The Old American (38 page)

The drink clouds over Nathan's anger and confusion. Hawks recounts the circumstances of Nathan's redemption. A new governor from France has taken the place of Galissoniere, and he did not recognize St. Blein. The governor informed St. Blein that a field officer has no authority to negotiate prisoner exchanges. Hawks pleaded on Nathan's behalf, told how Nathan had left a distraught wife and family behind; in the end, the governor threw up his hands and said, “Take your man back to New England, and keep your ransom money.” It's a story that Hawks will tell over and over again for years to come.

Nathan is surprised to learn that he's been exchanged for St. Blein. Surprised also to learn that the war is over, and has been over since October when a peace was signed in Europe, though word did not arrive in Quebec for more than a month, and many in both New England and Canada are pretending that the war is still on.

“A fine house it is, I've seen nothing like it in New England, not even in Boston,” says Hawks.

“A bit fussy for my tastes,” Nathan says. He seems about to speak again as a New Englander, but holds back. Perhaps he was going to tell of the house he built for the savages, but the tale is too strange or disturbing to relate.

Toward the end of the evening, St. Blein and Nathan talk. The Frenchman's English is much improved after his months in captivity. He'd been shot by a man from Conissadawaga, name of Wolf Eyes. Perhaps Nathan experiences some satisfaction in the knowledge that St. Blein's discomfort had come as a result of Nathan's musket. Nathan is no marksman, but he understands the gun as a tool, and he could have told Wolf Eyes that because of scours in the barrel, the compression in that weapon flagged at times. The ball hit its mark, right in the middle of St. Blein's chest, and it knocked him down senseless and slightly fractured the breast plate, but it hardly broke the skin. He came to hours later, alone and abandoned, and made his way to a farmhouse where he surrendered. He was brought to Boston, where, taking advantage of his birth as a nobleman, he managed to conspire with Governor Shirley over matters of state and craft, for though he was a prisoner he moved about as a free man in Boston.

“I met thy wife,” St. Blein says in the formal English popular in the generation before Nathan's.

“Aye, and you drove her away.”

“I was speaking of your English wife.”

Nathan stops breathing for a moment. “Is she well?” he asks with great caution.

“You're a lucky man, Nathan Blake.” St. Blein's voice is full and colorful, but he averts his eyes from Nathan's. It's the last time Nathan sees the Frenchman, who drifts away, out of house and festivities.

The Englishmen spend another day in sleep and lounging to get over the effects of the celebration, and start on their trek bright and early the following morning, proceeding on foot over trudged paths, led by their scarred and tattooed guide. If there is a storm, they will don snowshoes, which they carry tied to French roll packs. At the Richelieu river, the guide, telling Hawks he knows a route safe from pursuit, takes the men east away from the river and normal routes into New England.

In a strategy to bring Nathan back into the English hearth, Hawks makes frequent attempts to engage Nathan in conversation. The soldier's task, as Great Stone Face divines it, is to make Nathan realize that his love of Canada and savages was the result of despondency and savage cunning; Hawks uses the European trick of turning love to hate. I admire John Hawks very much, thinks Great Stone Face.

“You know,” Hawks says, “our guide reminds me of Mark Ferry.”

“I knew another native who reminded me of Mark Ferry,” Nathan says. “How is the hermit of our New Hampshire village?”

“I cannot say, for I have heard nothing about the man during these three years.”

Nathan takes Hawks's arm. “John, my village of Upper Ashuelot, what has happened to it?”

“It's been abandoned, Nathan. But now that the war is over, I imagine folks will be going back.”

Hawks continues to speak, but Nathan's attention wanders. He's a man between home and a far place. Using the old English of his grandfather, Nathan says, “I can see that my aloof behavior distresses thee, but you took me against my will.”

“You have no will—the savages burned it, as they burn flesh. But the burn that does not kill, heals over if in a scar; we will be friends again.”

Nathan cannot look at Hawks. Great Stone Face knows why. Nathan can't bear seeing the reflection of his history in those eyes, distorted now by Canada.

Great Stone Face turns the party south, and three days later the men enter the country of the highest New England mountains. A snowstorm holds them back a day. Now that their tracks are covered the men aren't sure they can stay on the path, which comes and goes according to whims of snow. They're dependent on their guide.

Hawks calls a halt on some level ground to bed down for the night, but the old guide motions for the men to continue. Hawks barks at him that he is in command, but the guide simply goes on walking.

“We can find our own way home now,” Hawks says. “We don't need this sullen savage.” But his voice lacks conviction, and they follow the old man.

Great Stone Face has the desire to make a Caucus-Meteor speech, or maybe he just wants an excuse to stop walking. He's not sure. Suddenly, his reuniting ceremony is in doubt. He's too exhausted. Or perhaps it's just the effort of pretending not to be exhausted that is exhausting him. Such contradictions have dominated his entire life. I am very grateful, he thinks. And then all too early he sees them—the stars in the heavens, the eruption of light from the great north. Then total darkness. For a minute or two he walks blindly, though pretends to see. And, then, does see as well as ever. They've entered one of the notches between mountains.

“Look!” says Hawks, pointing to the mountain top.

Silhouetted against the setting sun is a rock formation in the shape of the head of their guide—the great stone face.

Great Stone Face does not notice the presence of the Englishmen. He is looking up at the rock formation; he calls out to it, “Speak!” After a pause, he says again, “Speak!” And finally a third utterance, “Speak my name!”

Nathan Provider-of-Service looks down at him still kneeling in the snow. It is as if the strength of Nathan's sight has material weight, for the old guide falls over. He holds out a hand, and Nathan takes it. Great Stone Face can feel eyes upon him, can hear his own mouth still sucking and blowing air, can feel the cheek muscles on one side twitch. He is between the old man in the mountain and the far place. The sight of the stone face, the silence that followed his plea has stripped him of his disguise—he's Caucus-Meteor again. He understands that while his father may not be able to speak without a jaw, he can inspire a son to speak. Now, he thinks, now I will again be able to speak. “Thank you, father,” he says to the mountain.

“What's going on?” Hawks asks.

“This old fellow has had a shock,” Nathan says.

They build a fire and make the old invalid as comfortable as possible. “Bring him closer to the fire,” Nathan says.

“Nathan Provider-of-Services,” the old guide says in English.

Nathan's breath catches. He whispers, “Caucus-Meteor—are you a ghost?”

“I soon will be.”

“You know this ancient?” said Hawks.

“Shut up, John, and feed the damn fire.”

Nathan gives Caucus-Meteor some pemmican and water, and as he has done so many times, the old king finds strength to go on.

“You had a shock,” Nathan says in Algonkian.

“I'm grateful for the attack from the gods to my faculties, for finally I understand everything now,” says Caucus-Meteor, and now the need to make a speech charges him with energy. “My reign in Canada has come to an end. What will happen to my people is best left to the two sisters of time and fate, their brother, Jesus, the unborn, and the mysteries. Or something like that. I have always been a little confused about religion. Did we all arrive on the back of a turtle? Were Adam and Eve carried on the wings of carrier pigeons? Crows? Huge black-purple crows? Pigeons or crows? Eagles perhaps? I prefer crows. I half believe everything and half believe nothing; together everything and nothing make men and mud. You are equally complicit in understanding and confusion with me—you are, thus, this: my son. You have passed all the tests in Canada. You are ready for other tests in another place. Which is why I conspired to take you back to New England with these fine, if stupid, English soldiers.”

“What is he saying?” Hawks asks.

“He said, ‘God bless the English,'” Nathan says.

Caucus-Meteor chuckles, pleased by Nathan's ability, after three years, to deceive, if crudely. “Ever since that day you let an old man live who wanted to die, I have always wondered what force directed your actions,” Caucus-Meteor says in English.

“My behavior was nothing strange. I was only acting out of my manhood as I knew it.”

“What in hell are they talking about?” says Hawks to his men. They shrug.

“You prayed, and your god said do not kill this savage; that much I have determined,” says Caucus-Meteor.

“My God said, look at this man you are about to kill. So I looked, and as you drank, old king, it seemed to me you were kissing the water like a lover. I thought, why should God let me have such a thought if not to prevent me from killing you? So there you have it, for your life you may thank the God you have so often mocked.” With that utterance, Nathan's face changes; he's less confused, less angry, suddenly brimming with affection. Some obstructing tumor has passed out of him. He turns to Hawks, and says, “You came all this way, risked your life, and I, I treated you like a stranger.”

Like Caucus-Meteor, Hawks too is reading a change in the face of his countryman. “It's all right, Nathan,” Hawks says. “This land is marvelous strange, and one can expect nothing else but strangeness.”

Caucus-Meteor takes Nathan's hand.

The men loiter for a day while Nathan works. The other New Englanders watch Nathan with axe and crooked knife and makeshift birch-bark steam box bust a sled out of a young ash tree. Caucus-Meteor, the man who never slept when he was healthy, dozes, his eyes shut, his breath fast and labored.

“This old fellow, he was your savage mentor?” says Hawks.

“He was my king,” Nathan says.

“Where are we taking him? Back to Canada?” Hawks asks. “And, if I may be so bold, why? And why are you the agent of his removal?”

“We're taking him home.”

“Canada?” Hawks repeats.

“No, New England. As to your question of why I am the designated agent, I cannot say. I am only a farmer, a builder, and a believer in the Divine. In this endeavor, I feel ruled by the Divine. I think for a while the devil was in me, pulling me west, and that was why I could not see into my fate. Now I know it; now I follow the whim of the Divine as it is felt in me.”

Over the next three days, the New Englanders drag the sled over trails that twist through mountain notches. Luckily, they have good weather. When they come out of the mountains into the lower hills, the snow suddenly gives way, and they have to abandon the sled. But by now, as he has done so often before, Caucus-Meteor has rallied. He is able to walk, with head bowed, back bent, and a shuffle, as one in a funeral dirge.

Two days go by and the party comes upon some New Hampshire men. The ice has cleared on the Merrimack, they say, and though the water is still fast, the river is navigable. They lead the party to some river men, who guide them to the next series of cataracts.

And so they make their way south in various crafts on the big river, crafts not recommended to one accustomed to swift travel by birch-bark canoe, and then over hill and dale by horse cart, and on foot, until they are only half a day from the Blake family farm in Wrentham.

“Go to Wrentham, and tell Elizabeth that her husband will join her soon,” Nathan says to Hawks. “From here, the old king and I go on alone.”

By now Hawks and the other men have come under Caucus-Meteor's spell, for he's delivered long oratories in English that would shame a minister at the pulpit. There is no need to swear these men to secrecy. They know they are in the presence of some profound if indiscernible moment; they leave Nathan and Caucus-Meteor in full knowledge that the captive and his captor are part of a ceremony in which discretion, intimacy, and mystery are one.

That night it rains. Caucus-Meteor and Nathan stay under a bark shelter and keep warm with a fire.

“You've gained some pluck,” Nathan says.

“Just enough,” says Caucus-Meteor.

“I feel at peace,” Nathan says.

“It's because your service is almost complete, and thus you are relieved of whatever confusion was inside you. You only needed a bit of rescue from the devil that draws men west. Otherwise, on your own, you behaved well; you submitted yourself to the judgment of the village. And now the village is no more. Never mind that you were in part the agent of its demise. All that remains is your God, and I think your God was telling you that you had an errand. You were so long in Canada, because you were waiting for the circumstance to reveal itself. Now it is manifest.”

“Yes, I understand now that my place is here in New England. My only regret is Black Dirt. What will become of her, Caucus-Meteor?”

“Like you she is practical-minded, and her love for you was practical, just as your love for her was practical. I tricked the two of you into marrying, and you both made the best of it. She never really loved you, Nathan. She never really loved her first husband, Adiwando, either, else she wouldn't have grieved for him so long. I never should have arranged that marriage. Women who lose husbands they love get over their grief quickly, and remarry. It's only women who are never sure of their love who grieve long. I know the man Black Dirt really loves. I love him myself, but I prevented her from marrying him because he belonged to a different race. She still loves him, he still loves her—I know it from their behavior, though they won't admit it themselves. My last act before coming to you was to go to him, and explain to him the feelings he has been denying for years. He will seek her out, and he will marry her, and they will raise your child. Of this I am sure. You've provided your last service to me, Nathan. Now you are wholeheartedly my son.” And the old king gives Nathan his blessing.