The Old American (35 page)

Suddenly, Great Stone Face understands everything. “I see you still carry Nathan's musket,” he says.

“It was meant to kill Frenchmen, was it not?” Wolf Eyes laughs.

“I will leave now; I have decided I do not wish to visit with my former commander. I will not warn him against you.” Great Stone Face makes the old sign of trust.

“So, then, you will not reveal me, and I will not reveal you.

You see, Caucus-Meteor, we are both at heart the devil's children, for we've made a devil's bargain.”

“Not exactly, Wolf Eyes. It would be a great relief to me if you did reveal me. But I will not reveal you, for my loyalty to a citizen of Conissadawaga is greater than my loyalty to my former French commander. If you have a chance, tell him I am sorry before you kill him.”

“If the opportunity presents itself, I will honor your request, for as sure as you are in no part my father you remain in part my king.”

The romance between Norman Feathers and Wytopitlock builds slowly over the summer and along the same time-track as the construction of the house. The coincidence does not go unnoticed by you. Wytopitlock and Norman confide in you. She tells you that she and Norman have long discussions. He tells you how a great calmness of spirit came over him after his conversion to Christianity, but how no amount of prayer could overtake his loneliness until he met Wytopitlock. She tells you how her husband clipped her nose and cast her out of their village after he discovered her unfaithfulness; she tells you about her rage, her fears, her passion, her wanderings, her wish to die, and, finally, of the calmness that came over her when Norman brought her to church. You advise Wytopitlock to press Norman on the issue of marriage, not to entrap him—he is already entrapped—but to guide him. Norman is the kind of man who must constantly be led. In this respect, as it turns out, you are partly right. Wytopitlock guides Norman, as any woman of need does at entry, and Norman proposes marriage. But he goes a step further. He visits you and Nathan Provider-of-Services and tells them that he and Wytopitlock insist that a priest wed them in the sacrament.

“Your love, its peculiar need for sanctification, is an omen,” you say. “It is time that the priests return to this village.”

I am shocked. I had begun to think that with the conjuring gift came some control over events, or at least some blessing from outside powers. Now I understand that conjuring is a mere window pane of wavy glass that admits only the eyes. You, Nathan, and the lovers canoe to Quebec to visit with Norman's confessor, Father “Spike” Morrissette. The priest lives with others of his kind in a huge stone house full of echoes.

“My kinsman and his betrothed wish to marry with the blessing of Jesus Christ,” you say to the priest. “Will you come to our village to perform the ceremony?”

“I am elated at the opportunity to return to Conissadawaga,” says Father Spike. “I hope you will allow me to spread the gospel.”

“Will you tell us about heaven?” you ask.

“I will bring you the word of Christ. Heaven will follow.”

A few days later, Father Spike shows up in the village in response to your invitation. He stays a week, saying mass, reading the gospels, preaching on faith and morals. Everyone turns out for his talks. At first the priest is viewed as a curiosity, but soon his message of salvation through submission to the son of God takes hold. The villagers' thoughts can be summarized by the idea that now that they are no longer nomads but a settled people, they require a settlers' god. Father Spike makes no promises, but he does bless the crops in the name of Christ, and the villagers are impressed by the ceremony. I wonder about you, Black Dirt? Is it a need for faith that led you to call the priests? Or are you like your father, full of ambition and schemes? I think your decision encompasses both, or even something else I cannot conjure. Subsequent events only add adornment to my perplexity in this matter.

You ask Father Spike to arrange a meeting with the chief of the church. That would be the new bishop, says Father Spike, and he speaks the name of my old adversary, the reverend Esubee Goulet. You go alone to visit the bishop. Nathan would be no help since he does not speak the bishop's language, and anyway you wants the bishop to understand that you, not your man, are the village chief. Since you last saw him when he took Caterina away, Bishop Goulet has grown fatter, softer, redder in the face. You are impressed.

He welcomes you to his rectory, bows slightly, leads you to a chair. It's awkward to sit on, but you could get used to the position.

“What is your name, my child?” he says.

It's obvious that Bishop Goulet has forgotten that you've met before. You are aware that your name, Black Dirt, cannot be pronounced in French, and that in translation it is a bit of a puzzle. “I wish to be called Marie,” you say.

“Very good, Marie. And do you have a last name?”

“Meteor,” you say. Your pronunciation in the bishop's tongue doesn't quite take in the bishop's ear, but he adjusts. “Metivier, is that what you said?”

“Oui.”

“I'm pleased to make your acquaintance, Marie Metivier,” the bishop says. “Now what can I do for you?”

“My village has undergone many changes in the lastyear,” you say, your first utterance as Marie Metivier. “I believe we are ready for a priest. Our people wish to be baptized so they can receive Christ.”

“It's not so simple,” says the bishop. “Children, those holy innocents, may be baptized, but adults must be instructed before they are allowed to take the Eucharist.”

“We are not stupid, Bishop Goulet. We will learn the instruction.”

“I am sure you will.” The bishop pauses. “Something about your voice now seems familiar to me.”

“I am the daughter of …” You pause. Among our people, it was forbidden to speak the name of the dead. But I did not follow the custom, and you yourself spoke the names of your dead mother, husband, and children. But with the name of your father you find yourself under the sway of ancient gods. You bow.

“Yes, of course, I remember now,” says the priest. “You are Caucus-Meteor's daughter.”

“He was my father and king.”

“Your sister is in the convent.”

“What covenant?” you say, misunderstanding.

“What convenience, yes,” he says, equally puzzled. When it's clear to both that you've lost yourselves in words, you drop the subject. “I heard that your father passed away,” says the priest. “I am only sorry that he could not take the sacraments, but I am sure that God has a plan for him.”

“I am sure.”

“Marie Metivier, I must tell you that my last meeting with Caucus-Meteor was quite disappointing.”

“Yes, he too was disappointed.”

It occurs to me now, daughter, that through the sorcery of religion, nation, language, luck, and malice, Father Goulet has managed to name both of my children. I admire him very much.

“Enough of these old wars,” says the old priest. “I've been to your village of Conissadawaga. If we are to send a priest, it must have a church with a stove. If I remember correctly, your village is abandoned in the winter; your people live the old northern Algonkian life of the nomad; you are hunters and fishers.”

“I am here to tell you that today we are farmers. We live in our village year-round. We have farm animals. We have built a house, not a wigwam, a true house. It is almost complete.” You are no longer thinking of yourself as Black Dirt, but as Marie Metivier; you pause, then add, “We can use the house for worship until we build a proper church, bishop, for we know now what it takes to build.”

“All right then. I will assign Father Morrissette to visit your people to instruct and serve them.”

“It costs much to build a house, a church, a village. We cannot afford to pay tribute to Jesus and to the intendant.”

Up until now, Bishop Goulet thought Marie Metivier was an ignorant savage to whom he was ministering for the purposes of his church, his nation, and of course her salvation. Now he realizes she's been ministering to him. There's a long pause while the bishop mulls over this matter, prays silently, and finally says, “How much in tribute does the intendant extort from you?”

Marie Metivier tells him. They strike a bargain, souls in exchange for church influence in the palace. At the conclusion of the meeting, you ask the bishop for his blessing.

I'm thinking that God's wonders in expanding the meaning of that word “blessing” are quite extraordinary.

“Kneel, daughter of Christ,” Father Goulet says, rising. You kneel before him and bow your head. And so now I have lost my second daughter to Jesus. I admire the Son of God very much.

Minutes later, agreement ratified by the blessing, intendant taken care of, Conissadawaga committed to Catholicism, leaders parting in mutual respect and suspicion, Marie Metivier on her way out asks, “I've always wondered, Bishop, what's the difference between the French Jesus and the English Jesus?”

The bishop is startled. That moment of doubt within him is my only satisfaction. He's thinking that even here in Canada the savages are somehow exposed to dangerous ideas, or perhaps—and this strikes him as an unexpected blow—the savages are the source of the dangerous ideas. “The difference,” he says, “is antiquity.”

When Great Stone Face learns that his conjuring was correct—the priests have returned to Conissadawaga at his daughter's request—he senses another of those great turns in the scheming roll of the imperfect circle of things. He used to think the world's muddled landscape was made of the footprints of animals, but now he understands that it consists of wheel ruts; the gods of old or the three-persons-in-one god of the Catholics, or the Protestant god whose entertainment is to listen to prayers of individuals, whichever of the gods is in control these days, wish for us to live by the wheel. Conissadawaga, as conceived by Keeps-the-Flame and himself, is falling into the abyss of memory. When he believed that Haggis would take over his village, he was jealous, as a man is jealous to keep his woman or his best beads or his weapon, but he did not feel pained by his rival, for he and Haggis agreed over the important matters. They both looked back in time for inspiration; they both believed that to be a savage was to be a nomad, for it is only the man who wanders as part of his way of life who is forever at home. Haggis, like himself, was merely ambitious for power and preservation. If only they could have worked together! Now this: his precious daughter was destroying everything that her parents had wrought. This understanding, this vision of impending destruction, thinks Great Stone Face, is the true nature of my pain. I am very grateful. Surely this feeling is what the priests call penance for sins. Maybe in spite of myself I am bound for Christian heaven. I hope not, for it is all clouds and worshipping, hardly an environment for a curious king.

You and the other villagers are so busy with building and farming and, of late, praying that you hardly have time to notice how quickly and profoundly you are changing. No more nightly celebrations around a fire. Our people spend more time with loved ones inside the wigwam, where they discuss such matters as the cramped and dark quarters they live in and how nice it would be to have their own house, one with glass windows. Festivities are reduced to one or two nights a week, Friday and Saturday. Nubanusit and Pisgah leave the village in search of more gatherings for drinking. I look for them in Quebec, but I think they have gone south to Montreal, and will never be heard from again. Sundays everybody goes to church, the service held by Father Spike outside if the weather is good and in the house if it is poor.

The house now has a roof and floor, though no doors or windows. Only two windows will have glass panes. The others will be shuttered so they can be thrown open to let in light or closed to keep out cold, wind, rain. Trade missions this year are strictly local, for the tribe can obtain just about everything it needs in nearby Quebec. The women confirm what they had always suspected, that the trade missions were mainly an excuse for the men to travel and have adventures. The men miss the trade missions, which exposed them to goods and ideas far and wide and gave them a sense of importance. As a group, the men are thinking that though they work these days with their women in the fields, though they have given up summer trade and travel, though they confess their sins, no woman, priest, or God almighty is going to stop them from going hunting in the fall. Men are funnier than women in their vices.

The women also see a disadvantage to their new social cycle. They have more control over their immediate families, a safer environment for their children, but less control over the tribe as a whole. Men are taking over the farming and building operations of the tribe. In the old days, women set up the wigwams; now men are building the house that will replace the campfire circle. Some of the men are talking about more construction projects—houses, a church, a shed to store moccasins.

You see, my darling daughter, how it is with a ruler. All is excitable refinement refuted by loneliness.

It isn't until the first snow that Norman Feathers canoes to Quebec. The ice will lock the river in a few weeks, but now it's navigable. It's only when he speaks of his own bliss that Norman's powers of observation grow foggy, but by close questioning Great Stone Face is confident he has the entire story by the time Norman Feathers leaves.

Wytopitlock is baptized and takes the name of Anne. The wedding of Norman Feathers and Anne of Conissadawaga is the first public event held in the new house. A celebration follows, both for the house and for the married couple, what Nathan Provider-of-Services calls a house-warning or warming, hard to tell from Norman's description. Norman says that something, something better than oratory, told him he was in the presence of a greater power. Something better than oratory! How easily people throw around language today; Bleached Bones, you did right to die when you did. But Great Stone Face conceals his bitterness. Nothing is left of the old ways of Caucus-Meteor. He should have died with Bleached Bones.