Gear, W Michael - Novel 05 (35 page)

 
          
 
"Bet me."

 
          
 
"It is done." Trudeau raised his
voice. "You hear that? This Yankee says he can pull with the best of us in
a week! Ten plews, that's what the vide poche bets!"

 
          
 
Laughter rang out.

 
          
 
At long last, the sun settled blood-red into
the distant trees. After the bow line, the one they called a painter, had been
run out from the Maria and was securely tied, Richard reeled to the gangplank.
He staggered onto the deck and propped himself against the cargo box. The cool
evening breeze blew across his face. He swatted a mosquito that landed on his
neck and scratched at the older bites on the back of his neck and along his
arms.

 
          
 
Another itch pestered his leg, and he lifted
his fraying pants to see a tick embedded in his calf. He pinched the bug off
and threw it into the river. Damn this country! He looked across the opaque
brown water at the trees on the far bank.

 
          
 
God be my witness, I'm tired.

 
          
 
What would Will Templeton think of him now? He
stank of sweat and filth. Scratches crisscrossed his arms and face. He hadn't
had a true bath in weeks. His tattered clothes were almost black with filth and
grease, coated with mud.

 
          
 
"I was a gentleman," he mumbled
wistfully. "Now, I look like a wretched criminal."

 
          
 
Very well, Father, you son of a bitch. You
wanted me to see reality, and if this is it, I don't find it uplifting at all.

 
          
 
"Be talking ter yerseff?" Travis
asked, dropping next to him with a plate of food.

 
          
 
"That I am, jailer."

 
          
 
"Hah! Jailer, be I?" Travis grinned,
and it didn't help his ruined face at all. "That be some, after where I
been a time or two, Dick."

 
          
 
"The name is Richard. If I must be
condemned to this damned voyage of yours, I might at least get a little respect
as a man."

 
          
 
"Watch yer tongue, pilgrim. If'n yer
wanting respect now, ye've yet to earn it."

 
          
 
"Or what? You'll beat it out of me?"

 
          
 
"Might," Travis said through a
mouthful of food. He wiped his jacket sleeve across his lips and swallowed.
Then he glanced at Richard. "So ye comes from
Boston
town, do ye?"

 
          
 
"Yes, that's my home. God, how I wish I
was there now."

 
          
 
"Been there onc't upon a time. Got
skunked on good likker and woke up next day on a brig headed fer J'maica. Spent
two years on that bark. Then we made port at
New Orleans
and this coon skipped, I'll tell ye. Made
me way upriver to Saint Loowee and took ter the Plains. Seen me a sight of
places since then. Seen the
Shining
Mountains
and trapped me a plew or two."

 
          
 
"Want to go back to
Boston
?" Richard shot a shy glance at the
man.

 
          
 
"Hell, no! This child never lost nothing
in them waters." He forked another mouthful and chewed thoughtfully.

 
          
 
"I could make it worth your while. My
father has a lot of money. You could be richer than you ever thought to
be."

 
          
 
Travis chuckled. "Do tell? Don't reckon
I'd take kindly to them doin's, though. Reckon as how this child couldn't put
up with them Yankee sops."

 
          
 
"Never know until you try."

 
          
 
"I know's 'nuff 'bout them
diggin's." Travis gestured with the bent fork he held. "Saint Loowee
is enough civilization fer this coon, an' that's some, it is. Naw, I reckon

 
          
 
I'm fer the mountains. Man can float his stick
where he will."

 
          
 
They were silent then, and Richard went and
dished him up a plate from the big pot. The stew had been built around fresh
venison that Travis had shot that day. He returned and sat next to the old
hunter.

 
          
 
"I want to thank you for giving me that
whiskey the first night"

 
          
 
The hunter nodded.

 
          
 
"What's it like upriver?"

 
          
 
A strange light grew in Hartman's blue eyes.
"It be some, Dick. Thar's open land as far as ye can see. Makes a man sit
right pert, it do. Thar be open prairie an' high mountains that shine in the
sun. Ain't no people but the Injuns, and they be few and scattered. Thar's
buffler, and prairie goats, and elks, too. Open land, Dick. Free land, where a
man's what he's meant to be."

 
          
 
"True freedom? Why do you say that?
Freedom only exists in the mind."

 
          
 
"Waugh! Them words'11 rot in yer gullet
after ye been in the wilds fer a season or two."

 
          
 
"Freedom comes from philosophy, Travis.
It comes from investigating your actions and motives by logical frameworks and
manipulating your environment by perception. It's from reason—not a physical
thing. There is an inward path, a quest for totality of experience, the primacy
of will and nature as spirit. The world around us works according to rational
plans and can be understood when we develop our perceptions."

 
          
 
"Whar'd ye figger that from?" Travis
arched an eyebrow.

 
          
 
"You need to read Hume, Hegel, and
Kant." Richard set his plate down to gesture with his hands as he talked.
"Hegel, for instance, in the Phenomenology of Mind, documents how men can
grow. Right now, you're in a master-slave relationship with the world. Dave
Green is the same as my father, a master. Others work, like you and me, or my
father's employees, so that the master can consume the fruits of their labor.
But that's only one step on the way to truth."

 
          
 
"Do tell?"

 
          
 
"Indeed, I do. The master-slave
relationship leads to what

 
          
 
Hegel calls 'the unhappy consciousness.' That
is the condition in which we all seek more than material satisfaction. It's the
search for a higher truth. Let's see if I can remember. Hegel says, 'It is in
thinking that I am free because I am not in another but remain completely with
myself.' That's where your freedom lies, Travis. In overcoming the myth of
civil institutions such as the master-slave relationship, breaking the bonds
our civil conditions have placed us in, and being free to pursue higher truth
through reason."

 
          
 
Travis sat silently and pulled his pipe and
tobacco from what he called his possible sack. He tamped the tobacco into the
bowl, rose, and walked across the deck toward the gangplank, his moccasined
feet silent on the wood. The somber trees seemed to watch Richard, an
unforgiving presence. An owl hooted in the forest, and he could hear the
distant lowing of cattle from a farm hidden somewhere back from the river.

 
          
 
Richard picked up his plate, satisfied with
his translation of Hegel's complex ideas into something the hunter could
understand.

 
          
 
Hartman returned, having found an ember to
light his pipe. He puffed contentedly and settled cross-legged on the deck.

 
          
 
"Well?" Richard asked as he chewed.

 
          
 
Hartman finally looked at him pensively.
"Maybe so, Dick. Reckon though ye better sit back and wonder about this
hyar. Seems ter me that's there's a hitch in all that. This coon sees two kinds
of freedom. Thar be the ability ter use yer noodle fer thinking, and thar be
the ability ter pull yer traps and head whar ye will. Reckon a man can't be
free lessen he can do both. Them thar
Boston
folks can't just up and skeedaddle fer the
timber if'n they get the urge. Reckon they can think all they wants, though.
See whar me stick floats?"

 
          
 
"It's your mind that is important,
Travis. Your mind is your ultimate freedom."

 
          
 
"So's a good smoke, warm blankets, and a
hunk of buffalo haunch roasting in the coals while all the stars are twinkling
overhead."

 
          
 
"But that's only catering to the animal
instincts. You must rise above a base state of nature. That's what civilization
has attempted so poorly to do. You must free your mind, and the only way is
through reason."

 
          
 
Hartman exhaled a blue cloud and removed the
pipe stem from his mouth. "Yer still seeing one side of the beaver hide,
Dick. It ain't the whole beaver. Yer claiming that to be whole, you can only be
a half. Ain't nobody, not even yer mister Haggle—"

 
          
 
"That's Hegel. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel."

 
          
 
"All right, all them fellers, too. They
can't jist think their way through life. It's like walking on one leg. A feller
can only hobble."

 
          
 
"You're missing the point."

 
          
 
"Do say?"

 
          
 
"Or you're purposely being
thick-headed."

 
          
 
"Tell me, Dick. Did ye ever see a bear
what'd been raised in a cage?"

 
          
 
"I did, once. A bit barbaric."

 
          
 
"Do ye reckon that thar bear be free to
think anything he'd want ter, huh?"

 
          
 
"Bears don't think."

 
          
 
"Painter crap! Bears think as good as the
next critter. So ye don't know shit about bears. Wal, that don't matter, let's
just agree he can think, all right?"

 
          
 
"All right."

 
          
 
"So, yer bear's been raised in that cage.
He can roll back on his arse and think from Hell to breakfast. Still, he'd not
know the first thing about what it be ter be a bear, now would he?"

 
          
 
"Men and bears are different,
Travis." Richard sighed. "It isn't the same thing. Men have different
needs than bears. We have the ability to transcend earthly needs. We have
spirits and souls. We are not base."

 
          
 
Travis gave him a level stare. "Reckon ye
been in a cage too long yerseff, Dick. Be best if n ye took that noodle yer so
proud of and did ye some more thinking." Travis stood up, nodded politely,
and walked off.

 
          
 
"Damned old fool," Richard muttered.
"He has no idea what I was trying to teach him."