The Old American (20 page)

“Nathan, what does the English word
sill
mean?” asks Caucus-Meteor, as the men sit around the makeshift stove, propped on sticks in the shanty.

“It is a beam that rests on a foundation upon which the remainder of the house is built. Where in your travels did you find that word, master?”

“Not in my travels, but in yours. In your sleep. Your dreams sound a little to me like your prayers, but the words are different. Times are I think you are a sorcerer, for you speak words such as sill with incantation.”

“Nay, I am only a common man.”

“Common in the head, yes, but in the hands you are a sorcerer. The barn we burned, the cabin we burned—you built those places less out of need than enjoyment. You built the first log cabin in Upper Ashuelot. You built the barn and back door where you hoped to escape, and where I cornered you. You built whimsy doodles for your children. You built this shanty to save an old man from freezing to death. Nathan, why was your barn bigger and grander than your house?”

The question unaccountably upsets Nathan Blake. A flood of emotion envelops his face. He says nothing. Caucus-Meteor inspects his eyes. “You are full of shame and magic, Nathan Blake. How can a question regarding a barn fill a man with shame and magic?”

“I wish to speak no further on this matter.” And he turns his head away for privacy.

Days later Nathan Blake pours out the story to Caucus-Meteor. “I keep myself from falling into madness by building my wife's imagined house in my thoughts.”

“So there's no magic in you,” says Caucus-Meteor. “It is only memory and prayer and sheer loneliness. Tell me now what you think.”

“I think about sills, placing them on good stone sunk deep into the ground for a structure not to be upset by frost. I think about the pleasures of using a good, sharp chisel. I think about the triumph of a square saw cut all the way through a piece of pine. At the approximate location of the four corners of the basement site, I pound wooden stakes into the ground with a maul made of a maple branch with a burl for the hammer end. Run tight lines from stake to stake. Level the lines.”

“The labor of mind brings some satisfaction. You wish now to shout from the tops of the wigwams that unlike the savage who enslaves him Nathan Blake believes in Jesus Christ, and he believes in … what is the language for straight boards?”

“Plumb, square, and level,” Nathan says in English.

“And, surely, too, you think of heaven.”

“Yes, I think of heaven, to soothe me during this hellish experience. The earth may be a rank and wild place, fit only for savages, but in my reckoning, heaven is well laid out with a good stone foundation and squared corners.”

Nathan stops talking, exhausted by emotion. “Congratulations, Nathan Blake. You are becoming less of an Englishman and more of an American, for you are expressing yourself through oratory rather than actions. But your tale is unfinished. The other day you spoke to me of shame. Where is the shame?”

“The shame is double. The house was never built. I brought my Elizabeth to a log cabin, but I promised to build her a house. But the barn came first. You see, master, in my heart of hearts I have never wanted that house to be built in New England, or in any known realm at all. I dreamed of a place I called Paradise Lots, a farm town where the only vote was mine.”

“And in these paradise lots were women for the having, but no wife to scold, no family to tie you down.”

“Aye,” says Nathan in English.

“You speak as if your shame is large and unique. But you are like men anywhere, unreliable in the things you say to a woman, and imaginative in the things you truly desire. You are possessed by these thoughts today because of your slave condition. I suggest you reduce the size of your shame to its proper proportion. Let us move on to a related matter that interests your master. Suppose a great ruler, a king of kings, were suddenly to appear in North America. Could you build him a palace?”

“If I had the tools, the stone, the timbers, a foundry to shape iron, beasts of burden to carry the loads.”

“This ruler's palace would be of sticks no thicker than a man's wrist, and none straight.”

“Why such inferior material?” Nathan asks.

“Because such is the palace that appears in his dreams. It is like the castles he saw in Europe, but instead of stone laid on stone, his castle is a wigwam of bark and sticks that goes on forever. It is a house for Americans.”

“I think you know this ruler well.”

“He hardly knows himself. But this palace of sticks, could you build it?”

“To build a castle or sticks, a man would need divine guidance.”

“When I see you on your knees, Nathan Blake, do you pray to build your own castle to please your demanding wife?”

“Nay, my prayers and my imaginings are a far piece from one another.”

“Perhaps that is why the god of echoes does his work. If I had a god as powerful and meddling as yours I would think about him more, and ask him for more favors, for the king of heaven should be heavenly in his largess.”

“To use one of your words, Caucus-Meteor, I would think it ostentatious to think about God, and presumptuous to beg favors from him.”

“Then why pray?”

“I pray for guidance.”

“What you really mean is you don't know what to think about when you do think about god, nor what you should ask for or how. Your prayers, therefore, are worship without purpose. God must think you a comical creation indeed. Perhaps it is this knowledge of what god requires of him—so lacking in a man—that is what a man really prays for when he prays for guidance; I suspect your god sees you as you see him, as one looking through a wavy glass pane. Which reminds me of the first time I saw you with your family at the dawn of the raid.”

“The glass pane allows light to come through,” Nathan says, and then something of his personal loss comes to his face.

“What's the matter, Nathan? What are you thinking?”

“That like you I've suffered a shock, for my mind's eye is blind to my wife. I can no longer picture her.”

“That is no shock,” says Caucus-Meteor. “That is merely another condition imposed by your slave status. I will picture her for you, for my shock has brought me sight within.”The old king takes one of his slave's hands and holds it the way he held his children's hands when they were very young. “Shut your eyes. Your wife had hair like corn silk. Her skin was pale with a blush on the cheeks, and she had little blue eyes full of fright. I suggest that you practice thinking about her mouth as she cups water from a stream in her hand and brings her lips to it.”

Now Nathan kneels before his master, who is still holding his hand. The old king recounts in great detail all he can remember of Nathan's family. Soon Nathan's shoulders and chest begin to heave. He is a man weeping with his body. After the moment of intimacy passes between the two men, Caucus-Meteor releases Nathan's hand, and the slave shifts his body position until the two men are sitting across from one another, conversing in a casual manner as if nothing profound had just occurred.

“Old king, what do you think about when you eat your fire?”

“I think about being reunited with my mother and my wife in the next world.”

“And what of your father?”

“I revere the memory of my father, but I confess that I cannot think about him. He's too removed from me. I suppose he is to me as your god is to you, a superior being who does not speak.”

“My god is not a man, and yet he does speak.”

“Words given to prophets for the purposes of instruction are not speech. They are rumor.”

Nathan smiles sardonically. “You remind me, old man, a little of Mark Ferry, the hermit of our town.”

“Is the hermit a king?”

“The hermit is never a king.”

“But the king is always a hermit.”

“I never quite understand you, Caucus-Meteor, but I think I trust you, as savages go.”

“You would best be more wary.”

“You think of me as one who is gullible, then.”

“I think of you as a sometime son.”

“Then release me from this bondage, father.”

Caucus-Meteor mimics Nathan's sardonic smile, but says nothing.

“The tribe assigned me to care for you, but you are healed,” Nathan says; “you can care for yourself. You no longer need a slave.”

It's minutes before Caucus-Meteor answers, because he has thought so long and hard on this matter with no definite conclusion. “I would give you your freedom, for you deserve freedom, as all men do. But I cannot. I gave you to the tribe. It would take a vote, and they would never let you go.”

“You are lying to me, old king.”

“I am half-lying—it's the way of a king. The truth is you are too docile, the perfect slave, like the oxen you speak so fondly of.”

“Perhaps, but you lie when you say it would take a vote. Caucus-Meteor could release me, and his people would part the water for my walk to Quebec City.”

“I could let you go, but I will not.”

After that the fishers in the ice hut are silent for a while until

Caucus-Meteor says, “Now you are thinking that maybe you will kill me.”

“Yes, that is exactly what I am thinking.”

“But you cannot.”

“You told me earlier that I was starting to think like one of your own people, so perhaps another day I will find it in myself to murder like a savage.”

“If you decide you can kill, I suggest you do it as an Englishman, for your guilt will be less, and when you die, Jesus will be more likely to let you pass into his realm than if you kill me as a savage.”

The exact timing of the midwinter hunt is never the same, though it tends to come late in February. Caucus-Meteor watches the weather, trying to guess the right moment, for he's decided to join the hunt this year with his slave. Haggis picks the day of the hunt based on the conditions of snow. Some years the snow is never right, and the hunt can be difficult and unproductive. This is not one of those years; this year promises to be ideal. A warm spell a week before melted the top layer on the deep snow cover. When a hard cold following creates a crust on top of the snow, Caucus-Meteor announces, “We will return to the winter village with the next visitor with a dog team.”

They arrive the following day just as the men are about to leave with their weapons and gear—muskets, clubs, bows and arrows, knives, toboggans, dogs, noggins, pemmican, coats, mittens, blanket rolls. They've been waiting for this day for weeks: when the top layer of snow can hold the weight of men and dogs, but not the sharp-hoofed deer or the heavy moose. Sleds pulled by dogs skim the surface nicely.

All able-bodied men will participate in the hunt except for Omer Laurent. Hungry Heart has had a miscarriage, and she is very ill. He will remain in the village to be by her side.

“From what I can tell by the symptoms,” Caucus-Meteor tells

Nathan, “I think she probably induced her womb to abort, a trick they teach in Montreal among certain women who cater to the sailors.”

Haggis leads the hunters to a narrow gorge where young hemlocks grow, and the steep rock walls block the wind. “How do the hunters know to come here?” Nathan whispers.

“Haggis has been snowshoeing to this deer yard all winter, observing the herd below, letting them observe him, so they are used to his presence,” says Caucus-Meteor.

“What is beyond the gorge?” Nathan asks, and Caucus-Meteor can tell from the dreamy look in Nathan's eyes that he's thinking again of his “far place.” The old American decides to tease his slave.

“Why, a great river that flows west.”

“Really?”

“Who can say in truth what one will find in the west?” Caucus-Meteor says coyly. “I have not been there myself, but I've heard tell of deep soil and tall grasses.” The old slave master decides to say no more. He's titillated his slave just enough to keep his mind occupied with pleasing if false matter, which is the best thing a master can do in his own interest with his slaves.

Haggis divides the men into three groups. At one end of the ravine are the beaters. Caucus-Meteor and Nathan are beaters. They start down the ravine whooping and hollering. Behind them are a second group of beaters with dogs. The beaters and dogs panic the moose, which leave their winter home foundering in deep, crusty snow. At the mouth of the ravine awaits the third group, the shooters, led by Haggis himself. Haggis fires his musket, and the slaughter begins. The few animals that slip past the shooters are run down by the dogs, and clubbed to death by the beaters. Not a single animal escapes. The hunt has been a great success.

The real work comes afterward—skinning, gutting, and hacking up all those enormous animals into manageable units for transport on sleds. It's bloody work, and Nathan is in the middle of it. When it's over, Nathan's clothes are stained with blood; his hands sticky with blood; mouths of many of the Americans drip with blood, for they spoon it like a broth.

“Your slave is better with the butcher knife than the gun,” says Haggis, in the teasing manner that men reserve for those they respect. “You think, old king, he'll carve you up one of these cold winter nights?”

“He could have filleted me back on the lake, but he doesn't have the heart for human killing.” Caucus-Meteor calls to Nathan, who is cutting away the musk glands on a big buck. “Nathan, tell us what our slave thinks of our hunt.”

“It's a messier kind of slaughter than I remember for our cows or pigs, though, I will admit, more … more …” He lacks a word in Algonkian to express his thoughts and goes silent.

“I think he wanted to say more like the pleasures denied those who enter Christian heaven,” says Caucus-Meteor.

“And what does the slave's master think about our hunt, for you have not participated in years?” asks Haggis.