Barkskins. Annie Proulx

rose and stretched his long arms above his head.

      “It will be a good day,” said Theotiste, ever hopeful.

      Smoke coiled from René’s roof hole as always. Theotiste pushed in. Noë was making cornmeal porridge and dropped the spoon when he came through the door. “Brother! You terrified me. You know how our father died—I thought …”

      Zoë came in from the cow carrying a bucket of milk. She shrieked with joy and embraced first Theotiste, then Elphège. Her cry brought Achille up from the river, where he had been mending eel traps.

      Achille was almost too handsome a young man to look upon. He was tall but sinewy and as flexible as water, of perfect form. His glossy hair fanned out in the wind, his dark eyes were warm and amused. His mouth, like Mari’s, curled at the corners, and all who noticed this curving smile thought of her.

      The twins, still children, were more like René with stiff black hair and slanted eyes. They were active as all women were, bending, folding, picking up and reaching, handing out and taking, caressing, scooping good things into bowls, offering their brothers delicacies.

      The older brothers looked around, seeing the objects of their childhood—the old table marked with knife cuts. Theotiste remembered Mari wiping it with a piece of damp leather. Those wooden household plates—René had shaped them, Theotiste had smoothed them with a fine-grained stone. Mari’s old wikuom had sunk back into the earth but they remembered sleeping in it as children, remembered reeds of moonlight shooting through the tiniest holes.

      “Brothers,” said Achille, “I must tend my potash kettle. Come outside and talk with me.” They walked some distance to his potash works. He stirred the kettle’s contents with a stick.

      “It is our source of cash money—and the firewood I cut.”

      Money! thought Theotiste with scorn but he said nothing. They talked all day and far into the night. Achille said, “After Renardette left we burned her evil brew house. But men still came out of the woods looking for beer—and her.” Theotiste’s glance caught something shining on the high shelf against the entry wall. Something like a small snakish eye, he thought.

      “None here have married,” said Elphège.

      “Ah,” said Achille, “the Wobik girls are not Mi’kmaw girls. Should I not find a Mi’kmaw woman?”

      Theotiste nodded. “We all should do so. Even Elphège.”

      “Ho,” said Elphège.

      “Zoë and I never see a good man to marry,” said Noë. “We are out here in the woods and the only ones who come by are bad ones.”

      “So perhaps this place is not so good for you?” asked Theotiste.

      “No, no. It is not, even though in childhood it was pleasant, but what else can we do?”

      “We want you to come with us,” said Elphège, as though it had been his idea. “Theotiste and I are the oldest, but we are of the same blood and we will care for you always.” For Elphège this was long oratory.

      Theotiste spoke with the assurance of one who knows. “We intend to seek out the land of our mother. Even if it be greatly changed, there must still be a place for us among our people. Mi’kmaq still live there, perhaps even kin. I spoke many times with Mi’kmaq at Odanak. Some of them will come.”

      Achille nodded.

      “I had a vision some time ago that we must do this,” said Theotiste very softly. “First we come for you, then all go to Mi’kma’ki. I saw it fair and beautiful as our mother told us.”

      “But what will we do about Papa’s place?” asked Achille, waving his hand, encompassing the house, the river, the weeds, the potash kettle filled with the results of his labor.

      With some sadness Elphège thought that Achille might be more French than Mi’kmaw. “If you follow the white man’s ways of property you could sell it,” said Elphège. “Or, if you are not that way, just leave it and come with us. What are your thoughts?”

      It was clear what Achille’s thoughts were. He could not just walk away after so much chopping and burning. He was wedded to the idea of ashes as something of value. He had a sense of property. Elphège wondered if all Mi’kmaq were not changing into Frenchmen, wanting money and goods. Few could resist the luxuries, and Achille, Zoë and Noë were métis, half French, half Mi’kmaq.

      Theotiste nodded. “You maybe sell it. Is that old captain still alive? Bouchard?”

      “He was alive last week,” said Achille. “He is very old but strong. Yes, he would have ideas.”

      “Shall you go see him and ask what disposition might be made of this property, all this sad ravaged land? He may be helpful to us.”

      The next morning Achille and Theotiste set out to paddle to Wobik in René’s canoe, but less than three miles from the house something whistled overhead.

      “Vite! To the shore!” said Achille through clenched teeth, swerving them under hanging willows. The canoe scraped through tearing branches. Before the willows played out they crept up onto the bank and dragged the canoe behind them.

      “The forest is alive with bounty hunters. Let us leave the canoe here and go by foot. But warily.”

      Theotiste touched Achille’s shoulder in assent and they began to weave through the trees.

      “What, sell René’s house?” said Captain Bouchard. “Yes, such a thing can happen. There is a man, Jean Mague, a farmer from France looking for a property with cleared land and a house. He does not intend to waste the good years of his life chopping trees. I think he would pay a fair price. He will soon be here.” Jean Mague, he remarked, had two brothers, three grown sons, their wives, two nephews and their wives to farm with him. They were a strong group and handy with firearms. As the old man spoke, Jean Mague himself came through the door, a lipless face, legs and arms as long as wikuom poles.

      Mague was interested to hear about René Sel’s place and wondered how it had come in the possession of these Indians. He liked the sound of a sturdy French house, a potash kettle, cleared land. He looked Achille and Theotiste up and down rather insolently but agreed to walk back with them to see René’s property.

      “I’ll tell you something,” he said when they mentioned René’s death. “Bounty hunters will never molest my family.” And because he was who he was he wished he had brought some beads and cheap whiskey to trade. He carried his gun and followed.

      Before the house came in sight Theotiste ran ahead. He dug quickly in a certain place and put what he found in his pack basket, then rushed to the house to tell Elphège and his sisters that Jean Mague was coming. Noë ran into the back room and rummaged for the small birch-bark box decorated with colorful quillwork, a box from Mari’s childhood and precious to Noë. Inside the door Theotiste reached up to the high shelf. His hand grasped René’s old snow snake. They went out where Achille was already talking with Jean Mague, the newcomer looking around the property with narrowed eyes to show no one could put anything over on him. His squared shoulders and long heavy steps showed he already felt himself the possessor.

      “Will we give him the potash I made?” Achille asked Elphège in a low voice.

      “Yes.”

      Before the talk of price even began, they were interrupted by Renardette and Démon Meillard, who came out of the trees riding tandem on a black horse. They were sober and grim. Démon, his rum-red face shaped like a hazelnut, the modest chin augmented by a pointed black beard, spoke only to Jean Mague and said that the previous owner, René Sel, who had held the notarized title to the property, had bequeathed it to Renardette, his adopted daughter. René and Renardette, he said knowingly, were both pure French. Renardette owned it, not the half-breed Indian squatters who claimed it, who said they were René’s children. Demonstrably a falsehood. What Indian knew his true parentage? None!

      Démon