A Discovery of Strangers (16 page)

“ ‘I’ve seen you eat often, and you certainly have a big mouth … for eating, but something puzzles me. I’ve watched for you and listened all my life, and I can’t believe my eyes, perhaps my ears are deceiving me. What puzzles me, Owl, is how you shit. You shit of course out of your beautiful ass, lots of little shits, but how is it that you also shit — even bigger — out of your big mouth?’

“Owl can’t do anything. He knows he would shit happily from both if only he could get hold of Mouse, but a rock is protecting her this time and Owl cannot fight rock. All he can do is talk. He has to talk.

“ ‘O yes,’ he hisses, clappering so dreadfully Mouse almost shakes the rock off her with her shivers, one who can only run and who would be nothing but shreds in my beak, from under a rock can have such a big mouth, such a very big mouth.’ ”

In the lodge they are all laughing, even Birdseye behind her soft leather. Beaks and teeth and claws usually have the last things to say, everyone knows that, so words still possible from under a good rock are doubly amusing; especially in Keskarrah’s
reassuring, delicate tone. Greenstockings forgets everything else; she scrapes swiftly, feeling the love of her father embrace them all, irrefutable as rock.

“Here,” she says through her laughter, reaching beside the fire, “some liver to eat.”

And Keskarrah accepts that and eats, his story-teller teeth savouring the tender strength of the animal that gave it.

“Where would we be,” he sings softly, chewing, “without the raven and the owl, the caribou and wolf who taught us how to hunt them, the mouse who gives us wit and small discretion, the beautiful animals, all gifts, gifts.”

Birdseye says, suddenly loud, “I saw the northern river last night, it was the River of Copperwoman, dressed all white like ice —”

Without moving Keskarrah glances sideways, instantly meets her eyes and, still chewing, knows he must speak very fast now, because only an old story can stop a dream from being spoken into life, even temporarily, and he must try that; who can know whose life he will save, even for a day or two days, and the first words that find him are so good, so strong, long and old, that perhaps their two daughters have not noticed. He speaks upwards, into the smoke praying upwards:

“Hey! human beings come from … I have never heard where man comes from, though woman’s story is clearer, every story seems clearer about woman than man … sometimes I think men are afraid to let their stories … they are so afraid of what they think might be their manliness.…”

He hesitates, sees Birdseye still watching him, her mouth filled with words, and he plunges on, “…if man was in the world first, he must have been here alone in the summer when
roots and soft stems and especially fields and bushes of berries would be ready for him to eat without cooking, no man knows how to cook everything like a woman. The creator made him so he wouldn’t be scared to death with winter before he even found out how good eating and living was, before he just starved and froze black to death. Hey! I’ve heard it said that These English began from mud. Richard Sun told that story, white mud, I suppose, though he didn’t say it exactly the way, but if that’s what —”

Keskarrah stops abruptly. Words have lured him where he had no intention of going — to talk about the beginnings of Whites — but Birdseye’s look above her leather has remained so intense that he cannot avoid her now, he must continue, and even as he must repeat them, the words excite him with creation again.

“Richard Sun said this to Bigfoot, I heard Twospeaker repeat it: ‘You must know this, we men were made first from mud and the spit of the great Soul Everywhere.’ How could I not hear that? I’ve never heard a story like that, about such spit, but it would be wonderful to see happening. Or feel such spit, even if you never saw it. It would be like good rain, I suppose, which in summer makes very small things grow out of the ground in every place, so that story could be told, I can’t doubt that. I told Richard Sun that if I’d been spitting and playing with such mud and finding a man in it, I would have used much more and made him bigger and stronger, a lot stronger like a bear; myself.”

“You’re strong enough,” Birdseye says, lost in his story and her own necessities momentarily forgotten. “You have words for anything, you’re always so strong.”

Keskarrah chuckles a little, diffidently. He cannot disagree with her now, but her praise always makes him apprehensive; he already knows her incredible strength. But now he must continue quickly.

“The white mud is good, and there’s that mound of it on the north side of this esker, which These English liked so much and mixed with water and smeared all over their building — so —” he has a sudden revelation “maybe These English should really be called Whitemuds, maybe they came from this place, here they found their original mud again! Though I can’t see how that could be. If they really belonged here, they would have known this place without me telling them, but obviously they know nothing here — and then our ancestors would also have known them and met them long ago, but we didn’t. Richard Sun says woman Whitemud was supposed to be the companion and helper of the man. She happens out of his rib while he’s sleeping, but when he wakes up and there she is, his rib a woman out of his sleep, she doesn’t help him at all, she eats this one berry, which is so large it grows alone on one big tree, and then she gives it to him to eat and that makes everything in the world go completely crazy. Even the woman and the man.”

The women are looking at him, puzzled, and he explains fast. “That’s the part I can’t understand, though I have been thinking about it. If People don’t eat, they die — and Whites eat far more than People. How can one tree berry have so much power that eating it matters to everything else? For ever? Aren’t there plenty of smaller berries for the man to eat? Our first man ate berries alone for a whole summer and nothing happened to him. But Richard Sun says no, that’s probably because there was no woman yet. Once there is one, Whitemud man always has to
eat at least as much as the woman, he can’t eat less, and that one big berry she eats easily enough off the tree is too much for him. After that they both do everything all wrong.

“It’s very strange,” he adds thoughtfully, “hard for us to understand. Maybe it’s eating
together
that’s so bad for them — I’ve never seen a White woman, so I can’t tell — maybe that’s why White men never travel with one?”

Greenstockings has not heard his contemplative speculations that are tangling him further — she is thinking about the rib.

“A rib from a tree?” she asks him, smiling and ready to laugh. That’s a good story. A tall tree surely has as many ribs as branches. As it is, there are never enough women in the world so men never leave them alone, but if women were as numerous as branches, the fewer men would be kept so busy running after them that at least some women would be left in peace some of the time, maybe as long as the female caribou, who with their growing calves live free from males for an entire year. She laughs aloud for happiness: what a happy story! And in her laughter catches the essence of her father’s contemplations. “So — just never eat with them!”

“No no,” Keskarrah, always a man, spoils it. “The rib is from the man, one rib only, that is where Whitemud woman comes from.”

Greenstockings asks, “These English do have their own women, somewhere? And their first woman has a man for her mother?”

Her laughter catches in her throat, then bursts out even louder at this truly incredible story; Birdseye and Greywing answer her, and suddenly the lodge is shaking with laughter. What would such a first woman possibly look like! Even Keskarrah cannot help snorting aloud. But he stops suddenly.

“Their stories seem to be only about men, they say their Soul Everywhere is a man also,” he explains gently. “I think the Whitemud story says that two men have to dream and work, really hard, to give birth to one woman.”

Tears of laughter are running down the women’s cheeks. Astounded, they can only cover their mouths with their hands. They are hearing such a male story that Greenstockings knows she would never have heard it, so marvellously funny, without her father’s power to tell it. Did these first story men have very tiny nipples too, surrounded by a few coarse hair? How did their babies get born if they have no cunt — out of the two tiny holes in their two cocks? With nothing but a rib between them, and it bent so long and stiff as well? Her thoughts swim in laughter: if there are as many Whites somewhere beyond even the reach of the giant canoes as they insist — probably hidden under heaps of stuff they want someone to drag everywhere for them — what other fantastic stories do they have? There would be no time for anything like forgetting — only continuous laughter.

“There’s trouble.” Keskarrah’s tone quiets them immediately. He is lying with his eyes closed, as if he has already wandered much farther than he wanted to. Indeed, as if he has betrayed himself.

“The Whitemud story,” he says, “is not happy. Not like our story of the man and the ptarmigan-woman and how they make the snowshoes together. They’re both the same then, and different. I’ve only heard a little of Richard Sun’s story, but I don’t think I want to hear more. It sounds dangerous.”

Greenstockings looks at him, silently.

He says, “Stories are like ropes, they pull you to incomprehensible places. This rib story could drag us tighter together
with Whitemuds than the endless killing of animals, which we agreed to do without a proper council — a few men quickly said ‘Yes, yes’ very loudly when Thick English asked it, and then no one dared say anything else. Hey! a story can tangle you up so badly you start to think different. I think these strange Whitemud stories could be strong enough to tie us down — though I should be old enough by now to have heard everything at least once.”

He lies motionless, contemplating the luminous darkness under his own eyelids. Searching.

“Everything,” he says softly, “is becoming dangerous.”

In the lengthening silence no one looks at Birdseye. But the warm lodge filled with the tight smell of life and work and thinking suddenly sparkles with all their awareness of her bent, so worn, over interminable sewing. The beloved face none of them will see again except in the dark memory of their fingers; if they dare. They are as together now as they have been; but afraid. If Keskarrah were to open his eyes, lightning and flames would circle them.

“These strangers are here now,” he says with staggering sadness. “It must be their fault. Never before has anything been wrong with the world.”

“The ice on Copperwoman’s River,” Birdseye speaks softly, reassuringly, “it was very fresh. So thin I could see through it, and the beautiful fins of the grayling were brushing against it, blue as veins below the rapids.”

“Rapids?” Keskarrah asks, very diminished. He has spoken all he can — the most powerful story cannot stop her, so he must answer. If he does so carefully enough, he may recognize the place and they will be warned.

“Two of them, rapids, and the bare banks are without stones, a small curved lake, curved all white between them.”

“Ah-h-h-h.” And Keskarrah will lie as long as necessary to travel the river faster than any bird, searching for those two rapids.

But Bigfoot arrives first. He stoops into their lodge holding a long rifle in his stiff mittens, and for the first time a tall, black English hat sits on his head. He does not take that off as Birdseye welcomes him with a gesture to seat himself near the fire. After some time Keskarrah opens one eye, then opens them both, wider.

“You’re welcome,” he says out loud without moving. And his tone is on such a bare edge of courtesy that the two girls almost dare show their laughter at Bigfoot’s appearance. It would have been hard for Greenstockings to imagine how fur from an ordinary beaver — that’s what they say it is — could enlarge and extend a man’s head upwards like that, but These English have done it, somehow, because there the hat is, tall as a stump on Bigfoot’s head, and as wobbly as the authority they assume he has over People just because he talks for them. How is it sewn together? What is the tiny curled edge that curves twice so gracefully around it? She has never touched one, though she thinks Boy English once was ready to lift the one on his head and place it on hers. Unfortunately before she noticed that she already had her knife at his pants, and he certainly understood nothing about playing with knives.

“Have fish found the lake nets?”

“O yes,” Bigfoot answers too quickly. “Many, many.”

“And caribou?”

Bigfoot gestures to the hides piled about the lodge, still too
quickly. “Our women are very busy,” he says. “With meat too. Their paddle-slaves remain fat.”

“True.” Keskarrah grins. “Those Halfmuds sit behind logs stuffing meat into their enormous mouths, no need to shoot them!”

“What, ‘Halfmud’?”

“You know, These English say they are made of mud and spit.”

“Ahh … yes, I have heard something … Halfmud.” Bigfoot slowly gathers that into his ponderous comprehension. “Is that why they were so happy they found the white mud here?”

“I think so. And also the large trees, though ours don’t have such big berries. I had heard all the White traders mix mud to smear between trees to build their houses, and I always thought they did that because they want beavers so badly, who build their houses with logs and mud rather than hides like smart People, but since I heard the story of how these Whites were made.…”

Bigfoot sits motionless, confused by this confusing story.

“It seems,” Keskarrah muses, staring into the fire, “they don’t need the animal circle that gives us life every day. They want to live inside straight walls, as straight as round trees can make them — maybe they
have
to live inside the crossed-together corners of the trees that gave them their endless sorrow and wrong! So … they tie these big trees together … they smear them over thick with their first ancestors … and white mud is surely the best for that … then they can live here a whole winter, surrounded … sheltered by everything they’ve already done wrong … and all of it smeared over by the life of their ancestors — waugh!”