The Blooding of Jack Absolute (35 page)

Nothing. Neither sight nor sound came to where he stood, feet pointed down the path. He looked back at Até.The Mohawk waved
him on to another attempt. He blew again, watched the birch catch, stepped up to the hole. Was that the faintest whiff of
scorching or just the embers in his pot? With the branch crackling well, he tipped it over, ran back …

Still nothing. The only noise came from the faint rippling of water under ice, the squeak as Até shifted his feet on snow.
‘Go on,’ he hissed, miming the tipping of the whole contents of the kettle into the hole.

Jack ground his teeth, shook his head, stepped forward, the metal bowl crooked under one arm, kindling this branch like the
others, watching it flame. This was the biggest and driest of the three. If that failed to rouse the bear, well, Até could
bloody well go down into the hole himself and invite it to a quadrille!

Because he was looking into the kettle he didn’t see the trail of smoke rising from the ground. Because his nose was running
from cold and fear he couldn’t smell. Thus it was only when he bent over the hole that he suddenly was made aware that his
previous efforts had been successful.

‘NAAARGH!’

The roar was the worst thing he had ever heard; worse than the death rattle of the man he’d killed with a bayonet, worse than
his uncle’s screams, dying under his horse. It came from less than two feet away, from a head three times as wide as any man’s.
Though the eyes were small, they were entirely black, while the teeth were as big as dagger blades, yellow and lined in greenish
slime. Jack took all this in during his long, slow fall backwards, while the predominant impression, before terror melded
all of them, was of a reeking and terrible breath.

The dropped kettle rolled down the slope, a trail of sparks tumbling from its rim. Somehow he still clutched the flaming branch
and it was this he thrust up as the bear exploded from the earth and ran at him as fast as he’d ever seen anything move. The
animal, with a further horrible shriek, grappled the branch to itself, its jaws snapping the wood, scythe-claws ripping it
into a cascade of sparks in seconds; seconds that yet allowed Jack to roll completely over in a backwards somersault, slide
on the icy rock till his feet encountered the earth of the forest floor, somehow getting a purchase there. His first paces
were to one side, then to the other; then, somehow, he was in the forest, stumbling forward.

He couldn’t look, his vision blurred along with all memory – what the hell was he searching for on the path ahead? Then, just
before he hit it, he remembered, his front leg rising to clear the foliage-covered rope by a foot, his trailing leg doing
so by half that. He crashed down, slid along, contrived somehow to flip over, his legs scrabbling on contact with earth and
snow.

The bear must have been a claw’s flick away at that leap, for it was near on top of him now, rising on its hind legs, opening
those horrific jaws to roar once more. It stepped forward, a pace, another, its shin pushing against the rope.

It’s going to work,
Jack thought.
Bugger, it’s going to work!

Then there came a snap, the whistle of tension released as the sapling shot up, the stake driving hard … into the bear’s shoulder.

There was a moment of near silence. The bear suddenly looked almost human, puzzledly turning its face, paws rising to the
wood embedded in its flesh. Then it jerked the stake from the wound, placed it in its mouth, shredded it. In a second, it
had turned back to the prone man.

‘
Jesus
!’
Jack yelled, pushing himself to his feet, staggering back, colliding with a tree. Once more the creature roared, the note
soaring higher … when a tomahawk suddenly sprouted from its back.

‘Yah!’ yelled Até, triumphant. Yet the bear just glanced in the direction the weapon and yell had come from, shrugged, as
if it had been bitten by something small, then swung the huge head back to Jack once more.

As the bear moved forward, Jack pulled the leather bag from around his neck, hurled it. The bear batted it aside and came
on. There was no time to curse, to do anything other than swing round the tree and run. His own tomahawk, thrust into his
breeches, he did not even reach for. He thought of leaping into a tree, scrambling up, but even in his panic he knew that
if the bear was twice the runner he was, he was assuredly three times better the climber.

The bear chased Jack, Até chased the bear, the three in a line back up the slope, Jack hurdling branch and bush, the only
thing keeping him ahead of the bear, who crashed into the vegetation, through it, roared at it. He had no idea where he was
going, was surprised when he saw the kettle again, when he leapt over the gash of the bear’s cave. Beyond it was the
chasm, wider, surely, than any leap. But the bear’s breath on his back gave him no choice.

‘Aah!’ he yelled, sailing into space. He hit the lip on the far side, wasn’t far enough on it to get a purchase; hands grabbed
at tufts of weed, jerked them out by their shallow roots. He slipped off the edge … and his foot encountered a branch, some
bush clinging to the cliff face; his other foot followed and one hand he wedged into the smallest of cracks up above.

The bear came. He heard it, felt it as it made the same leap he had, felt the vibration as its feet thumped onto the cliff’s
edge beside his hand. He closed his eyes. There were two ways to go now: up into the bear’s mouth and claws, down into the
chasm. He knew which he preferred.

Then, just before he released his grip, there was another roar, higher-pitched, along with the sound of claws scrabbling on
stone. Then something banged into him, forcing him against the rock, nearly dislodging him. He felt a sharp pain in the back
of one leg, as if someone had run razors down it. And then there was silence save for the sound of something snapping below
him.

At first, all he heard then was his own gasping. Then footfalls slapped on the stone behind him and a voice came. Oddly, it
took a moment to realize who was speaking because the Mohawk had never used his name before.

‘Jack! Jack!’ he yelled. Jack heard feet withdrawing, then running. In a moment, there was another thump from near his face
and he looked up to see, first moccasins, then a hand.

‘Jack!’ Até was bending, grasping him by the wrist. He found it hard to dislodge his fingers, so tightly did they grip the
rock, but Até pulled and soon he was sprawling beside the Native. ‘We did it, Jack! We killed
Ne-e-ar-gu-ye.
’

‘We … we did?’

Jack pulled himself up, peered over the cliff edge. On the fissure floor, about thirty feet below him, a huge shape sprawled,
motionless. ‘Well, kiss my arse,’ he said.

‘Maybe later,’ said Até.It was a time of firsts: the name and
then this grin widening on the broad brown face. Jack found one to match it and suddenly they were both giggling, then laughing,
then roaring.

‘I think I call you by Iroquois name from now on: “
Sagehjowah
.” It means “Man Frightened”. Your face, when bear pulled stake from shoulder …’

‘Not very noble, is it? Can’t you come up with something a little more … spirited?’ Now he was laughing Jack didn’t want to
stop.

Até shrugged. ‘You
were
fast. You run, you jump, you leap … this!’ He pointed to the chasm whose width, contemplated, made Jack shudder. ‘I know!
I call you “
Daganoweda
”.’

‘And what does that mean?’

‘“Inexhaustible”. You like?’

‘It’ll do.’ Euphoria passing, Jack realized it was a name he was already not living up to. He was exhausted … and very, very
hungry. He may have survived; but the bear, whose death meant they might survive, was now lying far below them. ‘So,’ he said,
‘what do we do with him now?’

Até rose, ran along the edge, down the slope, vanished. A moment later he reappeared, walking carefully beside the narrow
stream along the chasm’s base. When he got to the bear he bent and cautiously toed the animal before removing the tomahawk
still lodged in the beast’s back. Then he looked around him.

‘Bad?’ called Jack.

‘No, good. Good!’ Até waved his weapon at the rock face. ‘I do not know how you call this … a place in the rock. With …’ He
mimed a covering. ‘We can do what we need here, better than up there.’

Jack straightened, groaned. He hurt in so many places, not least beneath the blood-lined rents the bear’s claws had made in
his leggings. ‘And what
do
we do?’

Até’s grin returned. ‘You may be “Inexhaustible”. But Até-dawanete means … well, the closest in your tongue is “Clever Moccasins”.
Now I show you how
I
got my name.’

‘Now what?’

Seven days after the slaying of the bear, and this was the first time he’d seen Até idle. Jack found it unnerving, especially
since it was also the first time he’d been similarly unoccupied. He would have preferred another growled order, that he could
grumble at, yet fulfil, for there was reassurance in every assigned task completed. Jack had begun to believe that they might,
might,
survive. The initial, terrible hunger had been sated. Yet now, with another storm wailing outside their shelter, Até was
doing nothing. Except stare at him.

He stared back, awaiting a reply to his question, expecting none. Indeed, he’d have been shocked if the other had spoken.
It appeared that casual conversation was not something in which an Iroquois indulged. Até was not exactly rude; with questions
he would reply in as short an answer as possible. Yet he seemed to have no curiosity to match Jack’s own. Jack had learned
that his reasonable English was due to his being a nephew-in-law of a famous landowner in the Mohawk Valley, William Johnson,
and that Até had been a favoured child, whose education Johnson had overseen and whose capture on the first raid of the war
would have caused the white father much sadness. Beyond that, he was unforthcoming, with replies growing ever terser while
questions simply never came.
Exhaustion contributed; but the euphoria they’d shared after the kill had evaporated rapidly. The growled order, the grumbled
response had become their only communication.

It’s going to be a long winter, thought Jack. He’d learned that the Mohawk regarded it as a matter of pride to stare him down
and the night before they had remained locked for an hour until Jack had decided it was stupidity itself. So he looked yet
again, around the walls, seeking anything to distract. Every square foot was filled with bits of bear. The Native had rendered
the animal into an astonishing array.

‘In Cornwall, we say, “use every part of the pig but the squeal.” Reckon you don’t even waste that much of a bear,’ he’d said.
Até had just grunted, as immune to praise as insult, another conversation still-born; but looking around now Jack realized
that if the Mohawk had contributed the brain for what they’d done, much of the brawn came from the Englishman for it was his
labour that had created the shelters in these two shallow caves at the foot of the precipice where the bear had fallen. While
he did so, the Mohawk had turned the one into a charnel house, so besmeared with blood and body parts did it become. Once
Jack had helped hang the bear’s bound feet from a jagged outcrop on the cavern wall, Até had set him an endless succession
of tasks. First, a fire was laid on the floor and a huge pile of fuel for it chopped and fetched. Then the entrance had to
be closed off to keep warmth in and winter out, and Jack lost count of the trips he made, taking fire to the forest on the
plateau above, using it to burn small balsam firs till he could hack through the charring and then drag the trimmed trunks
down, to be propped against the cliff face and woven with thick hemlock boughs, gradually closing the butcher’s cave off.
It was hard work for both of them but they were goaded by a louring sky that warned of more snow. The hanging bear – a disturbingly
human shape now it had been skinned – was full of winter fat that filled the kettle fast and was then ladled off to cool in
hollowed birch trunks for
pemmican.
In four small oblong
cedar frames, Até bored holes with bear tooth, then pulled through some of the stringy guts, knotted their ends, leaving them
to dry in a webbing. Jack recognized the racket shape of them, knew that they were shoes like Jote had used, for the traversing
of snow. Next Até had taken a supple piece of curved yew, cut notches in each end and fastened a length of drying gut into
it. ‘Bow,’ he’d muttered. Then he began on the tanning of the hide, stretching it on a larger frame he bent from saplings.
The two of them spent the whole day in their abattoir in silence, both naked, save for breech clouts, the heat inside so intense
they often had to go outside and stay out there till the cold nipped their extremities. Then it was fast back to Hades.

On the third morning the snow had started, light enough flurries for Até still to send Jack out, clothed now, to gather some
final necessities. ‘For eating just meat will kill us, pretty damn quick,’ he’d said, adding his favourite phrase. Cattails
were dug up whole by their roots and brought back in sheaves; a root he knew no name for in English was gathered, along with
thousands of tiny seeds, which Jack wrapped in giant leaves he found on the pond’s edge. He’d pulled up whole plants with
clover-like leaves and red berries, both tasting similar to wild mint. With the snow driving harder, he’d strayed up to a
small lake, lured by another strand of cattails. By the time he’d gathered them, the snow was blinding and he stumbled in
the rough direction he sensed he should take until he nearly fell off the edge that had doomed the bear. When he’d staggered
into the living space, Até was stacking bits of bear against the wall. ‘About time, white boy,’ he’d grunted. Then he’d pulled
the balsam door into place.

For seven days and nights the wind had screamed and driven snow against their shelter; they’d gone outside only to clear it
from the entrance, relieve themselves, fetch firewood from their pile or duck into the other cave – for its flames had to
be fed too, to continue the drying out of the hide, which Até
rubbed every day with a rancid
mélange
of bear brains and wood pulp. Soon implements of every description awaited the day when they could venture out. Strands of
the rope, peeled down, were tipped with small bones as hooks, for the lake might have perch to be fished for through the ice.
Larger bones transformed to tools; a shoulder blade became a shovel, a thigh bone a hammer. Teeth became needles to sew the
hide Até finally judged ready, which was transformed into two coats, the fur facing in, cattail down stuffed in for a lining,
smaller teeth becoming toggles to close them.