Annie Proulx - Barkskins

At breakfast one day Dieter said, dithering over his eternal dish of smoked salmon and two poached eggs, “Your sister and brother will visit next week. James Bardawulf has a very handsome wife, Caroline. His law practice is doing well. You have—”

“They are not my sister and brother, Father.”

Dieter ignored the interruption and went on.

“—have not met Caroline. The last time you were here she was abroad with her mother. She and James Bardawulf have twin baby boys — Raphael and Claude. And Sophia married Andrew Harkiss in January. Perhaps I already told you that? She is somewhat young and I feel he will have a steadying effect. Harkiss attended Yale Forestry School, by the way, and started working for us four or five years ago. He revived our cutting operations, got us into Ecuador for the balsa. And after the great fire, into California redwood. He persuaded us to buy up a good deal of prime timber on the Oregon and Washington coasts. It seems the company is regaining its lost wealth.”

“What great fire do you mean?”

“Why the great San Francisco fire after the earthquake — it destroyed every building two and a half miles north from the railroad freight sheds. They say it burned half the city. Surely you saw stories about it in the papers, wherever you were?”

“No. I rarely read the papers.”

“The only buildings that survived were those constructed of redwood. Nothing could have better displayed its flame-resistant qualities. People demanded — still demand — redwood lumber to rebuild. Andrew accepted the challenge. He had men in the woods before the ashes were cold, and they worked every minute there was light to see. The mills ran twenty-four hours a day.”

Charley faintly remembered Harkiss, who had been in the Yale forestry program during his own short time there.

“Andrew is very ambitious about restoring Breitsprecher to its former position. He dedicates himself to its improvement in every way.” With no irony Dieter paraphrased Coué—“Every day, in every way, he strives to become better and better.”

“Father, how do you feel about this logging enterprise? Better and better?”

“I give it my support, as we start replanting a year after they get out the cut. It is a balanced process.”

“I can’t imagine what you think will replace two-thousand-year-old redwoods — Scotch pine seedlings? And what of the diversity of species? What about the soil? Erosion? All those qualities you once cared about? Are you cutting old-growth fir and cedar and planting pine? You mentioned Oregon and Washington.”

“I suppose I have become more practical through years with Lavinia. So, cutting whatever grows along the shoreline. The big timber in rough country remains untouched — we can’t get that out without the great cost of rails and engines.”

“What about the watershed protections? The hydrology will be severely compromised. I have been in that country. It is mountainous with steep slopes. And I know that not only redwoods, but those big cedars, can swell out twenty feet across at the bottom — your choppers likely have to use springboards, get up where the girth is ten foot less. The waste must be prodigious.”

“Well. I suggest you talk to Andrew about that; he’s the man with the ax.” Dieter laughed.

“Oh God,” said Charley at the thought of that dandified homme chic gripping an ax.

• • •

When James Bardawulf and Caroline arrived, that youngest son went straight to the sideboard and made himself a whiskey highball; he did not ask anyone else what they would like. That was for Dieter to do — let him pour sherry, whiskey, more whiskey for Charley. Old familiar tensions seeped into the room.

Sophia and Andrew Harkiss were the family showpieces. Andrew’s even-featured red face and intensely blue eyes, his slender but muscular body gave him an advantage. Yet under the fashionable exterior Dieter saw a hunger that made him think of a dog in the rain watching the master walk to and fro behind lighted windows. And there was James Bardawulf, baring his teeth in a caustic smile. His wife, Caroline, in a modish silk dress, Sophia very pretty. And Charley in his worn tweed lounge suit and unpolished boots. His children, thought Dieter, his dear, terrible children.

“So, Charles, you’re paying us a visit,” said Sophia. She was a certain type of beauty with upright posture and pale hair, her young face ornamented by a beautifully shaped mouth.

“Do you object?” He leaned forward, twiddled his fingers.

“It would hardly matter if I did,” said Sophia. “You do as you please. You always have.” She paused a minute, then delivered her dart. “That is, you have done as you please so far. ”

They took their places at the table, handsome with its array of Spode plates and cut-crystal stemware.

Dieter said, “Is your room pleasant, Sophia?”

“It’s very pleasant, Papa, as long as the wind doesn’t come up. How a corner room makes the wind whistle.”

“Well, that’s it. It’s a corner so the wind will catch on it as it changes direction,” said Andrew. “It doesn’t bother me.”

The maid brought in a tureen of carrot soup, hot and spicy.

Conversation lagged, caught for a few minutes on Peary’s claim for the pole, died away, touched on weather, on Andrew’s house, being built by a local man with modernist ideas, on James Bardawulf’s new Model T Ford.

“I don’t know why anyone wants to go one hundred miles an hour,” said Dieter. “It’s folly.”

“Father, if you tried an automobile I think you would see its advantages.”

“What, go rocketing along by pressing one’s foot on a knob? I find the idea effete. A man needs to acquire horsemanship, needs to hold the reins !”

“There is something to be said for the skill of handling and riding horses,” agreed James Bardawulf, who was an indifferent equestrian but an avid collector. “But I am more interested in weapons. I recently acquired two Zulu shields said to be from the Isandlwana battle.”

The conversation stuttered along. James Bardawulf asked Harkiss, “What are the main features of your new house?”

“Automobiles, houses — is not money our subject?” said Sophia in her offensive drawl. “I wonder we have not had a hash-through of the values of stocks and bonds, the excoriation of New York banks.”

“Yes! And as to that,” said Dieter, pleased with the subject, and missing the irony, “I propose a toast to Chicago. I daily rejoice that we settled here, not in New York. Only look at the differences in the last panic. New York was in turmoil, banks and trusts failed — that fellow at Knickerbocker Trust. But in Chicago we had a central clearinghouse and a special bank examiner to keep an eye on liquidity. The New York institutions fell short in these respects as well as on liquidity. That’s when old Morgan had to push his way in and ‘save the day.’ ”

“Some,” said James Bardawulf, “say panics are unavoidable side effects of a free market.”

“And there are those who say such events are the fault, not of the free market, but of unscrupulous individuals and unregulated proceedings, and that the only way to avoid periodic panics and financial failures is to have a government-controlled national bank as most European countries do.”

“I expect there will be a time when that will come to pass, though I doubt I’ll see it,” said Dieter.

• • •

Over the almond pudding Dieter said, “Andrew, Charley was asking me about the West Coast operation — the redwood and cedars. He wonders—”

“I was hoping we could have a family dinner without talk of trees or forest management,” interrupted Sophia, disappointed that the discussion of money had turned into a review of a distant New York panic. She enjoyed hearing about the company’s increasing value, thanks to Andrew. As she had secured Andrew, it followed that she was the source for the company’s improving fortunes.