by Nancy Young
He believed that at all times man existed with one foot in heaven, another in hell, and everywhere in between and within lay his soul.
“There lies the truth of God, where never an end will be or a beginning hailed — no beginning because everything has already begun. At the all-knowing turning point of existence, eternity bellows in a great exultation; turbulent circularity increasing metamorphosis — the antithesis of time. Would Earth exist if it He did not create it to support us? Why would He then create time to confine us? Earth contains within it neither designation nor destination. Connectivity to the larger continuum is embodied in it — Earth is beholden to it.”
For his lifetime of convoluted and confounded wonderings, Jacob received answers from God himself, transmitted to this inner ear from the trees that grew around the farmhouse in the Lubéron, in the clumps of upturned soil, through whispered triumphs heralded from the brilliant summer skies. He received them in the half-lit barn, the scaffold half-creatures of living and past, souls not quite completed and not yet evolved. Meanwhile his father simply tried to beat the autism out of him. His punishments did eventually succeed in silencing the boy as Jacob eventually taught himself to distinguish conversations from the material world from communication during transmigrations of souls from other times, places, and levels of consciousness.
By the time he reached adolescence Jacob eschewed contact with other people of his age. The exception was Adrienne, his twin sister who protected him and respected his articulated fantasies of other worlds. Until the summer when they were twelve, nearly thirteen, and Jacob’s feverish and boiling-over mind conversed with an unseen ghost who instructed him to force himself upon her. He did not recognize this act as an abhorrent trespass, nor his sister’s sudden and intense aversion to him. For Jacob, yesterdays and tomorrows were inconsequential, spirits immaterial.
The siblings had found a mutual purpose, however, when their father brought home a new wife, like a stray cat who eventually took over the household. To escape the avaricious chiding of their unwanted stepmother, brother and sister both eventually escaped to the hills and mountains and the embrace of the monastic life. The father was not sad to lose both his children to houses of God. With a new wife, he felt he was finally blessed after so many years of loneliness and hardship. But when his new baby died in infancy and, following another pregnancy, his second wife died in childbirth, the new baby also succumbing after two weeks without sufficient nourishment, Arnaud Sébastiani fell into a stupor and eventually lost his failing farm in a drunken gambling bet that same year. When his father was found by the farm help hanging in his barn by a bullock rope, the son already knew because his father had paid him a visit offering unwanted advice from the other side. After some time the young man left the Trappists and journeyed to Canada as a missionary priest in the new country. Eventually he became the resident pastor of a new parish in Solpetrière.
When he inherited his niece’s welfare, the letter he received via the Catholic archdiocese offices in Canada, written by Father Pascal, roused his sense of duty to his beloved, now deceased twin sister Adrienne. But the sense of obligation did not arise immediately, as the responsibility seemed somewhat below what he believed to be his exalted, higher calling. He did, however, consult with his trusted housekeeper, the well-meaning Amalie Lowell, in one of his rare earth-bound moments, who helped him see the way to accepting this responsibility, and she agreed that together as a team — mostly led by her — they would act as legal parents to young Isabelle. Madame Lowell, however, saw herself as the mother to an entire parish, some one hundred children and their needy souls. Her sense of duty and her maternal instinct was unquestioned. The Swiss-French woman had been born in Lausanne, but her family moved to Québec when she was a child, and with her family’s blessing, she had married an Anglican minister from Toronto and had two sons. She lost them all in a tragic accident one winter day when their steam train collided with a mule-train on a bit of muddy track. Miraculously she survived but her husband and seventeen- and fifteen-year-old sons were killed.
Several years later she received a letter from the complicated French priest whom her husband had known through their unusual nondenominational religious affiliation. He wrote to her in Toronto, extending his condolences, and said that he had received a message from her family which he wished to pass on to her. They arranged a meeting in Montréal several weeks later and when they met, she knew that he had a special ability to communicate trans-spiritually for he immediately channeled her youngest son whom she called “Pauley” even though his real name was Alexander. Pauley’s message to his grieving mother was that it was time to move on; their father’s spirit had returned to his native Scotland where he missed the mist on the moors, but he and his brother remained in Québec and were sorry to see her alone. She accepted Father Jacob’s invitation to assist him in Solpetrière as soon as he offered it. Over the eight-some-odd years she had worked for him, prior to Isabelle’s arrival, she had never felt anything but respect and compassion for the odd priest, and through him she kept up a regular communication with her sons.
The opportunity to be a mother again appealed to the middle-aged woman. The memory of her sons never left her; even as she cooked, cleaned, and organized baptisms, weddings, and other special sacraments, their strong young faces graced her every waking thought. She was a naturally maternal person, and although Father Jacob could never be a husband, she thought they would make a fine pair as parents.
When Isabelle finally arrived at the small, well-served parish, Madame Lowell could hardly contain her excitement. Father Jacob, however, had no illusions about being a father — other than as a priest — and had become painfully shy in the presence of his new charge. Particularly during the passage across the Atlantic, his equilibrium worked exceedingly well in attracting lost souls to the steamer ship, but the awkwardness he felt in the proximity of his niece was rather disconcerting, and on occasion he wished he had not accepted the challenge. So many souls! And most of them sad and still drifting on the open seas. They popped up on the ship’s deck at all hours of the day and night, and even frequented the dining cabin when it was unpopulated by the living. Like a floating Tower of Babel, their multitude of languages confused the priest, but eventually the noises calmed down and funneled into a single ongoing monologue in his own language, a built-in simultaneous interpreter in his head that he had never experienced before, certainly not as effortlessly as he did now.
Madame Lowell took to her new role like a fish to water. Isabelle was the daughter she never had, and naturally she saw herself in the young girl. But during most of the early years of the girl’s new frontier life, Isabelle remained in a forest of fog. Madame Lowell could never replace her Maman, and because she never had a father, only the elderly Father Pascal who seemed ancient even when she was a toddler, Father Jacob’s role in her life was more as employer. Isabelle remained aloof, but helpful, and over time she grew to appreciate the efforts of Madame Lowell and her awkward uncle. As adolescence settled in, however, a new independence took over. It was subtly refined and finely tuned by fearlessness by the time she approached seventeen, a trait her uncle soon recognized as a vestigial inheritance from her mother.
Despite Madame Lowell’s best efforts, Isabelle would mourn her mother’s death for many years and lament the loss of the rich soul-preserving tenure of music her mother had granted her. Isabelle’s life had been simple: do her mother and God’s work, and the rest will be provided. But now, without a purpose in life to guide her, she found the beacons of her life on the headlands of her private sea journey by searching within herself. Opening her heart to God’s messages had always been her path in childhood, but if His love was the greatest gift of all, it could just as easily be lost in the blink of an eye, just like the simultaneous loss of her mother and her bearings.
She felt the smallness of her existence, and a keen sense of isolation, and could not explore
the forest around the camp without trepidation. Then she met the young brave who would change everything. Walk-Tall was a bridge to another world that existed beyond the forest. His entry into her life suddenly created an unfamiliar expansiveness; it opened the world out to her. It was a world of newness that made redundant the dull safety of her every day.
Their bond transcended time, place, age, culture, experience, and language and flourished in the infinitesimally small space between their kindred spirits. Isabelle and Walk-Tall had no conflicting loyalties between their desire to explore and be possessed of one’s own freedom. Love found its way in the equalizing deaf-mute blindness of their silent physical gestures. Walk-Tall actually knew quite a few words in French and English, but during their first meeting he chose not to reveal this, and she, new to the New World, had been led to believe that the Red Man still spoke the savage’s language, rather than the languages of Europe. On discovering this language bridge, their childish laughter gave way over time to feelings of intensity that were facilitated by a desire to communicate and to begin to truly experience life’s reality. They drew joyfully together. Isabelle’s talent for perspective and the fine details of the forest and the everyday found fodder in Walk-Tall’s notions of the natural world and spirit life. An easy uncompetitive desire to improve drove their exploration.
After the first day of their meeting when Isabelle’s horse brought her to the bend in the creek where he lay resting and then disappeared again, she thought only of her new friend. His softly chiseled face another beacon in her life, the image burned into her mind’s eye like a lighthouse on a dark cliff — it was inviting, intriguing, beckoning, and strangely safe. The latter came as a surprise once again, so indelibly etched was the prejudice of her times. If his face was a map of the territories they explored, they were the waterways and the tall trees, the span of natural bridges, the expansive sky full of hawks, osprey, peregrines, eagles’ nests on cliffs, and the clouds that fanned and cooled them at that great height. His laugh was the tripping of water over the rocks in the river running up to their knees, his hands the beautiful rough bark of the birch trees.
For every day they saw each other there were a hundred reasons to do it again. They agreed to meet every third day at the bend of the river throughout the summer, at the place where old gnarled cedar and spruces pummeled the ground and beat through it with roots like tentacles.
“I feel so alive exploring the forest with you,” she said, treading lightly on the familiar path.
“Here,” he replied pointing to another native plant she did not recognize. “It is one of the medicine herbs my mother uses for setting a broken bone. My brothers come home often needing that medicine.”
“But not you?” she asked innocently.
“No, I am my mother’s son — I am more careful!”
Together they searched her uncle’s great botanical guide for the illustration to match the rounded leaves and she read them for him out of the book, which she carried secretly to their meetings.
They learned two, sometimes three or four, sets of words for every object they came across, and their expanding vocabulary was like growing fresh new skin every day, for how they changed in appearance to each other was an ever-evolving experience; with each interaction they could attach a new word, like infants new to the world testing new skills and exploring new phenomena as they experience them for the first time. Once words were ascribed to something they used them over and over again, with different intensity, in different contexts to see if the meaning was firmly imbedded, to ensure they were on the same path, soaring on the same thermal. They were birds destined to be mated for life, staying unabashedly close to one another, taking turns to lead and then follow. It was an emotional watershed for both.
They rode the old mare together on occasion and explored farther downstream and upriver, spotting signs of the oncoming season of the salmon run like it was a spring dance. It was not difficult, as two animals of the same species, to eventually fall in love. Though their playful partnership became unwittingly flirtatious, their innocence was preserved. But over the course of five years, a chaste but very emotional love blossomed between them in the quiet garden of their cedar creek-bed. Isabelle was sixteen and in her heart she knew that the stirrings she felt in the presence of his solid and grounded being were going to grow stronger by the day and at some point she would want to allow their powerful physical attraction to make them wholly one. He was more than a bridge to another world now; his was the world she wanted to live in.
It was on a late summer’s day, as Isabelle admired the last elderberries of summer, that Walk-Tall dropped to his knees beside her and looked up at her as if he were her loyal hound, his brown eyes moist. Earlier this afternoon he had met her on the edge of the trees and they had walked together to another bend in the river, this one a much broader curve where the water spread out unusually wide and unnervingly quiet. The trees were different here as well; unlike the giant cedar, spruce, and fir of their familiar creek bed, this area was populated with willow, birch, aspen and poplar, along with the ubiquitous pine. In the midst of the lake-like expanse of wetland, a dome of twigs and leaves stood like a rotund castle encircled by a very large moat; it was a beaver lodge, its underwater entrances making entry impossible for any other animal.
Taking one hand in his, Walk-Tall led her down a separate trail to see the tightly interwoven beaver dam wall of logs, branches, twigs, and leaves which was nearly seven feet tall. In several undisturbed parts the dam was a solid bank, resisting a great force of water; some of the broken-down willow, poplar and birch had taken root, shooting up here and there forming a regular planted hedge, in some places so tall that herons built nests among the branches.
All at once Walk-Tall grasped Isabelle’s arm and placed a finger over his lips and then pointed to a ledge on the dam where two of the dam builders abruptly popped up out of the water. They appeared to have surfaced to tend to some repair and suddenly seemed to be in a race against time, chattering and worrying over where to put which branch. They ignored the human pair who were admiring with awe their human-like antics as well as the impressively large amount of water they had successfully dammed with their concerted effort. They were a team, a mated pair, a couple. This was the shared future the two observers could have one day, if they cared to achieve it. The concept dawned first upon the young man. They had walked along together now hand in hand until coming to a large stand of white elderberries, their fruit fermenting on the forest floor and sending up an acrid sweet smell. Isabelle reached up to grab a few and unexpectedly saw her friend drop to his knees on the ground beside her, his liquid brown eyes seeking out hers, tears threatening to break their dams and fall to his cheeks.
“Walk-Tall! What is the matter? Are you sick?” she cried, trying now to raise him from his knees upon the forest floor.
“I am fine, Isabelle,” he replied, surprised it seemed at his own tears. “You look so beautiful — your dress white, like your face, and so lovely in the sunlight.” A wan smile now came over this face, replacing the sadness of the tears. She wasn’t entirely clear what he had said because he used his own native language to express his feelings. But from the undeniable look of love in his eyes, she knew his confession would have been important, requiring the use of his native Iroquois instead of French or English, which was understandable. Then he continued in her language. “I am fine. I feel a weakness in my knees. I am thinking how much I love you.”
She laughed out loud and bent over to him, their lips meeting halfway as she leaned toward him, and he half raised himself. The kiss was perfect, calming the emotional tremor he felt in his heart, and melting away the nervous twinge she felt in her stomach when he had dropped to the ground. He rose fully to his great height, and held out his arms to her. They held onto one another in a full-bodied embrace that was filled with hope and a slight anticipation.
“Shall we go
back now?” she finally said.
“Back to the creek?” he replied, hoping for another kiss.
“No, I mean, back to my camp. And you back to your family.”
His eyes fell to the floor. “All right, of course,” he replied in his language, an agreeable phrase she learned very early in their meetings years ago.
“Tell me,” she said, turning away from his downcast eyes. “Would your family be happy that you are spending time with me?” The question was not said as a challenge, but it might have been seen to be. She hoped for a kind answer.
“I cannot say they would be happy about it. The mixing of our peoples has occurred for many generations,” he replied diplomatically. “The life of the Métis is not very secure. They have no rights on either the Indian side or the European side. They have had a difficult time.”
“I see … ”
“I cannot be sure of what my family would say if they knew I came to the forest to be with you!”
“Yes. I cannot tell my uncle either. I know he would not approve. He is a very religious man, you know.”
Walk-Tall did not respond. He did not understand what the word “religious” meant, but he did not ask.
“Madame Lowell is really my guardian in many ways, but I think she might also be cautious about our friendship.”
“She is like your mother.”
“Yes. And what do you tell your mother — about where you are?”
“Oh, splitting maple trees with my tomahawk for sap!”
“Really? But you do not return with firewood, do you?”
“Sometimes I do after I leave you. There is a wonderful stand of maples just beyond your camp.”
“That is very clever of you, perhaps I should help you, and take some back with me?”