The Survivor (2 page)

And “go” he went, leaping branches, dodging more deadfalls with the fire chasing him. Then he saw a grizzled birch, aslant. Yes! he’d fished there — that was the pool.

A limb fell just in front of him. He stopped. It ignited a thicket of dead brush. He dove back toward the brook. Just keep your footing, he prayed, slipping and slithering up the stream-bed toward his pool.

A muskrat scuttled straight back into the fire. No, he shouted, wrong way! He stooped to save it. Panicked, it whirled and raced past. He straightened and kept going.

His back burned, his feet and ankles pained, but he dropped once again into the icy brook, dousing his sixfoot frame, lean from two years surviving in the New World, burying his long hair and beard which was already drying rapidly. The bushes around the brook caught fire. Now what? His flesh seared; he choked from the smoke: it tasted bitter and acrid. He dropped onto all fours, keeping close to the water. For some reason, the lower air let him breathe. His elbows and knees scraped on the rocky bottom.

A blackened trunk athwart the brook stopped him. He tried squeezing beneath it. Some bark came loose and he grabbed it, forced himself under and past the ring of fire, splashed the last ten feet and then collapsed into the pool.

On his back, completely submerged, he lifted his face to breathe. Too hot. He placed the bark over his face to shield him from the heat. But his fingers burned. Was the fire passing over? All at once, he couldn’t breathe. No oxygen. Suffocating.

He tried gulping air. Calm down, he told himself, slow that beating heart. But he couldn’t. He felt he was drowning. With a huge effort, he made himself resist the urge to leap up and gasp for air. Better suffocate in this icy water than die by burning. Torn by impossible choices, his mind flashed with visions of a Native woman. Magwés, Little Birch, his wife, dead and gone these last two months. She reached out her hand. Her touch calmed him as he felt himself fading. And then as her vision drifted away, the fire seemed to pass over.

A breath of air filled his lungs. The intense heat was lessening. Soon he lifted out his face, then his body. The fire had thundered on, passing over him in its wild rampage, and he heard the sound of thunder. More lightning? No, he reassured himself, just rain. Rain at last.

Chapter Two

A couple of days later, Thomas sat on the stoop of his cabin in the Hollow and marvelled at how the providential rain had rescued him as he lay freezing in the brook. Whittling a spoon, he now tried to sort out his dilemma. Freed for a while from his haunting despair, the fire had shocked him back into reality. Again he offered thanks to the Lord Above.

Now take stock of the situation! Decide whether to stay, or to leave to find a job. Two summers ago, he had worked with an old British master-caulker on a Robin’s Company barque, the workhorse sailing vessel that Robin’s often used. Being on the run from the Navy at the time, it had offered a convenient disguise, but hardly enough money to accumulate all the tools and a draft animal needed for the farm he hoped to start. He had not accepted M’sieur Huard’s offer of work last summer; instead, this spring he had brought Magwés back to his cabin and worked at clearing his land for their life ahead. He quickly put that darkening thought out of his mind. Perhaps he should travel east along the Coast to the tiny settlement of Pabos. That was probably a couple of days paddling, and so manageable. But he’d not heard of any employment there. About a hundred miles further on at the mouth of Chaleur Bay lay Douglastown, another English settlement. But that was out of the question. Too far away to paddle, expert though he had become.

He could stay here, plant a few potatoes and some maize, the Indian corn, or possibly cabbages, but he was sure that would not keep him alive through the winter ahead. He could fish through the ice, trap small game — he knew how, after that one winter with the Micmac. He could live alone, slowly clear his land, cut trees, saw them into lengths with the fine tools M’sieur Blanquart had given him, after Blanquart’s son Marc went back to France to look for Sorrel, the little sister.

He wondered how the old man was doing. He had enjoyed his son Marc’s companionship in the woods last winter among the French lumberjacks. Again he’d seen how you needed neighbours here in the New World. One man alone could not survive. You needed the interconnecting relationships of friends. His cabin was far from any such community, nor would any spring up soon, given that winters were severe and the land only brought forth bounty after back-breaking work, guaranteed to make even the stoutest of hearts quail.

So that, in a way, decided him. Working here with no friends, no companionship, and of course no possibility of finding a wife to share his life as Magwés had done, would not further his cause. During these last two years in the New World, crammed with life-threatening episodes and all the challenges of an uninhabited terrain, he had learned one thing — you made things happen yourself, or you lost out. So for better or worse, he had better get out, get to Paspébiac, and try his luck.

Having decided, he leapt up, and spent the rest of the day preparing his camp for the leaving thereof. He hid his few tools in a cache he’d dug a hundred yards upstream from his cabin. Then he climbed out of the Hollow and on out toward the bay, to look down on the site of his proposed farmhouse. Below this hill, flat land ran down to the red cliffs overlooking the sea.

Not much to show for all his work, with about twenty feet or so cleared. Giant trunks lay awry, limbed and gaunt, awaiting oxen to drag them to the walls he hoped to erect over foundation stones lugged up from the beach. Among the stumps he’d planted some potatoes and corn from the Micmac. Yes, it would look like any abandoned site of a would-be settler, and passersby were unlikely, anyway, his place being miles from Paspébiac. Travellers up and down the Coast used only the sea: no land transportation through thick, impassable forest and rivers to be forded. He and Magwés, Little Birch, had mapped out this place for their eventual farmhouse, chosen because this hill would cut the north wind, and the flat land would accept a farmhouse, a garden, and buildings for livestock. This is where they had intended to stay until the end of their days. And now, her days had already ended, so abruptly.

He paused, and bowed his head, trying to keep tears from starting into his eyes. But start they did. His son would be well looked after by the Micmac band, he knew that, much as he longed to have him with him. But, of course, quite impossible. He waited for a while, then cleared his throat, and got up and walked down to the brook, where he got himself a good long drink of water, and then returned to his cabin to prepare for his next foray into the unknown.

***

The next morning, Thomas Manning sat in the stern of his new Micmac canoe, paddling with strong, even strokes past the high, red, ragged cliffs strewn with birds. He marvelled at how these helldivers wrung a satisfactory living out of their sparse environment, when he could not yet make a go of it by his lush brook. The spring had produced for him some wild onion root, very young leaves of willow that were nice and tender, and of course the one week’s produce of fiddleheads. But he had no more molasses for energy, flour for bread, and most important, no salt for curing, nothing in fact of the many supplies on which life depended.

He hoped this canoe trip might free him from his loneliness but no, his isolation remained. He had loved Magwés with all his heart, and it seemed so very cruel that she had been taken from him by the birth of his only son, now looked after by the tribe.

Above, reaching out like some mournful ghost, a floating cloud with dark undersides had taken over the pale sky. The weather here in the Gaspé was so changeable. An east wind meant rain. But right now, the wind had let up briefly. The stillness might indeed presage a storm. He paddled faster. The shoulder wrenched in his fall during the fire still troubled. His ankle throbbed too, though kneeling in this position helped avoid some of the pain. But as the rough weather approached, his natural confidence began to evaporate.

He loved the feel of the paddle, its white, polished birch handle fitting nicely into his palm. The blade was shaped like a willow leaf, pointed, unlike the settlers’ rounded paddles. He tried to breathe deeply as he drove on, to summon up his ever-present good humour. His canoe had been a godsend. What a surprise he had felt when that Native delegation arrived at his brook! Wending down the cliffside, he’d seen the Chief among them.

Nothing had been said during the appropriate welcoming ceremony back at his cabin, the smoking of the pipe, the exchange of news, while his curiosity had built. Finally, the Chief revealed they had come to present him with a special gift: this fine canoe and paddle. The humped-back design featured an elevated gunwale (raised sides that curved upward in the middle, and also at each end) to provide stability in rough water, as well as being navigable in both shallow streams and the ocean. Several of the tribe’s best craftsmen had fashioned it to demonstrate their appreciation for Thomas having risked his life to save that of their Chief. That fateful day he had gone, as a deserter, back to his man o’war, the
Bellerophon
, anchored off Paspébiac. With the invalided Chief in his canoe, he had paddled toward certain punishment, the one thousand lashes ending in death. But he put the memory aside.

On the cliffs, the cormorants wheeled and squawked their raucous objections to his passing, while ungainly squabs flopped about on the beach where they had landed after a first flight. Great gulls, some with black backs, others lighter grey with predators’ faces, all circled to voice their strenuous objections to this intrusion. He nodded to himself. Still and all, fine companions; nothing wrong with these birds. Just like you, I don’t like being interrupted; I too want to be left alone. Not many of us passing — which meant, he realized, no rescue should he get into trouble. One or two rowboats might pass each month, settlers going east to Pabos, a good long journey. Otherwise nothing but the odd Micmac paddler, and these never disturbed the birds. After all, the Micmac had been here for centuries.

He gazed again at the brazen red cliffs, secure in their severe majesty. He wondered how long they had looked out across this immutable bay. How long had they stared at Micmac canoes, passing them down through the ages? What must they think of our tall square-rigged ships now plying the waters? What must they think of the cannonades loosed by privateers at those merchant ships they were about to plunder? Though not much of that now, with the 1812–14 war between the British and Americans coming to a close. What have we wrought, wondered Thomas, with the march of our so-called civilization? Were they any happier before we came, these great, red guardian cliffs of the vast forests behind?

If only we had left them alone to stare out over the vacant waters, self-sufficient, with only their Micmac inhabitants who neither ravished each other nor the land itself, leaving the great trees to flourish upward untouched. The Micmac took from among the forest sentinels only what they needed for their own survival. Nor did they trap and kill beaver for hats in London and the great capitals of Europe. They left the wildlife bounty to interact and accumulate. They left the moose and caribou to battle for survival with the wolf packs, where the fittest could benefit from the testing, and go on to reproduce braver and more supple offspring.

We need the rain, he decided, forcefully bringing his mind back to the present: let the tempest come, I’ll get to Paspébiac. But that was just bravado. Gaspé storms were unpredictable in their ferocity, unmanageable in their scope.

To take his mind from the mounting wind and the increasingly rough seas, he looked ahead. Why, he asked himself, had he waited so long to make this trip? Because he knew there would be so little chance of success?

Perhaps his old caulking master would be hard at work on another barque. But he had turned down their offer of work last winter in the woods: M’sieur Huard, the company steward, would surely hold this against him. A tough negotiator, he paid so little, hardly enough to barter for needed supplies. And Thomas had to get food, and tools.

Smack! A wave struck the canoe and splashed over him. He glanced back. The waters of the bay, usually so blue, had turned an ominous black under the gathering clouds; white caps stood out vividly. He wondered how much further he had to go. More than an hour certainly. The wind, in its Gaspésian and wayward way, had begun to shift. Head out into the bay, he told himself, the waves were striking the canoe broadside. He paddled into them, focussing on seamanship. Better get a move on. That squall was building.

Sudden spray drenched him and nearly swamped the canoe. He turned in, heading for the shore. No, too rocky. But no time to dawdle. He bent low and stepped up his paddling, keeping the rhythmic motion learned from his native friends. Then, an errant wave almost flooded him.

He put down the paddle and grabbed the wooden bucket to bail fast. But another wave struck, all but capsizing him. Don’t bail; just drive forward. If only that cockamamy wind would not swing back.

But swing it did. For some reason, it seemed now to be coming off shore, swooping down over the cliffs and pushing him further out to sea. He paddled furiously, determined not to let the sea become his master.

When the wind let up, he shipped his paddle and tried again. After two quick bails, his canoe turned sideways again. He grabbed the paddle and with adrenaline pumping, stroked for dear life. First the fire, and now this — too much in just a few days. But then, he had spent weeks when nothing had happened, when he had just chopped and limbed trunks, piled brush with flies buzzing and ever-present loneliness keeping him company. Approaching disasters made one focus. And focus he did.