The Wanton Troopers Read online

  Reflected sunlight glistened on daisies, dandelions, and buttercups. The rain had raked petals from the wild rose bushes and many of them had been blown on the coarse gravel, where they lay, soggy but still delicate and velvety.

  He came to a place where the road was bounded on both sides by barriers of spruce, stunted pine, and fir. It was colder here, because the trees shut out the heat of the sun, and the trees were dark; even at noon, all evergreens seemed to be dreaming of the haunted darkness of midnight.

  Coming out of the woods, he passed the saw mill. This place both attracted and frightened him. The steam engine pulsed with ferocious, relentless power, pounding until the long, low, shed-like building shook on its log foundations. At intervals, the big saw emitted its scream of agony and triumph: the agony of the cleanly sliced log, the triumph of the luminous disc and its invisible, irresistible teeth.

  There were five saws in the mill, Kevin knew. He had gone there many times, carrying tobacco or a lunch to his father. The biggest saw was called the splitter and Judd was known as the splitterman. When a slab dropped from the log carriage, Judd seized it and hurled it down the rollers to the slab sawyer. When a board fell free, he grasped it and, half-turning, threw it on a rack, from which it was taken by the edgerman. Judd had worked in the mill every summer since his fourteenth birthday.

  The slab saw hung between two hinged beams. Cutting a slab into stovewood lengths, the slab sawyer gripped a metal bar attached to the beam and jerked the saw toward him, steadying the slab with his other hand. Twice in the years that Kevin could remember, slab sawyers had lost fingers, and once the swinging blade had ripped off a man’s hand . . .

  The edgerman trimmed the strips of bark from the edges of the boards. He stood about twelve feet from his small, twin saws and worked them with a long wooden lever. The saws could be moved in accordance with the width of the board. As each board was thrown, screeching, from the jaws of the edger, it was grasped by the trimmerman, whose saw tore off its ragged ends.

  When these saws were working at full speed, they ceased to be substantial, metal things and became rings of nebulous, convulsive light. Kevin could remember moments in which he could hardly resist an urge to thrust his hand into one of these luminous rings. There had been times when his desire had become so strong that he had felt his stomach contract in fear as he turned away. He wondered if the men who worked in the mill ever felt tempted to throw themselves into these hypnotic whirlpools. In the twenty-five years that his father had worked at the mill, three men had been killed.

  Steam billowed from the great, guy-wired stack and spurted from the exhaust pipe over the well. The saliva-light odour of steam mingled with the acrid tang of green sawdust. The mill-yard was full of men, all of them working furiously with logs and lumber. Even Stingle, who sometimes got drunk with Kevin’s father, walked ahead of his team of yellow oxen, twirling his black whip over his head. The oxen had gentle eyes in their huge, stupid heads. Zombie-like, they plodded behind their driver, their heads bent low under the red yoke with its leather straps studded with brass and copper rivets, red knobs attached to the tips of their inward-curving, yellow horns.

  The oxen hauled a drag, called a log-boat. All of the oxen in the world were named Broad, Bright, Star, Lion, Buck, or Brown. Horses, Kevin liked and sometimes feared; for these beasts, he felt only pity. No matter how often it was beaten, a horse retained a little glimmering spark of wildness. When let out to pasture on Sunday, even the old, sway-backed nag that pulled the sawdust cart would sometimes toss her head and neigh like a high-spirited colt. Kevin feared the teeth and hooves of horses, but something in him responded to the secret light he saw in their eyes, the freedom and grace that could never be wholly destroyed by work or punishment but ended only with death, because its life was inseparable from the life of their bodies.

  The oxen were strong, but their strength was as lifeless as that of the steam engine. They did not husband their strength, as horses often did. When yoked to a load, they pulled as hard as they could from the first, and they continued to exert all their strength until they were halted by their teamster. Under the lash, a horse would cringe or strike out with its hooves; an ox accepted pain as stolidly as it accepted changes in the weather.

  “Hello, Mister Man,” Eben Stingle said.

  “Hi.”

  “If yuh don’t hurry, yer gonna be late for school. Then, most likely, yuh’ll git stood in the corner.”

  Eben laughed, revealing tobacco-stained false teeth. Kevin grinned. He thought the joke inane, like most of the things men said to boys. But he always grinned when anyone smiled at him. The response came instinctively, and he was hardly aware of it.

  Beyond the mill, the road re-entered the woods. Poplar, maple, birch, and cedar grew here, crowded so close together that they sucked the life from one another’s roots. The trunks of these trees were so small that Kevin could have spanned them with his hands, but they grew to great heights, stretching upwards toward the sun.

  The school house was about a mile from Kevin’s house. He turned into the yard now. The tin-roofed, whitewashed building sat in the centre of a half-acre field, surrounded by flat and almost lifeless grass. A ragged and faded Union Jack hung limp from a pole opposite the door. Little crayon sketches of animals were pasted to the foggy glass of the windows. Approaching the open door to the porch, Kevin felt his stomach tie itself into a familiar giddy knot, his throat throb with the raw dryness of fear.

  He entered the semi-darkness of the porch. Half a dozen boys lounged against walls studded with coat-hooks. Among them were two husky fifteen-year-olds in Grade VI: Riff Wingate, whose grin revealed a mouthful of broken, yellow teeth and whose breath stank of decay, and Harold Winthrop, whose face was pocked with feverish, red pimples and who liked to boast of the things that he had done to girls. To Riff and Harold, school was a ribald joke. Next summer, they would be peeling pulp or sawing slabs at the mill.

  “Well, if it ain’t Key-von!” Riff laughed.

  Kevin reached for the knob of the inner door. Lifting his leg lazily, Harold barred his way.

  “What’s yer hurry, Key-von? Don’t yuh like the company?” Harold smirked.

  Ashen-faced, his hands by his sides, Kevin said nothing. Av Farmer stepped forward, a pudgy, fox-eyed boy of about Kevin’s age. Kevin’s terror of this boy was so abject that he could not muster sufficient pride to hate him.

  Harold, Riff, and the others pressed close, grinning, their eyes bright with anticipation.

  “The man spoke tuh yuh, Key-von,” Av leered. “The cat got yer tongue or somethin’?”

  “Mebbe he ain’t learnt tuh talk yet,” Alton Stacey guffawed.

  Women said of Alton that he was pretty enough to be a girl. But his cunning had saved him from Riff and Harold. He had come to Lockhartville from Ontario, and he had cultivated the reputation of a sophisticate, a reputation he had enhanced by teaching Riff and Harold to shoot craps in the woodshed behind the school house. In these games, Alton invariably lost, and neither Riff nor Harold ever taunted him because of his resemblance to a girl.

  “Show Daddy if the cat’s got yer tongue!” Av demanded. He grabbed Kevin’s collar and shoved him against the door. “Come on now, show Daddy!” The others giggled.

  Kevin went limp. His paralysis was too negative a thing to be described as fear. His blood was water, his heart and brain ash. All feeling was dead. The room was a vibrating blur.

  “Show Daddy, Key-von!”

  Idiotically, he stuck out his tongue. The boys howled and danced with excitement. Kevin wished that he could sink through the floor, sink to the dark centre of the earth and cower there forever.

  “Key-von’s got a tongue! Cat didn’t git it, after all!” Av shrieked.

  “Did yuh see that! Did yuh see what Av done!” Riff was almost hysterical with joy.

  Av reached out, grabbed Kevin’s nose with one hand and his chin with the other, yanked his mouth open.

  “Yessir, he’s
got a tongue!”

  “Key-von’s got a tongue!”

  Mercifully, the bell rang. Av threw Kevin aside like a worn-out toy. The boys brushed past, elbowing him. Blindly, he stumbled after them into the class room.

  Kevin believed that every one of these boys was stronger, tougher, and braver than he. Secretly, he envied their courage and strength and wanted to be like them. But he consoled himself by the conviction that when they grew up they would be only pulp peelers and mill hands. They would live all their lives in Lockhartville, fenced in forests and rivers, and at last they would die here and be buried in the cemetery behind the Anglican church. But he — ah, he would be a lawyer, a doctor, a member of parliament, and one day he would come back here, wearing a black suit and a shining white shirt, and then he would spit in their eyes! And, in thinking this, his eyes and mouth took on that insolent, faintly contemptuous look that made them hate him.

  Thirty children, ranging in age from six to fifteen, were seated at three rows of desks. The desks and seats in each row, made of scarred wood and rusting metal, were linked together so that they reminded Kevin of the cars in a train. Frayed canvas maps, rolled up like scrolls, hung over each of the three blackboards. The air was heavy with the smell of chalk, soap, sweat, and the stale crumbs of yesterday’s sandwiches.

  Miss Roache, the teacher, sat facing the children from behind her desk at the front of the room. Kevin slid into the seat that he shared with Alton Stacey.

  “Good morning, class,” Miss Roache enunciated.

  “Good morning, Miss Roache,” they chanted.

  Kevin never joined in such chants. He thought the meaningless singsong sounded idiotic. The children used a peculiar tone when they spoke in school, an undulating croon with the emphasis falling in unexpected places. It was as if they were reading words in a language they could not understand.

  “Class, stand,” said Miss Roache.

  With a clatter, the children got to their feet. They all of them derived a bit of sly excitement from this business of getting up and sitting down. The boys rattled the metal parts of their desks, the cotton dresses of the girls rustled like a windswept grain field.

  O Canada

  Our home and native land,

  True patriot love,

  In all thy sons command!

  With glowing hearts, we see thee rise,

  The true north, strong and free,

  And stand on guard, O Canada!

  We stand on guard for thee!

  The older girls did most of the singing. Their voices, a little spiteful with self-conscious assurance, rang out above the drone of the younger children. The older boys grinned and were silent.

  “We will bow our heads in prayer.”

  Again the mindless, undulating croon:

  Our Father, which art in heaven,

  hallowed be Thy name,

  Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done,

  on earth, as it is in heaven.

  Give us this day our daily bread

  and forgive us our trespasses

  as we forgive those who trespass against us,

  and lead us not into temptation,

  but deliver us from evil,

  for Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory,

  forever and ever. Amen.

  “Class, be seated.”

  There was another clatter and rustle, another little thrill of excitement and derision, as they resumed their seats.

  “Now we shall take our Testaments and have our morning Bible reading.”

  Kevin took the small black book from the niche in his desk.

  His paralysis was lifting now. He was settling into the inertia of the school day.

  Sunlight poured through the eastern windows, changing the crayon animals on the glass into grotesque abstractions. Miss Roache read aloud while the children stared with unfocussed eyes at the books that lay open before them.

  Follow after charity and desire spiritual gifts, but rather that ye may prophesy. For he that speaketh in an unknown tongue speaketh not unto man, but unto God, for no man under-standth him; howbeit in the spirit, he speaketh mysteries . . .

  The voice droned on. Kevin’s body became a vegetable. The children might have been so many carrots and turnips, propped up in their seats.

  Therefore, if I know not the meaning of the voice, I shall be unto him that speaketh a barbarian, and he that speaketh shall be a barbarian unto me. Therefore, let him that speaketh in an unknown tongue pray that he may interpret . . .

  He stared at Miss Roache, observing that she nodded as she read, her head bobbing up and down. She reminded him of a dog eating: the little, furtive sideways glances she cast when she raised her head. He remembered how she had wept the previous winter when some of the big boys, led by Harold and Riff, threw snowballs through the open door and onto the stove. The steam had swirled up like fog, and Miss Roache had wept and sent the children home. That day, Kevin had wanted to weep with her. He had wanted to go to her and say that it didn’t matter, that Riff and Harold were fools, that she should not let them hurt her. But, of course, he had done nothing of the kind. And the next day, she had beaten little Normie Fenton, the smallest and shyest boy in the school, until his hands were red with blood . . .

  Brethren, be not children in understanding; howbeit in malice ye be children, but in understanding be men . . . But if there be no interpreter let him keep silence in the church; and let him speak to himself and to God . . .

  She shut the book with a gesture of relief and finality. A little ripple of movement swept from child to child, like a ripple on the surface of water.

  “Current events,” Miss Roache said, as she dropped the book in the drawer of her desk.

  Every morning, Miss Roache talked for fifteen minutes on world affairs. To most of the children, these events were less real than the incidents in radio serials and comic books. Often, when asked to provide some news item for this period, the younger children related something that had transpired in Buck Rogers, Superman, or Mandrake the Magician. But, in listening to Miss Roache tell of the horrors taking place in the great world beyond the creek and the cedared hills, the world beyond Larchmont, beyond even Halifax, Kevin decided that this world, for all of its superficial foreignness, was in most ways only an extension of the world of his father and the mill.

  Today, Miss Roache talked about Hitler, about his imminent capture and about the punishment that should be meted out to him. Kevin shuddered when she said it had been proposed that Hitler should be killed slowly with knives, a bit of his flesh being cut away each day. During the Bible reading, Miss Roache’s voice had been a dull monotone; now it became shrill and emphatic. She said that she considered the death with knives too merciful. Hitler should be locked up in a cage and carried all over the world, so that persons everywhere could come and spit on him. He should be fed pig feed, but only enough to keep him alive, because if he were allowed to die, he would be no longer capable of suffering. In the cage, he might survive for years, and, in time, he could be brought to the little hamlets on the back roads, to places like Lockhartville . . . And every night he could be burnt with hot irons and beaten with whips, and the greatest doctors in the world would be on hand to see that he did not die.

  Having heard Miss Roache deliver such monologues every morning for more than a year, Kevin had long ago decided that he sympathized with Hitler. In his pictures and especially in the caricatures that Miss Roache tore out of the Halifax newspapers and showed to the children, the tousle-haired, toothbrush-moustached man looked funny and pitiful. He made Kevin think of Wallie, the half-witted hired man at the Mosher farm. When Kevin saw Wallie he did not know whether to laugh or to cry. He felt the same indecision when he saw Miss Roache’s cartoons of Hitler.

  If they ever bring him to Lockhartville, I’ll help him get away from them, Kevin vowed silently. For a little while each morning, Kevin was a dedicated Nazi. He wished he dare leap into the aisle, throw up his arm in a salute, and shout, Heil
Hitler!

  Three

  Kevin decided that when he grew up he would be king of Nicaragua. For months, he had been fascinated by the idea of becoming a king. From the little glassed-in bookcase that composed the school library, he had taken a book entitled A Boy’s Life of Napoleon. The book fired his imagination. He decided that when he became a man, he too would make himself a master of men and empires. Searching through an atlas for a likely country, he regretfully abandoned France, Spain, Germany, and Italy as too large and powerful. He doubted his ability to enlist sufficient volunteers to overthrow their governments. Finally, he chose Nicaragua, a tiny, purple blotch on the map. Yes, he would make himself ruler of Nicaragua. In his exercise books, he drew up time schedules and plans of campaign, fording rivers with a movement of his pencil, eliminating frontiers with a swipe of an eraser. In 1953, when he was twenty, he would raise an army of freebooters — perhaps one hundred men. They would seize a ship and sail to the Caribbean. In 1954, he would be crowned king. His Majesty Kevin I, by the Grace of God and the Constitution of the Kingdom, Commander-in-Chief and King of Nicaragua. Then, perhaps in 1955, he would invade Honduras and annex it to his domain. In 1957, he would plant his flag in El Salvador. In 1958, he would lead his troops into the capital city of Guatemala. By 1960, he would be Emperor of Central America.

  With wax crayons, he made designs for flags, settling finally on a golden cross with a golden circle on a field of white. And he invented names for ships and regiments, pages of them. He would christen his first battleship El Gringo, and his personal bodyguards, whose uniform, which he spent an entire evening designing, bore a strong resemblance to the garb of a guardsman as depicted in A Boy’s Life of Napoleon, would be known as King Kevin’s Royal Hussars.