Mattie Mitchell

by Gary Collins

  The other rodents surfaced and appeared to be alarmed. Worcester was waiting for at least the closest one to receive the same fate as the other two, when the Indian spoke loud and clear.

  “We ’ave plen’y. We eat good dis night. Young muskrat taste ver’ good. Tomorrow we find much clams. Maybe much pearls, too.”

  And then, just as Mattie had predicted, the rain began.

  FOR AS LONG AS HE LIVED, ELWOOD WORCESTER would never forget that first night he spent with Mattie Mitchell in the true wilderness. Both of them were soaked by the time they had set up the tent and stowed their gear inside. Just around the bend from where Mattie had killed the two muskrats, a droke of fir, some spruce, and white birch jutting out from the wetlands provided a suitable campsite. Around the trees the ground was firm and level. The falling rain made the fir trees come alive with a sweet scent that hung in the air. Their fire, once Mattie got it really going just outside the tent’s triangular door, gave off wisps of grey smoke that rose with the sparkling yellow flankers.

  Worcester was no stranger to the ways of the wild, but this day and night would forever stand out as the time when he had really lived with nature. He had fished the salt sea and jigged codfish. He had taken salmon from the clear river waters. He had seen a man kill for food in the most primitive of ways. He was also pretty sure he was about to eat the flesh of muskrat. Above them, the ageless, dark mountains with all of their splendours kept a silent watch.

  The rain stopped as suddenly as it had started. The air warmed in the windless night. The trees all around them divested themselves of the fallen water, dripping and plunking and plinking into the stream from overhanging branches, tapping on leaves and drumming on the ground. Away from the rim of firelight, the night was as black as pitch. Snipes hunted and cried above the two men. Somewhere a loon voiced its need, and from farther away its haunting cry was answered.

  Mattie carefully skinned the two muskrats by the fire. He saved both of the dark brown pelts, though he told Worcester the hides were not at their best this time of year.

  “Dis one yours,” he told Worcester, indicating one of the naked pink carcasses. “You cook on stick or in iron pan?”

  Worcester had some qualms about eating the scrawny meat cooked in any fashion and told Mattie so.

  “Caribou meat. Bear meat. Water rat meat. All meat. Only taste is differen’,” Mattie said quietly.

  Worcester couldn’t argue with that logic. Given the choice of frying his “rat” or roasting it over the campfire, and seeing Mattie’s supper skewered and dangling over the fire, he suddenly realized he was famished. He picked up the meat and, as if having read his mind, Mattie handed him a stick for roasting.

  “Good. We use fry pan fer bannock,” Mattie said.

  From his pack, which mysteriously seemed to contain many small and useful items, Mattie pulled a tin of bear fat. Worcester handed him the flour bag and Mattie stirred a measure of flour and brook water together. Greasing the pan with the heavy bear fat, he poured the pan more than half full with the moist dough.

  While their evening meal cooked, both men prepared a drying rack near the fire. Worcester helped cut young saplings for their purpose. Mattie was impressed with the American, who always helped with every chore—except with the skinning. Over the years he had taken many sportsmen into the wilds of Newfoundland. Many of them would not carry their own guns or their fancy fishing rods, but expected their guide to “do what he was paid to do.”

  One of them had taken Mattie’s uncomplaining manner too far. The short, skinny man, who was always out of breath and who complained and whined at just about everything, had demanded Mattie carry him on his back across a knee-high brook. Without hesitating, Mattie sat on a low rock near the swift brook, the grumpy man climbed on his bent back, and off they went. Approaching midstream, where the brook was deepest, and without uttering a sound of warning, Mattie tripped and fell into the cold water, unceremoniously depositing his screaming passenger as he did so. The cries and terrible curse words from the sputtering man only increased as he waded and stumbled ashore—on the wrong side—and did not see the grin on the face of his proud guide.

  The blue smoke rose from the campfire. Steam drifted upward from the drying clothing. The fat from the roasting meat dripped and sputtered down upon the glowing coals. The browning bannock bread smelled almost as good as Millie’s loaves. The two loons called again to announce they had found each other. The high, rolling laughter of the triumphant male resounded through the hills. And then, as if on cue, a new sickle moon appeared above the southern hills. On its silvery back it carried the faint outline of the old one.

  When the muskrats were cooked and just before the bannock started to burn, both men sat back and ate. When Worcester finished the last bite of his meat, he wiped the last of the bear fat drippings from the pan with a piece of bread. He sighed with pleasure and told Mattie the meat had a taste similar to chicken— only better. He even copied Mattie, who, after roasting the small leg bones on the hot coals, had cracked them open and ate the thin, yellow marrow inside. Walking to the brook, Worcester washed his hands and face, looked thoughtfully at the opening skies for a while, and stepped inside the tent to join his guide for a well-deserved rest.

  “DIS DAY UQANTIE’UMG—SUNDAY, PREACHER,” Mattie said after they had breakfasted the next morning. He looked at Worcester expectantly. Worcester saw in Mattie’s hand a well-used prayer book that he had removed from a tooled leather bag. Mattie made the sign of the Cross over the book.

  “And so it is, Mattie. I must apologize, for I had completely forgotten the day.”

  Seeing in Mattie’s small, dark eyes the need for something more from him on this day, Worcester stood, bowed his head, and voiced aloud a prayer. He suddenly felt as though he were standing in the grandest of churches, with an audience of one giving him his rapt attention. When Worcester asked to see the Catholic prayer book, Mattie passed it to him. He admired the leather bag made to fit over it. Mattie explained to him the case was made from babiche, rawhide made from the well-tanned hide of a caribou.

  The book had a red ochre colour and fit easily into the palm of Worcester’s hand. He opened the book and was astonished to learn he could not read one word inside. The book was written in Mattie’s own Mi’kmaq language! He asked Mattie if he could read and was totally surprised at the answer.

  “Some. Not much. Ver’ few words. No one show me my own tongue. No paper. Not even ’lowed to speak my own tongue. Dey call it savage talk. Dey laugh when I speak my talk. Dey laugh when I speak English talk.”

  Mattie told Worcester one white man had showed an interest in his language one time, but he only wanted him to say a few Mi’kmaq swear words. The man had waited with great expectation, a smirk on his bearded face. He couldn’t wait to hear Mattie reveal the curse words so he could share them with his friends. But Mattie said, “My language ’ave no swear words. Only white man curse great spirit wit’ swear words.” The man had walked away, cursing angrily.

  With his usual matter-of-fact attitude, Mattie explained to Worcester that he had attended school only briefly, where he was forbidden to speak the language of his people, where he was looked down upon and treated little better than a dog, and from which he left at a very early age and never returned. Worcester, ever the humanitarian, secretly equated Mattie’s plight to that of the black people of his own country and felt ashamed.

  Mattie shrugged off the things that had been, as was his way, and told Worcester how he came to read. He had guided two geologists, Alexander Murray and James Howley, for years. They were good men. Around dozens of campfires, especially in autumn when the nights were long, they had shown Mattie the basics of reading. Howley, especially, showed an interest in this endeavour and was very pleased to see Mattie read a few words. They had been friends for years. Mattie told Worcester that he had called Howley “Sage,” his Mi’kmaq word for James, and Howley would call Mattie nothing else but Matthieu.

  Still ha
ndling the well-worn prayer book, Worcester asked Mattie if he was a churchgoer and if he had ever been baptized. Mattie replied that he went to Mass sometimes, where he always sat in the back of the church. He only went when he felt like it, understood some of it, loved the mystery of it, and that he knew nothing about baptism. However, like all of his people, he had always been spiritual.

  “My people have big M’n’t’u spirit all ’round.” Here Mattie spread his arms to indicate his surroundings. “Ver’ many people not find M’n’t’u outside church.”

  Worcester, who had been trained in a sectarian world and knew that Manitou was considered a Supreme Being with all of the native peoples, said nothing. Mattie put the book—which he would open every Sunday morning for as long as Worcester knew him—back inside its rawhide covering and got to his feet.

  “Mass time over. We fin’ pearls now, maybe.”

  Worcester, rising to his feet, said, “Amen.”

  HE ENTERED THE COLD WATER OF THE slow-moving stream to his knees. When Worcester offered to help, Mattie told him, “I fin’ clams. You shuck ’em.” Worcester agreed. He did not relish wading in cold water.

  Twice Mattie brought his big hands above the water, filled with what he called freshwater mussels. He inspected them carefully and threw them back. The next time he brought only two, which were bigger than the others, their shells stained brown. They looked very old. These he tossed ashore to an excited Worcester, who broke them open. Inside one he found nothing, but deep inside the mucous body of the second one he found a white pearl as big around as the top of his finger. Mattie had found the clam bed and the pearls, as promised.

  They stayed on that river for more than a week. Mattie retrieved clams from the cold water and never once complained. Nor did he appear to suffer from the frigid task. Every day, they spotted muskrat swimming toward them. Upon seeing the tall man throwing handfuls of clams upon the grassy bank, the animals turned back, disappointed, and quickly dived again, not breaking the surface again until they were much farther away.

  They collected no less than 490 pearls of varying sizes and colours, only a few of which could compare with the first one they had found. Worcester deemed all of the dull-coloured, non-circular ones useless and threw them away. It was a big mistake. Months later, while meeting with a pearl merchant in New York City, Worcester learned much more about pearls.

  The jeweller told him that the pearls sometimes kept growing in the clam long after it had become a threat to its body. The mollusk kept layering the pearl like an onion. Often inside the seemingly useless covering is the finest pearl of all. Further to this, during a trip to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D. C., he learned that Mattie Mitchell had indeed been right about the relationship between muskrat and pearls. The muskrat, he was told by a knowledgeable curator, considers the clam a delicacy.

  The muskrat is also the carrier of a water-borne parasite that is deadly to the freshwater mollusk. Diving among the sharp-edged open clams, there are times when the parasite is torn from the muskrat’s sodden fur as it rips and tears the clams from their riverbeds. The rodent’s parasite then sometimes becomes embedded inside the body of the clam. Unable to dislodge the invasion, the animal entombs and isolates the virus with its natural secretions, thus suffocating it. The resulting build-up of nacreous fluids hardens and holds the louse a prisoner forever. Without ever knowing the scientific reason why, Mattie Mitchell was intelligent enough to make the correlation.

  The two men made their way down the river and out of the wilderness on a warm summer evening. They paddled in the gloaming to where the Danny Boy still waited. No one had been aboard during their absence. The day was just about spent, so, rather than sail out the bay in the dark, they spent the night aboard the schooner.

  After sailing back to Bay of Islands and paying Mattie for his admirable services, Worcester set a date for an extended caribou hunt early in the autumn, hired two crewmen, and set sail for Labrador.

  CHAPTER 10

  AS PROMISED, ONE DAY IN THE LATTER PART of summer, the little Danny Boy came reaching up the bay and tied up at Frank’s wharf. And Mattie Mitchell was waiting. They made arrangements for an extended stay, which would be spent on Mattie’s favourite hunting grounds far inland. This time they would leave the schooner at Frank’s wharf and paddle away from the community in the canoe.

  On the last evening before their departure, Worcester was having his evening draw and was quietly walking the deck of his schooner, studying the heavens and remembering the lesson Mattie had taught him about the North Star. He was bending down to knock the dottle out of his pipe when he thought he saw a movement on the inside of the wharf. He waited for his night visitor to walk out over the wharf. But after several minutes, no one came.

  Then he heard the sound of someone running along the narrow lane that paralleled the quiet cove. Glancing toward the sound, he caught only a glimpse of a fleeting shadow. The man’s feet sounded hard on the gravel path as he ran. For some reason Worcester thought the runner had big feet. The shadow he saw was a tall one. Going below, he opened his portmanteau and counted out all of his remaining cash. Along with the money in his purse, he still had more than $500 in American bills. He put all of the money in his purse, stuffed it deep inside his duffle bag, and tied the mouth tight. The following morning he and Mattie paddled across the calm bay. Worcester said nothing about the money he carried and remained quiet about his unknown night visitor.

  For three days they paddled up river and lake and finally reached the place where Mattie hunted. Mattie and Worcester successfully hunted and lived off the bountiful land for several days. Worcester had never seen a place like it. He would never have believed such a paradise existed if not for the fact that he had seen it with his own eyes.

  Day after day they hunted and fished. Worcester killed several caribou, one of them a magnificent stag with more than forty points. Mattie made use of all of every carcass. He cooked the cleaned intestines, stuffed with meat, and roasted the stomach linings. He relished the entire viscera of each animal and took a particular liking to the kidneys. The Indian skinned the tongues and fried them in an iron pan. He heated the bones and ate the nourishing marrow inside.

  Mattie dried and smoked the tender flesh of every doe and informed Worcester—after he had taken his trophy bull—that the stag meat “tasted ronky when ’orny.” He cleaned and dried the caribou’s bladders and used them as leak-proof containers. He scraped and flensed the best of the hides and then dried them in the cool autumn wind with their long hairs intact. Others he soaked in a mixture of ashes and water and then hung them to dry before working them into rawhide.

  They took from the autumn rivers thin, spawning salmon. Their flesh was without fat and almost tasteless until Mattie smoked them over dried alder. Snowshoe hares, in their thick brown hides, Mattie snared and cooked regularly. Canada geese Worcester shot with his fancy new Browning shotgun. And Mattie killed, unerringly with his bow and deadly arrows, ducks and what had become Worcester’s favourite-tasting game of all—muskrat.

  Mattie snared snowshoe hare—or, as he called them, rabbits. Both men ate them regularly, but here once again Mattie showed Worcester a different way. They were walking back to their camp, along a valley overgrown with alder where they had set rabbit snares two days before. They had caught several rabbits and expected to get a few more before they reached their camp. Although the animals were, for the most part, less than five pounds, a dozen or so of them, along with their other gear, made for a heavy pack.

  Mattie stopped without explanation and said, “We lighten our load, maybe.”

  Shrugging the pack from his broad shoulders and without saying another word, he began cleaning the rabbits. Grabbing one by the head with his left hand, he pressed the entire area below the rabbit’s rib cage downward. He repeated this until he was satisfied, and Worcester could see a significant lump in the rabbit’s lower abdomen. He now grabbed the animal by its front paws in both hands. Then he fl
ung the rabbit back over his left shoulder while still holding it by its paws. He jerked the rabbit a few times in a rapid motion, then yanked the rabbit back over his shoulder with an amazing speed. When the rabbit reached the full downward swing of Mattie’s arms, he stopped it between his legs with a violent whiplash motion, and in the same instant yanked it back.

  Worcester stared as the entire contents of the animal’s abdomen spewed out onto the ground while the organs inside the rib cage remained intact. Mattie repeated this unique field dressing again and again. When Worcester tried it, and failed repeatedly, he asked Mattie how he made it look so easy.

  Mattie said, “Ol’ Indian trick.” It was a saying Worcester would hear him say many times.

  It was the most enjoyable and productive outdoors expedition of Worcester’s life. He would never forget the time he spent with Mattie Mitchell. The American clergyman-sportsman shot and killed a black bear that wasn’t as big as he thought when they came up to it. Mattie brought the meat back to camp, skinned it out, and that very night got Worcester to try another trapline treat—bear paws. Worcester was a man with the ability to eat anything, or so he thought. He just couldn’t bring the bony hands of the bear to his mouth. They looked too much like human hands.

  They ate the flesh of fried beaver tail. Mattie told Worcester about the rite among his people to drink the foul-tasting gall of the very first beaver of the season. It ensured a good trapping season, he said. Worcester would not try that either.

  They were camped beside a shallow stream late one evening when Mattie told Worcester he was going to catch elnekat— eels—for their supper. His people had invented an ingenious tool for this purpose, he said. The sunkuti was a pole several feet in length. One end of the pole was cut away to a sharp spear point of a few inches. Whipped securely around the spear and fastened to the pole with thin strips of rawhide were two more wide, wooden, hook-shaped spear points, their edges turned in toward the spear point. When the sunkuti was forced down over the eel, the pointed spear pierced its body while the other two points kept its wriggling body in place.