Book of the Little Axe

by Lauren Francis-Sharma

  But I guess that aint the point.

  While we walked, Thompson watched the world like somebody seein it for the first time. Made me think that maybe the world could be somethin to behold rather than somethin to overcome. At nights Thompson wrote in a diary like if he told it what he saw in just the right way then his words might could change into the very thing they described. He had a diary for the sky and one for the earth and a nother I wasnt sure bout til I asked him one afternoon.

  “Do you know how to write?” he said.

  “I aint good at it, sir. My Pa taught me a lil. Aint got much use for it out here.”

  “Appears to me like you may have a little Injun blood. Is that true, Rampley?”

  I shook my head. I wasnt sure how I felt bout hearin it much less claimin it.

  He went on. “It is a dangerous thing, keeping a diary. Some things a man would like to say should not be said. Yet there are things a man needs to say—things a man needs to set down somewhere to remember and be remembered.”

  “So you set that all down in there?” I pointed to his book with its beaten skin. “All your thinkin on them pages, just there for anybody to read?”

  “Not for anybody. For the right somebody.” Thompson had a way of speakin like he was gonna always know more than me. “A story can die on a man’s lips. It is best we do not take what we have learned with us.”

  I knowed then that Thompson had written his whole story in that book. And it was about that time when I asked him if maybe he had a diary to spare so I could start writin mine. I was prolly eighteen by then and didnt think I was ever gonna be a great man but in my mind I hoped one day to have a somebody who might find himself in my story.

  There wasnt much time to write. Most days we walked thirty miles or more. Thompson spent lotsa time measurin distances tween riverbeds and ridges and notin plants I aint never seent. I aint knowed if I had a job or not but I come to know how long to wait when he stopped and when to get us goin again. I also come to know that the writer of a history aint have to tell nothin that might make his ownself look bad.

  It was midafternoon when I spotted two Piegans trailin us from the east. We was draggin beneath the weight of Thompson’s supplies when they stopped to watch us tween cedars. Thompson had us get into a defensive position, stomachs on the ground, weapons raised. I aint never expect to die in no hostility and Im sure it aint no surprise to you that I aint die in one that day. But it aint cause we was smart!

  “Maybe we should see what they want,” I said.

  We was on our bellies for two hours while them Piegans just watched us like we was a ripe batch a ninnies. I didnt usually offer no opinions. Most times if I thought somethin I figured somebody else thought it too and I stay quiet. But Thompson was runnin scared and I knowed for sure Indians aint never attack from that kinda position.

  “And you’ve lived for how many years among the Piegans?”

  “None sir.”

  “And you know them to be peaceful because all Indians are peaceful?”

  “No sir.”

  The other men chuckled.

  “We are traders not black robes,” Thompson said.

  Thompson went between awe and disdain of Indian ways. In this he wasnt no different from all the other men I knowed. Writin in his lil diary bout how different their beliefs and customs and dress was aint come without judgment. And it aint come without him bein frightened that his own way of lookin at the world might could be undone by knowin theirs.

  “You rather keep your face in the dirt than listen to good advice?” I said.

  “If the advice was good, Id listen.” I thought he was done but then he said, “You are not my sauveur, Rampley. I saved you from wandering like a Jew in the desert. You have no drive, no history, and until you decide to walk away from this job I have bestowed upon you, I shall need you to button that mouth of yours.”

  I aint gonna lie. I was humiliated. But Thompson musta thought I was right about the Piegans since we got up off our stomachs soon after. Them Piegans gathered themselves too. Took to followin us with maybe a hundred yards tween while the children pissed their togs with fear.

  But we made it to Kootenai House.

  Thompson and his men had built the Kootenai House post a year earlier. It was comfortable and most important, it was well fortified. When we got there the Piegans set themselves in the open plain cross from the front door. Close enough that I could see that the five Piegans had weapons for a dozen men—lances, spears, foot-long knives, two buffalo hide shields per man. We unloaded Thompson’s boat, skins, and traps into a double-door storage house at the back and kept the ten-guns and all our lead and powder with us. This ended up being wise since by next mornin the five Piegans had swelled to three dozen.

  Thompson was pink with jitters. We took turns keepin watch and riskin our hides to set out horses. Fore then I aint never slept indoors and I felt downright trapped. I was lookin out the side window every hour hopin them Piegans would just be gone so I could take in a proper breath. We ate small rations, shared dried berries and my strips of smoked buffalo but wasnt none a us ever full. The wife took the one cot for the children but the two eldest growed more restless each day, while the sickly one kept grabbin at the wife’s bosom like he membered somethin tasty been there once.

  “We have only a day’s water left,” the wife whispered to Thompson at the start of the second week.

  “What would you like me to do? Offer you in exchange for water?” he said.

  She mighta been used to his tongue but I wasnt. I sorta always figured if I was lucky enough to have a woman love me that I might like to be gentle with her in a way that the world aint want me to be with nobody else. “The lake is just outside the window.” I pointed to the backside of the post. “We could tie them brass kettles to ropes and dip em at night. Waters high nough now. Wont stay that way.”

  Thompson planned for us to wait them out but by the end of our third week we had our fill of water but aint have nothin left to eat. And the camp of Piegans outside had only got bigger. Each night they lit their fires and played their drums and sung at the top of their voices til almost dawn. Couldnt none of us sleep! Their plan to flush us out worked.

  “I need you to go out and present these to them.” Thompson put tobacco pipes and red porphyry in my hands.

  I turnt the gifts over. “Is this what they come for, sir?”

  When I kept questionin him Thompson asked me if I was a coward. So I stopped houndin him and figured I was just gonna do what he asked since a man like me needed to hear the breeze with its proper voice and needed to see sunlight hit leaves.

  The Piegans took a long hard look at my nose, my dark hair, and the sunlight inside my skin and started tryin out different tongues til we found a common language in French. They told me Thompson and North West Company brung their enemies too close. That Thompson had armed the Kootenais with weapons that the Piegans thought would be used against em. And they didnt believe it was no mistake. They wanted us to burn the post. They told me if we didnt, they would. I gave em Thompson’s paltry gifts and told em we was leavin soon. They understood that to mean they could do what they wanted after we left.

  When I got back inside and told Thompson they was leavin, he took a long drag on his pipe and said, “Thats how its done. Carrot and stick.”

  I wanted to give him a goddamn stick.

  By late afternoon we had already killed and eaten fresh loon and with our bellies full we took a sit outdoors. It smelled like sweetgrass out there and the sun was burstin through some clouds like it was plannin a full-on fight. Thompson sat far off from us so he could catch up his lil diary. The other men pulled their hats over their faces and slept. The two eldest children played while the wife was strugglin with the sickly one, offerin him fresh berries to calm him. I watched her from afar not sure what I was feelin. I seent Pa and the others at the tradin camps with their chests puffed and trousers bustin, hopin to empty out into women who wore grins like they
had pebbles on their back teeth. Lik Smith told Pa once that Pa needed to break me in but I member Pa tellin Lik that for a boy’s first time he oughta be wanted. That thats what separated a real man from a beast.

  The wife caught me watchin her. She brushed hair from her eye like she was givin me a better look fore her cheeks turnt pink like fat blossoms. I looked away but wondered what she was thinkin when she seent me. If she thought me easy on the eye. If she felt the ache I sometimes felt when I looked at her. I wanted to know what it was like to be wanted.

  The older boy threw a stone hittin Thompson’s girl square on the face. She leapt at him. And I thought to laugh but the wife seemed real upset. She left the sickly one and dashed into the grasses toward the lake. Thompson looked up only for a minute while the wife was givin em a good talkin to. She wiped the girls bloody chin with the hem of her skirt. I was thinkin about what life woulda been like had I a sister and a proper mother who woulda made us take care with each other. I missed Pa. Missed him in the same bad way I had the day they said they found his boots but not a body to pull off that ledge. “He picked a helluva place to throw himself,” I member Lik sayin. It stayed in my mind that maybe Lik thought Pa hadnt stumbled.

  The sickly one started to cry. He was always cryin so I aint paid him no mind til the cry become like shrieks. Shrieks like I aint never heard. He was followin his mother into them tall, fine country grasses, and I could see the stalks, gold and dry, swayin like mad and his left foot shakin in the air. I couldnt make no sense of it til I stood up to get a proper look.

  A full-grown mountain lion was draggin the lil fella off! Half his head was clutched in them jaws. I seent where the cat was headed and ran to cut it off. By then the wife was on the other side of the cat, pushin the other two children behind her. The cat paused and the lil fella stopped cryin like maybe he was already dead cept I noticed the seat of his trousers was wet and his lil fist still wobblin. I hadnt carried my weapon and felt nekked in front of that beast. Its eyes was set on mine and I knowed by the look of em that there wasnt gonna be no talkin tween us, so I picked up a stick.

  “David!” the wife cried out. Thompson prolly still had his head in that goddamn diary and I dont know if he saw what was happenin or not but I knowed for sure he aint take up no weapon. I heard the lil boy whimper like he was losin his breath. The cat clenched its jaw and blood ran along its soft tan coat, sleek and bright.

  I lunged. The cat bowed back only to find the wife primed for the same fight as me. I couldnt see how that boy had any breath left but I sorta figured he deserved to take a nother if he could. I rammed the stick into the cat’s right eye and when the cat shook, its grip loosed and I smacked it round the nose and ears and fought with it til the sickly one fell out. When I pushed the boy to his mother I knowed then what the cat had seent in him, and I knowed the boy wouldnt never recover from what his father aint do for him. I knowed this even as I watched the wife and Thompson pull at his legs and drag him to them like he was important, like he was a net a live fish meant to save a starvin village. The boy give off one last yowl and the cat ran off, knowin good as me that a nother boy like him was always gonna come.

  Course, everything changed after that. Thompson aint much speak to me, and both me and him noticed how the wife aint look at him no more when she spoke to me. About a week after, Thompson said the sickly one needed time to heal and we was gonna leave the wife and children behind at Kootenai House for a short time.

  Thompson worked us hard to make up the lost days. Rain come down most nights which made for bad walkin in the mornins. By the end of our first fortnight we finished the last of our food and was two days hungry. I hadnt even spotted a squirrel for a kill. Then one afternoon we come cross the remains of an antelope. An eagle had took most of it but there was some flesh left.

  “This is our best hope to eat this week.” Thompson said we should set the carcass to boil. But I aint agree. A man dont eat after no vultures.

  I wasnt never hungrier than the night I watched em eat that antelope. I ate gooseberries—tiny, sour, hard-as-stones gooseberries—while Thompson looked at me like I was the sour gooseberry. By mornin, they was all sick as the dickens. Bent over bushes. Sittin atop bushes. Cryin into bushes. And it felt damn good to be right. While I waited the two days for their runny arses to be done, I hunted and collected enough provisions to last us a solid week. The day we started up again, the geese flapped beneath low clouds and we was surrounded by mountains standin atop a ground that was level and moist and we seent a doe red deer in the distance nibblin at brightly colored Indian lettuce on the shoreline of a most beautiful lake. Thompson looked at that deer and grinned.

  “Sir, we got enough food,” I said.

  At first, the doe aint seem to notice she was shot. She was on a low point of gravel considerin mud hens off in the distance. Then her eyes got real wide and Thompson’s man moved toward her, chopped her head clean off. Whoop. I coulda sworn I felt the breeze come off that neck. Pa told me I wasnt never supposed to kill more than I needed so when that headless doe rose to her feet, mad like anybody woulda been if theyd lost their head, I took it to be a sign that good things wasnt comin for us. I tell you I aint never seent nothin like it. She danced and pranced and wagged and Thompson kept inchin back tryna figure how long til she dropped.

  “Sepanee,” I said, memberin a word Pa had taught me. Pa had said sepanee meant “strong life,” like the spirit aint wanna be taken.

  When Thompson raised his rifle to finish her, it just bout pissed me off. I lowered the butt of it only to have him throw his elbow into my jaw. I wasnt no fighter but I could fight good enough. I swiped the damn rifle and knocked it to the ground. Thompson scrambled for it. Pointed it at me. But it jammed. Jammed. Like somethin was favorin me. Like my spirit aint wanna be taken. I looked to the shoreline where the doe finally bled out and with blood salty on my tongue, I said, “Sepanee.”

  Thompson’s face was tight and his grip loose on the useless weapon. “Redskin,” I was almost sure he said.

  We crossed the wide lake on our makeshift boat and found a few families of Lake Indians who helped us tow our goods. It seemed we found ourselves a summer camp. An annual gatherin of Indian families. They was smart-lookin Indians too with oval faces and skin I thought mighta been like my mother’s. They gave us pike and berries and Thompson’s man, the one who took the head off that doe, laughed while he ate the offerin sayin that maybe eatin the “strong life deer” had brung us to the perfect place for a new trading post.

  At the point extendin into what one of Thompson’s men called “Lake Pend d’Oreille” tween Hope and Clark’s Fork stations, near the mouth of Saleesh River and across from a lone island the Kalispel called Memaloose, we got to diggin. One day after a supper of cold fish soup Thompson pulled me off to the side. “Youll have to be going after we finish here,” he said.

  I half expected it.

  For the next few weeks I took down trees, notched posts, mixed mud and clay to seal the roof. We built “Kullyspell” along with a fine storehouse over a few short months. When we was done I went to Thompson to collect my pay.

  “You caused me to lose three days,” he said. “Youve had a good run. Be on your way.”

  “Three days?”

  “Took us through badlands,” he said.

  I done nothin of the sort but there wasnt no law to call. Differences between men was bridged by death or love, sometimes both. While Thompson, smug as he was, sat on a stump and flipped through pages of his lil diary, I dragged logs into the Kullyspell House and set em in the front room on the floor. I heard one man say somethin to Thompson just as I closed the door and set down the latch.

  “Rampley, what the hell are you doing?”

  Thompson was bangin the door. But inside the fire was warm and startin to spread like a shiny waggin tail. Thompson and his men kicked and pounded but we made that door solid and the only way they was gettin in was to break the weaker window boards, which I reckoned theyd do
soon as they smelled smoke. Imma be honest and say I wasnt sure I wanted to get out. I had no place to go. No people. No land. I closed my eyes and leaned up against the mantel of the cold fireplace and wondered if this was what my Pa felt the mornin he left me. Like there wasnt enough in his world to fill him up. I waited for the flames to catch the ragged hem of my trousers and coulda sworn I seent a pack of horses in that fire—horses with rounded rumps and low-set tails—runnin like they was comin to save me.

  Kullyspell, Territory Unclaimed by Europeans

  1809

  Kullyspell Post didnt burn to the ground. Thompson’s men was dousin the flames when I kicked out the boards on the back window and set about runnin for my life. After leavin Kootenai River Valley I set off southwest into Missouri and Indian Territories then after a year or so of hard livin I found myself in the New Spain province of Tejas. I had heard that the war in the east had turnt livestock into a real moneymaker. Soldiers needed feedin, needed boots and belts, and their government was payin so to meet demand, private ranchers in Tejas hired cowhands to fight back both the natives and the wilderness. By the time I got to the west of Tejas at the end of 1809, one war was all but dead but there was a new war startin and now a grassy piece a land and a few cows could make a poor man into a rich one.

  I aint never seent land like that land in Tejas. In San Antonio there was hills and springs, and the dirt was light colored and shallow like it was all a bed of silt. The San Antonio River was fresh, never frozen like the rivers I’d knowed. To the east there was Rosillo and Salado Creeks, Martinez and Cibolo Creeks, and to the south was open plains of sandy soil. Almost everywhere I looked, wildflowers was as plentiful as ripples in a lake and fat-trunked trees grew like rounded hills. There was bristly hogs and deer and jeweled turkeys runnin wild alongside forestin squirrels and rabbits. And the streams overflowed with plump fish. In Tejas, a man could walk miles believin earth was his gift, could walk miles believin he was whole. I thought maybe my luck was bout to change.