A Discovery of Strangers (32 page)

“ ‘I thought I heard,’ the Prophet said, ‘that harm would come over us, like rain running, so I sang. Listen, singing I saw strange people come to this place, people pale as meat drowned in water, with unbelievable clothes. They went into the hard belly of this rock, into a hole they pounded there, right into the folded rock. They had tools harder than rock and they tore a hole out of it with a terrible noise, the rock screamed night and
day louder than anything we could have explained, you had to hear it two days’ paddling away across the lake.

“ ‘Out of that hole they pulled long sticks of rock as thin as arms, and so dangerous they shone, they melted your hand into burning air if you touched them. Then huge birds sailed down on their grey bellies onto Sahtú, and swallowed the sticks pulled from the mountain and flew away again, bellowing up from the water and roaring south, roaring who can understand where. But I saw that, it will come. Rock groans continuously. And when Rock groans it is warning us: be careful! Be careful. Strange people, more and more, strange fire, be careful!”’

Why, when the world is immeasurable and land endless, why does this child groan to be born here, and yet refuse? Forbidden Rock continually speaks what no one, not even the wisest, has yet comprehended beyond warning. And now she must wait here, cry with the earth and its inconceivable necessity of endurance.

She sees motion between hides above her: two ravens, riding light there. Long wings hold them above air it seems, the small density of their bodies blazing on the bright sky. She surrenders her heaviness to them, they soar over green summer land quick with flowers, the blue line of twisted rivers, and high stone rivers of eskers streaming their ridges north along the flat land into the white froth of rapids, lakes foaming into green lakes. The black movement of ravens intersects inland. Are they flowing into each other, are they doubled into one mellifluous sky warmth of People curved around and into each other skin upon skin? They open, sail wide and merge again. O to be raven, o to ride north on wind, to look down along the floating spine of the world.

Under her patient woman’s hood she drank the water she was given, but only one sip through a swan bone; she wore the stick necklace to scratch her heavy hair; she wore ptarmigan feathers tied below her knee so she would run all her life. And goose feathers in her hands to make her tireless, brushing them along her folded legs, blowing through them with a puff of breath like breathing out, “o-o-o-o-o” — the centre of his green name she could not yet dream was already coming — “o-o-o-o-o-o.”

And she remains on the grained rock. Past her knees, where the sheltering hides do not touch the ground, Greenstockings sees Greywing’s lovely head, body emerge in the saddle of the ridge. She is a woman, men are watching her, and when the deer grunt their rut in the valleys the men will dare each other to ask Keskarrah for her fresh warmth, take her, find her lust or accommodating gentleness. If she lets them. She is coming with food, her long strides as strong as the voice of the rock, she fears nothing here or anywhere. But behind her another shape, an old woman, The Hook’s mother. Even as Greenstockings sees this, pain lengthens through her body again, stretches her long and groaning.

But she struggles onto her knees as she has been instructed, gasping, pushing down and pushing because her body is tearing at itself, because the child will not move, there is space for more than a man between her legs but the child refuses and the old woman is beside her, one strong hand warm on her back and the other caressing her stomach, chanting under her breath,

It is time to breathe, little child,
Come out, come out,
It is time to eat, little child,
Come out, come out, bite the sweet air,

and Greywing wipes her face with fingers of water, catching her cries in a wet hand, the ground rhythm still rocking her, throbbing in her ears with her mouth gaping for air, the water and blood pushes a thick line down her thighs into the patient moss. She clutches the two rooted trees bent over her, heaving, heaving down until she will split and all her muscles lock in cramp together, down, down. But the child refuses.

When the pain has relented a little, the old woman eases her against herself, heavily onto her right side; looking away from the lake between hides, up into spruce and shouldered rocks. Her face shines bent over Greenstockings, her eyes and mouth hunched as if in its folds her ancient skin sheltered goodness.

“Almost ready now to show you its face, this one,” she says, chuckling a little. “But it is fearful, coming here from so many rivers away.”

“From farther than that,” Greenstockings whispers through her teeth.

“O-o-o-o, over stinking water,” the old voice so quiet, as if too gentle to know. “It’s very strong, come such a long journey.”

“Will it be … worn out?”

The old woman’s hand searches hard under the furs Greywing has folded over her, exploring her belly that shimmers, teeters over an awesome recognition of coming pain.

“No, no,” she says, her other hand firm as rock against the small of Greenstockings’ back, so exactly placed, so precisely comforting. “No, this one is very strong, you can feel that. It will live longer than you both lying together.”

And for one shiver she knows thin Robert Hood again, his arms locked around her, alive or dead they will never let each other go, her legs hooked over each other into the fold of his
narrow buttocks and pulling, holding him rigid, rooted inside herself as her shoulders suck in his hands and their faces are face upon face, her child must be, it will be, it started with him, the hovering, distended agony of her womb declares this to her: yes!

“…a baby’s cry beside great Sahtú,” the old woman chants her ancient birthing story, both hands fondling and circling her great gift now. “O, that is strong, it will come, come, girls cannot find such a beautiful child, no, not many fine girls, but a woman can, you can, you must look small, small and there it will be in the split print of a caribou’s hoof, that passing goodness in moss, perfect and small, no bigger than a thumb, crying for you!”

While Greywing cradles her head on her folded thighs; wipes her sweating face and feeds her blood soup. And tries to tell her other stories, talking of People now as they rest and wait, for today at least.

“The Hook talks with our father, like Bigfoot talked when he came, they sit all day and eat and talk. The Hook says, ‘We have to go farther south, to the traders,’ and our father says, ‘There are fine caribou here, we’re moving south as they move,’ and The Hook says, ‘Our guns can’t shoot without powder,’ and our father, ‘Of course, but are there no trees left for pounds, no braided gut for snares, no rivers for spearing?’ and The Hook laughs, ‘Bigfoot is near the traders, if we don’t go he’ll get all the guns!’ and our father laughs right back at him, ‘And get a bigger head too! Can’t you see, I left him to go with you? We have enough hatchets and needles and pots to carry now, if we hammer the guns we have into spearheads we don’t need to visit those traders for two years, or if we’re lucky, three.’ ”

Greenstockings has to smile; hearing in Greywing’s voice her father’s delicate needling, so exact in its explications of the land for hunters who, caribou thick around them or travelling just over the next ridge, nevertheless still cannot think further than “Kill! Kill!”

“You’ve seen the contradictions of the traders,” Keskarrah debates. “They want us to hunt caribou, as we have always lived, because they need that meat to eat too, it is too far for them to carry food from the stinking water — but they want us to
live different
too. They really want us to use up our lives killing small animals, as many as we can.”

The Hook says, “Small animals live here, lots of them, the traders want only their skin.”

“But who eats fox, or marten, unless they’re starving?”

The Hook cannot answer that; he doesn’t really think that tramping through snow and collecting small bodies contorted hard as rock in traps, or finding the stumps of gnawed legs, is worthy of a hunter who has travelled with the forests of caribou along ridges and down to the glacial lakes. After waiting politely, Keskarrah continues,

“Caribou have always given us what we need to live, why kill every small animal? To please Whites? Why? And destroy ourselves in winter and summer walking the tundra like loaded dogs to the traders with their fur? To get powder for guns? If we don’t use their guns, we won’t have to carry powder or lead. Iron knives and needles are very good, of course, and kettles, but Copperwoman has always given us fine copper ones.”

“But if others have White things,” The Hook insists shrewdly, “we have to have them too.”

“Why?”

“Guns are for killing, they can kill us too, very well. If our enemies have guns.…”

Keskarrah waggles his hands as if batting away the last groggy mosquitoes of summer. “We already know enough ways of killing, we don’t need more.”

“Bigfoot wants to hunt only with guns, it’s so easy.…”

“We all know that. And we also know that last winter he kept sending his young men to Thick English: ‘Give us more powder, so we can hunt!’ We have to beg Whitemuds for their things so we can live in our own land? Huh!”

For a moment Keskarrah’s disgust splatters about his lodge like spit; not even The Hook can find a word to say, though his mouth is open.

Keskarrah is staring up, the fire’s smoke ascending faint as prayer.

“People I think can kill themselves, trying to carry too much,” he says. “And also, there is Whitesickness. Traders won’t trade you that, o no, they don’t offer you sickness for furs or food, but often a person receives it anyway. As a gift, I suppose … something from Whites, a little extra. When I was a boy more than half the southern Pointed Skin and Cree people were killed by a blistering, bleeding sickness that no medicine could stop. Wolves and rocks didn’t give them that, neither did caribou. And the very best trader guns couldn’t kill it either.”

Hearing Greywing tell her this, Greenstockings almost forgets her body. Earlier that summer, at the place on the River of Copperwoman where, if you wait quietly at dawn, you can sometimes smell the sea, Greenstockings recognized that Bigfoot’s head had finally swollen too large for him to wear the black Whitemud hat any longer. It happened when Thick English
gave The Hook a shiny medal to hang around his neck, and he in turn gave him every bit of meat his People had; while Bigfoot watched, his face blacker than the sun could burn it. Then, for the first time she heard Bigfoot interrupt her father while he was still speaking:

“These English,” Bigfoot declared then, glaring across the river north to the distant haze of Copperwoman Mountains, “have brought us no sickness. Only many good gifts.”

Deliberately her father waited; to be certain Bigfoot was finished.

“Gifts.” Keskarrah spoke finally, and continued with stunning directness, “Gifts. Given to every person who does exactly what they say. Who works for them like the Halfmuds. Gifts we then have to carry.”

“We smoke their tobacco,” Bigfoot argued, but could not look at him; Keskarrah persisted,

“And beyond good smoking, how have these ‘gifts’ helped
US?”

“No one has died.”

“Two hunters died.”

“The lake took them. And we lived without sickness through the winter.”

Keskarrah smiled slightly. “We haven’t lived well with our ancestors through a winter before?”

“They’ve come to us, they’re our guests!”

“That’s true. And we are such People who know well in our hearts how to welcome guests. But no one changes their whole life, for guests.”

Bigfoot said then, very strong, “It is as I said when they came: they are here now, we can’t change that.”

“I know,” Keskarrah answered, suddenly sad. “And These English may go away, or die, hopefully before they find whatever it is they want here. The land will take care of them, I think Copperwoman will give them less copper for their giant boats than she gives us. But the White traders stay with us because they’ve found what they want — fur. And they are finding ways to make us want what they have, all this Whitemud stuff piled up, I think it can make a person avaricious to have more of it, just a little, more, and finally like Whitemuds you have so much you have to force other People to carry it for you because otherwise someone will steal it from you.”

“Stealing … we’ve always stolen women.”

“A good woman doesn’t come from Whitemuds.”

“But a person needs one to live.”

“Yes … as a person needs a good man to live.”

“Sometimes you have to steal one.”

“Yes, men sometimes do that, and often they don’t — men and women find each other otherwise, and both want what they have found. And,” he added thoughtfully, “some old men tell a stealing story, again and again. As if they didn’t know any better.”

Keskarrah and Bigfoot looked at each other steadily, reading each other’s tone correctly there on the gravel ridges of the River of Copperwoman. Beside the voyageur canoes piled high with Whitemud things, The Hook was talking with Thick English, and from a distance the large medal around his neck glinted in the sun very much like the one Bigfoot had been given a year earlier on the blacksand shores of Tucho — when the flag had burned like a beacon, though they had not then understood what it signalled. But they were thinking about that now as well.

Keskarrah turned away; for a time he contemplated the Copperwoman Mountains on the northern horizon. He said at last, even more sadly,

“Copperwoman was stolen. But stolen by enemies, and out of that she gave us a great gift beyond her story, as you know. A man may think he has power over a woman, but if he takes a woman who doesn’t want him, she can make his life taste like dogshit. Even if he tries to beat her twice a day.”

Bigfoot was also considering Copperwoman’s story, sinking year by year into those mountains, escaping deeper and deeper into the memory of her abuse. Taking her gift of copper with her.

“If These English find her,” Keskarrah concluded, “very soon not even the top of her hair will be there for us.”