Annie Proulx - Barkskins

Kuntaw worked tirelessly at this odd business; he carried the packs and canoe, hacked trails through young spruce thickets, and at the campsite he built the lean-to, chopped firewood and got a fire going, cooked samp, trout, wild meat, seasoned only with shreds of wild ginger and garlic. Soon he had regular customers who wanted to hunt moose or caribou, whitemen who wove these trips into tales of manly adventures.

It seemed to Kuntaw he had blundered into the strangest occupation in the world, helping men have a “holiday,” men ignorant of the tattered forests, ignorant of canoes and paddling, ignorant of weather signs and plants, of fire building. They angered him sometimes. Judge James, whom the others treated with deference, said, “You Indians have a nice life. Just hunt and fish all the time, let the women do the work.” He laughed. Kuntaw said nothing then but later, smoking a pipe with Ti-Sabatis, another guide he saw sometimes at the boat landing, he said, “Whitemen never see it was our work. For them hunt and fish is only to play. They think we lazy because we only ‘play.’ ”

Ti-Sabatis smiled a little. “These men don’t know nothing about the woods, but they pay good money and I don’t know how they get that money, so they do somethin pretty smart.”

“It was our life and we lived it, but it was not easy like those whitemen think.” Yet he enjoyed these excursions.

• • •

The illness had made Beatrix a different person from the energetic long-haired beauty on a sorrel horse. They had had many happy years, but she was old now, as was he. She was ill and the illness frightened him. Kuntaw wanted to turn it back, to return her to the old Beatrix. He brought her cups of tea. She drank slowly, slowly, smiled at him and then vomited. It was now, when she most needed him, that he veered away from her. He could not help it. His feelings had begun to change years earlier, when Tonny arrived with his three children, bringing the old Mi’kmaw life with him. In his shame at his neglect of Tonny and Malaan, Kuntaw began to regard Beatrix as Other. The feeling was always there, even when they were glad to be together and with their children. Like a faraway drumbeat something inside him said, She is not Mi’kmaq. He had not made her into an Indian. He had betrayed his people by leaving Malaan and Tonny for her. He had betrayed Beatrix by failing to fullfill her wish. Every spring when he readied to take a Boston man on a fishing trip he was a little more pleased to be away from Beatrix’s house, to be back in the forest.

• • •

Beatrix’s good days became fewer; the pain always returned as though refreshed by its holiday and bit into its victim with greater force. If Elise brought cod broth to her she would sip a few drops from the spoon and then vomit. Her bowels became untrustworthy, her face gaunt and drawn, arms and legs like reeds, but the treacherous stomach swelled and grew enormous. The pain was the size of a beaver and gnawing with a beaver’s yellow chisel teeth.

Elise washed Beatrix’s soiled linens and hung them out to be sweetened by the chill wind off the bay. She cooked for herself and Kuntaw, kept broth simmering for Beatrix, who often could not swallow it. Elise knew little of herbal medicines and came to Kuntaw.

“Grandfather Kuntaw. Beatrix has been ill for six moons and I do not know how to ease the pain. It grows. She won’t eat nothin. Do you not know a healer who understands this sickness?”

But Kuntaw shook his head. “Maybe still in Mi’kma’ki, but here, no. She will want a whiteman doctor.”

“If he will come,” said Elise. “I have heard that he is haughty and says he will only treat white people.”

“Well,” said Kuntaw. “Beatrix’s father was whiteman. He had doctor friends. Maybe all dead now.”

He spent an uncomfortable quarter hour with the sick woman and prized the names of two medical men from her. The first, elderly Dr. Woodrit, sent a message that he had a full list of patients and could not come. The second, Dr. Hallagher, an Irish fellow new to Penobscot Bay, visited Beatrix, examined and talked with her for some time. When he came out of the sickroom he sat beside Elise and shook his head.

“She knows many big words, this Ind — this lady. I think she has a bad sickness, and I advise to call in a certain learned doctor from Boston — Dr. Mukhtar — if he will come. He has much experience with — with stomach ailments. Of this kind.”

Elise wanted to ask what “this kind” was, but only stared at him with pleading dark eyes.

Hallagher continued, studying the tense woman. “He is a foreigner, and his ways are not our — your — usual ways, but he is very learned in medicine. If anyone can do anything…” He promised he would write to Dr. Mukhtar himself and see if he could be persuaded to make the trip to the Penobscot Bay house. Elise’s face changed for a moment and she smiled at him, the roguish Sel smile.

• • •

When Kuntaw heard all this he exhaled between his teeth, a hissing sound like that of an angry animal, furious to feel so helpless, and went outside. He could not bear to see her suffering.

• • •

Dr. Hallagher returned on a weekday afternoon ten days later, shining with cleanliness and fresh linen, hoping to find Elise alone. But Kuntaw was also there, repairing his guide equipment for another Maine trip.

Kuntaw nodded and nodded when Dr. Hallagher said that the Boston doctor — Mukhtar — would arrive any day and examine Beatrix. He was making the arduous trip. But, said the Irishman, Kuntaw should not get his hopes up expecting a cure. Beatrix’s illness was profound. Kuntaw nodded, then asked a brutal question.

“How long she live?”

Hallagher stuttered out that he did not know, that God would decide, that Dr. Mukhtar could perhaps say, but he — no, he could not say. He left without a chance for a few private minutes with Elise.

• • •

It was a cool autumn afternoon when Dr. Mukhtar arrived on a black Arabian mare that had turned heads all the way from Boston. As he was removing his saddlebags, Elise came out and said that if he liked he could turn the mare in to the horse pasture or put her in the stable, as he preferred. He chose the pasture with its shady maples and rattling brook. He was a small, wiry man with a foreign face, wet black eyes and a nose like a falcon’s beak. Elise thought his dark face was frightening, even devilish, his voice somewhat rough but kind. A little reluctantly she led him into the house.

As soon as he stepped into the hall he sniffed the fetid air and knew what he would find. Elise took him first into the schoolroom, where Beatrix always served visitors and brought him a cup of tea. He put his saddlebags on the great pine table. He asked Elise many questions, demanded she show him Beatrix’s soiled sheets, examined them closely. He looked at Elise with his glittering foreign eyes.

“Is there another person who can help you ? You are thin and very tired. Nursing someone with an advanced stomach cancer is exhausting. We must get you some help.” Elise was shocked to hear Beatrix’s sickness named and knew at once there must be a fatal conclusion. Then came his questions; never had she been asked so many. He wanted to know everything about Beatrix, about Elise, Kuntaw and the family, their circumstances, how they came to be in this house; he even asked about the foods they ate and nodded as if he already knew when Elise told him Beatrix was uncommonly fond of meats smoked in the chimney. It was unnerving how many questions the man could ask. She saw how he looked around the schoolroom. Their two porcelain cups looked small and frail on the table’s wood expanse.

The house on Penobscot Bay had always been the great possession of Outger and Beatrix. But Outger had left and she had stayed. New people were building bigger houses with clapboarded painted sides all around the bay now. Charles Duquet’s great log house had become a decaying eyesore derided by the white settlers as “the wood wigwam.” When at last she sold the woodlot stumpage, the house, black with age, stood naked and decrepit.