by Nancy Young
“Yes, but that might cause some … what do you call that?
“Suspicion?” They both laughed nervously.
“But a true Mohawk, he would slit your throat and leave you here to be torn to pieces by bears.” This grisly comment he said tenderly while stroking her neck as if it were a flower.
“Then I am most happy that you are your mother’s son!”
“Yes, you are beginning to understand. You know I would never hurt you. I am a not a warrior like my brothers. I am the youngest in my family, and it is our tradition that the youngest does not have to become a brave if he does not need to. As you know, my family has not given up our land yet to move to the reservation; we are one of the few family clans that are trying to preserve our tradition in the face of you intruders.”
She was taken aback at first, but knew he spoke the truth.
“I hope you don’t really mean that,” she cried.
“Although we have long ago moved out of our long houses and now live in timber houses like the White Man, I think the unhappy relations between the Iroquois Nation and the French are still very strained. We had many, many years of bloody wars between our peoples, particularly against my peoples — Seneca on my mother’s side and Mohawk on my father’s.”
“Yes, I have heard these things said. It is a shame on our side, I believe.”
“I think my mother would approve of it. The Seneca are great … how do you say it … philosophers? We Seneca observe the gentle world around us and constructed the medicine wheels of self-knowing and self-understanding to explain it, and to teach us how to live our lives. The Mohawk, however, only believed in war. I am my mother’s son!”
“Yes, that is a good thing. The French have a philosopher named Jean Jacques Rousseau. I read his book from the library when I was younger. He believed that all people are born good — even you savages.” The insult was returned and they now both laughed heartily.
When their mirthful laughter ended, a feeling of mutual calm came over them and they stopped briefly to kiss again. It was a gentle kiss, not as perfect as the earlier one, but rather brief and not quite satisfying. This inadequacy necessitated another union to achieve a more satisfying kiss. He sat her down on a soft patch of grass and kissed her deeply, his arms supporting her as they rolled together to the ground, his lips not leaving hers for a moment.
She was surprised at how soft and supple his lips were. They were full and dark but gentle it seemed, and soft as a baby’s, not at all what she expected, but much better. He kissed her and stroked her hair. Neither of them had ever felt so at peace, and yet so excited. In the distance the haunting cry of a pair of loons broke the silence.
“Ahhh, listen,” he said excitedly, breaking away from the kiss to better hear their cry. “Listen to these wonderful birds. You know, they only nest in pristine lakes. They hide along the shores, or on small islands. They mate for life and lay one pair of eggs a year, at most. After hatching, they carry their downy little chicks on piggyback for the first three weeks of their life.”
“It is so sweet. But that song … it is beautiful, but so sad, is it not?”
“No, not sad, just solemn … like the way I feel about you.”
As they returned to their kiss, the silence was interrupted again overhead by a very different sound — the raucous squawking of geese in formation, reminding them that autumn had arrived and the great migration would soon commence. Winter was around the corner. Their previous winters had been difficult for private meetings in the forest. With the snow thick and difficult to travel through, and temperatures freezing, they could not meet as frequently as they would have liked. When the blizzards had stopped and they had not seen each other for several weeks, they grew restless and irritated at their separation. Reuniting again in the great blankets of snow, they no longer played like children. With their first kiss, it seemed suddenly they had grown into adults. Winter would be a real test of their patience.
Reaching the outskirts of the camp again, the lovers separated, reluctant to release each other. It was a bittersweet parting, but one so full of promise and unknowns. It would soon be a matter of loyalties and negotiations, but love always holds sway over demands of propriety, creating grand schemes for continuation in the face of obstacles, great denials, and the trials of miscommunication and mistrust. No soldier patrols the heart, nor can love be overprotected. They made a vow to bring their families together and if possible find a path to open and share their happiness with their loved ones.
In three days’ time they met again. Isabelle rode Béatrice to the creek-side meeting place that day, and on the ride she lost her bonnet and her hair fell in auburn waves down her back as she rode into the clearing. Walk-Tall had never seen it that way, and the surge of desire he felt in seeing the deep burnished red color of her hair, like the rippling back feathers of a majestic eagle, was intoxicating. She trotted the old mare into her usual space, and straight away Walk-Tall leapt on the back of the horse and took the reins. He led them through a series of switchbacks, which the old nag did not like one bit. But he had brought the horse apples from his family garden and she appreciated the reward and made the effort. After the uphill climb they reached a summit. On the other side, a steep ravine fell away. Below, the cedars stood so high their tops nearly reached up to them, even as their roots disappeared into the dark of the forest floor.
Quickly the old mare trotted down to the bottom and there they came to a bend in another creek which bordered a large stand of giant, ancient cedars, their old gnarled roots reaching out of the earth like sea creatures. Walk-Tall swung himself over the side and led the horse to the water’s edge for a drink, holding onto her harness as Isabelle slipped off her back. When the horse had drunk her fill, he led the mare to a sapling and tied her reins to it. He swung a woven brown striped knapsack off his shoulder and dropped it in the niche created by the great-grandmother of all the great cedars in this ring of trees. The ancient cedar was seven hundred years old at least, its girth nearly ten feet around and its height over fifty.
Walk-Tall opened his rucksack and removed a blanket. It was thick white cotton and emblazoned with a dark native design. He laid it out on the soft, ferny, and pine needle–bedded ground space between the arms and motioned for her to sit upon it. She sat down gingerly against the base of the giant feeling rather small and dwarfed by all its greatness, and leaned her elbow on one of its roots as if it was the arm of a chair. This soft landing was welcome after the calamitous ride up and over the ridge that left her a little sore. Never having experienced a ride like that before, she was relieved that it was over and they were now safely in the embrace of the old tree.
“‘Old Grandma Tree,’ I call this one.” It became obvious to her that this place was one of his favorites.
“Do you come here often?” she asked with some amazement. It seemed so out of reach, so genuinely remote. Contemplating the distances, it was like the farthest reaches of her small world here in Canada.
“I used to come quite often with my brothers when we would go moose hunting. But we don’t do that anymore. We don’t have to. Now the caribou and moose come to us on our orchards and farms and we feed them instead of hunt them!” Not knowing if he was joking or whether this was true, she grew uncomfortable with the idea of coming up against a caribou, and a look of fright must have passed over her face. He sat quickly beside her and placed his arm around her.
“I’m sorry; I’ve frightened you,” he continued. “Never fear, I have brought my hunting knife, so if we are stalked by deer or moose or caribou, I will protect you!” He laughed a light-hearted guffaw that put her at ease. His laughs were always genuine and showed his beautifully large straight teeth, gleaming white against his tanned skin, and her fears fell away, along with her reticence.
“You may kiss me then,” she declared, parting her lips in a half-smile which brought a
misty look to his dark eyes, like the day he knelt beside her under the elderberry bush and declared his love. Her wait for the kiss seemed too long, so she brought his head toward her lips with her hands, his thick hair tied in his usual long braids warm in her hand, the sparse collection of eagle feathers and wooden beads swaying rhythmically at the ends of a leather thong. Their kiss lasted so long that they both felt faint at the end of it. Its magic still worked its way in for some time after they detached. For hours they kissed and stared into each other’s eyes. They listened to each other’s heart beat against their ears.
They marveled at the calls of different birds chiming, replying, tooting, or scaring away predators from their nests. The cauldron of trees seemed to funnel all sounds, from the smallest beetle to the grandest birds of prey, down into the human-like embrace of the tree around them. He did not enter her domain, but they made love passionately, desperately, like bees busy with the discovery of their young love, swarming each other with kisses, caresses, and questions about the feeling of each sensation. Their new experiences were stacked on top of the next: the feeling of skin on skin, the softness of anatomy never familiar until now, the smell of hair, the scent of musky sweat on virgin territory. His eyes were like a barometer of his emotions, the windows into his soul; they became clouded when he was overcome with desire, and cloudier still when the woozy state of sexual delirium flooded his body. The release forced his eyes closed, but brought clarity to them later, like those of a hawk that has nailed his prey. But his love was nothing like a predator’s strike; it was gentle but strong, fervent and grateful.
At home, it was Father Jacob, not Madame Lowell, who noticed the change in Isabelle as that autumn came to a close. She seemed brighter and happier and he could see a new spirit that followed her about. She went about her business in her usual way, efficient with the cleaning chores, generous with her time and attention to the needs of her uncle, Madame Lowell, and members of the parish who occasionally dropped by to request a private audience with the priest. The church had finally been completed after several more petitions to the Archbishop, and although it was never adorned or furnished to the level they would have wished for, nevertheless the job was done and Father Jacob was generally lauded for his Herculean efforts to bring about the conclusion of that great debacle to the satisfaction of most, if not all, of the community members.
Meanwhile, the niece continued to come and go as she pleased. The old mare had grown lean with the exercise she gave it; both girls became like new fillies, full of life once again, and galloping off into the woods to explore new territory. She often packed a small meal depending on the time of day it was when she was able to escape after completion of chores. Isabelle still occupied that small closet, for in the morass of church-building, the house itself was never extended as was announced on her arrival.
For the amount of time she spent in the room, its size never imposed upon her. She liked the close cocoon intimacy of it; it had made her feel safe in her first year in what felt like the vast interior of a frontier with no bounds. After the tight confinement of the sailing ships, it seemed palatial. And now, as winter was setting in at the end of her fifth year, the intimate closeness of the four walls was akin to the embrace of her lover; however, it could never replace it. She dreamt of his weight upon her, his smooth hairless stomach, hips, and thighs pressing down on hers, and the way his elbows kept his chest from crushing her as he laid kiss upon kiss on her face, neck, lips, and bared shoulders. All the while his arms encircled her, one diagonally beneath her back, and the other cradling her head against the solid surface of the forest floor; their horizontal waltz rotating in breath-taking sweeps, to the swing of their own heart-swelling music. With the first light snow they agreed that they would wait until the spring thaw — if they could wait that long — to make their love complete. She would be almost seventeen then and old enough to know a man; he would be nineteen and truly one. They would together approach their families for a truce of some kind and bring their love to the open air and let it fly freely with the eagles and peregrines, whose grace and beauty were the same hallmarks as their feelings for each other. The anticipation was sweet.
But they could not stay away for the duration of that interminable winter. Each week a desperate agreement was reached to meet the following week at the cedar. She came wrapped in Madame Lowell’s wool coats and shawls, and he in layers of buckskin and cotton blankets. Their horses complied with a tolerance beyond the norm of the noble beasts, but it seemed their master and mistress’s love and desire to be as one drew them into a cooperative truce that was rewarded regularly with dried apples, pumpkin skins, and much affection. Temperatures dropped below tolerable levels, but the lovers remained oblivious. The old cedar offered them the sanctuary of its cavernous and labyrinthine roots. Adding to this Walk-Tall brought blankets and hides to line the damp pine needle floor and together they wove pine and aspen branches together to form an intimate hut, like a large cradleboard hung with dream-catchers and Isabelle’s knitted shawls. Isabelle and Walk-Tall inched toward the consummation of their love in a slow but steady dance whose finale was as thunderous as their beating hearts.
April brought the first early buds of spring and the lovers happily plotted an introduction of Walk-Tall to Father Jacob and Madame Lowell. As clergy and devout Christians, it could be expected that their Catholic charity would prevail over their prejudices, even if absolute approval could not be expected. Did she expect a battle? Would they put up a fortress of excuses and denials to break her heart? The day after Easter Sunday, which always brought a measure of goodwill to the faithful after an end to a long fast, was a window of opportunity, Isabelle surmised. She would prepare dinner as usual before she went out of doors, but she would prepare an extra place at the table. They spent the early afternoon together exercising the horses over the steep ridge, gathering pine-cones and logs for the fire. This was the day they would receive a sanction for their love and she would bring her special guest home to meet her guardians.
When they arrived at the camp, however, they found that Madame Lowell had fallen ill with a stomach upset and retired to her bed. That left Isabelle alone with Father Jacob at dinner to attempt the introduction, a possibility that struck a frisson of fear and nervousness into her heart. Madame Lowell was the intermediary between the uncle and niece; she was also the light of reason, while Father Jacob in his increasingly befuddled mind confused the real with the surreal without distinction. He would hold forth at the table rehearsing ad hoc sermons while they listened attentively, and then he would sit supping in absolute silence, punctuated occasionally with a murmur of something or other to someone they could not see or hear.
Although his spirits spoke to him regularly now at the dinner table, almost nightly in fact, Isabelle never quite got used to his mutterings. She dreaded the prospect of introducing her uncle to her unsuspecting suitor, without her ally present. She had a slim chance of winning Father Jacob to her side. Ultimately it was the uncle’s decision whether he would bless their union or not, but the inevitable disaster of this first meeting could spell catastrophe for their overall plans. It would have been much preferable to garner Madame Lowell’s support and approval first, and then rally together as a team to find a way to win the priest over with her direct recommendations. Father Jacob, after all, valued her judgments above all others when it came to most things relating to members of his congregation and the household, while it was his duty to look after their souls, and the other spare souls that never waited for a private consultation with the priest, arriving and interrupting at their invisible leisure.
Isabelle contemplated sending the young Indian home and rearranging a time to re-launch their campaign of acceptance, but decided against it, naively optimistic and impatient to bring her love for Walk-Tall into the open. Walk-Tall entered the dining room of the residence with Isabelle, and Father Jacob froze in his tracks. He muttered something incomprehens
ible and reeled around, turning his back to them. Together the young couple managed to get him to the dinner table before he collapsed and he sat staring at Walk-Tall from across the large oak dining table while they all ate their meals in absolute silence. It was then that Father Jacob left the table and entered his bedroom.
Father Jacob returned to the dining room where his niece sat anxiously at the rustic timber dining table, her back turned to him as he approached. Opposite her, the young scout watched, first benignly, then, rising up cautiously from his chair as the tall priest approached them, muttering menacing words in a low unrecognizable growl — words — or a name — unfamiliar to the guest. With his next step, the priest raised a revolver from the folds of his black cassock and fired a shot as the younger man stood up fully from his chair.
Taken by surprise but already on guard, Walk-Tall twisted his body as the shot rang out. The lead bullet pierced his body through the muscle at his waist, threw him back diagonally against a corner of his chair, and toppled him to the floor. The priest was now above him leaning over to fire another shot to ensure his demise, but the wounded young man, with a swift motion like a reflex, pulled out a hunting knife from beneath his buckskin vest and swiftly dispatched the priest through the heart as the second bullet tore through his thigh.
When Madame Lowell heard the gunshots ring out and the subsequent screams emanating from the other room, she came running as quickly as her stout legs could carry her. There she discovered the incredible mêlée at the dining table and ran immediately to Father Jacob, who lay supine on the floor with the large knife in his chest and the heavy pistol still in his hand. It took very little time for her to scan the room to find Isabelle crumpled on the floor cradling someone in her arms, to surmise that in his increasingly deranged state of mind her employer had caused a bloodbath. Nonetheless, she gathered up the priest in her arms as he laid bleeding, muttering and tossing his head in a delirium. Meanwhile, Isabelle supported her lover in her arms, her hands pressed upon his body as blood oozed from his wound between her whitened fingers, his stillness like an island in the stream of pandemonium and panic that stormed the room.