It was the easiest life I’d ever lived, for a while. It didn’t take me long to figure out that Surly Bill liked being surly. Or, more like, he liked everyone to think he was surly. But he was a surprisingly kind man.
Shortly after I started working for him, I took a look at the old books. I’d spent a night and a day figuring how much “Skeeter” had stolen from him, but when I offered to show him, he refused, angrily. He said he knew Skeeter had made a fool of him, and he didn’t need to know how much of a fool.
Opal, the camp cook, told me much later on that Surly Bill had been too kind to Skeeter. Far from “driving him off,” he sent Skeeter packing with one of the older horses and a bag full of fresh biscuits that Opal cooked herself. She told me Bill should have shot Skeeter dead for what he did, and said most people would have thought he’d have the right to do it. But that was Bill.
Opal told me another story about Bill that took me a while to believe. Old Jim Burrows at the mill has more kids than he knows what to do with. I guess Maddie (Jim’s wife) is so damned used to being pregnant that she feels empty without a baby in her stomach.
One day, one of Jim’s kids (I think it was Tommy) goes messing around where he shouldn’t have, and breaks his leg.
Now, broken legs, that happens around here a lot. I mean, we’re a mill. Accidents happen all the time. We got a camp medic by the name of Francis McNair, but he’s just sort of a “wrap it up, rub some dirt in it, and walk until it don’t hurt no more” medic. This break was probably beyond Francis’ medical skills because the bone was sticking out of Tommy’s leg and there was a lot of blood.
Old Jim goes running to Surly Bill and says he’s got to get a horse and wagon to get Tommy to town and see Doc Hayworth. Surly Bill blows his top at Old Jim and shouts, “Are you kiddin’ me? I need you to run the saw! It ain’t our fault your dumbass kid don’t know how to walk without fallin’ down! Get your ass back to the mill!”
I must have had a look on my face like I’d just kissed a salt lick, because Opal started to laugh and laugh. Opal says right after that Surly Bill comes storming into the house and shouts for her to get Billy Crandal, our messenger. He tells Billy to take two horses into town as soon as possible and tell Doc Hayworth to ride here like his damn life depends on it, and tell him we got a child with a busted leg where the bone is sticking out. Then Bill goes running to Francis to help with Tommy’s leg, at least to get the bleeding stopped.
We run a sawmill here. There’s lots of blades. Francis was real good at stopping bleeding.
When Doc got to the camp about two hours later he said it was a right smart thing Bill did, and that the shock of being moved so far might have put Tommy in the ground. When Jim came to thank Bill for what he did, Bill said, “Take yer thanks and shove it, Jim. It’s cheaper for me to get the Doc up here than it would be to have to deal with you being sour about your boy’s leg for months. Now you know he’s gonna be fine, you take a week unpaid. I don’t want you near that saw until your head’s on straight!”
Opal told me she heard Bill himself talking to Skeeter. Skeeter about lost his mind at how much Doc was gonna charge us for coming up here on short notice like that, and Skeeter damn near fainted when he heard Bill say that the week off Jim was getting was to be paid leave, and paid in full.
That was the way Bill was. Opal reckons that’s also about when Skeeter realized he could take advantage of him.
Kindness, I was beginning to learn, was often seen as a weakness. So Bill tried to let as few people know how kind he was as he could.
Opal was the only person I could consider a friend at the camp. Born in Louisiana, she talked funny but nobody would ever say anything to her about it. Even though her skin was darker than mine, the men all treated her with respect, or at least without open disrespect. First off, it ain’t a good idea to get on the bad side of the camp cook. Second, coming from the Bayou like Opal did, she had a real mystery about her. She was always quick to laugh and had a real good nature, but when she wanted to, she could send you a look that gave you the sweats in winter and made you cold in the summer.
Opal was born a slave in Louisiana, and she said when she was about twelve years old, she became a house nigger. At fifteen, she started working in the kitchen, and by the time she was twenty she ran the kitchen on one of the biggest plantations in the South. She said she actually had a pretty easy life as a slave, especially since it was all she knew. But then some Union soldiers came by and “freed” her by burning her home to the ground.
She didn’t have anything left. The menfolk in the plantation were already in the war, and the womenfolk were raped by the Union soldiers. She was spared most of the horror because early on, when she screamed at the soldiers to stop, she took a rifle butt to the back of the head. Union soldiers were supposed to be the good folks. In a big enough bushel, you’ll always find bad apples, I guess.
When she woke up, she couldn’t see another living soul by the dim light of the plantation’s embers, so she just started walking.
She got rounded up as an “escaped slave” and feared the worst, a hanging, or at the very least, the whipping post. But no, she was used to slavery and knew how to say “yessir” and “nosir” and how to keep her head down. She spent another three years working in a kitchen, her talent with spice, flour, milk and bread was again her saving grace.
Then the war ended, and she was “free.”
She never did say how she ended up so far west, and every time I’d ask, she’d smile and look sly and say, “Dat’s a story ‘bout a man. You tell a story like dat out loud too many time, you start to lose the story in y’heart.”
I wished I knew what man she was talking about, but I never got the right of it. Although one day I did see Opal and Bill standing in the kitchen, discussing something. Then Bill said something in really exaggerated French, and they both laughed fit to burst. While they were laughing, Bill swayed closer to Opal and his shoulder touched hers, and he smiled like I never seen him smile before.
I asked him later that day if he’d ever been to Louisiana, and he got all gruff and surly again and told me to mind my own goddamned business, which usually meant “yes.”
Opal was a big woman who would tell me at least once a week, “Never you trust a skinny cook. Skinny cooks don’t taste da food. You got to taste it to know it’s right. If you ain’t taste it, you ain’t cookin’ with love, honey.” Opal was big, but she had a beauty about her too. I’d catch some of the lumberjacks and the sawmen looking at her from time to time. Of course, there wasn’t much else to look at. Some of the men had families who lived in cabins on or near the mill, but it was a bad idea to get caught looking at another man’s wife when you all worked with axes.
I heard one of the men tell another one that Opal looked like a pretty girl that ate four other pretty girls. The other man made a sound of disgust, and the first one laughed it off as a joke. To this day, I wonder if the man was disgusted at the thought of Opal being pretty when she was fat, or of the thought of Opal eating other people, or of the thought that Opal could still be pretty and black at the same time.
Lots of the men thought Opal was something they called a Voodoo Lady. It was some nonsense they’d gotten from a jack that came from Louisiana. Opal was another Christian who had never read the book she lived by, but she was alright with me. She said when she was little, Jesus filled her heart for her, and made it roomy enough to take in everyone, the good and the bad. I think people thought Opal knew the Voodoo because she was real wise. She had that look that I called the “Voodoo look” to myself. She’d give you that look and you’d know that she just learned something about you and was trying to figure out if she was going to use it to help you, or use it against you.
The books never took me long. For the first few months, Surly Bill would make me double check all the dailies, and triple check the weeklies. One time, about three months into my job, while I was double checking the dailies I found a mistake. Bill came to my room (which was where I kept the books) and I showed him that I’d done a mistake that cost him two dollars. It wasn’t a math mistake, it was me working too fast and smudging my writing. I went right to my bed and got the tin box that I kept all my wages in, pulled out two dollars, and held it towards him. I must have been shaking like a leaf, I was so scared Bill would be mad and want to thrash me, or worse, send me packing like he did Skeeter.
Bill looked me up and down, took my two dollars, and yelled, “Don’t you ever make a dumbass mistake like that again!”
The next week he doubled my wage and told me I only had to re-check the sums I wasn’t completely sure about.
Winter came on quick up that close to the Sierras, and that meant a big slow down. The camp cleared out and Bill paid end of season wages. Most of the men, those who didn’t have family living at the mill, left to go find winter work. Or some to just spend their money until the snow melted. Bill called it “going skeleton.” Opal, Bill, and two families stayed. Bill looked at me when we were done settling the end of season pay and asked if I had a home to go to. I must have looked pretty confused because I told him, “I thought this was my home.”
Bill got a funny look in his eye and disappeared. Without the books to do, I spent time with Opal that day, learning a little bit about how to cook. I’ll tell you what, Opal really got down to it when there wasn’t nearly eighty men to cook for. We had meals that were downright opulent.
When I came back later in the night I saw that my stuff had been taken out of my office. I thought for sure I was being kicked out and went looking for Bill to beg for my home back, but then I noticed my stuff had been moved to a larger store room. The bed was bigger, and there were nicer, really thick blankets stuffed with goose feathers. There was a wood stove, and lots of wood chips in case I got cold.
I cried for the first time since I lived with Preacher David. It was the first time I ever cried because I was happy.
I cried because I had a place I could call home. I’d have cried even harder if I’d known it wouldn’t last.