A Preacher and His Wife

Chapter Twenty-One

Things got mostly worse after that. My employment was organized so that any able man who showed up on-site would have their name written down and every man that was still working when it grew dark was given a wage for the day. Because of this, I was able to take a few days off without notice to deal with the aftermath of Mr. Thomas' death.

Clearing out Mr. Thomas' place broke everyone's hearts, especially when we went to the room in the back where he worked and found that the man had been, in his spare time, carving up pews for the church. Four were finished.

The place was a terrible mess though it was clear the man tried to keep things clean as the middle of the floor, and the center of the table was spotless, only he mustn't have been able to see into the nooks and crannies because many places were depressingly filthy.

Anders hadn't looked right since it happened but still, he showed up to help us. He asked if he could keep Mr. Thomas' bent tin cup. No one had issue with this.

Little Bit was even more of a hassle. He must have had a rough time of things before coming to Alston, as the boy knew how to evade grown men and women with ease. No matter what we decided to do with him or where we thought of keeping him, he'd be gone the following morning and we'd later find him at Mr. Thomas' place.

I marvelled at his sense of direction, but also it was frustrating. No one liked the idea of tying the child up while they slept, but this being said, it was far too cold for him to be running around on his own and when Mr. Clarke took Mr. Thomas' land back and sold it to another trapper, the boy was no longer able to sleep there.

In addition to everything else, we no longer had someone who made candles and the man who took Mr. Thomas' land was even coarser than Mr. Davis. He turned it into a bar proper and suddenly town was far less pleasant. There were bar fights often and many times walking to work in the morning, I could see that there was blood on the snow.

I worried about leaving Grace alone so close to town, but we needed the money to buy beans and what little pork we could have as even what she managed to grow in the garden was dwindling.

I spoke to Anton about the bar and he knew immediately what I was getting at. "I would supply them with less if I could afford it, Mr. Moore," he said. "Maybe in the spring." And though it was not what I was hoping to hear, I understood.

And then, there was an accident at work. Someone hadn't tied things properly, and when Mr. Bergman was climbing up on the log pile in the sled to help pull the next log in, things moved beneath him and rolled and the lower half of him was caught underneath.

What Grace and the Germans said about deaths happening in threes crossed my mind, but the men around me knew what to do, and I followed their instruction. We lifted the logs off Mr. Bergman and someone pulled him away and though he was badly injured, it didn't seem like he'd die.

Mr. Weber came to site and offered up his own sled and horses to take Mr. Bergman to Coburg as one of his legs was most certainly broken. At first, Mr. Bergman refused, saying, "I'm not paying for a doctor for a broken bone. Someone get me a drink and someone else push it back right."

Mr. Weber said he'd seen this sort of injury before and if it wasn't set properly there was the risk of Mr. Bergman being slower and weaker for the rest of his life and said that he would pay for the doctor himself. He said this was because he didn't want to lose out on an employee, but I felt certain the man's motive was kindness.

Mr. Bergman was brought whiskey, which he downed remarkably fast, and this seemed to settle him. He agreed and we brought him to the sled and I thought to go with him, but he asked instead that I go home early and tell Karin that he'd likely not return until the following day.