The Old American (8 page)

“What was impure between us for you was pure for me. This fellow about to run—he's yours, no?”

“I captured him myself back in New England.”

“He has legs for running. Do you think he can make them go fast enough to get through this mob?”

Caucus-Meteor is mulling over his dream. The adversary was Bleached Bones. The runner must be Nathan Blake, and the stones must be a wager. The tormentors in the gauntlet are the crowd in the dream. But who or what was the crow with the delicate claws?

“I think you are mocking me, Bleached Bones.”

“If I mock you, old king with his turban for a crown, it won't be with such subtlety. I was testing your confidence in your slave.”

“He has my confidence,” Caucus-Meteor says, but what he's thinking is that his confidence is in his dream.

Bleached Bones smiles, tweaks the bone in his nose. Caucus-Meteor remembers the day they pierced each other's nostrils many years ago, but Caucus-Meteor removed the bone through his own nose because it was a bother. Bleached Bones says something in Iroquois, in English, in Dutch. It's a joke. Caucus-Meteor and Bleached Bones were once interpreters in the employ of the French. Playing with languages was their shared art. In spite of his better judgment, Caucus-Meteor, as he has done in the past, succumbs to the wiles of Bleached Bones and bets his entire interpreter's salary that Nathan Blake will make it through the gauntlet. Bleached Bones, who knows how much Caucus-Meteor despises alcohol, offers him a drink from a noggin he carries in his belt pack. Caucus-Meteor takes a tiny swallow to be polite.

“You make a good living as a gambler?” Caucus-Meteor asks.

“Excellent, but I don't do it for the money. I like the travel, the excitement, the desperate characters you meet.”

“You're not afraid to lose?”

“The feeling—it's better when you lose.”The conversation is interrupted by a stirring in the crowd. “I think your man is preparing to make his run.”

Caucus-Meteor watches. Nathan is about to begin his test.

But Caucus-Meteor is thinking about his bet. Even if he's not killed, Nathan Blake might be too injured to be of any use as a slave. Caucus-Meteor will be forced to sell Nathan to the French for a prisoner exchange. It's doubtful he will bring a very good price if he's broken up the way the last fellow was. Caucus-Meteor will have to return to Conissadawaga without any gifts for his people. It's likely he will lose favor among them, and that his rival in the community, the great hunter, Haggis, will be crowned king. So, then, Caucus-Meteor thinks, if I lose this bet I stand to lose everything I value. I will be a free man. Bleached Bones is right: it's better when you lose. Still, Caucus-Meteor does not think he will lose. The dream was too powerful.

From the tense muscles in Nathan's legs, Caucus-Meteor can see that Nathan's impulse is to break into a run. The old American is thinking about his slave, when, out of nowhere, the conjuring trick that he has been trying to perform all his life is suddenly before him, but it comes unsummoned, in spite of himself. It comes like the dream. Nathan, you are naked and the gauntlet winds a long way. Caucus-Meteor sees his slave's lips move. You are praying again. You stand before your tormentors, smelling their sweat and bear grease and cheap French brandy and your own anxiety. Someone shoves you forward. Instead of heading for empty space between the rows, you walk toward one edge of the gauntlet. What are you doing, Nathan Blake? Nathan Blake doesn't know himself what he is doing. Prayer is guiding him. Or something else. Maybe the devil who resides in the far place. He wants you to join him there, Nathan—go with him. He wants you to run, Nathan—run. Run from your life.

A stick cracks you between the shoulder blades, like the lash of a whip but cutting deeper. You wince—run, Nathan, run. But no, you walk to the other side, offering yourself for abuse. Stones strike your face and chest. You take another step forward, but keep your head up. The old Mohawk with the burn-scarred face grins at you, a man driven insane by torturers in a time gone by. Another stick slashes you across your back, and you cry out involuntarily, as you did the day I burned myself instead of you. I feel that wound now, a tender place like a sorrow or a remembered hope. Do you know, Nathan Blake, that black slaves who are especially disrespectful are sometimes whipped to death by their English masters? A couple of laughing fellows shove you to the other side of the gauntlet. A woman raises a switch to strike you. You see the blow coming, but you don't try to avoid it, only to suppress your need to cry out in pain. The switch smacks you in the face.

You smile at the woman. Are you insane, Nathan Blake? Someone strikes you in the temple, and now you stand in a rain of colored lights. A second later something falls at your feet. You blink, your head clears, and you bend to pick up the walking stick belonging to the mad old man with the burn scars. The stick is decorated with a swatch of your skin and blood. You return the stick, bow, and say, “Your cane, sir.” The Mohawk accepts his implement with a handshake and a thank-you.

The people in the gauntlet find this exchange between a captive and one of their elderly touchingly amusing. They don't laugh ha-ha, or hee-hee, or har-har, more like ho-hoh-hohh. Nathan, can you taste blood running down the back of your throat? You step forward, see the lights again, but they're dimming, changing in color with fading music that may be coming from angels. What does your Protestant Jesus think about angels? Tell me, for I am uninformed on this matter. You hardly feel the next blow. Then another. In your determination to keep your head up and look into the eyes of your abusers, you continue the strategy you started with—don't run the gauntlet, walk it.

The conjuring fades until Caucus-Meteor wonders whether it was within him at all, for now he is merely thinking, thinking the word
pure
in the language of his father. For a while Caucus-Meteor is resigned to losing his bet with Bleached Bones. Nathan Blake staggers, is knocked about. Any minute he'll lose his temper like the previous runner or he'll just crumple from meekness. Then Caucus-Meteor notices something that gives him cause for optimism, an improvement in demeanor—head held high but without French haughtiness or English arrogance or American defiance, without the rancor of nation versus nation, a man. Exemplary behavior. Now the captive adopts the unusual tactic of walking the gauntlet, as if to say, “We are here together.” In olden days, when defiance was so admired, Nathan Blake's behavior might not have saved him, but these days the folks on the line see in him an emblem of the Christianity they've embraced. Caucus-Meteor chuckles to himself, thinks these people must be unnerved. He wishes he could predict the outcome. Will they crown this man with thorns or laurel?

He's surprised when Bleached Bones settles the wager between them.

“But he's not through the gauntlet yet,” says Caucus-Meteor.

“I've seen enough—he will walk to the end of it without harm. These Iroquois might be Christian by baptism and inclination, but they're pagan by ancestry and habit. The old gods rise up in them from time to time. They secretly suspect that your slave is a sorcerer. They may be right. You watch out, Caucus-Meteor, else your man visit upon you a plague you cannot now imagine.”

Caucus-Meteor stares into the eyes of his once and future adversary and companion. He sees a happy glint.

“You've lost your bet, and you are still a man. I admire you, Bleached Bones.”

“I am a man falling off a cliff contemplating the rush of air in his throat while the ground flies up to impale him. It is not so bad to feel what you can before you die.” Bleached Bones tweaks the bone in his nose, turns his back, walks away.

Nathan Blake, you kept your head up, you talked respectfully, but respect is not how you'll be known in the stories told; you'll be known as the man who walked the gauntlet. Nathan Blake, you will be the last to appreciate your accomplishment.

Nathan has minor cuts, bruises, and bumps. His most serious injury is a bloody nose. Caucus-Meteor throws Nathan's head back, puts pressure on his forehead and neck, and the bleeding stops. The old American conducts a brief examination, pronounces his patient fit, gives him a blanket. “Remain quiet, Nathan Blake, until your stomach tells you it is all right to stand,” Caucus-Meteor says. “Then you may dress and resume normal activities.”

Nathan throws the blanket over his shoulders, sits on a log, shivers. He's banged up, weary, a little nauseous, but calm.

“We will stay the night here in Kahnawake with my cousin, Omer Laurent,” Caucus-Meteor says. “Omer and his wife live by the European custom of ambition, hard work, chicanery, prayer, and luck. Tomorrow we will start for Conissadawaga.”

The Squakheag brothers decide to paddle home to Odanak under the stars. They don't bother to tell their commanding officer. By French law, they're deserters, but as a practical matter the military service is over and the mercenaries will return to their villages whether their commander wishes them to or not. Meanwhile, in Kahnawake, a big celebration rages all night. Caucus-Meteor and his slave, Nathan Blake, watch from the darkness just outside the fire glow. Sam Allen stands naked beside a huge pot of water bubbling over irons straddling a fire. Most of the village has turned out for this event. The Mohawk men and, worse, the women, make fun of Sam's scrawny body.

“They going to kill him?” says Nathan, his jaw tight, his eyes feigning slight interest. He's more upset about this than he was about his own safety.

“Watch, Nathan Blake—you will discover something you never encountered in New England.”

The younger woman standing beside young Allen pinches her nose; the older woman and the rest of the Mohawks laugh.

“What deviltry is this?” says Nathan.

“No deviltry; you look too deeply. All they're saying is the obvious. The boy stinks.”

The two women wash Sam Allen from head to foot. He winces where they touch his cuts and bruises. Finally, he stands clean and shivering, and they give him a blanket to dry and warm himself. Then Furrowed Brow dips his right index and middle fingers in a bowl of red paint. He marks first the right side and then the left of Sam's face. The women bring Sam a Frenchman's baggy trousers, trade shirt decorated with bead and quill work, moccasins, red sash for the waist, blanket with an arm hole, headband to keep hair in place.

“Those clothes belonged to his ‘brother' in the family, killed in the wars against your people, Nathan Blake,” says Caucus-Meteor.

Furrowed Brow thumps himself in the chest with his fist and speaks a word in Iroquois. Caucus-Meteor translates for Nathan's benefit—“Father.” Sam repeats the word. The mood of the onlookers changes from jovial to solemn. The older woman points to herself, and utters a word—“Mother.” The young woman takes her turn—“Sister.” Sam asks a question in English, and the Mohawks look away from him. “From here on in, he's not to speak any English,” says Caucus-Meteor. “Your young kinsman is not sure what he is to these people yet—a brother, a son, a slave—but he knows that he has become something more than a captive.”

Caucus-Meteor looks in Nathan's eyes to see if the lesson he has just completed has had an effect, but Nathan does not betray himself with word or facial expression. The gauntlet has made Nathan more confident. He'll be known as the man who walked the gauntlet. Such a man, rash but not violent, can pose great danger, thinks the old American. I admire him very much.

C
aucus-Meteor gently declines Furrowed Brow's hospitality, and he and Nathan walk along the shore of the river to a sheltered cove, where, tethered to a tree, is a huge log raft on which is built a wigwam. “Stay here for a moment,” the old American says to Nathan. It's a test. Caucus-Meteor is wondering if walking the gauntlet gave Nathan ideas about walking away to freedom. He goes inside the wigwam to converse with his subjects, comes out in a few minutes; Nathan is still waiting. “We'll spend the night here where I can smell the river,” says the old American. For the first time since the journey north began, he doesn't bind his slave for the night. While Nathan sleeps, Caucus-Meteor sits in front of a small fire in sleepless rest. At about the time that Sam Allen is going to bed after a night of revelry, Caucus-Meteor and Nathan are rising to get an early start.

They're met in the raft wigwam by Omer and Hungry Heart Laurent. Omer is hard-muscled, with almond eyes and sallow skin. Hungry Heart is light-skinned, heavy-bodied, with iridescent green eyes and skinny legs. They're mixed blood. Omer is mainly Montagnais, the Algonkian inhabitants of the St. Lawrence valley when Samuel Champlain arrived in 1608. Not that the Montagnais can claim the region as their ancestral home.

They replaced a tribe of Iroquois-tongued people laid low by war and epidemics following the arrival of Jacques Cartier in the century before Champlain. That's how it goes in these lands, thinks Caucus-Meteor, festivals of destruction, duplicity, and disease. Hungry Heart was a niece of Caucus-Meteor's late wife, Keeps-the-Flame. When she's had one too many brandies, Hungry Heart claims that she's a descendant of Champlain himself through a dalliance with one of his so-called native “daughters,” that Champlain is the source of her green eyes, but no one believes her.