Barkskins

by Annie Proulx

  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.

  VIII

  glory days

  1836–1870

  54

  vegetable wealth

  James 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.”

  “It is time for action, it is our turn to be first. If we can convince Cyrus, we can outvote Edward and Freegrace. It has come to that. They are timid. Since Lydia died Edward exchanges ideas only with his housekeeper and the cats.” This was patently untrue, for Edward was a passionate Trinitarian and Freegrace a seduced Unitarian dabbling in the new Higher Criticism and the two brothers had fiery discussions that flamed into shouting matches.

  James considered that Lennart and he were not many years behind those brothers; they were all old, he thought, though he didn’t feel it. And Lennart was spry enough. No doubt Edward and Freegrace felt able to run a business. The Duke blood promised longevity.

  “James, they hold the company back. What do you say, are you willing to undertake a journey to Michigan Territory with me? O
r even farther if we choose. I am intrigued by occasional remarks by mariners who have worked the otter fur trade on the west coast—sightings of heavy forests. I would like to see for myself, for what do sailors know of trees?”

  “That is very distant. Almost Japan.”

  “We are speaking of the future, James, the future! We must not let these chances pass us by.”

  “What about Breitsprecher? Would he come with us?” James wondered why childless Lennart was so emphatic about the future.

  “I think Breitsprecher is essential. It is he who can best judge the board feet of standing timber.”

  “Lennart, I will go with you. And Breitsprecher. When do you think of leaving?”

  “I have several important things to attend at once. First, I must see Cyrus. Then an immediate Board meeting. I must enlist Breitsprecher and persuade Edward and Freegrace that this exploration is vital. With luck I think we might leave in two weeks’ time.” He stopped talking, paced around the fragrant damask La Ville de Bruxelles, turned and flicked his finger at a Maiden’s Blush. “The first part of this journey by coach and rail I know well. The most tiresome is the canal boat to Oswego. Bring a large book to read on the canal boat. It is the greatest boredom known. Rail to Buffalo and the last leg to Detroit by steamboat. Progress has eased the traveler’s lot. When I think of poor Sedley in the grip of knee-deep mud . . .”

  James was interested not in his father’s travail in that hundred miles of infested swampland but in what he should pack for the journey. Cigars, he thought, were of first importance. The Indians were in love with Cuban tobacco—as was he—and they rarely got it, so he planned to carefully wrap hundreds of cigars and fill two saddlebags. “But is there any transport beyond Detroit? I would be surprised.” They strolled toward the end of the property marked by aged oaks filled with quarreling squirrels.

  “No, though steamboats, roads and trails extend travel every week. From Detroit it will all be terra incognita. Bring sturdy clothes for rough weeks of living off the land. And guns and ammunition. Only one thing I am sure of—we must go beyond Ohio.”

  Near the oaks James picked up a fallen stick and pointed it like a gun; the squirrels fled. The friends shook hands. Both had a sense of urgency, a feeling that the North American forests were going up in clearance fires and fireplaces, that armies of immigrant settlers were seizing everything. Lennart Vogel, thought James, had looked into the treeless future and decided to act. It would be dangerous, but he recalled Lewis and Clark, who, three decades earlier, had safely made their way to the far Pacific and back.

  • • •

  When they met the next day Lennart Vogel had spruced up and looked pleased. “I had good fortune of a sort since Cyrus now lives in Boston. We talked and he will side with us against Edward and Freegrace if it reaches that point. Also, there is a Post Office map for Michigan Territory and I have procured a somewhat worn copy. It shows post roads and stage roads, but the intelligence is twenty years past. More useful I think is word of a well-traveled Indian path suitable for horse travel from Detroit to that mudhole Chicago. The westward Sauk Trail has many branches and I think that if we can discover one northbound we will find the reputed forests by horse and shank’s mare. Indian guides and paddlers are easy to come by everywhere along those great lakes where the fur trade flourished so long ago. The natives will do anything for a bottle of spirits.”

  “Would that Freegrace and Edward were so easily managed.”

  “Give Edward a present of catnip for his beasts and he will smile on us.” It was true. Since his wife, Lydia, died of a profound asthma aggravated by the inescapable brown manure dust in the streets, Edward doted on Casimir and Vaughn, her two pampered striped felines.

  • • •

  And so, on an early September morning of drizzling rain Lennart Vogel, James Duke and Armenius Breitsprecher (accompanied by his kurzhaar hunting dog, Hans Carl von Carlowitz) got into their hired coach and headed northwest. Lennart set a hamper of roast chickens and beer on the floor. Hans Carl von Carlowitz ran beside the coach. “He may become footsore,” said Lennart. The dog heard this and ran faster.

  • • •

  They bought horses in Detroit and rode into the hardwood forest. As they left Detroit behind Lennart said, “I have heard that a hundred years ago old Sieur de la Mothe Cadillac thought La Ville d’Étroit and its environs ‘so beautiful that it may justly be called the earthly paradise of North America.’ ”

  They were in unpopulated country and James was disturbed by the green gloom. There were no landmarks, only trees, no open sky, only wind-rustled canopy. He felt as he sometimes had felt at sea, that glittering, hallucinatory sense of trackless immensity. But unlike wind-fated ocean travel the Sauk pathway was obvious, an ancient trail made by weighty mastodons and already very old when men from the steppes of Asia found it.

  At a ravine they looked down on a sinuous course of dry stones.

  “A sign that settlers are nearby,” said Breitsprecher, pointing at the desiccated watercourse. Another quarter mile took them past an eroded cutover slope. They could hear ax blows and smell smoke as they came to a stumpy clearing of twenty acres where three men were cutting trees in a windrow for a winter burn. An adjacent field already fired showed incinerated soil and cracked rocks.

  The settler—James judged him somewhere between forty and sixty years old—came toward them swinging sinewy arms. His hair hung to his shoulders, pale expressionless eyes gazed at them.

  “Where ye headed?”

  “West. Going west,” answered Lennart. “I’m Lennart Vogel.”

  The settler looked them up and down. The ropy sons came near and stared at the strangers, jaws relaxed.

  “You, Moony, Kelmar. Git back t’ choppin, schnell,” the father said fast and hard. He turned his eyes on James, on his horse, looked at his boots, squinted up to see his face better. “Look like you might be some kind a govmint man?”

  James said nothing. The father gave Armenius Breitsprecher one of his lingering looks, opened his mouth, closed it when Breitsprecher treated him to a similar examination. “We’ll be getting along,” said Armenius to Lennart and James with some emphasis. Without another word they clucked at their horses and moved out.

  They had ridden half a mile in silence when Armenius suddenly motioned them into the woods and down an incline to a swamp. At the end of a beaver dam, willows, brush and saplings had all been clear-cut by the rodents, making open ground with good views over the pond and their back trail.

  “Stay with the horses, keep quiet and no smoke,” he whispered. “That old man means trouble and I’m going up to see if he and the imbeciles are creeping along the trail. Hans Carl von Carlowitz, komm!” In a minute man and dog were out of sight. James and Lennart waited, the pond surface, the beaver house, the horses, their faces honey-glazed by the setting sun. The day began to close in and the mosquitoes thickened. “I got to have a cigar,” said James in a low voice. “Better not,” whispered Lennart. “Some settlers been known to kill travelers, take their money and goods, their horses. You see how the old man looked us over? How he marked us with his eye?”

  “Suppose they got Armenius? Suppose he don’t come back,” whispered James.

  “Cross that bridge when we get on it.”

  James took out his vial of pennyroyal and slathered it on to repel mosquitoes, fell asleep leaning against a mossy but damp spruce log. Something, a noise, woke him. He was more wide awake than he had ever been in his life. Something—someone—was there, near them, not moving carefully but letting branches swish, footsteps squelch.

  “Armenius?” said James very quietly. “Is that you?”

  “Hunh!” said something that clumbered off into the swamp, and for the rest of the night they could hear dripping water as the moose pulled up weed. James dozed against Lennart’s comforting snore. In the cold fog of dawn they both woke violently alert when the yellow horse nickered quietly.

  “Someone coming,” whispe
red Lennart. The horses had their ears cocked in the same direction, then placidly began to pull at some blueberry bushes. “Breitsprecher. They know his tread.” They waited. The swamp mist took on a tender color showing it would be a clear day. James fished in his saddlebag, found his Boston cheddar and cut it in half. As he was putting it to his lips a terrific splash startled him and he dropped it in the muck, cried, “Damnation!” A beaver, galvanized at the sight of Armenius Breitsprecher and his dog whipping along its dam, had signaled danger. Hans Carl von Carlowitz took a pose, pointing at the expanding rings of water. Beaver far down the pond slapped their tails. Breitsprecher stepped off the dam and walked up to the horses, patting each on the nose. He smiled broadly at Lennart and James and opened his coat to show a cotton sack. From the sack he drew a flitch of bacon, half a dozen eggs, striped apples and warm biscuits.

  “Guter Mann,” he said. “Name was Anton Heinrich. He was on the trail, not following us with evil intent but to bring us to their Klotzhaus for the night. I did not have time to return for you before the woods went dunkel—so I went on with him. He was ein Deutscher, once a Bauer in Maine. We only talk Deutsch—you would not like it. No English. They give me a big supper and sleep in a hay bed in the barn. Here is breakfast that the wife, Kristina, gives to us. Maybe eight Kinder, sets a good table, ja, es gab reichlich zu essen und zu trinken. Gute Menschen.”

  “Do not forget how to speak English,” said James.

  “Ja, sorry. He bought that farm from the Witwe—widow Kristina—when the first owner died from a fever. Anton used to have a farm in Maine but die Erde, the soil, didn’t last. It couldn’t, the way they burn the ground dead and then try to grow crops in the ashes year after year. Four, five years it’s done. Erde that the forest took tausend years to make.” He bit into an apple and continued. “But you cannot be too careful. There are settlers—and there are settlers.”