ONE by Joan Baril
The Key.
In early November, 1985, Kathy Lind was driving home from work when the motor of her car stopped. Her geriatric but lovable Ford Escort, as polite as ever, did not cough, did not sputter, made no sound at all as it rolled silently forward, to eventually halt, dead. The road was flat, the weather clear and the highway empty of cars.
She looked at the fuel gauge. Plenty of gas. She reached for the key to restart the engine and her hand hit air. She waved her fingers around but they did not connect with the key or its Mickey Mouse metal tag. She flipped on the overhead light and stared at the empty ignition switch for a long minute. Where was the key? Kathy squeezed her eyes shut. There must have been a key; she reminded herself, or how could she have driven this far. But could a car key just fall out of an ignition?
A deep calming breath. It was here somewhere. First things first, to switch on the flashing emergency lights. With her ears alert for the sound of an oncoming vehicle, she grabbed the flashlight from the glove compartment and ran the beam across the floor by her feet, then over the dash, the passenger seat, her lap. Nothing.
Still no cars coming. She opened the door and got out, listening for the plunk of metal falling from her clothes to the road. Silence. Once more she checked the floor of the vehicle and then the roadway beside it and then, kneeling, the pavement under it.
The lights from Lepinan’s store shone out about a hundred feet behind her. Should she run and ask for help? Her own house was just around the next corner, but there was no one home. Her teen-age son was in town on a sleep over. And alas, when she’d purchased the Escort second-hand three years ago, she’d been given only one ignition key. She had no spare.
Kathy felt herself becoming frantic. She shoved her hands down the crevice at the back of the driver’s seat. She emptied the bag of groceries on the passenger side and tossed the items one by one into the back followed by a dozen cassette tapes. Outside, in the headlights, she took off her jacket and shook it. She ran her hands over her body and into her long hair. She removed her boots and turned them upside down.
But headlights were approaching now, and in her stocking feet, Kathy waved the flashlight in the air like a movie heroine trying to stop the train. Her neighbours, Sheila and Donald Wilkins, who lived three houses past her along Highway 102, pulled up on the shoulder behind her.
When they heard the story, Donald suggested the three of them push the Escort to the side of the road so they could make a more organized and less dangerous search. Before they’d rolled the car more than a few inches, an OPP cruiser, lights whirling, arrived and from then on, the two police officers took over. They helped move the car and, while one shone his high-powered flood light into the interior, the other quizzed Kathy, shaking his head in disbelief.
“A key does not jump out of the ignition, Miss Lind. You’re talking impossibility here.” Even while scribbling in his notebook, his suspicious gimlet gaze surveyed her face. Perhaps he thought she was drunk. Or on hallucinogens. Or insane. Or, the cynical stare seemed to say, she could be some sort of rural hippie prankster.
Sheila and Donald searched the Escort. Both officers searched the Escort. Kathy searched her body and clothes, turning out her pockets, surreptitiously feeling in her underwear and bra, taking off her boots once more and then her socks.
“I know the Escort,” said the officer with the flood light. “I’ve got one myself. Once the key is turned and the motor running, you can’t pull that sucker out unless you stop the engine” He switched off his power beam. “King Kong couldn’t muscle out that key. It’s twisted in as long as the motor’s on.”
Kathy had already told them she owned no spare key so they radioed for a tow truck to pull the Escort to her drive. She rode home in the cop car, the tow truck following, and the police questions continuing. It was after ten o’clock before she was able to heat up some supper and go to bed.
The next morning, a Saturday, she dressed to make one last attempt to find the key in the car which was now sitting in the drive. Her sister and brother-in-law were coming out later to help with the search. Her brother-in-law was bringing his shop vac as well as tools to remove the front seats. But now, standing in her tiny front porch to spring the bolt on the outer door, a flick of sunlight hit her eye. There, on a low table under the single window was a familiar object. A metal tag in the shape of Mickey Mouse and attached to it, the key.
To this day, she has no idea how it got there.
In early November, 1985, Kathy Lind was driving home from work when the motor of her car stopped. Her geriatric but lovable Ford Escort, as polite as ever, did not cough, did not sputter, made no sound at all as it rolled silently forward, to eventually halt, dead. The road was flat, the weather clear and the highway empty of cars.
She looked at the fuel gauge. Plenty of gas. She reached for the key to restart the engine and her hand hit air. She waved her fingers around but they did not connect with the key or its Mickey Mouse metal tag. She flipped on the overhead light and stared at the empty ignition switch for a long minute. Where was the key? Kathy squeezed her eyes shut. There must have been a key; she reminded herself, or how could she have driven this far. But could a car key just fall out of an ignition?
A deep calming breath. It was here somewhere. First things first, to switch on the flashing emergency lights. With her ears alert for the sound of an oncoming vehicle, she grabbed the flashlight from the glove compartment and ran the beam across the floor by her feet, then over the dash, the passenger seat, her lap. Nothing.
Still no cars coming. She opened the door and got out, listening for the plunk of metal falling from her clothes to the road. Silence. Once more she checked the floor of the vehicle and then the roadway beside it and then, kneeling, the pavement under it.
The lights from Lepinan’s store shone out about a hundred feet behind her. Should she run and ask for help? Her own house was just around the next corner, but there was no one home. Her teen-age son was in town on a sleep over. And alas, when she’d purchased the Escort second-hand three years ago, she’d been given only one ignition key. She had no spare.
Kathy felt herself becoming frantic. She shoved her hands down the crevice at the back of the driver’s seat. She emptied the bag of groceries on the passenger side and tossed the items one by one into the back followed by a dozen cassette tapes. Outside, in the headlights, she took off her jacket and shook it. She ran her hands over her body and into her long hair. She removed her boots and turned them upside down.
But headlights were approaching now, and in her stocking feet, Kathy waved the flashlight in the air like a movie heroine trying to stop the train. Her neighbours, Sheila and Donald Wilkins, who lived three houses past her along Highway 102, pulled up on the shoulder behind her.
When they heard the story, Donald suggested the three of them push the Escort to the side of the road so they could make a more organized and less dangerous search. Before they’d rolled the car more than a few inches, an OPP cruiser, lights whirling, arrived and from then on, the two police officers took over. They helped move the car and, while one shone his high-powered flood light into the interior, the other quizzed Kathy, shaking his head in disbelief.
“A key does not jump out of the ignition, Miss Lind. You’re talking impossibility here.” Even while scribbling in his notebook, his suspicious gimlet gaze surveyed her face. Perhaps he thought she was drunk. Or on hallucinogens. Or insane. Or, the cynical stare seemed to say, she could be some sort of rural hippie prankster.
Sheila and Donald searched the Escort. Both officers searched the Escort. Kathy searched her body and clothes, turning out her pockets, surreptitiously feeling in her underwear and bra, taking off her boots once more and then her socks.
“I know the Escort,” said the officer with the flood light. “I’ve got one myself. Once the key is turned and the motor running, you can’t pull that sucker out unless you stop the engine” He switched off his power beam. “King Kong couldn’t muscle out that key. It’s twisted in as long as the motor’s on.”
Kathy had already told them she owned no spare key so they radioed for a tow truck to pull the Escort to her drive. She rode home in the cop car, the tow truck following, and the police questions continuing. It was after ten o’clock before she was able to heat up some supper and go to bed.
The next morning, a Saturday, she dressed to make one last attempt to find the key in the car which was now sitting in the drive. Her sister and brother-in-law were coming out later to help with the search. Her brother-in-law was bringing his shop vac as well as tools to remove the front seats. But now, standing in her tiny front porch to spring the bolt on the outer door, a flick of sunlight hit her eye. There, on a low table under the single window was a familiar object. A metal tag in the shape of Mickey Mouse and attached to it, the key.
To this day, she has no idea how it got there.
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