The Old American (9 page)

“Where do they go when the river freezes in the winter?” Nathan asks Caucus-Meteor.

“They live in the winter village of Conissadawaga, in the hills.”

“Winter village—different villages for different seasons,” Nathan nods his head, as one gaining understanding. “You truly are a nomadic people.”

“Aye,” says Caucus-Meteor, gently mocking Nathan's speech. “We are like the ancients, like all the American tribes. The rule of the nomad makes this land what it is.”

Caucus-Meteor remembers when the Laurents were dispossessed children given succor by the dispossessed people of Conissadawaga. Their business is river transport. Omer will tell you that some day millions of people will live in Canada, and the only practical way they'll have of travel will be by birch-bark canoe. He envisions a day when he and his heirs will control the river. At the moment the Laurents own and operate six canoes. Hungry Heart, who can cipher and read some French, takes care of the accounts and the bribes to French officials to steer business their way. Omer works the waters. Business is good. All the Laurent boats are in service except for Omer's personal craft. Accordingly, Omer himself will bring Caucus-Meteor and his slave 160 miles downstream to Conissadawaga.

After some food, the men are ready to depart when a French officer arrives with his gear. He explains that he is a soldier en route to Quebec, where he will report to the governor-general and visit his family. He's heard that Omer could transport him to Quebec quickly. It's St. Blein.

Caucus-Meteor smiles. He can see that Hungry Heart is about to show why she and Omer are equal partners in their enterprise. Because Caucus-Meteor is a relation and leader of her village, she could charge him only for expenses. Now with the appearance of a stranger, she has a chance to turn a profit. She can tell by his clothes and bearing that St. Blein is an aristocrat with coins in his purse. She shakes her head sadly, explaining that his presence will overload the canoe. It's probably best that he wait for another canoe, or go across the river to Montreal and charter a French bateau. St. Blein could bow, thank her for the advice, then pretend to leave, and she'd practically beg him to accept a seat on the canoe. But Caucus-Meteor and perhaps even Hungry Heart know that St. Blein counts himself too good for such tricks; sons of gentlemen do not lower themselves to the level of American women. He is honest with her. He tells her that a French bateau will take an extra day or more to reach Quebec. He wants to go home as soon as possible. Well, all right, says Hungry Heart, but because of the inconvenience he'll have to pay extra. Omer looks away. He hates this part of the business. Caucus-Meteor catches St. Blein's eye. The ensign smiles, and pays the fare. Caucus-Meteor is first amused and then deflated by this little drama. What Hungry Heart has gained in coins, she has lost in nobility.

The party shoves off in the hour before dawn. From his position kneeling in the rear, Omer steers his craft toward the center where the water moves fastest. Later he'll follow a line where the tide runs. Coming back upriver to home port, he'll work the eddies near the shoreline, where currents turn upon themselves and push upstream.

“If you all paddle mightily we can make St. Francis by nightfall,” Omer says.

“If the weather holds,” says St. Blein.

“The big ‘if' of the river,” says Omer.

Caucus-Meteor notes that Omer said “St. Francis,” the French name for Odanak. Omer is trying to worm into the good graces of St. Blein. Perhaps such shameful behavior is necessary during these times, thinks the old American, which leads him to his own shame. As usual he will cheat at paddling, pretending to pull the paddle through the water, but actually letting the boat motion push it.

Nathan paddles hard and steadily. He finally reveals something on his bruised face—appreciation, approval—at the sight of meadows and cleared fields in the river valley. Caucus-Meteor tries to see what his slave sees, but in the end sees only through his own tired eyes. He says to his slave, “Sometimes the river makes its own music, singing in its incomprehensible language.”

“You confound me, master, with the very words of my own language,” Nathan says.

“I am a mystery even to myself, as most men are; my only grace is my reverence to these mysteries. I saw you looking at the land with something of majesty in your eyes.”

“I thought I would see more wild lands.”

“You had a misshapen idea of Canada.”

“Aye. I expected howls out of the sky. Instead, the wind brings in sounds from the land—clack of tree branches, birds, cows, and, pigs, damn, comical pigs, rooting among stumps, yes, and the sweet lowing of oxen.”

“You like oxen.”

“The oxen of an English farmer are his hoofed brothers—loyal, uncomplaining, productive in their enterprise.”

Caucus-Meteor understands that he and his people have been subtly insulted, for they have neither oxen nor the notion of enterprise. Already Nathan Blake is rebelling in the manner of a slave: in lieu of freedom, attempting to wear away the happiness of his master. “Perhaps,” says Caucus-Meteor, lapsing into oratorical tones, “it is servants such as those that we think we love, rather than those we regard as our enemies, who do us the greatest harm.”

The party arrives in St. Francis slightly ahead of the optimistic schedule set by Omer Laurent. He's elated, projects a sense of accomplishment after a day's work well done, behavior that depresses his king. St. Francis, called Odanak by the residents, is a réfugié village of various Algonkian-speaking tribes about the same size as Kahnawake, with clusters of square log cabins and some wigwams. As he pulls the canoe up on shore, Omer remarks in French on the improvement in recent years in heating of wigwams with the introduction of iron stoves and flues to vent the smoke.

“I don't see it as progress,” Caucus-Meteor says in Algonkian. “Without an open fire, a wigwam loses sway for the spirits that help keep a man content.” He suppresses the urge to launch into a long speech. This is not the time and place for oratory.

St. Blein visits the families of his Squakheag fighters to inform them that they'll be coming home soon, only to discover that they've already arrived. When Omer learns that the two brothers who transported Caucus-Meteor and Nathan on Lake Champlain pulled in six hours ago, the corners of his smile drop.

“I shouldn't have let you talk me into going to bed last night,” he says to Caucus-Meteor. “We could have steered by the moon, beat them by two or three hours.”

“Don't feel bad, Omer,” teases Caucus-Meteor. “They're too happy to be home to boast that they beat a river man.” Which of course is not true.

The travelers spend the night in a lean-to shelter made by the canoe and a moose hide tarp. They could have lodged in the brothers' cabin, or with Omer's cousin. But Omer insists they avoid friends and relatives, because they'd be duty-bound to exchange gifts, dance, visit, drink, chat, and otherwise waste time. Omer wants his paddlers strong, awake, and alert before the dawn. He's given himself over to work, schedules, and whimsies for a life in the future very much like a Frenchman's, and he has no patience with those of his own kind who think like those of his own kind. Caucus-Meteor admires him very much.

Surely, home is on the minds of all here this night, thinks Caucus-Meteor while the others sleep. Nathan Blake had a home, but we wrenched him from it. St. Blein is returning to Quebec to visit his parents, but it's not home; the Canada he envisions as home doesn't exist yet. Omer's homesick for a life of wealth, power, and prestige that's not only out of his reach and talents but would not make him happy if he achieved it. Omer's happiness is in the strain, privation, weather, scenery, and danger of the river; he doesn't recognize that he's home in his canoe.

All his life Caucus-Meteor has dreamed of being a king, like his father, the famous King Philip. The English may have been sarcastic when they dubbed Metacomet a king, but his father came close to making them eat their words, uniting the New England tribes to fight a war he almost won before the English hunted him down, killed him, put his head on a stake as a reminder of English ferocity and American futility, and sold his wife and son into slavery. Caucus-Meteor often imagines himself heir to a throne of sticks and beads, though in his day-to-day dealings with the world he regards himself as next to nothing. He escaped from slavery, made himself into an American, married a woman who was half black slave and half Iroquois, raised a family, gathered réfugiés that no tribe in Canada wanted, and with his wife established a village. Ask Caucus-Meteor where home is and he'll tell you, “My kingdom is Conissadawaga.” But in his heart home was never a place or even an idea. Home was the comfort of a woman's arms, first his mother's, so fleeting her touch before she was taken from him, and later the arms of his wife, Keeps-the-Flame. With the loss of his women, home is a remove. The old American is thinking that he'll find a home only in the reuniting ceremony following death. Where, when, how this ceremony should take place is another burden Caucus-Meteor carries, which is why he hopes for a sudden death. Nathan Blake, Omer, Hungry Heart, St. Blein, all of us are homesick for a place we cannot reach, thinks the old American.

Omer breaks camp before dawn.

“No fire?” says Caucus-Meteor, whose ancient joints request time to loosen.

Captain Omer picks up a paddle, holds it like a staff, and repeats. “No fire—river. I smell one more good day with a south wind.”

Starting a day without a fire—Caucus-Meteor is appalled. But he won't say anything. Out here on the river, Omer is the authority.

“Everybody do your toilet, and let's dig the water,” Omer says in French.

St. Blein winces at Omer's slaughtered French, and Caucus-Meteor translates to English for Nathan's benefit, then puts three fingers on Nathan's lips, and repeats Omer's order in Algonkian, as if he could pass on his own gift for articulation through his fingertips.

“Speak now the words as I have given them to you,” says Caucus-Meteor.

Nathan attempts to voice the words in Algonkian. Caucus-Meteor, Omer, even St. Blein break ribs with hilarity at his pronunciation. Nathan smiles bashfully.

“What's that smell?” he asks in English as they're about to board the canoe.

“Iron foundry,” says St. Blein in halting English.

Caucus-Meteor points to a whaleback hill and says in English and Algonkian, “That mountain, put there by gods who left the earth before Jesus was born, is full of iron.”

Nathan repeats the phrases in Algonkian, and this time the laughter is more subdued. Nathan appears to wonder at this new development, so Caucus-Meteor lectures him.

“I am your master, Nathan Blake—never forget that,” he says in English. “I expect you to refashion your thoughts, feelings, expressions, dreams, yea, your very prayers into the Algonkian language. Once you have mastered that language, we will work on Iroquois and then perhaps French.”

“Yes, master,” says Nathan, his eyes looking off in the west to that far place that so intrigues him.

“And after you have mastered those languages, we will learn Latin together and become priests.” Caucus-Meteor is joking in French now for the benefit of St. Blein, who laughs uproariously.

The old American switches to Algonkian, and addresses Omer or perhaps the river, for Omer is not listening. “The day will come when Nathan Blake will forget he is an Englishman with an English wife, children, parents, brothers, sisters, friends, peers. His dream to build a homestead will vanish in the intoxicating light of new experiences. He will forget his god, or, more likely, his god will forget him. What worries me, Omer, is that there is something else in the man, a yearning that he does not understand, and because the slave does not understand, I fear it cannot be governed by a master.”

Paddle paddle paddle, dig that paddle north, downstream. Must be a bit disorienting to Nathan Blake. Where he comes from the rivers flow south, and they're not nearly so immense. The dawn is misty, not too colorful, a slow descending radiance that suddenly evaporates until the canoe is in blazing sunshine. This will be more like a summer than a spring day. Omer serves a breakfast of bread and dog meat to be eaten in the canoe as they keep moving, but the portions are generous and Nathan is given an equal share with the others. He appears pleased by the canoe master's evenhandedness. Caucus-Meteor knows that Omer is thinking he has to feed the slave if he's going to keep him paddling hard.

All along the river are rolling fields and pastures, the earth being prepared for planting. Nathan watches a pair of oxen pulling a plow, frowns, mumbles something under his breath. Apparently, the teamster is not measuring up to the Englishman's standards. The canoers pass well-manured fields, barns with thatched roofs, farmhouses of timber or stone or logs; fences of poles and split poles; windmills to pump river water for irrigation; and hewed poles squared into Calvary crosses erected at crossroads and on promontories, some standing twenty feet tall.

Omer steers the canoe toward the shore, where a rip of tide gives the craft more push. Then, a miracle. The wind carries the sound of a woman's voice singing, a farmwife working the fields with her husband. The delicacy of the voice carried by the delicacy of the breeze sends a tremor through Caucus-Meteor. He notices that the other men are also affected. They cannot see her face, obscured by the glare of the morning sun, but they do see her shape bent over a hoe, dress loose, long hair. They listen to her sing. The old American can pick out the words
coeur
and
amour.
It's all any of them can do to restrain themselves from jumping overboard and swimming toward the wail of that voice. The wind shifts, and now the only sounds are the hush of the current, the beating of their hearts, the strain of their labors. Caucus-Meteor is thinking of his dead wife when he notices that his slave is silently choking back tears, a man lost to home and unsure perhaps of his wife's love.