Annie Proulx - Barkskins

“Now you are a man,” said Achille. “I show you how we get this moose back to our camp.” He tied his useful sinew cords around its neck, plunged into the water as did Kuntaw, and together they towed the cow along the shore.

Auguste said, “We now may call you Moose Killer instead of Grasshopper Slayer.”

They dragged the heavy animal onto the sloping shore and gutted it. Kuntaw and Auguste carried the head up to the cooking fire and Achille followed with the heart, liver, a handful of fat and several choice cuts.

“So,” said Achille, “do you make up the fire now and broil liver slices, and cook the heart slices in moose fat. And heat many small stones. I will prepare the head for baking.”

They ate the liver slices half-raw. While Achille split the moose skull, removed the eyes and washed the head in the lake, Kuntaw set a flat rock in the fire. When the rock was hot he dropped moose fat on it, then laid the slices of heart in the sizzling grease. Achille half-filled their biggest birch container with water and dropped hot rocks into it. The water boiled and he put the moose head in. It was too large and he had to keep turning it end on end. He kept it boiling for several hours, and while they waited they feasted on the fine-grained heart meat. After many hours of boiling Achille could twist the jawbone loose from the steaming head. While he pulled out the bones Kuntaw and Auguste dug a deep hole and made a strong fire in it. They continued to eat the heart slices and to throw fuel into the roasting pit while Achille gathered the herbs he needed. He scooped out half the coals, wrapped the moose head in cattail leaves, wild onions and other flavorsome greens, put the head in the pit, raked coals on top, covered all with soil.

As they finished two Cree stepped out of the trees. They said they and their families had a fishing camp on the far side of the lake. Achille invited them all to the moose head feast of the next morning.

“I have heard of this food,” said one of the Cree, “but never enjoyed the taste.”

“In the morning you will have the best food of your lives,” said Achille.

• • •

The Cree came in the morning with all their bundles and dried salmon trout, for they were moving on that day to another good fishing lake. The group included two passably pretty girls and some small, noisy boys. Achille put the cooked head on a large slab of birch bark and they all leaned forward to appreciate the enticing aroma. Kuntaw and Auguste sat beside the Cree girls, eating. In the following days, as they built their canoes, they fed on moose and more moose until the Cree returned to their fishing camp.

“Moosehead Lake,” said Auguste.

Achille, Kuntaw and Auguste, laden with smoked moose meat, went on, hard traveling by labyrinthine waterways interrupted by beaver dams that forced them to portage packs and canoe overland. The birch became scanty, submitting to white spruce. And finally even those trees fell away and they entered the land of little sticks, the meager black spruce and dwarf birch, and beyond them the endless tundra. They saw a vast expanse filled with feathery puffs of arctic cotton grass. Auguste called this Walking-in-White-Things Place. Here, too, was the hairy-stem mastodon flower catching the low sun so that thousands of plants glowed with unearthly light.

The bird millions that had passed through Mi’kma’ki earlier were in this north country, every kind of duck and goose, loons, ptarmigan, ravens, owls and jaegers. Herds of caribou drifted across the tundra. There were broken eggshells and unripe berries without number; sometimes they saw heavy grizzly bears in the distance. The expanse of tundra trembled in the distorting heat waves; in the distance lay great grey rocks, their surfaces brilliant with orange, black, green and ocher lichens. On many days it was breathlessly hot, and the biting flies were a savage danger.

“Truly, Father,” said Kuntaw, “this is the country of insatiable biting flies. No one could live here. Only birds.”

“We are here. We are alive,” said Achille. “But did we not rub ourselves with grease and ashes we would not last long.” The ground quivered, dark water welled up around their feet when they stepped on land. Their canoe angled through the twisting waterways and at every turn they saw strange new sights. At last early frosts that turned the willow stems red warned them to turn back. So ended the summer of their great hunting journey, which would last in their memories as long as they lived, but tinctured with irremediable rage and grief.

• • •

Achille carried a moose quarter for the feast that would mark their return. As they approached their home place, Achille’s wikuom, they heard a terrific hubbub of tree chopping and voices calling in a fractured language. And then they walked into two hundred English settlers cutting trees and building log houses where Achille’s wikuom had stood. They did not speak French. Thirty armed English soldiers stood ready. The remnants of Achille’s wikuom smoked on the ground.

“Where is my wife? My children?” Achille demanded, his eyes swollen with anger, and the soldiers pointed their guns at him. Six of them rushed forward and seized the moose meat, hitting and kicking. One fired, and the ball gouged a furrow in the side of Achille’s head above his ear. More than pain he felt the heat of his own blood streaming down his neck. As he fell he saw on the edge of a debris pile that once had been the furnishings of his wikuom a still-shapely hand and blackened forearm, the skin burned away, exposing the heat-spasmed muscles. He knew the hand well, for he had caressed it, many times seen it preparing his food. Isobel. His wife.

Everything in his memory emptied out and refilled with the smell of burned wikuom bark, scorched bearskin beds, the caressing hand metamorphosed to charred meat, the corpse-white face of a soldier and his black oily hair, the groan of a falling spruce and English laughter.

Kuntaw seized his arm, pulling with reckless, frightened strength. “Father, get up,” he screamed. He, too, had recognized his mother’s severed arm and hand. “Run! They will kill us.”

Achille knew this was true and he longed for death, but Kuntaw and Auguste dragged him on and, shot whizzing above their crouching runs, they arrived at Elphège’s wikuom. And so Elphège learned the English had killed Achille’s wife and his younger children, their bones incinerated in the burning wikuom. When Elphège’s wife tried to treat his wound Achille thrust her away; he preferred the wound. Kuntaw wept while Achille went outside and reeled up and down, silent but with hard, lurching footfall. Numb and disconnected, he tried to think of small things such as weather clouds to rid himself of what he had seen. Useless. The scene burned his mind as though he still stood before his ruined life. Everything smashed. He went back inside and sat speechless beside his brother. The day passed and twilight softened the interior of the wikuom before Achille spoke, his voice rough in his constricted throat.

“The English have taken my wife, my children,” he said. “There are hundreds of them and armed soldiers. It is what Sosep foretold.” The brothers sat in silence. Achille shuddered, his heart and entrails knotted with pain, spoke in a trembling unnatural voice.

“This place, Mi’kma’ki, is indeed rich and beautiful, and because of its richness now they will take it, as Sosep told us. I hunt no more. My life here is finished. I am not. I leave this land of our mother. I will go south, do lumbering in Maine. I will despoil their land.”

“They will not notice. They believe despoiling is the correct way.”