A Discovery of Strangers (35 page)

We discovered then that Michel had gathered no
tripe de roche
, but had halted for the purpose of putting his gun in order with the intention of attacking us, as we had suspected.

Hepburn and I were another six days before we staggered into Fort Enterprise, though we had less than twelve miles to travel, where we had the melancholy satisfaction of embracing Lieutenant Franklin and his companions, the wretchedness of whose abode it is impossible for me to describe.

We weep with you, Sir, and with your family for a gentle, tender-hearted son and brother now lost. His talents shed a lustre upon the Expedition, even as the memory of his blessed spirit has given me the strength to write these clumsy words with much crossing out, which I pray God in mercy may in the manner best known to Himself reach you, to offer a few moments of consolation to you in your inexpressible loss.

It is evening and we three are still alive at Fort Enterprise, together with Adam, the Indian translator, very low. We have made up an outline report and a packet of letters to our loved ones. Fear of death has long held no meaning for us. We pray now for peace to die in the Lord. With the highest esteem, I am, Reverend Sir,

Your very sincere friend,
John Richardson

The name for it is “long pig”, you ever heard of that?

Ask any English tar an’ he’ll tell you. Give him a drink, an’ he’ll tell you more than you can stomach, ha-ha!

Stomach all right it is, an’ was, all of them bloody big Canadian paddlers dead, just dropped an’ dead on that trek from the Northern Ocean over all those rivers an’ barrens an’ snowdrifts an’ rocks an’ that big double rapid on the Coppermine, Obstruction Rapids, what took us nine days trying to get across till St. Germain, who could do anything, made that cup out of canvas an’ we pulled ourselves across one by one — the rapids really finished us. But those Canadians were dead, an’ our English officers alive — except poor Hood shot when he lies dying already, our officers live to come home an’ every one of them quick as winking Knights of the Garter an’ famous.

An’ me too, alive, the one yattering tar daft enough to go every step with them when even the Orkneymen — God be blessed, quick Orkneymen! — know enough to run early in the hard going, me a sailor of the bottom class given a soft lick on the London docks all those years, an’ now more than soft in the sweet air of Van Dieman’s Land, sweet if you ain’t a gaolbird here, all because I come alive out of that trek, you think ten Canadian voyageurs are falling down dead because they were
weaker
than us? Ha!

You hear me now, I lived with those Canadians for three years, an’ ate an’ slept with them too. More than I wanted, but that’s the English way, the servants sleep together whether they can talk to each other or not, I saw those buggers work, blessed
be God! work strong as any ox an’ so fast on their feet or with their hands you couldn’t see them move, that quick, an’ when the rapids there come roar a white wash down a canyon bend they’d never seen before an’ those great canoes thin as paper an’ loaded deep to the gunnels, you should of heard them laugh, riding that, where one wrong stroke an’ it all goes smash! riding it like ducks light an’ sailing. Or seen them paddle across a lake singing to a rhythm that would break your back before your lungs, sixty strokes every minute between pipes, that’s a hour steady without a stop! I seen them naked, many a time, they had shoulders an’ chests like a great Scots Clydesdale.

An’ only two of them lived, that’s all. Two of the eleven, or twelve — talk about disciples, ha! One alive was Solomon Bélanger,
le gros
they called him, his brother
le rouge
was … well, left behind to “rest”, like we said to them then. But Bélanger
le gros
was so strong he walked through snow from Fort Providence to Enterprise in five days with mail in November, 1820, more than one hundred and fifty miles of devil’s winter, the last thirty-six hours without stopping, straight into a snowstorm an’ come in, we had to break the ice off his face to know who it was. An’ a year later it was him found the Indian track for Mr. Back that saved us all, an’ us in the Fort giving up, mostly dead.

He was one that lived, an’ Joseph Benoît the other, a square hulk as wide as he was tall, an’ so thick no one could lock his arms round him to throw him. I never knew which was stronger, Joseph was the only one ever dared to say a word back at Solomon, though once he didn’t blow his breath talking, he just grabs
le gros
by his leather pants an’ shirt an’ hoists him over his head an’ throws him in the Yellowknife River. I think Joseph could have taken
le gros
if he had wanted to. I saw them dance
around the fire watching each other close enough, like two old dogs who’ve known each other for ever, you know, circling and pissing in the same spot, one beside the other.

Those two the only ones, the other ten dead. What for?

Ah-h-h-h God … I think there were times John Franklin thought they died because they cursed so much, those Canadians. It seems to me a good easy vice for working men, it don’t take time from work, nor energy, an’ costs nothing, but the Lieutenant thought their cursing was so
sinful
. He couldn’t even understand their Cree French! The name of God an’ all His shining attributes an’ history was there plain enough, known or unknown, an’ every blistering part of the Lord’s body uttered in vain, though the way they said it they sure didn’t figure it was
vain
. I don’t know if they ever cursed him — Sir John — he just a lowly lieutenant then, an’ near the end they were even past cursing after five hundred miles in those paper canoes in an ocean always nearer ice than water. Mr. Back, Sir George now, mostly never translated everything they said, though sometimes I thought he explained more than needful, a raunchy little midshipman hard as a rock an’ needing something, anything I guess, with no women inside a month’s walking to titter him up like they always did. But when we left those Canadians behind in the snow, one skeleton after the other with a thin blanket an’ mouth bleeding scurvy, those poor buggers were all praying like the true Christians they was raised to be, not one of them wasn’t.

Why ten of twelve, falling down? I’ll tell you: they had carried so much of our useless stuff — useless for staying alive, if that’s what you’re after in that country, an’ what else can you chase there once you’re forced to get down to it? — carrying so
much stuff even on foot in bloody big packs even after all the canoes were smashed, that strong as they were, they got caught on a neat point: what between starving an’ dropping of scurvy an’ freezing, they were just
worked
to death.

On that Expedition I worked as hard as any Indian dog I ever saw, an’ I expected that being the only servant so called to four officers who ate what we ate — if there was anything — they worked hard too as officers go, an’ walked every step like us after the canoes were gone an’ carrying their own notebooks an’ instruments, but I tell you I never worked like those voyageurs piled high as donkeys. An’ when the Doctor an’ me were left alone to get to Fort Enterprise, Hood an’ Michel both dead, shot — o, the Doctor he had a good hand then, still steady enough with a barrel notched in the ear to make the one shot he had time for, that shot neat an’ quick as threading a needle with one stroke an’ Michel was in Mohawk heaven or hell, let him rest in peace or heat, whichever he found. But we did that together, me an’ him. You don’t think one of us could of done it alone?

The Doctor has reported, “Immediately on Michel’s coming up, I put an’ end to his life by shooting him through the head with a pistol.”

That’s right. The Doctor cannot lie, I tell you, he doesn’t. But you think he just walks up to that big bastard with a loaded pistol, even when he’s never let him see he’s got it, an’ that Mohawk ready to kill us as he is just stands there, smiling till the Doc gets it all primed ready — “Just stand at attention, my good man” — an’ lays it up between his eyes an’ neatly blows his brains out? A clean, legal, proper — execution? Hah! Life on the polar Barrens ain’t no Admiralty report, nor a thick book neither like Sir John’s, so “picturesque”, as they call all those pictures
and nice words put so nicely together to cost ten guineas.

Listen to me, once we see that Dogrib Rock, we just have to get to it to see the Big Stone, south-west, an’ Fort Enterprise is on the straight line between. When we see that, we know: Michel doesn’t need us no more, nor our compass, which he always thought floating magic an’ couldn’t read anyhow an’ we would never explain. We have to move quick now, because he sure as hell will.

So when he comes up with his rifle all primed to shoot us one after the other, an’ leave us for the wolves if they’ll have us, I walk straight at him as if I’m looking for brush for a fire an’ he brings up the rifle but not really expecting anything, my hands are empty, we’d been so quiet an’ convenient just getting weaker while he somehow stays so strong, we never say nothing about where he goes day after day an’ never brings back nothing to eat, though he always seems satisfied when he tells us there’s nothing to hunt, an’ lies down to sleep pretty easy with his loaded rifle, or even when he cursed “the French” as he called all Whites for stealing land from his people an’ using them for everything — even food! The shit Whites ate his three brothers one winter on the Ottawa River! Though I’ve heard it said his people were that cruel, an’ some priests say addicted themselves to the habit of eating human flesh — no, I don’t say nothing to him, not a word, then.

I just walk close past him, he not quite suspecting me yet, but alert, an’ stumble hard as I can into him, I knock him down ramming against him an’ would of got his first bullet in my gut — would’ve if I’d been normal big-gutted, he sure as hell fired — but the bullet grazes my hip an’ I crush him deeper in the snow, I bury him with all the weight and strength I’ve
got, I’m screaming it’s him or me, an’ the Doctor gets there an’ pokes the pistol in his ear an’ fires.

Execution — but you can see we didn’t have time for prayer, not then. Though I heard him call himself a Christian. He thrashed under me pretty hard, but never moved after.

God be praised for saving us by our own hand; an’ we’re three days snowbound, the Doctor reported. That’s true, there was lots of snow, falling an’ drifting, an’ we were too exhausted after that to move, I can tell you. He cleaned my wound with snow an’ sewed it with thin boiled babiche from Michel’s pants or I’d of bled to death, my hip didn’t heal till spring when I had some fat again. Michel froze fast right there in the snow where I dropped on him, an’ in those three days, “snowbound”, I ate a lot of him.

Very careful, he so strong from the voyageurs he’d fed off, Canadians, as we called them, feeding a Canadian — an’ him an’ Indian — feeding me, a circle the way we’d done it anyways for two years, though this was slightly more personal, you might say, taking care of each other, me starting with slices off his good muscle, arm or thigh, the way the Doctor told me it would work, slow, slow, a little broth first, then boiled, then roasted, otherwise you vomit an’ destroy yourself worse.

The Doctor himself wouldn’t have any of him, he was drinking only country tea with bits of Mr. Hood’s singed an’ boiled buffalo hide to eat. That man’s so strong in his head, an’ tough, o, a Scot beyond all Scots, give him oats — which are real hard to find on the tundra — or nothing, with principle enough to curl your hair a fine Christian grey, though at the time he wasn’t thirty-five. What he ate earlier, which Michel brought, wasn’t his responsibility, he said, though he suspected
something, it was the shape of the bones. An’ he reported to the Lieutenant that I “exerted myself far beyond my strength” so that we did finally reach Enterprise an’ found the four that’s left there starving worse than us. Where did I get the strength to hunt an’ carry the gun an’ a bit of powder an’ bullets an’ hatchet an’ bedding hide we hadn’t eaten, an’ lug the Doctor too, which he did not report, not exactly? On my bloody back!

His heels draggin’ two furrows behind me, though there was nothing to sow in that godforsaken snow. Sir John wrote in his book for anyone to see who can read an’ has ten guineas, “John Hepburn, an’ English seaman, and our only attendant, to whom in the latter part of our journey we owe, under Divine Providence, the preservation of the lives of some of our party.” How lucky, me of the bottom class somehow had all this amazing strength to offer them.

Believe that, an’ I won’t mock you. But I say, if you care for them, you serve. An’ I cared for them, every one, even Back, who could outwalk anybody except Solomon an’ wouldn’t let nothing stop him finding those Yellowknives again an’ talking them dizzy until they brought us meat an’ saved us — though I wasn’t there an’ I’ve got nothing to say about how he an’ St. Germain an’ Bélanger
le gros
lived long enough walking to find them, I wasn’t with them an’ I’d never ask. Back reported they left Gabriel Beauparlant — he always called him his servant — to “rest” in the snow somewhere near Roundrock Lake, an’ his body was never found, like none of them was, who’d go find them? — God, Back would’ve eaten anything an’ walked into blazing hell to save us, I know that an’ I served him, before an’ after, just as well as I served young “Robin” Hood, poor churchly bugger, he at least got some good loving in that hard country,
for a little while, till it got all bust up. It’s not for me to talk about. If you care for them, you do what’s needed so they can return home with their great principles safe an’ precious as the crown jewels of England. How many English servants, you think, have had the strength to save the upper class their shining Christian principles? Or, if they couldn’t save them, have never said a word about it neither?