The Friends of Meager Fortune by David Adams Richards Page A
Authors: David Adams Richards
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Glidden’s wife.
He was a bookworm and had made the rank of major. He had been wounded, and yet didn’t look like he could fight. They were silent in front of him, and as yet did not talk so much about him behind his back. They did not want to swear, though they had already heard him swear like a trooper.
The book he read was Lear , the play he had often returned to, trying at one time to fathom his brother’s moods and whimsy and his mother’s curious worry. It was an old tattered edition bought in London during the Blitz—a curious shopkeeper reminding him that bombs breaking overhead might mean more to an interpretation, and he answering that yes, and “so too my son our share of landings off a boom.”
To which the shopkeeper replied: “You come from a land I have no knowledge of—what is it called?”
“Home,” Owen said.
FOUR
The wind blew snow all night up against the outside walls, and far up against the trunks of trees they were to cut. Higher than the head of a man by dawn the snow had piled, the world outside frozen solid—with “an extra mountain of ice” on the mountain they were on. Each tree the fallers would cut today was boughed down with snow, and each tree trunk had to be freed from snow to be felled, and each felled tree had to be cut in two or three, and each section had to be hauledby grunting, overworked men and horses—both seeming to enlist each other’s pain—leaning on and mocking it at the same time.
The world inside the camps was filled with the smell of smoke and meat and rank sweat. It was built in a hurry and was half a foot too low for many men. It was dark for the most part—and certain of the men feared theft from others. There were no rifles allowed in camp, though any man here could use a knife and throw an ax or hatchet well. One turn at forty feet and stick into a cedar tree. But a rifle was brought in by Owen himself and given to the cook, just in case.
“You might need this come sometime,” was all he said.
Owen was up long before dawn. The first thing he had to do this morning was dig himself out of the camp, because the door never was free of the nightly drifts. The air was arctic and split his lip, so he tasted his blood a second before it froze. The trees stood in blackness and weighed down boughs, for miles, like muted solitary soldiers.
Meager Fortune coming through the door, snow falling down the back of his underwear, shook himself bare, picked up an ax, and cut some firewood for breakfast, the ax blade coming close to the fingers that held the birch chunk. He had been up in the night stoking, but the fire had gone down.
Owen had traveled with Meager in the war, and had hired him as a general camp keeper. He was up at 4:30 mending seven pairs of socks for the axmen and the teamsters, his little face having a childlike gaze when Owen awoke, Lear over his chest. Meager was considered simple-minded, but had fought all the way to Antwerp. He had been saved by a minister ofthe Lower Rapids in 1934 and baptized in the “full” dress—and he set an example because of it.
He was learning to cook, and learning to write, and had recipes hidden in his boots that he had copied from the cook to take home, as he told everyone, to his wife and little boy, Duncan. He called everyone sir and was looked upon by most, Tomkins especially, as a simpleton. Tomkins had already taken to teasing him, but Meager Fortune didn’t seem to pay much attention to it.
Slightly ten minutes later, the acrid smell of burning birch and then hard rock maple drifted out over the camp’s tin roof toward the sky that was just beginning to be shaded by gray. Along the sides of the hovel, where the horses started to clomp, the outline of boards and old sled parts loomed as the day dawned.
Gibbs, the number one tend team, was shaken awake, and came out in his Humphreys and long underwear to feed the horses oats.
The teamsters were the next to wake, an hour before the rest.
In the
He was a bookworm and had made the rank of major. He had been wounded, and yet didn’t look like he could fight. They were silent in front of him, and as yet did not talk so much about him behind his back. They did not want to swear, though they had already heard him swear like a trooper.
The book he read was Lear , the play he had often returned to, trying at one time to fathom his brother’s moods and whimsy and his mother’s curious worry. It was an old tattered edition bought in London during the Blitz—a curious shopkeeper reminding him that bombs breaking overhead might mean more to an interpretation, and he answering that yes, and “so too my son our share of landings off a boom.”
To which the shopkeeper replied: “You come from a land I have no knowledge of—what is it called?”
“Home,” Owen said.
FOUR
The wind blew snow all night up against the outside walls, and far up against the trunks of trees they were to cut. Higher than the head of a man by dawn the snow had piled, the world outside frozen solid—with “an extra mountain of ice” on the mountain they were on. Each tree the fallers would cut today was boughed down with snow, and each tree trunk had to be freed from snow to be felled, and each felled tree had to be cut in two or three, and each section had to be hauledby grunting, overworked men and horses—both seeming to enlist each other’s pain—leaning on and mocking it at the same time.
The world inside the camps was filled with the smell of smoke and meat and rank sweat. It was built in a hurry and was half a foot too low for many men. It was dark for the most part—and certain of the men feared theft from others. There were no rifles allowed in camp, though any man here could use a knife and throw an ax or hatchet well. One turn at forty feet and stick into a cedar tree. But a rifle was brought in by Owen himself and given to the cook, just in case.
“You might need this come sometime,” was all he said.
Owen was up long before dawn. The first thing he had to do this morning was dig himself out of the camp, because the door never was free of the nightly drifts. The air was arctic and split his lip, so he tasted his blood a second before it froze. The trees stood in blackness and weighed down boughs, for miles, like muted solitary soldiers.
Meager Fortune coming through the door, snow falling down the back of his underwear, shook himself bare, picked up an ax, and cut some firewood for breakfast, the ax blade coming close to the fingers that held the birch chunk. He had been up in the night stoking, but the fire had gone down.
Owen had traveled with Meager in the war, and had hired him as a general camp keeper. He was up at 4:30 mending seven pairs of socks for the axmen and the teamsters, his little face having a childlike gaze when Owen awoke, Lear over his chest. Meager was considered simple-minded, but had fought all the way to Antwerp. He had been saved by a minister ofthe Lower Rapids in 1934 and baptized in the “full” dress—and he set an example because of it.
He was learning to cook, and learning to write, and had recipes hidden in his boots that he had copied from the cook to take home, as he told everyone, to his wife and little boy, Duncan. He called everyone sir and was looked upon by most, Tomkins especially, as a simpleton. Tomkins had already taken to teasing him, but Meager Fortune didn’t seem to pay much attention to it.
Slightly ten minutes later, the acrid smell of burning birch and then hard rock maple drifted out over the camp’s tin roof toward the sky that was just beginning to be shaded by gray. Along the sides of the hovel, where the horses started to clomp, the outline of boards and old sled parts loomed as the day dawned.
Gibbs, the number one tend team, was shaken awake, and came out in his Humphreys and long underwear to feed the horses oats.
The teamsters were the next to wake, an hour before the rest.
In the
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