The Deserter (15 page)

One Arm had, with Thomas, laid down traplines and set baited snares. They visited the line every two days so as not to let their catch be eaten by other predators. This time as they were on their way home with little to show for their efforts, One Arm signalled Thomas, speaking in Micmac. “You find wigwam, alone?”

“I think so,” Thomas said, not at all sure.

“I go find moose,” One Arm said in Micmac. “Moose make space.” Thomas did not understand. One Arm explained: “Flat area. Moose tramp snow flat. Maybe three four moose together. One man moose, also women moose.”

“Ah yes, a moose’s yard!” Thomas had heard Little Birch explain the feature on their trek. When the snow got deep, these monarchs of the forest fed in a circle that expanded as they ate, and thus made a flattened area often as large as an acre, or more, to give them mobility to fend off wolves. They took care to avoid deep snow in which they might flounder when attacked. Micmac hunters always looked first for the moose yard, where the animals made easy targets for an arrow, or if a hunter got close enough, a spear. You never threw a spear, you only used it at close quarters.

“I come back later,” One Arm said. “You go now. Bring back meat.”

All they had snared wouldn’t last long, Thomas thought, with only two weasels hanging round his neck. But then again, the women might make some sustenance out of it. The situation, Thomas recognized, was getting more worrisome. “Maybe on the way back, I’ll find a hare to shoot.”

One Arm nodded, and set off to reconnoitre. Nervously, Thomas watched his form disappear among the stunted spruce and then set about finding his way back. Fortunately it had not snowed, so all he had to do was follow their snowshoe tracks.

Alone, he was able to focus on the landscape and marvelled once again at the changing beauty the snow wrought. The straight, black shadows of the birch, mingling with the gentler outlines of spruce boughs, fell across the undulating humps and hollows of the snow-drifts, where the wind so casually piled them before going on its way to distribute more tuffets and hollows and hillocks. He passed a lake that had not yet frozen, leaving centre patches of black water rimmed with grey, encroaching ice. The ever-present wind wove drifts around bushes, wiped the earth clear at the base of trees and built banks at obstacles. The untidiness of autumn had been erased, leaving all pristine and pure.

He got home before evening. He’d found no snowshoe hare tracks, but did mark a rabbit run they’d missed on the way out. The women prepared the weasel in a broth made from its carcass together with some cattail roots. All four took care to spoon up only their tiny portions of flesh.

The next day, the family waited anxiously for One Arm. In the meantime, Thomas helped the women scrounge some caribou moss, which they then boiled for a few minutes in water, rinsed, and boiled in new water until it became a kind of jelly. Mixed with a little meat or grease, it made a somewhat nutritious dish. This lack of food began to mire Thomas in a kind of despair, the first he’d felt for a long time. He even noticed a haunted look on Little Birch’s face. She always ate less than her mother, and he was worried about her and her endurance.

One Arm did not return for two days. Late in the day, Thomas and Little Birch kept trading looks, but no one wanted to voice what they felt. Finally, Thomas said, “I think I should go look for him.”

“No, we must wait. He will come back, I know it,” Little Birch said, which provoked an outburst of fear and worry from her mother.

Thomas looked from Full Moon to her daughter. “Well, it can’t hurt if I just take a short tour. Be dark in a couple of hours. He must not stay out another night.”

Resolutely, Thomas got into his outside clothes, and pushed aside the heavy skin hanging as a door. There, through the lightly falling snow, he saw a dark form — One Arm!

Exhausted, with frost-starched eyebrows, he staggered forward. Thomas helped him into the wigwam, where the two women helped take off his outer clothing. Little Birch stoked the fire to prepare some warm but thin soup they’d made from bark.

They waited for him to relax. When he was finally able to sip hot liquid, he gave them the bad news: not one moose yard.

They sat around the fire in their cave shelter, acknowledging that things did look bleak, almost desperate.

Thomas tried to put on a brave face. “Maybe tomorrow, the weather will change.”

“Not just weather.” Little Birch looked gaunt.

“Glooscap has taken away game.”

“Why don’t we go back to the summer encampment,” Brightstar offered in Micmac. “We could trade some goods, maybe,”

“What goods do we have?” Full Moon asked.

“We would never make it that far,” Little Birch told her brother sharply. “Not enough to eat, trip need energy. Our things are too heavy. Too far.”

“Could we try another hunting area?” Thomas asked.

Full Moon shook her head. “It happens many times in winter. One family go short. But they never go to place of other family, unless dying.”

“Do we want to wait that long? Until we’re dying?” Thomas frowned.

On and on they discussed it, as the fire began to burn down, each one taking their turn. Finally, One Arm held up his hand.

They fell silent, knowing a decision — the purview of One Arm as the eldest male — had been made.

One thing only left, he said. Perform the age-old Mic-mac ceremony for summoning a moose.

They all took a nap before the ceremony. The two women lay abreast at the back of the wigwam, One Arm and Brightstar slept apart under their caribou skins, and Thomas closer to the entrance under his beaver covering, Big Birch’s legacy. Beaver pelts were the warmest of all coverings, but it took almost a dozen beavers to make one blanket, so Thomas considered himself extremely lucky to have inherited such a prize, if for only this one winter.

After a spell, One Arm roused them. While they were getting ready, he prepared his materials for the ceremony: sweet grass, tobacco, a pipe, and so on. He asked Brightstar to stoke the glowing embers in the central round of stones.

Thomas saw that Little Birch and Brightstar were not dressing and frowned. Little Birch caught his look.

“He is supposed to spend a day in a sweat lodge to purify himself first, but he cannot here. And also he must fast, and I did not see him eat, so that is all right.” “But aren’t you coming?”

Little Birch shook her head. “Women not allowed.” Thomas paused. “But I have to understand what is going on, what the ceremony is all about. I cannot do it without you.”

Little Birch shook her head.

Unaccountably, Thomas surged with anger. Perhaps he had not eaten, or the harsh conditions were getting to him, or he’d had enough of “fitting in” with customs he neither sympathized with nor understood, but his anger gushed out.

“No sir, One Arm, she is hunting with us, she works as hard, and I say, she is coming out to translate!” He glanced at Little Birch. “Translate!” Little Birch stammered out the gist.

One Arm looked round abruptly. “Not find moose if she come,” he answered.

“There is no way that Little Birch will spoil this hunt,” Thomas heard his voice rise in spite of himself, “she’s a good person, she cares for the game just like you do, her spirit will help, not detract. If you want me to hunt with you tomorrow, she stands nearby and translates.”

Full Moon was watching, perturbed, and shrank back. Little Birch was taken aback by this new side of Thomas she had not seen.

Thomas stared resolutely. One Arm stood, almost dejected, and then nodded. “She come. We try that way.”

Breathing hard, Thomas put on his outside garments, and crawled out with Little Birch following, soon forgetting the confrontation in his stimulation at participating in this first Indian ritual. The moon’s crescent hung above eye level in an almost clear sky, and clumps of disfigured spruce added an ominous gathering of black sentinels.

They stood in a circle, Brightstar, One Arm, and Thomas with Little Birch behind. They remained quiet as One Arm joined them, his pipe lit from a brand in their fire. He also carried a whisk of stiff grasses. Then he came round the circle, and blew smoke over them, whisking it to “smudge” them.

She whispered to Thomas, “He purifies us, before we begin.”

Thomas took this in with due solemnity; in fact, he had decided to give himself fully, asking his own Lord to deliver him into the spirit of this age-old ceremony. Nothing else had worked; maybe this would.

Facing the hanging crescent of moon, One Arm began to intone a low song in guttural monotone, consonants and vowels moving out one after another. Little Birch leaned in to Thomas. “First he prays to Grandmother Moon, asking her to bring us a moose.” After a pause, she went on, “He says we are helpless, we have no food, and we ask Grandmother to provide for us.”

Her uncle raised his one good arm, keeping his sung invocation going. Finally, he stopped and went back into the wigwam. While they waited in moonlit silence, Little Birch whispered to Thomas, “
Nugum,”
Grandmother Moon, she is our mother of the first creation of the Mic-mac, with Grandfather Sun. Our months, they are like the moon months, twenty-eight days, thirteen months in one year.”

One Arm came back out, and moved a short way apart from them with his lit sweetgrass smouldering. Facing the moon, he passed the sweetgrass back and forth before him, crooning again a phrase over and over. “What’s he saying now?”

“It is not allowed for me to speak that,” Little Birch told him.

After a pause, Thomas whispered, “Why doesn’t he just call a moose. I’ve heard you can do that, just call a moose and they will come.”

She smiled. “That is only in the autumn, when woman moose, she want baby moose, she call big moose. So hunter pretends he is woman, calling for big moose.” She saw Thomas’s look, and dropped her eyes, embarrassed. “Oh sure, Magwés, even we English know what to do when a woman wants a baby,” he teased.

She shook her head at his irreverent chatter. “So in winter, no moose come when you call. Only in autumn.” “Look there.” She pointed up at the Big Dipper. “See seven stars?” Thomas was acquainted with Ursa Major from his days in the Navy. “Those seven stars, they are seven hunters. Every autumn, they chase bear. They kill him, and his blood, it falls on
Gitpu,
the eagle. So
Gitpu
shake his feathers, and blood falls on trees. And that is why leaves turn red in autumn.”

“Maple trees. Really?” Thomas liked it when she spoke of Micmac lore. He determined to ask her for more stories. So far they had been too busy, just focussing on each other’s grammar and vocabulary every night.

One Arm had brought out his drum, which he handed to Brightstar. Thomas had not seen it before. Brightstar began to tap it slowly with a curved bone, light taps alternat ing with heavier ones to produce a Micmac rhythm. Soon One Arm, with the help of Brightstar, took some tobacco from his pouch. He bent, and holding a pinch of tobacco in his closed fist, thumb uppermost, he began speaking.

“What’s he doing now?” Thomas asked.

“Now he prays to
Migmuessu,
the spirit of the woods.

He makes offering of tobacco: first the earth, the good land which gives us game, and then the four directions.”

Thomas nodded, intrigued, as One Arm straightened and held his hand out before him, intoning again.

“Now he offers North, for hunters, for brave ones.” He tossed the tobacco, and then turned west. “Now, for the gift of patience and wisdom.” These concepts Little Birch was able to get across in a number of extra words, whispering so as not to disturb One Arm. “Now the south: the snow, the hunters who understand the woods.”

Thomas nodded, feeling so privileged to be part of these sacred mysteries, as Little Birch went on, “Now the east: light, energy, spirit seekers, those who know how to pray.”

They fell silent, waiting. “What happens now?” asked Thomas, unable to repress his curiosity.

One Arm went back to the fire, and came out with his tuft of sweetgrass now lit and smouldering. In rhythm with the drum, but not singing, he began to speak again, smudging the air before him, all the while turning slowly in a circle. Then he lifted his one arm, faced eastward out into the woods, away from the wigwam, and smudged in a circle at arm’s-length.

“Last part of ceremony. He pray to spirit of moose, the head spirit, the one who give the moose to the hunter, or take them away. He say, we are coming to find you. Creator will give you to us, and we ask Keeper of Moose for very fast kill, so we will not cause pain.” They watched in silence as he continued his prayer, tossing sprigs of tobacco in the air. “Now he say to spirit of moose, we will use all parts, skin, meat, sinew, we reverence you, we pray to your spirit. Please, you must come save us.” In a final gesture, One Arm took something out of his pocket and held it up.

“That is piece of moose horn. Watch.” One Arm took his sweetgrass and as Brightstar held it up high, he smudged the moose antler, and then the two of them put its leather thong around his neck. Then he extinguished the sweetgrass, and stood staring out into the woods.

Thomas found himself relax inside, he could stay here forever under the crisp stars, waiting, waiting for the moose to show. The four of them cast shadows over the snow, like ancient markers written on a sheet of time. One Arm turned. “Now we sleep. Tomorrow, we find moose.”

The four of them went into the wigwam in silence, and lay down. Thomas stayed awake for a long time, absorbing the gentility and reverence that the Micmac bestowed on the game which fed and clothed them. He determined he would do the same.

***

The next morning Thomas opened the heavy flap of the sunken wigwam and crawled out into a blast of brilliance, as the sun poured out its glistening light over the snow. He had to squint, shade his eyes with mitts to see anything. One Arm came out behind as Thomas knelt to tie snowshoes on his feet shod in fur-lined moccasins. Little Birch came out and handed Thomas his pistol and pack. The two went off with the sun for company and starvation as their guide.

All day Thomas and One Arm zigzagged back and forth across the territory, searching for tracks. Its swamplike condition at this altitude resembled the muskeg of the Far North above the treeline. After an early morning burst of optimism, Thomas felt himself flagging when they found no tracks. As the day wore on, he grew even more tired, more than ever before, including his long night watches on the ship. Dangerous, he thought to himself. Both of them were in dire need of nourishment. And he kept waiting for the recriminations due him for insisting on Little Birch being at their ceremony. But though he must have felt it, One Arm never let on.

Thomas walked behind, lifting each foot more and more slowly, in the biting frost and blinding light. Earlier, One Arm had learned from some Inuit how to fashion eye shades from whittled wood with a centre slit. They fastened behind the head with
babiche
, a strip of hide. But he hadn’t brought his today. They had been daubing their cheeks below the eyes with soot, to make a black band from one ear to the other as partial protection.

To make matters worse, huge storm clouds had been piling up in the east. Thomas kept his fearful eye on them. In late afternoon, it clouded over and heavy snow began.

“What do you think, One Arm?” Thomas asked in Mic-mac.

One Arm frowned. “We go trapline. Rest there. Wait for Moose. From trapline, more easy find way home.” Thomas followed as the older man headed west, unaccountably finding his way through stands of spruce, occasionally stopping to scent the air. Thomas could hardly see him ahead through the large, lazy flakes that were covering up all distinguishing marks. A couple of times, he even tripped. Hard to get any sense of depth with air, land, and track ahead so very white, no sun piercing the overcast to create the shadows that define a trail. Amazing, One Arm’s sense of direction, Thomas thought, as he brought them unerringly back to a section of trapline that, after a few moments, Thomas recognized.

Getting his axe from his pack, Thomas chopped the lower branches off a large spruce, some ten yards away from their snares. The two of them hollowed out the snow, piling it into a wall, and curled up next to it in the snug burrow, for all the world like a nest of the game they were trapping. Thomas unrolled his beaver covering and together, they fell into a sheltered sleep.

The wind blew up into a blizzard in the night. Not really the life he’d seen for himself, he grumbled, nor for Little Birch. If only he could have taken her off to a better life in his soon to be shipshape cabin. If only Burn had not laid claim to her. If only... Stop that! he commanded. Put her out of your mind! You’ve got enough problems of your own right now.

At dawn, Thomas woke with a nudge from One Arm.

“Diàm.”
His round face had broken into a rare grin.

“Moose?” Thomas could hear nothing.

One Arm motioned. Then Thomas heard it. A movement, from the direction of their snare. A branch swished. “Yes, moose!”

One Arm nodded, and quietly they got out of their rolled hide. One Arm took his spear down from the branches; Thomas began to load his flintlock. What a process, he thought. How could the infantry ever fight wars with this unbelievably laborious instrument?

“I will go out, take a shot.”

“Albàsi!”

Careful for sure, Thomas thought as he crept from their hidden refuge, One Arm following. The moose stood in a deep drift just in front of the clump of spruce where they had set their snares. The animal was panting and looking, Thomas would swear, as if perplexed.

The moose saw them. It stared. Thomas marvelled at the mighty breadth of the antlers, over six feet across. Later in winter, they lost their gigantic horns and grew a new set. Now, the moose appeared regal, magnificent. And tremendously lethal.

The beast brought down its head, uttered a lowing sound, and gathered its huge brown body, almost a ton, six foot at the shoulders, a large hump tapering back to a small haunch — so much larger than any bull Thomas had ever seen.

Breathing what he thought might be an appropriate prayer to the moose spirit, Thomas raised his firearm. The moose charged.

Thomas waited until it got within ten feet and pulled the trigger.

At the same instant the moose flipped, its foreleg caught in the snare that One Arm had set for small game. As it went down, the shot missed the chest and struck somewhere in the back, causing no serious damage.

The spark from the trigger-pull always took a good fraction of a second to reach the tinderbox, flash down into the breech to ignite the charge behind the lead shot. That fractional second’s pause caused Thomas to miss. Quickly! he yelled at himself, get the powder out before he gets up. He dropped his gloves to the snow and opened the powder horn. Don’t get the powder wet, don’t let any snow get in — so little time — measure it, tip it in, quick, quick! He tried to steady his hands as he poured the correct measure into the breech and then glanced up. The moose struggled to its feet.