by Gary Collins
The smoke milled around the fire just above floor level at first, but as the heat increased, the smoke spiralled upward, until it slowed and sought an exit around the blackened poles. The fire snopped and burned steadily. Now the new light flickered along the inward-slanting walls of the wigwam. Shadows appeared where there had been none before.
As Mattie rose away from the fire, his silhouette preceded him, reaching like a stealthy apparition to the height of the dwelling. Just above his head and turning slowly on their tethers with the rising heat were several large, smoke-cured trout, as well as the remains of two half-eaten smoked salmon.
Reaching up with his knife, Mattie cut a large piece from one of the trout and chewed the reddish-brown flesh. He was starved. Opposite the trout and hanging without turning were the remains of a hindquarter of caribou meat. It too had been cured over time by campfire smoke, its outer skin crusted to a deep, leathery brown.
While relishing the taste of the smoked trout, Mattie cut a piece from the caribou haunch. The inner meat was a succulent pink and he cut away a generous portion. Sitting beside the fire with his knees raised, the tall Indian’s silent form on the wall made only slight motions as his hand brought pieces of meat and fish to his mouth.
Stacked neatly near the doorway was a high cache of cured animal skins. Placed on the very top and with its eyeless head and tufted black ear tips facing the fire was the rich, silver-brown hide of a lynx. Its skin was spread-eagled over the pile of hides, its stumpy, black-tipped tail dangling over the edge of the stack. Above the hides and hanging from several of the rafter poles all around were an array of steel traps with fierce-looking teeth.
Opposite the furs and nearer the fire was a narrow raised sleeping mat. It was made entirely from the soft ends of green fir boughs that had faded a bit. The natural mattress was stitched and interlaced skilfully with the rich-smelling boughs. A heavy blanket sewed entirely from the hides of several caribou and with the outer hair still intact was folded on one end of the sleeping mat.
The simple, raw dwelling place smelled of leather hides and an unmistakably animal scent, earthy odours from the warm dirt floor, the rich, cured meat and fish, and fire smells of wood and heat. The place had a smell of warmth. The smell was a natural human-animal blend.
His hasty snack finished, his belly satiated but not full, Mattie stepped outside again and brought the beaver carcass back inside with him. With some difficulty he passed a string through the beaver’s rictus teeth and tied the animal with its broad tail hanging down from the sloping rafters. Now began a skinning style that was unique to Mattie alone.
It was the same careful method of cutting he would use to paunch a fat caribou. Two fingers of his left hand kept the stomach entrails away from the opened stomach liner. He made an incision just above the animal’s tail and pushed two of the inverted fingers of his left hand inside the cut. Holding the knife in his right hand, he inserted it, cutting edge up, between the two long fingers.
With his fingers keeping the point of the sharp knife away from the animal’s stinking gut, he pushed the knife with one long, even stroke to the tip of its lower gaping jaw. With amazing speed and dexterity and without once cutting the valuable skin, Mattie soon had the big rodent free of its tawny pelt and slowly twisting on its noose. With efficient movements he gingerly cut at the base of the animal’s wide tail to remove the tiny, yellowish green castor sack, making sure not to puncture the fetid voile. He placed the scent gland inside a small, thick leather bag he used for this purpose alone, secured the opening carefully, and set it aside.
With the naked beaver in hand he bent through the narrow opening and stepped out into the drizzly dusk, where no shadow followed him. He walked to the icy edge of the murmuring stream, placed the beaver, tail first, into the swift, black water, and laid open its distended belly with one swift cut. He pushed his fingers inside and with one fluid motion pulled the creature’s bowels, stomach, and intestines free.
He threw all of it into the shallow brook and watched the pale viscera, floating down-tide, looking like several eels swimming in the dark water. The unwanted contents discarded, he tore the membrane that hung below the rib cage and ripped out the plump heart and viscous liver. After cleaning and rinsing the carcass in the cold water, Mattie stood erect in the dark night.
The narrow brook that came out of the thick forest hastened gaily toward the pond, its flow an oily black as it sped along the snow-white banks. A long, deep rumble came from the direction of the pond. Mattie, beaver in hand, turned toward the sound and listened. The noise came again and again. It was the deep groan of the ice slowly releasing its wintry grip on the pond. It was another sure sign of mild weather close by.
Somewhere behind him and coming from high up in the heavy woods, an owl sounded at regular intervals. Its cry was a sound not usually heard on a cold winter night. The great horned bird hooted again, sounding as if it were far away, though Mattie could tell it was near. The day, and now the night, showed all the signs of approaching warmth. His instinct told him this wasn’t going to be like one of the midwinter mild spells. This was the beginning of spring. Maybe it was time to leave the mountains, he thought.
Back inside the wigwam, he hung the beaver up again. He placed a heavy, black iron skillet on top of the fire. From the beaver carcass he cut several strips of yellow fat. When he lodged the fatty strips inside the pan, they sizzled and slid around, greasing the surface. When the fat started to curl and smoke, its juices rendered, Mattie added the cut sections of tender heart muscle. He waited until the meat simmered before turning it over with his knife, then placed the soft liver in the pan. Savouring the rising steamy smell, he sat back and waited for his meal to cook. He wished he had a little salt left to flavour the meat.
His rich-smelling supper cooked, he carefully removed the hot pan from the fire. Spearing the meat with his knife, he ate the contents of the pan. His appetite appeased, Mattie returned the pan to its hook just above the floor and sat back again. Watching the pan, he waited.
From the upended pan, dark drops of grease fell onto a flat piece of wood. The drops slowed as the pan cooled and the heavy fat congealed on the wood. Before long a small, furry form appeared from the shadows. The tiny creature was below the light from the fire and created no shadow.
But when it stood on its hind legs and reached up to catch the grease dropping from the edge of the pan, the shadow of its head appeared on the birch wall. The Indian smiled, his even teeth showing white against his dark face. The grey field mouse looked plump and short on the ground, its bosom full and proud. It thinned and lengthened as it stretched upward for the tasty treat. The fat dripped, slowed, and then stopped. The tiny, patient mouse licked them all, while the quiet man watched. The fire crackled. A flaw of wind rustled a loose flap of bark on the outside wall. The owl hooted in the distance. The sounds of the running brook rose and fell with the wet night wind. Mattie Mitchell dozed in pure comfort, his head nodding.
The mouse started gnawing at the pungent fat that had collected on the piece of wood. The sound of its chewing brought Mattie fully awake. The sudden motion from the still human startled the mouse from its meal, but it didn’t run away. It just hunched itself into a ball and, satisfied that it had made itself look impressively big and threatening, squeaked once. Soon the night visitor finished its treat and simply disappeared into the shadows at the base of the wigwam.
Rising now that his entertainment was over, Mattie stepped outside, yawning as he went. The misty rain had stopped and the woods dripped. He could hear the rustle of wet snow settling. The pond ice boomed and cracked as before. A wisp of grey-blue smoke with a few trailing yellow flankers rose soundlessly from the wigwam.
The wind from the southwest felt warm and soft on his skin. He walked behind his shelter, breaking through the snow in several places as he went. He stopped, looked up at the dark sky, and urinated. All the signs told him it was nearly time to leave. Mattie made up his mind quickly. After the ne
xt night frost, which was sure to come, he would leave the hills and make his way homeward, pulling his winter-caught furs behind him.
Returning to the wigwam, Mattie loosed the thong that held the door in place. The leather door fell and covered the hole completely behind him as he entered. He added a few more pieces of seasoned birch wood to his fire, then removed his damp coat and hung it to one of the rafters. Without removing any other article of clothing, not even his long leather boots, he lay down on his bunk.
The thick caribou blanket crackled as he pulled it up over his body. Mattie turned his back to the smouldering fire and settled his head into the fragrant pillow of fir boughs. Almost as soon as he had lain down, the long, blanket-covered figure was still. The fire flickered, casting unmoving shadows, and for a second a small flare from the fire glinted across the shiny black hair of the sleeping Indian.
Outside, the night aged; the wind died away; the clouds opened, revealing a profusion of twinkling stars; the sound of a single, lonely howl from a faraway prowling wolf came on the fading night wind. But aside from the sleeping meadow, its solitary plea was heard by no one.
EARLY IN THE CHRISTMAS MONTH of the year past, heavy frost and snow had finally come. It was the last few days of the year 1899. A new century was about to begin, an event that appeared to be of great consequence to the white people of Mattie’s small village in the Bay of Islands. It was the start of a new modern era. Some of them were afraid. It would be the end of the world, they said. Many of the self-righteous religious ones spent their “last days” quoting Bible verses that supposedly verified their alarmist thinking.
To Mattie, who didn’t own a calendar but measured his days and seasons by his wandering way of life, it was the end of nothing. It was just the beginning of another wonderful winter of trapping. Mattie always carried with him a brown, pocket-sized Catholic prayer book that had been translated into his native Mi’kmaq language. Mattie was literate enough to read portions of it. Nowhere in his cherished book could he find a date for such a foolish portent.
He had spent the short, glorious days of autumn trapping and hunting along the many rugged coves and coastal plains and tidal river valleys. The English demand for fancy beaver-skin hats had taken its toll on the animals all along the coast. Mattie would trap them on his winter trapline far inland, where few others went.
A big part of his fall trapping along the coast was for otter. Their rich autumn pelts were in good demand, but around the windy coast they were harder to trap than they were in the rivers and ponds. The otters that frequented the saltwater bays and inlets were usually much larger than the freshwater variety and fetched a better price when cured just right. Mattie used a short piece of net obtained from a fisherman friend of his, with which he netted herring for bait to trap the otters.
He was paddling along the shoreline in the middle of the afternoon. The day had been too windy to chance paddling along the cliffs that bordered the water. He had spent the time picking ripened berries that grew on every bank above the tide line. He had taken a good nap, too, with the cool breeze from the ocean rustling the low bushes all around the place where he had lain.
Now with the wind dropping and showing every indication of dying, he set off in his canoe. His net had been set yesterday just around the bill of the point he was now approaching. When he paddled around the point, he saw the shorefast net running down to the water and the small wooden buoy bobbing at the outside end of the net, but not one of the cork floats between shore and buoy could be seen.
At first he thought a whale had become entangled in the net—a minke or a pothead, maybe. He rested his paddle on the narrow gunnel and waited. The imagined whale never surfaced and, upon considering, Mattie figured one of these small whales could have parted the mooring lines and swam off still entangled in the netting.
He approached the net and, looking down into the depths, saw what had dragged the floats under. From the foot-ropes to the head yarkins the net was filled with silvery herring. Their combined weight was too much for the cork floats to bear. Many of the fish were still alive, and wriggled and twisted to free themselves from the narrow meshes. Their struggling caused thousands of shiny scales to break free and float away on the current, flashing and glistening, only to vanish into the green depths.
The dead ones hung limp and motionless. Yellow, short-legged crab, and pink and green starfish with five fingers spread, were feasting on them. Below the net, wide-mouthed sculpins and squished-mouthed flatfish, their black eyes looking up, waited for the carrion.
Mattie had seen nets sunk with herring before. It was a common thing for the fishermen along this coast to witness. The schooling herring swam along these waters by the tons, both in the spring and fall. Mattie had seen them in the mouths of streams, with the milky sperm from the males clouding the tidal pools for days. At such times it was easy to scoop up hundreds of the fish by hand or with dipnets.
Mattie suddenly remembered another time when a small section of his net had been carried under, and it wasn’t by herring. An otter had been chasing herring and its paws had become twisted in the mesh. Its frantic struggle for life had only entangled the animal more. Mattie found the drowned otter hopelessly rolled in the linnet a few feet below the surface. Looking down at the hundreds of herring and remembering the otter, he had an idea.
He knew where to find several otter slides, where the playful animals slid down over the rocks into the sea. Favourite slides were used by the same otter families for years. In such places the otters created a muddy run from treeline to the ocean edge. The muddy “rub” or “burry” was their giveaway to knowing trappers.
Placed upon the rocks well above the surf line, and near the place where Mitchell had fastened his net to the land, were several lobster pots. Many of the local fishermen, instead of freighting their pots up the long bays to home after the season’s fishing, simply carried them ashore to a convenient site. It was on this very coast where Mattie had seen his very first lobster trap around the year 1870. At that time he wasn’t sure what he was seeing. But by 1873, a small lobster canning factory was started by a Nova Scotia man and the handmade wooden traps or pots were a common sight. By 1888 the fishery had expanded until the English had established more than two dozen such factories along this coast, and Mattie knew where a lone Frenchman had one. Mattie’s quick mind soon had figured a unique way of trapping the otters. He would combine their love for chasing and eating herring—with a lobster pot!
It took him a while to raise a part of the submerged net and take from it several dozen herring before letting it sink to the bottom again. It was a delicate task while sitting in the stern of a shallow, narrow canoe. There was a danger of capsizing it, but after he had wrangled a portion of the net across the centre of the craft, the canoe was held steady with the net’s weight. He simply shook the net until all the herring he wanted fell aboard.
He gingerly manoeuvred the glistening net back over the bow of the canoe and, paddling to shore, stepped out. Climbing the sloping, sea-smoothed cliff, he knelt beside the neatly stacked lobster pots and considered his plan. Several pots had been discarded next to the stored ones. They had been damaged by wave and prolonged use and were badly in need of repair. They would do nicely.
The pots were close to three feet long and had two bent spruce saplings on either end and one in the middle, fastened to the bottom frame, giving the pot an oval shape. Both ends and sides had separate lathes nailed to them. Inside the “parlour” was fastened a sharpened “bait stick.” The working side of the pots had tube-shaped netting for the lobster to enter, as well as a small, easily removable door to retrieve them.
Deciding to use just one pot for his experiment, Mattie removed part of the head or end of the pot and, using his axe and knife, had soon fashioned a hole of nine to ten inches across between the lathes. He secured one of his wire snares across the opening and, with the pot loaded into the centre of his canoe, paddled his way along the shoreline.
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p; The wind had dropped away to a mere breeze. Black shadows reached away from the high land. The canoe’s faint wake left a silvery crease in the water as it passed. An eagle perched atop one of the tall trees eyed the herring in the canoe out of its reach.
Mattie picked up one of the herring and gave it a throw. The eagle left its lofty perch as soon as the fish splashed into the water. The bird soared on silent wings toward the herring, dived, and stretched its mighty yellow talons toward the sinking fish. It tried its best, but sped away from the water with naked claws. The herring had sunk before the eagle reached it.
Picking up another herring, Mattie threw it as high as he could. The fish shone and twisted and turned in a long arc over the black water. The watching eagle dived again. There was a swishing sound when its feet brushed the water. Without once flapping its broad wings, it soared skyward again. Shiny water droplets fell away as it rose with the silver herring firmly gripped between one of its claws.
Mattie could smell the otter rub before he reached it. The strong scent of the animals had permeated into the damp soil where they played. He stopped paddling and let the boat drift to the water’s edge below the rub. There were no otters to be seen anywhere, but the rub was dark and wet. Showing below the mudslide and traced across the smooth cliff, just above where the ocean quietly lapped upon the rocks, was a damp water trail. At least one otter had been here recently.
Mattie skivvered three of the biggest herring onto the bait stick inside the lobster pot, lifted the pot carefully out of his canoe, and placed it into the water. He lowered the pot slowly with the buoy rope and watched as it sank in the clear water. He tugged it a couple of times to make sure it rested level on the bottom just below the otter slide. When it was down and to his liking he threw the line overboard with the small, wooden, tapered buoy fastened to one end.
