Eastern Passage by Farley Mowat Read Free Book Online Page B

and fled to a swimming hole on a nearby tributary of the Humber River.
    The pool was barely large enough for me and a school of small minnows called rainbow dace, but we shared it anyway. As they inquisitively nibbled at my bare skin, I downed several warm beers and tried to relax but I was too troubled for that. I could not –
would
not – accept the likelihood that my marriage had come unstuck and, worse still, that it might be
my own fault
. I felt guilty, and was angry about that. I was enormously frustrated, almost incapacitated, and helpless to rectify the situation.
    Angrily flinging an empty beer bottle into the woods, and sending the dace fleeing in all directions, I stumbled out of the pond and went back to work. There was solace – of a sort – to be found in working my ass off, and I could see no other way to fill the void.
    When the house foundation was more or less completed, it was time to put on a carpenter’s hat. I was a rank amateur at that trade, but thegods were kind. Late in July two ex-soldiers bought the abandoned farm directly to the south. Lloyd Coombs and Ben Green were of my own age and both had been carpenters before the war. Having purchased a war-surplus army truck, an old tractor, and a newfangled chainsaw, they were setting themselves up as lumbermen-builders. Since we were all “vets,” we became friends and they were of great assistance to me in the days that followed. They gave me expert advice and were almost my only human contacts until early in September, when Fran’s parents brought her back to me.
    She and I were smilingly polite to each other, but nothing was said about the shadowed weeks just passed. Those weeks never did reveal their secrets to me, remaining a disturbing and unsolved mystery to this day.
    Shortly after Fran’s return, we began raising the log walls of our house. She made herself useful, uncomplainingly rolling logs to the site; holding them firm while I sawed and drilled; and, as the walls slowly rose, keeping me supplied with caulking cotton and the ten-inch nails that pinned the logs together. The blight upon our marriage seemed to dissipate through this shared labour. We became comrades – then lovers once again. Although it was evident we would have to work like the very devil if we were to have a roof over our heads before snow fell I began to feel we might actually pull it off.
    We had little social life that autumn. Our few neighbours were generally a dour lot who may well have thought us unhinged for trying to establish ourselves in the wasteland they and their forebears had created. Relatives occasionally visited. One sultry day my father drove in, not to offer any physical or financial assistance but to deliver a homily. It was high time, he said, for me (and Frances too, if she wished) to enrol in the University of Toronto’s Library School. From there we could expect to graduate into useful and rewarding careers, as he and my mother had done after the First World War. Hisadvice was well meant so I did not take it amiss. I did, however, resent his parting shot that day, addressed to Fran.
    “I should have warned you before that Farley is the roughest carpenter ever conceived. If two planks come within an inch of each other, he considers it a tight fit. I hope your cabin will hold together without too much putty.”
    Raising the walls had been slow, tedious work. The roof went on more quickly, and by the end of September only two major tasks remained – water, and sewage disposal.
    For the well I chose a site close to the house and began digging. At twelve feet, the bottom of my shaft was still bone dry and I was ready to call it quits. Each bucket of earth had to be hauled to the surface with a block and tackle hung from a wooden tripod with the loaded bucket swinging ponderously over me all the while. It was a singularly happy day when water began bubbling up beneath my feet and sent me scrambling up the rickety ladder. But there was no time