The Spirit Keeper (36 page)

It felt like forever. I sat on a large rock, weeping, holding my face in my hands as my tears washed salty streaks down the red stains on my arms. I wept for my father in his pool of blood and for my mother in her captivity. I wept for all the family members I would ne’er see again. I wept for Thomas, who died defending his family, for William, who offered to fight for me, and for my little sister Susannah, whom I always slept beside. So far from me, all of them, in time and space. I would ne’er be able to tell any of them the story I had told countless strangers, and that thought made me sad, so horribly, horribly sad.

I didn’t hear Hector coming, but then he was there, staring at me in astonishment. “Why are you crying?” he asked, worried almost beyond expression.

I shook my head and held him off, sniffling, ashamed of myself. “I don’t know—I just . . .” and I wept again, helplessly.

“But what happened? Why did you come here? Why are you sitting here?” Hector was completely unable to comprehend my behavior.

“I’m lost!” I snapt, inexplicably angry. “I’m useless and stupid and the only thing I knew for sure was that you would find me. And you did.” In spite of my resistance, Hector put his arms ’round me and held me whilst I sobbed like a little girl. He thought I was scared because I was lost, and I let him think what he would. The truth was that I was beginning to suspect my real problem, and I was not yet ready for him to figure it out.

He had failed to kill another deer, but we got the meat from the first one back to our camp, and o’er the next few days we stript and dried it as quickly as we could.

Then we were paddling north again, soon to arrive at another village, where we gave another rousing and well-received rendition of our story. But that night, after we hurried to our sleeping furs, Hector reached to pull the bearskin ’round us and when his arm brushed my breast, I gasped in pain. He pulled his arm back and looked at me, alarmed. “Did I hurt you?” he asked anxiously.

I swallowed heavily and looked up at him, crinkling my nose. I put his hand gently on my swollen breast. I could see his face in the dim firelight of the lodge; he was frowning, uncomprehending. I took his hand and moved it down to my flat, hard belly, which would not be that way much longer. I bit my lip and shrugged. I heard him inhale sharply.

I wisht I could see his face more clearly, but all I could see was that he was staring down at my body. Finally he lifted his eyes to mine and tried to smile. “Your mother . . .” he said slowly, “she had a baby in one of your big canoes? And another in a . . .” He tried to say “wagon,” and I nodded in agreement to both questions. I didn’t mention that one of those babies was stillborn and the other died within hours of birth, but I reckoned such an omission was surely not as bad as an outright lie.

Hector nodded, as if to himself, then smiled at me, his eyes sparkling in the firelight. He leant o’er to kiss me, but I winced at the weight of him on my tender breasts. He pulled back and leant so that the only parts of us touching were our arms and foreheads.

In truth, I was terrified at the thought of being pregnant out in that foreboding countryside, but I knew it was far too late to start worrying about that now. Seeing Hector was also terrified did not soothe my fears, so I tried to console us both by reminding him the Seer had said I would live with his people. “We just have to trust in his Vision,” I said softly.

Hector nodded but said nothing. I started to fall asleep only to jerk awake, startled by something in my head. I could’ve sworn I heard Hector’s thoughts. He was thinking that sometimes seers can be wrong.

 • • •

The next day, after I was in the canoe ready to go, Hector stufft a large new bundle in amongst our other things. “What is that?” I asked, turning ’round to look.

“It is a buffalo hide. Very thick. Very warm. I traded much of our meat for it because my wife is always cold.”

I looked at him and could not help it—I began to cry. He had to push the canoe quickly into the river so the people who had come to see us off would not be alarmed. When we were out of their sight, I glanced back and said I was sorry for crying all the time, but he said now that he understood why I cried, he did not mind so much.

At that, of course, I blubbered like a baby.

~29~

D
URING MY TURN AT
night-watch, I wrapt myself in the buffalo robe and sewed clothes for Hector, happy to have something to keep my thoughts occupied. I made both a warm shirt and thick breeches, and tho’ they were unlike any other Indian’s clothes, Hector was delighted with them, touched by my determination to give him something special.

I finisht the clothes just in the nick of time. He had worn them for only a day or two when the sky grew dark and snow began to fall in a way it hadn’t snowed before. The wind blew hard against us. After steering ’round a rather large sandbar, Hector turned our canoe to the riverbank. The sandbar was surrounded by and covered with dried-out rushes, which rustled and rattled in the wind like the hissing whispers of a worried rabble.

’Twas full dark and our dinner was nigh ready when we heard a hail from the river. Two large canoes were rounding the sandbar, headed our way. The canoes were tethered together, with two men in the lead canoe, one in the other. None of them wore shirts and the animal hides that covered their heads were white with snow. A man in the first canoe said something we could not understand, then gestured, asking if they could share our camp.

Normally there would have been no question. Since we escaped from Three Bulls, Hector ne’er allowed other campers anywhere near us. He hesitated e’en now, but the cold and dark gave him pause. He turned and said that if he sent them on, they would no doubt camp close by; at least if they were here with us, he could keep an eye on them.

I shrugged. I always left such decisions up to Hector.

The lead man was nondescript, identical, in my view, to the hundreds of Indian men I had met o’er the previous months. The one in the rear of the first canoe had a wide, flat forehead, and when Hector saw this, he spoke to him in a language I did not understand. The man eagerly responded. The man in the tethered canoe was very light-skinned, and his hair, instead of the jet-black I was accustomed to, was dark brown. His eyes were brown as well. When he saw me, his eyebrows contracted, and he tipt his head to ask in a thick accent if I spoke French.

For a time the five of us engaged in a most confusing and cacophonous conversation. Hector spoke with the flat-headed man, who then conveyed information to the others, whilst I spoke with the light-skinned man, who conveyed my conversation to the others, at the same time that Hector and I turned and filled each other in on what the two strangers were telling us. The effect was dizzying.

The two darker men were traders who had, in the spring, taken a large load of furs all the way to the Great River. There they met the light-skinned man and one other, who teamed up with them to bring a massive load of trade goods to some village well to the northwest of here. We must have passed them on the river, they said, but, at any rate, they knew all about us, because throughout their return trip they heard stories of us at almost every place they stopt. They were delighted to meet us, e’en awed, and this flattery had an unfortunate effect: we let our guard down.

When the traders went on to explain in an off-hand way their fourth partner was killed at some point in some sort of altercation, we should have paid more attention, but Hector was too busy playing host and I was too distracted by the mountain of trade goods. The man who spoke French bade me come to the canoes and take what I wanted from his kettles, pots, pans, spiders, tongs, but because I knew I must carry everything I owned for perhaps another year, I complimented him on his nice things and said I myself wanted for naught.

Encouraged by my interest, he dug down for a secure-looking hide satchel, from which he extracted a beaver-skinned pouch. He opened this to show me two leather-bound ledgers, which, he confided eagerly, he was going to use to prove to his father that he could be as successful as he. His father, it seems, was a French trader who traveled up and down the Great River, and this young half-breed was determined to impress him by establishing his own trade route on the Misery. “Do you know how to read and write?” I asked, amused by his youthful exuberance.

“Enough to keep records,” he said with pride.

I had no more than smiled at the man before Hector was beside us, demanding to see what we were looking at. Because I could not explain it quickly, he waved his hand to dismiss the subject as he gruffly said it was time to eat. Knowing Hector would be bothered if I paid attention to anyone but him, I served the food silently, no longer looking at the strangers. When the half-breed tried to re-engage me in conversation, I just grunted and kept my eyes averted the way Hector always used to do. Frankly, I was too tired to be sociable anyway and saw no reason to make Hector unhappy.

After we finished eating and I was cleaning up, the strangers pulled out some tobacco and all the men smoked. Hector regularly smoked when we were in a village, but because I found the odor noxious, he abstained ’round me. This particular evening the smoke actually made me nauseous, so when I was done with my work, I went back to our upturned canoe and wrapt myself in my warm furs. I had our usual fire in front of the canoe to keep me warm, but the strangers had started a fire of their own about thirty feet away, and this was where the men sat smoking. Knowing Hector would not sleep with strange men ’round, I reckoned I might as well enjoy some extra sleep, so I closed my eyes and quickly drifted off.

Sometime later loud laughter woke me up. I lifted my head to look o’er at the men only to see one of them raising a jug to his lips. I was immediately alarmed and called out Hector’s name. He did not respond, which alarmed me all the more. Only when I shouted his name loudly did he turn his head and slowly rise to come to me. He left behind a wobbly line of footprints in the two-inch-deep snow.

He stank of rum. “What are you doing?” I hissed.

He was taken aback by my tone. “We are smoking. They have a strange water they wanted to share with me. Why are you angry? All is well. You should sleep.” His speech was slurred.

“It’s not ‘water,’ you dog!” I snapt. I had ne’er called Hector a name before, but my outrage was beyond all bounds. I saw my words wounded him deeply; I did not care. “It is . . .” I did not know the word for “poison,” so I said, “Bad, bad, bad water! Do not drink it! It will make you sick!”

Hector hesitated. “They said this water is like tobacco. They said your people use it to make friendship.”

“My people use it to make stupid dogs of themselves!” When he still seemed uncertain, I became e’en more agitated. “Who knows more about my people—them or me? I am telling you not to drink this water! It is bad for you, Hector!”

“It is a gift,” Hector mumbled defensively. “To refuse a gift of food or drink is an insult.”

“I don’t care if it’s an insult! You must refuse it! And don’t let them drink it either!”

Hector’s face turned to stone as he said, “Who knows more about the ways of my people—you or me?” He rose to walk unsteadily back to the men’s fire.

I was shaking in fury. I pushed myself upright under the canoe and pulled the buffalo robe ’round me. I watched Hector flop back down beside the flat-headed man, who laughed and handed the jug to him. My husband took it and paused, considering. He looked in my direction, a bit blearily. Then, whilst looking directly at me, he raised the jug to his lips and swallowed deeply.

I felt as if my head exploded.

I was back at home—at the farm, in Philadelphia, in Boston. In every place we e’er lived, my father drank himself stupid whene’er he had the chance. Every scheme he e’er had to make money ended in a keg of rum. Every dream he e’er dreamt drowned in a keg of rum. Every sincere effort he e’er made to reform floated, face down, in a keg of rum.

And every time my father got good and drunk, he turned on my mother. He screamed at her and abused her and called her whore and cunt and slavering bitch, and he blamed everything—everything—that had e’er gone wrong in his life on her. “’Twas all yer fault!” he always slobbered, weaving unsteadily, “and now ye’ve burdened me with this goddamned batch o’ goddamned bastards, half o’ which I’m sure ain’t even mine! I ought to kill ya, y’witch—I ought to push ye right into the fire and watch the flames consume yer cursed flesh!” And we children would scream as he lunged for her and shook her and pummeled her with fists or books or empty bottles and we’d try to grab him, to stop him, to protect her, to defuse the desperate situation, but the madness always bounced us from wall to wall, breaking furniture, bursting clothes at the seams, bruising all of us from head to toe. On more than one occasion he actually got a hold of her sleeve or her wrist or her hair, and he dragged her kicking and screaming o’er the hearth into the fire. But before the flames could catch, somehow, somehow she was always able to claw her way clear of his drunken grasp, or one of the older boys would jump in to pull her out and slap away the sparks that smoldered on her clothes or hair or skin.

’Til they started drinking, too.

They changed when they started drinking, the boys. They stopt being mischievous lads who teased and taunted me and became violent men who tortured and tormented me. The drink took away their inhibitions, it took away their shame, and it left behind frustration, remorse, and limitless quantities of self-loathing.

Every time my father sobered up, he’d hang his head and scuff his feet and beg my mother to forgive him. He’d cry and cling on to her and tell her she was his everything, his whole world, all he had left. He said he’d be lost without her. And she always forgave him and she always ended up pregnant and she always took out all her anxiety and resentment on us. And then we huddled together, we children, waiting with bated breath for the next binge, the next blow-up, and the next terrifying level of descent on the swirling downward spiral that was our lives. We fought each other just to keep a hold on our tenuous positions as we all slid e’er down and down and down.