Thieving Forest

by Martha Conway

  “You’ll never look like an Indian with your red hair,” Penelope says. Naomi knows she is trying to tease her, to lift her mood, but she answers, “I don’t want to look like an Indian.”

  What she wants is to leave this gruesome place that smells of death and find something of beauty. All afternoon a sheet of clouds covered the sun, stretching out like a shroud over the earth. A hard, hungry life—is this her fate now? Her music is gone for good.

  In the morning they move on, beginning what Naomi later thinks of as their march through the mud. The ground grows spongier and the stream banks bleed into the surrounding grassland, making everything soggy. Although they are skirting the Great Black Swamp, Naomi feels as though she is falling into sludge every other step. They are still heading west. In the afternoon they wade across a rill so cold that she reels a little when she first steps into it and loses her footing. A few nearby men laugh. Tau-tie-yost, one says. He mimics her falling and they laugh again. Soon everyone is calling her Tau-tie-yost.

  “Why do they call you that?” Penelope asks later, when they have stopped to rest.

  “It means clumsy.”

  “But you’re not clumsy!”

  She is clumsy, they both know it. Both of her shins are badly bruised and there are stinging cuts up and down her legs from when she fell against a nest of nettles. Only when she stands still playing music does she feel graceful. Now she’s like a sailor who can’t find his land legs.

  They walk for days without stopping except to sleep. Penelope finishes the stockings for the young Wyandot woman and takes Naomi’s stockings to make for someone else. Naomi watches her, wondering how she has the energy after walking all day. She wants to do nothing but eat and lie down. Penelope knits in the evening, after she has done all her chores and most of Naomi’s. Half the time, more than half the time, Penelope starts Naomi’s cooking fires for her. Naomi’s hands just can’t seem to do what she wants them to do. She takes meat out too soon and lets the fire die. None of the Wyandots like her knitting. In exchange for the stockings Penelope receives a bowl of samp, cooked corn porridge, which she shares with Naomi. They spoon it up using two sticks.

  “I wish I knew where we were going,” Penelope says. “Mud, mud, mud. That’s all there is.”

  “We’re going to Hog Creek,” Naomi tells her. This is what the natives call the Ottawa River. “I heard some of them talking.”

  “You can understand what they say?”

  “Back at the store I learned Iroquois pretty well.” She smiles slyly. “I thought if you knew, you would make me work at the counter even more.”

  Some of the Wyandots are smoking hemlock, and the thin, tangy scent wafts over with the wind. Naomi listens to them chatting. Language is like music to her, she can hear a word once and somehow understand it and remember it later. It doesn’t help to think too much about it. It’s like knowing where a melody is going the first time she hears it. Often she knows where the notes will land before they get there.

  “What else do they say?” Penelope asks her.

  “They like our hair, but they wish we didn’t smell so bad.”

  At the end of the second week they come to a brook so fast and full that even traversing it on rafts seems dangerous. Two scouts are sent to look for a better place to cross. After only a few minutes one comes back and speaks hurriedly to the leader, Tawakota. Naomi is crouched on a rock over the brook cupping up water when her mistress pulls her roughly back behind the trees. A moment later she sees four Indians approaching, not Wyandots. Perhaps a family? One woman is heavily pregnant. Naomi spies some early berries among the scrub, greenish yellow, not quite ripe, but she picks them anyway and pockets a few for Penelope. When she looks up through the trees again, the foreign Indians are gone.

  They find a better crossing but stop on the other side because the men come across fresh elk dung. A few of them go off with their dogs to track the animal. Penelope is now sewing a shirt for Tawakota’s young son, and Tawakota comes over to tell her that if an elk is killed he will give her a bowlful of meat for her work.

  But the men come back without the elk and in need of new arrowheads. Naomi is shown what to look for, a kind of chert that is abundant in this place, but everything she finds is discarded by her mistress as unusable. She doesn’t know why. After a while she stops looking and just stands in the canary grass watching the Wyandots’ dogs running around. The Wyandots are good to their animals. They might kill a horse for food but they would never kill a dog. Dogs chase game and sniff out berries. Naomi thinks: they have more use than I do.

  She wishes for the first time she were more like Penelope.

  That night she sleeps on a piece of limestone outcropping thinking it will at least not be damp, but when she wakes every muscle in her body aches. She looks around the campsite with its palette of gray and brown, at all the gaunt figures bending over various fires, and at the small bark shelters hastily put up last night only to be pulled down again now, at sunrise. There might be some beauty somewhere but she is unable to see it. The wind blows it all away. It is so gusty that even Penelope is having trouble with her cooking fire and can’t help Naomi. Naomi’s fire never flames. Her mistress scolds her severely and sends her away without food.

  They pull down the bark shelters and begin that day’s march. It occurs to Naomi while she’s walking, feeling both hungry and sore, that not only has her music failed her but it has betrayed her. Because she can do nothing else.

  Late in the afternoon they come to a stand of oak trees and the air grows thick and dark. Naomi allows herself to lag a little as she looks for berries or mushrooms or nuts, anything to ease the raw emptiness in her stomach. She hears her mistress calling her, Tau-tie-yost! But she ignores her. As she stops to re-braid her hair, her fingers feeling comfortable in this task at least, she spies a twig with tiny, hard, butter-colored buds. She picks it up and twirls it between her fingers: yellow fairies dancing on a stick. She thinks of her mother, who loved to tell old Scottish tales with fairies in them, and of Susanna, who loved to hear them. When she looks up again, something in the distance sparkles.

  It is the Ottawa River. Hog River. Naomi can see it through the trees, and she realizes that she’s been hearing it for a while now without really noticing. She slips the twig of hard yellow buds into her moccasin and then makes her way quickly down the path until she is standing next to Penelope on the sloped bank looking down.

  The river is fast and wide, and its color changes in spots from blue to green. The Wyandots’ dogs run down the bank barking, excited by the power of the current. The light is changing rapidly as white clouds race across the sky, and the drooping willow trees along the bank seem to change color along with it. Naomi can see men dragging canoes out of a marshy inlet where they had been weighted down with heavy stones and covered with reeds. Their movements are precise, like dancers. Later she will learn that the boats have been hidden there for weeks while they conducted their trades. Now the men examine the hulls and then begin to rub them down with the rough sides of skins. Above them the sky is a vast purple field.

  Is this where all the beauty has been hiding, Naomi wonders, all bunched up into this small stretch of sky and river, a magnet pulling whatever is good away from all the other places they walked through? She puts her arms around herself, feeling lighter. She has to hold herself down. If she looks at the river in just the right place, the color of the water is the same dark blue as her father’s eyes.

  “Where are we going?” Penelope asks her mistress, who is standing next to them. Her mistress shakes her head, not understanding.

  “Tuh-tish-yuh?” Naomi asks. “Tundi?”

  “Yadata,” the woman replies. Naomi translates for Penelope: their village. Penelope’s mistress gestures toward two women who are packing hide bundles into the first canoe.

  “Yes-tse kwa-oh,” she says.

  We return.

  Thirteen

  Paddling down the river, in spite of her best inte
ntions, Penelope begins to daydream about food: apple slum and roasted goose and baked sugared beans and all the ways Ellen used to cook corn—hominy, johnnycake, and cornbread with the corn kernels soaked in milk first to make the batter moist. Thinking about food is painful and she knows she shouldn’t indulge herself. But it is better than constantly worrying about Naomi, which she would otherwise do.

  They are heading toward Lake Erie, which the Wyandots call the Place of the Cold Water. Their village lies a few miles to the west of it. Six men ride the remaining horses along a deer path near the bank, their legs dangling loose without stirrups. After the first bend in the river Penelope never sees them again.

  She listens to the birds calling out as they paddle downstream mile after mile, a song taken up and carried and lost as the birds change along the route. She wonders if Naomi hears any comfort in their music. They are in two different canoes, each with her own mistress, and in Penelope’s case, a dog. Penelope does not see the river as beautiful, not at all. It would sweep them off and drown them if it could.

  If at first she thought canoeing would be easier than walking—she is sitting, after all—that notion is quickly dispelled. After only a few hours her hands at the paddles grow swollen and red, and her forearms begin to ache.

  “Tatsa-tah-tai-no-teh,” her mistress says from behind her. Hurry up.

  She cannot see Naomi’s canoe. She tells herself that she should not be annoyed with Naomi because she cannot knit properly or build a proper fire. She knows how Naomi is. And she knows it is her job as the oldest to protect her, to save Naomi’s life as well as her own. But how can she do this when Naomi herself contributes so little? She lied to Naomi about being clumsy. Of course she knows Naomi is clumsy. They all knew that.

  The insects are intense and soon her knuckles are puffy with bites. How she wishes she were more like Susanna with skin made of stone.

  “Tatsa-tah-tai-no-teh,” her mistress says again more sharply. The little dog with its long matted hair is curled up into a tight black ball at the bow. She would like to stretch her legs but there is no room. When she looks down at her hands she sees they are bleeding.

  “Look!” she says to Naomi later. They have stopped in a narrow clearing above the riverbank and will camp here for the night, although there hardly seems to be enough room for them all. Pin oaks grow right down to the river on either end, their roots in the water, and women are setting out wet clothes to dry on the surrounding brush.

  Penelope holds out her hands. The fleshy tops of both her palms are torn and swollen and red. Pus runs from several of the blisters.

  Naomi draws in her breath. “What happened?”

  “Paddling with that hard paddle! My mistress pushes me, she never lets me rest.”

  “Mine aren’t nearly so bad, maybe because of my violin. The skin on my hands is harder. Yours will toughen up.”

  “I can’t even bend my fingers. How will I knit?”

  They look at each other, worried. If she can’t knit, they’ll get no extra food. They both know this.

  “I can’t understand why they feed us so little! We’re their property. They bought us to do their work. Why starve us to death?”

  “Look how little they eat themselves,” Naomi says. “They don’t have much.”

  “But what if we get sick?”

  They both know what will happen if they get sick.

  The wind picks up and blows harder against them and the air begins to smell of rain. That evening Naomi does Penelope’s chores as well as her own, and Penelope cannot help but be dismayed at how poorly she does them. But later, after her mistress dismisses her, Naomi goes down to the river. When she comes back she says to Penelope, “This might help.” She wraps wet oak leaves around each of Penelope’s hands.

  “Hold them in place,” Naomi instructs her. “I’ve seen the natives do this.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know. Back when we were walking.”

  It is odd what Naomi notices. Can’t she notice how to start a fire? Penelope holds the leaves down with her thumbs. After a while her hands do start to feel a little better.

  Still, she won’t be able to knit for days. She’s not even sure if she will be able to close her hands around a canoe paddle. For the first time she can imagine how Naomi feels, trying and failing to light a fire. Penelope isn’t used to feeling useless. She doesn’t like it.

  “Na-ho-ten-ye-sa-yats?” Naomi says to a woman sitting near them.

  “Oyanoga.”

  Naomi repeats, “Oyanoga,” and then asks her something else.

  “What are you talking about?” Penelope asks.

  “Her name is Oyanoga. I’m asking her if she has any food she would trade.”

  She holds out a button from her old dress. The buttons are an ordinary brown, but Oyanoga nods. “I’ll give you one,” Naomi tells her, holding up one finger. They settle on two, and in exchange Naomi receives some boiled goose meat.

  The sun has set. With the last of the remaining light Naomi finds a tree with dry, loose bark and she peels enough strips to make a bed for herself and Penelope. She spreads them underneath a short willow tree and wedges some thicker strips of bark among its lower branches like a roof. When Penelope’s mistress sees the structure she laughs, but it is better than lying out in the open. Penelope huddles underneath the tree next to Naomi and they eat the boiled meat, careful to save some for later.

  “Shall I tell us a story?” Penelope asks. She used to do this almost every night, tell her sisters a story as they lay in bed, Penelope and Beatrice in one and Naomi, Aurelia, and Susanna in the other. Their feet touching for warmth. She hasn’t told a story since they left Severne.

  “How about Aunt Ogg Falls into the Cistern?” Naomi suggests, yawning.

  Penelope cups the palms of her hands and holds them carefully against her thighs. She can see the cloudy sky through the willow branches. The story is funny and mostly true, which is how she likes her stories, but she feels Naomi fall asleep before Aunt Ogg even gets out to the garden. Around them on the narrow bank people are talking to each other and laughing or scolding their dogs. Some time later the rain begins. Penelope wakes when a piece of bark falls on her shoulder, and in her half-dream state she thinks, “Then the roof caved in...” as though she were telling someone another story, the story of her decline. She gets up to wedge the bark back in place, her hands stinging when she uses them. Finally, when she can do no more, she lies down again.

  It is pitch black. Everyone is sleeping. She can hear the river behind the rain. She thinks about food: pork chops and new peas and sliced tomatoes with a sprinkle of sugar. If she closes her eyes she might be back in Severne breaking up salt so they can sell it in paper twists at the store. The creaking trees could be the roof beams in their cabin. Or even their old house on Walnut Street in Philadelphia. The rain could be horses clopping along on the cobblestones outside.

  But she is not in a city. She doesn’t know where she is. Her hands throb with pain and she has the feeling that she will never see Philadelphia, nor any other city, ever again. When at last she falls asleep again she dreams she is walking through a walled town while strangers look down at her from the battlement. Someone shouts a warning and for a moment she is afraid, but then to her delight small loaves of bread begin falling down around her like rain.

  Naomi gets up early the next morning to make another poultice for Penelope’s hands. It is still raining and the sky is as dark as sunset. Afterward she goes to see if she can trade another button to Oyanoga for food but she is told that Oyanoga is ill with a fever. Flashes of lightning appear up and down the river like spears. Several men with their hair hanging loose pull the canoes farther up the bank and weigh them down with muddy stones. Today they will not go on the water.

  Naomi goes from shelter to shelter looking for food until at last she finds an old woman who gives her muskrat meat in exchange for only one button, a better deal than she reached with Oyanoga. She is pleased w
ith herself. She goes back to their shelter where Penelope is patching up what passes for their roof as best she can.

  Penelope is happy about the meat. “How many buttons do you have left?” she asks.

  “Eight or nine.”

  “And I have ten. Perhaps they’ll do us until my hands heal.”

  No one ventures out if they can help it. Naomi spends much of the day trying to make their shelter more waterproof or fetching sodden leaves for Penelope’s hands. The next morning the dark sky is unchanged, but at least the lightning storm is over so they set out on the river again. The scrubby brush that lines the riverbanks does not change for many miles. But around midday there is a break in the landscape and a mass of rock rises like a tabletop above the water. Here they stop to eat and look for chert. As Naomi pulls her canoe up and wedges it between some bushes, she smells a foul scent in the air: weeds and mud and, when the wind shifts, some sort of carcass nearby. The men search until they find the dead animal, an elk, several days old. By now even the vultures have abandoned it.

  A man who is traveling with Oyanoga cuts off the elk’s horns and hooves. Oyanoga is still ill. Unable to sit upright, she lies stretched out in her canoe as if it is her coffin.

  Although Naomi tries to help the women look for chert she notices that many turn when she approaches, and when she speaks to them they do not answer. But at least Penelope’s hands are looking better. The blisters are beginning to harden. Naomi climbs down the northern part of the rockface to submerge more oak leaves in water, where a large Wyandot woman with very broad shoulders and a barrel chest is crouching to fill her water pouch. When she sees Naomi, she quickly goes up the other side of the rock, a harder climb, her pouch swinging behind her.

  “Why are the women keeping away from me?” Naomi asks her mistress when they are back on the river.

  Her mistress smiles a smile that is amused rather than kind.