Chesapeake (6 page)

Finally the young woman who had brought him the present took it back, reached for a sharp-pointed stick and deftly split open the shell. One half she threw away. The other she handed gravely to Pentaquod, indicating that he should eat.

Trained on venison and rabbit and fish, he looked at the strange object in his hand. In no way could he relate it to food such as he had known: it was watery, and slippery, and had no bones, and there was no sensible way to attack it.

The girl solved his problem. Taking the laden shell from his nervous hand, she lifted it to his lips, told him to open his mouth, and with a delicate twist of her fingers popped the food in. For an instant he was aware of a fine, salty taste and a pleasing sensation. Then the food, whatever it was, disappeared, leaving on his face a most bewildered look. With an easy throwing motion, the girl tossed the empty shell onto the mound.

‘We call them kawshek,’ Scar-chin explained. ‘More sleeping in the river than you could count. All winter we feed on kawshek.’

Pentaquod contemplated this: in addition to the abundance of food he had discovered by himself, there was this additional supply hidden in the river. It was inconceivable, and as he sat perplexed, trying to unravel the mystery of oysters, he thought of his friend Fishing-long-legs, and he queried Scar-chin. ‘What is it he catches on the bottom, cuts in two and swallows with such difficulty?’

‘Fish.’

‘I know fish. This is no fish. Shaped like a hand, with many legs.’

As soon as Pentaquod uttered these words a benign smile spread over the scarred face of his interpreter, who said nothing. Obviously he was recalling moments of past happiness, after which he summoned the girl who had caught the oysters. ‘He doesn’t know crabs, either,’ he whispered.

The girl smiled and with her right hand gave an imitation of a crab wriggling its many feet. Then a look of compassion filled her eyes; to be ignorant of the oyster was amusing, but to be unacquainted with the crab was pathetic.

‘What is crab?’ Pentaquod asked, and Scar-chin replied, ‘When Manitou, the Great Power, finished populating the river with everything our village required—pine trees for canoes, deer to feed us in summer, geese and oysters for winter—He saw that we were grateful and well disposed. So in His grace He created one thing more, to stand as a token of His eternal concern. He made the crab and hid him in our salty waters.’

Women in the crowd asked what he had said so far, then prompted him to add details that interested them: ‘A crab provides little food, so he is not easy to eat. But the little he does offer is the best food under the sky. To eat crab you must work, which makes you appreciate him more. He is the blessing, the remembrance. And no man or woman ever ate enough.’

Pentaquod listened with growing respect as Scar-chin reported on this delicacy, and when the oration ended he asked tentatively, ‘Could I taste some?’

‘They come only in summer.’

‘Didn’t you dry any?’

This question, when interpreted, brought laughter, which ended when the girl moved forward to indicate that the meat of the crab was so delicate it had to be eaten immediately; her fine fingers danced as she portrayed this.

Again Pentaquod fell to rumination, confused by this barrage of strange information. ‘But if the crab has the hard shell that I found on the island …’ He hesitated as the girl nodded, then knocked her knuckles together to prove how hard the shell was.

‘Aha!’ Pentaquod demanded, grabbing her by the wrist. ‘If the shell is so hard, how is it that Fishing-long-legs can cut it in half with his beak?’

When Scar-chin explained that the Susquehannock used that name for the great blue heron, and that he was referring to the manner in which the heron caught crabs, tossed them in the air and cut them in half, the girl’s expression became even more compassionate.

‘It’s the soft crab,’ she explained.

‘The what?’

‘In the summer we catch crabs that have no shell …’

This was totally incomprehensible, and Pentaquod shook his head, but the girl continued, ‘They have no shell, and we roast them over the fire, and they are the best.’

Pentaquod could make absolutely nothing of this, and he was about to drop the whole discussion when a boy of about nine summers moved beside the girl and by a series of swift gestures of hand-to-mouth indicated that he himself could eat four or five of the no-shell crabs. This seemed preposterous and Pentaquod turned away, but the daring boy tugged on his arm and repeated the pantomime: he could indeed eat five no-shells.

When the crowd dispersed to arrange ramshackle sleeping quarters for the night, Pentaquod retreated from the shore to his own wigwam, but before he fell asleep he found Scar-chin standing in the rude doorway. ‘Stay with us,’ the little man said. Pentaquod made no reply. ‘The werowance is old now, and sad.’ No comment. ‘The girl who caught the oyster for you, she is his granddaughter, and whenever he sees her it causes pain.’ This was impenetrable, but the little man continued, ‘Her father, the werowance’s son who should be in command now, died of the fever and the girl reminds him of this loss.’

Pentaquod saw no reason to respond to any of this, so in the darkness the little interpreter remained in the doorway, content to watch the shadowy form of the tall Susquehannock who had made this day so memorable. At last, when night surrounded the village, the former slave of the Susquehannocks slipped away.

In the ensuing weeks the villagers rebuilt their wigwams and instructed Pentaquod in their language, a much simpler one than his. In all ways this tribe lived on a less complicated level than the Susquehannocks: their werowance had little power and their possessions were fewer. Their medicine man was not so formidable as the mysterious shamans of the north, and for him to try to enforce decisions of life and death would have been laughable; he was a good-luck charm and nothing more.

The little old werowance was named Orapak; he was past sixty and must soon die, but was allowed to retain his office because there was none to challenge him. He was a wise old man, and gentle too, and for many years he had kept his tribe out of serious trouble. ‘When the Nanticokes come north to fight us, we flee farther north,’ he explained. ‘And when the Susquehannocks come south to fight us, we flee to the south.’

‘Doesn’t that take you into Nanticoke country?’

‘No, because when we flee south, we go into the marshes, and the Nanticokes wouldn’t dare follow us.’ He hesitated. ‘Mosquitoes, you know.’

‘I know. Last summer I lived in the marsh.’

‘Brave man,’ the werowance said. Then he asked, ‘Why did you think we leave our village each summer?’

‘What good do mosquitoes do?’ Pentaquod asked, whereupon the old man raised his eyes to heaven and replied, ‘On that first day Scar-chin here told you of how Manitou gave this river everything, and then one thing more, the crab. Well, when that was done He said, “Now I will keep men from becoming arrogant,” and He threw in the mosquito.’

‘Why?’

‘To remind us that He can do anything He pleases, and we have to like it.’

Pentaquod decided that now was the time to raise the question of his membership in the tribe. ‘The river is excellent. I enjoyed it when I lived here alone.’

The werowance studied this declaration, then blew out his cheeks, signifying that he appreciated the gravity of what had been said. The Susquehannock was pointing out that he had acquired possession of the place after the villagers had deserted it. He was intimating ownership, even though many warriors were available to contest it. Orapak realized how powerful this stranger was; quite likely he could defeat any of the warriors who up to now had defeated nobody. Warily he said, ‘It would be good if you stayed with us,’ adding hastily, ‘in the wigwam that’s already yours.’

‘I would like that,’ Pentaquod replied, and no more was said about his citizenship. He continued to occupy his wigwam, which women showed him how to finish properly, and he began paying court to Navitan, the werowance’s granddaughter. At seventeen she had been eyeing some of the young warriors during the summer encampment, but nothing much had happened and she now showed herself receptive to the moves the tall Susquehannock was making.

They were married before the first snow. The old women were delighted that their Navitan had caught herself such a daring man, and the shaman who performed the ceremony gave it as his opinion that Manitou Himself had sent Pentaquod to protect this village.

In the division of labor common to tribes along the Chesapeake, Pentaquod specialized in cutting tall trees, shaping them and burning out their interior so that canoes could be built. He also became the expert in hunting geese, those remarkable fowl that he had known simply as big birds: from oak and pine he carved eighteen rude likenesses of the geese, coloring them with earthen paints discovered by the tribe, and these he placed at strategic spots related to wind and shore, luring the birds so close that he rarely missed with his strong bow. But the killing of a goose always bothered him; for although he loved the taste of the roasted flesh, he did not like to see the stately birds destroyed.

It was at the end of winter when the sad night came. Navitan had been
scraping the reef for oysters when she saw a flock of geese in a cornfield acting strangely. The males were running at one another, and the yearlings were restless, gathering twigs as if to build nests they knew they did not need. Uneasy chatter murmured through the flock, when suddenly an old gander, much heavier than the rest, ran awkwardly a few steps, flapped his great wings and soared into the air.

In an instant that whole field of geese flew aloft, circled a few times, then set out resolutely for the north. From other fields which Navitan could not see, other flocks rose into the air, and soon the sky was dark with great black-and-gray geese flying north. ‘Oh!’ she cried, alerting the village. ‘They’re leaving!’

No one required to be told who was leaving. The geese, those notable birds on whom the tribe had feasted for generation after generation, were quitting the river. In nine days there would not be a goose visible anywhere, and to see them flying north, to hear them honking as they repaired to the distant ice-bound fields on which they would raise their young, was a moment of such sadness that many of the older men and women wept, for the great geese had been their calendars and the counting of their years.

Now the werowance appeared, white and stiff-legged, with his face to the sky, and after he had cast his blessing on the geese, the shaman uttered the timeless prayer:

No child made a sound, for this was the most sacred moment of the year. If the mysteries were not properly cast, the geese might fail to return, and the winter when that occurred would be terrible indeed.

Some moons after the geese had gone, crabs moved in to take their place as the principal source of food, and now Pentaquod discovered what the villagers meant when they claimed that Manitou, the Great Power, looked after them especially. It was a day in late spring when Navitan led him to her canoe, handing him a basketful of fish heads and bear
gristle to tote along. The concoction smelled offensive, but Navitan assured him this was what the crabs preferred, and he wondered how the loose and almost rotting stuff could be attached to the curved hooks used in fishing.

To his surprise, his wife had no hooks. ‘What kind of fishing is this?’ he asked, and she smiled without offering an explanation. But once he had paddled her to the spot she had selected, she produced long strands of twisted fiber and deer gut, and to these she tied fish heads and chunks of gristly bear meat, throwing the lines aft.

Pentaquod looked for the telltale signs which indicated that a fish had bitten the lure, but there was no such movement and he concluded that Navitan was not going to catch any crabs, but after a while, when there was no visible reason for her doing so, she began to pull in one of her lines with her left hand, holding in her right a long pole to which was attached a loosely woven wicker basket. As the line slowly left the water, Pentaquod saw that the first fish head was about to appear, but what he did not see was that attached to it was a crab, cutting at the meat with his powerful claws and oblivious of the fact that it was being pulled almost out of the water.

When the crab was visible to Navitan, she deftly swept her basket into the water and under the startled crab, lifting it as it tried to fall away, and plopping it, all legs wiggling and claws snapping, into the canoe.

Pentaquod was stunned by the performance, and when his wife continued to haul in her line, catching crab after crab, he realized that here was a brand of fishing totally unlike any in which he had ever participated. ‘Why don’t they swim away from the bait?’ he asked. ‘Can’t they see you’re going to catch them?’

‘They like us to eat them,’ Navitan said. ‘Manitou sends them to us for that purpose.’

Pentaquod gingerly touched one and found the shell extremely hard, but he could not examine it closely, for the fierce claws snapped at him. He was even more perplexed when Navitan carried her two dozen crabs to camp and pitched them into a pot of boiling water, for within moments they turned bright red. She then instructed him in how to pick meat from the carcasses, and when she had a clay bowl filled she told him to stop, for she knew that picking crab was a tedious and demanding job: a dozen crabs produced only a handful of meat.

But when she took this meat, as her mother had taught her, and mixed it with herbs and vegetables and corn meal, and formed it into small cakes and fried them in sizzling bear fat, she produced one of the finest dishes this river would ever know. ‘Cakes of crab,’ she called them, and Pentaquod found them subtle and delicious.