The Old American (19 page)

In early November, the tribe moves into winter quarters, a narrow valley in the hills by a brook. The area is chosen because it's near the deer yards; it's protected from north winds; and it's in the middle of a stand of maple trees, which the American women will tap for sugar late in the season. The winter wigwams are designed like the summer wigwams, except they have insulation of bunch-grass and moss between the bark layers. The big fear in the winter is fire. An ember escaping through an iron chimney sticking out of the smoke hole can ignite the bark roofing. Caucus-Meteor and Nathan move into Black Dirt's small winter wigwam. The villagers try to do as much as they can outdoors, even in the winter, but often the weather drives them into their cramped dwelling units, which are warm but dark. More than the cold and the storminess, it's the darkness of winter that rubs nerves raw. Even so the old American feels ennobled by the darkness, and it's all he can do to hide his disapproval of his daughter's use of candles.

A few days before the St. Lawrence river ices over, Omer and Hungry Heart Laurent arrive in the winter village. As promised, Omer gives money to Caucus-Meteor to be used toward the spring tribute for the intendant, then he and Hungry Heart give away their summer earnings to the rest of the tribe. Caucus-Meteor can tell by their impatience and lack of humility that they do not possess true largess. One day as Omer approaches, Caucus-Meteor says to Nathan, “No doubt the Laurents are hoarding much of their money. They live by the snake tails of guilt and exuberance. Watch how Omer's guilt hinders his happiness.” Caucus-Meteor tells Omer he loves and admires him. Omer turns ashen. After Omer leaves, Caucus-Meteor says to Nathan, “Only the river will save Omer.”

The men set out on the fall hunt. Though it's obvious he has no taste for hunting, Nathan is bitter and resentful to be left behind with women, children, and old men. Caucus-Meteor is amused; his slave might have some magic in him, but he's still a man. Black Dirt stitches moccasins, absorbed in her work. Caucus-Meteor misses his open fire, but he huddles by the stove and rambles. He talks in Algonkian, and by now Nathan can understand as well as converse in the language.

“We hunt in the northern Algonkian tradition,” Caucus-Meteor says. “Only one-quarter of our territory is used per year, leaving the other three-quarters to replenish the game. Since the land is hunted only once every four years, the animals forget the hunters. The game will be skinned, cleaned, quartered, and strung up high in trees to keep them out of reach of wolves and bears. Some of the meat will be smoked, and some will be preserved by the gods of cold. After the men return from the hunt, they'll run trap lines, fuss with their weapons and tools, and discuss grave matters relating to war, hunting, fishing, and the training of dogs. Our women will make moccasins. Late in the season after the snows have fallen, settled, melted, frozen into a hard crust, imprisoning weakened deer and moose in their winter yards, the men will go out on the winter hunt, which will be followed by the midwinter festival. Later in the season, the women will tap the maple trees, boil down the sap to sugar. Come spring half the tribe will go north to a stream for the salmon run, while the other half breaks down the winter village and sets up the summer village along the lake.”

Black Dirt remains quiet, removed. It's as if her physical being is in the wigwam, but her soul is elsewhere. She's in the last and most intense period of her mourning, though she never complains. Her father attempts through conjuring to absorb her suffering, but he cannot. His own pain—loss of physical powers, loss of influence, loss of loved ones—is good, for it makes him a little bit humble, which is accompanied by a little bit of contentment, but the pain within his daughter is unbearable.

It's because of her pain that he decides he can no longer live with her; accordingly, he devises a new method of suicide.

One day at the evening meal, the king says to Nathan, “I have good news for you. You and I are leaving this place. We have a saying: young men hunt, old men fish. Black Dirt needs privacy in these last days of her public grief. You and I will leave the winter village. We will camp on the ice, and fish in the lake. Periodically, you will bring the catch to the village in the hills. I do not want to be a burden on my people. With your help, I will contribute something to our necessities.”

“Father, you will sicken living by the lake where the wind makes it colder than here in the hills,” Black Dirt says, and then switches to Iroquois because she knows Nathan cannot understand that language. “Your slave might kill you and try to escape.”

“In his own way Nathan is a mighty man, but he doesn't have it in him to kill—it is part of his frustration.”

Nathan hears his name used and cocks an ear.

“Father, I cannot let you leave,” Black Dirt says.

“You have my pride and my life in your hands. Which do you think is more important to me?”

Black Dirt turns away from him, and moves to the edge of the wigwam for privacy. “We'll leave in the morning,” Caucus-Meteor addresses Nathan in Algonkian.

Later that night, for the first time since they've relocated to the winter village, Black Dirt asks to see Nathan alone. Caucus-Meteor accedes to her request and they leave the wigwam and are gone long enough that Caucus-Meteor has to replenish his fire. While he's alone Caucus-Meteor attempts to move his mind outside the wigwam so that he can eavesdrop upon his daughter and slave. But he's too healthy right now for such tricks and his efforts fail.

At dawn when they're preparing to leave, Caucus-Meteor asks Nathan what his daughter said to him.

“She held a knife under my chin,” Nathan says. “She said, ‘My father believes that you are incapable of murder. I am not.' “

“What did you say to her?”

“I took her hand, the one not holding the knife, and I held it against my heart. She felt it beating, and stalked away.”

Nathan and Caucus-Meteor leave the winter wigwam in the protected valley in the hills and return to the lake where the wind blows hard and cold. Nathan and Caucus-Meteor live huddled in a hide shelter by an open fire by the lake. It's a miserable and chilling existence, chipping ice with an iron bar, checking tip-ups, crawling into a cold, smoky hut. Nathan lugs Caucus-Meteor and the first shipment of fish ten miles by sled to the village. They take a meal at Black Dirt's wigwam, then with Black Dirt visit Haggis and his huge family and followers in their long house. Haggis, returned triumphant from the fall hunt, is in a good mood; he takes a few moments to pay his respects to Black Dirt. He tells her that though they are adversaries, he has great admiration for her.

“And I admire a man who can hunt and bring food to the cooking pot,” she says, mouthing an old Algonkian saying.

Haggis nods and continues the polite conversation by addressing Caucus-Meteor. “How do you like it by the lake?”

“It is stimulating—I think I would be eternally content if only the winter did not give way to the spring,” lies Caucus-Meteor.

“And the slave, how does he like it?” Haggis asks.

Something about Haggis's tone, taunting and superior and insincere, does something to change Nathan's demeanor. Caucus-Meteor watches carefully. He's less interested in the outcome of the drama about to transpire than in its process.

“My master and I cannot go on like this through the winter,” Nathan says. “After a storm or two, we will freeze in the cold.”

“Like most slaves, he is timid and exaggerates,” says Caucus-Meteor.

“He doesn't sound timid to me. He sounds insolent. I think he wants you to beat him, for the English beat their slaves as well as their children. Beat him so he can feel at home.”

“Give me an axe,” Nathan says softly insistent, looking Haggis in the eye.

“The Englishman speaks our language now, but does he understand what he is saying?” Haggis says with a mocking grin.

“With an axe I can build a proper shelter for Caucus-Meteor and myself,” Nathan says.

Haggis turns to Caucus-Meteor. “Do you want an axe?”

“We have no need of an axe. I am perfectly comfortable.”

“The old man will freeze to death,” Nathan says.

“If we give him an axe, he will kill Caucus-Meteor and escape,” says Kineo.

“My people, your concern for me is flattering and touching,” says Caucus-Meteor. “I am not worthy of it.”

“I could have killed Caucus-Meteor a hundred times over.” Nathan says in a low voice that can only be heard by Haggis and Caucus-Meteor.

“But not with an axe,” says Haggis. “A man without an axe in hand is less likely to be tempted than one with.”

“Let us test it,” Caucus-Meteor whispers.

Haggis rises, goes outside, comes back with an axe. “Here, we will see,” he says, loud now so everyone can hear.

Nathan picks up the axe, holds it up and down with arm extended. His hand is rock steady, though his lips tremble and something like love crosses his face.

“Too bad he can't embrace a musket with the same ardor,” says Haggis to his followers.

Nathan looks over the axe, runs his fingers along the edge. He frowns. Before setting out for the lake, Nathan grinds down the axe and sharpens it. He's watched closely as he works. “By Jove, I'll show these savages what an Englishman can do,” he mutters in English so slurred that only Caucus-Meteor understands. The deposed king laughs. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches sight of Black Dirt watching Nathan grind the axe. Her revulsion for the slave has been replaced by dim curiosity.

Later that day, at the lake, Caucus-Meteor stands with blankets wrapped around him and watches while his slave works. Nathan chops down some black spruce trees growing along the shore. He cuts trees only six inches or less in diameter. “If I had my ox to pull logs, I could cut bigger trees, and you'd have a more spacious structure,” he says.

“It's better you don't make it too good,” Caucus-Meteor says. “A king should not live ostentatiously.”

Nathan builds an eight-foot square log house on the ice. He splits the logs with hardwood gluts, notches the ends with the axe, stacks them. Caucus-Meteor helps by chinking between the logs with moss. On the third day, Black Dirt shows up in a sled pulled by half a dozen dogs. She watches for a while, and without a word leaves by sled. She's back the next day with pieces of iron on the sled and some French blankets and skins for floor covering and a door flap. “Can you use this iron to make a stove?” she says.

“Yes. Can you get me a pipe to vent the smoke?”

“I will try.”

Next day she's back with iron pipe and some firewood.

While Nathan builds, Caucus-Meteor watches through eyes whose vision improves day by day; Black Dirt gathers the lower dead branches of spruce trees to add to the store of dry firewood. The old lake man soon loses interest in the building activity, and turns his attention to more important matters. Another failed attempt at dying. It's obvious that he's not trying hard enough. He's only playing with death, but what's wrong with that? Death plays with a man, so shouldn't a man play with death? Listen, Death, I have the advantage in this wager. I have nothing to lose but my life, which you have already won anyway. I feel sorry for these loved ones, Black Dirt, my dear daughter, and Nathan, whom I have grown to love like a son. They are trying to keep me alive, Black Dirt out of the duty of love and Nathan for reasons mysterious to me and perhaps more mysterious to him.

Nathan makes the shed roof with poles covered with split logs and birch bark. Bowlegged on snowshoes, Norman Feathers arrives with a piece of glass from Quebec. He's returned from church worship, walked many miles over hill, through frozen swamp, with the glass. “Now you will have some light, and I will pray for you,” he says. Norman and Black Dirt leave by dogsled under an ugly, glowering sky. That night a howling blizzard maroons all living creatures in the St. Lawrence valley. Nathan and Caucus-Meteor are warm.

“A stove fire is not a fire a man can eat, but it nourishes nonetheless; I can barely see fire through the cracks in the iron, but the sound is interesting—I will listen,” says Caucus-Meteor. Caucus-Meteor has decided that this winter is proving too interesting for him to make any more attempts at suicide.

The old American and his slave spend the winter on the ice. They chip out holes all over the lake and even inside the cabin itself to catch trout, pike, and yellow perch. Fishing is a twenty-four-hour activity but the work is enjoyable for the Conissadawaga ice fishermen, and they don't have to haul fish to the village. Black Dirt and Norman Feathers spread the word, and once a week a villager or two, usually with a child present, brought along for educational purposes, arrives with a sled and dogs to view the Englishman's log house on the ice and to bring the frozen catch back to the village. And so the season passes. At one time or another every American in the tribe makes the journey to the lake.

The old American reflects on this particular winter experience, time for reflection being the great gift of winter. Never has he been in a position to wield so little power, and never has he been so content. Usually he and Nathan work in silence, and when they aren't working they are also silent, listening to the weather or to their own thoughts. But every once in a while, when they are eating (corn and fish, or beans and fish, or corn and beans, or corn and venison, all of it boiled in a single pot, served in wooden bowls, eaten with spoons carved from birch), and outside a storm rages, making them both feel lonesome and small but also snug and smug (because of all of God's creatures, only they have a fire), they talk. It's not the talk of old, however, for English has given way to Algonkian. Caucus-Meteor notes that Nathan seems to enjoy conversing in the language, musical and direct, in which a notion must be felt as much from the expressiveness of the speaker as the shared understanding of the meaning of words.