by Ian Roberts
Rain pelts the charred cross that lies on the burnt remains of the chapel, and darkens the fresh earth over Father Marquette’s grave.
In a hut in the forest, Kinta, her face now glistening with fever, tends a sick boy. She lays a wet cloth over the boy’s forehead and gazes out the doorway at the pouring rain.
Atironta stands at the entrance of his longhouse looking at the puddles forming on the ground. The village looks empty but for one person scurrying for shelter.
De Clemont holds his elaborate coiffed wig in one hand and clutches a canvas tarp over his head with the other. He’s soaked, shivering, and miserable. He taps one mud-caked, high-heeled, buckled shoe in the puddle at his feet.
Out on the lake, the surface of the grey water dances in the pouring rain. Two canoes slip into shore. Tonda steps out first and disappears down a portage trail to scout. The others hoist canoes and packs and follow. The rain falls in sheets but Brulé, Atsan and Savingon seem impervious to it. They move silently, sure-footed along the trail. LeCharon carries a small pack and over his shoulder the crucifix. He wraps one arm around himself trying to stay warm. His teeth chatter as he slips in the slick mud, falling behind.
The others keep a fast pace, trusting Tonda will return to warn them of any danger. The priest stumbles to keep up, his head down, shoulders stooped. He’s drenched, coughing and forlorn, and a hundred yards behind.
The crucifix, which felt light when he had lifted it off the chapel wall, now digs sharply into the bones of his shoulder. It had broken his heart to watch the chapel burn — the fire of his failure. Brulé had thrown the large cross that stood in front of the chapel into the blaze. As the flames grew and crawled up the front wall of their hut, LeCharon had dashed to salvage the crucifix. He could not bear to watch Christ burn. He felt he had to return with at least that, at least the cross, as if it symbolized some sliver and vestige of dignity amidst his complete humiliation and failure. Now it is literally his cross to bear — large, heavy and sharp. Much heavier than he ever imagined possible when he decided to bring it with him.
Suddenly, LeCharon’s foot slips out from beneath him. As he falls to his knees, the cross cuts into the flesh of his shoulder and a thorn from Christ’s crown slices into his cheek. Staggering back onto his feet, he senses no spiritual comfort carrying the crucifix. He had thought actually travelling with it would uplift him, that it would help him somehow embrace his suffering and allow him to better offer it up to Christ. But carrying it now feels only a meaningless torment. He feels stripped, empty and alone.
Tonda returns from scouting. As he prepares another foray to scout the trail a second time, a movement catches his eye. Not forty feet away a bear, its sense of smell and hearing dulled by the rain, sniffs the air. Brulé, Atsan and Savignon had noticed the bear as well but had continued on the path. Not Tonda. He picks up a rock, moves behind the bear and pitches, deadly accurate, at the bear’s rump. The bear bolts in exactly the direction Tonda had hoped.
Rounding a stand of trees, LeCharon stops, physically spent, his nerves frayed. He’s heard something but no, perhaps he is imagining it. Yes, there, right in front of him — a bear, running straight towards him down the trail. LeCharon freezes, terrified. The bear bounds forward then suddenly sensing the priest, halts and lets out a roar.
Screaming in panic, the priest bolts off the path, abandoning his crucifix and pack and running as if the demons of hell snap at his heels. Tripping on his long robe, he lands hard on some rocks. But he’s up again running, in great loping strides, splashing through a shallow swamp, tripping again, scrambling to his feet, racing blindly, gasping for breath, wheezing, faint, panic slowly overwhelming his senses.
He runs until he can run no more, finally collapsing. Panting in terror, he whirls around on his hands and knees, anticipating attack and certain death from the beast.
But there is no bear. He is alone. He checks left, right, once, twice. Nothing. He tries to locate himself, but it all looks the same, just trees as far as the eye can see in every direction. He realizes he is lost. The moment that thought hits him, he is hit harder by another, “They’ll leave me here.”
The bear sniffs the pack. Red wine from a broken flask leaks onto the ground and dissolves in the rain. The bear noses the pack and a silver cross and challis fall out.
Tonda returns once again from scouting. They stop to rest. When Savignon looks back, he notices the priest is no longer with them, “Where is LeCharon?” Brulé offers to backtrack and find him.
“Leave him,” says Tonda. “He will only bring us bad luck.”
“We will never get guns, Tonda, if we arrive in Québec with both priests dead.” He leaves his pack hidden in the bushes, and starts a slow run back up the path as the others continue on.
Brulé soon finds LeCharon’s pack and its contents. He looks at the weather-beaten crucifix and leans it up against a tree, stows the silver cross and challis in the pack and swings it over his shoulder. In the pouring rain the tracks wash away quickly, but he sees the bear’s prints and the first, deep steps the priest took in the muddy trail, and heads in that direction. Shortly he stops, kneels and finds a black thread in the brambles, and then LeCharon’s moccasin in the swamp.
He moves, riveted now, wholly embraced by the sentient presence of the land and the shadow traces left by the priest’s frantic intrusion. He can hardly see in the fading evening light and gloom of the storm. He comes to a large, smooth rock outcrop and runs his hands over the slick, wet surface of the rock. His hand is drawn to some lichen, freshly broken and smeared into the stone. He continues to follow the trail, as if following a past presence, stitching together a seam of feeling and sense, far fainter than what the eye can see or the ear detect.
LeCharon continues to lurch through the woods in horror, his mind increasingly distraught and confused. Three large crows perched on a branch above him rend the air over and over. Their cries seem sinister, evil. He tries to cover his ears but it is no use. Finally, he pitches a rock at them. They scream in defiance as they fly off into the forest.
As he watches them his attention follows the towering trees soaring above him like vast cathedral columns or giant wraiths. He beats and pounds his arms on his legs, trunk, shoulders, trying desperately to bring some warmth to his body. He starts coughing, a piercing cough he feels deep in his lungs. His robe is torn, his arms and legs covered in bleeding cuts and deep lashes from the brambles and thorns he thrashed through in his panicked escape through the woods. Both his moccasins are gone.
Suddenly he becomes aware of new sounds, an undercurrent of soft breathing and whispered voices. At first he mistakes the sounds for those of his own wracked and heavy breathing. But no, this is something else. What is it? Where is it coming from? Trying to steady himself, to think more clearly, he slowly turns and surveys his surrounding. Then, as if out of nowhere, a face appears through the trees. A dark, ghoulish face. Distorted. Grotesque. He gasps and turns, only to confront another leering at him. Dread holds him rooted, quaking. And then he bolts, careening, bashing his way through the forest as fast as his exhausted body allows until he can go no further and stumbles to his knees, spent. As he tries to catch his breath, the forest silence is broken by the harrowing, wild howl of a wolf. He looks around in desperation. But there is no wolf. Instead, his eyes once again fall upon the girl in white just visible through the trees in the darkening forest.
“Help me,” he cries, as she turns to go. “No, please, help me.”
He runs towards her but just as he reaches the spot where she had stood, there is no one. He tries to collect himself, to steady his breathing, but again he hears the whispered sounds, this time even louder. He looks about, trying to locate the voice.
Then he hears it, a female voice, the same whispering voice he’d heard earlier, but clear now, “You come to me, but see nothing.” LeCharon stops breathing. Then a second voice, a stern biblical voice, “Harden your hearts in the day of temptation in the wilderness.” Yes, those are the words.
He is not imagining this. This last one he recognizes, it is the voice of the Church. And then the softer female voice again, “Listen…I will teach you.”
“Where are you?” he yells.
The biblical voice returns, “Thou shalt beat him with a rod, and shall deliver his soul from hell.” Then the softer voice, “Listen…you are not alone.” Voice upon voice, until LeCharon’s entire rational mind dissolves. He screams and races again through the forest, falls, scrambles back on his hands and feet a few yards then finally collapses on the ground in complete exhaustion and confusion. More ghoulish faces in the trees appear before him. Trying to shelter himself from the onslaught of images and voices, he prostrates himself, pushes his body into the mud-soaked ground and buries his head under his arms. Then he hears a growl. He lifts his head. Not twenty feet away two wolves watch him. Their yellow eyes motionless in the dark. He can’t breath. One lets out a long growl. In his panic LeCharon grasps something, a rock.
But, as suddenly as the wolves appeared, they’re gone. And in that moment LeCharon senses something far worse approaching. Far worse. This must be his end. He is sure he is about to die.
Rock in hand, he rises to his knees lifting his arm to throw, just as Brulé emerges out of the darkness and the downpour.
LeCharon falls to the ground, sobbing uncontrollably, interrupted only by a deep, hacking cough.
De Clemont pulls the remnants of his soaked, silk stocking out of the bleeding blisters on his foot. His shoe, its high-heel now missing, lay cast off in the mud. As he pries off the second shoe, the other foot reveals similar damage and blood.
“Those look awful,” says de Valery. “You should have taken Petashwa’s advice.”
“Be quiet, will you. What am I going to do now?” He looks down the portage. One of the French aides approaches, carrying a heavy pack, his head down, soaking wet, plodding along in the pouring rain.
“Here, here,” says de Clemont, trying to catch his attention. “My feet, you see…cannot walk further.” The man ignores him. “Could I get you to put that pack down?” The aide plods passed without even glancing up.
“Blast you! I will see that you are flogged, you insolent dog! Do you hear me?” yells de Clemont. He pulls the oilcloth tighter around his shoulders. “Infuriating. At home all these miserable wretches would grovel. Here they behave like dumb, insolent mules.” He tosses his second shoe onto the mud.
“You should try them,” suggests de Valery, lifting his foot to show off one of his new moccasins. “Soaked, its true. But comfortable.”
“You lose yourself, Jean-Marie. We represent the Crown. You cannot just adopt the habits of these savages. We must show them the superiority of French custom, of our culture.”
“Joseph-Albert, you are being ridiculous. Just look at the superiority of your shoes. At these clothes. They represent nothing now but slow ruin,” gesturing at their sodden, filthy silks and velvets.
De Clemont stung, berates the Count. “Look at your hands. They are as bad as my feet. You completely diminish our position paddling with them.”
De Valery examines the blisters on his hands. “I asked Petashwa. I wanted to know. They laughed at us, you know, just sitting there idly in the canoe all day refusing to paddle.”
“Let them laugh. I abhor becoming like them. These beasts. And how can you continue paddling with your hands like that?”
“Petashwa told me that the skin gets tough if I keep it up.”
“Petashwa. Petashwa. You mean like a peasant. You want hands like a peasant?”
De Valery feels a flush of anger at his old friend, who becomes more foreign to him each day they are out here. He finds de Clemont’s cynical disdain for everything around him exhausting. As long as he had shared his friend’s disdain, he hadn’t noticed. But now he’s repelled by it. While the wilderness pushed de Clemont deeper into cynicism and despair, somehow it released de Valery from his. True, at this moment he feels cold, soaked from the incessant rain, miserable really, but he does feel it directly. He can’t pretend it is other than it is. Or that he can change it. Blunt, plain and present. And strangely, he finds he accepts the intensity of it.
Soldiers, aides and Algonquin silently plod by with heavy packs or canoes. De Valery sees Champlain coming down the path. He carries a small pack and walks with a long cane, limping slightly as he approaches.
“This portage will be the longest of the trip. Well, until we get to the Land of the Wendat. We have one….Oh, that looks painful,” says Champlain, wincing at the sight of de Clemont’s blistered feet. “You should try these,” pointing at his moccasins. “Did Petashwa not give you a pair?”
“He feels his represent his station better,” mocks de Valery, pointing at the broken shoe in the mud.”
“Well, I suppose you only make that mistake once. Must soldier on. I feel every old wound flaring up now with this wet cold,” he says as he continues down the path.
De Valery feels no desire to hear De Clemont’s next complaint and surprises himself by abruptly following Champlain. De Clemont stands looking at him. He feels betrayed. He seethes that his old friend has not stood by him. Now, especially, when he needs him most. He decides in that instant, staring at de Valery’s back as he disappears along the portage trail, that he has finished with this expedition. He will find some way, any way to get back to France. He gazes down at his shoes, kicks one impatiently into the woods and with the help of his cane limps slowly, barefoot, after the others.
A rock overhang shelters the two men from the pouring rain. Brulé has lit a fire against a rock wall and the light and heat are welcome and bright compared to the pouring rain and sodden forest outside. It feels safe.
LeCharon lies on the ground of the dry cave, his red-rimmed eyes watching the flames. His breath rasps; his body convulses with constant coughing, as Brulé tends the fire. It wasn’t easy finding anything dry enough to burn. But the fire does burn and he carefully adds larger sticks and stacks damp ones close to the heat to dry.
“The wolves,” whispers LeCharon. “Did you see the wolves?”
Brulé looks at him and smiles. “You attracted strong spirit, Charon. I am impressed.”
“Wolves, two wolves,” trying to get Brulé to understand the danger.
“Yes, yes. I saw them. They were there to help you, not hurt you.” He realizes LeCharon has no idea what he means. The wolves were messengers, the priest’s personal messengers, and powerful ones, there to help him connect to what Brulé himself has come to understand as a breathing presence alive in everything. A presence the priest had utterly resisted.
The priest’s idea of spirit as God the Father, a creator who does not actually remain embedded as a part of his own creation, differs dramatically to the Wendat view that that Creator remains very much present and alive in everything, animate and inanimate. And those two wolves, had he been able, could have led the priest to that understanding. But Brulé doubts the priest will ever understand or realize the great benefit they could have bestowed, or the sacred power they offered. LeCharon begins coughing again — racking coughs.
“You must get that robe off so we can dry it.”
LeCharon shakes his head vigorously. Brulé leans over to help him but he resists, turning away and pulling the robe tighter around himself.
“Charon with that cough, you must get dry. You could die. I have seen it.”
The priest feels the clammy, wet cloth pressed against his skin. He shivers, his teeth chattering. Brulé again tries to pull the robe over the priest’s white, sickly nakedness. As he pulls the robe up over his back, he sees a lacework of thin scars from self-flagellation. He pulls the robe free of his shoulders then over his head. He jams a long stick into both sides of the cave wall and hangs the robe close to the heat of the fire to dry. LeCharon crawls closer to the warmth and curls into a tight ball.
Brulé turns to say something but the priest is already asleep. Once again he examines the lines on the priest’s back, penance for so
me failing of faith or spirit. He pulls off his own leather vest and hangs it over the pole as well. Then he tends the fire trying to spread as much heat as possible into the overhang, hoping to keep the priest warm.
The flames flicker and leap. He picks up a piece of birch bark and cuts it carefully, then punches holes along the edges and splits a thin cedar root down its length. He sews the root into the holes, weaving and pulling them tight. Every now and then he stops to add the more sticks to the fire as his birch bark pot takes shape. He heats pine gum on a stick and seals the seams of the pot on the inside.
Finally, he ventures back out in search of wintergreen, the inner bark of the black cedar and balsam. He fills the bark pot from a puddle. Then he scours the forest for firewood, breaking off dead spruce branches thatched by the heavy growth of a live branch directly above them.
As he heads back to the overhang, the rain begins to fall more softly. He hangs the bark pot above the fire; he knows it won’t burn as long as he keeps it full of water. He adds the herbs to the pot and more sticks to the fire.
LeCharon wheezes and coughs lightly from time to time, but he sleeps, exhausted. Brulé rests his back against the now warm wall of rock. He fans the fire to increase the heat while keeping as much of the smoke out of the cave as possible.
Over twenty years ago he had been in this very forest, a forest sacred to the Wendat. He marvels that of all places LeCharon could have stumbled upon, it was here — here where the Wendat performed their vision quests. Young men cleansing themselves with drumming and chanting, sweat lodges and finally in days of isolation and fasting, each one opened to the Great Mystery and to the deep spirit that surrounds us all. And each one met and united with their spirit animal. Brule’s was a white hawk. He had heard the swift whisper of its flight and then, in three powerful beats of its wide, white wings it landed in front of him. That bird held him in his fierce gaze until he merged and fused with its spirit. From that moment on, the white hawk became his guardian and spirit companion.
