The Old American (12 page)

“Freeway—yes, that will do.”

Norman Feathers says something in French, and Caucus-Meteor translates first in Algonkian, so that Nathan can repeat the words, and then in English, so that he can understand them—“Freeway will spread the word that the king of Conissadawaga is home from the wars.” Caucus-Meteor is not tired any more.

The canoe passed some hills a few miles back with cliffs reaching right into the water, but here the land is more gentle. The river is wide, broad, and benign. The land on the bluff is flat to gently rolling. Beyond the plain are wooded hills which block the north wind. The men paddle into a slow-moving branch of the big river that twists and turns for maybe half a mile through dense swamp maples and willows growing off the banks. They're the kind of trees one might expect to find two hundred miles south. It was the trees as well as the good soil that caught the old American's attention years ago when he'd bargained for this plot.

The men can hear a waterfall ahead, and suddenly after a bend in the river they're paddling hard upstream through riffles, and coming into view are the falls themselves, a fifteen-foot cascade over a black granite outcropping, dropping into a frothing pool that grows quiet by the time it reaches a rocky shore where a single crude stone-faced wigwam stands. Villagers run down a path from the bluff to the shoreline—men, women, children, all laughing, waving, carrying on, welcoming home their leader, who gestures with the paddle over his head as a king might with his scepter.

As he steps from the canoe into the shallow water, Caucus-Meteor is greeted by a frail girl maybe fifteen years old; even she is not certain of her age. Her face is pretty but disfigured by smallpox scars. “Caterina, my little pumpkin,” Caucus-Meteor says in French to his adopted daughter, then switches to Algonkian, the words spoken with resonance so that the gathered can hear. “I've been gone too long, but now I am home; now I know that a contented people makes a king happy.”

Caterina comments in Iroquois on the state of the occasion of the king's return, and then ends in French, “Father, you don't look well.”

“I am just tired, dear daughter,” says Caucus-Meteor.

Out of the crowd emerges a tall woman in her early thirties, very dark, almost like an African, dressed in a blue robe with bright designs above the hem, a black mourning ribbon in her black braided hair, bead necklaces around her neck, moccasins embroidered with dyed red, blue, and white porcupine quills. She's the only villager not laughing or joking or hopping around in exuberance. Caucus-Meteor feels the weight of his responsibilities as a father. He remembers the day when his daughter was six years old and digging in the earth with her tiny hands, and he gave her a name to carry into womanhood. He doesn't embrace her, but stands before her, and calls out that name. “My daughter, Black Dirt.” He doesn't say what he's thinking, but he knows that she is thinking the same thing: they are the only two remaining of the same blood. She leaves, and starts back up the path to return to her mourning.

As soon as Black Dirt is out of sight, the good humor of the crowd returns. Caucus-Meteor puts Nathan on display, as one might any piece of property worth boasting about. The captive stands proudly with his head up, his legs wide apart, hands at his side, fists slightly clenched. The villagers like his bearing, though his beard stubble, matted hair, and dirty face give them pause. Caucus-Meteor's people are of mixed race. Though most have dark brown or black hair, some have lighter brown, red, and a couple even have drab blond-colored hair. Eye colors vary from black to blue, from brown to green. Most have never seen an Englishman, and now the sight of one is alternately exciting and revolting.

“He has good legs,” says Wytopitlock, one of the single women in the village; she's thin as a reed, with big ears and a clipped nose, from an enraged husband suspecting infidelity. The villagers sometimes joke that Wytopitlock was a widow before her husband died.

“It seems to me that these men from European loins, whether French or English, are all too hairy, and with long noses you wonder how they get a clear view to see,” says Parmachnenee, another single woman, stocky, full-busted, about thirty. She belongs to a small clan, current whereabouts unknown.

The crowd of perhaps fifty people or so moves up the narrow path onto the bluff. Hanging in the background is Haggis, Caucus-Meteor's rival for leadership in the tribe. Caucus-Meteor notes that Haggis's son, Wolf Eyes, is not with his father.

Caucus-Meteor watches his captive for any telling gesture or reaction that might signal future success either as a slave or member of the tribe. Nathan seems preoccupied by an old stone foundation of a French farmhouse that was never built. Then he gazes out toward the fields behind the foundation, then at the cluster of huts on the east shore of the lake. There his gaze stops, not bothering with the majestic view of the hills beyond or the clouds above the hills or the heavens above the clouds. These Englishmen, thinks Caucus-Meteor, pretend to be enchanted by the Maker of the Universe, but their eyes do not dwell upon His works but upon things made by man.

The old American pushes thoughts of his slave out of his mind and takes in his town in a long visual embrace. It comforts him that he sees no log cabins, barns, or permanent structures of any kind. The dwellings consist of poles covered with bark in a roughly conical shape and woven mats for doors, wigwams of the type used before the arrival of Europeans. Caucus-Meteor dreams of wigwams as big as European castles. The only animals his people keep are dogs for pulling loads. On stick racks hang hundreds of fish, mainly salmon. He sees drying racks for skins, one stretching a moose hide. A tri-stand holds a recently killed porcupine. The quills will be dyed and used to decorate moccasins.

“Understand, Nathan Blake, we are not like the French or the English, nor like the Mohawks or the mixed peoples of Odanak, stationary nations all—we are a tribe of nomads.” In fact, Caucus-Meteor is talking to himself, for his slave is out of earshot. It's a nice spring day, so everybody gathers by the communal fire. Some of the women are tending to cooking pots. A couple of men shake rattles and beat drums. A few villagers start dancing. Somebody passes around a jug of brandy, which eventually reaches Nathan. It always amazes Caucus-Meteor how brandy suddenly appears, seemingly out of the air. His people know how he feels about strong drink, so they do not talk of drink in his presence, nor reach for drink in his presence; drink just appears when he is not attentive to them. So, too, it must be in the struggle between the Christian Satan and the Christian Jesus. Satan does his business when Jesus is not paying attention. Nathan accepts the brandy with an Algonkian thank-you phrase that Caucus-Meteor taught him on the canoe ride, and drinks.

Caucus-Meteor scans the area looking for Black Dirt, but she's nowhere to be seen. People talk to the slave. He says a few words he knows in Algonkian, and everybody laughs at his pronunciation. He blushes, but he is not frightened; he must sense that for the moment there's no malice or instability within the villagers. The mood is festive. Mica, a little tipsy, wiggles her rear end at him, and speaks a word. Nathan understands her meaning, and repeats the expression as best he can—dance! They want him to teach them an English dance. The slave is light on his feet, and though the music isn't right for the steps, he dances.

During the festivities, Caucus-Meteor tells the story of how he captured Nathan Blake, how one Englishman made it through the gauntlet and how another did not, how Nathan tricked the gauntlet by walking it, how Caucus-Meteor made twice his interpreter's salary on a wager with the famous Bleached Bones. He omits the disturbing scene by the lake when Nathan Blake spared his life. The more he talks the more dangerously pleasant his mood becomes until the old familiar feeling of largess comes over him. This is the feeling that the king of Conissadawaga lives for. Caucus-Meteor starts giving away his money until everybody in the village has some of his coins. He gives away the tobacco that the intendant gave him. He gives away the medallion around his neck to the boy Freeway. And by malicious design, he gives Nathan's musket to Wolf Eyes, the sullen son of Haggis. He gives away all his valuables but his turban, for he is terribly ashamed of his bald head. Stripped of his possessions, he takes the hand of his adopted daughter, Caterina, and walks over to the wigwam that he shared with Keeps-the-Flame, his wife. Together father and daughter sing a brief lament, and then Caucus-Meteor gives away his iron stove. Caterina does not protest. There's a longing within her. She herself is not even sure what she longs for, but it has nothing to do with material goods.

The old American delivers a speech in which he recounts the history of the village. The villagers have heard it all before, and when the children begin to fidget, Caucus-Meteor knows it is time to stop talking. After that Kineo and Nubanusit approach Nathan Blake. They sniff him. Kineo pinches his nose. Haggis comes forward along with other prominent men in the village—Seboomook, Seekonk, and Kokadjo. Caucus-Meteor breaks a stick and tosses it into the communal fire. The villagers grow quiet; they sense a moment of struggle between the great king and the great hunter, the two most powerful men in the village, and they want to see how it turns out.

Haggis steps into an imaginary circle near the fire and addresses the townsfolk. “The captive must be tested, and better clean than no—for our own sake, if not for his, since an Englishman does not have the capacity to take offense from himself no matter how much offense he gives.” A few people laugh at his not very funny joke.

Haggis is dressed in buckskins, like the natives of the previous century. His hair is very long, very black, though his skin is almost fair in complexion. By contrast, his son, Wolf Eyes, is very dark, with startling blue-green eyes, with a shaven head, except for a tuft down the middle. Haggis says something that Caucus-Meteor doesn't catch, then Kineo and Nubanusit grab Nathan, and are about to haul him away. Caucus-Meteor stops them with the raising of his right hand.

Haggis laughs, steps out of the circle, walks away. The crisis has passed.

“Come,” Caucus-Meteor says softly to Nathan, and Nathan follows him to the wigwam with Caterina. Nathan and the king sit on skins on the ground. Caterina goes off to an edge of the wigwam, and stitches moccasins. Even though she's only ten feet from the men, her body is turned away from them, her attention on her work. It's the method the villagers use to attain privacy within the confined spaces of the wigwam.

Caucus-Meteor surprises Nathan. “Nathan Blake,” he says, “I forbid you to drink spirits in my presence.”

“Caucus-Meteor objects to strong drink?” Nathan is confused.

“Caucus-Meteor despises strong drink.”

“But his subjects drink.”

“The men and women in this village are free to do as they please.”

“How does the king rule if the will of his subjects is equal in authority to his own?” asks Nathan.

“The king rules by oratory and by example.” Caucus-Meteor stops, laughs a little. “Actually, I don't rule. No one rules a Conissadawaga citizen but himself, and even then the subject often disobeys his own commands.”

“But you rule me. You just now ordered me not to drink in your presence,” Nathan says, and Caucus-Meteor looks at him with a wry smile. Suddenly, Nathan Blake remembers what he is to these people. Nathan says, “I forgot that I am a slave. I am not used to being a slave.”

“And before you were a slave, what were you? An Englishman absent from his native land? One who kneels before a king he has never laid eyes on?”

“I have knelt before no king.”

“But you swear allegiance to one, through a belief unexamined; you refuse to busy yourself with matters you cannot tend to with your hands. With trials to come, now might be a good time to consider all matters previously unexamined.”

“There's enough today for me to examine,” Nathan says. “You, an old man who went off to wars, return home with your booty and give it all away, and still you claim to be their king. Those men, your villagers, they gave me, a slave, their liquor.”

“Sharing comes naturally to us. It doesn't necessarily mean I am less of a king, and you are less of a slave.”

“Why did they hold their noses and take hold of me?”

“Isn't it obvious?”

“They liken me to a skunk.”

“They want you to wash, Nathan Blake,” Caucus-Meteor says.

“In New England we believe that bathing is dangerous to health,” Nathan says.

“Perhaps you are right, for if I know one thing about the people of New England it is that right is their inheritance, but wash you must. The people require it before you are tested.”

“If Caucus-Meteor wishes, I will do it,” Nathan says.

“It no longer matters what Caucus-Meteor wishes, for Caucus-Meteor is no longer Nathan Blake's master.”

Nathan blinks. “Am I free?”

“I have bequeathed you to my village.”

“You mock me, master.”

“Since our fateful meeting and union, I have indeed mocked you, for you are easy sport. Forgive me; one should not mock one's inferiors. But in this case, I am not mocking you. You were my last gift, Nathan Blake. I am retiring to my wigwam to eat my fire to give me the energy to go on the trade missions with the other men. The ones who took hold of you were going to wash you; I was afraid that in their enthusiasm they might offend your lungs with too much water. I asked them to turn you over to me until such time as you are to be tested. You will stay in my wigwam with Caterina and myself. When the tests begin, I will surrender you to my people, and they will determine your fate.”

“Who is my master?” Nathan asks, and from his anxious tone it's clear that uncertainty disturbs him.

“I did not give you to any particular person. You belong to the people of Conissadawaga. I want them to think as a village, and you are an instrument for that purpose. But I will tell you that the most influential of the men, after myself, is Haggis. Haggis wears no French or English clothes. He is even more of an opponent of change than I am.”