Annie Proulx - Barkskins

Minnie had vowed there would be no more children. They were too fragile, too precious. She could not bear to have her heart torn so savagely again. How true, she said, was the often heard, and now proven, old adage that life was a vale of tears. Of all Jinot’s children Amboise had been especially beloved, a kind of resurrection of Amboise, his burned brother. Jinot knew, guiltily, that he had granted Aaron less affection. Now he vowed to make up for this, and from that moment he and Minnie favored Aaron with love and gifts.

Jinot, indifferent to Minnie’s long speech telling him she would never again sleep with him — somehow he felt she blamed him for Amboise’s death — put a worn bison robe he had used on the Gatineau on the back porch and slept there summer and winter. The children could come to him any time they wished but he was not the old affectionate silly father. So remote was his stare, so remote was he, except with Aaron, that he did not see Minnie’s slow decline, how she grew smaller inside the fine-striped dress, did not hear her constant wet cough. In the two years since Amboise had died she became gaunt as her spine twisted. She suffered and pulled at her hair to shift the pain. The cooking deteriorated, the children grew out of their ragged and dirty clothes. Jinot made a great kettle of pease porridge once a week and the children were to help themselves until he discovered Lewie laughing as he threw handfuls of — something or other, assuredly filthy — into the pot. Then he hired a neighbor widow, Mrs. Joyful Woodlawn, to feed the boys and look after Minnie.

“Of course I’d be glad to look after poor Minnie and the boys. I’ll make soups to build Minnie up and beef and taters for the lads. And will bring over some water from our well, as it is known to be the best water in the town. There is no better thirst quencher than good water. Mr. Woodlawn was always proud of our well water.”

• • •

That winter ended like a snapped cable with days of sudden heat and flooding brooks, thrusting skunk cabbage growing three inches a day. The crows began to take their seasonal places, the males stretching their wings to show the long primaries, fanning their tail feathers, their dark eyes aglitter, the lady crows watching coolly from nearby perches, measuring the presentation of every point with critical eyes. Hugh Boss, stumping along on his canes, came over on a Saturday morning and spent several hours sitting beside his daughter’s bed. When Jinot came in from the factory Minnie was sleeping. Hugh Boss got up from his chair and jerked Jinot into the parlor.

“Jinot, Minnie is sick, very sick. Have you had the doctor in?”

“I didn’t— No, I did not know it was so bad. I thought she was just poorly but — I did get Mrs. Woodlawn to care for her betimes.”

“Betimes! To me she seems not long for this world. I will send the doctor.” And he stalked out, no friend to Jinot.

The doctor, not Dr. Mallard but a mealy-faced old gent with a silk cravat spotted with pork drippings, said it was consumption. Advanced consumption. Nothing to be done though they could try raw eggs and brandy alternating with hot beef broth. He offered to bleed the woman but Jinot would not have it. He wished he knew of a Mi’kmaw healer such as they said his great-great- grand-mère had been.

• • •

He thought he had scraped dry the dish of deep sorrow, but time brought a helping of worse. Mrs. Woodlawn bustled into the Sel kitchen one morning with her famous jug of well water, swigging a large glass of it herself, bringing some to Minnie. When Jinot came in at noon he found the widow had gone a ghastly blue and was braced against the table, her hands clenching the edge. She looked at him with a terrible expression and then doubled over in dual spasms of explosive diarrhea and violent vomiting. There was no doubt of the cause — the cholera had been rampant in New York and was now encroaching on smaller towns.

“Save us all!” said Jinot, running into Minnie’s room. But the galloping disease had got there first and Minnie was sinking, fingers and toes clenched with spasm. The twins, Lewie and Lancey, still clung to life, but died while their father stood gaping down at them. It could happen so quickly.

“Aaron. Aaron!” he called, but the boy was not in the house. He found him in the woodshed with a book of tales. He said he had been there since early morning, had breakfasted on a piece of ham fat left over from supper. No, he had not taken Mrs. Woodlawn’s water. He felt well, he said, and he looked well.

They walked together to Hugh Boss’s house. “Hugh, it’s the cholera,” said Jinot. “It took them. Just me and Aaron’s left.” The big man cursed them both, broke down, buried his face in his hands. He was not well. Mrs. Boss, pregnant again, was abed with an illness that resembled cholera and the youngest children were ill. Mrs. Woodlawn had brought them some of her delicious water before she went to Minnie. Hugh Boss lived, but Mrs. Boss and the three youngest children all died on the same day.

• • •

After the funerals weeks passed, dragging their crippled hours like chains. Hugh Boss and Jinot hated each other for months until they met in the cemetery to put up the seven fresh-cut stones and were reconciled in grief. The memorials bore only the names and dates and the word cholera.

They agreed that Jinot and Aaron would live with Hugh Boss, sleeping in the haymow and helping with the surviving children until Mrs. Boss’s sister could come from Danbury, Connecticut. Jinot swore he would keep Aaron with him, keep him safe until he became a man. Yet there was something new to worry about as Aaron several times said that he wanted to go to Nova Scotia and know his Mi’kmaw relatives. He wanted to be an Indian. By the time young birds were crowding the crows’ nests the cholera plague had eased and Jinot and Aaron returned to their silent house.

• • •

For Jinot the palliative was work and he spent much time with Mr. Bone, now shrunken and stooped, but still making great plans and filled with energy unseemly for an old man. He spoke of starting a handsaw manufacturing factory. He talked of setting up a rolling mill and making his own steel. Anything could excite his fertile imagination.

Though axes remained Mr. Bone’s true love, he wanted new lands to conquer. He sat up nights roving over the world through the pages of his swollen atlas (for it had been dropped in the bath and dried page by page over the stove) and reading foreign newspapers.

“I think,” said Mr. Bone, after a year of consideration, “that the best course is to set up an ax manufactory abroad. Trees grow all over the world and everywhere men need houses and buildings, they need axes. My life has ever been dedicated to the removal of the forest for the good of men. I have studied countries where there is a burgeoning population, plenty of trees and a need for axes. The list is not a long one, but I would value your opinion before I take any steps.”

Jinot laid his hand on the atlas and waited. Mr. Bone’s peculiar list named Norway, Russia, Java, New Zealand and Brazil. Jinot said, “Why not go to the western forests of this country? They say there are forests that cannot be measured from Ohio westward to the end of the land.” Mr. Bone ignored this.

“It will be simpler for a swift establishment of the factory if the inhabitants speak English; that removes four of the countries from the list and leaves us with New Zealand.”

“They speak English in New Zealand?”

“Those in government and control do so. The country is allied to England, where they do speak English. The New Zealand natives speak some gibberish of their own, but many have learned English.”