The Old American (31 page)

“You wish to go back to your New England home?” you say to him.

After a long pause, Nathan says, “I have not known what in my heart I wish for since my capture. And today I am afraid.”

“You were not afraid to wrestle, you were not afraid to run, you were not afraid to hunt; even when your life was threatened you were not mastered by fear. You are the man who walked the gauntlet. What could Nathan Provider-of-Services be afraid of?”

“Forgive me. I cannot speak of it.”

I know what he is a afraid of and cannot speak of—contempt. Many captives who return with habits and conditions of the savage are mocked by New Englanders. He is afraid he would be first pitied, then scorned. Look how Nathan walks, pigeon-toed, like a damn savage. See how he fawns over his beard and eyebrows … His love of liberty does not bode well for either his soul or the peace and tranquility of this town … Note his pagan appreciation of those pines the king stole from him. See how he makes speeches now, instead of common talk, a pagan preacher Nathan Blake has become … Perhaps he'll take up residence with Mark Ferry the Hermit, and the two can comb each other's hair. Laughter … Pity his wife, her first-born taken from her, now this … You see how it is with Nathan? You see his fear? And what of the fear that even he will not acknowledge? His lust for the paradise lots?

Later that night you hear Nathan awaken, rise up from his sleeping mat, and kneel to pray to his god in English. “Oh, Lord, what do you want from me now? What work, Lord? What work?”

During one of your long talks in the wigwam, you say to Nathan, “You are troubled, husband.” Something about your voice, an intimacy, touches him. You hadn't expected to speak so, and did not feel it until you heard yourself voice the words. You still haven't slept together as man and wife, and he's never given himself over to your marriage. But with your insight into his state of mind, your casual reference to him as husband, Nathan responds as one who is wed. “Dear woman, I pray to my God every day. I know he has sent me to Canada to perform certain tasks. I pray, dear woman, I pray that I can accomplish His work whatever it may be.” It isn't the words that move you; it is the depth of feeling in my godson. For the first time since the plague that took your family away, you feel something inside that only a woman can feel.

Later you'll think about your mother teaching you to make moccasins. The moccasin maker cuts pieces of smoked skins into odd shapes. Laid out in front of her, the shapes suggest nothing of their fate. Your mother taught you how to join the pieces. The life of this village is in such pieces. What do these pieces make? How to stitch them? Where is the one who will teach you now?

The harvest festival brings all your people together. Americans from both bands dance around the fire, gorge themselves, drink, sing, make speeches. You will never be comfortable in this festive atmosphere, but you join them in their celebration because you must. Haggis's people talk about their plans for the fall hunt, the remove to the winter village, and of course their exodus to the north in the spring. Your village Americans have little to say; they are unsure how to talk about a life they have not yet lived. Nervous laughter is the best they can do by way of good cheer.

Haggis taunts them. “The Conissadawaga villagers grow meeker and milder. Soon they will be begging the priests for baptism to save their delicate souls.”

A retort is called for, but none of the villagers can find oratory within themselves to step into the circle. If you don't do something to show strength, most of the villagers will choose to join Haggis; our own band will just drift away. Conissadawaga will be little more than the tragic Frenchman's stone foundation, a mark on the landscape, no people. You step into the circle, uncertain what you will say; you pray to the spirits of your mother and father for some of their authority and oratorical skills. Perhaps we can breathe our wisdom into you as you speak, so that your every word will be a surprise, even to you. And so you begin:

“I am sure that those of you who followed Haggis and his wives, as one caribou follows another over the edge of the cliff, I am sure you will find happiness in your northern wilderness, and I wish you well. We who have chosen to remain in the village founded by Keeps-the-Flame and Caucus-Meteor are also about to embark on a journey. My husband, Nathan Provider-of-Services, has been telling me about the life of the village farmer. This farmer, he builds a house, not just a wigwam, a house that rests on a foundation and stays there long after a man and a woman part from this earth. Nathan Provider-of-Services, I ask on behalf of our people that you build us a house like the English build.”

Another long pause while the villagers contemplate Black Dirt's words. They don't know what your idea means, but they understand that it is important to their future. No one is sure what is next.

Nathan Provider-of-Services steps into the circle.

“Black Dirt is an able leader,” he says “Except perhaps in a footrace, I am no leader. No place but the far place of my imaginings has ever satisfied me. I am a passable farmer. The best part of me is a builder. I built the first log cabin in an English border town; I built the first ice-fishing shack on the Conissadawaga lake; now, by the grace of God and your help, I will build the first timber-frame house on these grounds.”

Nathan might have added an amen, but none is necessary. A spontaneous cheer rises up from the villagers.

Next morning bright and early Nathan calls a meeting of his Americans. For the first time they look at him, not contemptuously as a slave, nor admiringly as a trade fair runner, nor disapprovingly as a reluctant leader, but as a chief, and for the first time he presents himself as one worthy of the position.

“I have been awake most of the night laying plans, discussing them with Black Dirt,” he says. “Now you—you—will put them into action. This project will take the better part of a year. You must be involved. You must pay attention. You must watch what I do and remember well, for when I am gone your teacher will be your memory.” That night Nathan tells you that he repeated almost word for word a speech his father made to him when he was a boy.

And so the work ticks through time, as all work does starting with words, schemes, announcements, promises, resolutions, arrangements between individuals. Your villagers will place the structure at the site abandoned by the French family. You will re-lay and true the stones in the foundation, work that must be done before the ground freezes. Nathan picks two crews for the winter, one to fell the trees and one to make beams and boards.

“How will we move the logs?” asks Contoocook, one of the head women.

Later, in Quebec, Norman Feathers tells Great Stone Face in his quarters in the palace, “When Contoocook asked that question, I was the one who answered—I could not help but answer, my king; I said, ‘We will move the logs with a team of oxen.' And Nathan Provider-of-Services said, ‘Norman is correct. We will need oxen or horses to move the logs. These animals will be part of your test as townsfolk, for with farm beasts you can be nomads no more.'”

Great Stone Face feels some of the life-force drain from his vitals. He thought he'd been so clever to arrange for the marriage of Black Dirt, but as usual the God of Surprises had stepped in. His own daughter was transforming the village of nomads that he had worked so hard with her mother to construct into a village of farmers.

“What else, Norman?” he asks, concealing his anguish.

“We followed Nathan to the house site, to the pit saw site, to the forest to mark the trees. At the foundation, Nathan paced off the perimeter. He explained that the house will have a parlor, a front hall, a dining room, a kitchen, four bedrooms in the upper story, a woodshed, and a porch. His original plan called for a central chimney brick fireplace, but there is no clay in this region to make bricks. In place of brick will be a chimney made from the iron mountain near the three rivers.”

“What do you mean the ‘original plan?'” asks Great Stone Face.

“I do not know, except that he said he'd been thinking about this house for a long time. He said it was an omen.”

Great Stone face nods. “He built the house in his imagination. Now he will build it in fact. Norman, here's what I want you to do. You will leave your employment in the stables. Tell the stable master that you have village business to attend to. You will offer to help Nathan Provider-of-Services with whatever assistance he needs. You will also inform him that you wish to return every Sunday to Quebec so you can attend Catholic mass.”

“Which is the truth.”

“Of course it is, and another truth is that you will visit me every Sunday and keep me informed of news in the village so I can be in a position to offer useful advice, and to conjure on these important matters.”

Dear daughter, you and Nathan spend long hours in the wigwam discussing the building plans. “After my rash talk,” Nathan says, “I find that we have the right piece of property for this enterprise, the materials on hand, and willing laborers. But I lack tools, Black Dirt. I cannot build this house without tools.”

“I have the one indispensable tool,” you say. You reach for the deerskin satchel. Inside is Caucus-Meteor's money. You show it to Nathan. “Will it buy the tools and the animals?”

“I think so, but I don't know if you'll have enough remaining for the intendant's tribute in the spring.”

“Perhaps he will be merciful,” you say.

“Merciful?” Nathan arches a plucked eyebrow.

“All right. Reasonable.”

It's a desperate moment, for no solution seems possible.

“We have a saying in my nation,” Nathan says. “Don't cross a bridge until you reach the stoop.”

“Not a good saying in Conissadawaga land which has neither stoops nor bridges,” you say.

“I will go to Quebec with Norman Feathers,” Nathan says, “for he knows the city as well anyone in this village, and I will buy tools and beasts of burden.”

Nathan and Norman Feathers canoe to Quebec, and later Norman tells his king the story.

This quest for tools turned into quite a comic situation. Here you have a white man dressed like an American who is a shrewd judge of hardware trying to haggle in Algonkian and English with another white man, who speaks only French. Then you have the ignorant savage—that is, ignorant in the ways of the housewright—but who speaks both languages of the white men. In the end, the three-way trade ceremony succeeds not because of the fluency of the speakers, but because of the money, so I supposed, dear daughter, that you were right all along about the future—it is about money.

“From my work in the palace stables,” Norman says in the earnest and humorless way that so delights his king, “I was familiar with farm implements found in barns, and I'd used axes, as well as draw knives for shaping ash for canoes and buck saws for firewood, but tools for house building were strange and marvelous to me. I watched Nathan as he picked over tools with names like froe, broad axe, foot adze, pit saw, cross-cut saw, back saw, panel saw, keyhole saw, various files for sharpening same, chalk line and reel, brad awl, bow drill, auger, brace with bit, gimlet, twybil, twivel, chisel, scorp, spokeshave, plane, marking gauge, mortising gauge, cutting gauge, hammer, and nail.”

Something like a musical note chimes in the memory of Great Stone Face. He's heard all these words before. Nathan spoke them in his sleep. Great Stone Face wishes now he was twenty-five again. He would like to heft those tools, not because he wants to build anything with them but because he wants to feel and smell the things behind the wonderful words if only to make the words better in contemplation.

“You can use all these devices?” he asks.

“No, but I have touched them,” Norman Feathers says.

“I admire you very much, Norman. How did your trade for animals go?”

“Easier. Nathan, like myself, is an admirer of domesticated beasts.”

“No wonder he is comfortable with you. Other American men know so much about their world that Nathan can never quite measure up in discussions. They make him feel petulant. But, Norman, you share in his own fascination with farm beasts, and I imagine your presence gave Nathan the opportunity to test his oratory in large-animal husbandry. I will venture that he went on and on about raising, feeding, grooming, and nurturing oxen.”

“That he did.”

“I'm sure he told you that the beast of burden will never turn on a master he thinks of as his mother, thus kindness and tenderness will produce more work than the prod. And you hung on every word, and he was pleased. An excellent basis for a temporary friendship.”

“But you will always be my king, Caucus-Meteor,” says Norman.

Even someone as thick as Norman hears the jealousy in his king's voice. The gods are laughing at him now.

“Please refer to me as Great Stone Face. Caucus-Meteor now resides in that region between dreams and waking, between this world and the unknown circle where the souls of the dead speak. Continue with your observations.”

“We made the rounds of local stables, which tried to sell us sick or old animals. Nobody wanted to part with good oxen except for exorbitant prices, and they all wanted to sell the cart with the beasts. Since there is no road to Conissadawaga, there is no way to bring a cart except by expensive French bateaux. Nathan complained that a country that depends on rivers for highways can fend for itself in only a limited way. ‘A country needs roads, good roads,' he said. We had to walk half a day outside the city gates, where a Frenchman with a cough that seemed on the verge of killing him agreed to sell us two young, untrained oxen. I conducted the trade, and Nathan acted merely as an advisor.”

Great Stone Face thinks it must have been a painful moment for Nathan Provider-of-Services to watch a savage carry on the intricacies of trade relating to his English husbandry.