Barkskins (35 page)

They had married as children, soon after Kuntaw, Auguste and Achille had returned from their moose hunt to find ruin. In sorrow Achille had left his lonely and grieving son, a boy so sore in heart he could not accept that he and Malaan were too young for marriage. Elphège had forbidden it, but Kuntaw argued that he had killed his moose, now he was a man, he would marry! Elphège was not his father and could not deny him. They married and Malaan bore their son, Tonny. She had only thirteen winters and her labor was long and painful. Before the child was three Kuntaw left for the lumber camps and Malaan discovered whiteman's whiskey. The boy ran with a pack of orphaned and abandoned children.

From the older women who sometimes coaxed Tonny into their
wikuoms
to feed him good moose meat, to tell him that he could always come to them for food and shelter, he heard stories about his father, Grasshopper Slayer, and his skill with bow and arrow at a time when Mi'kmaw men preferred whiteman guns. It embarrassed him to have a father called Grasshopper Slayer. Now only a few feeble oldsters still kept their unstrung bows and time-warped arrows. Every Mi'kmaw man had a gun and it was possible even for an inept hunter to kill five or six geese from a distance. Food was easier to get and there was little reason to spend long hours tracking and stalking keen-witted prey.

Tonny was a sly thief and beggar; he had neither bow nor gun and depended on his wits for food and shelter. He ran errands for whitemen, slept under an upturned canoe or in a sapling lean-to he had scuffled together in the broken woods. At fourteen he and Hanah, a girl whose mother also hung around the post, began to sleep together under old canoes and while still very young they made three children, Elise, Amboise and Jinot, who all managed to live, scrabbling around the post like young turkeys. Then Hanah, too, who liked rum and the free wild feeling it gave, began to go with whitemen and when she was twenty she was beaten to death by Henry Clefford, a jealous and bellicose trader who kept two other Mi'kmaw women. It was early spring, windy cold days mixed with sleet and intermittent sunlight.

“Here I leave,” said Tonny to his mother, Malaan, smarting with hatred and sorrow. He despised her; why should he tell her anything? “I am grown. I am a father. I go, my children go with me.”

“You leave here,” she said flat-toned. “Always I know this.” She nodded and turned away, yawning one of her deep, deep gaping yawns. He could say nothing else; her wretched life was with the post. He was now grown, strong but without hunting skills or weapons, ignorant of animal behavior, which was men's correct interest and work. He no longer belonged here, if ever he had. He woke one morning, his eyes fixed on the underside of the broken canoe, the children wedged under his arm, and turned away from this life. He would no longer be part of the tattered Mi'kmaw people, whose customs had fallen off like flakes of dead skin. But he still believed that his children should live with blood kin. He felt a bitter sadness for them, nearly orphans with a dead mother and a worthless father. He could not leave them at the pernicious post. He knew only that his father was in a place called Penobscot Bay. Unannounced, paddling a stolen canoe and walking for weeks in mud and old snow, often carrying Jinot, the youngest, he found the house, the house of Kuntaw and the whiteman woman.

•  •  •

Year after year the logs of the old house had darkened almost to black. It seemed to be settling into the earth, but new cedar shingles shone like precious metal in the sunrise. The paint on the door and shutters had faded to a moss-grey color, something that made Beatrix think they must be repainted. Kuntaw paid no attention to house chores beyond getting in the winter wood and hunting.

“Enter you,” Beatrix Duquet called when she heard the scratching on the door. Tonny and the children stepped inside, ragged and travel-worn. They stood on the polished boards smelling the strange odors of the household, seeing the slant light dropped through glass windows, reflecting from mirrors.

Beatrix, grey-black hair streaming down her back like water, drew in a quick breath.

“Who are you?” She stared at them. “Who are you?” But Tonny thought she must know.

“I Tonny. Kuntaw Sel my father. These my children, Kuntaw their grandfather. Their mother dead. Names Elise, Amboise, Jinot.” As he turned them toward her he touched each child on the forehead. “No good live Mi'kmaw place now. I grown man but no good. I pretty bad man. I come my father Kuntaw, you. Help them.”

“Ah,” said Beatrix. She looked at the children; Elise at nine the oldest, withdrawn and shy; seven-year-old Amboise, also shy but with a winning smile; and Jinot, almost five, with a plump merry face.

“Sit at the table. I will give you food.” The chairs were strange and high, the table like the goods counter in the post. Jinot struggled to get on a chair until Beatrix lifted him up, found him warm and heavy, gave him a small squeeze.

“There you are,
snoezepoes
—sweetie pie,” she said, then turned to Tonny. “Oh poor Tonny, you must tell me everything, everything that has happened. Kuntaw is out hunting with our sons, Francis-Outger and Josime. They are close to the ages of your children. I know Kuntaw will weep with happiness to see you. He has spoken to me many times of his son, Tonny, and wondered if he still lived and how things were with him.” She felt a flash of compassion for this young man who resembled the handsome Indian striding into her life years past. “And now you are here. How happy he will be. But you, you are so young to be the father of three such big children.” She looked at them.

“Elise, Amboise, can you read or write?” They bent their faces low.

“Jinot, what do you like best?”

“Get sugar stick at post.”

“Ah, well, I have no sugar sticks, but I think you will like pancakes and some Dutch cocoa.”

“You good,” said Tonny. “I dream it you good.” He and Beatrix exchanged looks, Beatrix's steady eyes a promise that the children were safe. Tonny's returned gaze showed a distance that could not be traversed.

They were licking their plates for the last drops of maple syrup when Kuntaw came in with Francis-Outger and Josime. Tonny's children threw quick shy glances at their uncles, their black eyebrows and hair; their pale eyes. Josime carried a tom turkey by its feet, the bloody beak dragging along the floor.

When Kuntaw grasped who the strangers were his face swelled, his hands trembled. He could barely speak, but croaked, “Stay, stay, we all live here.” He looked at Beatrix, his eyebrows drawn together beseechingly.

So that is how it is, Tonny thought coldly; Kuntaw likely had to plead for favors from this tall woman who looked Indian when she stood in the shadowed corner of the room. He thought she was not one to stand in shadowy corners and in full hard light she showed her whiteman blood in those water-clear eyes. But she spoke the Mi'kmaw language better than Tonny or the children, who got along with a rough scramble of Mi'kmaw, French and English words.

While Kuntaw, Francis-Outger, Josime and Tonny went upstairs, she took the children around the big house, explaining the use of each room to them, especially the room with a vast table. This, she said, was the schoolroom, the
schoollokaal,
where they would learn to read and write. She would teach them. She sat at the table and took Jinot on her lap, whispered to him that on the morrow she would make him a little toy horse, drew Elise and Amboise close. She spoke to them in a low intimate voice, confiding her reasons. “Our people had special ones among them, those who remembered old stories—old ways. My mother died when I was a baby and she told me nothing. But from my father, even though he was a Dutchman, I learned that Indian people must take whatever is useful from the whitemen. It is just, because they have taken everything from us. Many of our people died with secrets locked in their heads. Now it is good for us to learn how to read and write so we may know how we make useful things, how our grandfathers lived. That is why we learn to read—so we can remember.”

•  •  •

Jinot was afraid of the tall staircase, for he had never seen more than three steps, and sniveled until Beatrix took his hand and led him up very many, counting
“zeven, acht, negen . . . dertien.”
Up in the attic they found Kuntaw and big Josime pushing ancient trunks, broken furniture, boxes of books and Kuntaw's worn-out bows and old quivers against the wall to make room for pallets.

“You will have this for your sleeping place,” Beatrix said. Jinot saw Josime roll his eyes as though she had said she was going to give roast moose to a pack of wolves. He smiled at Josime as only Jinot could smile and Josime twitched his lips in amusement. Jinot wanted to please—this woman; his father, Tonny; his grandfather Kuntaw; even Josime and Francis-Outger, who were ready to dislike their new kinfolk.

Tonny and the children were awkward eating at a table, but Beatrix signed they should not sit on the floor. They were cowed by the many dishes of meat and bread, unknown pottage and something that looked like a fish. Francis-Outger and Josime whispered and laughed together, took up their bowls and headed outside to eat far from the newcomers. Kuntaw called them back.

“In your places.” They ate in silence.

After dinner Beatrix put Tonny's children to bed. Josime leaned against the doorframe, listening.

“I will tell you two stories,” said Beatrix in a low, slow voice. “Listen. Here is the first one. Long ago in the old days three children were lost in the forest, and in that forest they saw a tree, a very strong big tree so tall its leaves tickled the clouds. The tree was old, old, so old all the other trees called it Old Woman Tree, except the clouds, who said it was Old Foolish Tree. It was big”—she stretched her arms wide apart to show its girth—“and for many years it grew in the forest. It was so big it had a great hollow at the bottom and in there lived two bear-people . . .”

•  •  •

As they went down the stairs, hearing Beatrix's murmuring voice above, Kuntaw put his hand on Tonny's shoulder.

“Come outside with me and walk to the river. The recent rain fattened the river and disturbed the weir. While we mend it I want you to tell me of Malaan and Mi'kma'ki. Do not spare me.”

They waded in, shifted stones. Tonny watched Kuntaw to see how it was done, replacing those the current had dislodged. The sky was overcast, a leaden dreary day of biting damp. The water numbed their feet and legs. Tonny talked haltingly, then furiously, told of Malaan's lethargy, her withdrawal into a silent world, the whitemen who pulled her about. He told of Hanah and how her wildness with the same whitemen had brought about her death. “Henly Clawfoot. I would kill him if I stayed there. Many times I want kill all.”

“You did well, my son, to bring your children here. I will care for them as I should have cared for you. I will pay for my neglect of Malaan and our people. I know well my earlier life was one of wrong behavior and loss. I did not teach you the things you need to know.” They came out of the water, pulled on their
mkisn
and began to walk back to the house in silence, Kuntaw opening his mouth several times until at last he began.

“It is not winter, but I will tell you the old stories of our people and the great ones in our lineage.” He did not wait for Tonny's reply but began to speak of warriors and hunters, of ancestors, but could not tell of the horror of seeing his mother's severed arm, of Achille's disappearance, his own years searching for that missing father. All the time he spoke he felt he was talking to the sky. The sky, as unmoved as Tonny, responded with a chill fine mist that thickened into steady rain. Kuntaw said, “I went from one tree to another, unthinking, never reflecting on you, my first son. But now I see I was not a good man. I should not have looked for Achille. I should have stayed with you and Malaan. So I say you should not leave your children.”

Tonny shrugged. The more Kuntaw spoke the colder grew his feeling for this father. He called him by name.

“Kuntaw. I do not belong here. I do not belong in Mi'kma'ki—Nova Scotia, they say it now. I am apart from every person, English, Mi'kmaq, French, American. I have
no place.
Many Mi'kmaw people in the village pretend all is well, but the animals are scarce and no one knows the correct way to live. White people take the berries, the clams, the fish and sell them. I cannot pretend. I have told you how things are at the English post. You, you have this woman. I have no one. I not belong. No place good for me. I go away. Maybe somebody kill me soon. Then I be done.” So he said, with rain trickling from his hair, soaking his shoulders.

The rain became a deluge. Kuntaw felt needles of fear in his throat when he heard these words. Was this his son or a malignant spirit in his shape? It was true that Tonny appeared different—not as two-spirit people are different, but more . . . white. Bad white. He was nicked everywhere with old scars, his features bunched in a scowl, he spoke in a hoarse voice. He was dirty and ill-clothed. Kuntaw wondered what he truly was, this isolate and unknowable young man. But he smiled numbly and said, “Foolish words. You still young. You have a place here. You did a good thing to bring the children here. Do not inflict the wrong that I did you on them. Stay here with me. Stay.”

He was afraid the whitemen had broken this abandoned son.

It rained all night and a heavy fog made the world impenetrable, yet Tonny said he would go, he would try New Brunswick for work.

“I hope to come back for you,” he mumbled to Elise, Amboise and Jinot. He met Kuntaw's censorious eyes boldly. Had he not done the same? Yes, Kuntaw wordlessly agreed, he had done the same.

•  •  •

There was little work. The lumber camps were the only places that would hire Indians, considered disposable labor—good enough, as long as they lasted, and for water work the best, while they stayed among the living. From a lumber camp, Tonny thought, he could always move deeper into the forest though he had no gun. He thought about trying to live in the forest without a gun. Without knowing the ways of animals. Would he go to a city? To Boston? Would he find something or someone? He had to find a new way. He would try the lumber camps first. And so he went to a chaotic world of groaning trees that ripped holes in the canopy, felled other trees, snapped off halfway, exploded into splinters. Some trees refused to come down, locking their branches into nearby neighbors, teetering on half-gnawed stumps. A few, on the edge of a new clearing and unprotected by the fallen hundreds, waited for the windstorms that would sweep them flat in great waves, uprooted, clods of dirt dropping with small sounds. He worked through the winter limbing felled pine and in the spring drive the boss ordered him into a bateau: he was an Indian and by birth skilled with the paddle. But Tonny's knowledge of bateaux was that they were shelters, roofs that had protected him from the rain in his childhood. He was no riverman. Before he could collect his season's pay, he drowned below Wolf Falls and, like countless other fathers, slipped into the past.