The O'Briens Read Online Free Page A

been making for his brothers and sisters.
    â€œWhat about me? Can you not found an order that would have me, Father?” He kept his tone light, so the old priest would think he was joking. Perhaps it was an eldest brother’s instinct to dominate in all realms that made him wish the old priest saw in him too the makings of a Jesuit, or at least a Franciscan.
    â€œLeave vocations for the others, Joe.” Father Lillis swallowed a piece of muffin, then used a damask napkin to wipe the buttery crumbs from his lips. “Holy Mother Church ain’t what she used to be. How many fellows on your payroll this winter?”
    â€œI got sixty-one.”
    â€œHorses?”
    â€œMost days, twenty. You think I ought to stay in the bush? Is that what you’re telling me? That this is all I’m good for?”
    â€œI don’t say so! A fellow like you, with plenty of go, doesn’t require an old Father writing letters on his behalf. Do you more harm than good. Follow your own nose, Joe. Stick with your business way of thinking and you’ll do well for yourself.”
    In fact the old priest had not been able to write any letters of introduction on Joe’s behalf. He had tried, but after a few lines he was overcome with tears and a sense of desolation so palpable he could touch it. The priest recognized that this was his own death coming. He was seventy-four by then, short of breath; two or three more Pontiac winters would wear him out and the spring would carry him away.
    At seventeen Joe wasn’t tall and never would be. He was no longer slender, no longer a beautiful boy. He was stocky and tough. Everything about him, though, was meticulous. The quick blue eyes, the black hair, the pallor — Joe was a piece of energy, and the priest was certain anyone with half a brain could read the aptitude behind those eyes. Joe O’Brien didn’t need an old Jesuit of tumultuous repute writing tear-stained testimonials on his behalf.
    Joe had, in fact, been following a series of articles in the Ottawa Citizen about the latest railway boom out west. General contractors and subs, mostly Scotchmen or up from the States, were laying hundreds of miles of branch and spur lines across newly opened wheat country on the far prairies — “the Last, Best West,”the newspaper called it, “Breadbasket of the British Empire” — while a second and third line through the sea of British Columbia mountains to the Pacific were being planned. It seemed clear there was opportunity out there for someone used to organizing gangs of men and working them hard, but he had always had a lurking sense that if he left the Pontiac for good, he would disappear. Not just lose touch with what was left of his family but also lose himself. The world had taken his father and not given him back.
    Maybe it was just the shyness of the ill-born. He’d grown up in the backwoods, after all, and felt strong enough there; but his strength might not carry elsewhere. He figured he would stick it out in the Pontiac after his mother died and the others left to take up the lives the priest had designed for them. His brothers and sisters had grown up believing their mother’s fairy stories. Believing the future was in a blue bottle. They loved talking about their dreams, the way she did; but dream talk and fairy stories had never made sense to Joe, and he’d shut them out of his mind, like troublesome insects.
    There was enough scope for his ambition in the Pontiac. Pulp logging was money to count on until he had sufficient capital to enter the lumber trade, where solid fortunes were still being made. When he made his, he’d build himself a mansion house of stone or brick, like those he’d seen at Bryson, Renfrew, and Ottawa. And yet: it was astonishing to read that some railway contracts through the Rockies were being let out at eighty-five thousand dollars per mile.
    Spring filtered slowly into the