The Old American (4 page)

Caucus-Meteor and St. Blein interrogate the other prisoners. Each is tied to a tree. One of Furrowed Brow's cousins brings some fire from the main fire, and lays it at the feet of the captives. The interrogators rate Samuel Allen as a frightened youth; he has wild red hair and a kind of hysterical curiosity in his eyes. Captain Warren remains more interesting to Caucus-Meteor and St. Blein. Warren is big, powerfully built; he raises his head at the sight of the interrogators.

“Captain Warren,” asks St. Blein in French, “what is a naval officer doing so many miles away from a navigable water body?”

Warren blinks with the terrors of confusion.

Caucus-Meteor translates the question into English. “You understand English, Englishman? You are, perhaps, a pirate?”

“I am an officer in His Majesty's navy, and thus a valued personage,” Warren says. “I will remain silent.”

St. Blein ambles off, turns his back on the proceedings, folds his arms. Caucus-Meteor picks up a burning stick and touches it just for a moment to the ear of Warren. He screams, first in pain, then in fear. The old American feels the hurt of his own wound. “Captain Warren, how long do you think you could stand this burning stick under your armpit before you answered the question in some fashion?”

Warren speaks all in a breath, “I am not a commissioned officer in the navy. Captain is an honorary title.”

“Which you have bestowed upon yourself,” Caucus-Meteor says.

“That's correct.”

“And you are not a son of Old England but of New England.”

Captain Warren nods in the affirmative.

St. Blein returns, takes the stick from Caucus-Meteor, and tosses it into the fire. Caucus-Meteor says to Warren, “Now please answer the good ensign's question. What is a navy man doing so far from the sea?”

“I am a timber surveyor hired by His Majesty's navy to scout pine trees to be used as ship masts.”

“Did you mark trees belonging to a proprietor of a border town east of here, a man named Nathan Blake?” asks Caucus-Meteor.

“I do not recollect all the names.”

“Thank you, Captain Warren,” says Caucus-Meteor. “With your cooperation, I will personally see to it that no harm comes to you.”

“You have a generous heart,” says St. Blein sarcastically.

Caucus-Meteor smiles a little, and then both men laugh. The laugh does more to terrorize Captain Warren than the questioning, for he begins to perspire heavily and his bowels loosen.

“Take him down to the river and clean him,” says St. Blein to the guards.

Upon return, Warren answers all of St. Blein's questions. He tells everything he knows about numbers of troops, location of barracks, kinds of weapons, and plans for future campaigns. The most important information the raiders learn is that no Colonial force is near enough to offer pursuit.

In concluding his inquiry, Caucus-Meteor asks, “By what device does the English heart remain so hard?”

“By the device of cannon and musket,” says Warren.

“He doesn't know what you mean,” says St. Blein in Algonkian.

“I know. He has little capacity for understanding, this man. I just wanted to see what he said.”

“I will tell you that there is more than musket and cannon,” says St. Blein in French. “There is the device of dividing the tribes by the wedge of their ancient animosities; there is the device of the promises of convenience.”

“Which is followed by the breaking of such promises,” says Caucus-Meteor. “And the spreading of disease, and the rum, and the terror, and the killing of women and children while avoiding warriors. These were the devices that the English employed to destroy my parents and their people. But all these devices we Americans have used to undo one another.” Caucus-Meteor switches to English and addresses Captain Warren. “The most important device of the English and, yes, the French, is your Christian god, who allows all things convenient in his name. With such a god, even a savage such as I could be king.”

Caucus-Meteor notes the expression on Warren's face, which tells him that though he speaks in the captive's tongue, his words are lost on him.

“Fall on your knees, then, old man,” says St. Blein in French. It's the dark humor between the Frenchman and the American, and their laugh makes the captive tremble, for he understands less and less.

Afterward, St. Blein talks to Furrowed Brow. “The Mohawks now have two captives. What do you plan to do with them?”

“The fellow who captured young Allen owed me a debt, so they are both mine now; I am reserving judgment until after we see how they perform in the gauntlet.”

“I think the governor-general would pay a good price for Captain Warren, for we could exchange him for more than one of our own,” says St. Blein.

“I do not know if I want to sell him. He looks strong; he might make an acceptable Mohawk for adoption,” says Furrowed Brow.

With that speculation, Furrowed Brow loses the respect of Caucus-Meteor, for the old interpreter is convinced that, despite his superior physique, Captain Warren is mediocre as a man.

Later, St. Blein visits Caucus-Meteor at his campsite, and sits with him by the old man's personal fire. They converse in French. Nearby, Nathan sits, bound with his own bootlaces. Caucus-Meteor likes to tie the captive in different positions, to keep his blood circulating and to keep himself entertained.

“You know, Caucus-Meteor,” St. Blein says, “in man-to-man combat I'd wager on an American any day over a Frenchman or an Englishman, but as soldiers you're impossible. You don't follow orders. You'd rather groom yourselves than keep your equipment in order. You desert nation for self.”

“I have seen the ensign groom his mustache and patch.” Caucus-Meteor touches himself under his lower lip.

“True, but I groom myself
and
keep my equipment in order, and I plan, and I fight for Canada. But the savage puts his person ahead of state, church, even family.”

“Count your blessings, St. Blein,” Caucus-Meteor says. “If the American could be ruled from on high like the Frenchman, we'd kick your ass out of Canada.”

“Yes, I've thought of that, old king. But if the American and the French-Canadian could truly be brothers in the heart”—he thumps his chest with his fist—“instead of just allies of opportunity, we could take this continent for our own, make it one country, free ourselves from all European influence.”

“You mean French and Americans without France?”

“That's correct, my friend; that is my vision.”

“A very ambitious idea that could get you stretched on that Old France torture machine in Montreal,” Caucus-Meteor says.

“Yes, the rack—it frightens me not. I used to keep my ideas to myself, but now I don't care any more because I'm likely to be killed anyway, either in combat or through betrayal. So I've resolved to speak with an honest voice.”

“Are you disturbed by thoughts of death?” Caucus-Meteor asks, and now he is thinking of his own death. Surely, it must lurk close by. He remembers the words of his captive, “a far place …west of here.”

“On the contrary, thoughts of death relax me,” the French ensign speaks with the confidence of a young man unable to contemplate his own mortality. “Dead, I won't have to carry on my father's despicable business. Dead, I won't have to wrestle with my confessor, who questions my ideals. The only fear I have remaining is death not by violence, but by disease or starvation or exposure alone in English territory.”

“With no priest to give you absolution.”

“You are being sarcastic again, Caucus-Meteor. It's the reason I befriend you.”

“How would you feel about being shot and scalped by an English bounty hunter?”

“It pleases my vanity to imagine a lock of my hair hanging in a Boston government office.”

After that there's a long silence until St. Blein says, “You seem a little frail for the rigors of war, old interpreter, and a little too philosophical for the enterprise.”

“You thought I came out of retirement because I like war so much.”

“I'm afraid I didn't think anything. We needed an interpreter, and when Adiwando wasn't available we were happy that his mentor and father-in-law agreed to accompany us. Nor did I think my interpreter, during the inquiry of a prisoner, would burn himself.”

“I had private reasons for involving myself in this campaign. I thought going to war would take my mind off my grief. The throat distemper took thirty members of my village, including my son-in-law, two of my grandchildren, and my dear wife, Keeps-the-Flame. All that remains of my immediate family are my two daughters, my youngest, Caterina, and Adiwando's widow, Black Dirt. It was the grief of my daughters that drove me away. I couldn't bear their suffering.”

“War with nature is far more terrible than war with man, Caucus-Meteor. I knew Adiwando had died; I didn't know about the others. You have other reasons?”

“Who can say why a man does what he does when the man himself is not so sure?” Caucus-Meteor is thinking about his captive and his decision to leave the stockade. “I will say that my village has use for the interpreter's salary.”

“Conissadawaga is poor? I thought your village did well in the moccasin trade.”

“We do, but because we're cold to the priests who come to take our souls, the church will not protect us from …” Caucus-Meteor cuts himself off. “Do you know what I'm saying, good ensign?”

“François Bigot!” He emphasizes the name in his musical language, bee-goh!

“Correct. I am required to pay the intendant a tribute every spring. You see, twenty years ago I negotiated with some Montagnais for property where our summer village now rests and for hunting rights in the hills beyond the lake. We didn't bother with French legal documents. Naturally, from the intendant's point of view, the legal documents are everything.”

“The vultures from Old France are stealing Canada blind,” St. Blein's normal blasé demeanor falls away. He's full of passion and belief. “They steal from the peasants, they steal from the soldiers, they steal from the king, and they steal from the savages.”

“We should be flattered they treat us as equal to the king.”

St. Blein smiles a crooked grin, as if remembering that it is more productive to pretend indifference. “It's getting late, Caucus-Meteor. I'm going to bed. You should go to bed, too, old king.” St. Blein rises to leave.

“Not me. I'm going to sit here all night, and eat this fire.”

Caucus-Meteor watches the Frenchman vanish into the darkness, then he huddles very close to his fire, lets the smoke sting his eyes, the heat burnish his skin. With the help of his fire and the nagging hurt of his self-inflicted burn, Caucus-Meteor finds powers to pluck out of memory a vivid picture of his late wife. She was in her sixties when she died, a woman with big shoulders, big bust, very dark skin. He says something in Algonkian to the fire. The fire responds in Iroquois. Suddenly, Keeps-the-Flame, young and beautiful and naked, appears in the flames. Caucus-Meteor, with a full head of hair in braids, drapes her body with wampum belts, bits of white and lavender seashells held together with thread—the old currency.

The old American dreams but he does not sleep; he sits with a blanket over his shoulders by a small fire, and rests by concentrating his attention on the fire, watching the flames and smoke, listening to the crackles and hisses, inviting dreams. Sometimes he closes his eyes, and is able move on to other places, other times, but he's never unaware of the world in which he resides, so when the captive awakens in the middle of the night, cramped, cold, aching from the thongs cutting into his wrists, Caucus-Meteor hears his labored breath, his moans, and finally his cry of startled anguish as he comes out of a nightmare.

Caucus-Meteor puts three sticks on his dying fire, picks up the musket, then walks a few feet in the darkness to the prisoner.

“Good evening, Nathan Blake,” he says. It's a test. If Nathan complains about his obvious discomfort, Caucus-Meteor will walk away and let him suffer from cramps, but Nathan only returns the greeting. The captive has passed a test. Caucus-Meteor frees Nathan from his bonds so he can stretch his limbs.

When a man dreams, he is righting himself, believes Caucus-Meteor, and a righting man is dangerous. Nathan Blake will pray to his god, and he will plan for escape. At this point, Caucus-Meteor is uncertain how violent and capable this farmer can be. He's feeling his burn when the dangerous idea he had earlier returns: if my captive kills me my worries will be greatly reduced.

Next morning on the trail, while pretending to be more exhausted than he really is (though he is exhausted enough), Caucus-Meteor watches his prisoner very carefully, and determines that his analysis was correct. The prisoner is planning an escape. The technique is simple enough: twisting his tied wrists until he can slip out in the slime of his own blood. Old tricks, born of desperation, are always a little sad as well as annoying.

The troop begins a long ascent through the mountains, following an ancient trail that winds with a river that tumbles over rocks, runs fast through pebbles, and never seems to meander. The rocks are different here from the ones in Nathan's land. They're lighter in color, more brittle, the slates more layered. The water in the stream is different, too, not tea-colored, but clear with just a taint of green. Further up, the hardwoods give way to fir with groves of white birch and yellow birch.

As Nathan Blake walks he continually turns his wrists against the ropes. Surely, thinks his captor, he believes that toil, blood, and belief will free him, for that is the way of his religion. All during this long march, Nathan Blake must be imagining himself killing his enemy, fleeing through the woods—to his family, to his own kind, to his ruined home, or perhaps not; perhaps it is that far place west of here in his secret heart where his hope resides.