Barkskins (57 page)

He diverted the conversation to the peculiarities of these curious tree giants that tempted woodsmen with their perfectly knotless bodies, for he, too, had chopped trees in Maine and Nova Scotia and had never seen anything like them. Arana said they were a kind of pine.

“Many men say,” said Arana, “that kauri is the best wood in the world.” They smoked their pipes in silence for some time. Etienne said, “What can you tell us of Jinot here?”

“He wanted to return to you but could not. He had no money. What else could he do? Become a trader? My father would not allow that. A cook? Perhaps. But he knew the ax, he knew how to bring a tree down even if it were the biggest tree of the world. He was very skilled with axes. He made a chair one Sunday, all with his ax. I think he was lonely here, nobody talk with but me and some of the choppers. He said he never meant to come here but that man, Mr. Bone, made him do it. He did not want to cut kauri—he said they were trees of power, and we also believe this. I do not think he ever told me of his uncle.” He squinted at Etienne as if he had just jumped down from the sky.

“He could not, for he did not know me, ha? His grandfather—my father—Kuntaw, left Penobscot a long time ago and returned to his Mi'kmaw people near Sipekne'katik river. Kuntaw got two wives after that whiteman woman, and one of them, my mother. Settlers pressed on us, the Scotlands, destroyed our eel weirs, burned our
wikuoms.
” Arana nodded at the mention of eels; they were his bond with Jinot. “The government give our reserve to those Scotland people with burning hair color, so Kuntaw led us across the water to K'taqmkuk—as the whitemen say, Newfoundland, where there were good eel rivers, good fish, and some Mi'kmaw people. For us it was good because the whites did not go into the rough parts of this place. But we did and now we live well. We come to bring Jinot back with us. Aaron was there for two years. He went to Boston. We look, we can't find him to come here with us.”

Joseph Dogg, who had been silent during this recitation, asked softly if whitemen were not pushing into such a bountiful country. “Yes,” said Etienne, “but it is rich only for us Mi'kmaw. For whitemen who want something that makes money it is not promising. They come not to make houses, but only hunt caribou and get fish. These whitemen come to Kuntaw and ask him to take them to good fishing places. No harm can come from that.”

Joe Dogg rolled his eyes and said emphatically, “It is dangerous to bring whitemen into your country. However rough the trail, they remember it and soon begin to want it.”

Etienne said, “We live our Mi'kmaw life. That is what we want give to Jinot.” Looking at Arana, he shifted the talk. “The trader said you were a friend to Jinot. Maybe you will tell us about this place that he came to. Maybe you will show us how you and your mother's people live. We like to know this.”

Arana was silent for long minutes, then said, “We will go in the bush with my sister Kahu—
he kanohi komiromiro
—she has the eyesight of that little bird that finds invisible insects. She knows the forest with all her senses.”

Their excursion fell on a day of days, clear and bright at sunrise in the time of nesting birds. They were five in number, for not only did Arana's elder sister Kahu come with her pet parrot on her shoulder, but also their young cousin Aihe, muscular and as quick of motion as the dolphin in her name. Aihe's crinkly hair seemed alive and moving, as though each strand was a tendril reaching for a hold. Kahu's pet kaka flashed his red underwings and shouted whenever he felt like it, which was frequently, a call that sounded to Joe Dogg like someone ripping boards off the side of a barn.

Arana and Kahu tried to explain their country (despairingly, because it could not be explained but only lived), saying all land was owned by Maori tribes and clans, who kept forests intact for birds and only cut trees judiciously. Aihe interrupted, saying hotly that some tribal chiefs were greedy and sold their relatives' land to whitemen of the New Zealand Company. As they walked Kahu pointed at some gnarled pohutukawa trees and said they were sacred. Springs of purest water bubbled out of the ground. In the distance they could see the swell of the forest like a great wave.

They entered what Kahu called “the forest of Tane,” and the air became still and heavy. Above them the westerly wind stirred the treetops and always some birds rose crying out. They went silently as Kahu pointed out the tallest trees making a top roof over the forest, the lesser trees below. Joe Dogg was scandalized by the way of the rata, which began life in the high branches of other trees and, as it grew, sucking the life force from its host, sent roots downward until they reached the earth and twisted together into a distorted trunk until the host tree became part of the rata.

Late in the morning the small pieces of visible sky clouded over and Kahu said they might have a little fast-moving storm. Before she finished speaking they could hear the rain pelting down above them, beating on the leaves, though so interlaced were the treetops that no drops reached them.

They came out of the trees as the storm pulled away, and from a lookout rock they saw pillars of mist exhaled from the folded hills. Aihe said it was Papatuanuku, the earth mother, sighing for Ranginui, the sky father, and that in the Beginning they had been glued tightly to each other in amorous conjunction, making great darkness for their god children. The children decided to separate their parents and let in light, she said, and Tane, the forest god, held them apart with trees. She asked Etienne for Mi'kmaw stories. He remembered several imperfectly, but stayed silent as he thought they would show empty against her accounts of a Maori world teeming with so many gods. The Mi'kmaq had lost their spirit world to the missionaries' God.

When they passed near an ongaonga Aihe pulled at Joe Dogg's sleeve, pointed and told him it was a dangerous plant with a poison sting. “They tell of a whiteman sailor who ran away from his ship in the night. He ran into a forest where there were many ongaonga plants and he fell in them in the darkness, crying out. But the ongaonga did not spare him and he died of its stings.” A little later she caught something and passed it to Etienne—“here is a
pepekemataruwai
for you, we call it ‘insect with a silly face.' ” He flung it from him, laughing.

•  •  •

Etienne was impressed that everything they saw or heard or smelled was linked to Maori gods and their feverish vengeful lives. He promised himself that when he returned to K'taqmkuk he would find old people and ask for stories of ancestors. He stared at the ocean below, glinting through the trees, and thought it looked back at him. Never in K'taqmkuk had the Atlantic Ocean fixed him with its watery eye. Was this a sign?

At the new moon Joe Dogg and Etienne Sel worked their passage to Port Jackson and after a long wait signed on to a London-bound ship and on to Boston. “We must find Aaron,” said Etienne.

J
ames had spent the early August morning hour combing very carefully through the monthly household accounts and totaling up Posey's expenditures. Since their marriage he had kept her on a liberal but strict allowance; in their early days it was his only ascendancy over her. She had found him rigorous—a single penny beyond the allowance and the next month's amount was halved. But now he cared less and since the birth of Lavinia (long after they resumed subdued marital relations), Posey had changed, all her tigerish flauntings behind her. The waves of her affectionate care washed beyond Lavinia and over James, his cousins and their wives, the house staff—all except Phineas Breeley, who had been banished to New Brunswick, far, far from infant Lavinia. Posey read stories and poems from
Tales of the Robin
to the child every night; Lavinia developed a tender regard for “the pious bird with the scarlet breast.”

James closed the account book. Posey had become almost frugal in her expenditures. For himself, beyond his cigars, presents for Lavinia, decent port and a very occasional waistcoat, he spent little money—except for new horseflesh. He had just purchased Throstle, a handsome chestnut Hanoverian saddle mount, and decided now on a half hour of manly horse talk with Will Thing, his aged coachman. As he rose to go down to the stables the new butler came in and said, “Mr. Vogel requesting to see you, sir.”

“Let him come in, let him in,” said James, for Lennart Vogel had become a particular friend. “Lennart, you must be just now returned from your annual jaunt?” He was slightly shocked. There was no sign of Lennart the elegant. He wore dark fustian workman's trousers, a grey wool vest and heavy boots. The boot heels were crusted with mud.

“I am. And very interesting it was, James,” said Lennart. “Forgive my appearance. I am so charged with information I came straight here. Apropos of my journey I wonder if you have a little time to talk with me. This last week I have been forced to consider the future of the company. I see pitfalls ahead that must be avoided. But also a chance to enlarge our scope if we exert ourselves. No use talking to Edward or the others just yet.”

“Would you like to walk about the grounds while we converse? The day's heat is not yet intolerable.”

“Better to walk about outside,” said Lennart, “I am so disheveled.”

They strolled through the grounds, under the grape arbor with its clusters of unripe fruit, past the gaudy geometries of bedding plants. Posey was delighted with the strident colors of pelargonium, salvias, petunias and calceolarias, but James preferred roses, which at least had some height and perfume; the bedding gardens, very much the new thing, were like cheap oriental carpets.

Lennart walked too quickly for James's taste; James finally sat on a stone bench near the roses and said, “Lennart, stop a bit and tell me what troubles you.”

Lennart did not sit but walked back and forth, the words tumbling out. “James, I believe we now must urgently consider the future and our forest holdings. We have had several rather lean years and you know as well as I that we do not have many good patches left in New England or York state. The pine is cut out. I know, you are going to say, ‘What about the forest lands in Ohio' that your father bought some years back. That purchase is the catalyst to my visit here today. In my woodland journey this year I went to that Ohio property and what I saw utterly dismayed me. It was no longer the pine forest that your father persuaded us to purchase. In his day there were only Indians and fur traders passing through great stands of white pine, but now settlers, mostly from northern Europe, have come there in number. Thousands arrived en masse eighteen months ago and they have burned and cut almost all of those trees and replaced them with farms. Can you imagine? The finest white pine heaped up to burn. There is nothing left. And they keep coming.”

“My God,” said James. “It was several thousands of acres.”

“Yes, we should have had a trespass agent in attendance. But the forest stood empty of all but trees and the inrushing people believed it was free for the taking. They took it. It is gone.”

“I thought Armenius Breitsprecher was supposed to make yearly inspections of those holdings.”

“We settled on every two years as it was a long and arduous trip and he has other duties. When your father went there he had to traverse the Great Black Swamp, one of the most horrific barriers to travel on the continent. Now with new roads and the Erie Canal it is all greatly improved. Breitsprecher planned to go this year—too late. These settlers are so many that they have taken those thousands of acres to the ground in little more than a single year.”

“That is difficult to believe.”

“James, you have seen birds of prey pick a fallen deer to the bone in one or two days?”

“Of course.”

“Consider settlers as human birds of prey,” said Lennart. “Birds of prey with the weapon of fire. They burned great swathes of our trees. You have certainly read in the papers of wilderness glades that become towns of more than a hundred houses in two months?”

James could feel the old pain starting to grip his stomach, reminiscent of the days when Posey threw her temper fits. “But surely there is still a glut of forest in other places. We can find other forests. I have heard it said that this continent has unequaled vastness of forests, the most in the world.”

“Quite true. There are still untouched and unknown forests. And that brings me to my point. We need to find these forests and get our woods crews on them as soon as we may. Else all of Europe will come in and burn and cut everything. In some European countries there are laws and prohibitions against free cutting of trees, and the more rebellious peasants who chafed under those rules now are here, and released from those ukases, they go mad with the power of destruction. They are like no people seen on the face of the earth before now. They are like tigers who have tasted blood. And like tigers they pass on their lustful craving for land to their children and grandchildren, who continue to believe it is their
right
to take whatever is there in this land of plenty.” He threw his cigar stub down. “I propose that you and I make a reconnaissance to find new forest. We are not young, James, but both hale and strong. On my journey I went no farther than those properties in Ohio, but while there I heard that to the north in Michigan Territory there are pines. Very many white pines.”

James sat smoking and thinking. “Yes, I suppose our usual way of buying land or stumpage in New England or York state and then cutting it with no idea of where new timber will be found could undo the company in future. There are more competitors than ever and we have learned our near forests are not eternal. Trees grow too slowly. This is not a fresh idea; we have gnawed on it several times at meetings. But Edward and Freegrace balk at exploration, they delay and counsel waiting, for what I do not know. I recall that at a gathering several years ago Cyrus spoke of excellent chances in Pennsylvania, but Edward said, ‘Not now, not now!' and our competitors gobbled them up.”