Arundel (18 page)

The young man laughed, a brilliant laugh that lengthened his face oddly, giving him the appearance of slenderness, height, fairness, instead of breadth and shortness and swarthiness. “Tell me where Dr. Sylvester Gardiner lives, and I’ll carry you to Arundel for four otter skins.”

“Hell,” my father said courteously, “I’d rather swim than pay four otter skins for such a trip. It’s worth no more than the information you seek. I’ll give you that for nothing. Gardiner’s holding lies on the west side of the river where the wharves run out at the mouth of Cobosseecontee stream. He’ll be in Boston at this time of year. From your masthead you can see Gardinerstown.”

The young man seized the ratlines on the inside and went up them hand over hand, not moving his feet: as quick and agile as the monkeys that Spanish sailors carry. At the top he swung his leg over, and in a second was clinging to the mast, smiling down at us. “From here?” he asked, and looked upriver. He seemed to slip, caught himself, swung under the ratlines, and dropped to the deck as light as a squirrel, looking at us as though to say: “You couldn’t do that!” and I wouldn’t have sworn we could.

“I’ll have a shot at it,” he said. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll take you to Arundel, and you can pay me what you think it’s worth.”

An older man with a chin whisker made some sort of protest, in which I caught the word “dirty.”

“We’ve been a month in the woods,” my father said quickly. “Tomorrow we’ll be cleaner than you are.”

The young man paid no attention to my father, but rounded on the chin-whiskered man with a face suddenly dark as a blackamoor’s, and puffy, as though rage surged knobbily to his cheeks. His voice was startlingly shrill. “This schooner’s under charter to my employers! I take whom I please and go where I please. Hoist your jib and anchor and get under way!”

He turned to my father again, his face lightening and lengthening extraordinarily. “What’s your name, sir, and where’ll I pick you up to-morrow when I drop down on the early tide?”

“Steven Nason, sir; innkeeper and trader, of Arundel. We’ll lie off the southern tip of Swan Island.”

The jib slid up and the schooner’s head payed off.

“To whom am I indebted, sir?” my father called.

The young man, gay in his white coat striped with blue on the sleeves and skirt, waved to us “Benedict Arnold of Norwich, Connecticut, sir, newly come from Quebec.” The schooner slipped off upriver as smoothly as her namesake.

My father bent to his paddle, chuckling. “That boy’s a trader, Stevie. That was good trading you listened to, and your pa sort of out-traded him.”

IX

I
HAVE
often wished we could have left Natanis a day earlier or a day later, so that I might have escaped a store of grief at a far distant period; but it may be that by doing so we would have encountered other and greater evils than the Reverend Ezekiel Hook.

There was an odd silence among the waiting Swan Islanders when we came down to the tip of the island and pushed through the guzzle; then Hobomok shouted that we had left Natawammet and Woromquid in a place of countless beavers, and that the sachem of the Norridgewocks was escorting us home. Thereupon there was a bedlam of whooping and firing of muskets, and the entire encampment rushed down the slope of the headland to welcome us. When Rabomis sought to take my father by the shoulders, he held her off, saying he would talk to nobody until the two of us had gone into the sweat house and freed ourselves of pitch and grime.

The
m’téoulin
ordered squaws to heat stones for us; and he himself led us to his cabin. On the way we saw a white man in rusty black garb standing alone on the ridge, looking sourly at us as though our talk and laughter had something unrighteous about it. This man, Rabomis said, was an exhorter sent from Boston to talk to settlers who had no meeting houses, and to lead the Abenakis to follow the white man’s Great Spirit, if they did not already do so. That afternoon, she said, he had paddled over from Pownalborough and spoken to them. They held a council, she said, and now the
m’téoulin,
being an orator, would reply. Since she interpreted badly, she begged my father to interpret.

My father said he wanted nothing to do with it; and we went on with the
m’téoulin,
who brought with him a kettle full of water in which herbs were steeping. This we took into the sweat house, a small wigwam at the edge of the river. Two squaws put in hot stones; then left us clean moccasins and blankets, and carried away our clothes to be washed and our leather shirts to be scoured with sand.

My father trickled the water on the stones, and a sweet-smelling steam arose, so that perspiration poured from us. In this stifling place we stayed fifteen minutes, after which we jumped in the icy-cold river, and came out feeling strong and elated: ready, my father said, to ride a bob-cat.

We cut each other’s hair, and my father was scraping bristles from his chin when the
m’téoulin
came in to say the white man wished my father, in the name of his Great Spirit, to interpret the words of the council.

I could see my father was reluctant; and if I had known what would come of it I would have gone back into the sweat house and stayed until the stones grew cold. But I could not know, nor could the
m’téoulin
with all his knowledge of magic; so we wrapped our blankets around us and went to the council house. The minister Hook eyed us disapprovingly, making me feel undressed, like a person driven from his home by a fire in the dead of night.

Hook was thin and hunched, so that he looked like a heron waiting for a fish. The skin over his forehead was tight and glossy, as though it might easily burst. He said to my father, in a harsh voice, that he had told the red men, earlier in the day, how he had been sent by the great missionary society of Boston, not to get away their lands or goods, but to instruct them in worshipping the Great Spirit. There was only one religion, and unless they embraced it, they could not be happy. They had lived in errors and darkness all their lives, and he had come to save them. Other Abenakis were awaiting the decision of their older brothers on Swan Island, so if they had objections to the true religion he wished to hear them.

My father, wrapped in his red blanket, nodded soberly and signaled to the
m’téoulin
to speak.

“Brother,” the
m’téoulin
said, “the white men came here to enjoy their own religion in their own way. We gave them corn and meat; they gave us poison. They called us brothers. They wanted more land; they wanted our country. We became uneasy; Indians were hired to fight against Indians. Your white chiefs have offered large sums for the scalps of the women and children of our brothers to the east. Your people brought strong liquor that stole away our senses and even killed our friends.

“Brother, our country was once large and yours was small. You have now become a great people, and we have scarcely a place left to spread our blankets. You have got our country but are not satisfied; you want to force your religion upon us.

“Brother, continue to listen: you say you are sent to instruct us how to worship the Great Spirit agreeably to his mind, and if we do not embrace the religion which the white people teach we shall be unhappy hereafter. You say you are right and we are lost. How do we know this to be true? We understand your religion is written in a book. If it was intended for us as well as for you, why has not the Great Spirit given it to us? And not only to us, but why did he not give to our forefathers the knowledge of that book, with the means of understanding it rightly? Why has the Great Spirit permitted our forefathers to live wrongly since the olden time? We only know what you tell us about it. How shall we know whom to believe, being so often deceived by the white people?

“Brother, you say there is but one way to worship and serve the Great Spirit. If there is but one religion, why do you white people differ so much about it? Why not all agree, since all read the book?

“Brother, we do not understand these things. We are told your religion was given to your forefathers, and has been handed down from father to son. We also have a religion which was given to our forefathers, and has been handed down to us, their children. It teaches us to be thankful for favors we receive: to love each other, and to be united. We never quarrel about religion.

“Brother, the Great Spirit has made us all; but he has made a great difference between his white and red children. He has given us a different skin and different customs. Since he has made so great a difference between us in other things, why may we not conclude he has reason for giving us a different religion? The Great Spirit does right: he knows what is best for his children. We are satisfied.

“Brother, if you white men murdered the son of the Great Spirit, we Indians had nothing to do with it. It is none of our affair. If he had come among us we would not have killed him. We would have treated him well. You must make amends for that crime yourselves.

“Brother, we do not wish to destroy your religion or take it from you. We only want to enjoy our own.

“Brother, you say you have not come to get our lands or our goods, but to enlighten our minds. We are told you have been preaching to white people along this river. These people are our neighbors: we are acquainted with them. We will wait a little while and see what effect your preaching has upon them. If we find it does them good, makes them honest and less disposed to cheat Indians, we will then consider again what you have said.”

Seldom have I seen a man so infuriated as Hook when my father had interpreted the last sentence. His rage, for some reason, was directed more against my father and me than against the
m’téoulin
or the other Abenakis. I think he suspected my father of putting words in the
m’téoulin’s
mouth. His eyes reddened and his knees trembled; he shot his head forward and croaked, “Blasphemy!”, looking more than ever like a heron about to pounce on a fish.

My father would have gone from the council house had not Hook gone up close to him, shaking with wrath, and said: “These sons of Belial have blasphemed against our religion and our God. Say to them they cannot speak thus!”

My father shook his head. “Reverend Hook,” he said, “I’m no minister of the gospel to rebuke these people for their beliefs. I’m a trader and innkeeper, and sometimes, against my will, an interpreter.” Again he made as though to leave the cabin, but Hook stopped him, his lips compressed, and his forehead shiny like the dried bladders my sisters throw about at Christmas.

“Or,” asked Hook, his voice shrill with rage, “are you yourself a heathen, damned forever with these imps of hell?”

“Now, now!” my father said soothingly. “I take comfort in the Good Book; and according to my lights I’m what they call a godly man. I think, even, I’m as godly as your Boston saints and deacons who speculate in land and trade in human flesh and specialize in bribery under the protection of a special God.”

“A special God!” Hook croaked, raising his hands, as though undecided whether to call on heaven for help or to take my father by the throat.

“Why, yes,” my father said, “a special God; the God of Boston. We’re sick of your Boston God, and we’re sick of your Boston merchants with their special privileges we common people can’t have; with their money bags filled out of wars we little people make; with their yowling and yelping that we who want a voice in the affairs of the colony are thieves and rascals!”

“A special God!” Hook whispered, with an air of expecting to see my father struck dead.

“Just so,” my father said: “a God like the God Jonathan Edwards wrote and preached about, without mercy or decency, rejoicing in human misery and suffering, cruel beyond belief to little children, and condemning the greater part of mankind to eternal torment. There’s no place for any such God in my life; for Jonathan Edwards’ God says my son here”—he dropped his hand on my shoulder—“is evil, was born evil, and is doomed to hell fire. Therefore if I believed in Jonathan Edwards’ God my son would be wasting his time in striving to lead a decent, godly life, being damned to begin with. And if I told these red men about the existence of such a God, they’d say he was worse than Malsum, their evil wolf-god. They’d fear to speak his name, lest he come back to earth to do mischief to innocent people.”

Hook stared from my father to me. I have never seen hatred more bitter, not even on the faces of men with whom I have fought for my life. He moved to the door, peering back at us with hard heroneyes. “The sins of the fathers!” he rasped. “You and your son and your son’s sons shall burn in hell!”