“Tomorrow we’ll break a jam,” said Sarsen as he poled along. “Always a jam down there. River pinches in like a girdle. You’ll see work.” Sarsen smiled. He liked helping these new boys. Charley Parsons, Sull Meeks, Lem Teter, Lem Watson, Zeke, and this one, whatever his name. Like no other, Sarsen could teach a fellow to unlock a jam. The Captain never asked him to; some looked askance at it, but this was the role Sarsen took on. You had to look for key logs, the ones rucked down face-first in the riverbed, even if you couldn’t see them, but they were buried there under the mass, it could take all day, it was a matter more for the brain than the eyes. The surface always betrayed you. A hard thing to teach, that. To pick a jam like a lock, to labor in frustration, and then, so startling, it gives way. The crux of the trade. If you could pick, you could always find work. Sarsen had a sense for it. He said key logs held an electric charge and one quivered underwater like a compass needle. Breaking the jam was deadly. The foolish let it bear down in a crush upon them; the wise skated away; and perhaps the wisest never came round at all. Sarsen was wise, he reckoned, and not the wisest. Indeed he thrilled when the jam busted and the jaws began to close — to skate into a side channel at the last second, tasting the electric crackle of death in your mouth — he lived for that moment. In gratitude, Sarsen shared his knowledge freely, learning them the code, but once they learned, the young boys would always forget him, they grew into men, they wouldn’t even nod in passing. He could name a dozen right now, on this very river, at this very second. He quit smiling. All his bitterness grew around this black kernel of pain. They wouldn’t even look at him. Wouldn’t dare shake his hand. They shied like horses.
He called out softly to Henry, who did not answer. This time Sarsen cried with vigor. The boy was looking about, to the reeds, to the shoals, like an idiot.
Henry felt something watching him, some small sort of god.
The fish surfaced in the deep, viridian green. Near five feet long and it sharked beside him with sullen violence. He nearly tumbled. Had it followed him down?
It sank and Sarsen saw it go. He split water, he aimed for a swirl of absence.
“What was it?” Sarsen made a listless figure eight with his pike in the water.
“A big fish. A big long fish.” Henry spread his arms to show.
“Musky. They’re usual not up this high.”
Sarsen was about to say he knew a man who caught one on a yellow plug — but he drove the pike like a piston with both hands.
He lifted the thrashing muskellunge, held it up for the world to see, and let the thrash go out of its body in a final, lurking shudder. He had pierced it through, a third of the way behind its head. Pale out of the water, all dull greenish-bronze and insipid vermiculations, except for reddish fins that reminded Henry of his mother’s hard tack candy. It had the teeth of a nasty little dog. Sarsen slid its body down off the shaft, leaving a watery braid of blood. Off the pike, its wound seemed to close. He lifted it by the tail and hollered.
Sarsen could do anything.
The two of them found bunks in a far corner, hunching so not to strike heads on the low ceiling. Others, moving subtle as shadows, gave them a wide berth. The ark smelled of unwashed hair, shaving lotion, moldering clothes. A jungle of socks hung by the stove, from every corner and nail. The river knocked below, snags bumping the hull, scratching, softly thunking. Sarsen’s yellow feet dangled over the bunk’s edge above.
Henry never had a better night’s sleep, and felt fresh when the Captain sent him and Sarsen to a hidden beach that liked to capture logs. There was a bent channel, almost an oxbow, around Smith’s Musselshell Island. Usually four or five men were needed. Maybe the Captain sent the pair alone as a joke, because you had to dig pikes under the beached logs and lever them out, straining your shoulders to the ripping point; perhaps he wanted to set Sarsen down a peg or give little Henry a fright. His aims were mysterious. He dressed no different than any drover, no insignia, not even a watch and chain, but you knew at first glance he was captain.
Sarsen didn’t care, he was so primed to break a jam. It had been a long, listless winter. He could jackbell the earth if there was call to. He told Henry, “You got to fetch them out or locals’ll steal them. A fellow can get good money on that. Blind Blake hides logs back of there and gets them later. J-grabs, too. He’d steal the eyeballs off your head.”
It was good to be alone together. With long, dragging pulls they poled into the still channel, where no current helped them along. A lush place of black cherry and bloomless rhododendron. A thatch of grapevines strained light like a colander.
“What the hell is that?” Something was swimming out to meet them.
“Just mother beaver,” Sarsen said.
“No, it ain’t.”
Then a silver V cutting the current, now the black knot of a dog’s head rising. Mystified, Sarsen knelt down on his knees to stroke its floating head. “Hello, little fox!” When the dog tried to put its paws on the log and drag itself up, Sarsen lost balance and slid off in the stinging water. Henry couldn’t help himself, letting out a great laugh. Sarsen came up sputtering. After several tries, he crabbed back on the log and shouted the dog off him. It angled away for shore.
Sarsen beat water out of his hat. “Oh shit,” he said.
In the shallows, a thin woman pulled up double-fisted piles of duck potatoes. She might as well feed her children air and water. The woman lifted her head to them, then looked back to the slough. She let out a cry. Sarsen poled on in silence, and Henry followed.
They saw a massive chestnut log, almost four feet across, and two straggling mules hitched to it with a singletree. The log was half ashore, half in water. A black-haired man — a big fellow, who once had meat on his bones but had it no more — was cussing softly but sharply, begging the mules to drag it on. He tugged at their bits, the worst thing he could do. From the slithery drag marks on the ground, it was clear other logs, small ones mules could handle, had been dragged off into the woods.
Henry couldn’t help himself. He called out, “What are you doing?”
“We’re having a prayer circle,” answered the black-haired man.
“Oh shit,” Sarsen said again. He cupped his hands and shouted, “Hello! Did you cut them logs?”
Henry shook his head at this piece of nonsense. Even from here he could read GRC stamped on the butt end. A girl, teenage, thin as a mantis, helped the black-haired man with his mules, if you could call holding a tether helping. Three others appeared: two young girls and the woman pulling duck potatoes. She carried them in a wicker trout creel on her hip.
“There’s too many people,” Sarsen whispered.
The two of them poled closer. Sarsen tapped the chestnut log with his pike. “If this is your property,” he said, “then I’m Tom Walker and the devil, too.”
“You’re no sheriff,” said the black-haired man.
“I hope that’s true.” Sarsen crooned as you would to a touchy horse. “Look here. That belongs to us. Give it here. Look at that mark.”
The black-haired man swatted at the nearest mule. His animals couldn’t haul it alone. He glanced at his wife and daughters, one of them slack-mouthed and clearly not sound of mind. He seemed to be considering whether to hitch them to the log, too.
“Too much for them,” said Sarsen. “You got greedy.”
When Henry and Sarsen hopped off onto the shore, the man spoke freely. “This is a deadhead and by rights I can take it.”
“It ain’t no deadhead. Brand’s right there.”
The black-haired man bent down to study it.
Sarsen smiled. “See there? Grand River Company.”