Barkskins. Annie Proulx

no. I only pity them. They have lost so much, so many.” Why could the man not grasp that the Mi’kmaq wished only to live their lives as they had for many generations, and that as every day passed that was less possible?

      “And France has lost so many. You would do better to think of them rather than these libertine heathens who are dogs and villains. They are not Christians as you, a designated man of God, might have noticed.”

      Père Crème, dismissed, tacked for the door, his feet at odds with each other and his neck wry. He prayed silently for the governor to become more observant, more kindly. Or better yet, to fall down in a fit and never rise. He immediately withdrew this cruel wish and requested forgiveness.

      Several days later he addressed a letter to his sister Marguerite, one of hundreds of letters never sent, for he had no sister. It eased his mind to have an imaginary confidante, and he was able to work out his sometimes chaotic thoughts this way.

       Dear Sister Marguerite.

      For a minute he imagined her, slender and pale, sitting in a green chair and opening his letter with a silver knife. She might wear a gold locket with a wisp of her brother’s hair in it—or a miniature of their mother, whom Père Crème could scarcely conjure from his faded memories.

       They do not have orderly Lives as we do. Their time is fitted to the abundance crests of Animals, Fruits and Fish—that is to say, to the Seasons of the Hunt and ripening Berries. One of the most curious of their attributes is their manner of regarding Trees, Plants, all manner of Fish, the Moose and the Bear and others as their Equals. Many of their tales tell of Women who marry Otters or Birds, or Men who change into Bears until it pleases them to become Men again. In the forest they speak to Toads and Beetles as acquaintances. Sometimes I feel it is they who are teaching me.

      He stopped for a long time before continuing with the feeling that he was getting it wrong.

       To them Trees are Persons. In vain I tell them that Trees are for the uses of Men to build Houses and Ships. In vain I tell them to give over so much hunting and make Gardens, grow Grains and Food Stuffs, to put order in their Days. They will none of it. Therefore many French people call them lazy because they do not till the Earth.

       I have heard a Story that in some earlier time …

       24

       Auguste

      The children of Mari—Elphège, Theotiste, Achille, Noë and Zoë—were trying to find their place in a world so different from Mari’s stories of the rich Mi’kmaw past. The realities were difficult.

      “Dîner!” called Noë without bothering to step outside, slapping down the worn wooden bowls, the old spoons. There was no response, not even from Zoë, who always had a remark. Noë stood in the doorway, listening. The offshore wind had shifted slightly but carried the fading clatter of boots on rock. They were wearing boots instead of moccasins. Noë knew what that meant but denied it. She stepped out onto the path. Auguste clutched her skirt. She saw them far down the shore crossing naked rock. If it were just Elphège and Theotiste—but no, it was all of them. Achille, Theotiste, Elphège and Rouge Emil, all three of her brothers and the cousin, and at the end, half-running to keep up with the striding men, the slight figure of Zoë. Anguish and rage mingled in her like a kind of soup made from nettles and grit. She shouted, “Go on, then!” and pulled Auguste up in front of her so he could see and mark this event.

      “That’s them,” she said through clenched teeth. She picked up a small stone and pressed it into Auguste’s hand. “Throw it,” she said. “Throw it at the no-goods that has run off.” Her voice rose again. “Go on then, you hell brothers and damnation sister,” and to the boy, “Throw it, throw your stone at them we’ll likely never see again.” But even as she said it she knew it was untrue, that she was acting out an imitation of drunken Renardette’s angry fits. She did not know why she sounded like someone she detested, nor why she spoke this way once again. She was not behaving as a Mi’kmaw. Why did she even think of Renardette, who was now deep in the past?

      The child cast the stone; it fell on the path. As it rolled, the boy saw Zoë, the smallest figure, turn and look back, Zoë who responded to his outstretched arm and waved. The lead figure turned as well and his arm cut an arc in the air, a kind of salute from Achille that made Noë groan. The men should be setting out to hunt moose, but because of the boots she knew they were going to work for the French logger.

      “Come, dear Auguste. We’ll eat all the dinner, just you and me.” Their house was a wikuom and although Mi’kmaq sat on the ground to be in contact with the replenishing earth, there was a low single-board table, the nails hammered into the legs from above. Before the stew redolent of duck meat, meadow garlic, wild rice and greens had cooled in the kettle the door flap was pushed aside and Zoë slid in.

      “Not what you think,” she said before Noë could start in. “They will cut trees on the St. John again. Rouge Emil heard from Eyepatch they should come. Just this winter. Elphège said tell you money is in his good moccasin. You use it for what we need, says he. They come back spring, those cut logs go in the river. Come back a little bit rich, maybe. But not Achille. He goes moose hunting.”

      Noë nodded. If Zoë stayed it was all right, and if Achille came back from his hunt in ten days or so, they could manage for a winter. It was the idea of abandonment she dreaded. All her life she had been afraid of being left alone while everyone around her vanished. She filled a bowl with stew for Zoë and set it before her. When the bowl was empty Noë filled it again.

      “They didn’t want to go, thinking what happened before. Rouge Emil’s father comes to stay with us so that don’t happen another time. He comes soon, I think. Other people see those brothers leave, think just you and me here.”

      “They think just me—they see you go with them.”

      Zoë shrugged and made a face. “Maybe. Maybe they see me come back, too.”

      A little later Rouge Emil’s father—Cache Emil—appeared in the doorway. He threw something large and heavy wrapped in bloodstained canvas on the floor.

      “Moinawa,” he said. “Bear meat.” He looked at the stew pot. Noë filled a bowl for him.

      “Good.” He told them he had shot the bear hunting with Achille a few weeks earlier. Not only bear meat, but he had brought his blankets and his flintlock. He would sleep outside in the small wikuom that Theotiste and Elphège shared.

      “I am here. No male persons will bother you.”

      Three years before the brothers had made a trip to La Hève to the lumber mill to ask if there was any work for them, but a man with a patch over one eye said the local Indians were sufficient, go away. The cousin, Rouge Emil, was persistent. He stood beside a stack of cut planks.

      “You got work for good axmen cut pine?” Everyone knew that the mast pines of Mi’kmaw lands were superior to the trees that grew along the St. Laurent, which were coarse in grain and more liable to snap. Eyepatch nodded. “It’s summer, but there’s always work for good choppers. Let’s see what you can do.” He fetched four axes from the mill, then filled his pipe. “See two spruce in front of the rocks? Take them down.” His tone was contemptuous, for he knew Indians were lazy and stupid. Eyepatch’s pipe was not finished before the spruce lay side by side on the ground, topped and limbed. He reversed his opinion of Indians.

      He nodded and they cut mast pines on the St. John River despite the summer heat and biting insects. In a few days they were crusted with black pitch, a kind of woodcutters’ armor. When they first had arrived the pine candles had been in bloom, each great tree pulsing out tremendous volumes of pollen until the sky was overcast and the choppers and even ships at sea wondered at the brilliant yellow showering down.