Breathe Again

Chapter 27

It ended up being a day from hell. From the moment Sterling stepped foot on the mill property, chaos erupted. His absence had been felt, and men were overworked and short-tempered. Orders had poured in at a steady rate, but they were quickly more than their operation could handle, and some jobs were turned away out of necessity.

He was barely able to get a break long enough to eat a few morsels of the noon meal when he was then forced to help where he could, ensuring a large order was completed and sent on its way in time.

His left side was killing him, but there was no time to give in to the pain. The lumberyard hummed with organized chaotic activity. The large circular saws screamed from the mill in a steady, menacing song—noise as familiar to him as the singing of birds in the morning sky.

Out in the yard, multiple teams of draft horses strained at their harnesses pulling with all their brute strength at the drags of timber, moving the loads across the yard to the necessary stacks to be sorted and stored.

It was a sight he enjoyed and one which filled his heart with a sense of accomplishment. A busy lumberyard was a successful lumberyard, his father used to say, and he knew he'd be proud to see it buzzing with so much business if he were alive.

The lingering scent of boiled beef and cabbage from lunch hung in the air from the mess hall and made him wonder if Herbert Stoddard knew how to cook anything else. It twisted and turned his stomach, bringing bile to the back of his throat.

Turning back to his job, he wiped a dirty hand across his sweaty brow and resumed stacking freshly cut planks of wood on the pallet in front of him. The screaming-whir of the blade filled his ears for the next two hours until a new sound intruded.

Panicked shouts, from the men working outside, picked up volume as more and more men joined the uproar going on in the yard. Looking to the head sawyer, Sterling motioned for him to kill the saw blades and soon the scream lowered to a low grumble.

With bandana in hand, Sterling wiped his brow and hurried out to the yard to find out what the problem was. Following the men running to the opposite side of the mill, he skidded to a halt upon beholding the scene before him.

Touching one of the men on the shoulder who stood observing the scene, Sterling asked, "What happened, John?"

John Sullivan glanced at Sterling and shook his head, "Two dead. That's all I know, boss."

"What the hell?" Sterling murmured and pushed his way through the crowd up to Mack McClintock, his foreman.

The tall Scotsman had moved to their town with his family when Sterling was a simple errand boy for the mill at the age of ten. Mack directed one of the wagon teams to take up position nearby and then shouted orders in his usual thick brogue for eight men to split into two groups.

A couple of years ago, when one of the new hires asked him why his jet black hair was cut nearly to the scalp, Mack had explained, "Tae ensure th' curly wee bastards ne'er hae th' chance tae see th' light a day, ye impudent dobber."

Needless to say, that particular question was never broached again.

Mack had a weathered, yet oddly handsome face reminiscent of the stories Sterling had heard of the fearsome pirates of old. The men at the mill referred to him as 'Black beard' for obvious reasons and a complete lack of originality.

Adding to his fearsome appearance, he was a burly man who stood several inches taller than Sterling. Sorrow filled His grey eyes when they met Sterling's over the heads of the crowd

"Mack," Sterling called out, "what the hell happened? I heard two men are dead?"

Sweat, grime, and several smudges that looked suspiciously like blood-stained Mack's tan shirt. He nodded and rubbed a hand over his short hair, "Och aye sairr; Phineas Perkins and Doogal McConneell hae left this warld fur th' next, puir bastards."