The Old American (13 page)

“A very impressive looking man.”

“Come, let us wash,” says Caucus-Meteor with gentle command.

The old American is thinking about his rival. It's the kind of thinking that brings him great pleasure, so he accompanies his thoughts with visualization. Haggis showed up at the village ten years ago with three wives—sisters, Katahdin, Mica, and Millinocket. Keeps-the-Flame advised Caucus-Meteor to turn them away, but he could not deny succor to desperate people. No one knows for sure where Haggis came from, not even he, for he has only the dimmest memories of a mother and father, and they themselves were réfugiés who went from tribe to tribe. Haggis was named as a cruel joke by a Scottish trapper who enslaved his parents briefly. He wields his name as a reminder of betrayal and humiliation. He is committed to the nomadic life of the northern Algonkian. Caucus-Meteor respects him because he is a moderate drinker and a great hunter, the best in the village. Like him, his wives are mixed blood, but they're known to have kin among the northern Cree. Katahdin is at least ten years older than Haggis. She has a very powerful personality, and rules the other two wives. Haggis has since taken a fourth wife, Chocura, a widow from the Penacook tribe. Haggis also has an adopted son, Wolf Eyes, a young man who offends his stepfather. Caucus-Meteor gave Wolf Eyes Nathan Blake's musket, knowing it would cause mischief between father and son. Haggis's wives are his strength in the village, but they are also his weakness. Haggis has a very powerful enemy, the Catholic Church. The priests say he and his wives are going to hell. Caucus-Meteor wonders if hell is a proper place for Haggis.

“Do you believe in hell, Nathan Blake?” Caucus-Meteor asks.

“I do, yes. And I fear it.”

“I think if one is uneasy in crowds, hell would be a good place to avoid.”

“I think I am there now.”

“And yet you are not so filled with fear.”

“You can do with me what you will, take from me what you will, but my fear I reserve for my God.”

Surely Nathan Blake understands that his life is at stake, but there's little anxiety within him. Caucus-Meteor is uncertain why. His refusal to kill and his performance in the gauntlet gave him powers. But there's something else in the man, something that was in him before the gauntlet. Then a possible answer dawns upon Caucus-Meteor. Nathan Blake is pious. He has put his faith in his god, and this action has released him from fear. But that is not enough. Something in him outside of his piety adds to his courage.

“You will be tested,” Caucus-Meteor says. “After that you might be adopted into the village, kept as a slave, sold to the French, or killed. What is your preference?”

“I wish to be sold to the French. I believe I stand a better chance in a French prison waiting to be redeemed than in this village.”

“You are right. And your wish will probably come to pass, though I suggest you heed an old Algonkian saying: you never know.”

“How will I be judged in these tests?”

“That is impossible to say. Your behavior will determine much, though in the end it may mean nothing. I suggest you do the best you can. If you deliberately do poorly because you think it might help send you to a Quebec prison, the people will divine your insincerity; they might think you are a sorcerer, and kill you. Like most people confused about religion, they are superstitious, though in their heart they want to be fair. From what I know of you, Nathan Blake, I do not believe you are capable of insincerity, which is a turn of mind that presents different problems.”

“I do not understand what you mean, Caucus-Meteor.”

“That is the point I am trying to make.”

Caucus-Meteor rummages through a moose skin, and comes up with some clothes. “They belonged to a Frenchman who unsuccessfully attempted to settle this land.”

“The fellow who laid the stones for the house foundation.”

“Yes, alas he died of disease before any house was built. You can wear his clothes while yours are drying. Come, let's go wash you.”

Caterina looks up from her work, and speaks. Caucus-Meteor answers, then says to Nathan. “I told her to speak in Algonkian. My daughter is Seneca by birth, and prefers her native Iroquois language, but I think it best that you are exposed to only one language, the one of this village, very much like the speech that was spoken in your own lands of New England before there was a New England.”

“What did she say to you?”

“She said she will speak as she wishes, and to mind my own business. She also said she will prepare a meal for us, and then she said, ‘Father, you must eat to regain your strength.' “Caucus-Meteor smiles. “You see how it is with a man? Even if he's a king, first his mother rules him, then his wife, and finally his daughters. It's only with his enemies that he can have his own way.”

“Your other daughter, the one I saw down by the water—”

“Black Dirt.”

“Yes. She doesn't live with you?”

“Keeps-the-Flame and I had four children of our own, and one adopted child, Caterina. One died at birth, two died from disease. Black Dirt is the survivor. She has her own wigwam, once filled with a family, now empty. Adiwando, her husband, a boy of nine, and a girl of three were killed by the same throat distemper that killed the children of your English village, as you related to me during your interrogation. She will remain alone in her wigwam until her mourning period is over next year.”

Nathan and Caucus-Meteor walk down by the waterfall. Nathan appears to be full of apprehension. It's his most worrisome moment thus far in his captivity. For him, a bath is worse than the gauntlet—it's such wonders in the human mind, the ability to make good seem bad and bad seem good, that keep old men attentive, thinks Caucus-Meteor.

The stone-face wigwam at the base of the falls is a room designed for cleansing the body. Water is poured on hot rocks. The moist heat opens the pores of the skin. Nathan and Caucus-Meteor undress. Caucus-Meteor marches naked except for his turban into the wigwam. Caucus-Meteor doesn't mind exposing his wrinkled body, his shriveled sex organs, but the bald head—never! Over an hour they sweat out the grime. The bath ends under the waterfall, where he must expose the bald head. Perhaps this humiliation is more cleansing that the bath. “Instead of the waters feeling frigid, they are cool,” says Nathan in amazement.

“The secrets of heat are easily available through thought if one only reflects with persistence and an open mind,” says Caucus-Meteor.

“An open mind like an open pit is subject to whatever a passerby may whimsically discard,” says Nathan.

“Good point,” says Caucus-Meteor.

They dress, the captive in the Frenchman's baggy pants, trade shirt, but his own coat. Caucus-Meteor offers to give Nathan a pair of moccasins.

“My boots are wet and cracked, but they are comfortable,” Nathan says.

“And you don't trust American shoes.”

Nathan bows slightly. Caucus-Meteor thinks: I like this fellow's sense of humor, if that's what it is. The old king addresses the crowd. “Clean is an odd feeling for Nathan Blake, itchy and wanting in aroma, but bearable perhaps.” The crowd laughs.

It's dusk when Caucus-Meteor, Nathan, and the villagers start back. They've almost reached the village when Caucus-Meteor eyes Black Dirt silhouetted against the red sky, body arched, planting corn.

“My daughter,” says Caucus-Meteor.

“In the fields all this time, working—alone,” Nathan says.

“And you thought her name might refer to her complexion, darker than the other Americans. Now you realize Black Dirt refers to her love of the soil. Like you, Nathan Blake, she's a farmer.”

She doesn't even notice us, thinks her father. She's lost in private thoughts. Her grief is so painful that she can barely stand her feelings. Or perhaps—and this strikes him hard—perhaps it is he she cannot stand. He will test her.

It used to be that Caucus-Meteor, his wife, and Caterina would join Black Dirt and her family for meals. They would eat outside over an open fire, except during the most inhospitable weather, in which case they would crowd together in one of the family wigwams. The old American remembers the laughter and mischief of his grandchildren, the portentous if honest speeches of his son-in-law, the biting quips of his wife, the Catholic choir chants Caterina had learned. Meals were always a good time. The reduced family still sits around the kettle boiling on the fire, but the feeling is not the same. Meals are a reminder of what has been lost, the good noises of clan. Today even Caterina, who has sung all her life, is silent.

The father and his eldest daughter exchange pleasantries. Caucus-Meteor wants to tell Black Dirt that she wears her mourning ribbon with great dignity, but something else in her demeanor, a tightness, tells him that she's concealing something from him. Instead of complimenting her, he decides to provoke her; perhaps in anger she will reveal herself. He gestures in the direction of his slave, and says, “I brought you back a husband.”

“Please, father,” she says.

“Do you feel that my coarse wit degrades your condition as a grieving widow: is that the source of your aloofness?”

“Your wit is yours alone for judgment, father, and I do not mean to be aloof.”

“Black Dirt, something has changed in you since I went off to the wars; something more than your sorrows makes you cold to me.”

“All the time you were gone, a storm has raged in me.”

“It's your grief—it's normal.”

“It's my grief and something else. It's this village. Good, king and good father, something is wrong here.”

“Wrong? What?”

She does not answer.

“Conissadawaga is a good place, inhabited by good people,” he says.

“It's not the place—it's how we live that troubles me.”

“We live the life that brings joy, the life of the nomad. How we live makes us what we are—Americans, at ease in familiar or strange lands. Only the nomad has such freedom.” When again Black Dirt does not respond, Caucus-Meteor, nervous and sorrowful, comforts himself by falling into repetition and oratory. “We live as we've always lived. The men do men's work—trading, hunting, warring; the women do women's work—house building, craft making, and farming. Together we care for the children. As king I lend pomp to the proceedings.”

“I am sorry if I upset you, father.”

Caucus-Meteor did not know he was upset until his daughter pointed it out. Now he realizes she is right—he is upset, and something
is wrong
in Conissadawaga. Perhaps it is him—his interest in morbidity. “What is it—what is wrong?” he asks.

“I don't know, father.”

That night in Caucus-Meteor's wigwam, Caterina makes hardly a sound as she sleeps; only the rise and fall of her chest signals that she's alive. He calculates that she, like her sister, is in the midst of changes. Nathan sleeps restlessly while Caucus-Meteor sits by his fire, so close as to be baked by it; all through the night the old American hardly moves a muscle except to put a stick on his tiny fire. Caucus-Meteor has given away everything that he owns. He has nothing, so that now he truly feels like a king. In some future time, after St. Blein and the rebels have taken over the government and installed him on the throne of Canada, he will acquire huge amounts of coins, gifts, trade goods, property, loot from the English colonies—and give it all away. His dream of a worthy reign as king is to begin each day rich and end it a pauper.

By morning the wigwam has become stuffy and smoky. Caucus-Meteor believes that a depletion in air for breath is good for his health. He goes outside at dawn with Caterina, who leaves him without a word and walks into the woods. Her mysterious behavior has always worried him. Caucus-Meteor removes the embers from the fire inside the wigwam and builds a small fire outside. Nathan comes out of the wigwam to do his morning toilet.

Later, Caterina returns and prepares a meal. She gives Nathan the same share she gives Caucus-Meteor, a pancake of dried corn and a piece of smoked salmon. She says to Nathan in Iroquois, “Your breakfast, good slave.” Caucus-Meteor translates her words first in English, then in Algonkian. Nathan bows, thanks Caterina in English for the food. Caucus-Meteor translates his thanks in Algonkian, and insists Nathan repeat the words.

Black Dirt has already been working in the fields, and presently, carrying a hoe, she returns with Katahdin. Caucus-Meteor has always been attracted to Haggis's primary wife. He likes Katahdin's big shoulders, wide back, thick neck, and spindly legs. The women are looking over the slave, not sure what to make of this fellow yet.

“He seems haughty and docile at the same time,” says Black Dirt.

“He's measuring us, as we are measuring him,” says Katahdin. “We will see how he behaves over time.”

“We've never had a slave before, so I'm not sure what to expect,” says Black Dirt.

“I've had some experience in these matters, and I'll tell you that captives change over time,” says Katahdin. “Some fall into despair, and lose their usefulness; some plan revenge, and must be killed; some transform themselves from the inside. It's such as these who become good slaves. Or even passable husbands. Our village needs husbands.”

“For today our need is for a laborer in the fields,” says Black Dirt. She turns to Caucus-Meteor. “Father?”

The old American nods. “Tell him yourself in Algonkian. He must learn our language.”

“Today you will work with the women in the fields,” Black Dirt says.

Nathan blinks, retains a stoic expression, which impresses his master. “He still doesn't understand,” Black Dirt says to her father.

“I believe your manner offends him. In his world women do not talk to men in officious tones.” Caucus-Meteor turns toward Nathan, and says first in Algonkian and then in English, “Our village has no horse, no ox; you, slave, are the beast of burden.”