The Old American (17 page)

For a long time the slave says nothing. That night, Caucus-Meteor sleeps for a few hours. When he wakes, his fire is cold and dark. He can hear a whisper. For a moment he thinks that Jesus has come from the beyond to punish him more, but it's only the sound of his slave praying.

“Nathan?” he calls. No answer. “Nathan?”

“Yes, master.”

“Get me some fire,” says Caucus-Meteor.

“Yes, master.”

He hears Nathan shuffle by; he can smell Nathan's disappointment exuding from his armpits. Caucus-Meteor cocks his ears at the open flap of his wigwam while his slave sifts through the ashes of the communal fire of the village until he finds some coals. He returns, carrying the coals on a couple of sticks. Caucus-Meteor opens the flap to the smoke hole on the wigwam and builds a small fire. He's sorry he can't see the fire, but at least he can feel its heat, listen to its peculiar language, and smell the burn. For a long time neither man speaks. Finally, Caucus-Meteor says, “I heard you praying; what did your prayers bring you?

“You can enslave my body, old king, even my will, but there is a part of me you cannot own,” says Nathan.

“I'm delighted,” says Caucus-Meteor, “for already, you are thinking like an American. You have made great progress. See that you don't enslave that secret part of yourself. Myself, I have no desire to enslave it. I am merely curious to know it, and perhaps learn from it.”

W
eeks
go by; it's June. By now the men should have departed on their trade missions, but some contagion in the air prevents any activity. Nobody moves. Like the men, the women too are unsettled, sullen, watchful. The people of Conissadawaga are waiting for the crisis that follows the crisis. Only the old king knows the true nature of the contagion, for he has created it with his illness. With a mix of smugness and sadness, he calculates that his people believe that the new crisis will be his death. Caucus-Meteor is not so sure his demise is imminent. He wasn't quite sick enough for enlightenment. A little sicker and he might have been able to use the powers of delirium to move a little closer to Keeps-the-Flame, his mother, his father, those countless ancestors he'd be pleased to meet in the great circle. He's waiting for a visit from the God of Opportunity, who hides behind the stone face of a moment.

His slave brings him to his toilet, prepares and presents his food and fire, listens to his speeches; such dependence is instructively humiliating. “We share not only our food and lodging,” he tells Nathan, “but a common condition, for we are both piteous creatures. You've acquired the habits of an old man, getting through the day with prayer and mind-drift. The difference is I will not get over my old age, but you may one day rise out of your slavery.” This speech is the best he can do by way of giving his slave hope.

Every night the Americans meet around a campfire to drink, dance, converse, laugh. But the night before the first trade mission is set to depart, they're somber. Caucus-Meteor hears a buzz among the people. He thinks: if I could see I would see the moment sparkle. “What is it? What's happening out there?” he asks his slave.

“It's Black Dirt—she's going to speak,” Nathan says.

“This is news indeed. Bring me outside.”

Black Dirt really doesn't like the circle. She's not a speech maker, nor is she impressed by speech makers. But since the people have elected her as a sub-chief, she must realize she has to reveal her feelings. Perhaps she will disown me, thinks the old king. I hope so, because then I really would be free to die.

Caucus-Meteor's sensibilities as an orator are offended when Black Dirt launches too quickly into the substance of her speech. He wants to tell her that it's not earth but air that people breathe.

“I'm haunted by a belief that something is not right with this village,” she says, speaking not in oratorical tones, but softly and intimately, as if to a loved one. “My father tells me that my grief is affecting my judgment, and he may be correct. But I must speak, and leave it up to you to decide. I have come to the circle to ask the traders to purchase some stock for the village—a cow, a couple of piglets, chickens, maybe even a horse or an ox to pull a plow.”

Everybody knows the meaning behind Black Dirt's request. Right now the tribe is nomadic, in the tradition of the northern Algonkian peoples, hunter-gatherers who abandon the summer farming village for hunting camps in the hills in the fall. Black Dirt wants the tribe to settle permanently in this, the summer village of Conissadawaga.

Passaconway, another of the chiefs established when Caucus-Meteor fell ill, supports Black Dirt, but then he undermines the idea by launching into a disorganized speech about days gone by.

Caucus-Meteor doesn't know whether to be amused or appalled by his friend's oratorical ineptitude.

“The crowd respects the old athlete for his accomplishments in youth, but they'd just as soon he'd quiet down,” he whispers to Nathan.

Katahdin steps into the circle. She “honors” her “sister” Black Dirt, but thinks she's gone too far. “The Conissadawaga Americans are not a people defeated in battle, like the Hurons of Wendake, and not a people seduced by mission gods, like the Algonkians of Odanak or the Iroquois of Kahnawake. We are the only true American people remaining on the St. Lawrence river. If we are to remain American, we must think, act, and feel like Americans. Livestock will imprison us on the shores of this lake, where the wind blows cold in the winter. Buying livestock will be the beginning of our downfall.”

Caucus-Meteor tells Nathan, “Now, that's more like a speech. It has authority, passion, and exaggeration. And it doesn't hurt that the king agrees with the sentiment.”

A couple of men make short, impassioned pleas.

“What are they saying?” asks Nathan, for he values their opinions over those of the women.

“It all amounts to the same thing: soon the women will want us to pull plows like French peasants. They're afraid to think deeply on the matter.”

Caucus-Meteor summarizes the debate, in part for Nathan's benefit and in part so that he himself can better calculate the situation. Several women, upset by the dismissive attitude of the men, speak in favor of buying livestock. Sentiment for a permanent village seems to be taking shape. The villagers are tired of living poor; they're envious of the other réfugié towns that have log cabins, meeting houses, churches. Nearly all the men are opposed, but most of the women are in favor, and since women outnumber men, Black Dirt's proposal has a good chance of being adopted. Caucus-Meteor is proud of his daughter's powers, but he opposes her ideas. He's not quite sure what to do.

Norman Feathers steps into the circle. His speech is brief. “We have no barns, no feed. I am the most experienced among you in dealing with large animal husbandry, and I am just now learning the skills of the keepers.” Norman goes on to support Black Dirt, but he's unintentionally sounded an alarm. The villagers are thinking that no one knows how to go about the purchase and upkeep of farm animals. It's at this moment of weakness that Haggis steps into the circle.

“What excellent timing he has,” Caucus-Meteor says in admiration.

“We are poor not because we are nomads,” Haggis says. “We are poor because we pay the intendant tribute. I say we leave Conissadawaga after the fall harvest. We will go north by sled, stay in the Cree village where three of my wives have family. We will live like the Americans of old, free to hunt and fish and trap, free from the confinement imposed by farm life and French law. We will follow the beaver, the caribou, the salmon, the seal, the whale, the bear.”

Most of the men cheer and chant in exuberance.

Black Dirt enters the circle and stands beside Haggis. “The nomadic life appeals to the wild in heart. The ones who die in battle. The ones who starve in winter. My dream for the future of Conissadawaga removes the wildness, this I admit, and regret the loss. But we must plan for our children. We must fold the notions of the French, the English, the Dutch into our own behavior, or our children will die in the cold.”

“There, Nathan Blake—I don't agree with my daughter, but I do admire her speech very much.”

The speeches go on, and a mood of fear and desolation grips the villagers. For the first time they understand how divided they are. It begins to look like the Americans are going to split into two groups and go their separate ways. Out of this confusion a raspy voice shouts in English, “Where is my slave?”

Actually, Caucus-Meteor knows that Nathan is standing right beside him—he can smell him—but he needs a device to attract attention. He's had enough of listening to others; the time has arrived for real oration. He reaches out for his slave's hand.

Nathan leads the old deposed king into the light of the campfire. Caucus-Meteor knows the effect he must be having on his villagers. He's seen old men who have survived shocks, and he knows what they look like. With his paralyzed face, his skin greased and blackened by close proximity to his fire, a rank, sour odor emanating from his pores, he must look and smell like a smoked man. But the turban on his head will remind them that he is still their king.

“Listen, my children,” he says. “When I was a young slave in training in Paris of Old France, my teacher, who was a gap-toothed and aged priest with a reputation for touching that which a priest is forbidden to touch, read to me a translation of my father's oratory delivered to the English before his fateful war.” The old king speaks each phrase clearly and musically. “I memorized those words, and I want you to hear them now.”

Caucus-Meteor delivers the speech of King Philip. “‘The English who first came to this country were but a handful of people. My father was then sachem; he relieved their distress in the most kind and hospitable manner. He gave them land to plant and build upon … they flourished and increased. By various means they got possession of a great part of his territory. But he still remained their friend until he died. My elder brother became sachem … He was seized and confined and thereby thrown into illness and died. Soon after I became sachem they disarmed all my people … their land was taken. But a small part of the dominion of my ancestors remains.'” Caucus-Meteor changes his tone from formal to intimate. “My father was speaking of the land in New England which was called Mount Hope. My father ended his speech with the words, ‘I am determined not to live until I have no country'”

Caucus-Meteor pauses to let the words find a proper resting place, and then he continues with his own speech. “Sequestered in my wigwam, eating my fire, recovering from an illness brought on, I am sure, by the priests who stole my daughter, I have been praying to my father. I called to his spirit and said, ‘Father, I have no country, I have never had a country. I have, however, this small dominion, this village of reprobates. May the old disgraced American gods and may Jesus and his followers bless them. My dominion is on the brink of annihilation. The people have pushed me aside, and elected three sub-chiefs. Passaconway is a noble person, but he cannot lead because he has no will for the enterprise, and I, a blind man, have more vision. My daughter, Black Dirt, is a true leader. She would see us as herdsmen and tillers of the soil. If my people do as she says and buy a goat or two, buy a cow, our children soon will be talking and behaving like Frenchmen, praying to the French Jesus. Every wigwam will have an intendant's man outside. The children will not know their mothers and fathers as Americans, and their mothers and fathers will not know their children as Americans. Haggis is also a true leader and a true American. But he's a well-meaning fool, who would take the people back to the drifting, wandering days of winter starvation.'

“All these things I prayed to my father. I also admitted that I too have been a fool. I invited the priests to come to the village, not knowing they would steal my daughter. I also made a rash pact with a childish nobleman that one day may come back to trouble this tribe. But that is all to come. After admitting my faults, I asked my father: What should I do? Take my people into conflict with the French? Withdraw to the north? Sit and farm? Seek more tribute for the intendant? Kill Haggis? Kidnap my daughter from the priests? Succumb to my fatigue and illness? I called out, ‘Help me, father.' I listened in my heart for my father's advice, but he did not respond to my prayer. King Philip stayed dead and quiet. My father was denied speech in the afterworld because Cotton Mather ripped the jaw from his skull before it was raised on a pole in Plymouth town. I have thought about this matter for a long time, for a blind man has the leisure to think—how lucky I was to lose my sight. I have learned in my thinking that if I were purer in heart, I might encourage the gods to let my father speak once again. Surely, my father was pure.

“My father became sachem only after his brother died; my father went to war out of desperation for the future of his people, not for personal honors. I can claim no such noble motives. I have always been sick with ambition. I am less worried about you villagers than I am about my own position among you. I gave you everything I own in return for your admiration and the surrender of your will to my own. I have not taken my demotion well. I believe that even blind, dependent on the slave Nathan Blake, I can lead you better than Passaconway, Haggis, and even my beloved daughter, Black Dirt. My children … my children …”—Caucus-Meteor's voice drifts off in the foggy ocean of forgetfulness of an old man, then returns to the pier: “my children I would be king not only of Conissadawaga but of Canada, and of the lands south, I would be king of America, and my father would speak my lost boyhood name, if only…if only I were pure.”