Annie Proulx - Barkskins

In his desire to see every part of this new forest he left the trail and descended into a ravine. It was like a somewhat nightmarish dream when he ignorantly touched a glistening leaf and received a burning jolt of pain. Looking closely at the leaves of this small tree, the stinging nettle tree, he could see silvery hairs. Alas, not a true paradise. And there were mosquitoes. A wave of anxiety suddenly washed over him and he felt he had to get out of the ravine quickly. His feet tangled in creepers and rough vines, in the maze of supplejack. An extraordinary jumble of plants, grasses, vines, trees, shrubs were crowded together in huge knots. His clothes, decayed by long exposure to sun and salt, began to tear as he climbed up again, slipping on the muddy slope, hoping to find the trail again, his pants in ribbons from cutty grass.

Above him, at the head of the ravine, lay an old kumara field which in recent years had reverted to bracken. Eight or ten women and girls, their ko sticks laid aside, were resting from their labor of digging aruhe — fern root. The roots, many of them ten and twelve inches long, fat and heavy, were piled in great heaps. “What is that sound?” asked a small girl, cocking her head, alert to everything out of the ordinary. They all listened; yes, breaking branches and scrabbling slide of soil, a kind of thrashing in the ravine below. They half-rose in trepidation, ready to flee. The noise came closer and then a frightful creature came up over the rim and ran straight at them.

Jinot, stained with mud, panting and itchy, clawed up out of the ravine. His bloodied clothing hung in shreds, his hair was spiky with sweat. To his delight he saw the women surrounded by their piles of fern roots. He could not resist. All his life girls had welcomed his company. But this time as he ran toward them smiling and stretching out his arms, waiting to be welcomed, they fled as if from an indescribable terror, some crying in fear. He shouted at them, “Come back, I mean no harm!” They were already out of sight. And the old, smiling, merry Jinot evaporated, in his place an aging man who had known sorrow and difficulty and now, painful rejection.

• • •

Mr. Bone had spread a mat on the ground and was sitting cross-legged on it drinking tea and eating baked yam and fruits. Jinot returned his greeting with a peevish grunt.

“How I wish we had possessed the foresight to bring sacks of coffee. Tea is all very well, but it is not coffee.” Jinot said nothing, but he knew Mr. Bone’s Scots “cousin,” John Grapple, had a store of coffee. He had smelled it on the path out of the forest that ran behind the pakeha houses.

• • •

Several days later while Jinot was mending his torn clothing with a borrowed needle, and Mr. Bone scratching in his Idea book, the chief with the many-colored flax cape reappeared.

“Oh, Mr. Captain Sir,” he said in a wheedling tone, “you have many ax?”

“I have fifty in a crate,” said Mr. Bone, putting down his pen and waving at the hut where the crate stood, “for demonstration only. As I explained, it is my hope to establish an ax factory here. It is my hope to teach the Maori how to make axes of quality. I feel there is a great need here.”

“You want see good deck for whekere ? You walk me.” He gestured to an oblique trail leading into the bush.

“Is it a place with a stream of running water?”

“Oh yes. Too many water.”

Mr. Bone smiled, turned to Jinot and said, “You see, it was very easy to interest this man in my idea. I’ll warrant he knows of a good location for the factory.”

“Mr. Bone, it is not possible. The trader says there is no iron ore in the entire country and laughs at you. You cannot make axes without metal.”

“I think I know better than you, Mr. Jinot Sel, what I can and cannot do. It is not that there is no ore, it is only that it has not yet been found.” The cloaked Maori stood outside the hut stepping backward along on the trail and beckoning to Mr. Bone.

“I would not go with him,” said Jinot in a low voice. “He may be planning mischief.”

“Bosh! I’ll be perfectly safe. He is friendly. For a savage, Mr. Jinot Sel, you are timid. Nor do you understand these people any more than you understand establishing yourself in a new place,” he went on, for he had heard how the women had fled from the awful stranger lurching out of the ravine. It was the talk of the missionary enclave. “This is why whitemen get ahead. They know how to command. He will be my first recruit. In a year he will be running the trip-hammer. I take no satisfaction in saying that after all these years you prove a sad disappointment to me.” Mr. Bone left the hut and followed his eager guide up the trail.

• • •

After a mile and a little more the trail became faint and disappeared, but the chief pushed on, following a way marked with ponga ferns turned silver side up (invisible to Mr. Bone). Two more Maori fell silently in behind the ax entrepreneur, who was so absorbed in looking at the massive tree trunks that he did not notice. Huge, huge trees, giants of the earth, the pale grey columns as wide as European houses. Who could believe such immensity? Was it possible an ax could take such monstrous trees down? Could they be—?

Much moved, he called to the chief, “Tell me, are these kauri trees?”

“Kauri,” said the man, turning around and flashing his eyes at someone behind Mr. Bone. But so stunned was Mr. Bone by the impossible trees that he was not aware of the descending club that burst his brain. His last shattered thought was that a great kauri had fallen on him.

“Quick!” said the chief to one of his comrades, pulling out a fresh-edged obsidian knife. “Do you run back and get the axes. Then return here and help me carry the meat.” Before he severed the limbs he gingerly withdrew the Quare watch from Mr. Bone’s pocket. The demon’s heart was pounding, pounding!

“We know how to deal with you,” said the chief, placing the evil thing on a large leaf and covering it with another protective magic leaf while he got on with the cutting up. He spoke true words for that night he cast the watch into the fire and with satisfaction all the sated assembly saw the demon fling his wiry arms out as he cried aloud, then perished.

• • •

Two days later when Mr. Bone had not returned, Jinot felt mildly uneasy but the headstrong old man had had his way as always and would likely make some kind of a success of his venture. No doubt he was looking for iron ore. Jinot, his captive, now wanted to find a ship going to Boston and work his way home, although the mariner’s trade was unfamiliar to him. He would quit Mr. Bone, for he knew a South Sea ax factory was an improbable dream; there was no metal ore in New Zealand from all he had heard — miners and explorers aplenty, but no mines. Even if there were grand mines he was finished with ax making. He wanted only to go back to whatever was left of the places he knew. The wild New Zealand forest had moved him in incomprehensible ways, yet it repulsed him with its violent tangle of vegetable exuberance, its unfamiliarity and ancient aloofness. To escape he would have to get to Port Jackson first unless an American whaler put in to a Hokianga port. Mr. Bone could not hold him. He would leave with or without the old man. He was planning his escape when Mr. Rainburrow marched into the hut, breathing heavily, his eyes slitted.

“Where is Mr. Bone?” His voice was penetratingly loud and Jinot saw people standing outside the hut, listening and watching.

“I do not know. He set off several days ago with a native man wearing a grass cloak. Against my advice.”

“Your advice! Who are you, a servant, to give advice to Mr. Bone! Which native man did he go with?”