Annie Proulx - Barkskins

“The river!” someone shouted. “Run!” The river lay half a mile beyond the shanty. It was a long journey and the fire raced with them, bellowing and booming, jumping its hot sparks over them and getting a head start each time. It was like being pursued by a ravening, demonic beast and Jinot was terrified. He saw Joe Wax’s hair on fire, the man oblivious to the pain, running, running. Now stumbling and falling, they passed the shanty, its smoking roof. The cook, Victor Goochey, stood in the doorway holding a long fork.

“The river!” screamed Swanee and ran on. The cook stood rigid and unmoving, his eyes fixed on the lusty springing flames behind the men. Jinot saw that the man could not move, swerved and ran to him, wrenching the cook from the doorway and shouting, “Run! Run! Run! Run!”

• • •

They leapt into the pool where the cook had often fished. The water was warm but deep enough to let them submerge, rise, submerge again. The teamster was in the pool with his oxen, sharing it with several deer, a wildcat and a black bear cub. The cook arrived, still clutching his long fork, his greasy apron smoking.

“Shanty’s afire,” he yelled and jumped in.

Joe Wax put his hand to his head, which was badly charred and blistered. Soot-stained river water ran down his face and neck. He was sobbing with pain. “Got me, most got me.”

The fire jumped over the heated river and the shallows quivered. The wind veered, fire greedily gobbled the landscape. Night fell and the pool was lighted by the lurid flames of the great fire. Near morning the wind lessened and in the first terrible day’s light Jinot saw ash swirl and ruffle. The pool was choked with dead fish. The cook, still holding his long fork, crouched in the shallows near the bear cub and was saying something to the animal in a low voice. Joe Wax floated facedown, the top of his head a massive red blister like a satin cushion. Swanee was nowhere. Jinot tried to call, but his throat was swollen shut and no sound came out. He sucked in a little of the river water, noticing with detachment that his hands and arms were deeply wrinkled from long immersion, and marked with welts and burns. Although his legs seemed strangely stiff he waded toward Joe Wax and shook his shoulder. No good, he was dead. The bear cub suddenly climbed out of the pool and, bawling, began moving over the burned ground, ashes accumulating on his wet fur, running toward a horrible shambling shape coming down the slope, a half-blind sow bear with most of her fur burned off and showing great raw swatches of roasted skin. She passed the cub and lumbered on toward the river, where she fell in, half-stood and began to drink and drink and drink.

The teamster, Jinot and Victor Goochey came out of the river and began the long walk to Fredericton. They had only shuffled half a mile when Jinot understood his legs had been burned. His charred pants had mostly disappeared and in places the wool cloth baked into the flesh. In the river he had hardly felt the pain, but in the open air and with gritty ash blowing against the open wounds the pain rose up in great waves. His endurance had burned down to a clinker and he fell.

• • •

He was lying naked on a rush mat. Above, birch bark slanted upward to a cluster of pole ends and a blackened smoke hole. He thought about it a long time. The realization came very slowly as he drifted in and out of consciousness; for the first time in his life he was in a wikuom. He was alone. His eyes were sore but he could see. He could smell something sweet and faintly familiar that attached to memories of pond edges. His legs itched and hurt intolerably and his thinking wavered and blinked out. When he woke again the light was very soft. It was twilight. He could smell honey, even taste it. He tried to put his hand to his mouth, but his arm was weak. It fell back and lay inert. His legs itched and he was violently thirsty. He slept again, half-woke when something sweet and wonderful dripped into his sore mouth.

The sound of wind woke him. It was grey dawn light. Slowly he remembered pieces of the fire, the burning, his legs, Victor Goochey holding his fork, the swollen red dome of Joe Wax’s head. He tried to move his legs but they were somehow stuck together. He smelled the honey. And the sweet swamp-edge fragrance.

A voice spoke, but he couldn’t understand the words. He thought it was Mi’kmaq but he had forgotten too many words to be sure. An arm half-lifted him up; a cup pressed against his mouth. The liquid was fresh with the taste of pine resin and soothing and after he swallowed it a deep lassitude overcame him and he drifted into the dark again, but not so soon that he couldn’t smell and almost feel that someone was dripping honey on his legs.

A long time later, days or weeks, he knew not which, he came out of his medicinal torpor and saw the broad face of a Mi’kmaw man of middle years, perhaps a few years older than himself. His hooded eyes had the protective coolness of a man deeply acquainted with suffering.

“Where am I? Who?” he whispered.

“Inui’sit? Parlez Mi’kmaw?” the man said.

“No, few words.”

“Français?”

“Un, deux, trois, quatre — c’est tout.”

“So.” The man said nothing for a long time, then, in a resigned and sad voice he continued in English. “This Indiantown. By Shubenacadie. Men bring you here tie like turkey. Leg burn. Name my Jim Sillyboy. Help burn people. I burn one time, enfant fall in fire. Know pain. Now burn people here come, Mi’kmaq, Iroquois, even whitemen. Some better. Some die. Burn is very bad, die. You little bad. I think walk one day.”

Jinot had heard the name Shubenacadie before and knew it was in Nova Scotia, part of old Mi’kmaw territory. How had he come here from New Brunswick? Who brought him here? Was it that cook, Vic Goochey? What did he mean “walk one day”? Of course he would walk, he would dance on the logs again as soon as he had his strength. He had been hurt many times and always he had healed quickly. He wanted to know about the fire.

“Big fire…” was all he could say.

“Ver, ver grand incendie. New Brunswick place. All burn up.” There was another long silence, then Jim Sillyboy sighed.

“Tomorrow maybe we start clean leg, both him. See you move leg. Now drink medicine. Sleep. Sleep good for burn.”

Over the next days Jinot learned that Jim Sillyboy was a renowned burn healer, that people came to him from far distances, bringing children scalded with hot oil, drunks pulled from fireplaces, woodsmen trapped in burning shanties, farmers half-roasted in flaming barns, and now he tended five from the Miramichi fire. This wikuom, and three others like it, were special healing places. Jim Sillyboy’s son Beeto helped him with the burned people.

“Long time burn pain. Long time.”

His two other sons, he said, spent much time roaming in search of bee trees, for honey was essential for treating burns. “Use much honey.” He took no pay for his services though he was poor.

“Kji-Niskam say one, spirit place. Black robe say brothers, help, do good.” His unease in speaking English showed in his rough sentences.

Slowly Jinot learned that many of the people in Indiantown were poor and miserable, so poor that there was not enough food. The old hunting places and the game had been destroyed, the salmon rivers clogged with logs, bark and sawdust from mills. Now, said Sillyboy, his people talked of changing Mi’kmaw ways, of growing gardens like the whites so at least there would be food.

“Our chief go London, speak king. Ask how make jardin. We never know this. We try.”

Were the Mi’kmaq now embracing even more doings of the white men? Jinot thought suddenly of Amboise, his embittered brother who liked saloons best in the white man’s culture if he had to like anything. And Martel, what of their comrade Joe Martel? Did the fire reach Bartibog? When Jim Sillyboy came in the evening Jinot asked him for information.