Barkskins (52 page)

Elise herself opened the red front door. She had become a middle-aged woman with a knot of black-grey hair. But she had the same impish sparkle in her eyes, the same curling smile and pointed teeth as all the Sels.

She knew him at once. “Jinot. You are my brother Jinot.” They embraced in a mighty hug and Elise began to cry. “Oh, how long I have waited to hear something of you. Francis-Outger wrote and told me he had a letter from you asking news of us. Come with me, dear brother, come with me for a moment. And then we shall go in.” She drew him to a side yard, removed six fragrant loaves of wheaten bread from an old clay oven, wrapped them in a piece of muslin and carried them to the kitchen.

“Now, Jinot, you must tell me everything.” He followed her down a dim hall, the plaster walls hung with likenesses of stags drinking from mountain pools, into a stuffy parlor, where his own reflection in a tall mottled mirror frightened him. A pale, listless boy of ten or twelve lay dozing on a daybed with a closed book resting on his breastbone.

“This is my boy Humphrey,” said Elise, bending over the child and kissing his hair. The boy opened his eyes and looked at Jinot.

“This is your uncle Jinot,” said Elise.

“Ahhhh,” said the boy and closed his eyes.

“Come into the kitchen, Jinot, I will make us a pot of tea,” said Elise. “Or coffee, if you like. It is almost time for the doctor to come in for his pick-me-up. He will be very pleased to see you.”

But when Dr. Hallagher came in he was less than delighted, gave a brusque handshake then sat at the table blowing on his tea.

“So, you've found us out,” he said in the tone of a captured criminal.

“I thought that as so many years have passed, for the sake of our children it would be good to be in touch with each other again.” He told them of the great Miramichi fire, of Amboise's death in that fire, without mentioning the town jail or drunkenness. He told them of Minnie, of his children, of little Amboise's accident. It was only when he described the kindness of Mr. Bone and his favors over the years that Dr. Hallagher relaxed. Jinot guessed that he had been expecting to be asked for a loan and that he was relieved to hear Jinot was independent enough to support a wife and four—no, three—children. When he returned to his surgery the visit became jollier with Elise and Jinot trading old stories and “do you remembers,” plans for a family gathering on the Fourth of July, and bits of gossip about distant Mi'kmaw relatives, for there were countless Sels in Nova Scotia, all descended from René Sel, the little-known Frenchman who had started their history. Elise remembered a few of them, but Jinot knew none.

“We even heard something of our grandfather Kuntaw, can you believe that? He went back to the old place, all English settlers now except a part they call Frenchtown, and another part they call the Diggins. That is where the Mi'kmaw people live, the ones that are left. Not many, now, not even a hundred they say. So he married a Mi'kmaw woman and had more children. Yes, that old man, can you believe it!”

They laughed, the talk shifted to their children. Elise's oldest boy, Skerry (a Hallagher name), was clever, a great reader and had a powerful inquiring mind. “He wants to go to that Dartmouth school,” she said, “as he is, y'know, at least part Mi'kmaw, and they are said to take an interest in Indian scholars, so it could come to pass. I don't know if it
will,
but Doctor wants it. Don't it seem strange, from how we lived at the post when we was—were—little? We've had big changes in our lives, Jinot. And maybe Josime? If Amboise had lived . . .”

Jinot thought that if Amboise had lived he would have been run over by a freight wagon as he lay stuporous in the roadway. But he did not say it.

The brief hours of family affection began to fade and by the time the stage left, the sky had clouded over. The coach traveled through a storm that came in repetitive squalls with a few tremendous claps of thunder, minutes of hard rain followed by a breathless silence until the next wave caught them. The cleansed air chilled and he thought it would clear, but the interludes of rain turned to sleet and then to snow, a strange end to the summery day. And Jinot, recollecting the visit and the wasted boy lying on the daybed, thought of his own little Amboise, who could never be twelve, and the barely healed old wrenching began afresh.

M
innie had vowed there would be no more children. They were too fragile, too precious. She could not bear to have her heart torn so savagely again. How true, she said, was the often heard, and now proven, old adage that life was a vale of tears. Of all Jinot's children Amboise had been especially beloved, a kind of resurrection of Amboise, his burned brother. Jinot knew, guiltily, that he had granted Aaron less affection. Now he vowed to make up for this, and from that moment he and Minnie favored Aaron with love and gifts.

Jinot, indifferent to Minnie's long speech telling him she would never again sleep with him—somehow he felt she blamed him for Amboise's death—put a worn bison robe he had used on the Gatineau on the back porch and slept there summer and winter. The children could come to him any time they wished but he was not the old affectionate silly father. So remote was his stare, so remote was he, except with Aaron, that he did not see Minnie's slow decline, how she grew smaller inside the fine-striped dress, did not hear her constant wet cough. In the two years since Amboise had died she became gaunt as her spine twisted. She suffered and pulled at her hair to shift the pain. The cooking deteriorated, the children grew out of their ragged and dirty clothes. Jinot made a great kettle of pease porridge once a week and the children were to help themselves until he discovered Lewie laughing as he threw handfuls of—something or other, assuredly filthy—into the pot. Then he hired a neighbor widow, Mrs. Joyful Woodlawn, to feed the boys and look after Minnie.

“Of course I'd be glad to look after poor Minnie and the boys. I'll make soups to build Minnie up and beef and taters for the lads. And will bring over some water from our well, as it is known to be the best water in the town. There is no better thirst quencher than good water. Mr. Woodlawn was always proud of our well water.”

•  •  •

That winter ended like a snapped cable with days of sudden heat and flooding brooks, thrusting skunk cabbage growing three inches a day. The crows began to take their seasonal places, the males stretching their wings to show the long primaries, fanning their tail feathers, their dark eyes aglitter, the lady crows watching coolly from nearby perches, measuring the presentation of every point with critical eyes. Hugh Boss, stumping along on his canes, came over on a Saturday morning and spent several hours sitting beside his daughter's bed. When Jinot came in from the factory Minnie was sleeping. Hugh Boss got up from his chair and jerked Jinot into the parlor.

“Jinot, Minnie is sick, very sick. Have you had the doctor in?”

“I didn't— No, I did not know it was so bad. I thought she was just poorly but—I did get Mrs. Woodlawn to care for her betimes.”

“Betimes! To me she seems not long for this world.
I
will send the doctor.” And he stalked out, no friend to Jinot.

The doctor, not Dr. Mallard but a mealy-faced old gent with a silk cravat spotted with pork drippings, said it was consumption. Advanced consumption. Nothing to be done though they could try raw eggs and brandy alternating with hot beef broth. He offered to bleed the woman but Jinot would not have it. He wished he knew of a Mi'kmaw healer such as they said his great-great-
grand-mère
had been.

•  •  •

He thought he had scraped dry the dish of deep sorrow, but time brought a helping of worse. Mrs. Woodlawn bustled into the Sel kitchen one morning with her famous jug of well water, swigging a large glass of it herself, bringing some to Minnie. When Jinot came in at noon he found the widow had gone a ghastly blue and was braced against the table, her hands clenching the edge. She looked at him with a terrible expression and then doubled over in dual spasms of explosive diarrhea and violent vomiting. There was no doubt of the cause—the cholera had been rampant in New York and was now encroaching on smaller towns.

“Save us all!” said Jinot, running into Minnie's room. But the galloping disease had got there first and Minnie was sinking, fingers and toes clenched with spasm. The twins, Lewie and Lancey, still clung to life, but died while their father stood gaping down at them. It could happen so quickly.

“Aaron. Aaron!” he called, but the boy was not in the house. He found him in the woodshed with a book of tales. He said he had been there since early morning, had breakfasted on a piece of ham fat left over from supper. No, he had not taken Mrs. Woodlawn's water. He felt well, he said, and he looked well.

They walked together to Hugh Boss's house. “Hugh, it's the cholera,” said Jinot. “It took them. Just me and Aaron's left.” The big man cursed them both, broke down, buried his face in his hands. He was not well. Mrs. Boss, pregnant again, was abed with an illness that resembled cholera and the youngest children were ill. Mrs. Woodlawn had brought them some of her delicious water before she went to Minnie. Hugh Boss lived, but Mrs. Boss and the three youngest children all died on the same day.

•  •  •

After the funerals weeks passed, dragging their crippled hours like chains. Hugh Boss and Jinot hated each other for months until they met in the cemetery to put up the seven fresh-cut stones and were reconciled in grief. The memorials bore only the names and dates and the word
cholera.

They agreed that Jinot and Aaron would live with Hugh Boss, sleeping in the haymow and helping with the surviving children until Mrs. Boss's sister could come from Danbury, Connecticut. Jinot swore he would keep Aaron with him, keep him safe until he became a man. Yet there was something new to worry about as Aaron several times said that he wanted to go to Nova Scotia and know his Mi'kmaw relatives. He wanted to be an Indian. By the time young birds were crowding the crows' nests the cholera plague had eased and Jinot and Aaron returned to their silent house.

•  •  •

For Jinot the palliative was work and he spent much time with Mr. Bone, now shrunken and stooped, but still making great plans and filled with energy unseemly for an old man. He spoke of starting a handsaw manufacturing factory. He talked of setting up a rolling mill and making his own steel. Anything could excite his fertile imagination.

Though axes remained Mr. Bone's true love, he wanted new lands to conquer. He sat up nights roving over the world through the pages of his swollen atlas (for it had been dropped in the bath and dried page by page over the stove) and reading foreign newspapers.

“I think,” said Mr. Bone, after a year of consideration, “that the best course is to set up an ax manufactory abroad. Trees grow all over the world and everywhere men need houses and buildings, they need axes. My life has ever been dedicated to the removal of the forest for the good of men. I have studied countries where there is a burgeoning population, plenty of trees and a need for axes. The list is not a long one, but I would value your opinion before I take any steps.”

Jinot laid his hand on the atlas and waited. Mr. Bone's peculiar list named Norway, Russia, Java, New Zealand and Brazil. Jinot said, “Why not go to the western forests of this country? They say there are forests that cannot be measured from Ohio westward to the end of the land.” Mr. Bone ignored this.

“It will be simpler for a swift establishment of the factory if the inhabitants speak English; that removes four of the countries from the list and leaves us with New Zealand.”

“They speak English in New Zealand?”

“Those in government and control do so. The country is allied to England, where they
do
speak English. The New Zealand natives speak some gibberish of their own, but many have learned English.”

“But do they have trees there?” asked Jinot, who fancied New Zealand was mostly desert and salt flats. He had only a vague idea of the country's location—perhaps near India.

Mr. Bone leaned back in his chair. He smiled the smile of a man who knows a great secret.

“Yes. They have trees. Especially do they have certain ‘kauri' trees, which experts describe as the most perfect trees on the earth, truly enormous trees that rise high with all the branches clustered conveniently at the top. The wood of these trees is without blemish, light, odorless, of a delightful golden color, easy to carve and work, strong and long-wearing. I have learned that a nascent trade in poor-quality axes is in progress through the efforts of a bumptious Australian entrepreneur who was once a convict now working in New Zealand. Before I make my decision I have decided to go to New Zealand and see these forests for myself. They are said by men who know timber to be one of the wonders of the world. You must accompany me. I have arranged passage. We leave in a fortnight, Mr. Joseph Dogg will manage the factory while we are away. He is thoroughly competent to do so.”

Jinot opened his mouth to say something, then consulted the atlas. It was far, far—a long skinny wasp-waisted country at the bottom of the world.

“I— Mr. Bone, I have sworn to keep Aaron close to me until he attains manhood. You know my sad history, sir. He is all I have left.”

“Quite simple. Tell him to pack his trunk. He shall come with us. A husky lad is useful when traveling.”

•  •  •

But Aaron only shook his head and went into one of his long, silent spells. For days he did not respond to Jinot's badgering and pleading. He smiled distantly as if his thoughts were too lofty to share.

“Father, I do not wish to go on the ocean. It is my desire to go to Nova Scotia and find our family, whatever Sel relatives may be there. I wish to know that life.”