The Sentinel

This book is a work of fiction.  References to real people, events, organizations, or locales are intended to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously.  All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

This is for Janice, with love and gratitude.

We’re all riders on this train.

- Bruce Springsteen

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Our world is crisscrossed by information sentinels, some obvious and visible.

-Virginia Eubanks

Dreams

It came at her in blasts of steam and smoke. Standing in the middle of the tracks she stared at the black mass bearing down on her.  It screamed steel, cutting through the land like incisions in flesh, hissing, screeching.  Her heart pounded.  The smoke split the mist, the solitary beam burned of the sun.  It stung her eyes.  The ground quivered under her feet, she bit down on her lip.  The stationmaster saw her through the window.  Again, she’s doing this.  He ran to the platform.  Useless to shout out, nothing could be heard over the shrill of the screaming whistle.  The train straightened, charging, pushing the air, creating a wind that blew over her face. With one ear-piercing blast, she knew the time was right. She jumped up to the platform.  The locomotive shot past her in a blast of hot wind.  She caught her breath.  Couplings rattled, brake blocks ground the train to a stop.  The 8:15 A.M. milk-run to Montréal sighed with steam of relief. 

She walked briskly to the end of the platform, away from the swinging doors of the railcars, sat on the bench, opened her notebook and leaned over to write.  Her heavy thick brown hair cascaded to her shoulders and over the surface were other hairs of auburn, copper and chestnut.  The conductor shouted: Everyone for Lenox! Toutes les mondes, nous sommes ici Lenox.

In the red glow from the fire-box, some of the passengers stood huddled together on the platform, encumbered by bundles and suitcases.  Other passengers fell into the arms of mothers, some shook hands with friends; one walked off alone, a canvas pack slung over his shoulder, and disappeared into the forest.  A woman with a fringed shawl over her head stepped off one of the railcars.  She held a small wooden box to her chest as if it were a baby. She looked around, searching as she walked towards the station. There was an old man with a young boy and girl carrying oilcloth bundles. There was a couple embracing, kissing.  She wrote in her notebook:

10th of May 1884

True love, the dream of every woman.  She is dreaming now as they walk off arm-in-arm to a waiting carriage, far from her parents for the first time in her life, she is a bit apprehensive.  He is thinking of when he’ll save up twenty dollars to buy a suit in which he can marry this woman of his dreams. Off they go with a crack of the whip, into the sunrise to a life of toil and deceit.  He will run off with his best friend’s wife leaving her alone and penniless with child.

She loved the movement of her hand, holding the pen inching over the paper in time with the relaxed movement of her wrist and arm, the frozen moment when the pen stops, hovers over the paper waiting for the next word to come, flowing on with great sweeping arcs and squiggles until the past is lost.  You cannot write dream three times, she thought. There must be another word. 

Since she was thirteen she has been telling stories with each arrival at the Lenox train station.  From this bench she has seen Swedes, Poles, Scots, Russians, and the starving Irish for three years. Many of the immigrants have spent the previous three months in a leaky boat crossing through the storms of the North Atlantic, each with a vision of a new life, each trying to get their feet steady on solid ground.  She read body language: smiles, tears, hugs, kisses, the moment when two faces look down at the same time and walk away.  She knew the timetable for the trains to and from St. John, Portland, Maine, and Lac-Mégantic to the east; Sherbrooke and Montréal to the west.

Her eyes drifted off and she wrote:

At the last moment, a young fellow appears at the rail car door. He comes down the stairs as if he were about to step into the ocean.  He looks about, confused.  Given his rough attire and the shabby wicker suitcase, I think he might be a stowaway.  I was about to offer some assistance when Mr. Sullivan comes along the platform and stops in front of the young fellow.  He looks the boy up and down as if he is appraising the value of a horse. Sullivan gestures with his finger that the boy must follow him.  Sullivan marches off, the boy trailing behind.  I suspect the young fellow is a Home Boy from England.  If they are such a long way from home, why are they called Home Boys?

Emma! her brother George called out.  He was sitting at the reins of a buckboard harnessed to Rebel, a muscular Bay with a thick black mane.

Emma hitched up her skirt and hopped aboard as the stationmaster came to the edge of the platform. You must stop doing that, young lady, he said.

I’m sorry, Mr. Eksteins.  You really mustn’t worry.

George snapped the reins and Rebel took up the trot past the limestone train station, turning right on to Rue Frontenac.  Emma’s hazel eyes took in the street around her with a depth of curiosity that found everything worthy of note.

George snapped the reins, his mind, as usual, a thousand miles away.  He was as long limbed as his sister but that was where the resemblance ended.  He was two years older; his hair was coal black and long; his eyes deep set.  There was an austere solemnity to his face, his brow furrowed as if he were a preacher considering the sins of the world.  Emma never considered writing about her older brother but she knew that the day would come when she would have to write about George on a platform boarding the train for somewhere.  She picked up the two books propped on the seat: L’Assommoir – he’d been reading it for two weeks – but the other was new to her, and she read out the title: "A Memory of Solferino".

It’s a memoir, said George.  Henri Dunant, Swiss businessman.  In 1859 he witnesses this terrible battle.  It changes his life.  He spends the next ten years traveling through Europe, persuading sworn enemies to change their ancient ideas. He founded the International Committee of the Red Cross.  That’s the idea in the book.  He develops this brilliant piece of logic. Then he vanishes.  C’mon Rebel, he calls with a click of his tongue.  We’ve got to get there today. 

With a huff, Rebel picked up the pace, pulling the buckboard up the hill of Rue Frontenac, past the bank, the post office, and a large empty lot beyond which Emma could see the wilderness only a hundred feet or so beyond the buildings.  It was a never-ending task of pushing back the advancing forest creating a narrow strip of uprooted and rotting tree stumps.  Left alone, Nature would march back to re-conquer what had been ripped out seventy years ago when Alfred Lenox chose this site at a bend in the St.François River  as the location for a grist mill.  It proved to be a good choice and the mill thrived.  The hamlet of Lenox, as Alfred proudly named it, did not grow very much beyond a few farmhouses and a livery stable. But geography shined on the hamlet of Lenox when the railroad surveyors came through.  The gentle slope of the valley and the narrowing at the bend in the river made the site ideal for a bridge and a railway station.  The line was connected five years ago and Nature was pushed back further.

At the Talk-To-Thomas’ General Store, Mr. Hatley was leaning against the balcony strut, puffing on his pipe: Hey there George.  You tell your father he’s a fool for buying that rag.

I’ll be sure to tell him, Mr. Hatley, said George.  You have yourself a good day, now.

We should name it The Rag, said Emma.  It’ll save money in the end.

Don’t worry. We’re going to change all that.

I’m not worried.

Through the large windows of Madame Lajoie’s boulangerie, Emma saw the maître chef with her face powdered white; past the Hotel De Witt where on the second floor balcony Julia, the chambermaid, was shaking out a carpet, slapping it against the balustrade, sending up a cloud of dust.  In the barbershop Casimir Zubov was polishing off the black leather chair for the next head; and at Finnegan’s Tavern the regulars emerged hungry and bleary eyed, stumbling into the morning light. 

At the top of the hill Rebel reared up to avoid a black hood suspended atop a wooden tripod on which was mounted a large format camera.  Underneath, a pair of shoes stirred up dust.  The camera and tripod shifted, the black hood with them.  Rebel snorted.  H.C. Branch emerged from under the black hood. Get in there you two, he shouted to Emma and George, pointing to a group of people gathered on the balcony of a two-storey wood frame grey building. A bank of windows spanned the front with freshly-painted gold curlicue lettering on the glass: The Sentinel . Framed in the viewfinder of the camera was the new publisher and editor, Samuel Lloyd-Craig.  Next to him stood his assistant, Leah Spencer, a tall, distinguished-looking woman in her late-forties wearing wire-rimmed glasses.  There was Wesley the office boy who walked with a rigid left leg that had been crushed under an oak tree on his father’s farm. Beside him were the printers: Raleigh MacIntyre with his perpetual black fingers and his son Cal.  Emma sat on the steps in front of the group while George leaned up against a pillar next to Peter Spanyaardt, a journalist wearing a snappy bowler hat.

Branch poked his head out from under the hood to look back to the sun coming over the hill.  He must hurry.  In a few minutes the sun would pass and cast a shadow from the overhang of the second floor balcony. Branch was a thin man, quick and wiry, light on his feet.  He never wore a hat - too cumbersome to wear under the camera hood, his thick black hair glistening in the sunlight.  His eyes had broad, pale, flickering pupils and missed nothing while hunting the world in search of a photograph. Emma once asked him what H.C. stood for and he said he couldn’t recall.  Emma assumed that he simply never liked the names given to him. How bad could they be? she once wrote. Harold Christopher? Henry, that’s a good one.  Henry... Henry Columbus. Howard. Hugh...

You must keep very still.  Don’t breathe, said Branch.

And that is supposed to bring on a smile? said Samuel.

Branch reached his hand out from under the hood to the lens and turned it to open the shutter.  He pulled the black slide away, exposing the wet plate.  For the next five seconds, he held his breath. One...two...three...He held his breath not for fear of shaking the camera but because this was the moment when no matter how much he had prepared the light, the framing, the focusing, this moment was beyond his control and he had to place his complete trust in the camera alone.  ...Four...five...He pushed the slide back and breathed again. That’s it.

I want that framed for the office, Branch, Samuel said as he went inside. 

Emma was not officially part of the staff but she walked in with everyone else anyway, certain that one day soon she would be filing stories.  Her father knew she could write but he told her, Experience, my dear, you watch how the others do it and you’ll learn.

A large editorial office occupied the first floor.  Sunlight poured through a line of windows to the south side.  The ceilings were high, the walls olive-shaded and emerald green and covered with bookcases stuffed with books and stacks of newspapers from Montréal, Toronto, New York and Boston.  To the left ran a staircase leading up to Branch’s photo studio and darkroom on the second floor. A Franklin stove was placed in the centre of the office and four support columns stood in a line across the room.  At the back were double doors leading to the typesetting table and the Hoe Rotary printing press. 

Samuel had his desk brought down from upstairs where the previous editor had hidden himself and placed it near the window looking onto Frontenac Street.  The bookcases near his desk were filled with legal texts.  He arranged all the desks, including his own, in a diagonal line extending across the room.  He wanted to feel the heartbeat of the newspaper, its pulse surrounding him.  His previous career was conducted in courtrooms encircled by animosities: the judge bearing down on him, the stone-faced jury, enraged prosecutors and trembling defendants.  Lose there and a life goes out the window.  But here, he believed, life takes on a different form, but no less tenuous. And he wanted to be near all of them, including Raleigh with all of the ink. Ink, that was the blood.

I’d like to have a word with everyone, if I may, said Samuel. Everyone gathered around.  Leah opened a ledger at her desk and began writing the first entry.  She used accounting ledgers because they were longer and she could usually fill one page for each day.  She had black bound cloth ledgers for the fifteen years she had managed Samuel’s law office, filling twenty volumes of them.  Now she was starting a new set of green cloth ledgers in which she would record The Sentinel’s ‘dailies’.  She will document everything: the story meetings; the people who walk through the doors; the circulation numbers; the telegrams; the weather; the names of the horses on staff and the oats they will eat.

Samuel hooked his thumbs into his vest pockets and paced back and forth. The relentless pacing is of his courtroom days, his way of keeping the jury focused on him and his arguments, not the accused.  He was a little shorter than his son George but he had broader shoulders, more muscular.  He was fifty-two with a well tanned face framed by a short-cropped white beard. His was the face of a man who is always fighting against something and was not frightened, the face of a man of free, combative intelligence.  He began: Twenty-eight years ago our master printer over here, Raleigh MacIntyre, was arrested and sentenced to sixty days in jail for printing a pamphlet and sending it out to the people of Lenox, Stanstead and several other villages.  When he was released, he found his printing press had been seized and destroyed.  I know this because I was his defense attorney.  I obviously did not do a very good job.  But what happened to Raleigh was not unusual in those days.  It was strictly forbidden for anyone outside of the government printers to publish anything at all.  Joseph Howe, George Brown, and printers like Raleigh have changed all that.  But as you know political parties continue to influence newspapers in many underhanded ways - influencing editorial content and advertising only in assenting papers.

Samuel stopped and looked up.  "That will not be us. We will be an independent press – in the tradition of Le Canadien, The Globe, and The Kingston Chronicle – and we will not be a mouthpiece for the Grits or the Whigs.  I can’t for the life of me fathom why we would want to become insiders when it’s more interesting to be outsiders. Irreverent, inquisitive, impudent, independent – that’s what we’re going to be here.  If any politician wants to communicate with his constituents or announce some policy or another, he can come here and we’ll interview him on our terms.  We’ll still do the church socials and the weddings and the funerals and all that.  But we’re also going to write about the working conditions in the factories, the railway, the farmers, the shop owners, and the changes that are coming, the changes that are already here and how they’re affecting people.  I want a telegraph machine in here to bring news from around the world and I want to explain to our readers how the telegraph works.  Now you all know I have not the foggiest of how to run a newspaper.  That’s why I’m going to need each and every one of you.  But I do know what I like to read and that’s what is going to be in The Sentinel.  Does anyone have any questions?"

Yes, I do, said Cal.  Are we witnesses for the prosecution or the defense?

I’m sorry, Samuel said. I’ll have to break some old habits. Now, the first thing I want to do is double the print run.

You did say you didn’t have the foggiest idea of how to run a newspaper, said Leah.

Surely we can sell two thousand copies, he said.

There are only eight hundred people who live here, Samuel, Leah said impatiently.

So we’ll sell them at any price, whatever it takes.

Does that mean giving them away for free?

As I said, at any price.  There are fifty people arriving here by train every week. Isn’t that right, Emma?

Yes, she said. There were at least ten new arrivals today.

Samuel looked at Cal. He was serious about keeping Cal and his father on as printers. Without their experience the paper would surely fail. But he also worried that they would consider him an interloper, too inexperienced to know how to run a newspaper.  To them newspaper printing was an art, not to be dabbled with by amateurs. Samuel knew he would have to prove himself.  How long before we have to pay for the newsprint?

Cal thought for a moment. Maybe three weeks.

Good, by that time we’ll be up to a thousand.

We could use fewer words, said Peter.  Everyone looked at him with varying degrees of incredulity. Peter stared back:  Seriously. We should write like a telegraph cable, quick and to the point.  There’s too much flowery language in newspapers today. Besides, it’ll mean less ink and less paper. Fewer words and we’ll save some money.

I cannot believe I am hearing this, said Leah.

No, I like it, said Samuel. Fewer words it is. You can start by going up to the rolling mill on Mead’s Hill.  There’s a worker there who says the blast furnace is unsafe and that one of his co-workers was burned last week.  Peter scribbled in his notebook.  George, I want you to go to the Distribution Home, talk to some of the Home Boys, find out where they’re ending up.  Miss Winston over at the library told me one of the children had some nasty cuts to his face. She suspects the boy is being slapped about.

They’re better off here than in some slum in Liverpool. said Cal.

Not if they’re being mistreated.  These boys are going to grow up someday and they’re going to want to know where their parents are.  But don’t be hard on the people who work for the Home.  They’re good folk, they’re doing good work.  Branch, we still can’t publish photographs yet?

Branch looked up from a lens he was polishing. Not yet.

All right.  In the meantime I want you to set up a couple of display stands in the window. Mount whatever photographs you want and we’ll add captions.  The rest of the story will be in the paper.

You’re giving everything away, Samuel, said Leah.  Free newspapers, free photographs.  Are we working for free, too?

I’m certain that some copies will be used to wrap fish.  I don’t care.  If it’s in their home, they’ll read it.

It seemed that Samuel was always giving something away, including his time.  Back in their law office days, Leah’s refrain was: Why don’t you defend clients who will pay instead of these thieves?

He did take on more lucrative clients, but he preferred the thieves. They have more interesting lives, he said.

And what can I write about? Emma suddenly interjected.

Your assignment, my dear, said Samuel, "is to go to school where you should have been an hour ago.  I have no objection to having the youngest Lloyd-Craig writing for The Sentinel or that it be a woman.  She must, however, be a woman, not a sixteen-year old girl.  Don’t worry, one day the best story will come right through that front door.  Peter will take you.  He’s going to Tibbits Hill on the way to the rolling mill."

He kissed Emma on the cheek and she slowly walked across the room making sure each of her steps would be heard.  There was no time for resentments.

Samuel sat the table and watched everyone going about their work, still not grasping that he had done something quite startling even to himself. Two months ago when he had walked into Finnegan’s Tavern to talk to Darcy Stewart, the alleged editor of The Sentinel, the last thing on his mind was that he might buy the newspaper.  He had gone to The Sentinel building assuming he would find the editor.  He was wrong.  The calligraphy painted on the front window was flaking and barely spelt out:  Th  S n  nel.  The large room was empty, the desks unoccupied, a patina of dust covered the windows and the printing press looked like a museum exhibit.  He had been in many newspaper offices before, the Montreal Daily Star for one, and they had been a cacophony of furious scribbling, clattering presses and loud voices shouting out headlines and arguments. Not here.

Samuel wanted Darcy Stewart to assign one of his reporters to the Circuit Court proceedings.  These were the courts where the under classes of the world - the criminals, the immigrants, the attempted suicides, the desperate ones - met their inevitable fates.  Their stories were not being written about in any newspaper.  He spent most of his days in court defending these people but he could not write about them without compromising client-attorney privilege.  It was reasonable to expect a newspaper to do it, or so he thought.

He eventually found Stewart finishing off his second whisky at two o’clock in the afternoon in Finnegan’s Tavern.  Stewart had a florid drinking complexion and alarming growths on his nose.  He blinked his boiled-onion eyes, poured some whiskey into a glass and slid it across to Samuel.  He pushed the glass back.  Stewart spoke in a lumbering brogue, slurring words, blathering nonsense.  Samuel presented his idea but Stewart dismissed it as a waste of newsprint.  Samuel reminded him that he was already wasting paper reprinting political tracts of the Conservative and Liberal parties.  It was obvious that not only was Stewart uninterested in assigning a reporter to the Court, he did not seem interested in publishing a newspaper at all, adding: "Laddie, I’ll give you a dollar to take the bloody albatross from ‘round me neck."

In that moment Samuel’s mind snapped as he sensed the approach of a precipice. A newspaper? That was never part of his plan.  He had had this sensation once before. There was something about that instability that made him feel alive. Without thought given to how he would pay for it or who would follow him into it, Samuel told Stewart that it was time to retire, sell the paper and he would be the one to buy it.  He gave Stewart one hundred dollars for the Hoe Rotary printing press and made him sign an agreement transferring ownership of The Sentinel - ensuring that when Stewart came to his sober senses he could not change his mind.

In an instant, Samuel became a newspaper publisher. He walked up Frontenac Street to The Sentinel office, mapping out his plan.  Wherever he had been in his life – Montreal, Ottawa, Charlottetown, London, Paris – he had always read newspapers.  Reading one was for him like being wrapped in a warm blanket, regardless of how bad the news.  Now he owned one and the only thing to guide him was what he wanted to read, and that would have to be good enough for now.

Rebel appeared from behind The Sentinel building pulling the buckboard with Peter at the reins. Emma jumped aboard and they rode off down Frontenac Street.  It was the first time Emma was alone with the kid from Montreal (as Samuel referred to Peter).  He was only twenty-one so kid was not too far off.  Peter wore his bowler hat tilted to the side of his head, as if he’d tossed it on, landing wherever it may. It gave the impression that he was not a serious journalist, an impression he cultivated.  He pursued stories with energy, his sharp blue eyes never missing a detail.  He had a strong, ruddy colour, thick black hair and small curly moustache. Peter thought Samuel had a story for him when Samuel had come to the editorial office of The Montreal Daily Star a month ago.  He had done so before with stories of a thief being treated unjustly by the courts and a maid harshly treated by her master.  They often had drinks together in the Auberge St.Gabriel down the street from the courthouse, where Samuel would give Peter information on the shenanigans of corrupt police officers or politicians.  When Samuel told him he had purchased a newspaper somewhere in the wilderness of Québec and that he needed a real journalist, Peter did not hesitate.  The prospect of working on a fresh newspaper venture with a mind like Samuel’s at its helm was too good to pass up.

Where are your parents? asked Emma.

Peter paused before answering: My father died on the ship coming over from Holland. Typhoid.  My Mom and I ended up in Montreal. She got work as a seamstress in a garment factory and I sold newspapers in Place d’Armes.

How old were you?

Eleven.

Eleven? What about school?

I did school, after the morning edition.  That was my real schooling.

I guess it didn’t seem like the promised land from there.

Oh yes, it did.  We were dirt poor in Amsterdam. My father was a carpenter, a good one. Made furniture but he never made enough money at it. So it was either the East Indies or Canada. Father only made it half way. Goddam that. At the end of Frontenac Street, they heard rumbling sounds and saw thick black smoke curling from the chimney of the rolling mill perched on the mountain slope overlooking the town. After three years the editor took pity on me and moved me inside to the mailroom. That brought me to the news desk every day. I overheard everything.  From there I went to printing assistant then to copy editor. One day a reporter took sick and there was a fire on Mountain Street. My first story.  I felt terrible being excited about a house burning down but I couldn’t help myself.  Real people, homeless, nothing but the clothes on their backs. It was a great story.

So my Father picked you because you were chasing fires?

No. Because I came cheap, he said laughing. But chasing fires took me all over the city. Fire doesn’t discriminate. I eventually moved on to the criminal courts. That’s how I met your father.

I suppose you think I shouldn’t be bothering Father.

Give yourself some time, Emma. You have a lot to learn.

Such as?

"How to pitch a story idea.  Every journalist has to do it and every editor puts up a wall of resistance.  It has to be that way.  To get an idea clearly marked out in your head you have to be questioned on it before it ever becomes a story.  A good reporter knows ten times as much as he ever prints. Off the record. The angles. Get the angles to every story, even when you can’t print it. You never know when it’s going to come in handy. Samuel wants to make The Sentinel into something very different.  That’s why I came.  Besides, Montreal stinks, he says looking up to the black smoke from the rolling mill.  At least there are more trees around here."

Peter reined Rebel in to a stop.

You be careful up there, said Emma jumping down from the buckboard.

Why, are there ghosts up there I should know about? he said laughing.  Rebel pulled the buckboard up the hill.

Emma approached the Tibbits Hill schoolhouse, walking along a crest overlooking the cemetery behind the Presbyterian Church.  Flowers adorned several gravestones. Emma’s family never did such things.  They never went to a cemetery, or to church for that matter, and they never talked about her mother Isadore.  Emma was ten years old when her mother died and in the six years since her mother’s face had vanished from the retina of her memory. Emma felt no guilt over this.  It was not as if they held any semblance of the primordial mother-daughter bond even when she was alive. Their relationship was strict functionality: making sure she was fed and dressed was the only repertoire Isadore knew.  Expressions of affection were unnatural and Isadore would often look at her children as if they were hotel guests who had worn out their welcome.

Over time, Emma and George learned to take care of themselves and their father, whose legal practice often took him away from home.  They taught themselves how to cook, sew clothes, do laundry, plant a vegetable garden and keep the house clean. There was no time for remorse and even less of a desire to nurture it.   

It happened when Samuel and Isadore had gone to Montréal. Samuel was litigating a criminal case and it was a good time for Isadore to have a holiday, away from the children, time to soak up the culture she so dearly missed.  Instead the city gave her smallpox.  It was the middle of winter and impossible to bring her body back to Lenox.  At the age of thirty-eight, Isadore Lloyd-Craig was buried in an isolated cemetery on the north side of Mount Royal.  Samuel was never inclined to take his children to her grave.  He left that part of his life behind and had no wish to revisit it.

Emma suspected that little of this story was true.  Samuel did not appear to be a husband in mourning when he returned from Montréal.  He was exhausted and slept for twenty-four hours.  When he awoke he went through the house pulling back all the curtains and opening the windows, allowing the fresh February air to blow through as it had not done in fifteen years.  From that day on, sunlight poured through the house year round.  Samuel never closed the curtains in his bedroom at night: I like to look at the stars, he told Emma.

Emma arrived at Tibbits Hill School, a sturdy fieldstone building sitting atop a field of mountain laurel.  It was born from the blue and grey stones of the hillside with moss growing in its crevices.  Here, Emma traveled the world – from the maps spread across the walls and the library that their teacher, Mr. Scot Gardiner, kept filled with novels, encyclopedias, and books about magic.  Stroking his long white beard while looking out the window, Mr. Gardiner spinned a tale of his own brain floating above the schoolhouse in a cloud.  Rather than having facts cluttering our brains down here we should be able to snap our fingers to summon a fact from the cloud.  Gives a whole new meaning to one being empty-headed, don’t you think? he asked with a full-bellied laugh.

§

The wheels of the buckboard bounced over smooth stones, slowly up the hill to the rolling mill.  Peter glanced down to Lenox, a tiny outcrop of civilization surrounded by a blanket of forest that covered the smooth hills that sloped down to the valley floor and disappeared under shrouds of mist.  In the summer, the blanket would glow, the green almost unbearable to the eye.  In the winter the trees became incisors, cold, white and sharp. 

Peter heard the fierce sounds of the mill, a muffled grinding mixed with the smell of coal dust. He had seen rolling mills like this in Griffintown, the Irish district of Montréal.  He had reported on scores of explosions and fires that had injured or killed scores of workers.  It surprised him that no one seemed to care very much. It was the price, people said, of bringing civilization to the wilderness, the price of building the railway.  Lenox was designated a hub of new branch lines being cut through the hills and this rolling mill produced the steel rails.

Peter saw two men eating at a table behind the mill and introduced himself.  One of the men spoke English while his partner did not.

Bonjour, monsieur. I’m Roland and this is Maurice.

Peter felt the strength in their vice-like grips when he shook their hands.  Bonjour. What’s it like working in there?

Hot, said Roland.

Is it dangerous?

Roland glanced at Maurice.

Sometimes, said Roland.

When?

Last week.  One of the exhaust lines blew.  Steam, everywhere.

Was it fixed?

Bien sûr, he said laughing. With a piece of cloth.

Peter leaned forward, careful not to give too much away.  He could tell Roland was taking his cues from the silent Maurice.  He’d scare off if pressed too hard.  Has anything like that happened before?

Roland looked off, thinking about his children.  Suddenly, a burly man, surely the foreman, marched from the mill towards them. You’re a reporter with that bloody rag, aren’t you?  You’re on private property. Get the hell out of here!  You two get back to work.

Maurice was already walking back to the mill. Roland turned to follow him.  Peter had a hunch.  He spoke to Roland in French: If you want to talk, I won’t use your name. 

Roland looked back at Peter and replied in French, Savez-vous L’Eglise St.Mathias?

Hey, what the hell were you two talking about? the foreman shouted.

Peter smiled, he was right. Oui.

A demain soir, neuf heures.

Under the glaring eyes of the foreman, Roland walked back to the mill, leaving the real world to crawl into this cavern of heat and darkness.  The smoke hit his face, triggering the coughing that would not stop for another six hours. Even with the drafts open, the smoke collected at the peak of the cathedral ceiling much like the paintings Brother Felix used to show them in Sunday School  ─ This is where you go when you have sinned.  Such a place is for eternity.  Eternity?

Forty men worked in silence, shoveling coal, hoisting steel beams from winches, coughing.  Three huge coal fires burned a blinding light, the metal drums above them sizzled as they groaned in turns.  Maurice was at the end of the line slowly pushing a long raw steel beam into the fire. Roland picked up a shovel, speared it into the coal pile and fed the insatiable fires.  Roaring.  He stared at the glow, felt the heat cooking his skin, the sunlight was burning on his face, and he is following Céleste pulling on the harness, gripping the handles of the plow cutting through the loamy black earth.  Celeste’s hooves pound the ground, ‘the thunder walk’,  her head held low, her chest heaving with each breath, hooves hitting the ground as if some great monster were walking the earth, grains of earth and dust flung up, smacking onto Roland’s face.  He can taste the buttery sweetness.  Once he thought this was where time was invented, out in a cornfield where, if all were to unfold as it should, the future was clear.  The rain will come and burst the seeds, the sun will warm the black loam, and life will rise. This was the farm he and Helène had in the valley two short years ago, where Alexandre and Julie were born, where there was the sun, the wind and the rain, when the clothes on his back felt like a river.  Even when time brought no rain and there was less food, there was certitude to it all.  Cela ne fait rein. There would be potatoes, and tomatoes and eggs and milk and if he were lucky he would shoot a deer and they would make it through the winter.  A shrill hissing of steam pressed against Roland’s ears, a yellow-hot steel rail burst from the fire and three men guided it with an iron rod into the sand of the cooling bed fizzling slowly into a cold, hard rail.

On the road down the hill the smoke dissipated, the rumbling did not.  Suddenly, Rebel pulled up, startled by the rustling of tree branches.  Branch stumbled out from some bushes and jumped aboard.

Peter snapped the reins and Rebel set off in a trot. What the hell have you been doing?

Taking some photographs from the hill, Branch said, out of breath.  He opened the small wooden box that was strapped over his shoulder, taking out a camera with narrow cloth bellows.  It’s made in France by Dubroni.  The best part, it’s a dry plate.

It’s small, said Peter.

Yes, compared to my wet plate camera.  But they’re getting smaller.  The day is not far off when you’ll be able to hold a camera in the palm of your hand.

You’re damn lucky you didn’t get caught.

Branch laughed. He felt he had all the luck in the world and was eager to test it any time.  He had only one desire: to photograph anything or any person, to create a record for future generations, to show what the world looked like at this time.  One day this will be the past and a camera will seize it. With a camera he is an artist. In the photograph the world changes, bright corners become dark, the surface of a lake becomes a shimmering mirror, a face is frozen forever.  Now he could be a painter and a sculptor with a lens.

§

The image of The Sentinel crew gathered on the steps of the building emerged from nothing, floating up from the clear solution. The sour smells of acids, fixers and cleansers permeated the studio.  Branch drew the plate from the bath solution and held it up in front of Emma.  To her, no one seemed to be real in a photograph; everyone existed in some foreign place.  People seemed to change if they felt they were being observed, their postures seized with tension.  Raleigh never stood that straight.  His beard appeared black, blind to the flecks of grey that formed tessellations in the daylight.  Cal, resting his arm on Raleigh’s shoulder, stood aloof, his forehead creased with impatience.  To Emma, he looked to be posing. Peter emerged from the solution, leaning up against the pillar nonchalantly, his face darkened under the shadow of his bowler; and George, taller than anyone, regarding the camera with defiance,  Leah, her stubborn chin upright as if engaged in a contest with the camera.  Wesley sat on the edge of the wooden sidewalk, his rigid leg stretched out on the ground forcing him to lean awkwardly to his side, his large hands hanging off his knees. His hands never seemed that large to Emma before. Or was it because she had never looked? Samuel stood in the middle standing as if he were in court, thumbs buried in his vest pockets, ready to argue.  His hair appeared more grey than white. His eyes regarded the lens with aplomb.

Finally, Emma looked at herself in black and white.  She felt she looked like someone else, the camera was lying, this was not her at all. This was not the person she saw in a mirror or in the reflection of a window.  Where were her bright eyes?  She always considered that she looked a great deal more open, more curious.  In the instant Branch had snapped the shutter, her elbows rested on her knees, her hands interlaced together over them.  But she could not recall having made that expression to the camera.  It was an expression she recognized of a man playing poker when a player is about to bet and he looks into the eyes of his opponent, calculating the possibilities.  Surely I do not look like this, she thought.

Branch finished working on one of the dry plates from his rolling mill expedition.  Emma watched Branch lift the plate into the next tray, letting it drop to the bottom.  They both stared at it as it became fixed forever.

It’s still a wet plate, said Emma.

When it’s developing here it is, but in the camera, it’s dry.  Light sensitive silver salts are covering the surface, capturing light.  I don’t bring the chemicals with me.  The image is held and I develop and fix them here.  With his eyes expectant, Branch lifted the plate and took it out of the darkroom.  One day pictures are going to start moving, like a train. He laid the plate on a wooden rack. Around the room were several racks of glass plates from his photographic expeditions around the village and countryside.  Along the opposite wall were his cameras, some large format cameras on tripods and on a table were the smaller cameras such as the Dubroni and his newly acquired Kodak Dry Plate box camera that could easily be packed into a suitcase.

Within an hour Branch had made a print of the rolling mill.  Emma could see that the smoke billowing from the mill’s stacks appeared as solid columns.  Without movement they had become corporeal.

Is it hard to look at the world upside-down? she asked.

At first it was, but you get used to it.  Besides, I’m not under a hood all the time.

It’s odd. Here you are looking at the world inverted and backwards. I’ve helped Cal with the typesetting where he sets the words and sentences backwards.  It’s a wonder to me that anything in a newspaper comes out making any sense at all.

This is exactly what Samuel wanted Emma to do: to make sense of it long before she writes for it.  For this reason she was helping Branch in his photo studio, and working with Cal at the type case table.  There the pleasing mystery of the different letters and their divisions – the great ‘e’ box – the box for spaces – the ‘a’ box, the ‘i’ box, the ‘o’ box – the box for quads away off in the right hand corner – the slow and laborious formation, type by type, of the first line. Words formed this way were tangible, vital, the incarnation of thought where words seemed to show a  purpose of their own.  Raleigh taught her the minutiae of the printing press, its gears and rollers intertwined in a circular playful dance.  He showed her how to hold a ‘hot-off-the-press’ full page foldout, stretching it open wide with both hands upright, diving one’s head into the page to scan it for the slight ink blot or misaligned headline.  Raleigh paid particular attention to the masthead – it had to be perfect every time.  After a printing there was again more cleaning, the rollers, the plates, the oil overflow over the gears.

After school, Emma helped Wesley with the mail pick-ups, delivering messages from the telegraph office, and gathering together the notices from the churches and the town hall.  Even with his limp, Wesley never flinched, keeping her amused with his knowledge of Lenox lore: Mrs.Chandler, she owns the Stagecoach House, she used to live in New York.  Her husband fought in the Civil War, survived it. Their aunt died and they got her inheritance.  Don’t know how much it was but it was enough to buy that building.  They came back here. Traded New York for this.  Imagine. Two months after coming here, her husband goes to Montreal to see a friend, catches the smallpox and it does what the Civil War didn’t do. Figure that one out.

There was time with Leah.  Instead of teaching Emma how to sew, Leah taught her how to maintain the account ledger and circulation record (the actual  circulation), pay the bills,  and order supplies. 

But today, she was in Branch’s studio peering through the viewfinder of the Dubroni camera trying to figure out the inverted image of the room.  From the downstairs offices they could hear loud voices.  Emma came to the top of the stairs and saw large burly man with a face like a cliff standing at Samuel’s desk.  Samuel faced him defiantly.  Peter stood nearby scribbling notes, much to the irritation of the man.  What the hell is he doing?

His job, Mr. McPhee, said Samuel, his legs spread apart, firmly planted.

I don’t care what kind of a shit rag of a newspaper you’re running here but you will keep your reporters off my property, or else.

Or else what, Mr. McPhee?

Why was this man talking to my employees?

We suspect your rolling mill to be unsafe.  We needed confirmation.

Why the hell do you care?

Men are being seriously injured.  We have doctors’ reports that verify burn injuries and blows to the head to several of your men.  Some have not been able to go back to work.

McPhee’s cliff face turned crimson, he took a step toward Samuel.  Peter and George stood, ready to jump in.  McPhee towered over Samuel, You publish one word about my mill and I will put you out of business in an instant. McPhee slammed