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THE LAST CHAMPION

By the time I got to page five, I knew this was going to be a great read. It was so good I never wanted to put it down. It is one of the best books I have ever read. And I also recommend other books by Robert Holland to those who don't know about them.

--David B. Millette, age 13

I loved this book and I could really relate to Jared, the main character. I would like to just step right out and join him. This is an exciting piece of literature and I would recommend it to anyone who likes a good, exciting, funny, and adventurous book.

--Tim Moore, age 12

Chapter One

My First Fight

Some things can never be explained, others can be explained later, still others need no explanation. I've never been sure which category my relationship with the other kids in the village fit but it was complicated by the fact that there were only five of us left and four of them came from the same family. Joe Duquette was 18, then came Nanette and Natalie, 17-year-old twins, and finally Janette who was 16, the same age as me. The normal thing would have been for us to have been friendly, but we were not, and I don't think family accounted for it, because when there aren't many kids, age doesn't usually matter much.

Maybe it was Dad. Maybe it was me. I always got the highest grades, and sometimes Mr. Green, our teacher, had me explaining things to the others. But there were also a lot of people in the country who resented my father. Part of that came from his reputation for simply being the one you didn't want to tangle with. Part of it grew out of his willingness to assume other people's troubles. But some of it also came from the way we thought about the Indians. As far as Dad or Mother were concerned, a good human being was just that, and nothing else mattered. And Indian Joe, a Penobscot, was a good man. He was smart, and he had worked hard ever since Dad had hired him away from the paper company where he hadn't been able to get a fair shake.

He was only twenty-five, the same age as my brother Ike, and the two of them got on together like brothers. They'd both been to Vietnam, they'd both been wounded, and they'd both come back as decorated heroes.

Maybe it was because Dad always seemed to have cash around when he needed it. And for the last three years he'd been using that cash to buy up any land the paper company would sell him. So had Ike and so had Joe. They called themselves The Syndicate and they bought land because they knew the road was coming. They knew because they guided fishing parties for the paper company bosses during the summer and fall, and because they drank their beer at McAffrey's, when they could afford it, because the beer came upriver in a bateau and it cost twice what it did downcountry, but I never heard anyone complain.

McAffrey still wasn't happy about Joe drinking in his bar at the hotel. Two years before, when Joe had come back from Vietnam, McAffrey wouldn't let him drink there because he was an Indian. That lasted until Dad heard about it, and he and Ike went down to have a discussion with McAffrey. The place had been full that night, with a crew heading out the next day for the new cut upriver, and Dad had walked up to the bar and leaned over.

"Angus," he said. "Story going around that you won't let Indian Joe drink in this place."

"That's the truth, all right. It's my place and I won't let no Indian drink here. They have a little firewater and they get rowdy, and next thing there's a fight and stuff gets all busted up."

"You're saying that a man who went off to fight for his country, a man who won a Purple Heart and a Silver Star, isn't fit to drink in your bar?"

"Not if he's an Indian."

Dad had straightened up. "Time you changed your mind, Angus."

Angus was a big man, like Dad, but he was soft in the middle and quite a bit older, and looking into those narrowed down ice cold gray eyes unsettled him considerably. What unsettled him even more were the stories about the man he was facing.

Suddenly it was so quiet you could have heard a mouse fart.

"It's my place, Arthur."

Dad nodded, turned, looked slowly around the room, and then back at Angus. "I count six men here who fought in Vietnam, and I wonder how they feel about drinking in a place that won't serve a fellow veteran."

That put a different coat of paint on things. The first to respond was Albert Johnson, and he stepped over to the bar and looked at Angus. "Who is it you're not serving?" he asked. "It couldn't be Indian Joe. You couldn't deny a drink to a veteran, especially not a guy who was wounded in combat."

Angus shook his head, knowing he was cornered. "I must've made a mistake. I serve everybody here."

Albert nodded. "That's good," he said.

After that Joe went down for beer most every night. He always sat in a corner by the front window. It wasn't long before people seemed to forget Joe was there and that's when he began to overhear things. Once he came back with a story about a lot of heavy equipment being assembled down in Millerton by the company. Another time he was there when Louie LaPierre, who marked out roads for the company, got drunk and started complaining about having to walk all the way in from Millerton.

Bit by bit the three of them pieced it together. Then Dad went out one day and found Louie LaPierre's blaze marks on the trees. They'd been certain that the only place to bring in a road was right through Bear River, but the marks on the trees cinched it. The road was coming to Bear River and whoever owned land stood to profit. The only land they didn't own in the village was McAffrey's, the three company summer houses, the company buildings, and the farm. But they owned the land around those places, and they had taken dead aim at acquiring both the farm and the hotel. Dad may have hated the road, but once there was no point in fighting it, he was very clear on making it profitable.

Angus' wife, Bertha, wanted to move downcountry where their kids all lived but Angus wouldn't sell. Which was just as well, because at the moment the cash flow was kind of thin, from what I gathered, so the real estate tycoons in The Syndicate were biding their time. Not that they had much of a chance to buy the hotel, because there was no secret that Dad and McAffrey didn't get along. They had never gotten along. Nobody would say what was behind it, but there was some deep secret there all right.

In any case, The Syndicate was busy raising cash. They had teamed up during the winter and cut a mountain of wood for the paper company, but that check wouldn't come till July. And even with all that work, Dad trapped beaver all over the country and sent his furs off to a buyer. That was another check they were waiting for. And all three of them guided fishermen and saved every dime. Worse, the price of land had gone up to a hundred dollars an acre, which may not sound like much now but was a tidy sum then, especially to anyone living in Bear River, where there just weren't many ways to make money. Not that they didn't have plans, because they did, and mighty plans they were, or at least that was the impression I got, because, for some reason, they didn't talk when I was around and I had to gather my information by inference and surmise, not always a reliable source.

In the meantime I had my own problems. Joe Duquette might be two years older, but we were the same height, and he seemed to think it wasn't fair that I kept on growing and he didn't, and late that spring he took it into his mind to take me down a peg.

It started with some pushing and shoving as he tried to size me up, and I guess he figured because I had only just turned sixteen, I'd be a pushover. Or maybe he thought I was soft from living in the village while he had to work on the farm. But I worked too. I split and carried the wood for the stoves, split the kindling, spaded the garden, and a thousand other jobs, all of which developed muscle. So when he pushed me and I pushed him back and knocked him down, he had to reconsider his plans. That suited me fine. I'd never been in a fight, and though I watched all the fights from the loft of McAffrey's barn and I read the boxing magazines, I was a spectator, and I planned to stay a spectator. Or at least that's what I told myself, though there must have been another voice I couldn't hear, because I'd also made a big punching bag out of moose hide and ground-up corn cobs. I hung it in the back of the barn and I spent a lot of time punching the daylights out of it.

No one in the family thought well of that, and they weren't shy about telling me I was wasting a lot of energy that I could have put to good use. I let their comments pass, no matter how angry they made me, simply because I wasn't old enough to talk back. And when their remarks began to get to me, I'd go out and hit the bag. Work like that tends to make big shoulders and biceps, and that suited me fine. I'd noticed a long time ago that big, powerful men seemed to have a certain advantage in matters of fighting, mostly because nobody wanted to fight somebody who might just kill them.

That Monday, with Dad, Ike, and Indian Joe out guiding, Joe Duquette started in again. Out on the playground he started teasing me while his sisters looked on.

"You're just a big chicken," he said. "What's a matter, you afraid to fight? Afraid you'll get hurt, eh?"

"No," I said.

"Then go ahead. Take a punch at me. I dare you."

"What do you want to fight for, Joe?"

"Because it's time you and me, we settled things, eh?"

"What things?"

"You know what things."

"Naw," I said. "I don't want to fight."

And then he hit me in the nose. I took out my handkerchief and held it to my nose. "Jesus, Joe! You hit me!"

"And I'm gonna hit you again, till we get this here all straight between us, eh."

That's when I hit him back. I set him up with a left jab, crossed with a right, caught him on the cheekbone, and he went down like he'd been shot. He wasn't out, but he was pretty groggy.

"Get up," I said.

He looked like he wanted to kill me, and he got to his feet, but he was moving slowly now, and I dropped into my boxing stance and moved in. He blocked my first left jab and I let him block the right cross, but that only set him up for the left hook, and this time he went down and just lay there flat on his back.

At first I thought I'd killed him, but then he began to groan, and he rolled over and got onto his hands and knees, and then fell onto his side, holding his hand to his jaw where I'd hit him. I hoped he'd stay down because both my hands were pretty sore, and I thought maybe I'd broken a bone in my left.

"Get up, Joe!" his sister Nicole shouted. "Get up and fight!"

I stood several feet away, watching him, ready to hit him again, no matter how much my hands hurt, but he was through fighting. I picked up my handkerchief and walked back into the school.

I sat at my desk and waited, but the Duquettes decided to go home, and I spent the rest of the afternoon studying algebra, and wondering if I'd broken my hand. It was pretty swollen, but I could move the fingers, so I figured it was probably all right.

Mr. Green, our teacher, answered questions when I had them and I saw him glance at my swollen hand but he never mentioned the fight, though I had seen him watching from the schoolhouse.

Mostly I hoped Dad didn't hear about the fight, because I was pretty sure I'd be in trouble if he did. So I said nothing about it. I dipped a bucket of water from the well, chipped some ice from one of the blocks in the ice house and soaked my hand for awhile. The swelling seemed to go down quite a bit by the time Mother called me to the table.

Supper was usually the same. Everybody ate and said little until they began to fill up, and then they found time to talk between mouthfuls. Dr. Chase and Mr. Everett were there too, and for a while they talked about the fishing up in Carter Pond, where they'd spent the day, but after that the conversation seemed to drift from topic to topic as randomly as a water strider skittering about on a still pond. Mostly they just commented on the weather and the height of the water in the river, and then suddenly Ike grinned at me across the table. "So," he said, "you planning on turning professional?"

I scowled at him across the table.

"Got a really nasty left hook," Indian Joe said. He shook his head. "Not to mention his right cross."

Dad set his fork down and looked at them and then at me. "You been fighting?"

"Yes, sir," I said without hesitation. Once the cat was out of the bag, denial was impossible. It was always best with Dad just to own up.

"Who the hell is there to fight?"

"Joe Duquette."

Dad looked at me carefully, but he couldn't see any damage. "Not much of a fight, I'd guess."

"Oh, it was a fight all right," Ike said. "Just didn't last long."

Dad nodded. "Joe's what? Two years older," he said. "Ought not to go around picking on younger boys."

"Oh, he won't do that anymore," Joe said. "His sisters nearly had to carry him home."

"I take it a left hook and a right cross had something to do with that," Dad said.

"Couple of jabs too," I said.

Mother never said a word. That came later.

"Break your hand?" Dad asked.

I pulled my left hand from my lap and held it up. "Just a little swollen. Works all right."

"Well, it doesn't hurt to have a reputation," he said. "Keeps you from having to fight most of the time." He looked over at Indian Joe. "Take Joe here. Weasel quick. Nobody could hit him, so nobody wanted to fight him. Also had the good sense to stay out of McAffrey's ring. Nobody wins there except the people betting money."

I understood what he was doing all right. He was trying to get so far ahead of me I'd be stuck having to think about what he said, and guess at what he meant, though it seemed pretty clear. The truth was, I suppose, that somewhere in the back of my mind was the idea that one day I'd get into that ring and knock the stuffing out of some poor logger. I don't know how Dad knew that.

"Jared," Dr. Chase said, "come over here and let me have a look at your hand."

I walked around the table and stuck out my hand.

He ran his fingers over the bones, peering down through his glasses. Then he had me curl and uncurl my fingers. "Just a bruise," he said. "Be sore for a while, but you'll be able to fish..." he grinned... "and do your schoolwork."

Later, while I sat in the kitchen doing my homework, and the men were all in the parlor reading, Mother checked my hand again and my nose to make sure nothing was broken.

"Got that out of your system?" she asked.

"I never had it in my system," I said. "I wasn't looking to fight. He hit me and I got kind of mad."

"And what happens next time?"

I shrugged. "I don't think Joe wants to fight me again and there isn't anyone else."

"No," she said, "I mean when you go to live with Uncle Phil and Aunt Elinor."

"Mother," I said, "I never thought about getting into a fight until I was in one. Now, I guess I need to figure out how to keep out of them."

She smiled, her pale blue eyes dancing in the light from the oil lantern. "You do have a way," she said, "of coming up with the right answer. Ought to serve you well beyond high school."

"Beyond?"

"College."

Now there was an idea I had never, ever, not even once in my wildest dreams, considered. College? I mean, I knew what it was but it just didn't seem to fit into any of the thoughts I'd had about my future. Though, to tell the truth, I hadn't thought much about my future. Mostly the future was whatever turned up next.

"Why would I go to college?" I asked.

"Because you're smart," she said.

It was something else I'd never thought about. Where I grew up, the word wasn't used much. You heard people called clever and shrewd, but not smart, unless you were describing someone all dressed up.

"Mr. Green was quite clear on that the other day. Dr. Chase and Mr. Everett are of the very same opinion."

I wondered how you figured out that someone was smart. What had I done? At least with Mr. Green, there was school work and tests, but how did Dr. Chase and Mr. Everett know? "I don't know," I said. "Pretty far off."

"A little over two years," she said. "Not so far." She shook her head. "Things are changing, Jared."

"What things?"

"I'll be taking in people all summer."

"What about the hotel?"

"Mrs. McAffrey told me they're all booked right through the September fishing."

I just shook my head, not much liking the idea of sharing my house any more than I had to. "These people you're taking in, do they know about the black flies?"

"I'd guess they must," she said. "But you make a good point. I'd best lay in plenty of bug dope on the off chance they don't come prepared."

"What about food?"

"We ordered a freezer and a refrigerator. They'll be here as soon as the road reaches us." She pushed back her chair. "Guess I'll leave you to finish your homework."

Alone in the kitchen, I looked down at my books and shook my head again. There was no way I could think about homework now. But at least I knew why Dad had bought that big generator from the paper company. Our little old Onan wouldn't handle the load with a refrigerator and a freezer to run.

I felt as if I were standing on the edge of a cliff that looked out over the future, and I could see it coming at me from far, far away, just a cloud of dust, hiding all that I had imagined and even more that I had not. Until those dozers came rolling into the village it was gonna be hard to concentrate on anything else. And it would most likely, I thought, be just as hard after they got here.

After all, there was another question and that was which way the road would go once it got here. Over the next few days we had some mighty discussions about that over dinner. Ike and Joe were of the opinion that it would go past the village on this side of the river. Dad said they'd build a bridge at the landing in order to reach a patch of wood that hadn't been cut since long log days, when all the logs went to the saw mills to be turned into lumber.

Ike looked up from his dinner. "Bad place to build a bridge," he said. "Nothing but bog on the other side."

Then Mother spoke up, which in a discussion like that was pretty unusual. "Arthur," she said, "you get them to build it someplace else. I don't want a lot of traffic boiling through here and leaving us all covered in dust."

"Good place not too far upriver," Joe said. "At the narrows. They could make it there in a single span."

"I'll talk to Louie," Dad said. "See I can't shift his thinking." He shook his head. "A through road'd be better for business. Always best to be on the main course of things." He grinned. "Still, there's no place to stop along the way, and not likely to be for some time to come. We're where the road will go and the company owns all the land along the road." He folded his arms across his chest, cocking his head to the side. "Even so, a time will come when they'll allow some development and then it's best to be on a thoroughfare."

"Not if you're living on it," Mother said. "I grew up with that in Presque Isle. Couldn't keep a dog for fear he'd get hit in the road. Dust so thick everything close to the road was gray and you couldn't hardly be outside. Every year we lost our summer."

The one thing about Dad that always took me by surprise was how a good argument could change his mind about the way he'd decided things ought to be. Of course a lot depended on who produced the argument. He'd listen to Mother and Joe and Ike. I was still too young and my opinion didn't count for much, so usually I just listened but this time I had something to say.

"Hate to see old Spud killed in the road," I said.

Dad sat silently for a while and I could feel him watching me and then finally he cleared his throat. "Then I guess I'll talk to Louie sooner rather than later. He's supposed to be here tomorrow or the next day."

I may have been only sixteen but just then I felt as if I were a lot older and I have to tell you I thought I could get used to feeling like that. But what I wondered was whether I'd get used to the road and what the road would bring. Beyond cars and people it was hard to imagine because I had no place to start. And maybe I didn't want to start. Maybe I didn't want to believe that the road could be anything but good.

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