 
DAVID SHATH SQUARE Chapter One
MY GRANDFATHER JEB climbed down from the jitney and walked toward the moose. The animal stood in the middle of the tracks, head lowered and defiant. He stopped ten paces short of the stubborn moose and began to speak to it in a solemn, measured voice. From where I sat on the jitney I couldn't make out his words, but as he spoke the moose began to paw the ground with its right foreleg.
My Grandfather moved closer to the animal and raised his voice. The moose began to shake its head back and forth, the sharp points of its palmated antlers swept the gravel rail bed; stones skipped across the ties and pinged off the steel rails into the warm August air.
All the men on the jitney watched this trial of wills with concern. My Grandfather wasn't sitting in the cat bird seat. That angry moose stared him down like a big league pitcher stares down a batter about to strike out. From the corner of my eye, I saw Lee Chang slip a cartridge into his .22 and raise the rifle to his shoulder. Before he could squeeze off a shot, a hand grasped the rifle's barrel and pushed it down.
"You're not going to stop an 800-pound moose with that pea shooter. I'm afraid Jeb is going to have to talk his way out of this mess."
My father was right. My father was right about a lot of things. But he seemed to have forgotten Lee Chang was devoted to my Grandfather and would have thrown himself in front of the moose if he thought his sacrifice would save him.
Meanwhile, the moose had advanced. Its antlers were within inches of removing the stubble from my Grandfather's face. He paid little attention to the danger because he wasn't the type to back down from a fight, no matter how overmatched. He raised his voice again and pointed his index finger at the moose.
"You don't scare me. You're not even a big moose. You're a very average moose. A very average homely moose, even by moose standards. Now if you were a l400-pound moose with a real rack of antlers, not those puny little things you've got stuck to your head, then I might be afraid. But you're such an average moose that I'm not going to waste more time talking to you."
My Grandfather turned on his heel and walked away from the moose. It took a few steps toward his retreating back and stopped. It had lost the battle of wills. To vent its frustration and humiliation, it let out a high-pitched snort that made every man on the jitney jump. Not my Grandfather. He just kept walking as if he were out for a Sunday stroll. He whistled a few bars of the Maple Leaf Rag, a Scott Joplin tune that he liked.
After more snorts and bellows, the moose stepped over the tracks and ambled down the gravel embankment into the tamarack bog on the north side of the rail line. It walked about a hundred yards before turning to stare at the jitney.
A moose is an unpredictable animal and I had a feeling this one wasn't finished with us yet. That's why I was hoping Lee Chang would restart the engine and get us moving before something else happened.
The jitney we rode on was a steel platform fitted with bench seats and rolling stock. It was the only vehicle capable of travelling on the rail line that linked us to the outside world. It was powered by a flat head '51 Ford engine scavenged from a pickup truck some unlucky miner had abandoned on the unnavigable cart tracks that served as roads in these parts.
In summer, the jitney was uncovered and it was fine to ride the rails in the open air and allow your senses to soak up the smells, and colors and warmth of the landscape. In winter, the steel platform was covered with the shell of a bus that had served as a house for the widow Holdstone and her seven children. My Grandfather said she deserved better than a tin can for a house because her husband had been killed the summer before in an accident at the Hydro Plant. The men who worked at the Plant had built her a log house that was a lot warmer than the bus shell.
Just about all the men in our village of Pointe du Bois worked at the Hydro Plant. The Plant generated electricity to power the industries of a big city over a hundred miles from The Pointe, as we called it. I had never been to Winnipeg, but my father told me it had a library with three floors and more books than a person could read in a lifetime.
As I mentioned, the jitney was our only connection to civilization. I guess civilization is a relative term because the town of Lac du Bonnet where we were headed seemed a vast city compared to our secluded little community. Lac du Bonnet was about 25 miles west of us and had become the hub for a number of smaller towns that depended on it for food and clothing and, in my Grandfather's case, tobacco and other "indulgences required by the soul".
Once he had climbed back onto the jitney, my Grandfather began to strut like a teenage peacock.
"Did you see me put the fear of God into that homely moose? Why, I had that poor devil quaking like an aspen in a summer gale. Believe me boys, that's the last time that bag of bones will give us trouble. He'll be off his feed for a week."
All the men gathered around my Grandfather and congratulated him. Lee Chang was beside himself with joy and pride. "Very brave, Mr. Jeb. Very brave, man."
Copyright © 1998 David Square/Log Cabin Chronicles/7.97 |
