The Deserter (13 page)

Tongue shook his head. “For wear, for clothing.” Tongue made as if to shiver. “Very cold winter. And for eat.”

Thomas certainly did remember hearing of the beaver furs and hats in London, so
à la mode
a few years back. But here, fur was a sheer necessity. And again, he realized that his own clothes must now be a priority. The heavy coat he had bought from one of the departing Robin’s carpenters would hardly suffice, though it had been a gesture in the right direction. “How long do you stay there?” Thomas gestured north. “Four moons maybe five.”

Oh Lord, thought Thomas, what have I let myself in for? Five months? In the depths of winter, miles from anywhere, no trading post at hand. In fact, nothing but open space. Icy woods. What would they live in? Surely not birchbark wigwams? He’d freeze. Would they have any spare clothes to lend him? He began to have severe doubts about this unknown future. His cabin looked better and better. But no, he had promised, and now he would live up to it. Those desolate hills in the interior so far from civilization, with all their dangers, would have to be faced, no matter what the risk.

The next day, Thomas and Tongue worked on winterizing his cabin and stowing tools and any other belongings in places not easily found. Thomas was also worried about the roof of his cabin. With no knack for stitching birch-bark, he placed rocks to keep the bark in place, though he had no great expectations of that lasting.

At dawn the next day, they both started back to the band’s encampment, Thomas with mighty misgivings. But jogging easily through the woods together, Thomas cheered himself by noticing the difference now in his conditioning from that first trip. He covered the ground with ease, chest no longer heaving, arms and legs firmer as he ran rapidly and surefooted through the woods. Being a sailor, he’d had no opportunity to get in shape for such unanticipated activities.

On approaching Port Daniel, they took care not to follow any perceptible trail and even struck northward above the camp so as to approach from upstream, away from the mouth of the river and its trading post.

When Thomas reached the camp, the Chief determined he should move in with Burn’s family to get better acquainted with the Micmac language, and to learn how to set snares and hunt with bow and arrow. That way when they all trekked into the interior, he’d be more prepared.

Burn’s father, a square body atop two bow legs, spoke little and glowered a lot. Thomas nicknamed him Big Burn, instead of trying to pronounce
Weliedulin
,which meant, “he who builds canoes for great rapids.” His wife seemed docile, never complaining, moving about her job silently, but with a sadness in her eyes. Although known as the master canoe maker, Big Burn had turned to fashioning bows and arrows, now that the winter was at hand. He seemed to accept his guest, teaching him how to shape the black ash or mountain maple into the shape of a bow, notching both ends for the string, and how to protect it with hot grease, polishing the grease deep into the wood. When not teaching him, he would send Thomas by hand signals to cut wood for their fire and tend to other jobs.

The weather had grown definitely colder, snow was falling, and Thomas kept wondering when the band would take off for the uplands, and what he should do, if anything, about more winter clothes. Should he try to buy them? How does one scrounge a sweater according to Micmac protocol? He worked hard learning archery from Burn, for all agreed that his powerful firearm, although essential, took too long to load in emergencies. Thomas had bought some powder in Paspébiac, and only a few lead shots, for it was made mostly at home by the settlers.

Burn and several other young men made no bones about their impatience to get going. So the Chief, by common consent, sent Burn with two companions to report on the game situation in the interior. Meanwhile, families kept to themselves, making preparations for the trek by day and telling stories in their wigwams at night.

With clouds gathering and snow flurries falling, Thomas wanted to spend time with Little Birch, but she was among those working hardest. Was she avoiding him? Hard to tell. He contented himself with his archery, at which he was improving, happy to know she was close at hand. Did she feel the same way?

Before Burn left, he had mentioned to Thomas that their food supplies this autumn were not as ample as they might be, and the band prayed nightly to the Creator for plentiful game during the dark winter months — and for strong hunters to harvest it. To make matters worse, Burn and his friends, having travelled fast, returned three days later with a negative report. The dilemma remained: stay here longer, or leave at once. Thomas was worried: unsettled feelings among these usually relaxed Micmac did unnerve him.

The next morning when the sun broke out of early clouds, the weather warmed up and a kind of late St. Martin’s summer (a warm spell) fell upon them for an all too brief period. The Chief convened a meeting and called for a modest banquet.

The camp exploded into action. Fires were laid and Thomas set to work with his tinderbox — deemed a marvel and loved especially by all the children. The women filled two hollowed stumps with cold brook water to which they added corn, roots, and a porcupine fortuitously killed two nights before. Stones heated in fires were placed and replaced in the stumps to cook the soup that, with other foods, would be shared by all that night. While women busied themselves with these preparations, the Elders sat on logs around a fire to begin the traditional conference to set the time of leaving.

The banquet was enjoyed with great gusto by everyone save Thomas, who still had trouble with most of their rough foods, except for some tubers that he took to be Jerusalem artichokes. Burn had not been assigned any tasks for the preparations, having travelled long and hard. So now he lit a pipe in honour of the occasion and motioned for Thomas to join him. They sat on a couple of stumps at one side and talked in English and Micmac, watching the conference, called a
mawogmkejik.
Thomas again marvelled at how the Elders all spoke slowly, with consideration for each other, and with dignity.

At one point, Little Birch came to stand beside them. Thomas rose to give her his stump, but no, that was not the Micmac way. She paused only for a few minutes, without speaking, and then went on to help the women. “Next spring,” Burn leaned over to Thomas, “I throw her stone.”

“You what? Say it in Micmac? I didn’t understand.” Haltingly in English and in Micmac, Burn explained their custom of how a man proposed to a woman. He entered the tent of the family, and after certain set preliminaries, tossed a stone in her lap. If she accepted it, that meant she agreed to be his bride. If she put it aside, it meant she was not ready, or she didn’t want him.

“And that’s it? What about the wedding ceremony?”

“No ceremony, this band. Couple live together. But first she must accept stone.”

Burn went on to explain that a young man could not toss the stone into her lap until he was considered a full member of the tribe, and had spent time with the family, too. “After winter, if I okay, Chief say me, I ready. I live with family and I throw stone for sure.”

What a mouthful to swallow: Burn and Little Birch. Why hadn’t he really grasped that sooner? Of course, the perfect match! What had he been thinking? He himself came from a totally different culture; a marriage with her could never, ever have worked. Put it out of your mind right away, he sternly admonished. And anyway, had he really thought of marriage? Of course not, it was just that, oh yes, he was so very drawn to her! She was everything he could ever want in a young woman. But he had never gotten as far as thinking about marriage. And now, she was lost to him forever.

Stop that, he commanded, you’re just torturing yourself. Change the subject! He looked over at the Elders.

“How long will they talk?”

“Until all agree,” Burn told him.

“Don’t they take a vote?” Earlier on, Thomas had explained the system of democracy to Burn, who considered it laughable. “No. No, not our way.”

Well, thought Thomas, I wonder how the British Parliament would function on this basis?

Night fell and the central fire threw a rosy glow on the bronzed features of the Micmac Elders. Smoke from their pipes curled upwards and their eyes reflected the roaring fire as they spoke in turn, seriously, each giving their own opinion. Cedars provided a scented backdrop, while white and yellow birch soared upwards, seeming to carry their deliberations into the starry sky where they’d be heard by Niskam, the Creator. Dwarfed beneath giant trees, their conference below seemed capable of making the most weighty of decisions.

Behind Thomas, as he sat watching, the river continued to ripple and splash over rapids, which acted as a natural barrier for canoes and made this a convenient portage point. But he heard no nightbird songs like the British nightingales that sang near the castle. Finally, Thomas found himself getting sleepy, long accustomed to going to bed with the sun and rising with it. Burn too gave a big yawn. “Will they decide soon?” Thomas asked. Burn shrugged. “Maybe they discuss all night and tomorrow. Maybe only one pipeful.”

“They’ve already had several,” said Thomas. “I think I’ll go to bed.”

Burn nodded but remained seated.

After Thomas had been asleep for a while, he was wakened by a gentle nudge. He sat up, wide awake in a flash. Burn was taken aback by his nervous reaction, but then murmured, “Leave in morning.” “Tomorrow?”

Burn nodded. Thomas began to worry, would Burn and his father make a good team to be with? The father was not the jolliest companion for the long and confining winter months. No worries, if the game were there, the band would soon find it and survive. He went back to sleep.

On the morrow by first light, Thomas was helping prepare supplies for travel while Big Burn’s wife cleaned out the wigwam. Most of the band had already dismantled their wigwams, bundling up the birchbark for travel, and now were busying themselves with last-minute details.

The Chief called Thomas over, and with the help of Tongue, introduced him to Little Birch’s uncle,
bàsêk neutpidnoqom
, Micmac for the arm that dangled uselessly. In his late thirties perhaps, he had a face like Full Moon’s, rounded, with large gentle eyes, but the features possessed a haunted look, caused perhaps by his disability. He lived with Full Moon in their wigwam. Thomas promptly nicknamed him One Arm.

The Chief pointed to One Arm and said to Thomas, “You go with him.” Tongue translated.

“You mean, travel with him, to help him?”

“No. Live. His family.”

“His family?” Thomas had never thought for one instant the band would be separating into families, as Tongue seemed to be indicating. “Don’t we all go together? All the band?”

Tongue explained, patiently and haltingly, that in winter, each family went to a separate territory. In it, they were free to lay out their own traplines and to hunt without interference from other families. That way, no family would have to travel more than a couple of days on each trapline. And the Chief partitioned out the territories annually, rotating the assignments to make sure no one family got all the good game areas year after year, nor another continually having a hard time of it. “So we separate?”

“Yes. You go with family of One Arm.” With whom? Thomas stared.

Tongue saw his confused expression. “Big Birch, he die. Need hunter and trapper for family. One Arm good, but no two arms. Need two arms for trap, for snare, for bow and arrow.”

But that therefore meant with Little Birch! He would be spending the winter with Little Birch. What a deal of confused emotions this aroused.

Later, during the evenings on the trek, Thomas heard the story of Big Birch, which explained that sense of heaviness he’d found among the family when he had first returned. Big Birch had not really been a seagoing man; he was much happier spearing salmon in the river, at which he was superb. His Micmac name,
nedawiwskewn
, indicated that. But in order to pull his weight with the band, he had consented each year to hunt seals with them. This year there had been a large influx in Port Daniel bay due to unusual cold currents.

He had been assigned to hunt with another young fisherman, and late this summer, they had gone out alone. With a storm rising, his young partner had managed to harpoon a large male seal. Rather than let it escape with their line and harpoon, they decided to land it before the waves built to full force. In their light canoe, they aimed for the cove around Port Daniel point, but as the seal dove and tugged them along, the treacherous shoals and sharp rocks of the point damaged the canoe. Only too soon, it sank. The young man made it to shore, but Big Birch, unable to swim, had disappeared.

Now Thomas found himself with a severe dilemma.

He wanted to do his best to care for Little Birch, but now she was spoken for, the dangers of any relationship with her seemed to outweigh the benefits. And he realized he’d be with just one family: a man with one arm, two women, and Brightstar, nine or ten. Was this so much better than being on his own at the cabin? True, he’d be able to learn the lore imbued in them over centuries of experience. But would that be sufficient to save all five of them? Other families might be hard put to feed themselves, let alone give any food to this family. Only his own strength, his own health, his own gun with its limited powder and shot, and the hunting instincts of One Arm, would see them through.

And most important of all, now that he thought about it, the odds were not all that high that this cobbled-together group — with its addition of one inexperienced young white man — would even make it through the winter alive.