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could get used to it, you know.”
    Rod felt his heart sink at his father’s words. Ever since Melvin had died, he’d known that this day was coming. He’d just refused to believe it. Who could blame his poor father? How could he leave him? The old man was looking at him, beseeching.
    â€œYes Pop, I know you need me. I’ll stay with you.”
    That night he dreamed again. He was at the seashore; the tide was going out, and out, and out. As it did, tall spruce trees grew up where the sand was. When he awoke, Rod lay still, thinking bitterly that if there was ever a dream that was significant, this was it. He could see the pattern of the days and years to come. He was dreading it. Hating it.
    That summer Rod started in the woods with his father. He had written his grade eleven exams, passed tolerably well, and his father thought it was good enough for him to manage the contracting business. It was more than
he’d
started with, he said. Rod was now a man, seventeen years old, and working as a full-time logger.
    As they worked side by side, Rod watched his father closely to seewhere he cut corners to increase his profits. The only way Rod could make sense of it was that a woods contractor was like being a private businessman in that you had some control over your expenses. But that wasn’t quite right either, because in another way, the A.N.D. Company was in command of the operation to the extent that sometimes the contractor felt as though he was no different from the loggers.
    The Anderson camp, considered a prime spot, was closest to Badger: across the River and in through the forest on a woods road about twenty-five miles up on Sandy Lake. The camp held a crew of forty men who were fed whatever was available in foodstuffs, by a cook and cookee. White navy beans were the staple food: boiled, baked or fried. This, coupled with white bread, strong tea and molasses buns, day after day, breakfast and supper, was far from being nourishing, even though it filled their bellies. All the camps were the same. The Company kept everything on a tight rein.
    The bunks were infested with bedbugs and lice. The only heat came from a converted oil drum. The men had only cold water to wash in. Most never washed at all. It was 1933 and camp life had not come forward in the almost thirty years that the A.N.D. Company had been harvesting pulpwood.
    Eli and Rod Anderson had never seen anything different. Woods camps were expected to provide only the barest essentials. The men didn’t come in to them to work as loggers expecting luxuries and fine accommodations. They never considered change, and for sure the Company didn’t.
    One evening, in early summer, Rod took his fishing pole and went over to Drum’s Pond, not far from the camp. Trout were a good supplement to the beans diet, but it was hard to get free time to sit by a pond and fish. He cast out his line and sat quietly gazing at the still pond water, so different from the ocean that was always alive with motion. Sometimes Rod even envied the River, making its way unhindered to the sea, while he was forever stuck inland among the trees. Such foolish thoughts only depressed him, but sometimes he got so caught up in his own private misery and anger that he couldn’t help himself.Rod glanced to his left and noticed a man sitting no more than three feet away. It was Peter Drum. Rod had not heard him come up, but that didn’t surprise him. He knew the Indians moved through the forest like shadows. He had grown up knowing the Mi’kmaq people. Many of them were trappers and guides; some were loggers.
    The old man took out his pipe and filled it with tobacco, all the while watching Rod.
    â€œGood evening, sir,” Rod ventured.
    Peter struck a match, applied the flame to the tobacco, and puffed until the pipe was lit. “Do you smoke, young man?”
    â€œUh . . . no, not very much.”
    â€œWould you like to draw on my pipe? I would be