From time to time the Scots organise a ceilidh. We have a fiddler among us, and one of the fellas has a squeeze box. No women, of course. Just drinking and gambling and some mad dancing once the booze starts to flow. Which is when the French join in. They’re pretty reticent at first, but once they get a drink in them they’re worse than the Scots.
There was a ceilidh earlier tonight, and I was sitting playing cards with a bunch of the boys in a corner of the recreation shed when I first became aware of the fight.
The place was heaving, music ringing around the rafters. The bar had been doing a roaring trade, and most of the men had a skinful. But there were voices raised now above the melee, angry querulous voices that cut through the smoke and the noise. A circle had formed, and men were pushing back from the centre of it on all sides. Me and several of the others stood up on the tables to see what was happening.
In the centre of the circle, two huge men were slugging it out. Big knuckled fists smashing into bloodied faces. One of them was Michaél. He’s developed a liking for the drink while we’ve been here, and after a few he gets argumentative, and violent sometimes. He has let his beard grow back, and his hair is longer again, and he presents a scary figure when he gets riled.
But he picked a brute of a man to get into a fight with tonight. A Frenchman called The Bear. At least, that’s what we call him. L’ours is the French name for him. A giant of a man with more body hair than I’ve ever seen, a big beard and a shaven head. In a fight with a real bear you wouldn’t bet against him.
I immediately jumped off the table and ploughed my way through the crowd. Me and several of the others grabbed Michaél and pulled him away from the swinging fists of The Bear, and the French did the same with their man, both combatants fighting against constraining arms.
Finally the struggle subsided, and the two men stood glaring at each other across the circle at the centre of the storm, breathing like horses after a gallop, steam rising off both of them, and blood on the floor.
‘We’ll finish this tomorrow,’ The Bear growled in his thickly accented English.
‘Fockin’ right we will!’
‘It’s the sabbath tomorrow,’ I said.
‘Fock the sabbath. We’ll settle this like men. The clearing at the far side of the old camp. Midday.’
‘It doesn’t make you men to fight,’ I shouted at Michaél. ‘More like schoolboys!’
‘You keep the fuck out of this!’ The Bear glared at me. Then he turned his loathing back on Michaél. ‘Midi it is,’ he said. ‘And you’d better be there.’
‘You can fockin’ count on it!’
I have tried everything I can to dissuade him. It seems to me that The Bear is the bigger, stronger man, and that Michaél is going to take a beating. And when the blood is up, men like that have no idea when to stop. But honour is at stake, and Michaél won’t hear of backing out, though I’m sure he’ll regret it in the morning when he sobers up in the cold light of day.
The truth is, I fear for his life.
The old camp is about a mile away from where they built the new one and there is a large cleared area on the far side of it. Just about every man jack of us was gathered there at midday on the sabbath. I went, not to watch the fight, but to look out for Michaél and try to prevent him from being too badly hurt. What a miserable bloody failure I was at it, too!
God only knows what the temperature was. Well below freezing. But the sun was up in a clear sky, and both men stripped to the waist. If Michaél had one advantage over The Bear, it was his intelligence. The Bear was a big, lumbering idiot of a man. Michaél was blessed with a sharp mind, and native cunning. And while The Bear was stronger, Michaél was faster, lighter on his feet. With space around him he immediately darted in to land a blow on the big man’s nose and leap back again before The Bear could swing a fist. Blood spurted from his busted nose and The Bear roared. But Michaél was in again to land two quick blows to the solar plexus and a high kick that caught the bigger man full in the chest and sent him staggering backwards before dropping to his knees.
The crowd was baying and shouting encouragement to both men and the clamour of it rose through the stillness of the trees.
The Bear got to his feet again, breathing stertorously, and shook his head like an animal. Then he advanced on Michaél, arms at his side, eyes fixed like gimlets on his opponent. Michaél retreated, skipping around the circle created by the crowd, darting in to land occasional blows which just seemed to glance off The Bear like water off oiled wood. Until he ran out of space and The Bear closed in on him, oblivious to the punches and kicks being thrown at him.
I barely even saw the glint of the blade as he slipped it from the belt behind his back. One arm closed around Michaél’s shoulder, pulling the Irishman towards him, and the other came up from his side in an arc and plunged the knife deep into his abdomen. I heard Michaél’s gasp, air escaping from his lungs in pain and surprise. He doubled over, and the crowd went suddenly silent as The Bear withdrew the blade before plunging it in again. Once, twice. Then he stood back as Michaél dropped to his knees, clutching his belly, blood oozing through his fingers, before he toppled forward, face-first into the dirt.
Shock spread through the crowd like fire, dispersing them in silent panic like smoke in the wind. The Bear stood over Michaél’s body, breathing heavily, his lip curled in contempt, blood dripping from the knife in his hand. He pulled a gob of phlegm into his mouth and spat on him as he lay on the ground.
His friends immediately grabbed him and pulled him quickly away as I ran to Michaél’s side. I crouched beside him and gently turned him over, to see the light dying in those pale-blue eyes I knew so well. ‘Focker!’ he whispered through the blood bubbling between his lips. His hand clutched my sleeve. ‘You owe me, Scotsman.’
And he was gone. Just like that. All that life and energy and intelligence. Vanished in a moment. Stolen by a brute of a man who knew nothing of human dignity. Of Michaél’s generosity or his friendship or his courage. And I wept for him, just as I had wept for my father. And I am not sure I have ever felt quite so alone in this world.
It didn’t seem right that the sun should shine so brightly, falling through the windows of the foreman’s office across his desk, reflecting a dazzle of light in our faces while Michaél lay dead outside. The foreman was about forty, and had spent all of his adult life in the lumber business. His jaw was set, and his lips pressed together in a hard line.
‘I’m not bringing in the police,’ he said. ‘We’d have to call a halt to production while they had an investigation. And you can bet your bottom dollar there’s not a man in the camp who’ll say he saw what happened. Not even your precious Scots.’
‘I will,’ I said.
He glared at me. ‘Don’t be a fucking idiot, man. You’d not live to testify.’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t afford a war breaking out between the Scots and the French. Nor can I afford any more delays in production. We’re behind as it is.’
He crossed the room to a small safe that stood against the far wall and took out a pile of notes tied in a bundle he’d already prepared. He threw it down on the desk. That’s your money. Yours and O’Connor’s. You can have one of the horses. Just take the body and go.’
So there was to be no justice. Not of the legal kind, anyway.
It was dark by the time I had sewn Michaél up in a canvas sheet and strapped his body to the back of the horse. The camp had been quiet all day, and no one said a word to me when I gathered together all our stuff, mine and Michaél’s, to pack into saddlebags. No one came out of the huts to shake my hand or say goodbye as I led the horse off along the lumber trail that tracked away from the river.