Unrest by Gwen Tuinman

Author:Gwen Tuinman [Tuinman, Gwen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House of Canada
Published: 2024-05-07T00:00:00+00:00

22

SEAMUS

A crackle of splintering wood, followed by perfect stillness as I wait for the tree to give way. I never tire of the chain reaction I trigger by hacking into a white pine nearly twenty times my height and with a girth nearly three times my arm span. It’s evidence that I can, on occasion, exert my will in this world.

The second axeman tips his head back and squints upward into the branches. Our patience is rewarded by the low groan of yielding wood. The tree shudders and together we shout, “Timber!” Then we scramble well back, knowing what will come next.

The tree leans away from us and sheers from the stump. Sharp pops precede the snapping of limbs on neighbouring pines as the mammoth trunk plummets to the ground. A thundering impact against the frozen earth sends a cloud of powdery snow into the air.

This is the sort of day a man lives for. From the treetops to the seat of God, blue sky stretches uninterrupted. We started work as the sun began to rise. The afternoon’s just begun and our gang of five—the other axeman and me, plus the liner and hewer fellas squaring the logs and the skidder who hauls them away—has already brought down four pines and squared three. Every man sets about his work with focus.

There’s a rhythm to the axe swings of felling gangs scattered through the woods. The strokes of blades, close by and distant, come together in a strange chorus of high or low notes, depending on the breadth of the trees they smite. I can tell which job a man’s doing by the measured beat of two men felling pine, the woodpecker taps of blades skinning bark or scoring logs in preparation for the hewer’s broad axe.

The blazed trunk of another white pine towers before me. There’s no question about what needs doing. The other axeman sets off to top the newly fallen pine while I start chopping this new one. With every swing, the blade of my felling axe bites into the trunk as chunks of bark and pine spit back at me. I’ll keep chipping at this beast until it weakens and topples too. Then I’ll continue to the next one and do it all over again. Here everything is that simple: no need to walk on eggshells around two women always ready to pounce.

An entire day can pass without my speaking a word to anyone, and that suits me fine.

Thirty feet away from where I’m standing, two of our men stand atop a fallen white pine, skinning bark and scoring the log’s roundness in preparation for its soon-to-be squared edges.

A funny thought occurs to me. Biddy would make a great hewer; she lives to measure and perfect things. The woman’s been trying to square me since we first met, but I’m round and that’s all there is to it. I used to speak my mind, but I’ve lost the willingness to do so, given my opinions never fall in a neutral middle ground between my wife and sister-in-law.

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