Annie Proulx - Barkskins

Charles Duke, Penoscot Bay Cost of Mane

Martch 3. 1717

He lodged his sons in Boston, but they came to the Penobscot Bay house once a month to meet in the business room, to spread out their papers and books on the great pine table.

He had not been wrong. Already, within a few months, the sons began to put forth their impressions and ideas. Jan, with his long bony face and hazel eyes slitted as though squinting into the future, was perhaps the most long-seeing, but they spoke among themselves before presenting him with new ideas.

“Father,” said Jan. “We have noticed that more and more English and Scots shipwrights are settling along the New England coast. We think it would be a sensible move to get a foothold in the shipbuilding industry. It would reduce the necessity of transporting lumber, masts, bowsprits and yards to English or European ports. It is an opportunity.”

“Yes,” said Duke. “I have often felt it would be good to move into shipbuilding, often and often, but I hesitated. You reassure me.”

“Also,” said Bernard, who had confounded them all when he arrived from the Baltic countries with a great horsy wife, Birgit, “pitch and tar. We have pitch pine here, of course, but the superior trees are in the Carolinas. And slaves. I would suggest that we purchase and operate a pitch pine plantation in Carolina.”

“It shall be done,” said the gratified father.

In Boston one day Dred-Peacock came to him at the Duke warehouse, a cavernous building near the docks, redolent of pine, oak, furs and roots.

“I thought you might wish to know that the man you mentioned some time ago has been asking many people about you. How many sawmills you own, how disgustingly large your fortune may be, what ships you have, what tracts of timber and townships you possess. He himself operates five or six or more sawmills on the Penobscot tributaries and in New Hampshire. He begins to look like a serious rival.”

“Who do you mean? Elisha Cooke?” said Duke.

“His damned hard man, McBogle.”

“Indeed,” said Duke. “I hear this sometimes. He asks questions but we never see him. What is your own perception of this situation?”

“I think as you do, that he should be absorbed. He has the reputation of a dangerous man. I doubt we could buy him out but a partnership may be attractive. He has friendly relations not only with Elisha Cooke and the Wentworths, but with many judges and businessmen here and in New Hampshire. Yet he does not have our contacts across the Atlantic.” It was Dred-Peacock who had the invaluable English and European contacts.

“We must talk with him and see what might be arranged. Where do we find him?”

“That may be difficult. He has what they call a ‘thunderstorm sawmill’—because the only time it runs properly is when the water is high with rain — on the Moosegut and a house nearby. He keeps very much to himself in this remote place. If we go to him we must bring a few men with us for I hear he has a band of ruffians at his beck. I could accompany you a week today. But no sooner.”

“Bien,” said Duke. “Good enough.”

Then, within the hour, Forgeron, who had led a crew of woodsmen to cut one of Duke’s pine-heavy townships, arrived in Boston. His lean face was blotched with a red rash. He hesitated, as though he wished not to speak his news. When he did speak he threw his words down like playing cards.

“We found the best trees taken. The stumps still oozed sap.”

“Who?” said Duke.

“ Ne sais pas —don’t know. But there is talk that the man McBogle last week shipped two great loads of masts to Spain. He will have made a fat profit. He is known for tree piracy.”

“I plan to find this man in a week’s time and see what can be arranged. We will work with him.”

“He is not known for compliance.”

“Nor am I. Dred-Peacock will accompany us on the Monday. You must come as well.” Something had to be done about McBogle and they would do it. “It is necessary we go in a body as we do not know the strength of McBogle’s men.” But over the last year Duke’s eyesight had begun to deteriorate, dimness alternating with flashing light and tiny particles gliding through his field of vision like birds in the sky. He said nothing to Forgeron of this, only “what is wrong with your face that it shows so rough and crimson?” Forgeron shrugged.

• • •

The plan was ill-fated. Two days later a packet entered Boston harbor with great sacks of mail. Among Dred-Peacock’s mountain of letters was one informing him that his older brother and nephew had both perished in fire, and that he, Dred-Peacock, had succeeded to the title, the great house (now with a somewhat charred east wing) and the family’s two-thousand-acre estate, Dred Yew in Wiltshire. In seconds his talk of colonial liberty and rights evaporated, his self-definition as a man dedicated to New England self-rule shriveled.

“I must go,” he said to Duke. “It is my responsibility to my family and to the estate — and the great yew tree now in my care. I cannot evade the title nor the responsibility. I leave at once.” In his voice Duke detected a long-suppressed tone of haughtiness. “I will write to you when I have settled my affairs. I believe we can continue our business ventures.”

“Yes,” said Duke. “I quite see it.” Scratch some New England colonists, he thought, and you find Englishmen, as the bark of a tree hides inner rot. “But I cannot believe your chatter about a ‘yew tree.’ What man would leave a fair and rich land for the sake of a haughty tree?”

“It is an immortal tree, centuries old. It has been on my family estate since a time before Christ, since the time when men worshiped yews and oaks. It is nothing you can understand.” What could Duke say to that? Nothing. What mattered was the continuance of their business dealings. And as if that were not enough, word came that Forgeron was ill with a fiery skin inflammation and the quinsy, a putrid sore throat that forced him into his bed. Duke said he would not delay. He would seek out McBogle alone.

• • •

He ordered a canteen of strong black coffee. He would ration it out, drink it cold, eschewing fires as the forest was sown with skulking Indians and French. A schooner took him to the mouth of the Penobscot and he began his solitary journey.

It was spring, rafts of rotten ice riding the current in company with thousands of logs. Crowds of woodsmen stood on the banks snagging the logs slashed with their outfits’ marks of ownership. The work continued all night by the light of enormous bonfires, cat-footed men running out onto the heaving carpet of mixed logs to hook and prod their property to shore. Impossible to put a canoe into that maelstrom. He had ordered his own timber crews to hold back his logs until the river cleared of the floating forest. Now he set out afoot. And noticed two riverbank men turn away from the heaving river and cut obliquely into the forest. He smiled. Did they imagine they were not noticed?

Sometimes he was on dim Indian trails following landmarks almost always obscured by the jagged skyline of conifers, but more often making his way through logging slash and blowdowns. Although timber cutters had worked the area along the river, a mile or so inland was still terre sauvage, and like the ocean it breathed wild grandeur. Tree limbs arched over the silent earth like the dark roof of a tomb vault.

He took an entire day to cross an autumn burn, charred trunks of the smaller trees with their own black limbs tangled around their roots like dropped drawers, still-smoldering logs that could not be quenched. The biggest trees stood lightly scorched but unharmed. Winter snow had converted the ash to black muck. On steep slopes it was the ancient wind-felled monsters that caused the greatest hindrance. Some, whose branches interlinked with those of their neighbors, had pulled them to the ground. Often he had to crawl beneath these barriers. It was not possible to get around them as the way was blocked by other recumbents. He could not count all the streams and bogs. The treetops dazzled, the flashing wings of hundreds of thousands of northward migrating birds beat above him. He saw snowy owls drifting silent through the trees, for they had come into the Maine woods in great numbers that winter and with the turn of the season were retreating to the cold lands. His eyes wearied of broken, wind-bent cedar and glinting swamp water. All one afternoon he had the feeling he was being watched, and as twilight thickened he saw a grey owl flutter to a branch stub and grip him with its clenching eyes. Of all birds he most hated this wretch.