“I’ve got about fifty bags of wheat in storage at Hatch’s mill,” Wicks said and, looking closely at Marc, added, “but then you already know that.”
Marc finished chewing his biscuit before replying. “Erastus hasn’t written down the amounts for me yet, but he’s suggested I see men like yourself because he knows you may be interested in any offers.”
This answer seemed to satisfy Wicks. “I’d be willin’ to sell half of that, as grain or flour when the mill starts up again. Hatch can vouch for the quality.”
“Any livestock?”
“Half a dozen hogs fat enough by April, if that’s okay. Do you need to see them?”
“The state of your buildings and the neatness of your house tell me all I need to know about the fastidiousness of your farming,” Marc said, hoping he was not overplaying the flattery card, “and, of course, what Hatch has already told me about you.”
They chatted informally about potential prices, the prospects for a good spring, and the severity of the past two winters before Marc said casually, “Hatch tells me the winter’s been hard on his neighbour.”
“Mrs. Smallman,” Wicks said, eyeing him closely.
“Something about her father-in-law getting killed in a freak accident.”
“A tree fell on him. New Year’s Eve.”
“What kind of fool is out cutting trees on New Year’s Eve?” Marc said, feigning incredulity.
Wicks eyed his guest carefully, then said, “Joshua Smallman was no fool.”
“You knew the man?”
“Just to see him,” Wicks said with calculated offhandedness. “I knew his son Jesse a while back. The father was a merchant from your town-an old Tory, I’m told, but a good man all the same.”
“Not the dry goods man?”
“That’s right. He come back here to run the farm after Jesse died.”
Marc smiled. “And I take it that you are not a Tory?”
Wicks laughed, and the tension in him dissolved. “I see that my good friend Constable Hatch has been praisin’ more than my ploughin’ techniques. In this province, once an American, forever a Yankee.” The laughter faded. “I’m more the fool for thinkin’ that’ll ever change.”
“My quartermaster doesn’t distinguish between Yankee wheat and English corn,” Marc felt compelled to say.
“That is quite true,” Wicks said, pouring them each another whisky. “And it’s one of the many reasons I’ve chosen to stay here and raise my family. Though I still have days when I wonder if I’m crazy to do so.”
Marc shifted in his chair.
Again, Wicks’s smile was as broad as it was enigmatic. “You haven’t been in this country long, have you?”
“A year or so,” Marc said.
“So far I bet you know mostly what you’ve been told by the self-serving grandees around you, includin’ a lot of lies and exaggeration about the Yankee settlers doin’ all the agitatin’, or secretly yearnin’ for the democracy they so foolishly abandoned.”
“I’ve heard that kind of talk,” Marc said. “You think I shouldn’t believe it?”
“I’d be astonished if you didn’t,” Wicks said. “But you’ve been given a chance-bein’ sent out here to the untamed countryside-to see for yourself. Which is somethin’ the Family Compact-with its rectors and bankers and lawyers-and the toadyin’ members of the Legislative Council in Toronto have never bothered to do.”
Marc seized his opportunity. “I did see for myself only this morning the tragic effects of the Clergy Reserves policy-on the Smallman farm.”
“You can multiply that by a thousand,” Wicks said, seemingly without rancour. “But since you are interested and may be young enough to learn somethin’ new, let me tell you a bit about the so-called Yankee troublemakers in this province.”
“I would be happy to listen,” Marc said, barely able to contain his delight.
“I was a Yankee born and raised up, like so many of us who came up here after 1815: free-spirited, happy-go-lucky, fearin’ no man and certainly no government, genuflectin’ to nobody. My parents had carved out a farm in the Ohio Valley and helped to push the frontier towards the Wabash. But when they died, what they left me was not peaceful fields and prosperous towns. They left me Indian wars and military service and all the horror and lawlessness that comes with social chaos and the seductive power of sudden riches.”
Mrs. Wicks, detecting perhaps some sea change in the familiar rhythms of her husband’s speech, poked her nose around the partition.
“I was forced to serve my three months with the Ohio Volunteers during the Indian wars. I was at the Battle of Frenchtown on the River Raisin. A slaughterhouse it was. I saw the great warrior Tecumseh up close before some tomahawk clubbed me unconscious. I was one of the lucky ones: I got dragged back with my unit when we retreated. Several hundred of our wounded were massacred later that night and their bodies tossed into the bush to be eaten by bears and coyotes. And later on, when we got a chance to get our own back, we did: I watched women and children hacked and slashed like butchered swine. I myself held torches to houses, some of them with people still inside, refusin’ to leave. I still wake up at night, screamin’ with the agony of it.”
“War is sometimes an unpleasant necessity,” Marc said lamely.
Wicks did not hear. He stared into the fire for a while, then said, still looking down, “Most of us came up here for a little peace and stability, a little law and order, and a chance to prove we could be good farmers and better citizens. When Governor Peregrine Maitland called us aliens and sought to have us barred from holdin’ office or a seat in the Assembly, we had no choice but to do the very thing most of us were tryin’ to escape: get embroiled in politics. For a time even our property rights were threatened.”
“So you joined forces with the radicals in the Reform party?”
“Who else was goin’ to look out for our rights?”
“And so you met Jesse Smallman, who also had his grievance.”
“And dozens of others-local-born, Scotchmen, Irishmen, a few fair-minded loyalists. And we got the alien question settled once and for all.”
“But I’ve been told that a new petition of grievances is in the colonial secretary’s hands at this very moment.”
Wicks had lit his pipe and was now puffing contemplatively at it. “I do read the papers, young man, including the Colonial Advocate. But my property is now secure. My two sons, who can’t remember any other home but this, are out doin’ public service on the King’s Highway. My own concerns are no more than the weather and the price of grain.”
“I’m most happy to hear it,” Marc said, rising. “Thank you sincerely for your hospitality and your frankness.”
As Marc was buttoning his greatcoat at the door, Wicks said, “When you make your report to John Colborne, be sure and ask him how keen he’d be to repeat the carnage of Waterloo or Toulouse.”
Riding away, Marc was still too flummoxed to notice Maureen Wicks’s angst-ridden face in her kitchen window, like a winter moon with all the harvest-blood drained from it.
EIGHT
Marc continued north along the Farley Sideroad towards the last farm before the serious bush began, though to someone not familiar with the Upper Canadian landscape this frozen twelve-foot swathe bordered by cedar, pine, and leafless birch would seem more like a logging road in a wilderness than a neatly surveyed thoroughfare. At the moment, the isolation and silence suited Ensign Edwards, who was deep in thought.
He guided the horse through a gap in the evergreens and was astonished to see before him a very large area, perhaps a hundred acres, completely shorn of trees and seemingly of all vegetation. Not a bush or vine peeped above the rumpled counterpane of snow. At the far edges of the clearing Marc could see a ragged fence of uprooted stumps and charred limbs. Three buildings interrupted the horizon: a low, ungabled log house with oiled-paper windows; a ramshackle barn whose wings, ells, and jetties seemed to be patched together; and beyond that a sort of lean-to fashioned of cedar poles and layers of bark or wind-stiffened sailcloth. From the house a limp plume of smoke rose out of a crumbling chimney.