Annie Proulx - Barkskins

“Grandfather, I am old enough and I want to go to the forest camps to cut trees,” he said. Kuntaw nodded. “I know you think of starting a man’s life,” he said, “although there are many girls who maybe think you better stay. You have been warm with these girls. Is it not possible many children here will call you father?”

Jinot, shocked, said no, no. “Grandfather, the girls only talk to me. Girls like to talk to somebody. We are friends.” Kuntaw looked at his grandson with an assessing, weighing eye, putting wispy thoughts together.

“Yes, I see. I see you. I am old, Jinot, but do not take me for a fool. If you were among Mi’kmaw people they would see no wrong in a man who has a double spirit. But whitemen call it bad. And those church men.”

There was nothing to say to this. In a moment Kuntaw continued.

“When will you go?”

“Today. I have warm clothes in a hide bag. Shall I take an ax?”

“Have an ax if you wish, but the lumber camp will give you as many as you need. They provide the tools. This I know, for I, too, worked in those camps chopping trees, even as my father, Achille, did, and his father, the Frenchman René Sel, before him.”

“I did not know of the Frenchman René. He is our ancestor?”

“He was my grandfather, murdered, they said, by a girl he adopted. So you see we have French blood in us. But René Sel did not work in lumber camps. He cut trees for himself. Jinot, before you go into the forest I want you to travel with Amboise to Mi’kma’ki and see Elise, see if she is well, if she has children. We have heard nothing. And I want you to inquire if my cousin Auguste, son of my deceased aunt Noë, is still alive. He was a person always in trouble so he may be dead. Though I have noticed that many people who cause trouble live long lives. If he is alive I want him to come here and stay with us. And take care. The woods and rivers are full of English and Americans fighting. Stay distant if you hear firearms.”

• • •

Amboise, who was very strong and heavy-shouldered, and Jinot, waving farewell to a bouquet of girls on the wharf who called his name, went by ship up the coast to Halifax, made a foot journey to the post.

“I do not have a good feeling for Elise,” said Amboise. “I remember Tonny said Mi’kma’ki was a bad place.” In his pocket he had a small wooden turkey he had carved long ago, an object that amused Elise when she was young.

“If she has children,” he said, “I thought maybe they like to play with this.”

“Amboise, that is a good idea. I wish I had brought something — even a pinecone.”

Kuntaw’s sister, Aledonia, thin and with many teeth missing, made much of them, pointed out certain people with the patronym Sel, and told them that yes, Auguste still lived. “That one! He is too bad to die!”

But Amboise and Jinot saw the Mi’kmaw village was a hungry sad place, a mix of wikuoms and whiteman cabins. The eel weirs were in disrepair and rarely did the men make an effort to put them in order. It was easier to eat bread and pork from the agency than catch eels. Luçon Brassua, Elise’s husband, lay drunk in the mud beside their wikuom, whose torn bark covering needed repairs. They were sorry for Elise, who cried and said she had lost a baby girl whom she had called Bee after Beatrix.

“I thought married would be like Beatrix and Grandfather Kuntaw, nice, laughing, you know?” She wept women’s tears.

While they were in the chopped lands of what once had been Mi’kma’ki they heard stories of Kuntaw’s father, Achille the Great Hunter. For some reason these stories made Amboise resentful. “Everything yesterday! Everything good happens long ago! Now — oh now…” His eyes narrowed. “Elise, if Brassua is not good to you, you must come with us.” They knew that Brassua was not good to her. Guilty and uneasy, they wanted to get away.

Old Auguste had succumbed to drink. They found him at the wikuom of one of his granddaughters, bleary and nodding, sitting outside squinting at whatever happened there. When they told him they were Kuntaw’s grandsons he roused a little, huffing out rum breath, gave a bitter smile and said Kuntaw had had a fortunate life, unlike him. He spoke in an old man voice, then clamped his mouth shut. They sat together and watched the dozen idle Mi’kmaw men who hung around the post like flies on meat. Amboise was surprised to see tears running down wicked old Auguste’s face as he watched them.

“They have nothing to do. When Kuntaw and I were of those years,” he said, “we were always ready for a hunt or go for eels, fish or seals or sturgeon. We made our bows and arrows, we made crooked knives and good canoes, we fashioned the paddles. We had good war games then, not like fighting foreigners with guns. The young men — yes, even I — committed brave deeds and there were feasts and dances such as are no longer performed. But you see what we have become,” he said and he pointed first at the idlers, then at himself. His hand groped beneath his thigh for the flat bottle.

• • •

“Elise,” said Amboise. “Come away now.” She threw her few possessions into a turnip sack and outstripped them running for the boat landing. Luçon Brassua was not there to hold her back.

“He is drunk with his friends,” said Elise. “We go now, now!”

“Wait. We must get Auguste. Kuntaw wants him to live in the Penobscot house.” The old man got up, trembling when he heard he was to come with them. He looked around. The idlers stood near the post doorway, a dog scratched its fleas. He sat down again, smiling slyly.

“No. Too late. You go. I stay.”

No matter what they said he refused. “Someone must stay. I will be the One Who Remains.”

He was always good at naming.

• • •

Amboise used the money Kuntaw had given them to buy passages on a vessel going from Halifax to Boston, then persuaded the owner of a fishing boat bound for Georges Bank to detour and drop them at Penobscot Bay. Elise said very little to them on the return journey, but when the boat sailed into their home port she sucked in a great deep breath and exhaled. Beatrix, who saw them coming up from the wharf, threw the front door open. She looked at Elise, saw the fading bruises and brimming eyes and understood everything. She stretched out her arms.

“Oh, thank God, my poor Elise, you are with us again. You are safe at home now.”

“Mother,” Elise cried. Beatrix embraced her and both women began to sob. Amboise and Jinot looked at each other; they had never seen Beatrix cry.

“This is a woman thing,” muttered Amboise, his eyes stinging. “Let us go out.”

Though Jinot wanted to be with Elise and Beatrix, he followed Amboise.

“What is wrong with me?” demanded Beatrix of Elise’s dog, Ami, a wolfish creature who could not ignore porcupines. The dog, flinching from her angry tone, looked at the floor. For months a pain had been twisting in the woman’s belly, came like a crab in the night to pinch at her gut. She had days when she rushed about as usual, teaching a boy from the village to read and write, concocting elaborate meals for Kuntaw, who turned away. He only wanted the spare foods of his childhood.

A new path had opened to Kuntaw — guiding whitemen to hunt and fish. It started when a Boston man, Mr. Williams, came to him and said he wanted to go in the Maine woods and hunt, and he needed a guide; he would pay. Kuntaw knew the forest, streams and lakes from his years in the logging camps. And they went north together on the train, then by buckboard, then by canoe. Mr. Williams returned to Boston dirty, scratched up, his eyes red from campfire smoke, thinner and more agile; he felt himself a tough woodsman. He had caught more than fifty trout in a single day and described his taciturn Mi’kmaw guide to envious friends. Not only that. The war for independence had linked the idea of freedom to a country of wild forests. Americans saw themselves as homines sylvestris —men of the forest.