Barkskins

by Annie Proulx

  All day and into the night, their legs festooned with bloodsuckers, the watermen fended off logs trying for the shore, a shore as deep in mire as a hog yard, mud that gave no purchase to a straining man. Days in the icy water caused chilblains, swollen and redly itching legs that swelled and blistered; some men could not bear to sit by the fire for the pain.

  Yet twice, despite their labor, the river logs knitted together, bobbing and rising, a huge wooden knot forming to block the river, which began to back up and flood the land. Farmers ran down to the shore shouting that their hay meadows were ruined. Twenty men attacked the first jam, prying and separating logs that seemed to grow into each other. Minutes changed to hours and suddenly a quiver trembled through the mass and the men ran like squirrels for the shore, turned and looked back at what they had escaped: thousands of logs shooting downstream, picking up speed, riding up on each other, hissing with the speed of the current, acres of pine forest on the ride. But the second jam was a killer and they all saw it.

  The day was overcast and dark grey. Marchand hoped for rain, a good hard rain that would lift the water level. The rain held off and the difficulty came right where they knew it would. A granite ledge like the backbone of the world ran halfway across the river, plunged underground leaving an opening of two or three rods, then rose again on the other side of the river. The logs had to go through the central channel. The ledge was no problem at high water; logs glided over it with grace. In low water the trick was to have good men standing on each side ready with their pike poles, and more men in the bateaux to guide logs into the narrow passage. Jinot Sel was in one of the three bateaux. Downriver he saw James Ketchum and Franceway standing up to their knees in water herding strays. The orderly procession of logs slowed and almost stopped as tenders upstream jabbed at bunching troublemakers. Onshore, Tom Keyo saw one slightly crooked log, a good forty-footer, elbow its way into a crowd.

  “Lookit, that’s a bad one, you see it?” he said.

  As he spoke the men upstream shoved scores of hustling logs out into the faster current and these swallowed up the troublemaker.

  “Goddamn!” yelled Tom Keyo, with no regard for Marchand’s rule about swearing. A great batch of logs reached the ledge all at once, and among them was the crooked stick, which hung itself on the ledge. The rest of the logs began to pile up on Old Crooked, as they were already calling it, like sheep struggling through brush to escape a pack of wolves.

  “All hands and the cook!” someone screamed.

  Higher and higher the logs rose on each other’s backs, a vast sheaf of wheat for giants, covering the ledge and forcing Franceway and James Ketchum toward the shore. So high did the logs stack that a few top ones began, of their own volition, to roll down into the central current.

  Marchand was dancing with frustration. “From the top, roll ’em in from the top,” he shouted, unaware of the crooked key log at the bottom holding the main bunch in place. A dozen men scrambled high and began rolling logs down into the current. But the central jam did not move and new sticks continued to build up. Franceway put down his pike pole and ran for his ax. He shouted at Marchand, who didn’t hear him, “There’s a key down there, crooked ol son of a goddamn jeezly bitch key!” Gripping his ax he ran out onto the ledge toward the jam, got into the hung-up bunch at the bottom and spied the ill-shaped jam maker. It was crisscrossed by half a dozen big stems and he beckoned to James Ketchum to come help him chop down to the problem.

  “Marchand!” screamed Byers over the roar of water, “you got a key hung on the ledge.” Marchand nodded. A few of the men on top came to the lower level and began prying at logs. Franceway and Ketchum chopped their way down to the bad log and began to cut into its crooked bend. Crackling sounds came from it and Ketchum shouted “Run!” suiting his action to the words. But Franceway lifted his arms and smote the bent devil a final blow. It broke, the jam quivered and immediately began to haul. Logs gushed over the edge. Jinot, in his bateau above the jam, saw a thirty-foot log rear up at the top of the releasing pile and plunge down like a falling arrow, striking Franceway square in the center of his back. Men onshore heard the crack. Franceway folded backward like a sheet of paper, his heels came past his ears and now a butcher’s package of meat, he went under the grind. Jinot opened his jaws to scream but his throat was paralyzed. In that moment his childhood ended.

  • • •

  The workday lasted until after sunset, the long summer light slowly giving way to darkness, and Jinot bereft, weeping in rasps and chokes, crept under the bateau to lie beside Franceway’s empty place. He did not sleep but wept and rolled back and forth. It was the first of many sleepless nights. Trying to get past the misery he worked. He cut trees with a surety and rapidity that made him difficult as a chopping partner. He always volunteered for the spring drives and people up and down the rivers recognized his fluid, quick-footed style. “Jinot!” they called. “Jinot Sel.” And waved.

  He worked for Marchand again for two years, then, like his brothers, moved on to different camps, different rivers. He went home in the summers and chopped the winter’s firewood for Beatrix and Kuntaw—eighty cords to keep the old house warm, sometimes also for Francis-Outger, who lived nearby. It was good when Josime or Amboise was there and they sawed, chopped and split in comradely fashion. He went fishing with Kuntaw and Francis-Outger’s young son, Édouard-Outger. Once Beatrix made a picnic with roast chicken and potatoes cooked in hot coals. Another year Kuntaw and Beatrix went to the mudflats and came back with a bushel basket of clams, which Kuntaw cooked Mi’kmaw style smothered in seaweed. Jinot helped Elise by lifting great boiling kettles off the fire when she put up vegetables and fruit for the winter, gleaming purple beets in their glass prisons on the cellar shelves alongside varicolored jars of blueberries, peas, beans, applesauce, pickled eggs, and pear halves. Then came the morning when he’d had enough of domesticity, packed his turkey and set off for Bangor and the hiring bosses. If Josime or Amboise was at home, this itch to leave was infectious and they went the distance together. Sometimes they hired out together and hiring bosses fought to get them; it was well known the Sel brothers were the best in the woods.

  The years slid by distinguished only by accidents, injuries, wildfire and strange events. Then, around the time of the new century, for some unclear reason, they again began to work at different camps. Once more Jinot joined Marchand, by mistake, as he had come late to Bangor and the best camps already had their quotas of men. Marchand’s camp was as rough and primitive as in the old days, but he was cutting in the Allagash watershed, where Jinot had not been. The trees were some of the best remaining white pine, and he wondered how Marchand had come by such a choice woodlot. He slept under a bateau rather than in the bunkhouse, thinking of Franceway in their young days. How would it have been now, with both of them close to thirty winters? He would always think of Franceway when he slept under a boat.

  Someone called his name in a hoarse voice.

  “Jinot! Jinot! Wake!” His heart leapt. He had been dreaming of him. It was not Franceway, it never would be Franceway again, but his half brother Francis-Outger, holding a lantern in his left hand and shaking Jinot’s knee with the other.

  “Get up! Come. Now.”

  “What? What?”

  “Mother is dead. Kuntaw wants you to come. I told Marchand. He cursed me hell to breakfast—a bad-swearin man. Josime rode to tell Amboise. You come. Now!”

  • • •

  Beatrix was buried in the plot that Outger had laid out behind the house. The judge read the will directly after the funeral as the family was at hand. Beatrix had left the house, furniture and property to Elise in gratitude for her care and in atonement for sending her to a miserable marriage when she was a girl. All her books she left to Dr. Mukhtar. The secret pine woodlot she owned in northern Maine, a property of forty thousand acres, went to her sons, Francis-Outger and Josime. To Kuntaw she left two of the five horses they kept, a red English wool blanket he had always liked and
a letter. He opened and read the letter of only a few sentences, gave a short laugh and turned silent. Beatrix had made him laugh once again, and once again she had puzzled him. He said he would go back to Canada. Jinot and Amboise each received a small package. Amboise pulled away the paper and found a small watercolor Beatrix had painted depicting Elise, himself and Jinot sitting on a bench under the apple tree. He had a very faint memory that long ago she had sat them in a row and made a drawing in her red sketchbook. He had never seen this painting. There was a small deerskin sock containing five gold pieces. Mopping his eyes and putting his inheritance carefully in his breast pocket he said he would go to New Brunswick for the drive that was barely under way. Jinot opened his own package—it was a familiar stuffed toy horse, four inches tall, that Beatrix had made for him the day after Tonny brought them there. And he, too, had a deerskin pouch of coins. A folded paper written in her unsteady hand said, “Remember me.” How could it be otherwise?

  That evening Amboise said to Jinot, “You come my camp end of July and we talk where to go. I got some ideas. But first go find Marchand and git your pay. I can tell you got some trouble, not just Mother’s death—better come work.”

  • • •

  Marchand said, “I shouldn’t give you nothin. You left me in the lurch, just walk off like that middle of the night.” But he paid him and Jinot found himself with nearly two hundred dollars in his pocket as well as Beatrix’s coins. Yet his heart was sore with the loss of Beatrix. He had loved her since the day she lifted him onto the chair and called him snoezepoes. He had loved the little stuffed horse with its yarn mane and painted eyes; it had been lost, and it seemed he was holding his childhood again. He put it with his other precious memento—Franceway’s tiny songbook, two or three reminder words for many songs. He could feel Beatrix’s warm closeness, could hear Franceway’s beloved voice.

  This last day at the Penobscot house he stuffed his pack basket with clothing, a crooked knife, flint, extra moccasins as if he were going on a long journey. He came into the kitchen for the last time. Elise was sitting at the table writing a list of chores. She looked up at him.

  “When will you come again?” she said.

  “I do not know. I can’t tell. I will work awhile, maybe find Amboise, maybe go back up north. Maybe find Grandfather Kuntaw? I don’t know.”

  Taking down the trees was his anodyne. The forests of New England vibrated with chopping. Swarms of men limbed and hauled the windfall to the rivers. Mills sawed day and night and the great glut of lumber brought new settlers and encouraged an unprecedented construction boom.

  Another year passed and another and Jinot counted his more than thirty winters. It was time he found Amboise, if he was still in that New Brunswick camp.

  41

  Gatineau camps

  The New Brunswick camp was deserted except for a mournful ex-logger with a bandaged head and scabbed face sitting on the cookhouse steps peeling potatoes. “Wal, they tell me I am lucky. They tell me I am lucky I can peel taters. Lost half my teeth, see?” He exposed empty purple gums. “On the drive, log took half my face, bled like a busted dam. They give me a job of cookee but I spect by fall I’ll be good agin.”

  “Looking for my brother, Amboise Sel?”

  “Yah, I see it—you got a Indan phiz like Amboise. I seen him come out the bunkhouse with that old Indan pack basket and known he was goin his own way. He talked about makin a shack in the woods, out by our cut. Liked it out there, but I don’t know what there was to like—just swamp. Say, have some tea! I take some this time a day. Name’s Mikla. Joe Mikla.” Like many who spend time alone he could not stop talking. They went into the cookhouse. Jinot noticed shrouded mounds of rising bread, raised his eyebrows at the cookee.

  “Yeah, there’s a crew a swampers workin, but no choppers. Here, show you where we was cuttin.” Dipping his finger in his tea he drew a wet map on the table marking the old cut where Amboise might be found. “Can’t miss a cut like that. Guess Amboise’d pick a good spot next to the swamp, get the full benefit a the mosquitoes. I was glad to get out a there.”

  • • •

  He found Amboise at the end of three days of swamp slash, bent over and whittling on something. To one side Jinot saw a row of dressed tree roots.

  “I’m gettin these,” said Amboise, gesturing at the row of roots. “It’s old Perley Palmer’s show. He don’t care if I take the knees—all stumps to him anyways.”

  Maybe, thought Jinot, Amboise had lost his mind. He shifted the subject and asked about Kuntaw.

  “Grandfather Kuntaw? After her buryin he rolled up and went north. Back to Canada. Back to where he come from. Last I heard. Maybe he writes to Elise?”

  “She’s in Boston with that doctor husband, Hallagher.”

  “Who is livin in the house?”

  “I don’t know. Francis-Outger looks after it now. Maybe Elise sold it? Nobody told me.”

  There was silence while they thought about Kuntaw, an old man heading into the north woods. Their thoughts were envious.

  “Brother,” said Amboise. “I have work we can do together.”

  “What work? Not swampin out roads. Told Marchand I’d be back in November. If I could.”

  “Not swampin; I talked with some fellers down in Portsmouth shipyard after—after the drive. I heard they’d pay good for them things.” He waved at his root assembly. “Workin this cut I seen the swamp full a hackmatack. They want ship timber, knees—knees for ships. They say ‘ships get built in the woods.’ ”

  Jinot looked at the root knees lined out in a row. Hackmatack, hard as iron, prized for its tough and twisted root fibers.

  “We just do it for a while, eh? You go with Marchand when he starts. Winter, I chop again.”

  “Guess we can. This a good hackmatack-juniper swamp?”

  Amboise said that it was better to get the knees late in the year, when the sap stopped running. In summer it was a sticky business. “But it’s dryin up pretty good now. I figured work on them until frost. And then go back in the camps.”

  They dug around the roots of likely hackmatacks. When they found one with a good bend, they cleared away the soil, cut the end two feet out from the tree and went after the taproot. The tree teetered, went down and they bucked off the root stump a good five feet up.

  “Now we got a knee,” said Amboise, and he showed Jinot how to measure and mark the line and hew to make a ninety-degree angle at the heel, a smooth throat on the inner curve, the back and bottom smooth and flat.

  Jinot didn’t much like grubbing in the swamp for knees and he did not want to go back to Marchand. He felt as Kuntaw, that he had to get away.

  “Brother,” he said to Amboise. “Let us go west. I have heard there are great forests west. I do not want to get these hackmatack knees.”

  Amboise looked upward at the treetops. “Yes,” he said.

  • • •

  It was dark when Jinot came awake. There was something—someone—outside the shack. He reached over and touched Amboise and knew by his rigid shoulder that he had heard it and was awake. Slowly, soundlessly, Jinot sat up. His ax was near the door flap. He began to stretch toward it when a voice said, “Long ago in the old days three children were lost in the forest—”

  “Josime!” yelled Amboise. “You fool! Could of shot you.”

  “If you had a firearm,” said Jinot, groping for the candle. Josime built up the fire outside, Amboise filled the kettle. They sat in front of the fire, brothers in stained shirts, spark-holed hats. In the first light their uncle-brother Josime saw the hackmatack knees.

  “Is this man’s work?”

  “No, we are now travelers and hunters. Go to that west forest, Pennsylvany, Ohio, we don’t know how far. Kuntaw said that forest goes to end of the world. We go there,” said Jinot. Amboise nodded. “That is our plan.”

  Josime laughed. “That is not your plan. That is my plan. I care nothing for that woodland I was to share with Francis-Outger. He was happy to
hear me say, ‘Brother, you can have it all.’ I think about you, my nephew-brothers. You better come with me, but I am going. Today. It is my plan.”

  • • •

  The decision began a welding of their lives and work as they angled north through the forest, leaving behind them a world of chopped and broken trees, woodland changed to cornfields and pasture. They yearned to go to a place where the trees still stood thick and wild. Josime said he had heard of a timber operation in the Gatineau country to the north.

  “There is a man from Boston went there. He got three camps, sendin log rafts down to Montreal. I say go north.”

  The important word for them was north. They were of the north and they would go north.

  • • •

  In ten days they walked to Three Rivers—Trois-Rivières—where they found some Omamiwinini downriver people preparing to go beyond Montreal up the Kichisìpi. These travelers, many women and children, in the care of a tall man with a dark and serious face, were happy to have three more strong men to help on the portages, to move along before the hard cold. Already there were morning frosts.

  When they stopped for the first night a knot of girls enclosed Jinot. Some of them were exceptionally pretty. The Omamiwinini told Josime that some of them were Odaawa people on their way to Manitoulin Island, where other Odaawa people lived. Once, long ago, they had all lived on that big island, but whiteman’s diseases had come and the survivors set their villages afire; some moved to Trois-Rivières. Now they were returning home, for the diseases had disappeared. They would break their journey for a few days at First Meeting Place—Montréal. Josime, in another canoe, stared at one girl for a long time before he turned away and asked the men questions about the Gatineau. Yes, said the man with the serious face, it was true, whitemen cut pine up that river. They were making round logs to be flat on all sides. Very strange.