Authors: Karl Iagnemma
“Stop. Please.”
“She says her cough has vanished utterly.”
Reverend Stone’s stomach fell away. He sagged into the chair. A faint smile curled the corners of the girl’s lips.
“Her cough is vanished and she is consumed with love. She wants you to know that she feels wonderful. You may ask her a question, if you’d like.”
Adele Crawley’s eyes skittered beneath their lids. A woman in the crowd cried,
Lord bless this child!
then a hiss stifled her words.
“Ask her…” Reverend Stone licked his parched lips. “Ask her about Elisha. Ask her where he is.”
A rattle started in the floor then rose to the table, the candle flame shuddering as the sound sharpened to a
tap tock tock tock
. Reverend Stone jerked his hands from the tabletop. Adele slowly cocked her head, as though nodding toward sleep. “She sees him in a dark place. He is in a dark place among strangers, and it is not his home. He is awful far from home.”
“Ask her if he is well.”
Outside a whip cracked, then a horse whinnied sharply. The crowd closed around the table, a hip bumping Reverend Stone’s shoulder, a hand brushing his neck. Adele Crawley leaned forward as if straining to hear. “He is not among the dearly departed. But she is concerned for him. He is in some sort of danger, from other men. She is very deeply concerned.”
“Ask her who the danger is from! Is it from Natives, or his companions? Ask her.”
“She cannot see the man’s face. It is a white man. It is not a Native.”
“Ask her what the—”
“She is fading now. She is drawing away.”
“Ask her if he is happy!”
“She is waving farewell and drawing away. I can see nearly through her. She is so very beautiful, her beautiful blue eyes.”
“Tell her I mourn her daily,” Reverend Stone whispered. His face tingled with numbness. “Tell her I am sorry.
Please.
You must tell her!”
Adele Crawley opened her eyes. “She says she awaits you.”
Three
The party canoed along a leafy shoreline, the weather dry and cool, the sun’s warmth on their shoulders. To Elisha the lakeshore resembled the coast of Massachusetts: knobs of granite bearded with widow’s-cross, framing long, sandy strips of beach. Thick fringe of hobblebush below columns of beech and yellow birch and red maple, grading upward to a string of low hills. Elisha paddled absentmindedly, distracted by the scene’s beauty.
Sheldrakes and loons skimmed alongside the canoe. The loons darted toward the craft then ducked beneath the lake’s surface, reappeared ten yards distant with a call like a child’s whinnying laugh. Elisha had seen loons behave likewise at the millpond in Newell, though there the birds’ actions seemed driven by terror. But here the loons’ behavior matched the region’s joyful nature: it was as though they’d glided into a forgotten corner of Eden.
He recalled an essay he’d read in the Springfield
Intelligencer,
claiming that red Indians gradually lightened in complexion when exposed to white society. Their demeanor and character, the author claimed, were likewise improved. The essay’s logic was simple: that a Native’s complexion became paler due to decreased time spent outdoors; that his character was elevated by the comforts of civilized life. Now Elisha imagined a Chippewa brave standing in Detroit’s Grand Circus, amid manure and heaped-up slops and rushing carriages, deafened by shouts and clanging bells and whining street organs, choked by dust and smoke. The essayist was wrong, Elisha realized. Natives could only become more savage when exposed to civilization.
They had encountered Chippewas twice during the previous week. The first was a canoe following them for an hour at dawn then disappearing, only to reappear when they put ashore for lunch at Vermillion Point. Elisha had moved beside Mr. Brush, nervously monitoring the man’s reaction to the approaching craft. A sour-looking brave disem-barked with a graybeard mongrel at his feet, followed by a squaw with her hair cropped short and a cradleboard strapped to her back. The cradle was filled with black feathers. The brave offered a haunch of rancid venison in trade for whiskey or gunpowder; Professor Tiffin gave the man a carrot of tobacco and a neck bone for the hound then sent him away. Later Susette explained that the black feathers indicated the death of an infant. The poor woman was in mourning.
The second encounter was a Chippewa camp laid out along a horseshoe inlet. A half-dozen lodges lay like black shells on the grassy beach, Native women moving among them while a group of men breakfasted around a cookfire. Smoke rose from the fires in shimmering threads. As the party’s canoe approached, a few braves emerged from the lodges and stood at the lake edge. It was the Yellow River band, Susette said, her husband’s grandmother’s band, at their summer fishing ground. At this Professor Tiffin stopped paddling, said, “Would you like to pause for a visit?” The woman shook her head.
That next afternoon they made camp at the edge of a burned-out birch forest. Susette staked the tents then fetched a kettle of water, hauled out sacks of peas and rice; Professor Tiffin prepared himself a mug of tea then started westward down the shoreline. Mr. Brush leveled his telescope and fixed on a nearby peak. Elisha recorded the inclination in Brush’s fieldbook, then assisted the man in measuring barometric pressure.
The tasks complete, the boy took up his own fieldbook and wandered eastward, pausing to scrutinize pebbles of hornblende and smoky green agates. Seabirds floated like bits of ash over the lake. Some ways up the beach he came upon a huge, knobbed boulder that was sheared flat along a vertical face, as though it had been cut by a chisel. Parallel grooves ran like scars across the face.
It was igneous rock streaked with flesh-colored veins of feldspar. Elisha compared the boulder’s characteristics to those of granite: mottled gray-white appearance; large, coarse pores; too hard to scratch with the tip of a blade. But how to explain the grooves? A pleasant eagerness stirred inside the boy. He opened his fieldbook and wrote:
June 22, 1844
Here at the lake’s edge there is a most intriguing granitic boulder, with diameter equal to that of a carriage wheel, and parallel gouges along a vertical face to a depth of one-quarter of an inch, at an angle of approximately 20° with the horizontal. The grooves suggest the action of irresistible force, such as waves—yet how might water create such sharp relief? For surely waves would tend to polish a surface, rather than score it. Thus another mechanism must be at work.
Perhaps Professor Agassiz’s theory of glacial action might be here in evidence? The grooves might have been formed by the vast power of a glacier, inexorably surging north-eastward. The thought of such unyielding power is at odds with the tranquil sublimity of the scene, where the serenity of the lake and idle frolic of sheldrake and loon lead one to imagine that there is no force on Earth greater than the breeze on one’s cheek, or one’s own breath.
Elisha read over the description with gathering impatience. Mr. Brush would disapprove of his dreamy suggestions of beauty; Professor Tiffin would scoff at the mundanity of his observations. The description contained neither facts nor ideas, just a jumbled amalgam of both. As a scientist he made a decent writer of travel narratives.
He shut the fieldbook and started back along the beach. The sun had shifted behind a veil of clouds, and the day’s light was wintry and diffuse, as though filtered through a frost-coated windowpane. As Elisha neared camp he saw Susette sitting cross-legged beside the cookfire. She was hunched over a magazine.
The boy approached quietly. When he was ten yards distant the woman looked up, then shoved the journal aside and took up a long spoon. The magazine appeared to be a tattered
Godey’s Lady’s Book.
“That must be a pretty good issue. You’ve read it nearly to shreds.”
She pinched pepper from a cotton bag and sprinkled it into the cookpot. A hint of color had risen to her freckled cheeks. “It is a fine issue. I bought it in Sault Ste. Marie before we departed—I look at it only when there is no more work to do.”
“I don’t mind a bit if you look at the magazine! Nor do Mr. Brush or Professor Tiffin, I suspect. They’ll be happy no matter what, so long as the stew is hot and the fire stays lit.”
Susette’s expression tightened as she stirred the cookpot. She tasted the stew then added another pinch of pepper.
“Shall I read to you?”
Her stirring paused. Surely she doesn’t have much English, Elisha thought, maybe a winter or two at a French Catholic schoolhouse, learning the catechism by rote from a foreign priest. Maybe she’d learned how to write her name, maybe just her mark. Her reading skills were likely no better.
She handed him the magazine. It was open to a page of watercolored illustrations of women’s capes and collars. Elisha said, “This one?” Susette nodded. He knelt beside her and cleared his throat.
“‘Number two is a collar à la Vandyke. It is of guipure lace, and fastened with a knot of ribbons. Neck ribbons are a distinguishing peculiarity of the season. They are worn of very bright colors, usually embroidered, and tied close at the throat. The square flat knot, usually called a “sailor’s tie,” is most fashionable. It is suitable for a dinner dress, or for a small evening company.’”
He glanced at Susette as he turned the page. She had been more sociable of late, engaging in suppertime chatter about the weather and their course; Elisha had begun to wonder if her warmth was directed toward him in particular. But now she sat straight-backed, peering out at the lake. She seemed to be feigning indifference while listening intently.
It’s her Native blood, Elisha thought, bringing forth an emotionless Native demeanor. White women seemed simple: they smiled when they were happy and frowned when they were sad. But Natives were as stony and inscrutable as sleepwalkers. He could not imagine what the woman might be thinking.
“This next page is just an essay about points of etiquette at the theater. Shall I skip ahead?”
She shook her head. “Read it, please.”
“Then. ‘Several queries regarding proper modes of demonstrating approval at the theater have been submitted to us for decision. We must strongly insist that loud thumping with canes and umbrellas, in demonstration of applause, is decidedly rude. Clapping the hands is quite as efficient, and neither raises dust to soil the dresses of ladies, nor hubbub enough to deafen them. In Europe such a display would be frowned upon, if not outright mocked.’”
Susette was absorbed in the narrative, the spoon frozen above the cookpot. Elisha asked, “Have you ever been to a theater?”
“My mother,” she said, resuming her stirring. “She went twice to the Pearl Theater on Queen Street in Toronto. She saw British actors play
As You Like It.
”
“
As You Like It
! That’s a good one—one of the best, actually. Rosalind and Orlando and Duke Frederick, and Touchstone and Jaques and all the rest. And Rosalind dressing up as Ganymede to court Orlando, and accidentally wooing Phebe. And then the end in the forest with the weddings and the songs.”
“Yes. My mother told me the story.”
“Of course,” Elisha said quickly. “I haven’t seen the play, either—I’ve just read it, on account of my own mother. She’s partial to Shakespeare—I’ve read nearly all of his plays due to her. She’s still back in Newell, Massachusetts.”
“My mother is in St. Catharines. She is half Canadian. She’s as white as you.”
Elisha nodded. Susette’s hair was unbraided and lay draped over her shoulders, the tendrils at her throat like a beautiful necklace. With her loose hair and leathery hands she could pass as a Massachusetts farm girl, sun-browned after the tobacco harvest. Or a farm girl stolen into Chippewa captivity, raised to forget her own language and customs. Despite the notion’s absurdity a tingle of excitement moved through Elisha. She might have been seized from her mother in St. Catharines, brought to the Sault and forced to marry against her will. Elisha might be her rescuer to civilization.
An image rose in his mind of him and Susette entering the meetinghouse in Newell arm in arm, every head turning as conversation quieted then ceased. Their footfalls echoed in the cavernous room. From the pulpit Reverend Stone stared down at the pair, agape. The image pleased Elisha. In white society Susette would be viewed as a Native; in Native society she was no doubt viewed as white. Neither of two, the hybrid’s curse.
“I will go to the theater soon,” Susette said. “In Detroit there is the Rogers Theater on Woodward Avenue. In Buffalo the Cascade Theater on Clinton Street.”
“With your pay from this summer you can go as often as you please. Every night for a month, even.”
Susette smiled. “Perhaps I shall.”
“You must tell me if you go in Detroit. I’ll likely be staying in a boardinghouse near Woodward Avenue—we could go together, see
As You Like It.
”
The woman’s smile quivered, a barely perceptible tremor. Wildness flashed in her eyes. She took the magazine from Elisha and looked away.
“If you sit in the wrong part of the theater there are rowdies and single men. I could escort you, show you the safe places to sit. People would believe I was your husband and wouldn’t trouble you. Wouldn’t trouble us, I mean.”
He understood that he was acting brazenly but could not stop himself. A beautiful woman traveling with a party of men, without her husband—it was inexplicable, no matter if she was white or Native or half-breed. Without looking at the boy Susette resumed stirring the cookpot.
“Perhaps.” Her voice betrayed a hint of emotion. “Perhaps I will go in Detroit.”
He moved close to her and took up the metal spoon. He tasted the stew: whitefish with peas and wild rice, flavored with smoke and pepper. Elisha’s hands were trembling. He was overwhelmed by a desire to touch the woman. He said, “Tell me the Chippewa word for tobacco.”
“Why?”
“Because I am curious.” He smiled awkwardly. “I am curious about your people—or your mother’s people, I suppose.”
She regarded Elisha without speaking.
“Just as you are curious to learn about the theater,” Elisha continued in a rush, “I am curious to learn about your people. I have never met a Chippewa woman, and I figured perhaps—”
“Asemaa.”
“Asemaa! What about…what about the word for canoe?”
“Jiimaan.”
“Jiimaan. Jiimaan.” The boy turned the soft vowels over in his mouth. “A beautiful word.”
Susette fingered the worn
Godey’s Lady’s Book.
“There are many words that are not beautiful. Just as in English, or French. Chippewa has no special beauty.”
“Well. I don’t believe you.”
“You must.”
“Love.” He touched the woman’s wrist. “What is your word for love?”
A shout rose from down the beach and Elisha bolted upright: Professor Tiffin was running toward them along the lake’s edge. He was waving what appeared to be a specimen pouch in the air. The man stumbled in a wash of surf, then with a hoot he hauled himself up and continued forward.
Susette rose, her gaze fixed on Elisha. The two were very close; he smelled her breath and her hair’s pungent grease. The boy’s breathing caught. Susette shook her head, and as she did her eyes dulled, as though a light inside them had flickered out.
“We have no word for love,” she said, then moved past Elisha toward the lake’s edge.
The drawing was of a man, a hollow-faced figure with upraised arms and jagged hair. A plume rose from the man’s mouth and snaked toward a large dome with a flag at its peak. Beside the dome was a row of eight parallel grooves, and beside the grooves was a web of curved lines, like veins, spreading across the curling scrap of birch bark. The lines were traced in a rich red pigment that might have been cherry juice or ocher, or blood.
“Remarkably serendipitous!” Professor Tiffin said. “I was strolling along the lakeshore beyond that outcrop, not two hundred yards distant, searching for a petroglyph that Colcroft described in
Chippewa Researches
. I was scanning the upper rock face—the petroglyph is reportedly located fifteen yards above lake level—and I happened to glance down. There it was! Trussed to a bough staked into the ground, plain as pudding. I had nearly trampled it underfoot.”