The Old American (3 page)

Caucus-Meteor takes the blindfold off his captive. Nathan is coming out of the shock of capture, and Caucus-Meteor decides to address him to see how he behaves.

“Can you swim?” he says, knowing that the water, icy cold from snow melt, would kill a man before he could cross.

“If a savage can ford this stream, an Englishman can,” he says.

Does the Englishman really think that we are going to plunge into the waters? wonders Caucus-Meteor. Is he confused, stupid, or merely inexperienced in the ways of native humor? He attempted some humor himself back when he was captured. But that was only nervousness and bluster in the face of personal disaster. Perhaps he will be funnier and wiser when he is nervous again. When the local Abenaki fellows arrive with the canoes, the old American searches the captive's face for a reaction. But the Englishman conceals all emotion. He is cleverer than Caucus-Meteor had thought. Already his captive is probably thinking about escape, perhaps even laying a plan. I admire him very much, thinks the old American.

The brown water of the river is high, moving with the treachery of malicious whispers. Two canoe men ferry the raiders to the other side. It's flat above the river banks, good soil. The troop makes camp in the woods just off the flats in the cover of the forest. From this vantage point, they can see the open areas along the river where distressed cornstalks from the last growing season stand like weary sentries. The corn was planted by the wandering and secretive Abenaki. The old man gives Nathan some pemmican. Later St. Blein arrives, talking to Caucus-Meteor in French. Then the old American says to Nathan in English, “Come. Follow.” And then a dangerous idea sends a shiver of excitement through him. He pulls the blindfold off. “If you should happen to escape,” Caucus-Meteor says, “I wouldn't want you to get lost going home.”

Another French commander might be appalled at the action of the native, but St. Blein is only amused; Caucus-Meteor thinks: the pleasure of amusing one's superiors is a remnant of my slave days.

He leads Nathan to a huge sugar maple tree with rot oozing from its crotches, the bark twisted and colorful. “You are a farmer, are you not? And a woodsman?” Caucus-Meteor strikes a formal tone.

“Aye,” says Nathan.

“What will happen if I hit this tree with that fallen branch?” asks Caucus-Meteor.

St. Blein looks on, a sardonic smile on his pretty face. Nathan is confused. Perhaps he suspects he's being made sport of. But he answers the question. “Likely, it will ring hollow,” Nathan says.

“And why is that?”

“Because the maple dies from the inside. In old age, the core is likely to be rotted out. Eventually, the weight of the tree will bring it down for the weakness of its empty chamber.”

“Let us test it.” The old man unties Nathan from the stake at his back, and points to the fallen branch. Nathan's arms are so stiff he can barely pick up the branch, but finally he gathers the strength to swing it against the maple.

“It makes drum music,” says Caucus-Meteor. “You know your trees—is there a god in the tree?”

The Englishman ponders the question, apparently trying to devise a cunning answer. Finally, he says, “The Lord God is everywhere, so in the tree, too, I imagine.”

“Surely, you must be right, for I can see that you are a man unused to falsehood. Know this as your god knows it: I am Caucus-Meteor, and by force of arms I am your master. Now repeat for me your name, and your position within your community.”

“I am Nathan Blake, one of sixty proprietors of the town of Upper Ashuelot that you burned.”

“Your town by birthright? Or perhaps by the grace of your god?”

“By English law. I was born and bred in Wrentham, Massachusetts.”

“What a coincidence. I was born in the same area, Mount Hope.”

“The home of the rebellion during King Philip's War,” Nathan says.

“That is correct. I was a boy during the war. Do the local English folks still talk about Metacomet, the leader they called King Philip?”

“They still tell how the head of King Philip was placed on a stake outside Plymouth town and how the preacher, Cotton Mather, ripped off the jaw to silence the king forever.”

“What do they say happened to the head?”

“They say after twenty years the devil came and got the head and brought it down to hell.”

“If it be so, King Philip has a place to call home, which is more than can be said for his people.”

Unsure how to respond, the Englishman bows.

“Your captive is somewhat naive, but he is no fool,” says St. Blein in French.

Caucus-Meteor now shifts his accented English to sound like the fine-wigged nobles from old England: “Nathan Blake, this man is Ensign St. Blein. He and I will ask you some questions. Let them not ring hollow like the tree, lest you topple from the weakness of your own answers. Understand, Englishman?”

“Aye,” says Nathan.

Caucus-Meteor makes Nathan drop to his knees and ties his hands behind him. “Now you can properly pray to your god,” says Caucus-Meteor. He builds a small fire only a few feet from Nathan's loins, shoves a stick in the ground behind Nathan, and leans the stick against his spine so that he has to strain to keep from toppling into the fire. Caucus-Meteor kneels opposite his captive, the fire between them. St. Blein sits on a log a few feet away, hands folded, face assuming the meditative aspect of an interested observer.

“I wish to begin by asking my captive a series of benign questions,” says Caucus-Meteor in French to St. Blein.

“Seems like a waste of time. Fear is the only emotion necessary to instill,” says St. Blein.

“Information obtained through fear is unreliable and debases the inquisitor.”

“Then why the fire?” asks St. Blein.

“For warmth.” What Caucus-Meteor doesn't say is that he believes that the process of inquiry debases both parties on any account, for it subverts the ancient religious rites surrounding the torture of captives, but he keeps this point to himself.

The old American stirs the fire with a stick, and says to Nathan, “I note that a glass window graced your cabin.”

“I have no cabin—you burned it.”

St. Blein, who understands English and speaks a little of it, interrupts, and says impatiently in English. “You have no cabin, but you have your life. You will please us with your cooperation.”

“I brought that glass all the way from Boston. It replaced oiled parchment,” Nathan says.

“Why?” says Caucus-Meteor.

“Why, for light. My wife and I met at a New Light meeting, and she is sorely afraid of the dark.”

“I watched you through your glass, Nathan Blake. It told me that your wife was full of sorrows. Is that the real reason you left the fort: to escape a difficult family situation?”

“Whatever my motives, I had no wish to be captured by a savage.”

“And yet you did risk life and limb.”

Nathan starts to speak and then goes silent, his eyes distant and his jaw tight with a private pain.

“You are thinking about your wife—her sorrow,” says Caucus-Meteor.

Nathan says nothing, avoids the eyes of his interrogator.

“I doubt it was sorrow; the man's wife was probably afraid of an attack. Why dwell on this unimportant matter?” says St. Blein in French.

“Because it interests me, good ensign,” Caucus-Meteor says, then he asks Nathan in English if his wife's distress was provoked by fear of an impending attack.

“Nay. My wife was grieving the loss of our son, our eldest child, who died of the distemper in the fall of the last year.”

“And you?”

“Myself?”

“He doesn't understand,” Caucus-Meteor says to St. Blein in French.

“But I do understand. Can we proceed with the interrogation? I want to know where the Massachusetts militia is. Our safety may depend on his answers.”

“I doubt it, Ensign. He's my captive, and I'll handle him in my own way.” Caucus-Meteor switches to English. “I am curious, Nathan Blake. Why does an Englishman abandon his family and risk his life to free animals from a barn, since he must know that most will be slaughtered anyway?”

Nathan Blake remains silent.

“What does an Englishman do for comfort when his wife is sorely lost in sorrows and he himself grieves the loss of his son, and yet cannot speak of it?”

Caucus-Meteor grabs a stick from the fire, and holds the burning end inches away from Nathan's eyes. He brings it closer and closer until perspiration pours from Nathan's brow. His mouth gapes open. He's a man suppressing a scream, not from pain, for the heat has not touched his flesh, but from fear. And now he does cry out—a terrible gasp—and from neither pain nor fear, but from bearing witness to the uncanny, for the burn end does touch flesh, though not Nathan's. Caucus-Meteor suddenly pulled the stick away, and burned his own arm. Nathan's cry is followed by a soft moan from Caucus-Meteor, and a softer curse from the French commander.

“Your idea of mirth astonishes me,” says Ensign St. Blein.

“Surprise always gains over repetition,” says Caucus-Meteor to the Frenchman, as if he knew exactly what he was doing. In fact, he burned himself out of an impulse that he realizes now was ignited by his own grief. The pain will alleviate his weariness, he knows. He turns his attention to Nathan. “Speak now, Nathan Blake—speak.”

“You wish me to speak of my comfort?” Nathan says in a whisper. His voice is under control, but sweat runs down his forehead into his eyes, and his flesh trembles.

Caucus-Meteor answers in Nathan's own accent, “Aye, of your comfort.”

“For comfort I pray.”

“I asked what you think. Prayer is not thinking. Every man thinks of something to give him comfort. I wish to know what you think. When you came out of your cabin, upset by your wife, you paused before going into your barn. You had a look on your face of a man searching for … something; I cannot say what it was, but it was not comfort. What were you thinking?”

Nathan says nothing.

“Speak or I will burn you.”

St. Blein says in French, “You burn yourself, now you threaten to burn a captive over trivialities?”

“My curiosity is not trivial, Ensign,” Caucus-Meteor answers in French, and then addresses Nathan in his language. “Speak—speak.”

“I was thinking about my oxen, Reliant and Intrepid, their warm breath, their mild nature, their unconcern over such matters as mortality, territory, and pride.”

“By the look on your face, you were thinking something else.”

Nathan blushes, like a boy caught in a lie. He hates falsehood, especially in himself, thinks Caucus-Meteor.

“I was thinking of my oxen; then my thoughts turned to … a far place,” Nathan says, and his tone is so serious, so dark that even St. Blein cannot find amusement in the utterance.

“Where is this ‘far place'?” asks Caucus-Meteor.

“West of here, I cannot say exactly. Only that it is far, and I think of it often.”

“So it is a place of your thinking, and not of the world.”

“Of my thinking it is, but also of the world, for I believe that if I think it so, it must be, else my desire means nothing.”

“Such thinking surely goes contrary to your prayers.”

Nathan now cries out as if burned, though the old American has not touched him. For the first time since his capture, Nathan Blake appears on the verge of breaking down. “I have no answers on these questions of desires and prayer.”

Caucus-Meteor turns to St. Blein, and says in French the opposite of what he believes. “This man is a simple farmer.”

“That may be, though I fail to see the relevance. Let us turn now to questions regarding military matters.”

“We will do better when we question the naval officer.”

“I think you are protecting your captive, Caucus-Meteor,” says St. Blein, but there is no venom in his accusation, no justifiable outrage, not even exasperation. The ensign is a good soldier—why is he so accommodating? Caucus-Meteor concludes that his commander has something besides warring on his mind these days. What can it be?

After more questioning, it becomes obvious to soldier and savage that Nathan Blake is a farmer with no information of any immediate use to the force. Caucus-Meteor is pleased with his captive, for he remains an interesting puzzle.

“Watch my prisoner, please. I wish to tend to my burn,” says Caucus-Meteor to St. Blein, and then goes into the woods. He has no interest in medicating his wound, for it is not serious.

What he really wants to do is feel cool air on his bare head, but in private so others do not see his bald pate. Out of sight of the other men, he removes his turban.

Around nightfall, another raiding party from the south joins up with St. Blein's men. They have a third captive. Through questioning of Nathan, Caucus-Meteor learns the new prisoner is Samuel Allen, a youth of eighteen, and a nephew of Nathan's friend John Hawks. Nathan is also acquainted with the naval officer. The big man is known to Nathan only as Captain Warren. “He marked my pines,” Nathan says with some bitterness. Caucus-Meteor doesn't understand what Nathan means, but he decides to let the mystery sit for a while.

That night the men make fires for feasting and fellowship. Someone has looted rum during the raids, and the men sing and drink and dance and celebrate their victory. Caucus-Meteor releases Nathan's hands, but hobbles him with ropes tied around his ankles. He can walk well enough to pick up dead branches from the woods and hemlock boughs for bedding, but he can't run away. Caucus-Meteor follows him around, pointing the musket at him, saying nothing.

After the beds are made, Caucus-Meteor orders Nathan to lie on some boughs on his back, and ties his wrists and ankles to maple saplings at the base. “There,” he says, “I've arranged you like Jesus on his cross so that you can comfort yourself with the idea of martyrdom.”