Otherworldly Maine (24 page)

The waitress returned, and Lucie spoke to her in rapid French, indicating the three of them. Watching her, Jay found himself not thinking of anticipated objections, but simply looking at the woman, an unremarkable Native American in her twenties whose mitochondrial DNA held, like a recently deciphered codex, the unlooked-for confirmation he had never expected to find. He had no doubt that this woman's great-to-the-forty-or-fiftieth grandmother had been a Viking settler—not of New-foundland, where the Beothuk natives probably drove off the Norsemen after a few years, but from an unknown settlement, Vinland or another, that encountered the coastal Wabanaki of what is now called Maine. The fact that genealogists would doubtless find her mtDNA line suggestive rather than conclusive meant nothing: the immediacy of her being—before him, as he knew the drowned foundations never would be—sufficed to banish doubt.

“I ordered for you,” she said, directing her look at Jay. Before he could thank her, she added, “You're just a typical American, unable to speak any language but your own?”

“I actually picked up a fair amount of Norwegian one summer,” he replied mildly. Then, “Have you studied Abenaki?”

She gave a fractional nod, wary. “There aren't any Norse words in it, if you're wondering.”

“Of course not.” He decided not to tell her about the Victorian scholar who claimed that the Wabanaki trickster Lox derived from Loki, the wind eagle from something in the
Edda
and so on: who would certainly have pounced upon any linguistic echoes in the languages. The reasoning seemed sound, but he was beginning to understand how readily she felt his intrusion. “Is there an Abenaki word for ‘exile'?”

She frowned, either at the question or his reasons for it. “
Nakasahozik
is the act of pushing out, but it doesn't really have a political sense. Perhaps
awskonomuk
—it means to displace. The Wabanaki were
awskonoak
by the English from their homeland—‘wabanaki' means the eastern land.”

“Did you visit Mount Desert Island when you were living in Maine? It was Wabanaki country a thousand years ago, their easternmost extent. The bay to the west was Penobscot—Penawapskewi—territory. That's the region where the Vikings would have landed.”

“I don't care.” She slashed across his point like a scythe. “The Wabanaki were driven into Québec centuries ago; do you think I am interested in details of
your
history, or its traces in that blood test? I did it for the sixty dollars.”

The meal came then, three laden plates, different—he could see this as she set them down—from a Down East all-day breakfast. Thick cuts of what Jay would call ham, fries with gravy and what looked like half-melted cheese, beans atop scrambled eggs. The plates clacked down with reassuring solidity, and the three bent over them just as a chill gust blew from the door, a reminder of what was outside.

They ate in silence, finishing meat then starch and savoring the richness of the juices, which Jay did not hesitate to sop up. (Lucie, he saw, spread butter and then jam on her toast, a fearless Canadian practice he had unthinkingly associated with Anglophones.)

Eventually she pushed her plate away, and sat back to look at him with an amused expression. “And do you think you have Viking blood, too?”

“I have no idea.” It had never occurred to him to get a DNA ancestry kit and try it on himself. “I grew up in Iowa.”

She snorted. “And a thousand years ago your ancestors were where?”

“Well, not there. Allover Europe, I guess.” Someday genetic testing would tell more; he had read up on that, too. An uncovered potsherd was physical, and unique: these ghostly bits encoded in the tiniest structures of one's blood were neither—everyone had different proportions of the same innumerable scraps. Someday the tests would be so powerful and common that all would be known, the endless migrations of peoples, churning and recombining like seawater.

Nobody's story would please them, Jay thought; one more thing not to say right now. Flight, rapine, exile, all would be laid bare, plus bolts of more unremarkable lineage than anyone liked. We are all kings' bastards, for it is to them that our mothers were brought.

Lucie gestured as the plates were cleared away. “If you're planning to pay with American dollars, you'll need more than you think. It isn't worth more than ours any more.”

“We have Canadian money,” said Alicia, with perhaps a touch of reproof. “Maine isn't Mississippi.”

“And Odanak isn't Maine.” It would be interesting to know what had brought her to study in the States, and why she had returned to the reserve. But Jay felt he had maybe two questions left him, and that would not be one.

“Did it interest you,” he asked, “to find that you have a Viking ancestor? I know it's not
important
to you, and I understand that it's nobody's business; but how did you feel to learn that something that happened so long ago, for which all other records are utterly gone, remains documented in your blood?”

She seemed to consider the question. “It's like an echo that bounced off a distant canyon. What produced the sound happened long ago. Some Indian graves are even older, but that doesn't mean you can handle the bones and put them on display. It's . . .” She looked at him in frank curiosity. “I don't know if you can understand it, Mister From-Everywhere.”

“Meaning nowhere in particular. Okay, that's an answer.” Dispelling her misapprehensions wasn't a priority for him, and Jay waved to the waitress to buy himself a few seconds. “Has anyone else on the reserve—”

A cell phone rang, not Jay's or Alicia's. Lucie stood up, lifted the hem of her sweater, and glanced at its display. “Goodbye,” she said.

“You walked here,” Alicia said. “Let us give you a ride back.”

Jay was glad she offered—he knew it would be better if he didn't—but Lucie shook her head. “Finish your coffee; you have a long trip.” She looked at Jay. “If you learn anything more, don't call me.”

The door banged shut as the waitress poured their last cups and set down the bill. Jay and Alicia regarded each other, then he reached over and poured cream for her. “She doesn't want us to come out until she's gone from sight,” he said.

“She probably has enough on her mind,” Alicia replied. “Did you notice that she's pregnant?”

Jay stared and then shook his head. “How does that matter?” He stirred his own coffee, then sipped. The last swallow of warmth before they stepped out into the cold: he wondered if the Vikings had a word for it. Longships lacked cabins, but the Newfoundland excavations disclosed thick walls, so the act must have been significant.

“Her bloodline runs downstream, not up.” The remark seemed to surprise her as much as him, and she smiled in embarrassment. Finishing her cup, Alicia picked up her purse and added: “She doesn't want to represent something.”

The temperature had dropped outside, and the afternoon sky looked bruised. The surrounding flatland felt more like the Midwest than anywhere in Maine, and Jay wondered how far the Vikings had penetrated, up the Penobscot or St. Croix, into the continent's interior. The remains of such ventures might never be found.

The burial ship found at Ladby had entirely dissolved, its hull's outlines only discernible by a darkening of the soil. So the artifacts of Vinland, tokens one could lift and feel, were—he felt its truth bump hard—now vanished forever from human reach, their last traces, now copies of copies, diffusing in chemical memory like smoke.

T
hat's a gorbey, him. Canada jay. Also known as gray jay, Whiskey Jack, moose-bird. See his furry feathers? For the cold. Put him back outside,
la
. You come up here to hunt moose, not gorbeys, you. Fog don't bother him. Funny-looking little thing, isn't he? Personally,
non
, I wouldn't call him cute.

Keep him? What for?

Sorry to hear that. But Jack won't make a pet for a sick child. Spirits of the dead, some say gorbeys are. Or just very smart birds that'll do to you what you do to them.

Oh, we got all sorts of such creatures up here, just like anywhere else. Papineau, big man like Paul Bunyan only meaner, goes from house to house begging for food, never can get full, him, puts a curse on you if you don't give him all the food you got.
Feux-follets
, spirits of the damned that wander around in the woods. You'll see 'em sometimes, little tiny flames in this thick old dark forest. Forest more like one solid tree,
n'est pas?
You boys ever seen anything like it?

Fairytales? Oh, I don't think so. So you best put that bird back outside,
la
. I'm telling you.

Pea soup? Hah! “Pea soup” don't come close to Maine fog. Thick enough you could cut it into bricks and build a house out of 'em like this one, easy. The wood all weathered gray, kind of dim and dark in here with those filmy curtains Lina likes, could just as well be made out of fog. Fog gets inside here, too. Can you see it, all shimmery between me and you? Feel it, like your skin and your hair might just dissolve any minute now? Taste it?

Lina. My daughter. This is her place.

Fog lifts, there'll be good hunting. More moose than people up here. Every vehicle's got sonic moose deflectors like on my car. You saw how straight the roads are and how the forest comes right up close. And moose are big! In a collision between human and non-human, you know who wins,
non?

Like the song says, “There's a tombstone every mile” along the road. Forgive me, I am not a singer. He's talking about right here in The County.

So you gotta be careful. Don't mess with moose, okay? Don't mess with gorbeys. We'll be waiting out the fog for a while here, my daughter Lina's place, she won't mind, she went down to Bangor,
la
.

Leave him be, you. Let him go. Gorbey's nothing to fool around with.

Born and raised here, me. Went down South to see what I could see, nothing worth seeing, no reason to leave The County again. The Cyr family goes back a long ways. Benoit's an old family name, too. Benoit. B-e-n-o-i-t. Like I said at the beginning, just call me Ben.

Aroostook County. Bigger than a lot of states. Everybody in all of New England knows it as just The County, like there's no other county in the world. Potatoes. You saw the potato houses on those farms we went by. Some of 'em are huge, potato mansions. You never thought of potatoes as beautiful? Hah. Beautiful white and purple blossoms. And you have never tasted anything in your life like my Lina's potato cake.

Your basic wilderness. Everything manmade is very far from everything else manmade. That's the way we like it up here.

Well, I am a certified Maine Woods Guide, me. Not many of us. Been leading hunting and fishing trips for longer than you've been alive. Believe I'd have checked that out before I signed up for this trip. Best to know who you're in the wilderness with,
non?

This'll be my last trip, though. Retiring, me. Lucky for you boys you come when you did, no telling who you'd've got.

So, Tim, how do you say your surname, with just the one vowel? That Polish? In French, we have an abundance of vowels. Perhaps we should give you some. Hah.

And Rob Thibideaux. You are Acadian, Rob? Ah, from Louisiana,
oui
. Cajun. Perhaps we are related. From the Diaspora. You don't know the Diaspora? Your own history? 1755, when our people were expelled from the land and scattered like so many seeds, which is what “Diaspora” means? We call it the Great Derangement.

You never heard of none of this.
Mon Dieu
. A man without a history is a man without a soul. You gotta do something about that, you. Maybe we can do something about that. Goes into making us who we are. You much as me. Like the Holocaust goes into making Tim who he is. Right, Tim?

My daughter Lina's quite the historian, her. Last winter she spent down in New Orleans,
la
, brought back Diaspora tales and Cajun recipes. Good cook. Pretty girl. You'd like my Lina, you. Don't know if she'd like you. She's picky. Says she's got no need for a man. Always been a little bit crazy, her.

Could be socked in for a while, can't say. Fog's part of the Maine experience you come here for. Third of this month was heavy fog, and some say that predicts the month.
Le trois fait le mois
. Don't know as I hold with that, but that's what some say. But then, some'll say practically anything. Gets thick enough, you can make fog angels. Hey, after a while you'll do anything to amuse yourself. Get to feeling sort of confined.

Like a gorbey in a box. Take that bird outside, you, let him go. Your kid won't like him, trust me. He won't like your kid, him.

What's your wife and kids think of you leaving 'em back there in Shreveport while you come up here to the fog and the moose? Ah,
oui, c'est vrai
, you got to get away sometimes. Heart grows fonder, like they say.

Divorced, me. One daughter. My Lina. Her husband's one of those tombstones along the road that Dick Curless fella sung about. Lonely for a woman up here, never mind what she says, just her old dad to talk to and me out in the woods half the year. Don't know why she didn't remarry. My sweet Lina. See how nice she keeps a house, her? Get your boots off the furniture.

Gotta take a leak. Leave the door open if you want, get some air in here. Sure, the fog'll come in, but it's already in, can't escape the fog, best you can do is hunker down and not get lost in it. Here, prop this up on the table,
la
, so the beam points up. Helps a little. Reflecting off the fog wisps like that, kind of looks like a wedding veil, don't it? Kind of pretty. Be right back.

Give me the damn box.

Rob Thibideaux, you are one stubborn Cajun, you. What is it with you and this gorbey? Stole your sandwich, did he?
Mais oui
. Camp robber's another name for him. Lina tells how a gorbey come right in her kitchen window and hooked his left foot through one of her doughnuts and his right foot through another one and his beak through another one and he flew off into a tree with all three doughnuts, him. Comes back now and sits outside her window every time she makes 'em. That's what she says. Complains, calls him names, but I'm not sure she altogether minds, being a young widow like she is and alone except for that woman comes up here sometimes from Bangor.