Barkskins (2 page)

They came again to open forest, where it was easy to stride under the trees.
Sauvages
burned away the underbrush, said their new master in a disparaging tone. In late afternoon Monsieur Trépagny cried
“porc-épic!”
and suddenly hurled his walking stick. It whirled once and struck the porcupine a blow on the nose. The animal pitched down like a falling star, trailed by blood drops. Monsieur Trépagny built a big fire and when the flames subsided into purple rods suspended the gutted animal over the coals. The burning quills stank, but when he took the carcass off the fire, beneath the blackened crust the meat was good. From his bottomless pockets Monsieur Trépagny drew a bag of salt and gave them each a pinch. The leftover meat he wrapped in a greasy cloth.

The master built up the fire again, rolled into his cloak, lay down under a tree, closed his fiery eyes and slept. René's legs cramped. The cold, the pines hissing in the wind, wheedling mosquitoes and owl cries kept him awake. He spoke softly to Charles Duquet, who did not answer, and then he was silent. In the night something half-wakened him.

Morning began with fire. Though it was late spring it was colder than cold France. Light crawled into the gloom. Monsieur Trépagny, gnawing on leftover meat, kicked Duquet and bawled
“Levez-vous!”
René was up before Monsieur Trépagny could kick him. He looked at the meat in Monsieur Trépagny's hand. The man tore off a piece and threw it to him, tore another and threw it to Duquet as one might throw scraps to a dog, then headed out with his tireless, lurching gait, following the cuts high on the trees. The new servants saw only darkness except to their rear, where the abandoned fire winked beguilingly.

The day was cold, but dry. Monsieur Trépagny racked along a dim trail, but by noon the rain returned. They were stuporous with fatigue when they reached snarling water, a black river, yet transparent as dark chert. On the far side they saw a clearing filled with stacks of cordwood and the omnipresent forest pressing in. Smoke rose from a hidden chimney. They could not see the house, only mountains of wood and outbuildings.

Monsieur Trépagny shouted. A woman in a mooseskin tunic painted with curling designs came around the end of the nearest woodpile and called out—
“Kwe!”
—then turned away. René Sel and Charles Duquet exchanged stares. An Indian woman.
Une sauvage!

They followed Monsieur Trépagny into the frigid river. René slipped on a round river rock and half-fell, thinking of Achille, of the icy Yonne. Fish veered around them, shot past, so many fish the river seemed made of hard muscle. On the muddy shore they passed a fenced garden plot of weeds. Monsieur Trépagny began to sing:
“Mari, Mari, dame jolie . . .”
The
engagés
kept silent. Duquet's mouth was pinched as if the air burned, his eyes swollen almost shut.

Beyond the woodpiles they saw Monsieur Trépagny's house, their first sight of the timber
pièce-sur-pièce
style, the steep-hipped roof, the shape of the bell-cast eaves familiar from France. But every part was wood except for three small windows set with expensive French glass. Against the trees they saw a
wikuom,
which they learned the next day was the
sauvage
woman's bark house, where she retreated with her children at night.

Monsieur Trépagny took them to his storehouse. The interior stank of rotting potatoes, marsh hay and cow shit. One end was partitioned off and behind it they heard the breathing of a beast. They saw a black fire pit, a forge. Monsieur Trépagny, enamored of his own voice, continued to sing, made a fire in the pit and left them. Outside his voice receded,
“Ah! Bonjour donc, franc cavalier . . .”
The rain began again. René and Duquet sat in darkness except for the light of the dying fire. There were no windows in the building and when Duquet opened the door to let in light, clouds of savage midges and mosquitoes rushed them. They sat in the near dark. Duquet spoke. He said that he was suffering from
mal aux dents
—toothache—and would run away at his first chance and return to France. René was silent.

After a time the door opened. The
sauvage
woman and two children came in, their arms full. The woman said
“bien, bien,”
and gave each of them a beaver robe. She pointed to herself and said “Mali,” for like most Mi'kmaqs she found it difficult to pronounce the letter
r.
René said his name and she repeated it—Lené. The larger child set down a wooden bowl of hot cornmeal. They disappeared. René and Duquet scooped the mush out of the bowl with their fingers. They wrapped themselves in the robes and slept.

•  •  •

It was not light when Monsieur Trépagny wrenched open the door and shouted in a hard voice,
“Allons-y!”
Behind the partition came the sound of jets of milk hitting the bottom of a wooden bucket. He tossed them pieces of smoked sturgeon and took his steel-bladed ax from the wall, gave them each a short-hafted dulled ax. René's had a great chip missing from the cutting edge. In the dripping dawn Trépagny led them past a maize garden and into a small clearing. He swung his arm in an arc and in an ironic voice called the cramped space his big clearing—
“le grand défrichement”
—then began to chop at a tree with skillful strokes. He commanded them to do the same. He said today they would cut logs to build their quarters, an enlargement of his
domus,
so that they might vacate his storehouse as quickly as possible. René swung the short-handled trade tool, felt the jolt of the tree's resistance, swung again, embarking on his life's work of clearing the forest of New France. Duquet nibbled at a tree with his hatchet, a yellow discharge leaking from his bitten eyes. They limbed the fallen trees, rolled and dragged them to the edge of the clearing. The branches went aside to be chopped later into cordwood.

The ax was dull. In the time it took René to fell one smallish tree, the master brought down three larger and was at work on a fourth. There must be a way to sharpen an ax with a quarter of the cutting edge gone, he thought. He would refresh its sharpness; with doubts he chose a river cobble and began to grind with circular motions. There was no visible progress and he soon began chopping again. Monsieur Trépagny picked up the useless cobble and threw it into the forest, took the ax from René and flourished it. “To sharpen,” he said, “we use sandstone—
grès.
” He pantomimed the sharpening. René wanted to ask where Monsieur Trépagny kept his sharpening stones but the man's glaring expression kept him quiet.

Monsieur Trépagny twisted his lips at Duquet's whittle marks. He regarded Duquet's lopsided face. “Open your mouth,” he said, tapped the rotten tooth with the blade of his knife and muttered that he would pull it at the end of the day. Duquet made a negative sound.

At the height of the sun the
sauvage
woman brought a pot of steaming maize. René had rarely eaten food at midday. With a wood chip Monsieur Trépagny scooped out a glob. In the center of the maize melted a creamy substance. René took some on his wood chip, was overcome by the richness.
“Ah!”
he said and took more. Monsieur Trépagny said tersely that it was
cacamos,
moose bone marrow. Duquet barely ate even this and leaned against a tree breathing noisily.

At twilight they left the clearing. Monsieur Trépagny clattered through his smithy tools until he found a pair of ironmonger's pliers. Duquet sat openmouthed on a stump and Monsieur Trépagny seized the tooth with the tool and wrenched. He dropped the yellow fang on the ground. Duquet spat blood and pus, his lower lip split from the weight of the pliers. “
Allons-y,
” said Monsieur Trépagny, moving toward his house. René saw him pick up Duquet's tooth and put it in his pocket.

The men entered the single room and their masculine stench blended into the human funk of the north woods. The pockmarked Mari noticed René's nostrils flare at the smell of the house and threw an aromatic juniper branch on the fire. In the hubhub of brats they heard some names—Elphège, Theotiste, Jean-Baptiste—but they all looked the same and so like their Mi'kmaw mother that René forgot them immediately. Mari spoke a patois of mixed Mi'kmaq and terse French with a few Portuguese phrases in a curious rhythm. The children had French names.

She brought them a pot of unsalted stewed goose cooked with wild onions and herbs. The meat fell off the bone though Duquet could manage only a little of the broth. A small dish of coarse salt stood in front of Trépagny and he pinched it up with thumb and two fingers.

“Mari does not cook with
sel,
the Mi'kmaq say it spoils the food. So always carry your own
sel,
René Sel, unless you can put your thumb in the victuals and season them with your name—ha-ha.” Then came a plate of hot corn cakes. Monsieur Trépagny poured an amber syrup on his cakes and René did the same. The syrup was sweet and smoky, better than honey, and he could not believe it came from a tree, as the master said. Duquet, exhausted by his ordeal, bent his head. Mari went to her cupboard and stirred something. She brought it to Duquet. Monsieur Trépagny said perhaps it was a potion made from green alder catkins, the very alders Duquet had cursed, so then the medicine would not work for him. Mari said, “willow leaf, willow bark good medicine Mali make,” and Duquet swallowed it and slept that night.

•  •  •

Day after day the chopping continued and their hands swelled, blistered, hardened, the rhythm of chopping seized them despite the dull axes. Monsieur Trépagny watched René work.

“You've held an ax before; you have a woodsman's skill.” René told him about the Morvan forest where he and Achille had cut trees. But already that life was unmoored and slipping sidewise out of memory.

“Ah,” said Monsieur Trépagny. The next morning he took their wretched axes from them and went off, leaving them alone.

•  •  •

“So,” said René to Duquet, “what is Monsieur Trépagny, is he a rich man? Or not?”

Duquet produced a hard laugh. “I thought that between you and Monsieur Trépagny all the knowledge of the world was conquered. Do you not know that he is the
seigneur
and we the
censitaires
?—what some call
habitants.
He is a
seigneur
but he wants to be a nobleman in this new country. He apportions us land and for three years we pay him with our labor and certain products such as radishes or turnips from the land he allows us to use.”

“What land?”

“A fine question. Until now we have been working but there has been no mention of land. Monsieur Trépagny is full of malignant cunning. The King could take the
seigneurie
from him if he knew. Did you really not understand the paper you signed? It was clearly explained in France.”

“I thought it concerned only a period of servitude. I did not understand about the land. Does that mean we are to be farmers? Landowners?”

“
Ouais,
plowmen and settlers, not landowners but land users, opening the forest, growing turnips. If people in France believed they could own land here outright they would rush in by the thousands. I for one do not wish to be a peasant. I don't know why you came here but I came to do something. The money is in the fur trade.”

“I'm no farmer. I'm a woodsman. But I would like to have my own land very much.”

“And I would like to know why he took my tooth. I saw him.”

“And I, too, saw this.”

“There is something evil there. This man has a dark vein in his heart.”

•  •  •

Monsieur Trépagny returned a few hours later with iron axes for them, the familiar straight-hafted
“La Tène”
René had known all his life. They were new and the steel cutting edges were sharp. He had brought good whetstones as well. René felt the power in this ax, its greedy hunger to bite through all that stood in its way, sap spurting, firing out white chips like china shards. With a pointed stone he marked the haft with his initial,
R.
As he cut, the wildness of the world receded, the vast invisible web of filaments that connected human life to animals, trees to flesh and bones to grass shivered as each tree fell and one by one the web strands snapped.

After weeks of chopping, limbing and bark peeling, of dragging logs to Monsieur Trépagny's clearing with his two oxen, cutting, notching and mortising the logs as the master directed, lifting them into place, chinking the gaps with river mud, the new building was nearly finished.

“We should be building our own houses on our assigned lands, not constructing a shared lodging next to his
ménage,
” Duquet said, his inflamed eyes winking.

Still they cut trees, piling them in heaps to dry and setting older piles alight. The air was in constant smoke, the smell of New France. The stumpy ground was gouged by oxen's cloven hooves as though a ballroom of devils had clogged in the mud: the trees fell, their shadows replaced by scalding light, the mosses and ferns below them withered.

“Why,” asked René, “do you not sell these fine trees to France for ship masts?”

Monsieur Trépagny laughed unpleasantly. He loathed René's foolish questions. “Because the idiots prefer Baltic timber. They have no idea what is here. They are inflexible. They neglect the riches of New France, except for furs.” He slapped his leg. “Even a hundred years ago de Champlain, who discovered New France, begged them to take advantage of the fine timber, the fish and rich furs, leather and a hundred other valuable things. Did they listen to him? No. Very much no. They let these precious resources waste—except for furs. And there were others with good ideas but the gentlemen in France were not interested. And some of those men with ideas went to the English and the seeds they planted there will bear bloody fruit. The English send thousands to their colonies but France cannot be bothered.”