Caleb's Crossing

by Geraldine Brooks

  There were several more like readings. I marveled at how father had contrived to gather so many texts to reinforce his message, so that without risk of contradiction he gave forth the spiritual ground on which Caleb’s inclusion among us rested, and also let it be plain that he would brook no dissent over the matter. Well and good; father had a tight hand over what transpired in morning service, when we read the texts and prayers he had selected. Afternoon devotions were another gate’s business, for there we gave confession and prophecy. Those who wished to speak were obliged to come before father or grandfather, our elders, ahead of meeting, so that their thoughts might be properly shaped into what was fitting for all to hear. But it was always possible that someone might flout this custom.

  Father did not seem in the least concerned. With the morning service safely negotiated, he stood in the dooryard, greeting everyone and introducing Caleb as he would any other newcomer amongst us. I stood with him, and noted that most people, if not warm, were at least civil. The Aldens of course did not tarry to be introduced, but gave us their backs as quickly as they might, hurrying off to their own cottage, where I am sure the iniquity of my family was much discussed.

  Father was in a merry mood as we walked the short distance home to take our meal. I had made a hearty chowder and some cornbread with a browned crust; I also set out some dried fruits and nuts from the last season’s gathering. As I put a dish of huckleberries and hazels before Caleb, he glanced up at me. I knew that he recalled the day he had shown me where to find them. He smiled, and said a mannerly thank you, and I turned away, blushing.

  Father engaged Caleb right away in conversation, asking him what he thought of the service compared with those he had attended at Manitouwatootan. Caleb said that he enjoyed the hymn singing with English voices all in unison, “for at Manitouwatootan, there is always some newcomer who will sing, even if he knows not the words or tune…” and then he commenced to give a parody that made father laugh with recognition. Makepeace passed the dishes in silence, and took no part in the conversation unless father addressed him directly.

  For myself, I had even less to say than usual, the strangeness of having Caleb so close at hand in this unfamiliar setting rendering me dumbstruck. I had to think about even the most ordinary task, willing my hands to do the normal business of setting down dishes and taking them up, for my head was full of his presence, and I felt all light and a-tingle. But no one seemed to mark this. If any noted my silence and my oddity, I expect they felt it only natural before—as they thought—one who was a stranger to me. I did attempt to study him, as best I could. He had changed a great deal, in the months since I had taken tearful leave of him in the woods. He seemed older, certainly, but also somehow winnowed, whether by the magical and diabolic rites demanded of him during his ordeal, or by the simple human matters of loss and death. He had exchanged the restless, flaring energy of his boyhood for a mannerly restraint. But the sense was of fires banked, not extinguished. One thing hadn’t changed: even in the unfamiliar English garb, he glowed.

  Just before we were to return to meeting, I drew father aside, and did ask him who he expected to speak. He named two men, each of whom had come to him regarding certain texts they felt inspired to explicate, and another whom he said intended to confess corrupt promptings towards the theft of a neighbor’s unearmarked tegs. “As to the Alden faction, no one has approached me. I do not expect anything from them today. I think they will bide their time and take the sense of the settlement regarding the inclusion of our hopeful young prophet here.”

  “Does Caleb—I mean, does the young scholar—know about the Aldens and their hostile views towards his people?”

  “I have enlightened him. Why do you ask?”

  “I just—I know that their views are very harsh and I—”

  Father reached out a hand and patted my shoulder. “You are a kind girl, Bethia. Considerate of the feelings of others, just as your beloved mother was. But do not distress yourself on Caleb’s account. He knows that harsh words pass between the Wampanoag and the English, and not all one way either. His uncle Tequamuck has that to say about me that would flay me to the bone, if words were whips. Luckily, they are not, and we must toughen our hides and withstand adverse comments, just as did our blessed Lord when he was subject to slander.”

  Father, as ever, proved himself a shrewd reader of men, for the afternoon service passed unremarkably. At supper I served small beer and the rest of the cornbread smeared with honey from my own hives, in which I must confess I took a little pride. Makepeace, who loved sweetmeats, had consumed his in a few bites and rose, excusing himself to go to his rest. Caleb, however, chewed his food thoughtfully, refused the beer in favor of water, which he rose and fetched for himself, although father told him that in future he must just ask, since it was my place to serve the men at board.

  I cleared the board as the others rose to retire. I had looked out the spare shakedown for Caleb, one I had pieced from burlap grain bags. As I shook it out before the hearth, I thought of the furs layered upon the plank benches in the Takemmy wetu, and how my hands had sunk deep into that buttery softness. As sonquem’s son, Caleb would have been used to wrap himself in the finest of such furs—even those we did not generally see here on the island, like bear and beaver, which the Indians traded across from tribes on the mainland. Well, I thought, he had to sleep hard upon the plain ground often enough these past months: he would be able to make shift with burlap.

  It did set me to wondering in what things Caleb might feel a lack, living here with us. Those English who have never been within a wetu fashion them squalid, inferior to their own habitations in every way. They would naturally assume that Caleb would be grateful for the chance to live with us. But I was not so sure that he would find his lot materially improved here. For one thing, the winter otans are generally set in well-drained, sheltered places. By changing these sites each season, the freshets run untainted and the grasses regrow. But the land on which we had chosen to set ourselves down is in the path of maritime gales, and already constant use has fouled the nearest springs. So have the years of our habitation worn well-trodden ways down to bare rock and claypan—slick in winter, dusty in summer. I feared that Caleb would feel himself in a reduced condition here.

  When I had made Caleb’s place, I gave a general good night and carried Solace up to my own bed. I heard Caleb ask father if he might sit up a while. “For I see here many of the books of which you have often spoken to us, at Manitouwatootan….”

  There was a sputter and hiss as father lit a stick of pine tar. “Take care not to tire yourself. We rise early here and are to chores until dinner. After the dinner hour, we will commence your course of study. I intend to bring you along as fast as may be, so you will need your wits tomorrow. Do not stint your rest.”

  When father and Makepeace had settled, I noted no low murmurs from the other side of the blanket. They did not engage in their usual quiet conference that night. There was a constraint between them, clearly caused by Caleb’s presence. I lay there, considering my brother. I knew that Makepeace cast his concern about taking in Caleb as a wish to safeguard me from the arrows of slanderous tongues. It was no hollow pretense; his desire to protect me was well meant. “A good name is as a precious ointment,” he would say, and I knew it to be true. It is a great favor to have an unblemished reputation, and no small matter for one of my sex in a close community such as ours. But his vigilance, however motivated, also was vexing; like having a dog that will snarl at whomever approaches, whether the person be friend or foe. And truth to tell, it was also offensive to me, that my brother should think I cared so little, or so lacked wit, that I would fail in the standard of conduct required of me. Then, as I lay there, it came to me that I had no business to be either vexed or offended. Had I not, these past several years, taken the gravest risks with my reputation, and that with the very person whose presence in our home now troubled him?

  In any case, Makepeace’s concern did no
t prove so great as to keep him long awake. Soon enough, I heard him snoring quietly. Solace’s hot little head lay, heavy and damp, against my breast, her arms flung out in the deep, abandoned sleep of infants. But I lay open-eyed in the dim glow of the pine tar, smelling the resinous scent and listening for the rustle of pages turning softly in the room below.

  II

  I woke in the blueblack predawn, and got right about my chores. Since mother’s death I had reformed myself. I no longer roamed the wilderness evading English glances, nor crept off to lay myself to books. And neither did I lurk about, listening an ear to my brother’s lessons, hoping to steal wisdom like a cur dog after scraps from the midden. For one thing, my duties were become too onerous. But even had I time and space in my day, I had decided that the best way to honor mother and atone for my sin was to try to follow her in her acceptance of humble duties. I strove to see each simple task, whether the making of barley malt, gathering herbs or brining of meat, as she had. She believed that each humble thing, if done worthily, might be touched by grace. I hoped it might be so, for it would require an abundance of grace to clean me of my sin.

  So, before sunup I left Solace asleep on the shakedown, pausing for a moment to stroke her warm head and tuck the coverlet around her. As the sky lightened I was at the hearth, raking over the coals and setting a new fire. Father’s concern, that Caleb might not be equal to the hours we kept, seemed to have been misplaced. He had evidently risen while it was still dark out, since his shakedown was folded and placed neatly in a corner. For a moment I thought he might have left us and returned to the woods, but then I saw the grass basket that contained his few possessions hanging up upon the peg rail.

  I went out to draw water. As I straightened from lifting the full bucket, I saw Caleb, the dawn breaking fair behind him, walking back from the low dunes by the shore. The frosty grass crunched under his feet. When he approached the garth I gave him a good morning, which he returned civilly, laying a hand to the bucket. “No need,” I said. “I can manage it.” He smiled, but did not let go, and rather than grapple I released the handle and let him take it.

  “You are abroad early.”

  “Always,” he replied. “Not a morning has passed, for as long as I can remember, that I did not sing a greeting to Keesakand upon his rising.”

  I stopped sharply in my tracks. Was he then, as my brother held, an idolator still? I was glad I no longer had charge of the water. I might have spilled it.

  He smiled. “Do not look at me so, Storm Eyes. Did not God create the sun? Mayn’t I make a hymn of gladness upon it? Your father has never taught me that the only one place to pray is in the dim confines of your meeting house. God’s spirit shines out in every goodly thing. Do not wonder that I stretch up my hands and reach out for his grace.”

  We were at the door by then. I lifted the latch for him. The others were stirring. Makepeace had Solace, who had wakened, in his arms. I took her from him and fed her some clabber, wondering what father would make of our exchange. All morning, as I went about my tasks, I thought about braiding together two beliefs that seemed at first so much at odds, and how so doing might sit with our precisian faith. How easily Caleb had taken the teachings of his youth—the many gods, the animate spirit world—and simply recast them in terms of our teaching. And father, so it seemed, was satisfied.

  Later that day, when the men came in from morning chores, I served them dinner and cleared the board as father instructed, to make space for the lesson. I was then obliged to go out from the house for my field tasks, which began as soon as the ground had thawed and the soil dried out a little. As all know full well, one must plant pease on the New Moon, so I was bent backed, turning clods of chill earth, and was not there to witness the encounter when Iacoomis brought Joel to join my father’s afternoon classroom. I hoped that Caleb would be able to o’ermaster his oft-stated distaste for Iacoomis and his son, and that his own change of mind had caused him to look at them in a different light. It was a strange thing, that we, who had spoken easily and for so long on this and every other matter would not now be able to converse beyond the most hasty exchange in a rare unobserved moment, or mere commonplaces when in company. Even though we shared a single roof, the distance between us was become as great as if the years of our friendship had never been.

  When the light faded and the cold seeped through my clogs and set my chilblains a-throbbing, I returned to the house and found Solace, who had wakened from her nap, mewling softly and waving her fists about before her face. When she saw me, she smiled a joyous grin and reached out her arms. I lifted her from her crib, all warm and heavy limbed, and nuzzled my face into her soft neck, blowing gently till she laughed aloud. I took up a posset I had made for her earlier, and carried her with me to the lean-to that we called the buttery, though tool store and henhouse also would describe the place, for we had staked out a small indoor roost for the fowl when the outdoor coop grew too cold. I put an old flour bag down on the dirt floor and set Solace there, with a peg doll that Makepeace had fashioned for her, and got about draining the whey off the cheese curds.

  Even as I sang softly to Solace, it was impossible to shut my ears to the business under way on the other side of the thin wall. Makepeace was lumbering through a translation of Gaius Mucius Scaevola, butchering his fourth conjugations. I noted that father was even more forbearing than usual with his corrections, letting several errors pass unremarked, not wishing to reduce Makepeace before Joel and Caleb. When Makepeace reached the end of his short passage, father called upon the boys to recite the first declensions of vita and mensa, which he had set them to conning, and each managed well enough. I heard father contrasting the Latin form with the English: “We say ‘I strike him’ not ‘I strike he,’ because the person who strikes we put in the nominative case, but very few words in English as it is spoken and written nowadays have an accusative case different from the nominative. In Latin, on the other hand,…” and I thought to myself what a vast thing it was that these boys were being put to—having, in Caleb’s case, no formal grasp of English grammar, and yet being called upon to master the peculiarities of Latin, with Greek and Hebrew to follow.

  Since I did not wish to intrude, I went out again to draw water. I lifted the well cover, as usual, and dropped the bucket down. When I brought it up, I could tell, even in the twilight, that something dark and unwholesome floated there. I plunged a hand into the icy water and pulled it back at once, having touched the fur of a dead rat that had contrived to fall in and perish, though how, with the cover in place, I could not think. Then I realized that I had left it off, in the morning, distracted when Caleb had appeared. Someone else must have replaced it later in the day. It was impossible to see much in the gathering dark, so I put back the cover, tipped out the tainted water and left the investigation of the small wet corpse till the morrow. Fortunately I had a little water left in the kettle in which we might wash before supper.

  The class had ended, but Caleb was still bent to his book when I came back in and announced the sorry news about the well. Father shrugged. “We are fortunate that we do not have to dig any great depth to strike fresh water in Great Harbor. We will see at first light if there is a risk it has been befouled. We may dig another with no significant effort, and fetch from our neighbors’ meantime.”

  I set out the curds and some bread for supper. Father and Makepeace went out to the buttery where I had set the basin with warmed water, leaving Caleb, still seated with the Latin accidence, whispering to himself the words he had just learned. He glanced up, following my hands as I arranged the board. He flicked through the accidence, and closed it with a smile of accomplishment. “Puell a…” Here he pointed at me. “Mensam…” Then at the board. “Ornatearranges,” he said softly. I stopped, struck anew with the agility of his mind. He glanced up. We exchanged smiles with the ease of an earlier season. “I have missed our lessons, Storm Eyes,” he whispered. Then he too went out to the basin to wash.

  III

&
nbsp; So it went on, day following day, as the weather steadied and the early seeds stirred beneath the soil. At first, Caleb held himself aloof from Joel. He reminded me of a powerful dog, who will stand back, hackles raised, if he sees another approaching. Joel had always been a silent boy, coming and going with his father but saying little. In truth I had not passed above a dozen sentences with him through the years, and had formed no opinion of his character. His handling of Caleb’s wary manner revealed that he had a measure of his father’s self-possession and courage. He neither cowered before Caleb nor did he fawn upon him. But in diverse subtle ways he made it plain that he was a ready ally, helping Caleb betimes to the proper English phrase, correcting with a meaning look should Caleb seem likely to err in some matter of English manners. Because Caleb was quick and perceptive, oftentimes these subtle intercessions thwarted Makepeace, who stood ready to censure or mock any misstep.

  Before very many weeks passed, Caleb and Joel were on easy terms with each other. This blossomed, before long, into a fast friendship, which was no strange thing for two boys who shared much with each other and so little with the others closest about them. Caleb’s confident spirit seemed to draw Joel forth, so that he spoke up more in company, and thus I grew to know him more fully, and to admire his gentle, generous spirit. They were, the pair of them, quite unalike, feature for feature. Caleb, product of the wilderness, had the long-legged, lean muscularity of a boy born to running after game and hastening through the woods beside long-striding warriors. His eyes were avid and his gaze intense. Joel was in all ways softer—heavier in build, his long-lidded eyes dreamy and contemplative. He was short of stature, like his father; an uncommon thing among that people, and one of the reasons Iacoomis had been shunned by their warrior class. But like his father, he had an agile mind and a determined spirit. Caleb and Joel were, the two of them, quick studies, and father was more than pleased at the profit they took from their lessons. As the weather softened, I would see them walking out together, two dark, cropped heads bent over some book or smiling at some private jest, and I felt a stab of envy for a lost intimacy that could not be mine again.