The Eden Hunter (20 page)

 

AT NIGHTFALL, WHEN the smoke would draw no attention, Israel lit a driftwood fire in the firebox of a tall smokehouse that stood behind the shack, then arranged the gutted mullet on racks of green branches. Thereafter they all went to sleep, but then every hour it was as if some bell in Israel’s head would chime and wake him. If it was not his turn he would holler out, and then either Kau or Xavier would rise to rotate the fish in the smokehouse from low racks to high racks, maybe toss another knob of damp driftwood inside the puffing firebox.

 

KAU WOKE WITH the sunrise and went outside. The fire was dead, and Israel had all of the mullet stacked neatly inside the cold smokehouse. Xavier joined them and that morning they dined on smoked fish and salty oysters that they opened with a chisel, round skillets of ashcake washed down with mug after mug of sweet, sweet storm water.

 

HE SOON LEARNED that the rhythms of the pigeonkeeper’s life were actually quite simple—at dawn, high noon, and dusk the man took the measure of the bay with the spyglass; the between hours Israel would spend reading his Bible. Every day he would write a note to Garçon and send a pigeon. Israel considered himself a Methodist, and so if there was no news of any immediate consequence he shared some scripture in his message to him. In a half hour Garçon would be holding it in his hands. “Only trick,” Israel said to them, “is not to stare out at the bay any longer than you have to. That water will ruin your eyes if you let it.”

 

IT BECAME CLEAR to him that Xavier was reluctant to leave, wanted to stay forever it seemed. They passed the days eating mullet and talking, and Israel told them story after story. Old Testament stories. New Testament stories. Georgia slave stories about a trickster rabbit. The story of his learning of the negro fort and deciding to run. “Now ain’t it a thing,” said Israel, “for a man to read about something in a newspaper one day, then go on and live it the next?”

 

IT WAS ISRAEL’S idea to smoke the yew stave, as although the pigeonkeeper knew nothing of bows, he understood well the properties of wood. Kau unwrapped the stiff canvas from around the otter board, then showed Israel the yew. It was still damp to the touch and Israel shook his head. “No, sir,” he said. “That green stick might never season in this wet air.”

There was a scrubbed-out powder cask buried to its rim in the dirt floor of the shack. The inside kept cool and dry, and so here Israel stored cured meats atop corked jars of coon tallow that were intended for candles, soap, cooking. They moved the mullet to the barrel, then Israel nailed the otter board to the inside of the smokehouse. That night they transferred chunks of smoldering wood from their cook-fire to the firebox. They did this every evening and on their fifth day together on the island Israel plucked the yew with his finger and nodded. “Take it down,” he told him. “I say it be ready now.”

Kau cut through the strips of canvas binding the yew. In his hands the dry wood somehow felt both lighter and stronger. He
went to the south shore and sat down alone on the beach. All day he worked. He shaved the belly of the stave flatter still, tapering the limbs evenly from the handle out to either end until finally it was less than the width of three fingers, no taller than he himself in length. He knelt in the sand and bent the stave over his knee. The wood was perfect, limber but not too much so. He nodded and was close to happy.

He was cutting nocks for the bowstring when he looked out in the direction of St. Vincent. Dark shapes had appeared in the bay, and suddenly he flashed to the slave ship that had been waiting off the green coast of Africa. This had become a common moment in the world, he realized—hidden eyes staring out at approaching ships. He saw a dolphin come sliding up out of the water, and then he turned and gave a whistle for Xavier, for Israel.

H
E STOOD WITH the others, watching the bay. The two ships were double-masted schooners, and they were soon joined by a slow-trailing pair of gunboats. Each came from the southwest—through a channel that ran between St. George and St. Vincent—and each flew an American flag.

“A convoy,” Israel decided. The four vessels dropped their white sails and lit their lanterns, then sat in anchorage beyond the mouth of the river. Israel assured them that from the bay his island would appear deserted and harmless. He told them not to fret. “We just sit and watch them,” he said.

“I should go back,” said Xavier.

“No,” said Israel. “Maybe nothing will come of it.”

Kau saw that the two men were now looking at him. “What are you planning?” asked Xavier.

“I’m stayin here only long as you.”

“And when I leave?”

He pointed toward St. Vincent. “Then I’m gone too.”

They went to the shack and Israel scratched out a message to Garçon with the flight feather of an eagle. He dipped the quill into a porcelain inkwell and spoke as he wrote, slowly dictating to himself. Kau leaned closer so that he could hear him. “6 p.m. July 10. U.S.A. ships in bay.” Then: “Two merchant schooners. Two navy gunboats. So will monitor.”

 

HE HAD INTENDED to borrow the small canoe that Israel kept on the island and paddle to shore. There he would follow the marsh channels to the pinewoods and collect plant fibers for a bowstring, light lengths of softwood for his arrows. But with the arrival of the ships his plans were stalled. He stored the cut yew back in the smokehouse, then set about helping Israel and Xavier in their spyings.

 

THEY WOULD WORK in eight-hour shifts measured out by Israel and his pendulum clock. Kau had volunteered for the first watch, and so now he sat alone on the beach, staring at the distant ship lanterns glowing in the blackness. When he was lonely he spoke in Kesa to his wife and his children, sometimes to his parents, sometimes to Samuel and Benjamin even. Anything to keep his mind off Beah. The woman who had nursed him back to health, then asked him to help her.

 

DAWN THE NEXT day. Smoke appeared in the west, at a hidden point where the forest gave way to marsh. He woke the others, and they watched as a smaller vessel—a masted skiff of some sort—was lowered from the davits of one of the gunboats and boarded by four men, one at each oar. The sail was kept furled as the rowers made for the snake of smoke. They disappeared into the marsh and Israel collapsed his spyglass. “I don’t know what this means,” he admitted, and then the pigeonkeeper limped off to send another pigeon.

 

THE SKIFF RETURNED to the gunboat with the falling tide, and he saw that a fifth man was with them now. Xavier and then Israel looked through the spyglass. “That is an Indian,” said Israel. “A Creek, I think.”

Kau took a turn at the spyglass. The Indian in the skiff seemed small compared to the American sailors, and his head was wrapped in cloth the color of cherry. Kau passed the spyglass back to Israel, and they remained on the beach until sunset but saw nothing else to report.

 

DAYS OF BOREDOM. From sunrise to sunrise they watched the ships, but for an hour each night they would gather together on the beach to share a meal and talk and tell stories. Kau kept mostly quiet until supper on the third evening when Israel insisted that he offer up some tale of Africa. He begged off but Israel would not take no. “I know your people had stories,” he said. “All people got stories.”

Kau thought a moment, then swallowed the last of his ashcake and told them an Ota parable. A story that had been one of his father’s, a story Kau would sometime tell to his own children:

There is a Kesa farmer. He has grown tired of farming and wants to be a hunter like the Ota. The farmer goes to the Ota and they take him in. He is eager and the band begins to teach him, then finally the time comes for the farmer to go off hunting alone. The elders tell him that he has learned much but there is really only one big, important lesson. You must give yourself over to the forest, they tell him. Submit yourself fully and completely and you will be protected. The farmer is told then of the molimo—how in times of trouble the Ota need only to call upon that wooden trumpet to remind the forest to care for them. When we wake the forest we dance, say the elders. We dance because we know the forest will now remember us, we know we will now be saved.

And so the farmer goes, and he is not away very long before he sees a honeybee. He follows the bee deep into the forest but then night comes and he realizes that he is lost. A dog wanders upon him, one of the small hunting hounds from the Ota camp. The dog tries to lead him to safety but the farmer frightens it off. He spends a long night hungry and terrified, chanting aloud to the forest. He screams and screams as he tries to wake it.

The next day a foraging Ota woman happens upon him. She invites the farmer to go with her back to the camp, but even though he is still miserable and afraid he refuses. “No,” he says to her. “I will trust in the forest.”

The Ota woman returns to the camp and tells of the lost farmer. The elders agree that maybe it is because a woman found him that he will not return. He is proud, they decide. In the morning two of the young hunters are chosen. The woman describes to them the place where they will find the farmer and they know it very well. They leave the camp and reach his bed of leaves. The farmer is missing and so the hunters begin to track him. He takes them on a long journey through the forest, and when they finally overtake him he is crying. They sit with the farmer, say, Come with us now and we will help you. Again he refuses. “This is a test,” he says. “The forest will provide.”

The hunters leave the farmer and share this with the others. The elders shake their heads in confusion. The following morning they depart together—a group of old men led by the two young hunters. They find the farmer and he is dying. He roamed in the night and was bitten by a forest viper. He will not live long. The elders do what they can to make him comfortable. His leg swells until it blackens and splits, and as the venom takes root in his head the farmer sees the forest for the web of connections that it is. He speaks to it, says, I had to send away a dog and a woman and two hunters—why did you do nothing to save me? The elders hear the question hidden between his moans and are angered by it. The forest sent one dog, a woman, and two young hunters, what more did this man need from it?

 

THE SHIPS HAD been four days in the bay when Garçon came. It was late in the afternoon and Kau was on watch. He turned and
the General was there, on the river in a long canoe. Two of the Choctaws were with him, a pair of longhaired and bare-chested warriors. The canoe kissed sand and Garçon regarded him. His hand rested on the hilt of his sword. “Please,” he said. “Go and wake the others.”

 

NIGHT FELL. THE waning moon was almost at last quarter, and he saw its twin reflected onto the water. Israel had put on a fraying redcoat in addition to his cut trousers, and was now speaking alone with Garçon on the beach. Kau sat on a length of driftwood and slapped mosquitoes. Xavier was beside him, wearing his own crimson jacket over his gray osnaburgs. Both were staring at the silent Choctaws. The two Indians had dragged the canoe into the palmettos and were crouched beside it, smoking a long pipe. Xavier spoke. “Are either of those the one who came into your tent?” he asked.

Kau studied the Choctaws’ faces. “I don believe.”

“Are you certain?”

“I’d know him.”

Xavier threw a forked stick into the river and it was carried off by the current. “Maybe you should have left, no?”

“Yes. Maybe.”

Garçon called them over. He had received Israel’s pigeons announcing the arrival of the ships, the rendezvous with the lone Indian. Now he had a report for them from upriver. “The American soldiers are preparing to march south soon,” he said. “In three or four days they will be coming for us at last.”

Xavier spoke: “And then how long, sir?”

“Once they break camp? Another three days, I would say.”

Kau stared at him. He was thinking of Beah. He felt like he had murdered her. “Till they make the fort?”

“Yes,” said Garçon.

“You gonna fight them?”

“Of course.”

“What about them boats? What they doin out there?”

Garçon shrugged. “We will know soon enough.” He pointed to the black south. “In the morning we will ask those sailors just what their intentions are.”

 

AT DAWN CAME the doldrums of the slack tide that Israel had promised them. The rowboat had been hidden on the north end of the island, and they all went to it now. Kau stood watching with the Choctaws as Xavier and then Israel stepped on board with their longrifles. Several big muskets were already lying in the hull. He spoke to the Indians in English, and when they did not respond he tried addressing them in their own language. They ignored him, then one Choctaw whispered something to the other and they both laughed.

Garçon had prepared himself in the shack. His sword and boots were now polished and he was wearing a clean uniform—a white waistcoat and breeches, a long-tailed redcoat. His tricorn held his long braids in place, and a longrifle was cradled in his arms. He walked over to Kau and smiled at him. “Will you join us?” he asked. “We have room for a small one like you.”

“I’m thinkin I’ll jus leave off.”

“Or you could fight.”

“I don think.”

“You do not understand me.”

“How you mean?”

“St. Vincent—Israel tells me that you intend to live there.”

“Yes.”

“But, you see, that is my island you think so freely of having.”

“Your island?”

“Correct.”

“You sayin I can’t?”

“I am only saying that you have to earn such favors.” Garçon touched him on the shoulder. “Please come,” he said. “We will need you there with us.”