by Annie Proulx
Her greater interest was not in the infant but in rotary lathes. Duke & Breitsprecher was entering the plywood market. Here was a use for birch, long despised as a weed tree. Her engineers were experimenting with various glued-up wood layers from different species. And they were discussing an interesting new wood, balsa wood from Ecuador, very light and very strong. She listened to their reports of its remarkable weight-strength ratio. The problem was that balsa trees did not constitute whole forests, but grew in scattered places throughout the dripping tropical forests. Finding the trees and getting the logs out was the difficulty. She thought it was not worth the effort, and balsa logging went on the shelf.
The day Lavinia went back to the office Dieter took the baby from his nurse and carried him into the park, laid him down under the newly leafed silver maple, propped himself on his elbow beside the child. Charles stared up into the quivering green, where dots of sunlight winked. But, wondered Dieter, how much could he see? Were the shapes of leaves sharp or was all a green massed blur? He picked the baby up and looked into his small pointed face seeing his expression change to one of interest as his eyes focused on Dieter’s mustache. The baby’s arms flew up in a nervous start.
“You see, Charles, it is a tree. Your life and fate are bound to trees. You will become the man of the forests who will stand by my side.”
• • •
One morning Axel Cowes walked through the forest to the Breitsprecher kitchen door at six in the morning. “Good morning, Mrs. Balclop. Is Lavinia up?”
“Awake, I am sure, but likely not up and dressed. I have orders to send her coffeepot up at six thirty sharp.” Lavinia had abandoned tea for cups of strong black coffee sweetened with honey.
“If you can add another cup I will take it up to her myself. There is most urgent business—a crisis I must discuss with her immediately.”
At that moment Dieter came into the kitchen for his coffee mug. He would take it out to the potting shed and begin the morning’s work.
“Axel! What brings you here at this early hour? A tree down in the forest?”
“In a manner of speaking. I came to break the news to Lavinia and to you that Mr. Flense has done a bunk.” Mrs. Balclop tipped her head to hear everything.
“What does that mean, ‘done a bunk’?”
“It means that he has left the city and the country for parts unknown—perhaps Texas, as they say of all absconders—with a great chunk of Duke and Breitsprecher funds in his pockets.” There was a ringing silence. Cowes drew in his breath, said, “And Annag Duncan, too. She went with him.”
“Oh oh oh,” said Dieter. “Let us go up to Lavinia. She will take this hard.”
IX
the shadow in the cup
1844–1960s
60
prodigal sons
The years had been hard on Aaron Sel, Jinot’s only surviving son. When Jinot left for New Zealand with Mr. Bone, Aaron found his way to Mi’kma’ki and the family band of Kuntaw, his father’s grandfather, who had after the death of his wife Beatrix left the Penobscot Bay house and returned to Nova Scotia hoping to live the old Mi’kmaw way. Aaron made an impression on Etienne, Kuntaw’s grown son of twenty-six winters, as a brash youth with nothing of Jinot’s reputation for merriness. Aaron had expected some kind of ceremonial welcome, the warmth of acceptance, had hoped for dissolving mysteries of who he was. He had expected young women. Now that he was here he did not know what he should do. He had no understanding of eel weirs, could not tell a blueberry from an enchantment. He could not hunt caribou or beaver. In any case there were no beaver or caribou.
“I have no friends here—everyone is against me,” he said to Etienne in his most piteous voice.
“You have to learn. Come with me to the river and I show you how we repair the weir.” But Aaron could not fit rocks together, could not hammer stakes in the right position.
“I need a gun,” he said, but there were no guns for anyone without money.
“You want too much,” said old Kuntaw, the Sel clan’s elder and sagmaw. “Here you must learn to give, not take.” But after two restless years in Mi’kma’ki, Aaron went back to Boston, looked for Jinot, who was still in New Zealand, and drifted around the waterfront.
It was on the waterfront that two jovial men got into conversation with him, invited him to the alehouse and bought him drink. Later he had a misted memory of walking between his two new friends toward the docked ships, but no recollection at all of how he came to be aboard the Elsie Jones. He woke the next morning to the painful strike of the bosun’s rope end.
“Git up, you stinkin Indan beggar brat.” He was a green hand on the Elsie Jones bound to London with a cargo of spars and masts.
“You cannot do this! I know my rights. You cannot keep me against my will.”
“What! Are you a sea lawyer? One of them always prating about ‘rights’ and ‘free speech’ and such? I’ll learn you what your ‘rights’ are. You’ll toe the mark and the mark will be high.”
The bosun, James Crumble, instantly took a strong dislike to this young half-breed who spoke of “rights,” put him in the hands of the crew for daily greenhorn instruction in the names and functions of the ropes, the tackle, the watches, the names and functions of the bewildering kinds of sails, the workings of the tackle fall, the daily duties beginning with the swabbing of the deck before the sun was up. They gave him tasks spangled with mortal dangers, sent him clambering up the futtock shrouds in great wind and icy rain, snarled confusing orders salted with vile epithets such as “toad-sucking gib-cat,” and “scabby jackeen,” picked away relentlessly in faulting his lubberly errors. Nor did Crumble spare the rope’s end, cracking it every time Aaron opened his mouth—“Shut yer gob, you hopeless fuckin hen turd of a fool or I’ll spread your guts on the deck.” Crack!
The trip was wretched, storm after storm and in the intervals between, rough seas. A set of monster waves cleaned the deck of the spars stored there and lightning struck their mainmast. Putting up a new mast in the heaving ship cost two men their lives and Aaron expected he would be the dreaded third man. He lay in his hammock trying to think how it would feel when he was pitched into that lurching brine, how long the drowning would take. He asked the old hands, who agreed there was sure to be a third death before they docked, and heard the comforting news that it would be over very quickly, just one or two water-choked gasps from the shock of the cold water, “and then you don’t feel nothin.” During the voyage Aaron grew in strength, knowledge and hatred for Crumble. He swore to himself that if he survived he would kill the man once they were ashore, but the bosun melted away as soon as his boots hit the London docks.
It took weeks, weeks of asking and walking warily along the great wharves in the odorous London fog before he found a ship though he cared not whether bound for Canada or Boston. Day after day the acid fog was so dense that men five feet away were wraiths. In those weeks he began to feel he had somehow changed, and in no minor way. Physically he felt well, strong and alert. He was nineteen, had become watchful, more inclined to read the body movements and faces of people around him. He wanted to go back to Kuntaw’s Mi’kmaw band. “Likely old Kuntaw is dead by now,” he said aloud. Maybe Etienne was in his place, one of the other men. He would try again with a more willing heart. His presumption of himself as the central figure in any scene had been scuttled by the bosun James Crumble.
In a grogshop one afternoon he heard two sailors talking coarsely about what they would do in Halifax. He moved closer, listened, said, “Halifax bound? Ship lookin for crew?”
They gazed at him, at his callused hands, tarry canvas pants. “Excel sails tomorrow mornin. Go talk to the bosun. He keeps aboard all night—Conny Binney.”
Binney was a red-bearded good-natured fellow from Maine, for Maine men were as common as hempen ropes on the wharves of the world. “Wal, yes, sailin for Halifax, carryin China trade goods first for Halifax, a load a China dishes and some porcelain dawgs—at least they c
all ’em dawgs but look more like pawlywawgs to me. Cobblestone ballast. Ye ain’t green, are ye? Not a landsman? Sailed afore the mast, have ye?” Aaron said he wasn’t so very green as he’d sailed on the Elsie Jones. Binney raised his eyebrows.
“And so you attended Miss Crumble’s Academy for Poor Sailor Lads?”
“I did, sir, and enjoyed a rigorous education. And survived.”
Binney laughed. Aaron was hired as an able seaman. After Crumble, Conny Binney seemed too easy, giving orders in a pleasant voice. It seemed unnatural. The ship traveled against brisk westerlies, beating to windward all the way, and Aaron’s spirits lifted with the exhilaration of sailing home, no matter what waited at the far end.
Going directly to Halifax would save him the torturous overland journey from Boston. He could walk to Pitu’pok, the Mi’kmaw settlement on the shore of the saltwater inland lake, in two or three days. He thought he could find Mi’kmaq there who would take him to K’taqmkuk. And the niggling question he had been pushing down kept kicking its way back into his thought: why was he going back to the Mi’kmaw life? He had a calling now, he could make a sailor’s living. He could go back to the sea if he had to, as long as it wasn’t a-whaling.
• • •
Long before land came in sight they could smell it—a mix of softwood smoke and drying cod blended with the familiar salt of the North Atlantic. A rushing flood of joy made Aaron grin foolishly at nothing. He got his pay, shook hands with Binney, who said, “If ye want a berth on the Excel again, we be back here come April or May. Nother v’yage t’ China.”
Aaron hurried through the knotted streets of Halifax, his mind filling with imagined conversations as he tried to explain why he had returned. Etienne had been angry when he left. Yet in his new sense of self he was glad to be back. He was ready to trap and construct weirs, to fish. He no longer expected his relatives to honor him simply because he had come to them, because he was Jinot’s son. His sea skills might somehow find a use. He’d see what he’d see.
The trail through the forest he remembered was now mostly cleared land with settlements and a few farms, the too-familiar sight of settlers burning swathes of woodland. He met two whitemen children driving cattle along the shore. As they passed they began screaming “dirty Indan bug-eater” and threw clamshells at him. The ragged trail now showed trees again—sprouts growing up from stumps. This was the way he had taken five years earlier, after his father left with Mr. Bone. A Mi’kmaw family had fed him and given him a place to sleep, had told him Sels had all gone to K’taqmkuk, and that if he wanted them he should go to Sydney, the easternmost port, and send word over the water. Someone would come. He remembered the man’s name as Joe Funall. Just another mile he thought and he would see that wikuom near the trail. He walked farther than a mile and knew he had somehow missed it, turned back, looking hard into the scrappy woods. Some distance in he saw a few poles. That was the right place. He went toward them. Yes, it had been a wikuom once but was now weathered poles with rotted skins and bark at the base. They must have moved to the Mi’kmaw village a few miles farther on. He picked up his pace.
He was frightened by the village. Shabby wikuoms sat on rough ground amid slash and baked patches of bare earth. He saw smoke issuing from only one wikuom. There were no dogs, no people in sight. He walked slowly toward the wikuom making the smoke, but as he passed a derelict jumble of poles with only saplings instead of bark for a covering he heard someone cough, a retching, choking cough that sounded like it was tearing out someone’s lungs. He bent to the opening. “Hello. Anybody there?” Stupid question. Of course there was someone there, someone dying of violent spasms of coughing. He peered into the gloom and saw a bundle of rags jerk forward and cough and cough and cough. The more he looked the more he saw—there were others in there, emaciated skeletal arms rose as if to ward him off, huge feverish eyes fixed him. An infant lay naked and dreadfully still on the ground. He went to the next wikuom, where a comatose man lay on the earth, only the very faint rise and fall of his rib cage showing he lived. He did not speak. Farther along in the sole wikuom issuing smoke sat a man and woman, both very thin, but able to move and talk. The man said their names—Louis and Sarah Paul.
“What has happened?” asked Aaron, wondering what was wrong with himself. He was choking, hardly able to speak. He told them he wanted to find the way to K’taqmkuk, where others of his family lived. But here, in this ruined village, what had happened here, what had overcome these people, where were Joe Funall and his wife, who had been so kind to him years earlier? Whatever had occurred also might have befallen the Sel clan in K’taqmkuk.
“They die. Everybody sick, no food, die, die, die. Children all die. Mi’kmaw people now walk around, look for food, eat dirt, no firewood, whitemen shoot, say it their firewood. We make potato garden but too many rain. Potato all go rot. We come any place, try make wikuom, always whitemen come and set fire, come with clubs and sticks. They drive us on. Nowhere to go. Sometime good whiteman give food, coats. Only look for more good whitemen. Mi’kmaw people walk lookin, keep walkin. Now lie down and die.”
Aaron knew that since the death of Amboise, his childhood brother, he had had a cold heart, but now, appalled, he felt it burning. He had no food but he had his wages. He reached for his money, his impulse was to thrust it into their hands, but he considered. They were too weak, he thought, to go buy food. But where was the nearest place? It would take him two days to go to and return from Halifax. Sydney was closer, and perhaps he would pass a whiteman farmer who would sell him food. “I will come back with food,” he said and rushed forward on the trail.
• • •
Two miles along he saw a settler’s house with a large garden, a cow and chickens. Before he could enter the gate a tall whiteman with glassy eyes and sprays of hair like black grass on the sides of his head came rushing around the corner of the house. “Git off’n my propty!” he shouted. “Git! Damn Indan.”
He walked on toward Sydney, passing settlers’ houses and gardens. He tried once more to buy food and an angry man shot at him. Once more he tried. He walked around the corner of a small church to the pastor’s house and saw the housewife on her knees weeding onions.
Poised to run he said, “Ma’am, I would like to buy some of your vegetables for some poor starving Indans down the trail.”
“Why, them poor things,” she said, “let me ask the pastor.” And she went into the house. When she came out again the pastor was with her, his yellowish old face drawn into a stern expression.
“So, who is starvin? Indans, eh? You do not know how often I hear this complaint, but we do live in a time when the Red Man passes from the scene, replaced by the vigorous European settler. The Indan has to learn to work and earn his livin, grow a garden and put the harvest by against winter. Charity does but delay the inevitable.” Then, taking in Aaron’s posture and face, which suddenly looked less like that of a softhearted white man and more like the visage of a murderous Indian with a barely suppressed intent to kill, he stepped back a little. “Course we do try t’ help, even knowin it—yes, course we sell you some vegetables. What will you, taters? Maggie, pull some taters and carrots for the poor Indans.” Hastily the two pulled at stems, plucked young turnips from the ground, heaped the plunder on the ground for Aaron to pick up as best he could. He stuffed everything inside his shirt, the warm turnips scratching his skin. He stood up with the last potato in his hand and said, “This potato means life to those people.” He held out his money. The pastor snatched it and with the passage of tender recovered from his fright and said, “I would say that the will of God, rather than a potato, decides the matter.”
Aaron did not wait for the end of the sentence but was on his way back to the broken wikuoms. On the trail he saw movement under an elderberry shrub. He picked up a heavy maple stick from the slash pile alongside the trail. He came closer and saw the animal was one of the whiteman’s favored creatures, a house cat. It had something—a bird—and he saw a wing ris
e and fall as the cat crunched the wing joint. Closer and closer, gripping the maple stick, came Aaron. The cat, intent on savaging the young partridge, which was large enough and still lively enough to escape, did not abandon the prey and Aaron crushed its head with the first blow. He then wrung the still-struggling young partridge’s neck. “This is the will of your whiteman god,” he murmured to the cat, taking it up by the hind legs and, with the limp partridge inside his bulging shirt, walked on toward the wikuom of Louis and Sarah Paul, left Louis making a fire and Sarah skinning the cat.
• • •
The next day in Sydney he saw five Mi’kmaw women sitting together on the dock. They seemed easy and content, joking with one another. They looked healthy. One of the women—he was almost sure it was Losa, the wife of Peter Sel, one of Kuntaw’s sons, the older brother of Etienne. Round-faced with very red lips, Losa carried a single basket and the others, their handiwork sold, were chiding her for making something so clumsy no one wanted to buy it. She said something he could not hear. They laughed and it felt good to him to hear Mi’kmaw women laugh.
And there was Peter Sel’s fishing smack at the far end of the wharf.
The basket makers began to board the vessel, chattering and laughing, still showing each other bits of finery or foods they had bought at the stores. Aaron, heavy in thought, and mentally rehearsing a variety of pleas to Kuntaw and Etienne to come west to the ruined wikuoms and save the starving people and bring them back to K’taqmkuk, followed. As they left Sydney harbor and entered the grey ocean, Aaron went into the bow and faced east, taking bouquets of spray in the face, staring into the haze of distance. Why had he come back? What had changed him, he who cared for nothing but himself, who acted on fleeting impulse?
