Barkskins (25 page)

Jenny, one of Noë's daughters, watched all this. One evening in the
wikuom
she whispered to a friend. “You know those whiteman pigs get our
e's
—our clams?”

“I do. A big grandmother pig is the leader.”

“Yes. I have a plan.” She reached behind her and took up a skin sack filled with empty clamshells. She whispered to her friend and the other girl laughed.

“I will help you,” she said.

They were up before the tide turned. From the banked night fire Jenny and her friend took hot coals and put them in the clamshells, joined the halves together with clay so the clams seemed their usual unshucked selves. They placed the shells temptingly just above the waterline, then sprinkled a little sand over them. They waited, high up on the shore. A great sow and six lesser beasts came down to ravage the clams. The first clam was rooted up and as it fell open the old sow seized the hot coal. The watching girls were gratified at the terrific squealing and roaring and rolled on the sand in laughter. The old sow rushed away to the village emitting unearthly squalls. The other hogs rooted up the rest of the burning clams and in a short while the Acadian village trembled with porcine uproar. For the women it was a wonderful day.

•  •  •

The hunting journey began well. Auguste and Kuntaw were excited by the new territory and the chance for a real hunt as Mi'kmaw men had made in the old days. On the third day Auguste shot a swimming beaver, then dived into the water to retrieve it and his arrow. Before he was back onshore another beaver came up out of the depths and Kuntaw shot it. Auguste brought both to land. They ate well that night. Achille had picked willow and kinnikinnick leaves on the way and tied the stems to his pack basket; as he walked they cured. At night they smoked their pipes before bed and told stories.

The new territory refreshed their eyes, everything infused with the spirit of
mntu.
They camped beside waters so crowded with hungry lake trout it was the work of a few breaths to net six. They saw bears at the rotten logs, noticed the small creatures that made their livings in cavity-riddled snags and the many owls who lived on this bounty. This was a world
Wenuj
never noticed, even when walking through it.

After a rainy night they woke to a spider's world of spangled webs. Heavy mist silenced footfalls and the sound of movement through brush. It was a good morning for hunting and many more good mornings followed. Kuntaw saw that Achille was very strong in his body and in his understanding of the unseen forces that bound all into one—animals, spirits, people, fish, trees, ocean, winter, clouds.

“We got not much food now,” said Achille, sharing out two small woodcock. “We hunt today, go a little east.” They walked toward the sun all morning and while resting at noon near a small lake, their prize came to them. Out of a tangle of small spruce a lustrous black bear ambled onto a grassy bank. The bear was so fat his belly trembled with each step. Achille shot first, Kuntaw and Auguste simultaneously, then Achille again. The bear lay still.

“How we get him back to camp?” said Auguste. “He's too big.”

“Ho, you will see. Come,” said Achille. “First we gut this bear, leave for wolves.” They eviscerated the huge animal and Achille dragged it to the edge of the bank. “Watch. I show you.” Achille took sinew cords he always carried and bound the bear's hind feet to the front feet. He jumped down off the bank, turned his back to the bear, slid his arms into the loops formed by the bound paws, leaned forward and with a heave and lurch stood almost upright, the bear like a monstrous knapsack on his back. He alone carried it to their camp, his feet making deep impressions with every step. After he let the burden down he made them examine his footprints. “You see how deep when a man carries a heavy burden? Sometimes that person is carrying supplies, sometimes fur packs. And sometimes a bear.”

•  •  •

A full moon passed before they neared the end of the birch forest. Here the hunting party stopped early one evening on the shore of a small lake. Achille looked about. “The
masgwi
—white birch—of this forest is good. And I see trees encumbered with knots of the fire-starting tinder. We make two canoes with this bark,” he said, “even though it is not the correct moon.” Auguste, who had brought his crooked knife, would fashion the paddles. They made camp in the dying light. Auguste, who had a way with naming, called it Canoe-Making Place.

While Auguste resoled his worn moccasins, Kuntaw and Achille set out for the east end of the lake in the wavering darkness of early morning, frost crackling beneath their feet. From the distance of an English mile they could see a moose-shaped dot at the end of the lake. As they came closer Kuntaw could see it was a young female moose in the shallows; the rising sun caught the glittering water dripping from her muzzle. They left the shore lest she see them and backed into the woods, circling closer, each step painfully slow and carefully placed. Long before they were near, the moose raised her head and stared in their direction. She had heard them. Kuntaw was shocked by the acuteness of hearing that let her sense their distant approach. A cloud of steam swelled into the bitter dawn with each of her exhalations and Achille thought that these puffs were like the lives of men and animals, brief, then swallowed up in the air. Kuntaw had no room in his mind for thoughts; he was so tense his jaw ached. “Wait, now,” whispered Achille. “Let her become sure there is no one.” After a long time the moose splashed closer to them. “She will feed along the shore, she will come to you,” signed Achille in pantomime. Closer she came until they could hear the tearing of the water plants. When she clambered onto solid ground again Achille motioned and Kuntaw raised his bow, drew back the string and released it. The moose bled and fell.

“Now you are a man,” said Achille. “I show you how we get this moose back to our camp.” He tied his useful sinew cords around its neck, plunged into the water as did Kuntaw, and together they towed the cow along the shore.

Auguste said, “We now may call you Moose Killer instead of Grasshopper Slayer.”

They dragged the heavy animal onto the sloping shore and gutted it. Kuntaw and Auguste carried the head up to the cooking fire and Achille followed with the heart, liver, a handful of fat and several choice cuts.

“So,” said Achille, “do you make up the fire now and broil liver slices, and cook the heart slices in moose fat. And heat many small stones. I will prepare the head for baking.”

They ate the liver slices half-raw. While Achille split the moose skull, removed the eyes and washed the head in the lake, Kuntaw set a flat rock in the fire. When the rock was hot he dropped moose fat on it, then laid the slices of heart in the sizzling grease. Achille half-filled their biggest birch container with water and dropped hot rocks into it. The water boiled and he put the moose head in. It was too large and he had to keep turning it end on end. He kept it boiling for several hours, and while they waited they feasted on the fine-grained heart meat. After many hours of boiling Achille could twist the jawbone loose from the steaming head. While he pulled out the bones Kuntaw and Auguste dug a deep hole and made a strong fire in it. They continued to eat the heart slices and to throw fuel into the roasting pit while Achille gathered the herbs he needed. He scooped out half the coals, wrapped the moose head in cattail leaves, wild onions and other flavorsome greens, put the head in the pit, raked coals on top, covered all with soil.

As they finished two Cree stepped out of the trees. They said they and their families had a fishing camp on the far side of the lake. Achille invited them all to the moose head feast of the next morning.

“I have heard of this food,” said one of the Cree, “but never enjoyed the taste.”

“In the morning you will have the best food of your lives,” said Achille.

•  •  •

The Cree came in the morning with all their bundles and dried salmon trout, for they were moving on that day to another good fishing lake. The group included two passably pretty girls and some small, noisy boys. Achille put the cooked head on a large slab of birch bark and they all leaned forward to appreciate the enticing aroma. Kuntaw and Auguste sat beside the Cree girls, eating. In the following days, as they built their canoes, they fed on moose and more moose until the Cree returned to their fishing camp.

“Moosehead Lake,” said Auguste.

Achille, Kuntaw and Auguste, laden with smoked moose meat, went on, hard traveling by labyrinthine waterways interrupted by beaver dams that forced them to portage packs and canoe overland. The birch became scanty, submitting to white spruce. And finally even those trees fell away and they entered the land of little sticks, the meager black spruce and dwarf birch, and beyond them the endless tundra. They saw a vast expanse filled with feathery puffs of arctic cotton grass. Auguste called this Walking-in-White-Things Place. Here, too, was the hairy-stem mastodon flower catching the low sun so that thousands of plants glowed with unearthly light.

The bird millions that had passed through Mi'kma'ki earlier were in this north country, every kind of duck and goose, loons, ptarmigan, ravens, owls and jaegers. Herds of caribou drifted across the tundra. There were broken eggshells and unripe berries without number; sometimes they saw heavy grizzly bears in the distance. The expanse of tundra trembled in the distorting heat waves; in the distance lay great grey rocks, their surfaces brilliant with orange, black, green and ocher lichens. On many days it was breathlessly hot, and the biting flies were a savage danger.

“Truly, Father,” said Kuntaw, “this is the country of insatiable biting flies. No one could live here. Only birds.”

“We are here. We are alive,” said Achille. “But did we not rub ourselves with grease and ashes we would not last long.” The ground quivered, dark water welled up around their feet when they stepped on land. Their canoe angled through the twisting waterways and at every turn they saw strange new sights. At last early frosts that turned the willow stems red warned them to turn back. So ended the summer of their great hunting journey, which would last in their memories as long as they lived, but tinctured with irremediable rage and grief.

•  •  •

Achille carried a moose quarter for the feast that would mark their return. As they approached their home place, Achille's
wikuom,
they heard a terrific hubbub of tree chopping and voices calling in a fractured language. And then they walked into two hundred English settlers cutting trees and building log houses where Achille's
wikuom
had stood. They did not speak French. Thirty armed English soldiers stood ready. The remnants of Achille's
wikuom
smoked on the ground.

“Where is my wife? My children?” Achille demanded, his eyes swollen with anger, and the soldiers pointed their guns at him. Six of them rushed forward and seized the moose meat, hitting and kicking. One fired, and the ball gouged a furrow in the side of Achille's head above his ear. More than pain he felt the heat of his own blood streaming down his neck. As he fell he saw on the edge of a debris pile that once had been the furnishings of his
wikuom
a still-shapely hand and blackened forearm, the skin burned away, exposing the heat-spasmed muscles. He knew the hand well, for he had caressed it, many times seen it preparing his food. Isobel. His wife.

Everything in his memory emptied out and refilled with the smell of burned
wikuom
bark, scorched bearskin beds, the caressing hand metamorphosed to charred meat, the corpse-white face of a soldier and his black oily hair, the groan of a falling spruce and English laughter.

Kuntaw seized his arm, pulling with reckless, frightened strength. “Father, get up,” he screamed. He, too, had recognized his mother's severed arm and hand. “Run! They will kill us.”

Achille knew this was true and he longed for death, but Kuntaw and Auguste dragged him on and, shot whizzing above their crouching runs, they arrived at Elphège's
wikuom.
And so Elphège learned the English had killed Achille's wife and his younger children, their bones incinerated in the burning
wikuom.
When Elphège's wife tried to treat his wound Achille thrust her away; he preferred the wound. Kuntaw wept while Achille went outside and reeled up and down, silent but with hard, lurching footfall. Numb and disconnected, he tried to think of small things such as weather clouds to rid himself of what he had seen. Useless. The scene burned his mind as though he still stood before his ruined life. Everything smashed. He went back inside and sat speechless beside his brother. The day passed and twilight softened the interior of the
wikuom
before Achille spoke, his voice rough in his constricted throat.

“The English have taken my wife, my children,” he said. “There are hundreds of them and armed soldiers. It is what Sosep foretold.” The brothers sat in silence. Achille shuddered, his heart and entrails knotted with pain, spoke in a trembling unnatural voice.

“This place, Mi'kma'ki, is indeed rich and beautiful, and because of its richness now they will take it, as Sosep told us. I hunt no more. My life here is finished.
I am not.
I leave this land of our mother. I will go south, do lumbering in Maine. I will despoil
their
land.”

“They will not notice. They believe despoiling is the correct way.”

“You are right, but I will do it anyway.”

“Brother,” said Elphège, “we may follow you if more English come.”

“They will come.”

“Father! I am going with you,” said Kuntaw passionately. And Auguste, outside the
wikuom,
heard this and called that he, too, would be with them. But several days passed taken up with funerals, mourning and serious talking before Achille left, a great scabby welt above his left ear, the ruined ear, which now heard nothing but a roaring sound. He said Kuntaw and Auguste would stay with Elphège until he sent word for them to come. He must find a safe place first. He had to be alone to bury the memory of what had fallen on him. Elphège would help Kuntaw and Auguste. But no one could help Achille.