Barkskins (56 page)

•  •  •

On Saturday nights Arana went home to his father's house to exchange his filthy work clothes for fresh, sink into his mother's large family clan again and eat his favorite dishes, to be Maori once more. Jinot stayed in the camp, washed and mended his single garment, a pair of canvas trousers torn off at the knee.

Arana came back one Sunday evening with a home delicacy, a basket of eels that had been wrapped in leaves of green flax and roasted over the coals. “We worked all day fixin our eel weirs. Some settlers pulled up all the manuka stakes that show the eel the way into the
hinaki.
” Between mouthfuls of the juicy meat they talked about weirs and nets and eel pots, the different ways to make good weirs. “Mi'kmaq make weirs with river stones,” said Jinot, arranging pebbles on the ground. “Takes a lot of attention, the river shifts them.” Arana explained how brush and ferns could be worked in between the manuka stakes to make a good fence, and spoke eloquently on the importance of a strong and beautiful
hinaki
net that did the eels honor.

•  •  •

For Jinot, cutting his first big kauri was pain. He had to clear away a mountain of debris around the tree with ax and brush hook, with hoe and mattock. Then it had taken three days to chop out a large enough “room” so he could climb up and get inside the tree and, in a twisted half crouch, swing his ax. At last the true assault began. He managed the first hour, but the pain in his leg was bad, very bad. At noon he moved like a crab to the edge of his chopping hole to get down to the ground and some cold tea. He was not hungry. He jumped and felt something give way in his knee. When he tried to stand upright the bad leg folded. He could not straighten it and fell again, the knee hitting the mattock point. Arana saw him down, loped over and looked at blood seeping through Jinot's pants. “We'll get it fixed,” he said, “we'll get you right.” He cut a forked sapling and made a makeshift crutch, helped the injured man up. Jinot, standing because he could not sit, drank a quart of tepid tea, leaned against the maimed kauri and panted. He put his head against the old tree's grey bark and whispered, “You got me this time.”

“You can't work,” said Arana and helped him back to the bunkhouse, pulled off his trousers and looked at the knee still oozing blood from the blue and swelling cut. The knee looked strangely flat. He got water from the cook and tore a bit of rag from his extra shirt, mopped the wound and left Jinot to lie there all afternoon trying to find a position that would ease the pain.

There was no doctor. Palmer did any necessary doctoring or burying. Arana brought him in the next day and the trader looked at Jinot's knee, deformed when the ligament had torn and the patella moved up into the thigh; the mattock wound was red and swollen. “Christ,” he said. “You better lay up. Maine men heals pretty quick so we'll see.” He noticed Jinot's graying hair—the man had aged in New Zealand. He went up to the store himself and got two bottles of opium-heavy patent medicines—Sydenham's laudanum and Dover's powder. “Course he's not no chicken now—older feller, you don't heal so good.” While he was gone Arana put his hand on Jinot's burning cheek, leaned over and said into his ear, “Rest, rest.”

Jinot slid in and out of narcotic dreams in the bunkhouse for a week while the infected wound broke free from restraint, galloping headlong toward victory. Bright with fever, panting, he did not recognize Arana, called out to Franceway. Arana and Palmer regarded the leg, one vast black blister. Arana sighed.

Arana and Shuttercock buried Jinot near the river at the edge of the hay field where they had cut rickers two years earlier. Before the last shovelful of earth topped the grave it began to rain. They walked back up the steep tree-bare slope sloughing off muddy soil as the rain increased. It was the beginning of a great lopping storm that loosed unreasonable torrents. The mountain streams, joined by other runaway water, raced flashing down the hills carrying rocks, ricker slash, logs, gravel, soil, the old cookhouse, and, disinterring Jinot Sel, swept his carcass out into the Pacific.

•  •  •

The old year ended trembling in storms of wind after a wild winter, but once again a fresh spring morning, pastel and calm, gave Mr. Rainburrow pleasure as he sucked in the sweet air. He left the door open and hoped for no interruptions. If he finished all his correspondence within the hour he would have the afternoon free to count and arrange the flax bales in his storeroom, but before he had written half a page he heard tramping on the earthen path and a figure loomed, entered his sunny workroom. Another followed. He thought that he had rarely seen uglier customers than the two men who stood with folded arms staring at him. One was hoop-backed and swart, an aging hunchback with obsidian eyes in a flat American Indian face. The other had even more marked Indian features and a wiry body. His inward-drawn mouth showed that he cared for neither Englishmen nor missionaries. To Mr. Rainburrow the pressed-in lips and knotted eyebrows indicated a particularly disagreeable nature.

“Yes?” said the missionary in the brusque voice he used to dust off time wasters.

“Joe Dogg,” said the crooked man, fishing in his pocket, then extending Mr. Rainburrow's own letter written several years earlier. It was stained and tattered, one corner quite torn away. “I am Mr. Bone's foreman and acting manager of the ax works. Your letter came to me. Has Mr. Bone now returned? My inquiries have remained unanswered.”

“Oh, he—no, he—he has never returned. We are quite satisfied that he was decoyed and killed by a renegade Maori—it is quite sure that poor Mr. Bone is dead. Quite sure.”

“What basis have you for that surety?”

“Well,” blustered Mr. Rainburrow, “well, because it is
known
by some—I am not at liberty to say whom—that he was—killed. Killed and likely”—his voice dropped—“in the custom of some of these heathens, eaten.”

Dogg grimaced, shook his head as if driving off an irritating sweat bee. “We will have proof of your assertion, sir. People do not just ‘disappear,' people are not just ‘eaten.' ”

“In New Zealand it can happen. Mr. Bone was headstrong and showed no reticence in going into the forest with a native he did not know. Guile is part of the Maori nature.”

“I ask you to produce those people who ‘know,' ” said Joseph Dogg. “A great deal depends on being sure. And what of his money box, do you have it?”

“I keep it in a safe place, it is in my cupboard in my sleeping room. I will get it directly.” The words tripped over each other like a too-often-repeated prayer.

The hard-faced Indian clenching and unclenching his fists spoke loudly and angrily. “Where is Jinot Sel? I wish to see Jinot.”

Mr. Rainburrow also had a wish—that he might be instantly transported to a desert isle. If he had never written that letter these men would have remained forever in their wretched land of rebels and upstarts.

“He—he, too, is dead.”

Dogg, the hunchback, who had been looking out at the harbor, spun around, spoke in a tigerish voice. “What! Jinot dead? Not possible. Never. How? When?”

“Last year, in, in— I have forgotten the month.”

“He died how? Or did he also ‘disappear'?”

“He died of illness. Of blood poison. He worked as a bushman and hurt his foot. Or leg. His friend, Arana Palmer, was with him and no doubt can tell you all the particulars.”

Joseph Dogg said in a low voice, “Perhaps you do not know that Jinot Sel was not Mr. Bone's ‘servant' as you surmise, but was greatly favored by him as a friend and business associate and it is to him that Mr. Bone has willed all his works and possessions, which include the ax factory in Massachusetts. And if truly he is dead, and if Jinot is also dead, then likely Mr. Bone's holdings will shift into Jinot's estate and go to his son, Aaron. I have the responsibility to bring all details back to Aaron Sel, who could not make the interminable journey.”

“I am also Sel,” said the dark Indian. “Etienne Sel, an uncle of Jinot Sel although he was older than me by many years. We came to reclaim him and take him back to his home country. If what you say is true we must have his bones that he may be returned to the land where he began. This is important.”

“I cannot speak to the whereabouts of his grave,” said Mr. Rainburrow, seeing an escape route. “I can only advise you to search out Arana Palmer, one of the sons of the trader here, Mr. Orion Palmer. He was a friend of Jinot Sel—and, I think, did bury him—where I do not know. So, I wish you good day, gentlemen, and good fortune with discovering what you wish to know.”

“The money box, sir,” said Joseph Dogg. “I will take it in hand before we leave this place. I trust you have not availed yourself of any of the funds?” A cloud passed over the sun, briefly dimming the flood of light through the open door.

“How dare you, sir, imply that I am a thief?” Mr. Rainburrow swelled up. The word
sir
hissed through his teeth.

“Why, Mr. Rainbillow, I see that you are a clergyman of sorts, and it has been my experience that pastors, ministers, clergymen and church officials of all kinds feel entitled to use any stray funds that come their way to further their influence and control of local affairs—as well as building new churches, adding wings to existing churches, gilding the altar and such so-called good works, especially improving the parsonage or the wine cellar.”

“I will have you know that I have not touched a ha'pence,” lied the missionary, who had, in fact, used more than a hundred pounds of Mr. Bone's money to build the storeroom where he cached his bales of flax.

“It will be a simple matter to judge,” said Joe Dogg, “as I know to the last penny what Mr. Bone had in that box. I have his monthly accounts up until three years ago, when correspondence ceased. He was meticulous in noting his expenditures. Before we depart I will conduct my examination of the contents of the money box and any papers he may have left. Also, you will present that proof of his demise.”

They left the missionary biting at his thumbnail. Sunlight washed the room as before.

•  •  •

Orion Palmer leaned on his counter near the open door, his narrow temples surmounted by a wave of cresting auburn hair, his hard blue eyes wide open. Etienne stared at his odd face, for below the earlobes the jaws swelled out, fleshy and full, carried down to a thick neck. “My son? Which one? I have more than a dozen, all fine fellows, but I certainly do not know the whereabouts of each. Most with their mother's people.” The trader, in an easy mood and pleased with the fine day and the flock of sheep-like clouds marching overhead, sized up the two men.

“Your son Arana Palmer, sir,” said Etienne in the weighty voice he used with assertive whitemen. “We have heard that he knew my nephew Jinot Sel.”

“Ayuh, he did.” The trader sighed and thought for a long moment. “Pret' sure Arana is workin the kauri yet.” He picked his teeth with a long fingernail. “Yep, he did know Jinot, we all known him. He frighted the women wicked when he first come here. So some took a dislike to him. He died of a poisoned wound—nothin we could do. Too late for amputation and no white man doctor here—just me, and I don't go in for cuttin men's limbs off.” As he warmed up he became more voluble, his limber mouth stretched in the smirk of a self-regarding man. “I say he was not young or strong enough in the first place to work cuttin kauri, but the missionary put him to it so's he could earn his passage back home. He tried. Choppin kauri calls for strong young men,” he said. “He was not so young, pret' lame though he knew well how to handle the ax. You could see that. He said he was a Penobscot man, and maybe he was a long time ago. Them days is gone, y'see—we got circle saws and trained bullocks. Now bullocks—”

He was ready to tell them his brilliant innovation of importing bullocks to New Zealand, for the trader had to get some indication of his importance into every conversation, but something in their intent leaning postures, their serious eyes following his lips as he spoke deterred him. He told them instead to take the steamer two harbors north and, following the map he sketched out on a broken packing-case slat, to walk the track to the Big Yam camp, where the choppers and sawyers were laying the kauri down. He wished them luck. “And I guess you want to finish your business here pretty quick as the
Vigor
is leaving for Port Jackson next week. We don't get that many ships these days since the whales is all gone. Catch the
Vigor
and return to your own place.”

Etienne spoke. “We only just come here. Long long trip. We see something of this new land, not leave so soon. Country pretty different to K'taqmkuk.” He stared out at the bulging forest line beyond the cutover slope hardly believing the size of the stumps.

“Arana can show you—his mother is Maori. The Maori got a good many
tapu
places you best not disturb.” And the trader drew the edge of his hand across his throat.

•  •  •

The calm morning had changed; intermittent clouds now cast their stuttering shadows over the landscape. Arana, when they found him at work, was, like many Maori, handsome and strongly built with great leg muscles. There was little of the trader Orion Palmer in his appearance beyond a slightly oversize jaw. His hair hung long and snaggled. He listened to them, then said, “Come with me,” and led them through the stumps to an awkward place—a huge kauri stump surrounded by slash and the great pale arms of its severed limbs. He jumped on the flat top, the size of a barn floor, and beckoned to them to join him. “This is the very stump of the kauri Jinot was cuttin when his bad leg give way. There's the cuts he made,” he said and pointed to the ax marks on the outer rings. Etienne touched the greying wood, old ax marks all that remained here to show that Jinot had walked the earth.