Caleb’s Crossing. Geraldine Brooks

them thusly: ‘Adam ate the apple.’ ” At once there was a difficulty: he had never seen an apple. I promised to bring him one from our small orchard, which father planted when first he came here. But this snag was nought to the briars yet to ensnare us.

      I commenced to introduce Adam to him, to describe the garden and the fall, and how that first sin comes down to besmirch all of us. I had then to explain sin, of which he had no ready concept. He would not concede that he had ever sinned himself, and seemed much offended when I assured him of it. His brow drew itself heavier and heavier, until he waved a hand as if sweeping away noxious smoke. “Your story is foolishness. Why should a father make a garden for his children and then forbid them its fruit? Our god of the southwest, Kiehtan, made the beans and corn, but he rejoiced for us to have them. And in any wise, even if this man Adam and his squa displeased your God, why should he be angry with me for it, who knew not of it until today?”

      I had no answer. I felt rebuked for my pride. Clearly this undertaking would be harder than I had reckoned. My father must truly be a marvelous preacher if he had to answer such as this. I resolved to go with father when next he visited a Wampanoag otan. I would listen to him sermonize, to find out if his flock had so many vexing questions, and if so, how he answered them. I realized I should have to devise a pretext for this, since father was unaware I knew the Indians’ language and would think I understood nothing of what passed between him and his listeners. So, at home, I began to hint that I had a curiosity to see how they arranged an otan, to visit the wetus and to meet the squas who lived in them (which was no more than the truth). After a time, I asked father if I might go with him, the next time he had a mind to it. He seemed pleased by my interest, and said he could see no harm if mother could spare me from chores. “For they hold family very dear, and count it a slight that we English do not foster more ties of affection between our families and their own.”

      A few days later, we went together on Speckle, and as we approached the settlement, we dismounted and walked so that father could greet everyone and tell them that he proposed to preach to them when the sun was at its highest. The praying village was for those who had been convinced by my father to embrace Christianity, and was called Manitouwatootan, or God’s Town. Despite its godly name, father worried that the old ways still had a strong hold there, and that the people remained confused about the truth of Christian teaching. Some families who had removed there remained divided between the convinced and those who were not ready to yield the old ways. Some were conflicted in their own hearts, halting between two opinions. Some came only to see and hear what was done, yet though they heard the word of the one God of heaven, remained thralls to sin and darkness. “They say that their meetings and customs are much more agreeable and advantageous than ours, in which we do nothing but talk and pray, while they dance and feast and give gifts one to the other. I try, Bethia, to explain that this is the way of the Great Deluder, Satan. But I have found no words in their language to answer our English words— faith, repentance, grace, sanctification. . . . Well, you will see for yourself, soon enough, how it is. . . .”

      The first thing that struck me was the peace of the place. In Great Harbor, on every day except the Sabbath, there is noise from first light to last light. Someone is always splitting a shingle, hammering a nail into the latest new dwelling or enlarging an existing one. The smith’s mallet rings from the forge, the pounders hammer at the fulling mill and the stone mason worries at his rocks with all manner of iron tools. There was no such English factory evident here.

      The squas were in the gardens, weeding with hoes made of clam-shells. In truth, they had little to weed, for the planting was contrived cunningly, with beans climbing up the cornstalks and the ground between each hillock covered in leafy squash vines that left scant room for weeds to grow. The menfolk were about the wetus, some casting jacks in a game of chance, others lying idle upon their mats. I saw father draw his brows at this. I had heard him opine that too much toil fell to the women. It was they who tilled the soil, ground the corn, foraged for wild foods, made the mats for the shelters and the baskets for the stores, and bent their backs under loads of wood for the cook fires. The men, warriors and hunters, had little to do in the way of daily drudge-work. “Of course, you should know that bow hunting is no lordly game such as an English shooting party might make of it, Bethia. It is a wearying endeavor, without beaters to drive and game-keepers to ensure the quarry. Still, I think the men might do more to lessen the women’s burdens.”

      To make his point, father sat down with some old women who were shelling last year’s dried beans, and took a share before him, to shell himself as he talked with them. When he went to another group who were hoeing, he reached down and gathered out the weeds they had turned over.

      There were some half-dozen children running in the fields or about the wetus— fewer than you would expect, given the size of the settlement, which was more than a dozen and a half families. It was just as well they were few, because those there were seemed to run entirely wild, with no check or correction, barreling through the fields in the way of the hoes, interrupting the men’s talk, or snatching at their jacks so as to disrupt the game, piercing the quiet with loud hallows and curdling shrieks. An English child would have been whipped for half of what these were about. Yet I saw no elder do so much as wag a finger at them. I remarked on this to father. He nodded. “They are, as you say, remarkably indulgent. I have remonstrated with them on the matter, asking them why they do not correct their children. But they say that since adult life is full of hardship, childhood should be free of it. It is a kindly view, even if misguided.”

      Father had a friendly greeting for everyone, and I was impressed at how much he knew of their doings, their families and their concerns. I learned that he did a great many good turns for them, of a practical nature, and I thought it might be that these preached to them more loudly than his sermons. More than once, I had to suppress a wince when he dropped a word into the mangle of his dreadful pronunciation, so that the meaning came out quite changed from what I knew he had intended. Over time, I had come to grasp that the chief principle of their grammar is whether a thing to them is possessed of an animating soul. How they determine this is outlandish to our way of thinking, so profligate are they in giving out souls to all manner of things. A canoe paddle is animate, because it causes something else to move. Even a humble onion has, in their view, a soul, since it causes action— pulling tears from the eyes. Yet as I had begun to see this strange, incarnate world through Caleb’s eyes, my grammar had much improved, and it pained me to hear father expose himself with his many errors. I blushed when he used an indecent word, quite innocently, thinking he was uttering a beautiful compliment. But these Wampanoag , who clearly loved him, kept their countenance and strove mightily to make out his meaning, so as not to shame him.

      At mid-morning, a man was brought to him who was not of the settlement. He came hobbling, supported by two others. It seemed he was a fugitive from the wrath of the Narragansett, a tribe often at odds with the Wampanoag whose lands touched theirs on the mainland. This man had been captured by the Narragansett in a raid, and because one of his captors had had a brother killed in some prior skirmish, this captive had been marked for a slow death by ritual torture. He had somehow escaped when the work was only part done, stealing a mishoon and paddling to the island. The praying Indians had taken him in and now they asked father if he might treat the man’s wounded foot. They described how four of his toes had been severed, one by one, then roasted and given him to eat. I felt my gorge rise at this, and turned my face away lest father divine from my expression that I understood what was being said.

      Father, for his part, looked ashen. He murmured to me in English: “They will believe that I have healing skills, no matter what I tell them. It is because of their pawaaws, who profess to be healers. In their minds religion and medicine mean much the same thing. Since they have given up their pawaaw in coming here, I suppose I must do what good I can. . . .”

      The injured man had been eased down onto the mat, and now father tried to remove his moccasin, dark with dried black blood. When he saw that the hide was adhered to the man’s flesh, he called for some warmed water. He soaked off the moccasin and set about cleaning the pus from inflamed, swollen flesh, muttering to himself about the barbarity of such wounds. “To do such as this, not in heat of battle, but deliberately. . . . Bethia, it must be granted that these are a very sinful people. Iniquity does abound among them. As the scripture says, the love of