On the Rails: A Novel

Chapter 1

George Shymchuk’s axes were always sharp.

Michael was fascinated by his father’s honing ritual. The curiously smooth grindstone, pierced in the center by a heavily greased axle, hung suspended on a frame, connected by gears and a rubber belt to a foot treadle. Sitting, Michael’s father would step up and down on the treadle, slowly at first as the stone wheel began turning, barely moving, rumbling to overcome its inertia. Then his foot pumping would become faster and faster until the wheel sped up, revolving easily, whirring now, its speckled surface blurred to a hazy gray.

Content with the speed, George would tilt the axe blade to a practiced angle and ease it against the spinning wheel. Michael would wait with anticipation for the groan of friction that brought a shower of yellow white sparks, streaks of straight light spraying his father’s pant leg, never burning, harmlessly extinguished in the air and against rough denim. And his foot pumped and pumped until his father was pleased with the sharp, silver edge he had made.

********************

To Michael, it seemed always so that his brother was stronger than him. A year and a half younger, always shorter, Peter was powerful and moved easily into the chores at the farm where Michael felt awkward, uninvolved.

In winter, they took turns using the axe to split the wood brought in by sleigh from the stand of trees near the back boundary of the farm. Their father would spend the day on the crosscut saw cutting up the trees he had felled the year before, sawing them into two- foot lengths which his boys would wrestle into stacks on the sleigh.

Neat. Make the piles neat! their father admonished them in Ukrainian.

Why? Michael asked, knowing that his question would bring exasperation, asking it not to learn but because he couldn’t see a reason for it.

More wood, fewer trips back and forth, that’s why, answered his father, obviously irritated that his flow, his rhythm on the saw, had been interrupted.

The huge Percherons had no difficulty pulling the sleigh through the packed snow. Peter drove the team. Michael sat on the wood, staring back at the ruts which the runners had created, watching his father disappear into the distance.

Although barehanded, the boys looked forward to the messy unloading as they pitched log after log near the wood shed while the workhorses stamped their huge hooves and snorted, puffs of warm breath made visible in the cold, and the logs clacked crisply off each other.

After two trips, Michael was reluctant to return to the woodlot. The house, the warm house, was so close. He was petulant as the light-blue sky darkened into the rapid winter dusk.

Why do we have to do this in the cold, papa?

It’s a better time.

Why?

His father, steam rising off his reddened face and head, stopped the smooth rasping of the saw. He looked at Michael with genuine anger.

Because the wood has dried since the summer so it weighs less and is easier to cut! That’s why! Now be quiet and work!

So Michael became silent and remained silent on the last ride back to the house. Even at that age, Michael saw that Peter could feel the cold, invisible wall between his brother and his father, tried to chip at that wall with a torrent of conversation – about the weather, about the amount of wood, about the horses. And even at that time, Michael understood and his father seemed to understand what Peter was doing, knew that it only served to mark out so clearly the division between them.

The next morning was, again, clear. And Michael could not wait to be outside with the axe, splitting the wood.

He carefully set up each round log on a flat board, turning it so the faint splits of dryness pointing into the center were directly in front of him. Hoisting the axe, Michael felt at his fullness when he reached back and brought down the axe, in a split second sensed the initial resistance then the blade drove the pieces apart, sent them spinning into the snow.

********************

From his youngest days to his last days, the smell of baking bread made Michael smile. The aroma, heavy, fresh, intrusive, was the aroma of the farmhouse kitchen every day. It was the scent of his mother who seemed so happy to have him by her side as she rolled and pinched and kneaded the dough on the countertop sprinkled with flour. The fine white dust covered the backs of her hands, lay on and pronounced the light hair of her slender arms, sometimes blotched her face when she dabbed sweat that came from the job and from the huge wood stove Michael had stoked and kept fired up.

The mother and child would speak little, and Michael liked that. He could watch her then, study her intentness, her precision and care, her dark, warm eyes measuring, guiding her sure and quick hands. And she was aware of his gaze and connected to him because, from time to time, without breaking her rhythm, she would scrape and ball up a bit of soft dough, slide it to him, and smile as he popped it into his mouth.

********************

The boys had been sent out to kill gophers and they worked well together. Peter would make the trips from the slough to the holes they had found, water sloshing in the tin pail that bumped heavily off his hip. He would pour bucket after bucket into the burrow and Michael would wait with a length of two-by-four for the animal’s wet, furry head to pop up. Usually one swing was all he needed to kill. Michael would never confess to the pang of sadness and regret he would feel as he pulled the dead gopher from his hole, cut the animal’s tail off for the two-cent bounty the government would pay.

Peter could not watch the blow, never asked to swing the club and Michael wondered if that made him the better or the worse for it.

********************

Michael did not question but always envied his father’s absence from Sunday Mass. By buckboard in summer, cutter in winter, he would drive his family to the simple white church, deposit them at the lane’s entrance, turn the workhorses around, and retreat into the distance, away from St. John the Baptist.

Michael would watch him disappear, always aware of the stares of parishioners. The boy knew they were thinking something unkind, something critical as they filed into the church to be blessed. He sometimes cringed at the silent disapproval, and sometimes was proud of his father who, for his own reasons, did as he pleased on Sundays when the bell of the steeple would ring and be heard for miles.

Anne was the director of her younger brothers’ behavior. It was her job to stand, sit and kneel between them, warding off their pokes at each other, calming their fidgets with silent pinches painfully applied just so to their thighs or their arms, all without taking her eyes off the front.

Father Kashimsky was striking in a gold, heavily embroidered robe, white lace alb underneath, lightly brushing the tops of his old, heavy boots. He stood out from the church with its whitewashed walls, dirt floor, and crude altar. And he stood out from the people who, though dressed in their finest, remained so plainly farmers and farmers’ wives. Michael and everyone else had trouble associating this solemn, graceful figure with the shy and clumsy man, stocky and unimposing in the schoolyard, at Smygawaty’s store.

On Sunday, with his hands scrubbed pink, the priest tended to the ministrations, mixing unseen ingredients in the gold chalice, falling to a knee, crossing himself, with a practiced seriousness and calm.

And then the priest would open his mouth to sing the Mass and the hair on Michael’s neck would stand up. Deep, strong and clear, he’d chant, one man opening his arms and spreading his gold cloak as if he were winged.

"Hospody pomeloy."

Michael would brace for the sung response from the congregation. He would glance around the people and never fail to be astonished by them, by the ordinary people, the adults and children he knew who, on that day, on every seventh day, could together make that loud, ringing chorus, mournful or joyous.

And he would stare at his mother in profile, her long, slender neck, her chin and at her red lips, so fearlessly casting her song.

Then the silence when the bell was wrung three times and the smell of the incense, shaken rhythmically from a silver container swung from a chain, rolled invisibly through the church, reaching every corner with its pungency and strangeness.

Michael had been taught confession and penance but it was never a clean, natural thing for him and did not bring peace or relief because, every time, he would lie about the frequency and nature of his sins, and then never confess the lie.

He always felt awkward at communion, knowing his mouth was open too wide or too early to receive the body and blood. But there was a moment, as he walked back to his seat, hands folded in front of him, when the wine-soaked cube of bread began to melt in his mouth that he sometimes was bathed in comfort.

When Mass was over and the parishioners filed out into daylight, Michael saw a change back to the ordinary, as the men smoked, the children ran as they did in the school yard and the women talked quietly in groups. Whatever had just occurred in that building seemed to stay trapped in that building.

And his father was always there, expressionless, waiting to take the family home.

********************

The coop was dark and full of the stinging smell of chicken shit. The jerking lantern that Michael held created bouncing shadows on the whitewashed walls and the thin, tiered logs where the hens slept. The birds clucked nervously, ruffling their feathers, shifting from one claw to the other, their heads twitching under the lamplight.

Michael’s father reached out and grabbed a large, old hen, pinned her wings to her sides. The squawking grew louder.

And that one, said George Shymchuk, pointing with the chicken in his hands at another one on a beam. Michael set the lantern down and slowly approached it.

Michael grasped at it but it wriggled free, its powerful wings beating furiously, the bird now screaming in fear, small white feathers shook from her body, floated lazily in the acrid air.

Oy yoy, oy yoy, Michael’s father clucked in disapproval, as Michael scurried around after the chicken scurrying around.

Michael cornered it and reached out, but the hen flapped up the wall, almost cleared his shoulder. The boy grasped at the bird, caught a leg and held it tight, finally able to still the beating wings. With one hand pressing the chicken against his chest, Michael’s father retrieved the lantern and backed out of the coop.

In the barn, George Shymchuk hung the light on a peg and rested the chicken’s head on a log block. The face of the block was scarred with axe marks and stained dark brown.

Do I have to, dad? Michael heard himself protest.

Yes. It is your time. Now watch. And his father picked up a small axe. First, you wait while the chicken becomes quiet.

The bird, indeed, became calm.

And then once. Very hard.

The axe came down quickly passing through bone and ending with a ‘thock’ in the wood. The chicken convulsed one or two times as Michael’s father held it upside down. Blood flowed then dripped, a deep red in the lantern light.

Now, you.

But Michael’s small hand could not pinion both wings. One wing beat against the side of the log. His father had to kneel down, clutching the chicken, its neck resting on the block.

After a few moments, the bird was still and soundless.

Now, hissed George Shymchuk.

With the axe poised, Michael hesitated.

Now! said his father, loudly and impatiently.

But the chicken was wriggling again and Michael, fearful of cutting into his father’s hand so close to the block, faded away with his swing. The axe descended and cut into the chicken’s head just behind the beak, Michael feeling the skull’s resistance to his half-hearted stroke. The bird was alive and thrashing.

Shit!

George grabbed the axe Michael had let fall and swung forcefully and the bird was dead.

Michael wanted to cry and would not, knowing his father would be maddened further.

He was shaking as father and son walked back to the house and the summer kitchen where his mother had a large pot of boiling water waiting for the birds and the stink of their feathers and scalded, stubbled skin soon filled the house.

********************

Michael accompanied his father to Gimli on the shore of Lake Winnipeg to buy a thresher that, his father heard, could be had for a good price from the Swede who owned it. The trip in George Shymchuk’s Model T truck had taken most of the day as they became lost several times.

Finally on the only road to Gimli, his father seemed to relax, his grip on the steering wheel loosened and he would look from side to side and even at Michael from time to time.

Michael kept his nose against the window staring at the countryside as it became more uneven, more treed. In the distance, he saw an imposing structure, a huge skeleton of girders and beams supporting an undulating roof.

What’s that? he asked.

It’s to amuse the lazy, rich people, answered his father while Michael craned his neck at the roller coaster disappearing behind them.

At last, they found the man’s home on a small hill overlooking a huge expanse of blue. Nine-year old Michael was enchanted with the sight of such an unlimited volume of water. His father, not wanting the boy, never wanting the boy, to be near any discussions of money, sent Michael to the lake.

The Swede with keen blue eyes had been watching.

Go ahead, boy. Go to the water. It won’t bite, he said in singsong English, that day the language of business. Then to his father: You bohunks must have wheat fields. I must have water, big water. It is the way it has always been, no?

Happy to escape the bargaining of men, Michael walked then ran to the water’s edge.

By the sun, Michael knew he was staring north at this blue swath that had no end until it met the sky which, in that light, seemed farther away, the edge of a great dome.

He rolled up his pant legs and removed his boots and rough socks and timidly stepped onto a rock barely submerged in the water. The cold was like the cold of Cooper’s Creek in the spring when the ice had gone. Startled at the frigid sharpness, Michael lost his balance, and rather than fall among the rocks in the shallow water, he pitched himself forward, naturally lunging into deeper water.

Under it now, the water was no longer blue, but transparent with a brown depth. He opened his eyes, saw the white bubbles and his still whiter hands before him. The cold seemed colder than anything Michael had felt during the Prairie winter. On frozen, wind-whipped land, only his face or hands or feet would be cold but in this water that seeped through clothing he was instantly and completely cold.

He broke the surface, gasping and thrashing, his thick clothes now heavier. Extending his feet, he could not feel the lake bottom and panicked but did not cry out as the cold water flowed into his mouth.

Wrenching himself and pulling at the water, Michael was able to feel a rock. His hand slipped off it and slipped again, his lungs burned and he kicked and finally could lift himself out. Panting and heaving on the rocks, his first thought was of his father.

Had he been watching?

The boy could not put his socks and shoes on, walked barefoot over the new, soft shoots of grass and flowers. His clothes felt like heavy sacks of grain, his trousers soon chafing between his legs, as he trudged up the hill to the Swede’s house, the anger at himself slowly dissipating with the warmth of the early May sun.

The men were shaking hands and laughing. At him? Michael did not often hear his father laugh and knew this to be a surface laugh, one he manufactured in his throat when others around him were feeling something deep within themselves while he seemed to feel only bemusement or boredom or polite contempt.

The laughing stopped when Michael drew up to them and then the Swede began laughing again.

Maybe the water, it bite after all!

Head hung in embarrassment, Michael fought off shame and shyly smiled at the easy, loud way the Swede had, at the joke that meant no harm. His father reddened and stared at Michael with something almost like hate in his liquid blue eyes. He slapped Michael hard behind his head.

Stupit boy! he hissed in English. Go to the truck.

The sun was setting as George Shymchuk and the Swede concluded the deal and lashed the thresher to the rear axle of the pick-up. Outside Gimli, Michael looked past his father driving so carefully, the truck swaying from the weight of the farm machine, and saw the roller coaster again in the distance, this time lit by flashing lights, the whole area glowing with a halo fading into the black sky.

The trip back to Cooper’s Creek was long and quiet in the dark, slowly pulling the thresher.

Michael’s father said only: Stupit Swede is bad with money.

He’s from Iceland; just about everybody around there is from Iceland.

Same thing.

No, it isn’t, Michael insisted.

Same thing, I said!

So silence again.

And later, as the yellow orange-lit windows of the farmhouse came into view: You must want to be a man soon, not a boy.

********************

Michael Shymchuk learned to skate when he was eleven. He was a late starter as his father had thought it silly and told him, in English, that he would ‘brek ya goddamn nik’.

But Michael wanted to slide along the frozen creek the way his friends did while he sat impotently on the bank watching them.

It was trading time. Bill Czerenko had let it be known that, for the right price, he’d part with a pair of skates he had outgrown. The leather was cracked and soft as a glove, the laces mismatched and the blades rusted and nicked. Michael had seen them and had to have them.

But what to trade? Obviously, it had to be chewing tobacco, his father’s chewing tobacco. Michael had seen Bill chewing secretly at church dances and openly with his friends in front of Smygawaty’s store. The older boy was expert at working up a huge gob of tobacco and spit deep in his throat, rolling it around noisily in his mouth then letting fly a brown string. Old man Smygawaty was always after him to stop plastering the whitewashed side of the building with trickle upon trickle of brown slime that had dried over time and stood as his mark on the world.

Michael weighed the elements of the trade, particularly the theft that had to take place. His father, so careful with his possessions, would immediately discover the loss and, just as quickly, know who did it for Anne and Peter were incapable of such trespass. Michael decided that one tin of Skoal and one terrific beating were worth one pair of very used skates.

In a corner of the living room was a solid, dark oak cabinet. Squat and unadorned, it contained George Shymchuk’s male paraphernalia: a long hunting knife with an ivory handle, a rifle and shotgun standing up, bullets for the .22 and shells on a shelf beside them. There was a bottle of brandy and several carved pipes, a cribbage board that Michael never saw used, and bundles of papers that constituted the written record of everything to do with the family and farm. And there were small packets of rolling papers, a can of loose tobacco and a flat tin of Skoal.

George Shymchuk never locked his tabernacle, didn’t have to and, in fact, had gathered the children around one night to tell them that he wasn’t ever going to lock it. As near as Michael could tell, his brother and sister took it as a commandment, while he understood it to be a dare.

Usually, there was someone in the house, his mother and sister in the day, joined by his father and brother in the evening.

But sometimes, the house was empty when the women were berry picking and Michael had volunteered to fetch something or other. Michael would head straight to the cabinet, open its creaking doors and rummage around, after first memorizing the placement of things.

The smell was oily and heavy with tobacco and gun grease. He would feel the heft of the knife in his hand, count the .22 bullets, sniff the brandy cap and let his eyes wander and absorb.

But this day there was no time for languor. He had asked Czerenko to be at the store for two o’clock. Feigning a sore stomach, Michael did not go out to fields with Peter and his father after lunch. As he had guessed, his mother and sister were gone to gather Saskatoons.

With shaking hands, Michael pulled the stubborn door of the cabinet, was sure its opening creak could be heard by his father hundreds of yards away in the fields. He dashed out of the house and down the road, the nearly-full tin of Skoal tucked under his shirt.

Bill was waiting for him as arranged. They swapped quickly and Czerenko smiled.

Thanks, kid. Hope you enjoy the skates.

Then he laughed as he balled up a wad of tobacco and popped it in his mouth. The skates didn’t seem like such a great deal anymore. Their boots flopped limply in his hands as Michael walked slowly home, anticipating the final part of bargain.

He stashed the skates under his bed and lay down, waiting silently upstairs for his father’s return. The women had come back but did not know Michael was in the house so he was able to read uninterrupted. He poured over his favorite part of the only book he had ever finished, the part in The Count of Monte Cristo where Edmond Dantès, pretending to be a corpse, is wrapped and weighted and thrown off the cliffs of Chateau d’If, only to cut his way out and struggle to the surface, gasping but free.

Michael, get down here! Now! came his father’s shout.

Michael swung his legs to the floor, sighed deeply and took out his skates to look at them, convincing himself somehow that they were, indeed, truly wonderful. He descended the thirteen narrow steps.

His father stood like a statue beside the open cabinet door.

Did you steal?

Yes, sir.

Come here. And the raised cane.

Michael tried not to flinch. He took the blows with his arms at his side and his body stiff. His father was red-faced and tight-lipped, wordless as he lifted the cane for another humming blow. The sting was something Michael had never felt before, at least double the usual. He cried, as he knew he would. But he did not beg for mercy as his father became watery and indistinct through his tears.

Finally, the blows stopped. The boy stared at his father only long enough to see a glare, an anger or a hatred that cut as deeply as the cane.

He hobbled upstairs, knowing that he was to go without supper and because he didn’t want his siblings to see him.

It took considerable time for him to find a comfortable position. In the dark, he experimentally prodded the long red welts that he half-expected to see glow.

Sometime later, his mother entered his room and knelt beside the bed. With the light from the hallway, Michael could see that she too had tears in her eyes.

Why, oh why, Michael, do you do these things? Why do you make him hurt you? she whispered.

I don’t know, momma.

And he didn’t.

********************

The second week of November 1931 brought a quick, sharp cold to the land. The wind from the northwest swept over the flat ground, whipping the trees, tearing the last brittle leaves from their holds. But there was no snow. Not yet. The earthen furrows had turned to rock in the fields, with white ice veins in the valleys between.

There was no snow for almost three weeks, well into December. Cooper’s Creek, low at the end of the dry summer, had frozen solid.

With little work to be done on the farm, Michael skated every day. Hunched low, his arms swinging wildly, he would practice.

While he easily got the notion of moving himself forward, he had great difficulty in learning to stop. At times, he tried pointing his toes inward, snowplowing until he halted. Other times, he would throw his legs in front of him like baseball players he had seen sliding into second. Either method required time going by and he felt silly sliding along, waiting, almost detached, for the negligible friction to bring him to a stop.

He longed to be able to more expertly control his direction, his speed. He longed to be able to turn sideways, dig his blades into the ice and send up a shower of ice chips the way the bigger boys could, accelerating at a terrific rate then stopping almost instantly, their bodies parallel to the ice as the sharp edges caught and held, bringing their bodies vertical and posed in front of a girl, methodically tying her white skates, who would be covered by their ice spray. Michael wanted to do that.

So he tested himself, over and over. He would stand by one bank of the frozen stream, rear back and fling himself at the opposite shore. He could only take five or six frantic strides then twist his body, his skates parallel with each other and dig in. At first and for a long while, he achieved one of two results. His body would either be too straight so that his feet stopped but the rest of him pitched forward sliding head first into the bank or, sensing that he was jamming his skates too hard into the ice, he would ease up and thus coast helplessly until he plowed into the steep embankment.

Always he would pick himself up and try again. His body would ache.

And always he listened for human voices approaching, friends walking along the road or coming up the creek bed. At those times, he would quickly sit down and start unlacing his skates.

Hey, Michael, come with us!

Naw. I just finished. I gotta go in now.

He would wait until they had disappeared out of sight, retie his skates, and try again.

The children probably would not have laughed at him for his awkward movements on ice, but he didn’t calculate it that way. He was sure they would ridicule him but, the fact of it was, they were slightly afraid of him. He could not conceive why, for he saw himself only as a tall, gawky kid.

The snow came and stayed. For a few weeks, he could shovel and practice, shovel and practice until he became confident in his stops, starts and turns. But almost a year must pass before he had a chance at the full course of the creek.

********************

Now he was good enough, he thought, to join in. He had grown considerably in that time, was now almost a head taller than his friends from the same grade. He had put on little weight and, skinnier now, he ought to have been the target for nicknames but he wasn’t. He was quiet and seemed older, and there was that temper which had been seen on rare occasions, but often enough to be a minor legend in the small community.

He had respect, not the way a good athlete had respect but because of the temper and he could get crazy angry sometimes and it didn’t seem to matter to him at whom or for what.

Michael, would you stay behind and get wood for the stove for school tomorrow?

I did that yesterday, sir.

But I am asking you to do it again.

But I’m telling you I don’t want to do it again, sir. The ‘sir’ strained through set teeth.

You will kindly do as I ask, young man.

The hell I will.

The slammed door and quiet classroom. Quiet except for the sputtering, muttering of a teacher, temporarily powerless and embarrassed by a tall, skinny twelve year-old.

Or sometime later that year:

Hey, Shymchuk, you got stilts in those old pants?

What?!

You got stilts in tho—

Take that back, now!

What’s the matter…?

Take it back!

Geez, it was only a joke.

Take it back right now or, I swear ta God, I’ll kill you. This said quietly, barely above a whisper, his dark eyes blazing and, to the name caller, fixed on murder.

Only a few times. Then the air of unpredictability in those brown-yellow eyes under bushy brows was known and Michael could feel from his classmates, even from his teacher, if not their fear, at least a wariness. He knew it was no strategy, only the effect of an anger which rose surprising and unbidden.

********************

Again there was cold, but no snow. Again the creek was frozen. Its surface was imperfect glass. There were white tendrils of cracks running through it and lumps, transparent humps, pocking the plane. By the bank, Michael looked down and, through the ice, could see the dried prairie grass and reeds, still with a tinge of green, hanging suspended and trapped, pressed against the clear ice.

The day was sunny and cold, zero Fahrenheit.

Michael could not quickly decide which direction to go. Cooper’s Creek snaked from the southeast until it joined another creek and another until it flowed into the Red River. Heading upstream, it wandered around until it met Lake Winnipeg to the northwest.

Even at its most swollen, some springs ago, it had no appreciable current, sort of dozed along, had to be watched closely to see something floating to know its direction. But now, transfixed solid by the cold, it did not matter at all. The landscape was no consideration either. It was the same for miles and miles either way.

Michael had avoided the requests of friends to form a party and strike off for some undetermined time and distance. Today, at least, he would go alone.

For no apparent reason, he elected to head north.

The skating was effortless, almost without thought. Smooth stride followed smooth stride with no discernible goal in sight. His speed increased and he simply wanted to fly until he was tired. He did not consider that the trip out demanded a journey back and that some energy would be required to complete the circuit.

Around each bend he sailed, leaning into the turn, righting himself for the straight stretches. The air was soundless save for the occasional screech of a whiskey jack.

His breath would steam up in front of him then stream around his head, as he skated through the fog. His eyes watered from the cold and his nose ran. But he would not rest.

The north-south township concession roads were straight and even, dissected at right angles by east-west roads, creating perfect squares, a mile and a quarter by a mile and a quarter. Cooper’s Creek had been diverted on the west side of his concession to follow the road then angled into farmland until it hit the north side and followed the road again.

He knew that the distance between his place and Onsowich’s farm, their nearest neighbor, was about one mile by road, shorter as the creek ran. He came out on the north side and saw his first obstacle. Onsowich’s bridge to the road cleared the creek by less than three feet.

Michael ran down his options. He could stop, climb up the steep bank and portage the bridge. He could stop and on his hands and knees crawl under the bridge. Or he could just keep skating.

A few feet from the bridge, going as fast as he could, Michael flung his feet forward and slid under the wooden beams. His momentum easily carried him the width of the bridge. But the ice under the bridge was different, lumpy then sharp and white and he rattled over it painfully until he emerged on the other side where the surface was once again smooth and translucent. There was darkness under the bridge and the sound of his low groans as he slithered.

Back on his feet, Michael resumed his trip, but something had changed in his stride. He ached; his knees hurt and moved more stiffly, less confidently. But on he went and the distances stretched out and his rhythm was set as he passed under other bridges and through culverts, following the meandering creek.

It was impossible for him to reckon the spaces covered. Five miles? Six miles? Ten? The route was new and not marked by roads. He saw things, the backs and sides of farm buildings in a way he hadn’t before.

His pace slowed, slowed in pain and exhaustion and wonderment. He rested frequently. Sat and listened. He saw a family of raccoons skitter across the ice, their black sharp claws clicking, and watched rabbits, now a brazen white, tricked by the snowless cold.

He would still himself, not rustle at all and listened to his best loved sound, that of silence. Occasional peeps from small, unseen birds did not seem to count and he was not distracted by them. There was no roaring tractor, no sputtering Ford. No human voices that, from a distance, were indistinguishable from each other, be they laughing or crying.

Because there was no destination to be reached, there was also no simple way to determine when to turn and head back. The sun was dimming and its feeble warmth disappearing.

His feet ached like he had never known. Enclosed in the ill-fitting skates, they seemed as if they were being molded, reshaped to fit the flat, narrow soles.

So often, the return is easier than the outward journey because the way is now known. But this time, his feet throbbing, each stride, no matter its lightness, stung sharply. No varying of pressure points helped. On his toes, on the balls of his feet or on their sides, nothing helped.

The temptation to remove the skates was enormous but he knew how stupid that would be. The cold would pass easily through his socks, bringing white and numbness to flesh. But yet. Numbness. That’s what he wanted and that’s where the danger lay. The removal of pain would be replaced with easy numbness.

Just a little bit more, he said aloud and found comfort in his voice so seldom used alone. His pain had not subsided, telling him he was not yet frostbitten.

Onsowich’s bridge and he was almost home. This time, he slowed and stopped, deliberately crawling on all fours, feeling each hard lump of ice on his knees.

It was almost dark now, so quickly dark in late November. That didn’t concern him, as there was no path to search for. Just his bridge and the laneway to the house. His way was defined by the course of the stream and the confines of its banks.

At last, the orange lights of his house came to view, warm and beckoning, but maddening in their distance. He couldn’t seem to catch up with them. And he knew the coldness and reproach that lay within those lights.

By his father’s bridge, he searched for his boots but, in the darkness, could not find them. So close and now he had to remove the skates only to walk sock-footed, as the banks could not be climbed in blades.

With the laces fully undone, the boots resisted removal. His feet were burning in pain as he forced the skates off. He tried to walk and immediately collapsed on the ice. His toes seemed horribly twisted, malformed, his arches locked and sore.

At last, he could crawl up the embankment, right himself and begin the painful three hundred-foot hobble down the rutted, frozen laneway.

Where have you been, my child? his mother pleaded.

Skating on the creek. Owwwwww! It hurts, mama!

Come. Come to the stove. Warm up.

The big kitchen stove squatted and gave off its heavy heat. Sitting on a chair, Michael rested his legs on the woodpile, his feet almost touching the heated metal.

So, you come back! spat his father from behind him.

Yes, sir.

George Shymchuk fell back into Ukrainian as he scolded his son.

You just disappear all day. Don’t tell your poor mother where you are going. Don’t come home for dinner and then, more than that, you leave your boots near the road where any gypsy son of a bitch could find them and take them for his own. Boots that cost good money. Money that takes hard work to earn. You don’t know about that, do you, my boy? But it’s time you started. That’s why I took them into the house. Let that be a good lesson for you.

His father stopped and pointed at the boots standing neatly behind the door.

I don’t know about you, my boy. I give up.

Michael had heard that phrase more and more frequently. He wished his father would give up on him and leave him alone. He thought to himself that he could and would soon hit that man.

Chapter 2

Michael and Peter were picking fruit in the crab apple trees that lined the driveway. Unwatched, they were less than fierce in their activity, half-working and then half-playing at the games they made up, alternating between cowboys and Indians and pirates and whomever pirates are supposed to fight. Michael was the arbiter, deciding what to play and what roles they were to have. There was little dispute when it came to cowboys and Indians as Michael invariably became an Indian, today, cached in the short limbs of the tree, waiting to drop on the white interloper who was not, to Michael’s dissatisfaction, being sufficiently nonchalant.

You can’t look up, stupid! You don’t know I’m here!

Yes, I do! protested Peter.

Just pretend! Now try it again!

So Peter walked away then wandered back under the tree. He feigned inattention but braced himself for Michael’s drop onto his shoulders and the roll on the ground littered with hard red apples. Astride Peter’s chest, Michael dealt the deadly tomahawk blows, oblivious to Peter’s constant firing of his imaginary six-shooter.

I got you! I got you! Peter announced to the imaginary corpse.

"Did not! You couldn’t have got the gun out!

Could so!

And so on, until Michael tired of the debate and of trying to maintain the authenticity of the ambush.

It’s pirates now, he determined. You go be a pirate in that tree over there. This one here’s my ship, he said, patting the trunk. And don’t forget your loot sack, tossing the empty burlap bag to his brother.

By himself, Peter was a half-hearted buccaneer, casually looting his ship of the crabapples that were to be turned into steaming pies.

Michael was not interested in ransacking his craft. Instead, he climbed as high as he could up the branches, carefully avoiding the short, sharp thorns. The boughs swayed with his weight and the dry wind that rustled the thick, round leaves so that they made a sound when they shuddered against each other.

Up in his crow’s nest, Michael turned his face to the wind, saw the wheat fields rippling under the breeze, flattened and swept in swaths, turning, now turning into the undulating blue sea, his ship rising then falling with a crash. The horizon was nearly empty, a churning line where sea met sky, waves breaking over Onsowich’s barn and outbuildings that were now coral heads in the distance.

No fighting today, no ships in pursuit nor galleons to hunt, only the empty sea and the creak of the rigging.

Then Michael saw the two men turn into his laneway.

Instantly, he was tense. Visitors to his home were rare, adults on foot unheard of. He swung down from the tree, told Peter to stay where he was and be quiet. Then, without thinking, he went to intercept them.

Hey, boy, were you hiding on us? said the taller of the two, as the men stopped.

No, Michael answered as he looked at the pair of thin, disheveled men. Their clothes were dusty and dirty, their faces red and sweaty and dark stubbled, their hair long, sticking out from under their shapeless caps and spilling over their grimy white collars.

Hot one today, eh? the shorter man said as they resumed walking towards the house.

What do you want? asked Michael trying to slow their progress, wishing, wishing so hard they would just go away, aware of his impertinence, aware of the sound of the smaller man’s torn boot sole slapping against the dirt laneway as he walked.

Need to talk to your old man.

He ain’t here. He’s back in the fields, Michael said, hoping his answer would halt the men in their tracks, cause them to turn around and leave, but knowing it would not.

Oh, is that so?…then your mother, said the taller man.

She isn’t here either, Michael quickly insisted, as he trotted ahead then turned, alarmed that he was the only barrier between the strangers and the house.

That so? and the taller man looking past Michael who then turned to see his mother, emerging onto the porch, wiping her hands on her apron.

Can I help you gentlemen? she asked.

Hope you can, ma’am, said the tall man, sweeping his cap of his head. We’re looking for work. Of any kind.

I’m sorry, but we don’t need any help, Michael’s mother said, frightened and kind at the same time.

Sure?

I’m sure. How about some water?

Michael was watching the taller man, saw his gray eyes had become angry.

Doesn’t seem right to walk hours and hours for a glass of water, he said.

I can fix you something to eat, she offered.

Sure.

To Michael’s consternation, the men mounted the steps of the porch and Michael’s mother turned. But stay out here…just stay out here, alright? Michael, go and get some water.

The men drank noisily from the tin cups, water dribbling down their chins onto their chests mingling with the sweat soaking through their shirts. They said nothing, then mumbled brief thanks at the plates of bread and cold stew Michael’s mother brought out to the porch. She and Michael stood awkwardly as the men ate, mother and son exchanging glances, vainly trying to decipher what was in their eyes, what plan, what reaction.

Michael looked into the distance for a sign of his father’s tractor. He thought of the rifle in the cabinet, imagined how quickly he could get it out, load it. Load it with a single bullet.

The tall man sopped up the last of the congealed gravy with large hunks of bread, wiped his lips on his shirtsleeve.

Sure there’s no work? he asked.

She said there wasn’t, didn’t she? Michael snapped.

The tall man looked up at Michael and the boy saw the man’s eyes change, from surprise to anger to bemusement, as surely as if he were watching the colors mutate in the sky at sunsets.

Ain’t your boy something, ma’am? the man said through a thin smile. A liar and full of lip to boot.

Would you gentlemen please leave? asked Michael’s mother.

Thought we might sit a while out of the sun. A man should be able to get out of the heat, don’t you think? the tall man asked, leaning back in his chair, surveying the front yard.

Please? Michael’s mother pleaded.

You got any money? the shorter man suddenly asked.

Yeah, you got any money you can spare? the tall man added. Food’s good, but money’s better.

Of course we don’t have any money, Michael’s mother firmly said, sure of the ground she was now on. Who has money these days?

Ain’t that the truth? said the tall man, looking at backs of his stained hands as he rubbed his thighs.

Still no sign or sound of his father’s tractor, Michael observed nervously.

At last, the man slapped his thighs and slowly rose. Michael braced himself for whatever might happen next, unsure of any action beyond that of exploding into the man’s midsection.

The tall man looked hard at Michael but spoke to his mother.

So, I suppose we should be going, ma’am. Thanks for the eats.

And then the two men were walking down the laneway. Every second step the smaller man took brought a small puff of dust underfoot as his loose sole flopped ahead of him.

Michael and his mother watched them go, stood arm in arm on the porch, supporting each other, listening to one another’s quick breaths.

Emboldened, Michael left his mother’s side and followed the men at a distance, as if his presence was sure to be sensed and they would keep moving, impelled, herded out to the road and away.

Peter dropped out of the apple tree as Michael passed, tagged behind his big brother.

At the end of the laneway, the two men stopped, turned and began walking back towards the house.

Everything in him told Michael to run, except for the understanding that whatever was to occur ought to happen here and not near his mother.

Peter backed off but Michael stood firm as the tall man strode up to him. The boy clenched his fists.

Kid, the tall man said. I’m Roy and this is Earl. Those are our names. It wouldn’t hurt you to know them.

He leaned down and extended his hand and Michael tentatively shook it, not taking his eyes off Roy’s.

I’m Michael and that’s my brother, Peter, said Michael.

Roy squatted down so he was looking up at the boy. His narrow eyes wider now.

It’s not right to be afraid of us, said Roy. We’re just down on our luck, is all. We’re the same as you, only we don’t have much…Christ, we don’t have anything…. and that changes things. Changed us, changed the way people look at us.

I’m sorry, mister…Roy, and Michael felt good saying the man’s first name, sad for what had happened to him.

Don’t be sorry…Mike.

My name’s Michael.

Michael, and the tall man smiled briefly. The way things are going, it might happen to you someday and you’ll need a hand…. That’s all I’m saying. OK?

Michael shook his head.

OK? Roy asked again and stared hard at him, narrowing his eyes.

OK.

Roy rose to his feet and walked away.

Good luck! Michael called after them but did not know if they heard him.

********************

That summer, Michael’s father took him into the parlor, opened his cabinet and withdrew the .22 rifle.

Today, you will learn to use the gun, George Shymchuk announced simply. It is the time.

Michael was trembling and proud as he walked behind the house, cradling the rifle in his arms as his father had instructed. And happier still because Peter had been excluded as too young for shooting.

His father was clipped and serious in teaching Michael how to load and aim, as the boy lay on his stomach facing the tin can targets arranged on the rail fence. Michael could feel the weapon shivering in his hands and his father barked at him.

Be still! Be still! he snapped.

Michael glanced up once at his father and then froze his fingers around the smooth stock. He inhaled, held his breath and sighted down the barrel. Suddenly, it seemed to the boy that the distance between the grooved flip-up sight by his eye and the tin can had closed until he saw the target clearly, as if it were resting just beyond the barrel’s end. His finger gently wrapped around the trigger and he squeezed. A small sound, he thought, followed instantly by the ‘plunk’ of the can as it hopped off the fence.

Michael looked up again at his father who smiled slightly and handed four more bullets to his son.

Michael missed but once and was chided for the last remaining can.

Do not waste the bullets, my son. Each one is meant to do a job.

Michael was feeling jaunty as he returned to the house. His father grabbed the swinging barrel.

Don’t be so proud of yourself, he said. From now on, everything you see down the length of the rifle will be farther away and alive.

Michael was granted use of the rifle only to hunt gophers. Although, for a while, he saw all moving things, birds, squirrels, even the cows and chickens, as potential targets, he was happy with the pursuit of gophers. While he still split the bounty with Peter, he could be alone and unsupervised for long stretches, lying or sitting in open fields, away from chores and his family.

His father rationed the ammunition, unfailingly pointing out that the number of bullets spent should be the same as the number of gopher tails he brought home.

Michael secretly began buying paper boxes of bullets from Smygawaty’s store with his share of the bounty, giving himself the cushion to miss or to fire at birds in the air he never could hit except for one large magpie. It had been sitting on a fencepost as Michael aimed and shot and its feathers fluttered and the blackbird toppled off the post, stone-dead.

********************

Christmas was quiet that year. Michael’s mother was not the same as previous holidays. The house was not festive and the preparations were mainly left to Anne. The teen-aged girl did the best she could, but there was a silence before prayer on Christmas Eve when everyone seemed to sense that the dishes in front of them did not match her mother’s ease in the kitchen. The kutya had been made too watery and so did not stick to the ceiling when George Shymchuk tossed up a spoonful. The cold honey, barley and poppy seed mixture fell back to the table, foretelling a year of bad luck.

The pyrohy was underdone, with dough too soft, potatoes undercooked. The holubtsi did not stick together in tightly rolled cabbage leaves. The borshch was plain, made plainer by the sour cream dollops floating on it. And there weren’t twelve meatless dishes although Michael couldn’t name the missing one, maybe two. When the warm kolach was presented to the table, Michael did not think of the symbolism of the circle of bread standing for the circle of life.

Stella Shymchuk spent most of the meal moving the food from side to side on her plate. Michael watched her. He wanted to grab her and demand to know the reason for her listlessness.

In the following days, she seemed continually tired, had bursts of annoyance or frustration and she startled Michael by scolding when she had never, to his memory, done so.

Soon, she spent longer and longer periods in her room. Michael had no idea what was happening, guessed at many things as he listened for her behind the closed door of his parents’ room. Sometimes, he could hear her crying.

Timidly, he would enter the room, sit on the bed, not speaking for minutes until he could ask her what was wrong, an extraordinary question for a child to ask of a parent. And always the same answer and weak smile. ‘Nothing, dear boy, it is nothing’ and she patted his hand as if he was the only distressed one. He so desperately wanted to believe her, as a child always wants to believe, that things are alright, even though he could see the pain in her eyes.

It was not a new bed – ‘Waste a goddamned money,’ his father had declared. ‘Nobody see it so who care?’ His mother had shown him a drawing of the bed she wanted in the Simpson’s catalog. It was white, curved, with delicate spindles. He wished he could buy it for her.

The iron bed was painted brown but flaking, so the dull metal shone through. The head- and footboards had narrow bars.

When he was younger, Michael would timidly enter his parents’ room on some early mornings, aware he was invading a private place. Through the bars of the footboard, he would watch them together on the bed as they awoke under the blankets in the morning light, their two bodies filling the bed with stirring.

But now, the bed seemed vast and she seemed insignificant, lying alone, small and shrunken in the folds. The bright hardness of her dark eyes was gone. Her cheeks were sunken and sallow with the color of sickness. Her hair, once so thick and alive and shining in its darkness, had lost its radiance, become dull and flat. And there was the hump in her midsection, rising round and hard from the plane of the bed.

Michael would sit with her for hours, reading to her, to himself or speaking short, soft sentences or saying nothing. In the silent times, his mother would say her rosary, a delicate chain of black, many-sided beads. From his chair, Michael watched her lightly-closed eyes, her eyelids fluttering. She seemed to make no sound, her dried lips barely mouthing the prayers until, leaning closer in, he heard the whispered chants. And in her weakened hand, the fragile rosary, a bead held between thumb and forefinger then moved as each prayer in the chain was finished and another one was begun.

He did his schoolwork in her room and was angry at the call from Anne downstairs that supper was ready. Every evening he would try to ignore it, stopping himself from moving, holding his breath, as if that could stop Anne and the food ritual. No sound except the steel alarm clock on the night stand growing louder in its metallic ticking until his father’s impatient shout.

Get down here or have nothing!

Go, Mikey, go, she would dryly whisper, the only one allowed to shorten his name.

Michael would eat quickly and in silence, not noticing the blandness of the food. Weeks before spring, there was little left from the autumn harvest. Only the daily bread, baked fresh, had the taste of newness. The beets, potatoes, cabbage and turnips that barely lasted the winter, were now soft and small. The best ones had been eaten earlier and now the bottoms of the bins in the cellar were being reached.

It had always, it seemed, been Michael’s job to retrieve vegetables from the cold cellar. The yellow light from the hurricane lantern made the stone walls seem rougher, casting sharp shadows. The gray stone and yellowed plaster protruded even farther into the low-ceilinged room. To increase the flame against the darkness, Michael would turn up the wick. As the fire rose, wisps of black kerosene smoke became thicker and the smell of the twisted burning cloth and oil became stronger, held in by the closeness of the windowless, subterranean chamber. The oil’s sharp smell mingled with the odor of decay thrown up by rotting vegetables and the smell of dust gathering through the winter.

Michael held the lamp over the bins made from scraps of wood. But it did not illuminate the recesses and he had to place it on the floor to pick up handfuls of the remaining vegetables. He would pause before he plunged his hands into the cubic blackness.

His mother would always compliment him on his choice of potatoes for the meal. And he was happy she recognized the care he took as he picked over the pile for the largest, roundest ones. But that was in the fall and early winter.

As the snow weeks passed, he had to pay for his selectivity. Only the smaller ones were left and they were becoming smaller and softer. Before he would put the lantern down, he would stare at the forest of ghostly white tubers, the new life fed by the old, trying to emerge from the blackness. The tubers were smooth and cool to the touch. He would try to grab them but they would snap off.

The smallest potatoes were almost useless. By the time Anne had finished with the paring knife, there was little more than a bite and she would sometimes curse him for