The Old American (5 page)

That night in the mountains it is cold, and Caucus-Meteor is so tired and weak that he doubts whether he can go on. After the captive has gathered firewood and boughs for bedding, Caucus-Meteor stakes him down, sits by the fire, and stares into it.

Next day the pace slows somewhat because the troop is beginning to feel safe from pursuit. Even so, Caucus-Meteor has to push himself hard to keep up. As the pain of his burn wound subsides, the limits of his stamina close in, for pain gives a man energy. He hopes the weather holds. These mountains, like mountains anywhere, play tricks. He entreats the god in the mountains for a continuation of kindly weather. Caucus-Meteor distrusts all gods, but who else but gods can one pray to?

The old American notes that his captive's wrists bleed, but he still cannot pull his hands free. Another day or two, and he'll be so far away from English territory that even if he can escape he'll have no place to go. He must be excited in his desperation. “I envy you, Nathan Blake,” Caucus-Meteor says, but he speaks in Algonkian, so that the captive understands only the sound of his name.

The following dawn the troop leaves the stream behind, goes through a notch, and then begins a downward trek, picking up another path along another stream. Caucus-Meteor thanks the mountain god for deliverance.

Soon they arrive at the big lake the French call Champlain, a blue ribbon in the mountains, appreciated for its beauty by white and red people alike: it's a thought that cheers Caucus-Meteor. The troop retrieves their birch-bark canoes. The crafts were filled with stones and sunk in the lake for concealment. The men are in a good mood. They believe themselves safe from English muskets. From here to Quebec there will be no more long marches; they'll move swiftly in their crafts with only a few short portages.

“Do you know where you are?” Caucus-Meteor asks Nathan.

“I've heard tell of this lake,” says Nathan. “They say a monster lives in its depths.”

“The monster does not live in the depths, but across the waters in the long houses of the pagan Iroquois. Perhaps some day, Nathan Blake, you will visit the English and Dutch town of Albany, or perhaps the native town of…” and he speaks the local name in his native tongue. “You will have to learn our language. Speak now the name as I have uttered it.”

“Synecdoche,” Nathan says.

“Good start,” says Caucus-Meteor.

Caucus-Meteor checks the wind. It's blowing from the southwest, and that means easy going. He realizes now that he has enough strength to make it back to Conissadawaga, an observation that sends a charge of despondency through him, for once he has returned to his village he will no longer allow himself the luxury of contemplating suicide; he will feel the weight of the responsibilities of his throne, the gnawing hound of want chewing the bone of his ambition.

For the old American canoeing is not as exhausting as walking; canoeing is just stiff joints, aching back, cramps in thighs, pain in the elbow, bee buzzing in the buttocks, and sloshing bladder. For Nathan, it's the first time since he's been captured that his hands and legs are untied for long periods of time. The raiders chant, an activity that helps with the rhythm of the paddling. Nathan is quiet; it's a while before Caucus-Meteor realizes that his captive is passing the time in silent prayer.

In the same canoe with Caucus-Meteor and Nathan are two brothers from the town of Odanak on the St. Lawrence River, and this is their canoe. They keep to themselves, laughing and joking and singing. Caucus-Meteor tells Nathan that they're Squakheag réfugiés.

“Their families once lived in the river valley where your farm is, Nathan Blake.”

“In 1736 when I built the first log cabin, no one challenged my claim to the property,” Nathan says.

“Most of the Squakheag proprietors were driven out by the pagan Mohawks, the same people who are now the English allies. Just as you have never stepped foot in Old England, these brothers had never stepped foot on their ancestral lands until the day they burned your town, and that is why they are jovial.”

The canoes ride low, but move fast, since each person paddles. Only the old American cheats at paddling. As the hours slip by, Caucus-Meteor finds himself thinking about matters long interred in memory. It's this captive, his enslavement to me, that has disturbed my mind, he thinks.

As a slave in boyhood, Caucus-Meteor had moments when he no longer wanted to be an American, but he didn't want to be a Frenchman or a Dutchman either, and certainly not an Englishman or an African. He thought maybe he wanted to be a Spaniard. At night, he would lie still in darkness, trying to remain awake to think, for only the moments before drifting off to sleep were his own. He would imagine himself in armor, face painted gold and silver, ears decorated with brass crucifixes, a ring in his nose, as the pope might wear. In those days he thought the pope was a Spaniard. He enjoyed picturing himself in full armor. He didn't know whether in the interest of accuracy he should picture the shiny metal armor he heard tell Champlain wore, or the stick armor of American warriors before the age of firearms, or the strange cloth armor he saw in his dreams. He settled on a compromise, stick armor painted shiny. How did a Spaniard behave? With that question, he had realized he had no understanding of such matters. The whole idea fell apart in his head. He was no Spaniard. He was not an anything or an anybody. Goaded on by that notion, he'd started planning an escape from slavery. He wonders now whether his own slave is having similar thoughts.

Later that night the company reaches Missisquoi at the northern end of Lake Champlain. A few Abenaki leave the troop, for this village is their home. Under the stars and moonlight one can see a couple of log huts and maybe a dozen stick-frame structures covered with layers of birch bark, pine needles, and grass tufts between the layers for insulation. St. Blein visits with Father Etienne Laverjat, the priest who operates the mission. Caucus-Meteor muses that the gatherings of Frenchmen, though admirable for their intimacy, leave out natives.

The company camps under some pines in a cove sheltered from the wind on the eastern shore of the lake. Caucus-Meteor sets up his camp out of sight from the others. The warriors sit around a fire, chewing their pemmican; Caucus-Meteor can hear them talking of war, women, weapons, wagering, and weather. The mild south wind pushing the canoes has turned them into giddy optimists. Caucus-Meteor wants nothing to do with people in such a mood, so he's content to guard his prisoner.

Caucus-Meteor sits on a log, raps it with a middle finger. It's not hollow, no good for drumming. The sounds of laughter and easy talk come to him worse than taunts. He's thinking about his wife, his grandchildren, his mother, his father, scores of fallen comrades—all the dead ones. Why have I lived so long? he wonders. He decides to walk down to the shore, where the sound of the waves will drown out the sounds of happiness. “Come, let's have a drink of water,” he says in English to Nathan. He hobbles the captive's feet with thongs. As he ties Nathan's wrists to the stake across his back, the old abrasions open and he feels Nathan's blood on his hands. He pulls up his sleeves and rubs the blood against his burn. Is this the omen he's been looking for? It doesn't feel like an omen. Even so, Caucus-Meteor leaves some slack below the knots. “Now you can escape,” he says to Nathan in Algonkian. He picks up the musket, holds it for a moment, leans it against a tree.

They walk on ledge, down through ground made soft by pine-needle cover, to the rocky shore. Gentle waves slosh through stones. Caucus-Meteor is certain now that he does not want to return to Canada to face the burden of his responsibilities as a king. St. Blein will travel to Conissadawaga and report that he was killed by a prisoner. He'll trust St. Blein to turn over his salary to his eldest daughter, Black Dirt.

From Nathan's squirming movements followed by no movement at all, Caucus-Meter determines that his captive has freed his hands. Caucus-Meteor drops to his knees to drink. He can hear the captive shuffle behind him. He's picking up a rock, thinks Caucus-Meteor; he will bring it down on my head. The lake water is cold and very tasty. Caucus-Meteor enjoys a surge of intense feeling very similar to the feeling of gambler's excitement. He'd like to turn and deliver a long oratory on the nature of choosing the time and instrument of one's death, but this is not the place for oratory. It's the place for submission to those unknown gods who rule by whim and mystery. Something like the lights that fill the northern skies in the winter dance in his head, and the image of the Spaniard is back, huge and metallic in his armor.

Caucus-Meteor senses the decisive moment. Nathan Blake throws a rock ten feet over his head. With the sound of the splash, Caucus-Meteor leaps to his feet, and pulls his knife.

The captive lurches forward, trips on his hobble and falls to his knees. Just as moments earlier, Caucus-Meteor awaited death, so now does Nathan Blake.

Caucus-Meteor says politely, “Do you wish to drink?”

“Aye,” says Nathan.

After Nathan drinks, Caucus-Meteor marches Nathan back to camp, and ties him down.

“You could have killed me, but did not,” says the old American.

Nathan says nothing, gazes off into a place his own.

“I am your master. You must answer my question,” says Caucus-Meteor.

“I have not heard a question,” says Nathan, and the insolence in his voice tells Caucus-Meteor that his prisoner, through his refusal to kill, has found powers within himself that he did not know he possessed.

“You know the question. Why did you spare my life?”

Nathan Blake remains silent. For the first time, Caucus-Meteor feels anger toward his captive. Perhaps he is a Christian devil, or maybe a trickster from olden times returned in a new guise. Perhaps he should kill Nathan Blake, or sell him to the Iroquois, or burn him, as in olden times, as a rite to assuage his own pain. But Caucus-Meteor has lived too long to be mastered by anger or fear or even hope.

“It's just you, me, and the Great Now, Nathan Blake,” Caucus-Meteor says, and suddenly he's thinking about himself from a time long ago. He switches to the tongue of his parents, so that Nathan can feel the emotion within him without the disguise of word-meaning. He speaks in the manner of his father, addressing the multitudes before the king's seat in Mount Hope. “I wish I was a young man again so I could go on a vision quest, as we natives used to do before the French and English arrived. It used to be that young fellows would go off into the forest to seek dreams to understand their lives and place in the world. These days they get drunk, and think they're having visions. They go to war, not to avenge a wrong or to make just an indignity or to assuage the grief of their mothers, but so that French merchants in Paris can have fur hats to sell.”

Caucus-Meteor does not finish his thoughts with speech, for they would embarrass him, even if he did speak them in a language only he comprehends. Still, the thoughts bring him a mellow feeling, for wistfulness has given way to that wonderful feeling of ambition. He silently mouths the words of the dog-gnawed bone: “One day I will be king of all North America; I will lead one tribe, one people with castles to rival those in Europe, with corn ten feet tall and canoes with so many paddlers their singing can be heard in the countries across the oceans. I will throw out money as a medium of exchange and bring back the wampum belts, which combined money and diplomacy with adornment. What else besides money, diplomacy, and adornment is of worth in the public domain? A condition of permanent and excited peace will ensue.” The old American tries to cast his mind out into the void like a net to embrace his vision, but all he catches is a headache.

Next day, on the water, the troop glimpses the Lake Champlain sea monster. Actually, it's a sturgeon. Quite a fish, but disappointing as a monster.

The troop paddles off the lake onto the Richelieu river. From here on in, it's downstream into the heart of Quebec. The Americans' good mood continues as they paddle for home.

“What is to become of me, Caucus-Meteor?” asks Nathan. “Are you my master forever, or truly do I belong to the French?”

Since Nathan spared Caucus-Meteor's life, a change has come over both men. Nathan is more forward, unafraid; he has gained something, while Caucus-Meteor has lost something. What can it be? And then the answer comes to him. Now that he's back in Canada, the old American once again is in bondage to the idea of life and the difficulties involved in continuing life.

“I captured you,” Caucus-Meteor says. “You are mine, a fair prisoner in war. I may, as I am sure is your wish, sell you to the French, which means you would probably be exchanged for a French prisoner held by the English. Or I may keep you as my personal slave, for I am an old man with an old man's needs.”

Nathan seems somewhat relieved. Perhaps he believes that it's unlikely he will be harmed, for if an Englishman understands anything it's that a damaged slave is not of much use.

“Are your people papists?” Nathan asks. “I hear tell that many of the Canada savages have been converted by the Jesuits.”

Caucus-Meteor thinks: what a wonderful opportunity for speech-making. The old orator begins to speak, and as he does he's no longer addressing his captive. He's talking to the familiar throngs inhabiting his imagination, though now his words are in English.

“I will tell you about my people,” he says. “My village, just north of Quebec City, is called Conissadawaga. In every language, some words mean more than one thing. Conissadawaga means two things. It means, roughly put in English, makers of shoes. Our women make the best moccasins in North America, and our men trade them. But it also means People-in-Exile, for a people with shoes too good are tempted to wander far from home. Our citizens are from tribes taken by the English in New England in the days when the Colonials called us Americans and before they began to call themselves Americans. We are, therefore, the first American tribe. We are the children of war and disease and gods who have abandoned us. A few of us worship Jesus, a few the old American gods, some no god at all. Most live in great confusion. When I was in Europe where I was a slave trained in languages, I heard of a king in China, who was known as Confusion. The Chinese would have sayings, as in: Confusion say, ‘English fellow going to Canada to have breakfast with the People-in-Exile.'”