Barkskins

by Annie Proulx

  A crazy taste for invention and improvement blew through the state like a dust storm. Shingle mills used small circular saws and men swore the time was just around the corner when round saws would replace the old up-and-down and even gang saws. Already there was a forty-eight-inch circular saw in a mill on the Kenduskeag, and another in Waterville that was rumored to cut an amazing four thousand board feet an hour. Steam engines were taking over the world. In Boston the new gaslights burned as brightly as high noon. It was too much progress to swallow in a lump. Amboise and Jinot Sel—Josime was still in far Manitoulin—did not like it and after one season on the much-cut Penobscot among crews of griping farmer-loggers they went north to New Brunswick, to the monkish silence of the old-fashioned woods camps where they found other broad-cheeked Mi’kmaq living the hybrid lives of woodsmen. Their people could no longer live without whiteman goods and food; instead of hunting and making the things they needed they worked for pay.

  Jinot could fall a little six-inch pine in less than a minute. Down they went, the small pines. The brothers, pressed between the white world and their own half-known and disappearing culture, settled back into the woodsman’s life. Amboise was highly susceptible to rum. In the camp he was sober and thoughtful, but when they went south for a blowout he became a Drunken Indan, lying sodden in the muddy street, where boys thought it funny to thrust burning splinters into the toes of his boots.

  • • •

  One year Jinot, like a man visiting his old homestead, went back to Penobscot Bay. He walked down to the Duquet house, just to look. He felt nothing. It was run-down and dilapidated, the roofline sagged, two damaged wagons stood in the yard. But someone lived in it—he could see dogs under the porch. There were sheets hanging limp on a line. Was Elise still there? He walked past the house several times, unable to go to the door. But there were two shops now in the settlement and he went into one to buy tobacco.

  “Them that live in that old log place down by the water? Doc Hallagher, years ago?”

  The old shopkeeper, walnut-stained color, long thin fingers, looked up.

  “They did live there. Move to Boston five, six year past. Bay folks too healthy for the doc to make a livin. Kids to feed.”

  “Lot a kids?”

  “Course she was Indan, so what can—” He broke off, recognizing that the man he was talking with might take offense at what he almost had said. He had some not too distant Indian ancestors himself. He squinted at Jinot. “You related?”

  “Yah. She’s my sister. I didn’t see her long time.”

  “You go down Boston way you might find her. Don’t know who’s in that house now. I think Elise sold it or give it to Francis Sel, rich stuck-up bastid. Ask him. He owns it, leases it out. He lives in that house next the sawmill. Sawmill owner. If he’s feelin good he might tell you.” He thought a moment, then said, “But if Elise is your sister, then Francis is your brother? You better go ask him yourself.”

  • • •

  But Jinot did not care to see Francis-Outger. If young Édouard-Outger was at home it might have been a temptation, but the storekeeper said the nephew was working in the camps somewhere. Jinot wasn’t going to Boston. He went back into the Miramichi woods. But not back to Mi’kma’ki. Better to be in the lumber camps.

  • • •

  It was a dry winter, cold enough, but no amount of snow compared to the old days. It made woods work easier except for getting the logs to the stream. They ran the water wagon at night to make a slick runway. While the choppers ate breakfast the driver ate his dinner, told of seeing lynx and once a black catamount, its eyes catching the yellow moonlight for a moment and then gone like pinched-out candles.

  They rolled the logs into the scanty freshet. Logs grounded on gravel bars and it was hot, hard work prying them off. Sun glint off the river made them half blind and when they walked into the woods the shade throbbed with green blaze.

  “Crimes, it’s like hayin season. Hot!”

  With half the drive stranded along the river until heavy rain or the next spring drive the farmers went back to their homesteads, complaining, “ ’Tis only June, but I never see it so unseasonable hot. And dry.” Few seeds sprouted. Those that managed to send up shoots withered when no rain came. The wells quit. Women scraped water from inch-deep brooks for their gardens but as the long hot August blazed on, the plants remained stunted and starved. By September potato plants prostrate, maize stalks like faded paper foretold a hungry winter. Even impious men prayed, staring up at the monotone sky.

  The only farmwork that could be done was more clearing. Work was the cure for every trouble. And it was thirsty work. The tough French and English farmers came from generations who had burned fallow fields and they saw no reason to change. Burning was part of farming—piles of slash from months of clearing, heaps of deadwood and dry rushes from drained swamps. The easiest way to clear woodland was to set it on fire and later grub out the black stumps. In that crackling dry autumn when dead weeds shattered into dust and brittle grasses crunched underfoot hundreds of settlers set their clearance fires as usual.

  • • •

  In the camps swampers were building roads for the winter cut. Most smoked pipes and now knocking the glowing dottle onto the ground started a swift little fire. The habit was to let fires burn. Fires were inevitable. It cheered settlers to know a little more of the forest was going down.

  By early October the air was smoke-hazed violet, thick with heat, so humid that sweat-soaked shirts could not dry. Everyone moved slowly, cranky with rash and sweat sores. The choppers drank gallons of water from the shriveled brooks and their steaming hair hung lank. No evening breezes cooled and people lay in their smelly beds praying for the heat to break.

  On the seventh of October the prayer began to be answered. Dry air from the west crossed an invisible frontal boundary, encountering the stagnant wet air. The winds began to mix with ferocious results, blasting oxygen like myriad bellows into the many small fires.

  • • •

  Amboise and Joe Martel, their old friend from the Penobscot, had hired on with a jobber on the Nepisiguit. Amboise seemed to land in Bartibog jail every time he left the camp. Miles south on the Miramichi, Jinot, another half Mi’kmaw named Joe Wax and Swanee, a bullnecked limber, were cutting for one-armed old Lew Green.

  Jinot’s crew was two miles upstream from the shanty, just starting the show on a marked-out plot. The terrain was level enough where they were cutting, but to the west and southwest steep hills and inaccessible ravines were packed with big timber, deadfalls and heavy underbrush. That morning Swanee had laid his pipe down on an old stump and it had smoldered on sullenly after he took his pipe up. There were little smoke spirals in every direction, always fire somewhere. They let the stump burn; whenever they wanted to light a new pipe they could put a dry splinter into the smolder and have an instant light, but a sudden rush of wind out of the southwest set the stump ablaze in seconds and they stood amazed, watching it rise into a towering column of fire. They heard the sound then—faraway thunder, then a roar like the rumble of logs coming off a rollway. It went on and on and grew louder.

  “Hell is that?” said Swanee. The wind increased and it bent the stump’s tower of flame to the ground. Immediately fire spread out like spilled water. They could see bulging black smoke to the southwest. Cinders and ash flew overhead. Joe Wax pointed south and Jinot saw a sight he could never forget. Behind the pine ridge billowed a mountain-scape of smoke and a brightness grew behind the ridge, silhouetting the jagged crest of pines. The roaring sound was tremendous, and with fear they now grasped that it was the wind and fire in a concert of combustion. With a harsh snarl like an exhalation from hell, the entire five-mile-long ridge burst into orange streamers that ran up the pines. Great slabs of flame broke free from the main fire and sprang at the sky. A hail of burning twigs and coals came down on the men. Rivulets of fire snaked up trees they had planned to cut. A nearby pine exploded. The noise from the approaching ho
locaust and the hurricane wind deafened them. Trees burst open. Nothing could exist in that massive furnace.

  “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.

  “Can no one tell me about the fire? You say it burned up New Brunswick? Could not burn up all New Brunswick. Très big place, many rivières,” he said, hauling out a few French words.

  “I hear all burn. I look somebody. For tell you. Maybe find
that man you bring.”

  The next day Sillyboy gently cleaned the honey from his legs. He rolled Jinot on his side, said the back of the right leg was the worst.

  “Big scar come you, I think.”

  This meant nothing to Jinot. Scars were common, scars didn’t kill you. Scars were the proofs of survival. But as the weeks and months went on he discovered their cruelty. The cicatrices made him a walking dead man, for the scarred back of his right leg contracted painfully and made it almost impossible for him to walk. When he tried, it was to hobble with tremendous pain and he could manage only a few steps. The scar froze his leg in an unnatural position.

  All through the winter he lay in the wikuom. Early in his recovery, when Jim Sillyboy examined the itchy healing wounds, he explained in words and gestures that the scar was “too enfant” for his special massage that would make it a little softer and more flexible. Beeto would do this—it was his skill. He would use a special salve Jim Sillyboy compounded of the mila-l’uiknek, the seven kinds of healing herbs, roots, bark and needles. He made another good salve of beaver fat and the gum of kjimuatkw, the white spruce. And there were useful decoctions and teas which he would teach Jinot to make himself from the good ingredients. For the scar was now his master and it would demand a lifetime of care. The fire had been the salient point of his life. He had an absolute knowledge that nothing—nothing—would ever be as it had been.