Barkskins (49 page)

“The river!” screamed Swanee and ran on. The cook stood rigid and unmoving, his eyes fixed on the lusty springing flames behind the men. Jinot saw that the man could not move, swerved and ran to him, wrenching the cook from the doorway and shouting, “Run! Run! Run! Run!”

•  •  •

They leapt into the pool where the cook had often fished. The water was warm but deep enough to let them submerge, rise, submerge again. The teamster was in the pool with his oxen, sharing it with several deer, a wildcat and a black bear cub. The cook arrived, still clutching his long fork, his greasy apron smoking.

“Shanty's afire,” he yelled and jumped in.

Joe Wax put his hand to his head, which was badly charred and blistered. Soot-stained river water ran down his face and neck. He was sobbing with pain. “Got me, most got me.”

The fire jumped over the heated river and the shallows quivered. The wind veered, fire greedily gobbled the landscape. Night fell and the pool was lighted by the lurid flames of the great fire. Near morning the wind lessened and in the first terrible day's light Jinot saw ash swirl and ruffle. The pool was choked with dead fish. The cook, still holding his long fork, crouched in the shallows near the bear cub and was saying something to the animal in a low voice. Joe Wax floated facedown, the top of his head a massive red blister like a satin cushion. Swanee was nowhere. Jinot tried to call, but his throat was swollen shut and no sound came out. He sucked in a little of the river water, noticing with detachment that his hands and arms were deeply wrinkled from long immersion, and marked with welts and burns. Although his legs seemed strangely stiff he waded toward Joe Wax and shook his shoulder. No good, he was dead. The bear cub suddenly climbed out of the pool and, bawling, began moving over the burned ground, ashes accumulating on his wet fur, running toward a horrible shambling shape coming down the slope, a half-blind sow bear with most of her fur burned off and showing great raw swatches of roasted skin. She passed the cub and lumbered on toward the river, where she fell in, half-stood and began to drink and drink and drink.

The teamster, Jinot and Victor Goochey came out of the river and began the long walk to Fredericton. They had only shuffled half a mile when Jinot understood his legs had been burned. His charred pants had mostly disappeared and in places the wool cloth baked into the flesh. In the river he had hardly felt the pain, but in the open air and with gritty ash blowing against the open wounds the pain rose up in great waves. His endurance had burned down to a clinker and he fell.

•  •  •

He was lying naked on a rush mat. Above, birch bark slanted upward to a cluster of pole ends and a blackened smoke hole. He thought about it a long time. The realization came very slowly as he drifted in and out of consciousness; for the first time in his life he was in a
wikuom.
He was alone. His eyes were sore but he could see. He could smell something sweet and faintly familiar that attached to memories of pond edges. His legs itched and hurt intolerably and his thinking wavered and blinked out. When he woke again the light was very soft. It was twilight. He could smell honey, even taste it. He tried to put his hand to his mouth, but his arm was weak. It fell back and lay inert. His legs itched and he was violently thirsty. He slept again, half-woke when something sweet and wonderful dripped into his sore mouth.

The sound of wind woke him. It was grey dawn light. Slowly he remembered pieces of the fire, the burning, his legs, Victor Goochey holding his fork, the swollen red dome of Joe Wax's head. He tried to move his legs but they were somehow stuck together. He smelled the honey. And the sweet swamp-edge fragrance.

A voice spoke, but he couldn't understand the words. He thought it was Mi'kmaq but he had forgotten too many words to be sure. An arm half-lifted him up; a cup pressed against his mouth. The liquid was fresh with the taste of pine resin and soothing and after he swallowed it a deep lassitude overcame him and he drifted into the dark again, but not so soon that he couldn't smell and almost feel that someone was dripping honey on his legs.

A long time later, days or weeks, he knew not which, he came out of his medicinal torpor and saw the broad face of a Mi'kmaw man of middle years, perhaps a few years older than himself. His hooded eyes had the protective coolness of a man deeply acquainted with suffering.

“Where am I? Who?” he whispered.

“Inui'sit? Parlez Mi'kmaw?”
the man said.

“No, few words.”

“Français?”

“Un, deux, trois, quatre—c'est tout.”

“So.” The man said nothing for a long time, then, in a resigned and sad voice he continued in English. “This Indiantown. By Shubenacadie. Men bring you here tie like turkey. Leg burn. Name my Jim Sillyboy. Help burn people. I burn one time,
enfant
fall in fire. Know pain. Now burn people here come, Mi'kmaq, Iroquois, even whitemen. Some better. Some die. Burn is very bad, die. You little bad. I think walk one day.”

Jinot had heard the name Shubenacadie before and knew it was in Nova Scotia, part of old Mi'kmaw territory. How had he come here from New Brunswick? Who brought him here? Was it that cook, Vic Goochey? What did he mean “walk one day”? Of course he would walk, he would dance on the logs again as soon as he had his strength. He had been hurt many times and always he had healed quickly. He wanted to know about the fire.

“Big fire . . .” was all he could say.

“Ver, ver grand
incendie.
New Brunswick place. All burn up.” There was another long silence, then Jim Sillyboy sighed.

“Tomorrow maybe we start clean leg, both him. See you move leg. Now drink medicine. Sleep. Sleep good for burn.”

Over the next days Jinot learned that Jim Sillyboy was a renowned burn healer, that people came to him from far distances, bringing children scalded with hot oil, drunks pulled from fireplaces, woodsmen trapped in burning shanties, farmers half-roasted in flaming barns, and now he tended five from the Miramichi fire. This
wikuom,
and three others like it, were special healing places. Jim Sillyboy's son Beeto helped him with the burned people.

“Long time burn pain. Long time.”

His two other sons, he said, spent much time roaming in search of bee trees, for honey was essential for treating burns. “Use much honey.” He took no pay for his services though he was poor.

“Kji-Niskam say one, spirit place. Black robe say brothers, help, do good.” His unease in speaking English showed in his rough sentences.

Slowly Jinot learned that many of the people in Indiantown were poor and miserable, so poor that there was not enough food. The old hunting places and the game had been destroyed, the salmon rivers clogged with logs, bark and sawdust from mills. Now, said Sillyboy, his people talked of changing Mi'kmaw ways, of growing gardens like the whites so at least there would be food.

“Our chief go London, speak king. Ask how make
jardin.
We never know this. We try.”

Were the Mi'kmaq now embracing even more doings of the white men? Jinot thought suddenly of Amboise, his embittered brother who liked saloons best in the white man's culture if he had to like anything. And Martel, what of their comrade Joe Martel? Did the fire reach Bartibog? When Jim Sillyboy came in the evening Jinot asked him for information.

“Can no one tell me about the fire? You say it burned up New Brunswick? Could not burn up all New Brunswick.
Très
big place, many
rivières,
” he said, hauling out a few French words.

“I hear all burn. I look somebody. For tell you. Maybe find that man you bring.”

The next day Sillyboy gently cleaned the honey from his legs. He rolled Jinot on his side, said the back of the right leg was the worst.

“Big scar come you, I think.”

This meant nothing to Jinot. Scars were common, scars didn't kill you. Scars were the proofs of survival. But as the weeks and months went on he discovered their cruelty. The cicatrices made him a walking dead man, for the scarred back of his right leg contracted painfully and made it almost impossible for him to walk. When he tried, it was to hobble with tremendous pain and he could manage only a few steps. The scar froze his leg in an unnatural position.

All through the winter he lay in the
wikuom.
Early in his recovery, when Jim Sillyboy examined the itchy healing wounds, he explained in words and gestures that the scar was “too
enfant
” for his special massage that would make it a little softer and more flexible. Beeto would do this—it was his skill. He would use a special salve Jim Sillyboy compounded of the
mila-l'uiknek,
the seven kinds of healing herbs, roots, bark and needles. He made another good salve of beaver fat and the gum of
kjimuatkw,
the white spruce. And there were useful decoctions and teas which he would teach Jinot to make himself from the good ingredients. For the scar was now his master and it would demand a lifetime of care. The fire had been the salient point of his life. He had an absolute knowledge that nothing—nothing—would ever be as it had been.

•  •  •

One day, sitting outside the healing
wikuom
in a special chair, he had a visitor. A lanky whiteman came striding down the path. Jinot didn't know who he was but hated him for his good legs. The man stopped in front of him.

“Member me? Vic Goochey? Borned Gautier but they all call me Goochey. We was in the fire and the river? Brung ya here with Lew Green? Dragged a damn wagon with a old black horse. He got burned up, y'know. Most a the crew got it. But Lew heered about this Indan, Jim Sillybub, he's a burn healer. I had to get away from New Brunswick anyhow, place is all black and stinkin, so we brung you here. Lew Green had his right ear burned off and Sillybub fixed him up good. Course his ear is gone, just a little bit a skin left, but he's up and around. Figured he might do the same for you. Seein you got me to run down to the river. I was goin a stay in the shanty, figured the fire would never take it, but when you come runnin and half on fire yellin ‘run! run!' I change my mind. So I'm alive and hardly got scorched. Remember that sow bear on fire? She died right there and the cub just kept on tryin to suck. It was a bad fire.”

“God save me,” said Jinot. “I want to know about that fire. How big, what they say. I got a brother, Amboise, workin up on the Big Bartibogue.”

“Ver bad, that place. Fire come in, burned her up. They say three million acres a good timber burned. Towns, houses, jails, lumber camps, sawmills. Half a Fredericton got it.”

“Amboise and Joe Martel,” said Jinot. “Oh my brother, my friend. It can't be the fire killed them.”

“Must of. More'n a hundred people got it.”

Jinot could not speak for choking. Goochey waited. He sighed to express sorrow for Jinot's people, then he spoke softly. “We was lucky we made it, specially me. How your legs comin along?”

Jinot snuffled a little, then spoke in the hard and angry voice of someone who puts bad news behind him and gets on. “Slow. Sillyboy says it takes a long time. The scar draws up my leg, so I can't walk good. Can't do much.” He slapped the side of his right leg to indicate that it was the most damaged limb.

“Well, I come to ask if you want to go back out west, work the Gatineau?”

Jinot, unable to stop thinking about Amboise, shook his head. “I just told you I can't do nothin now. And I got no clothes cept what Sillyboy got from the priest, can't do no work. Not a chance I can do woods work now.”

“Hell, y'can cook, can't ya? That's the law, people get hurt in the woods, they cook.”

“I can't cook nothin but fish. Can't stand up for long, just two, three minutes. I tell ya, the burn pulls my leg up hard. I don't know how I'll get along. I want to get away from here. Sillyboys, all of 'em, been good but this is a hard place, hungry, poor, no money, no job, no huntin, nothin. I don't belong here no more. If I ever did. If I could maybe get to my other brother on Manitoulin, let him know what happened, I might work out some things.”

“Hell, Jinot, I'll take you out a here, Manitoulin if that's where you want a go. You save my life. I ain't forgettin that.”

“I got to get healed up, first. Sillyboy says couple more months, this fall, maybe, I might be walkin. Some. I got to get so I can move around better. I'm just cripple this way.”

“Say what, you get Sillabub fix you up some more and I'll come git you. Lessee, it is now just about June, drives are on, what say I come back October, see how ya go? Maybe you be better and we'll see what.”

He left, and Jinot thought Goochey was a good man, though he'd never paid him any attention before the fire. He cried again for Amboise, his older brother, a drinker, a dreamer of past days he never knew, now lost to him forever. Amboise, who hated cutting the forest but did it because when they went into new woods he felt he was entering a past world. Amboise, who drank whiskey to get away from the present.

•  •  •

The son, Beeto Sillyboy, showed him there was something more that could be done besides the gentle massage and softening salves. He coaxed the stiff, scar-bound leg into positions that hurt, very gradually stretching the clenching scar, moving the leg carefully, carefully, not to tear the stiff tissue. So by September, almost a year after the fire, Jinot could limp slowly. The leg was dreadfully painful, a kind of pain like no other, tedious and biting, angry and gripping, and he could see how the scar held his leg under tension. He said one day to Jim Sillyboy, “If you was to cut right here—seems to me it would let the leg stretch more. That scar is like a rope tyin me up. Just a little cut where that thick place binds, eh?” But Jim Sillyboy did not want to make such a cut. So Jinot was no good for the woods, or other heavy work. He had no money, everything lost in the fire, and when Goochey came back he would have to say he could not go with him. He would have to stay in Indiantown until he died, poor, hungry and crippled. He saw that life in front of him. But he tried once more with Beeto Sillyboy, saying that one little cut might make the scar easier. Beeto thought he was right.