Excerpt

The costumed guide launched into an enthusiastic history of Daniel Stong’s log cabin at Black Creek. Kate half-listened, more interested in the square logs and the tight fit of the dovetail corners. She pictured the original split cedar shingles and the mud Daniel once squeezed into the cracks that were now replaced with mortar.

The guide tapped Kate’s shoulder, interrupting her rumination.

“Can you believe it took Daniel’s father, Sebald, six years to clear twenty acres at Black Creek—and all without title, not even a lease?”

Farming didn’t interest Kate. She was more interested in something else. She turned to face the guide.

“The Stongs were Loyalists. Why weren’t they granted crown land when they arrived at Black Creek?”

The guide smiled, pleased with Kate’s intelligent question. Most of her tours were with restless school children.

“Unfortunately for the Stongs, crown land in the 1890’s had become scarce.” Her voice lowered. “It hardly seems fair. Especially after their long wagon journey from Pennsylvania.”

Kate had her own theory. Sebald Stong wasn’t military. He was a hardworking man, more interested in his crops and his religion, than in wielding power. He wouldn’t have bothered to contest. Perhaps he had been forewarned about the scarcity of crown land before leaving Pennsylvania. He would have accepted his fate and forged on regardless. The Stongs were accustomed to farming life – the hardship of early frost and drought, the fear of disease. God knows what else. The rougher the life, the tougher they proved they could be.

The guide continued with her lecture, explaining how Sebald had laboured forty hours to reap an acre of wheat with a sickle, but the two-handled scythe allowed Daniel’s generation to reap five times faster without bending at the waist. With the cradle, several acres could be reaped in a single day. Kate had no idea what any of these farm tools looked like, but it hardly mattered. Black Creek Village was surrounded by metropolitan Toronto, sandwiched between Jane and Finch Avenues. There was nothing left to reap at the ancestral farm except tourist dollars.

“Did Daniel also farm land without title?”

“Oh no! He owned over five hundred acres. Or I should say, Elisabeth did.”

“Elisabeth?”

The guide adjusted her late nineteenth century bonnet.

“I’m Elisabeth. Daniel Stong’s wife. She’s my character, remember?”

The porcelain doll face of the congenial Black Creek Village costumed educator was not the least bit reminiscent of the miserable-looking Elisabeth in the faded yellow book.

“Shall we have a look inside?” Kate asked in spite of her doubt that the preserved 1800 log cabin would reveal any clues about her great-great-great grandmother.

It took a few seconds to adjust to the dim light. With her architect’s eye, Kate calculated the cabin’s dimensions at twelve by twenty feet, a tight fit for a family of eight. The space was divided between a common living area and two smaller rooms that were barely large enough for a single bed in each. The windows were add-ons; the only opening in the original structure would have been the door. The pine planks were also an addition, like the concrete slab underneath that had been poured to cover the original dirt floor.

Kate’s eyes were drawn to the stone hearth, the focal point of the home. She imagined the fire hissing and smoking, the iron pots and kettles bubbling, the cedar boughs of a broom scratching the earth, the whirling sounds of the spinning machine. The fantasy made her slightly claustrophobic. The space was so cramped. She could barely breathe. How did Elisabeth Stong manage all those years?

The guide motioned Kate to a ladder-back chair roped off from the rest of the room.

“It’s an original piece. Possibly fashioned by Daniel himself. We don’t allow the public to sit. But seeing as you’re family….”

Kate thought the invitation ridiculous, but didn’t want to offend. She stepped over the rope and sat down. The chair was built for functionality, not comfort, hardly a glorious experience. She sat on her hands to stop the front edge from digging into her thighs. The seat was hard. She couldn’t imagine lasting for more than a few minutes. Then again, she sat for hours staring at a computer screen, oblivious to the ergonomic Aeron chair that she had paid so dearly for.

“Was Elisabeth from a more advantaged family than the Stongs?”

“Why do you ask?”

“You said the land was hers.”

“She was educated. Although, strangely enough, she signed legal documents with an “x”, like her husband who didn’t write.”

“She had no choice,” Kate said evenly.

“What do you mean?” The guide sounded confused.

Kate crossed her ankles.

“She couldn’t upstage him.”

The ladder-back chair was making Kate ill humored and testy. Her lower spine ached and her legs tingled from lack of circulation. She resented Daniel Strong’s freedom to roam his fields and the barn with plenty of fresh air to breathe while Elisabeth stayed cooped up in this cabin like a cow in a stall. Despair filled her, which made no sense. Kate lived in a spacious Old Montreal apartment with twelve-foot ceilings. She was her own boss, fiercely independent, and took orders from no one, not even Doug Spinelli. Here, in this miserable log cabin hundreds of miles from home, someone else’s hopeless life was pushing in at the edges of her consciousness. The intrusion made her angry. She shifted on her seat, thinking it was time to leave this place, now. The lack of air was making her faint.

The guide took out a camera and snapped a photograph of Kate on the chair. The flash was blinding; When Kate’s vision recovered, the guide had removed her white bonnet. An auburn braid hung down the middle of her back. She was stooped over the hearth and the camera in her hand had been replaced by a long wooden spoon. Kate hadn’t noticed the fire before. Nor the strong smell of raw meat that was turning her stomach. The guide’s voice became very low; her words sounded more like groaning than speech. Or blowing wind. Her face shifted from soft and friendly to serious and hard. She began stirring a steaming pot with the wooden spoon. Kate squinted for a better look, but the smoke from the hearth made her eyes sting and water. The wooden spoon clanged against the metal sides of a pot. Louder and louder, like a ringing alarm. Close to deafening. Kate wanted to cover her ears, but her hands were stuck under her thighs. She could no longer feel her fingers. Her legs were a dead weight, holding her prisoner in the ladder-back chair. She gasped for air.