Book of the Little Axe

by Lauren Francis-Sharma

  Ma began again, walking up the path.

  “Why are you so angry about that foolish diary?”

  Ma’s shoulders slackened and she turned the upper half of her torso, causing the sun to fall in a diagonal across her face, making her appear halved, the mountain peak atop her head like a crown. “I am not angry, you are.”

  “I’m here waiting for something or someone you yourself are not certain will come.”

  “Waiting?” Ma pointed to the place where Victor had seen her clawing at the dirt. “Down there.” They had walked past it that very morning, and Victor had pretended not to see how Ma had looked back at him to deflect his attention away from it. “I met Edward Rose there and that is where you and I began. We have journeyed back to the beginning, Victor. We are not waiting.”

  2

  The whitefish was overcooked. Ma and Victor ate indoors, for it had begun to rain. Victor nibbled at what he’d plated, slumped into the crosshatch of the chair that pinched the skin on his back. He had questions. So many questions. And each time he thought to ask them, the words grew thick and fat in his mouth.

  “Ma,” he began.

  But Ma set her finger to her mouth, and at first, Victor thought she wished not to discuss the diary until he saw the fluttering of her eyelashes. “Get down!”

  Now Victor heard the approach too. He watched Ma’s chest heave as he took up his bow and arrow. Ma scurried to the front, musket in hand, and closed partway the front shutter. She wedged the muzzle between a crack, while Victor waited before the door, waited for it to open.

  Quiet.

  The two horses slowed and Ma pried open the door. Victor put himself before her. The man and woman greeted them first in a language neither Ma nor Victor knew, then in English. The man, a Yellow-Eyes, had a pointed mouth and narrow face and appeared small next to the woman, who stood several inches wider.

  “We thought Rampley came back.” The woman was rugged, wide-faced, with a smashed nose, and much younger than the man. She could have been half Sioux, but Victor couldn’t be certain. “He’s not here?”

  Ma shook her head.

  “I’m Margaret.” The woman smiled, then clapped her hand to her face, wincing. “Bad tooth.” She pointed to her mouth. “Rampley told us all about you.” Margaret took stock of Ma’s clothes, her glance probing as if she’d expected something different. “Saw the smoke and thought he was around.”

  Ma looked up to the roof as if she had forgotten it could speak. She set the musket down after the man tipped his hat and introduced himself as Gerard. Margaret and Gerard greeted Victor with a half smile.

  Ma invited them inside, and Margaret set their rifles outside the door. The lump in Victor’s throat swelled. “We brought drink and meat.” Gerard held up a package. “Waiting for months for Creadon to show. Don’t think he’d mind if we shared it.”

  Victor had learned from Father that Apsáalooke were first introduced to Europeans by the writings of the first men they called “Yellow-Eyes,” two French Canadian brothers who stumbled upon the tribe around 1743. The brothers believed their meeting to be the tribe’s first encounter with white men, though it likely was not, and wrote in their journals that the Indians were beaux hommes, or “handsome men.” It was these brothers who were responsible for the misnomer of the tribe, for they had interpreted “Children of the Large-Beaked Bird” to mean the crow. Father told Victor men such as those were not to be trusted for their understanding.

  “This was the first fur-trading post I ever seen made into a home. Nobody’s got anything like this.” Gerard, who was pale like a sun-bleached bone, admired the walls, the floors, the table before them. He took in the place as if it weren’t as familiar to him as he had suggested. “Me and Margaret make do. Got ourselves a little dugout, but this place is a real luxury.”

  Though Apsáalooke had decided not to spurn the Europeans, many Apsáalooke still considered the Yellow-Eyes wily castoffs. Yet Ma poured the Yellow-Eyes’s drinks, listened to his stories, chuckled at his jests.

  “We’ve shared a few meals with Rampley.” Margaret watched Ma like she’d found something peculiar about her. Victor had seen that kind of examination before and did not like it. “Like us, sometimes he’ll join a company for a few months, earn a pay, but he likes to be by himself. Not usually gone so long,” Margaret said. “You must be worried.”

  Ma did not respond.

  “Described you good, didn’t he, Margaret?” Gerard added. “Told us you like to ride horses wild and hard.” Gerard took a drink. “Sometimes Margaret comes to visit by herself. Creadon shares more then, doesn’t he, Margaret?” Gerard looked to Margaret, and this was when Victor noticed that the two shared the same hairline, same longish ears, same pointed chin.

  Gerard emptied his third cup and held it out to Margaret for more. “The lad favors Creadon, doesn’t he?” he muttered.

  Victor pretended not to understand. Pretended not to see Ma’s face flush and her eyes dart to his, as she worked to read his expression. Victor pretended not to notice that Margaret had nudged Gerard and that the man didn’t seem sorry. Victor pretended not to know what he knew now to be true.

  CREADON RAMPLEY

  Isle of Trinidad

  1814

  The old man coulda stayed sick. I thought about that a lot. I aint have no claim to that hayloft. No claim to that family. I wanted to help but stayin forever wasnt somethin I ever thought bout. But I also knowed if I left his daughters when Demas was still in that sickbed or worse, after he was dead, I couldnt rightly call myself a man no more, could I?

  Rainy season ended. Christmas come and went. Then the heat fell on us like a wool cape. We wasnt ready to go into a nother year without Demas. But there we was. Me and his two girls—Eve tendin to him and the house and Rosa beside me, fixin posts, pullin rotted banana trees, diggin out a well that prolly wasnt never gonna be more than a mud pit.

  Some days I wanted to leave Trinidad. But on Sundays, after I visited Demas, I couldnt never get myself to do it. He would try and talk. Words dripped slow and thick and it tired me to watch him so I talked over him mostly. Told him about the shop, the crops, the horses … everything cept that I was scared I couldnt run that place without Rosa, that she couldnt run that place without me, scared that I got myself so tied up with them that even though the scared part of me wanted to leave that place behind I couldnt.

  It was somewhere about the middle of May when I finally seent the DeGannes fella I heard so much about. He come around demandin to see Demas. He had one of them faces that could make you think he was kind. Eve told us later that when he arrived, she went into the room, propped Demas up against the wall, wiped his face and told him he aint have to speak if he was too tired to. Demas waved her away and when DeGannes went in, Eve said Monsieur DeGannes was hard whisperin like he aint want nobody to know how angry he was. When DeGannes left, Eve went in and seent her father lookin weak like he did that night he fell down. When she asked him what DeGannes said, Demas pretended to sleep.

  By the first of June Demas was up every day on slow feet that didnt always listen. He aint have all his words back and that left hand of his still shook but somehow he found his get-up-and-go.

  “We need to get this place into shape,” he said. “We have a wedding c-coming.”

  Lookin back, I still aint sure how it all happened.

  Not long after the DeGannes visit, an Englishman named Grayson come around. He wasnt no regular customer. When Eve greeted him, she told me she pulled in the door behind her. That he scared her that much. Grayson aint speak no Spanish. He had blue veins that looked to be ready to jump outta his skin. Said he was lookin for “Mister Runyan.”

  Eve brung him to the shop when Demas was only two days outta bed. Demas was sittin on his rocker tellin me where to set the sledgehammer and the anvil, how to sort the files and things. There was a pig let loose, havin his way inside a bale a hay that would be no more good. Eve called out for Demas so Demas stood to meet the man
, but when Grayson spotted me, he come over and said, “Runyan” and gave me a smile big as New Spain. “DeGannes sent me.”

  I started to explain his mistake but not fore he added, “I was beginning to think this place had no overseers.”

  My face got hot and I could hear blood in my ears. Demas stood just next to me. Watchin me fight for the right words to name him.

  “DeGannes tells me you have some obligations owed to him. He told me to tell you that this work will help extinguish your debts to him,” Grayson said.

  “Sir, you got me mixed up. Señor Rendón here owns this land.” It was the first time I had to think about how we looked to the outside and it seemed it was the first time Demas thought on it too, cause all he did was stand there and wait for Grayson to grunt and take out a sketch from his breast pocket.

  None of us noticed Eve still there, so when we heard her leave, Grayson stared into her hard like a nail poundin through lumber. When he turned back, he stabbed his finger into the drawin. “Can you understand this?”

  Demas took a step back and it made me feel uneasy to be standin out front like that.

  “The back bar must have a well-forged terminal for hair to gather,” Grayson said. “The side bars must meet the back bar and there shall be rivets for fastening and a small opening for drinking.”

  It all sounded like Dutch to me. I turnt to Demas and confessed with my eyes that I aint knowed nothin about none a that. Demas looked tired. Like he was holdin himself up by the waist. He smashed his boot tip into the dirt fore he spoke. “Sir, I have horse bits here that might be better suited and more comfortable.” Demas nodded at the wall to show where we hung them just like he said they used to be at his old shop. “We raise fine horses and I can assure—”

  “It is not for horses,” Grayson said.

  “P-perhaps then if you tell me what animal, I c-can make the size just—”

  Since Demas fell down, his words aint always come out right. Fore Grayson come that day it seemed only to frustrate him, but in front of Grayson, I could tell it embarrassed him.

  “If this is too difficult, I can give you something simpler.” Grayson bit down on his lower teeth. “DeGannes told me you were the best blacksmith on the island. I didnt realize you would need hand holding.” Grayson took out a second drawin. Held it open. This time he set it tween me and Demas. “I need a small, circular mask that fastens in the back or through a neck collar with holes slightly larger than the head of a pin just under the nose for breathing,” he explained. “There must be a firm plate to fit flat on the tongue to prevent speech and—”

  “What s-sort of animal speaks, sir?”

  The man looked to me then I looked to Demas, wonderin if Demas really aint understand. It seemed like he didnt cause he alla sudden started shakin and I thought he was havin a nother one of them fits til Grayson looked at him and said, “Youre having a burst of conscience now? Youve done similar work, yes? DeGannes tells me you need the money.”

  “Sir,” Demas said, “I dont have the c-correct tools to—”

  “Papá! What is the pig—” It was Rosa. Demas tried to signal to me not to let her come close, but there was no tellin Rosa nothin. She come in, tall and strong and strikin. She had on her some old work boots that climbed up them long legs of hers, and over top was her white petticoat, half tucked into old brown trousers.

  “Oh.” She stopped short when she seent Grayson. “Lo siento.” Rosa pulled at her dress, tryna hide the trousers.

  Grayson watched her til she rounded the corner back toward the house and I got the strangest feelin he wanted to do her the way that mountain lion had done the Thompson boy.

  We was inside at lunch. Bout an hour after Grayson left. The wing of some dead insect was in the bowl of yellowish ñames. Rosa scooped around it. Demas aint notice it.

  “What did that Englishman want?” Eve said.

  Rosa looked up from her plate but Demas only shook his head. He had learnt months earlier how to pick up his cup with one hand, but that afternoon, he gripped it with both. Water dribbled down to his collar.

  “He came for nutting?” Eve had gotten used to speakin for Demas. Puttin words where Demas couldnt. “If he comes again, I will tell him youve gone into town, sí?”

  Demas shook his head. Didnt seem like he could explain the work he told Grayson he was gonna do or why he felt he couldnt say no to him.

  “You—neither of you—should greet p-people anymore.” His sh was more like a th. “We will p-post signs, make certain they dont cut tru the stable. Even if we must b-build a wall.” Demas looked to me then down at his plate and wiped his eyes. “Dirty business,” he muttered.

  Eve covered her mouth but Rosa seemed none too surprised. “I saw them parading the new ones through town last week, like how we heard they do them in Tobago.”

  Eve and Rosa never once while I was there talked about livin in a slave colony. Not in front of me, no how. And I aint gonna lie. I aint really wanna think on it either. I aint wanna have to think if I thought it right or not.

  Eve sat with her back straight like good posture could make somethin like slavery not stick to her. She looked embarrassed. Like she aint want me to know that this was part of her life too. That this was somethin floatin round in her lil head.

  “Rosa, you said nutting of this til now?” Demas said.

  “What was there to say? New ones have always come.”

  “Never s-so many like this.”

  “The Arawaks and Caribs were fighting Spanish slavers hundreds of years ago,” Rosa said. “You know it has always been like this.”

  “It’s 1814. They said it would end in 1807.”

  “That could mean 1907 before it is done, Papá.” Rosa sounded more like Demas than Demas. She was different since Demas fell. Like she was always thinkin somethin was gonna go wrong. “You already know that labor is a problem here. The English brought the Chinese men and almost the whole lot went back on boats. And the French planters are lazy. They wont give up their slaves unless they have replacements,” Rosa said. “The revolt in Chaguaramas proved this.” Rosa crossed her arms. “We will just survive until they kill each other off.”

  Demas raised himself to almost standin. The left side of his mouth, which hadnt quite met its old place, had a deeper burrow than the right. “Surviving is not living,” he said. “Your p-people, my grand-fadda, didnt fight for me only to survive. He had to p-pool his money with others for manumission fees to be p-paid to the same Spanish bastards who bring the Africans here in the first place. And then he had to p-pay an insult tax to the Crown who had blessed his enslavement,” Demas said. “Them Englishmen can just—” Demas stopped himself. “You cant go there anymore.”

  “Go where?”

  “Town.”

  “I mustnt go into town?”

  “Nowhere. Not without Señor Rampley or me. Neither of—of you.”

  “That is craziness!” Rosa said.

  “Rosa.” Demas sat down again and whispered her name like he had failed her. Like she had failed him. “You are not to fight. I take care of this family.”

  “You just said we are to live, not only to survive.”

  “Sometimes you have to make them tink all you doin is survivin.” Demas sliced the air with his hands. “But you ent know the world yet. You ent know that you have to fight different when they change them rules, when they de-decide I cannot own land, a home, horses, when they decide that—that I cannot work my trade or be your Papá.” Demas folded his hands now like he was tryna keep the left one from shakin.

  “Never,” Rosa said.

  His plate was still fulla yellow smashed potatoes. Demas got up, limped to the door, then stopped. The tears in his eyes looked like water trapped behind a lookin glass. Since his fall, his heart seemed tenderer somehow. “‘Never’ is what you say when you dont have to tink about your chil-chilren.”

  That evenin in the shop, me and Demas talked. He told me some things. Told me that when the transatlanti
c slave trade was scheduled to end it only made the intracolonial trade thrive. “They bring them in from Domenica and Grenada and they drop them all over the place, Guiana, Cuba, all up and down the coasts of the Americas. Wherever they ask for them and can pay for them, they take them, leavin a mudda here, a brudda there. And they did this same ting before, when they killed off most of them Arawaks and Caribs. And now these Englishmen wanta repurpose Trinidad into a sugar colony, which means even more slaves.” Demas sighed. “The sugar in the cane in Trinidad, they say, is almost tree times that of other islands. Governor Woodford knows what is happening. The Crown knows what is happening, and nobody wants to stop it. It leaves a man like me feeling powerless.”

  Demas told me he wanted to protect Eve. And I said yes cause I aint have a good nough reason to say no to that man.

  “If and when emancipation comes, they ent want them freed slaves believing they can own land because theyll still need them to work. A man like me will be a problem for the Crown,” he said. “But the governor will let a man like you own the business. Theyll permit you the peace to run your affairs. But this is Rendón land. You understand? I need you to pr-promise you will never forget that.” Demas held his stronger left hand out to shake mine then patted me on the shoulder like the agreement was all wrapped up, cept then he said, “I have debts. You understand what that means? I rob Peter to pay Paul and now Peter comin to collect.” The sunken side of his face twitched. “My Peter is DeGannes. We had a business arrangement for a very, very long time, and when the governor closed my shop, I lost us both money. Plenty money. And I fell on hard times.” Demas paused real long like it was the first time he ever said them words even to himself. “The governor came for the land only a short while before you came to this house and DeGannes loaned me the money to pay the taxes. I was paying him back, lil by lil til I fell.”

  I wanted to ask Demas why he aint tell me before, why he let his debt come due but I already knowed why.