A Northern Light(35)

"Oh, Uncle Fifty, where have you been? You haven't heard, have you?"

"Heard what? I been on da Saint Lawrence for wan year and den da Ausable and da Saint Regis, too."

I sighed. "Come on. Lets get the kerosene. There's lots to tell you. And none of it good."

I had Lou to help me, so I was able to get my uncle seen to quicker than I'd thought. I had to sit with him and hold his hand for a while, though, after I told him about my mother and brother. Uncle Fifty doesn't hold much back. When he's happy he laughs, and when he is heartbroken—as he was to hear my mamma had died—he cries like a child. Pa says that's because he is one.

I got to school two hours late. Classes were over for the rest of the students; it was just Weaver and myself going then. Miss Wilcox was standing outside the schoolhouse looking for me when I arrived. "I thought you weren't coming, Mattie! What happened?" she asked. "Weaver's on his second exam already."

I explained everything, settled myself, and started my tests. Each one was two hours long. We'd taken two yesterday and were taking three more today. When we finished, I felt pretty confident that I'd passed them. They were my best subjects, though—composition, literature, and history. Yesterday's—mathematics and science—had been harder. On the walk home Weaver told me he thought he'd done quite well on mathematics and history and fairly well on literature and science, but he was worried about composition. It would be another week until we found out our grades. I wondered again, as we walked, why I even bothered. I still had no way of getting myself to New York.

By the time I got home, it was nearly six o'clock. I had been so wrapped up in my exams, and in rehashing them with Weaver, that I'd forgotten all about my uncle. Until I smelled cooking. And heard music from a harmonica, and laughter. And saw lights blazing in the kitchen. It didn't smell, nor sound, nor even look like my house. Not at all.

"Ba cripes!" my uncle bellowed when I came in the door. He was clean, his hair was shorter, and his beard had been trimmed. He was wearing a fresh shirt and trousers and my mother's apron. "Where you been? Da supper, she ready since two weeks!"

"I'm sorry, Uncle Fifty," I said. "I had a lot of exams."

"You pass all your test?"

"I don't know. I hope so. I think so."

"Good! We make a drink to you den..." He poured a short glass of whiskey, handed it to me, then lifted his glass. My pa was sitting by the fire with his own glass of whiskey. I looked at him uncertainly, but he nodded at me. "To Mademoiselle Mathilde Gauthier ... da first wan of all les Gauthiers to get a deeploma!" my uncle said, then knocked back the contents of his glass in one go. My pa did, too. I took one swallow and coughed myself breathless. It burned like the dickens. Poor man's vacation, Pa calls it. I'd never had a vacation, but if that's what one was like, I'd just as soon stay home. My sisters laughed at me and cheered. Beth blew on Uncle Fifty's harmonica. Uncle Fifty whooped. I felt my cheeks burn with whiskey and pride.

"Come on, Mattie, wash up, would you? We're starving!" Beth said. Only then did I notice the mess—the pots and pans on the stove, the sink full of bowls and dishes, the flour all over the floor, and Barney in his bed, gnawing on a big greasy bone.

Uncle Fifty had cooked a feast for us—a real lumberjack supper. He made us all sit down at the table, then he started pulling dishes out of the warming oven one after another. We could barely believe our eyes. There was fried pork and milk gravy speckled with bits of crackling, potatoes hashed with onions, baked beans flavored with smoky bacon, maple syrup, and mustard, hot biscuits, and a towering stack of pancakes stuck together with butter and maple sugar. There was not one green vegetable. Lumberjacks are not fond of them.

"Uncle Fifty, I didn't know you could cook," Abby said.

"I learn dis past weentair. Da cook on da Saint Regis job, he drop dead. Bad heart. All da lombairjock have to take turn cooking. I learn."

"You learned good, Uncle Fifty," Lou said, shoveling beans onto her plate. "You get an A-plus. Will you teach Mattie how to cook? She can only make mush and pancakes. And a pea soup that's so bad, it's more pee than soup."

Uncle Fifty roared. My sisters laughed. Especially Lou. Pa raised an eyebrow at her, but that didn't quiet her. She knew she was safe because our uncle was laughing.

"Don't mind them, Mattie," Abby said, petting me.

"You like my pea soup, don't you, Ab?" I asked, hurt.

She looked at me with her kind eyes. "No, Mattie, I don't. It's awful."

My family laughed harder then, even Pa cracked a smile, and I laughed, too, and then I ate until I thought I would burst out of my dress. And when we were all so stuffed that we were groaning, Uncle Fifty took a huge rhubarb pie out of the oven and we ate that, too, doused with fresh cream.

When dinner was over, my father and uncle went to sit in the parlor. Uncle Fifty took his whiskey bottle, his satchel, his Croghan boots, and a tin of mink oil with him.

Beth's eyes never left his satchel as he walked out of the room. "Do you really think he's got dirty clothes in there?" she whispered.

"I think the dishes need scraping," I said. "Get started."

We washed the dishes, wiped the table, and mopped the floor just as fast as we could so that we could go sit with our uncle. His visits were rare. He mostly lived in Three Rivers, Quebec, where he and my father were born, and only showed up every two or three years, when logging jobs brought him near.