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Great Writing - Home > SF > Under a Mastic Tree — part three
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Science Fiction and Fantasy
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| Under a Mastic Tree — part three | |
| By andybyers | ||||
| 20 March 2008 | ||||
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This story is set in Brandon, Manitoba, about fifty or sixty years from now. This is the last part of three. It was just after Thanksgiving and before Halloween that the foreman called them together. “We’ve been pushing. You all know that. But the inspectors have said they don’t believe we can meet the deadline of November 15th. So the company’s not making the bonus. And that means neither are you.” The men raged at the news, pushing forward; the foreman held up his hands. “However… however! There’s another project, starting Monday. If they can get enough to sign on for it, this leg of the TransCanada recovery will be put on hold till the spring. They want to re-open the Assiniboine bridge to relieve the communities on the other side. If they can use that, then they can at least get one lane of commerce along the safe trail on the south side. I’m not going to blow smoke up your asses. It’s heavily mined on both sides and they nearly blew the thing up just removing the booby traps. But for every man who volunteers, there’s fifty up front. For every man makes it through, another two hundred at the other end. That’s for about three weeks’ work.” The men’s rage turned to guarded optimism. “Sign-ups are this evening at day’s end, and tomorrow and Friday, which is the day we shut down. Think it over. Now eat up and get back to work.” Cameron’s heart lit up. This was it… unquestionably. This was being given to him. Nothing had ever been so clear. Just before Christmas? To know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he would have enough money to free his father, and more besides? It was a sign. It was meant to be. When he turned to Rob, mouth open in joy, he found Rob was already regarding him. Something about the look kept Cameron from speaking out just then. It was in the evening. They handed in their detectors and Cameron made his way to new line, not even stopping first to collect his wages. Something in Rob’s manner had made Cameron avoid the subject over lunch, but there was no hiding it now. And suddenly, he felt Rob’s hand at his elbow. “Cameron, no.” Cameron pulled his arm away. “I don’t have any choice.” “There are other ways, Cameron. You’re nearly there. You said so yourself. Quit while you’re ahead.” Cameron stared at him, his heart racing in his throat. “Don’t make this hard for me,” he growled. Rob drew his hand back. Men behind them began complaining about the delay. Cameron turned, and stepped up to the table. The man behind it eyed him warily, but having seem Cameron around for months, he simply sighed and shoved the paper across the table at him. Cameron signed it. He turned, glared at Rob, and wandered to the paymaster’s line. “You don’t seem very hungry tonight,” his mother said. “Is anything wrong?” “Just had a rough day,” Cameron told her. “Isn’t it getting a little late for the harvest?” Granddad said. “Mostly over,” Cameron said. “We’re putting the place right for winter. Getting set up for next year. You know.” “Ah.” Cameron picked at a boiled potato with his fork. “There’s only a couple days left now.” Dave said, “They’re looking for runners at work,” he said. “A lot easier than what you’ve been doing. We could ride to City Hall together. Good way to spend the winter. Interested, Cammy?” “I dunno,” he said. He looked up in to his brother’s hopeful face. “Why don’t we wait and see next week?” He could not fight down the lump in his throat at the sudden realization that his plan meant he would be far away from them by then. He had to look away. “Sure. I’ve got an in… I’m pretty sure I can get them to take you on,” Dave said. Cameron rose, reaching for his jacket. “Well, I better get back,” he said. “I’ve been learning a lot about the machinery, and I guess I’ve only got a few more days to learn.” “Well, alright,” Mom said. “Don’t be out too late, okay? The nights are really starting to get cold.” “I won’t. I’ll see you in few hours.” He found Rob alone, with a bottle in his hand. It should have made him ashamed — and it did — but mostly, it made him angry. Cameron said, “Why can’t you be happy for me?” Rob said nothing. His eyes wandered back and forth between the bottle and the boy. Cameron sat. “I have to do it. Rob, I could get my dad home. For real. In weeks now, not months. And there’d be money left over. Fifty bucks gets you on the grid for six months, non-stop. I’d be able to get power for our house for more than a year. I’ve been putting it aside… I’ve been hiding most of it. Having to lie and tell them I’m picking crops for crap wages. Do you know what it’s going to mean when I bring that money home? When I can show it to them at last?” “Cameron, do you know why they’re paying that kind of money?” “Yes, of course. Because it’s so dangerous.” Rob sighed. He raised the bottle and took two deep swallows. Eyes already becoming bloodshot, he leaned forward. “This highway is a convenience. Clearing it will make commerce a lot faster. Get things started up again for real. But trucks, tanks… they really don’t need highways. They can cross the prairie grass and make their own roads. But they need bridges, Cameron. Without them, well… people on one side don’t know the people on the other anymore, and we get a world like this. We know it, and the Chinese knew it.” “That’s why they booby-trapped it. I know.” “No. You don’t know. They mined this road up and down, that’s true. But they saved the good mines, the best mines, for the bridges. Mines made of wood, boy. Clay. Plastic. Mines that don’t show up on a detector hardly at all. Mines designed for men more than machines. A mile to either side. Do you get me?” “You’re trying to scare me.” “You’re goddamn right I am. And you should be. But I’m telling you the truth. You know, when I was a kid in Red Deer, they used to clear the bridges in town by driving cattle back and forth across them till they either ran out of mines or they ran out of cattle. But meat was getting scarce by then and when that got too expensive, they started using sheep. And when that got too expensive, that’s when they started paying men to do it. My brother is buried alongside the 49th Street bridge.” “Then why do you do it?” Cameron sneered. “Because I broke my son’s arm. Because sending money home is all I have left to offer them.” He raised the bottle again. Cameron leaned in, seizing the bottle before Rob could drink. “Well, all I have is this to get my father home,” he said. Rob stared into his eyes. “Cameron… about every third man they send out there is going to die. That’s a solid fact. They know it, I know it, and I’m telling you. And I’ll tell you something else. Your father would rather rot the rest of his life in that camp than have you blown all over that bridge for a lousy couple hundred bucks. If he’s even half the man you say he is.” Cameron pushed Rob, who fell off the cot, his bottle tumbling to the floor. He stood up in the mouth of the tent, watching the man scramble for his liquor. The pathetic spectacle hurt and sickened Cameron. As Rob knelt there, cradling the bottle and looking up, ashamed, Cameron turned, and left him there. Rob did not report for work in the morning. As the men gathered, Cameron looked around for him. He wondered if perhaps Rob had left, but something told him the answer was simpler than that. Hurriedly, he crept away. He found Rob insensate in his tent, reeking of liquor and vomit, snoring loudly. Cameron could not rouse him. Cursing the man, he made his way back to the line. “Where’s your friend?” the foreman asked him. “I think he’s sick,” Cameron said. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll bet,” the foreman said. “Show me.” “I don’t think you want to catch what he’s—” “I said show me.” Cameron led the man to Rob’s tent. The foreman looked inside, then drew his head back out. “At lunch time, if he’s awake… hell, if he’s not, wake him up. Tell him to get his shit together and get gone. He’s finished here.” Cameron pleaded, “It was just one night. He misses his family. Everybody—” “If you can’t follow orders, kid, you can stay right here next week. I don’t need nobody who can’t follow orders getting on the truck on Monday. Understand?” Cameron nodded. “Get in the line and get to work.” It was a long morning; perhaps the longest since his first day. When finally lunch came, Cameron made his way to Rob’s tent. He wondered what he would say to him. There didn’t seem to be enough time to patch things up and say what he really wanted. He wanted to go with him to the next job, closer to his father, making their way across the Prairies. His stomach in knots, he leaned into the tent. “Rob?” he said. The tent was empty. The few things that belong to Rob were gone. Cameron made his way back to the others, looking around, hoping to catch sight of the man. Instead the foreman found him. “Did you tell him?” “He’s already gone,” Cameron mumbled. “Well, at least he’s got that much sense,” the foreman sniffed. Cameron could not eat. He felt as though he had a boulder in his gut. If the morning had seemed long, the journey into evening seemed like an epoch; his feelings of loss hauntingly, disturbingly familiar. His tread was leaden as he made his way home. In the twilight, he lingered at the tree for a long while, savouring the time alone with his feelings, the isolation between the loss of his friend and the show he nightly put on for his family, which this night he had no heart for whatsoever. He counted each dollar the tree guarded, like one more step home for his father. And then he turned and went home, feeling somehow never further from his goal. It was mid-morning of the next day that it all fell apart. The clicks made their familiar metronome beat in his ears; oblivious to all else, he swept the detector back and forth until suddenly, he was seized by the collar and hauled back. The foreman jerked the headset from his ears and snarled, “You little bastard; why didn’t you tell me you were sixteen?” Cameron gaped at him in amazement. The foreman had known that nearly as plainly as he’d known the colour of Cameron’s eyes; it had simply been conveniently overlooked. Until now. Suddenly he became aware of the commotion, and he looked over to see his mother, raging at several of the administrators. Some of the men where laughing, clearly amused. Cameron saw his grandfather there as well, trying to rein the woman in. She was having none of it. The foreman manhandled Cameron over to her, finally shoving him at her. “Get him out of here!” he bellowed. He pointed at Cameron. “Don’t come back,” he said, and stormed off. His mother slapped him. “Minesweeping?” she shrieked. “After what happened to Dave? After your father went away?” She raised her hand to strike him again, but Granddad caught her arm. “Easy, easy, Annie,” he soothed. Crying, she tucked her face into the old man’s jacket. Eyes swimming, Cameron rubbed his stinging cheek. “What happened?” he wailed. Granddad said, “A man came by this morning. Drunk. Said he knew you. Said you were sweeping, getting ready to go away. We didn’t believe him at first but he knew everything about us.” Cameron shook his head, bewildered. “But I never told him where we lived…” “Well, he found us, and he set us straight.” Granddad looked at his daughter, stroking her hair. “Boy, you’ve hurt your mother something awful. How could you do this? Have you got no sense? No sense at all?” His mother turned, her features red and pinched. “Get home!” she yelled. “Get home! Now!” “But how did he find you? I never told him…” Followed me, it came to him. He must have followed me. “Oh, my God,” he whispered, the very bottom dropping out of his soul. Without another word, he turned from them and ran. He did not stop till he had arrived at the tree. Nearly slamming into it, he dove his hand into its depths. For a moment, a split second, he felt relief as his hand closed around the brass case. But it was distressingly light. From it emerged with a small handful of bills and a torn piece of paper. Frantically he counted them up. Fifty dollars. Over and over. Fifty dollars, fifty dollars, fifty dollars. Always the same. “No, no no!!” he screamed. “You fucking bastard!” He pulled the irregular scrap of paper open, tears already tumbling onto it as he read. I HOPE YOU’LL UNDERSTAND SOMEDAY was all it said. Monday came and took the men away. Several of Brandon’s families said good-bye to fathers and brothers and sons, some of whom would never come back. Cameron was not among them. In latter days, he was among those, including his brother, who daily made their way into the centre of town to attend to the menial chores of bringing a city back to life, making it work as best they could in the meantime. Long, boring, poorly-paid days of moving paper and arranging jobs and couriering what remained of the past for use by the present to build the future. And Cameron endured, rocked in silence, nursing his hatred and hurt, betrayal and bitter disappointment. The gift of his father’s return that he had hoped to make for his family was reduced to a half-year’s share of electricity. A marvelous thing in the winter months, unquestionably. But all things considered, a meager consolation indeed. His nights were tormented by visions of Rob drinking himself to death on the proceeds of his father’s freedom, or returning home in well-funded triumph to his own son to bask in love and absolution. He would wake barely able to breathe, and curse the man with every fibre of his being. The winter was merciful that year. The first snows did not come until mid-December, and they fell on a Saturday. Cameron, with others, shoveled the walk of the building while Dave, precariously balanced, swept the stairs with a broom. The snow only seemed to Cameron to highlight the disappointment; something he should have shared in happiness that was instead a painful mockery of his naïve hopes and faith and trust. He was stirred from his dark musings by the neighbours, murmuring a familiar name. “Ben?” he heard them say, asking one another as they peered up the street through the snow. “Is that Ben?” “Dave, Cammy… isn’t that your father?” someone said. Cameron dropped his shovel. “Dad?” he asked. “Dad?” he called, stepping forward. Breaking into a run. The man in the street dropped his pack and opened up his arms. Cameron threw himself into them. “Dad!” Dave cried, dashing forward as quickly as he dared on his crutches. “Cameron! Oh, Cameron… Dave. Oh, my God… I can’t believe it’s you.” It was their father. He was thin… so terribly thin… and the year that had passed seemed to have worn itself into him five times over. But it was definitively him, and he was home. “Oh, my God, boys,” he wept as they embraced in the street. Already, the neighbours were gathering around them, or summoning the rest of the Belangers out of their apartment and into the street. “How did you get away? How did you get home?” Cameron marveled. “I don’t know,” his father said. “One day about a month ago, the guards came up and told me my parole was paid; I could go. Someone just paid it. I don’t know who, and I don’t know why.” The tears stung Cameron’s cheeks, salty and sharp in the cold. “You don’t know who it was?” he begged, his voice cracking. “No, Cammy. All I know is the message they gave me. To tell my family ‘Merry Christmas’, and especially my son.” He looked back and forth between Dave and Cameron, but David’s gaze directed him. “Cameron?” he asked. But before Cameron could say anything, his father was swept up in the love of the rest of his family and the cheers of his neighbours. It was Christmas Eve, and his father was home. There was light and laughter, warmth and food. Their family was whole again. It was, perhaps, the most joyous night of his life so far, he reflected. But even so, at some point that evening, Cameron felt himself drawn away. There was something more, something else, that rendered his soul a leaf in a tempest. Donning his jacket, he excused himself and slipped out into the starlit veils of winter. He made his way to the place he’d been before, so many times — a place of trust and hope. All around him lay the snow, silvered in the moonlight as if in memory of all that had once resided here in the guardian tree: faith, fidelity, responsibility, true adulthood. As the wind tousled his hair with an unseen hand, he gazed to the west where the sun had dropped below the horizon. Seeing nothing, he turned his eyes to the stars, and felt them tearing up with what must have been the cold. Surely that. And then he astonished himself. Compelled by something beyond words, Cameron did something he hadn’t done in years; not since he’d been a little boy. There, beside the tree and in the sight of the waxing moon, he dropped to his knees. Falteringly, but with an open heart, Cameron prayed. It was the only thing he could do.
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