Sea of Two Suns

by Nicholas McAuliff

  “Are the forts about Hudson Bay not shuttered?”

  “He resumes trade in most. Now far north to the northern bounds of New France, where they say beyond the pines you can hear the tides rise and fall, so close are those frozen shores.”

  “The Jesuit? They say he opened the shuttered Fort Cognac as a missionary before slaying the chief trader there, a decent man was the latter I had heard.”

  “A decent man Isaac, not like the one who calls himself Ordained by God. Missionary to trapper to chief trader, a strange path in life. But alas insanity oft mesmerizes men. Men will murder for him. Men will die for him.”

  “This is a free press! Let them try and shut down the press. Last I had heard Fur and Pine was bankrupt.”

  “They’ll send men after you. Irish mercenaries already chase deserters south. Or shoot you dead in a pew on some Sunday morning. These are not city-folk and lawyers and businessmen, Isaac. These are wolves and the way of the fur trade is the way of blood.”

  “Aye, well maybe I’ll find better company with whalers then. But this story must be told. The pirate’s stash, all of it maybe, unreal.”

  “You have never spent significant time at sea. I worry about your ability to withstand it, not saying anything ill of your character and strength, which are commendable.”

  “Do not patronize me,” said Isaac as he poured the remains of the brandy into he and Francisco’s cups.

  Francisco downed the brandy in one sip and filled his glass with grog from his own flask. “If we do find the silver hoard,” he said, “we can expect many others to follow. You are in danger even in the best case, make no mistake.”

  “I rarely make mistakes Francisco.”

  Francisco studied the writer. “A Jew in a tavern in Mexico City. You just waltz in with your overcoat and sit down. The looks on their faces, unbelievable. You looked around like a lost child in a wolves’ den. You have no sense of the world, my friend. No sense of danger.”

  Isaac laughed. “That was in aught nineteen, was it not?

  “I do not remember the year.”

  “Well I had just sailed from Cambridge. My time there put the stirrings of the world in me, or the wanderer.”

  “Mexico City is not Cambridge.”

  “No. But I wanted to see the true southlands one more time before-”

  “Before you fucking Americans take it, is that what you were going to utter?”

  “I do not think that will happen. We chase the scraps of the French and Brits and fight for those scraps as it is.”

  “Damned right,” said Francisco. “Precisely why you have your eyes on the southlands.”

  “I do not think it will happen, Francisco.”

  Francisco raised his cup. “To your prophecies then!”

  Isaac raised his and the two drank.

  Isaac sighed. “Alright then,” he said, standing and snuffing out candles with a long douter. “I need to sleep,” he said. “Take the sofa there, and the quilt from the sidebar.”

  Francisco spun and pointed toward the white porcelain bowl. “Water?” he said.

  “Aye,” right there Francisco.

  “And the outhouse?”

  “Down two ways and out back. Take the lantern there. Watch the hinge on the door in the dark.”

  Francisco gulped water straight from the bowl as it spilled down his face and then onto the floor.

  Isaac glared on from behind.

  Francisco took the lantern and lit it and opened the door, he shuffled out and bashed against the hinge. “Damn!” he cursed.

  “Did I not say watch!” yelled Isaac.

  “Shut up!” came a scream from below. “Shut up!” And a knock from the ceiling underneath, like some denizens of hell made aware of a commotion above them.

  “A Jew in Mexico City!” Francisco screamed from the stairs.

  Isaac sighed as the Mexican laughed and the writer eyed the grandfather clock with hands on his hips in the dark. Mutters from underneath the apartment turned hush and a Whippoorwill sang from somewhere out faraway in the cold.

  V

  Isaac shivered atop his horse.

  Northward the two rode through a constant wet, an enveloping of the air with moisture though no rain fell. Gossamer and hoarfrost covered the brush and bramble of the wood like a veil of morning mist and dew and ice, and wind moaned atop that barren hoarfrost. The moan stayed present in the men’s peripheral, like the witch riding the dawn itself as two men rode in futility away from her.

  Francisco led in a white draft horse; its coat muddied around its enormous hooves. “Feels like rain,” said he.

  “Aye. Aye it does,” said Isaac in a weak voice.

  The Mexican halted his horse and turned a quarter. “Will you be ok ‘til dusk?” he asked.

  “I can stay atop a horse,” replied Isaac. The writer’s horse was smaller and darker, and seemed uncomfortable with a man atop.

  “Have you spent much time in the saddle?” asked Francisco.

  “Not enough,” Isaac replied. “My father would take us North to Albany, to hunt with my uncle. Only three times, but long treks. Once I was kicked from a stallion and by the end of the hunt we had made some sort of truce.”

  The two men rode side by side, ahead of them cold sun shot through pines and dogwoods and aspens.

  “Albany?” said Francisco. “We passed through there yesterday.”

  “Wild lands, in that upper north past New York City. Like a forest that never ends, Francisco.”

  “Wild indeed,” replied Francisco. “And soon no more men will tread there. Frenchmen, maybe, should New France crawl south like dying snakes and consume all of those pelts too.”

  The men rode for stretch and it seemed only the horses spoke. Gentle neighs back and forth, their heavy hooves plodding. Once Francisco howled and laughed as Isaac lurched up from his half sleeping daze. Hours passed like sleep and twice they picked up to a gallop when the woods faded to meadows, then back to wood.

  “After the French won the war, I fear that New France will consume America too as they have the north,” said Isaac suddenly.

  “Well the Brits like rats have found a way to stay settled in regardless,” replied Francisco after a delay. He sounded like he had drifted into sleep in the saddle and then awoken.

  “I was thinking of that summer in San Francisco,” said Isaac.

  “The city that takes after my name. They chose well. Look there,” Francisco yelled, pointing to a funnel of smoke no less than a mile ahead and eastward rising on the near hills. “Let’s follow that,” he said and they turned their horses toward it.

  Isaac’s eyes followed the smoke upward and he chuckled. “You were like a shark amidst them,” he said. “Back against the wall, eyes darting here and there. I had never seen so many men wearing so many furs. It was hot in there. A sea of furs, with you against the wall. You could not have been more out of place.”

  Francisco grunted. “Now we feel out of place even in Mexico.”

  “Well I thank you,” said Isaac.

  “For what?” asked Francisco. “You followed me for a month and wrote what you saw. Yet Jackson will take the Texas land from us. The whole of the Texas Territory I think. Where me and Maria were to settle.”

  “President Jackson will merely finish what was started,” said Isaac.

  The Mexican spun his horse abruptly as it neighed. “Already you stole it from us. And you were happy to use candy-words in your New York Messenger. You were happy to have ‘Isaac Isaacson’ printed at the suffering of thousands who were forced south. And that’s it,” he said, his green eyes sharpened.

  “Aye and you were happy to take an advance to get out of that cell,” said Isaac.

  “I had no choice Isaac,” replied Francisco. “Don’t take me for a beggar, as I know you Americans love to do. All you see are betters or lowers. You never see any man eye to eye.”

  “Don’t take me for an American,” said Isaac as he pushed up his glasses. “I was b
orn in Milan, in the old world where stone and wool still thrive over fur and silver and blood.”

  “Ah,” said Francisco. “So you are a hard man after all, that right?”

  Isaac grimaced. “Maybe,” he said. “But without you this story would never be told.”

  “Maybe you are in the right company after all,” said Francisco. “Ruffians, whalemen, and destitute fur trappers. None of whom are afraid to kill. Many of whom aren’t afraid to die.”

  “I’m not one of them,” said Isaac.

  Francisco grinned and looked over his shoulder. “We will see,” he said.

  Isaac shuffled at his saddlebags and a skin of water fell to the ground and spilled. “Damn!” he snapped.

  “Listen,” said Francisco. “When the sun fades, we will make camp and have some salted beef and biscuits. And I believe I saw you stuff a bottle of something in our pack, along with that bread. New York has the best bread. I’ll give her that.”

  “Aye,” said Isaac. “Now you understand my hesitation in your confidence.” The horse neighed and reared. “Woah!” said Isaac. “After all you were a whaler, not a trapper.”

  “I can make a fire, damn you!”

  Isaac laughed. “Well so can I. With the oil from the sea perhaps men won’t need fire anymore.”

  “Men will always need fire,” Francisco muttered. “We will have a long sleep,” he said looking at the sinking sun with a hand cusped to his forehead. “For we will need it for what is to come. And by this time tomorrow we will be in Boston.”

  “Boston! I can already hear the noise. Insufferable Boston can be. Never stops.”

  “You should see Durango in the summer,” replied Francisco.

  The sky tinged darker and the chill more intense as the men trotted deeper into the wood. The yonder smoke was now close enough to smell, and a fire crackled ahead and sent sparks sky bound.

  “Rider,” shouted Francisco.

  Ahead was a sole man squatting and warming his hands by the fire. He was of brown beard, his face partially obscured by curly hair and his large body covered in black and brown furs. His horse was tethered to a tree nearby and it looked spooked at the newly arrived presence.

  “Be on your way,” the man said.

  “Ahoy!” shouted Francisco. “Did not think to see another rider this late.”

  “And I thought not to see any coming my way,” said the man in a bellowing voice. He stood and grasped a long smoothbore barrel. An elephant gun which stood taller than he.

  “Mean no trouble here, friend,” said the Mexican.

  “That’s what those who mean trouble oft say,” said the man. “And I ain’t your damned friend.”

  “We come from the city,” said Isaac, removing his beaver skin hat. “New York to be precise. I am Isaac Isaacson. I write for the New York Messenger.”

  The man laughed. “Well how’s that for a fucking name,” he exclaimed.

  “We are guessing you head to Boston, too,” replied Isaac.

  “Many riders head for Boston,” said the man.

  “It is our pleasure to meet you,” said Isaac.

  “You a Jew?” asked the man.

  “I am!” Isaac replied. “But as American as you, American as any now!”

  “Say that again,” the man bellowed.

  “Friend!” shouted Francisco.

  “I ain’t your friend, said it once!” said the man.

  “Very well, nor I yours!” said the Mexican. “In the least, we have a cause in common,” said Francisco. “Why not share our bread and meat this eve?”

  And from his saddlebag Francisco pulled out a fistful of jerky which caught the man’s eyes.

  “Didn’t think any meat would grace my supper tonight,” said the man, his eyes leveling on the food.

  “Friends then,” said Francisco with a grin. He tossed the jerky to the hunter who caught it and calmed like a frothing dog would when offered such bounty.

  “Obliged,” said the man.

  “And tomorrow we can be enemies,” said Francisco.

  The man looked down upon his pot of beans, meatless, but steaming into the sky. “Very well,” he said and his eyes softened. “I thank you. Beans be enough to fill a man’s belly, but it passes fast.”

  “Not a problem,” replied Francisco.

  “You try anything in the night and this elephant gun will take your head.”

  “I would not doubt it. Black powder?”

  “Right,” replied the man.

  “I am called Francisco. Are you a trapper? Do you come from Montreal or Quebec or somewhere south of New France?”

  “I was a hunter,” said the man. “In the Rockies West of the Missouri. Trapped for three seasons in New France before that. From aught nine to aught twelve, and then the war,” he said. The fire illuminated a crisscross of scars on the man’s face which though deep were faded by the years.

  “You left the trapping life before it left everyone else then,” said Francisco.

  The hunter lifted his left hand and removed a shortened glove and there were only two fingers, the thumb and index, the rest nubs.

  “I see,” said the Mexican.

  “Froze off three fingers so that some child somewhere in London or Paris or Versailles could wear his beaver skin hat, jus like his ma and pa. The world’s workers ebb and flow according to the tastes of the rich,” he said, slipping the glove back on.

  “They always have,” said Isaac.

  “I want to be one of ‘em,” replied the hunter. “They say the Barbary Pirates disbanded and left their loot all the way up in-”

  “We too have heard of the silver haul,” interrupted Francisco. “Do you have brothers or shipmates in Boston with the means to sail?”

  The hunter shook his head. “I mean to talk my way into a crew,” he said.

  “And what skills do you offer?”

  The hunter pointed at the elephant gun. “Any pirate try and step aboard the vessel, there’s the response,” he said.

  “What is your name?” asked Francisco.

  “My name is Herb,” said the man as he added the jerked meat to the beans. “Don’t worry about the last.”

  Herb dished out the stew into copper bowels and the men ate quickly as night took the sky in full. After which the hunter grasped his elephant gun and laid down with it on his person as if it were a lover joining him in sleep. The fire crept higher and they all bedded down in a dugout and slept under a mountain of furs and a starless sky.

  VI

  “Cold set in mighty quick this year,” said Herb the hunter. “Never seen it this frozen in October,” he said as he eyed the frost sticking to the firs. “This be more like a deep January freeze.”

  “I wasn’t aware the cold had layers as such,” said Isaac.

  The dawn was still rising but Isaac and Herb were already led by Francisco’s Draft Horse, trotting northward.

  “Oh yes,” said Herb. “Once you know cold, you’ll taste her flavors and see what mood she is in. Winter, the bitch can be a tempest for sure.”

  “Be tricked not by this early frost,” said Francisco. “The northern Indians say there be a warm winter ahead. Ice does not coagulate over the bay as it usually does, as it should. Hence the litany of desperate men sailing north a week before November, of which we are included.”

  “Sure don’t feel like it,” replied Herb. “That’s a big damned horse.”

  “Not a riding animal but what we could procure on short notice,” replied Francisco.

  Isaac stirred on his horse. He took a fur draped across its back and threw it over his own shoulders atop the one already there.

  “Cold cold!” snapped Herb.

  “This cold at sea, I’d imagine,” said Isaac. “Where we are going.”

  “Wouldn’t know,” said Herb.

  “I would,” said Francisco softly. “I was a whaler.”

  “Been at sea once,” replied Herb. “Hitched a ride on a cargo vessel,” he said, raising his voice as if
meeting a challenge. “Skirting the Carolina coasts though, where the sun don’t take much a beating from the winter.”

  “If you come back from the northern seas, you’ll welcome this as a summer afternoon,” said Francisco. He held his arms upward as if praising the sky. “See,” he said, his voice also rising as he pointed to the sun and squinted. “He still shines upon us.”

  “Ha!” shouted Herb. “You try one winter anywhere in New France, anywhere, then talk to me of cold.”

  “New France isn’t yours anymore American,” replied Francisco.

  The hunter laughed. “Ain’t yours either Mexican.”

  “Been cold and wet?”

  “Been that too!”

  “Ah I see,” said the Mexican. “Wasn’t sure exactly what a fur trapper would want at sea.”

  “Already made my intentions clear yesterday. I see you left the whales to chase pirate’s treasure.”

  “Gentlemen,” said Isaac. “Even I know it is wise not to make enemies before setting sail. Please.”

  “He’s right,” said Francisco. “We all ride to Boston for the same reason, do we not?”

  “We do,” said the hunter. “But know this, what is your name?”

  “Francisco. As I said yesterday.”

  “Know this, Francisco. I will break bread with you. Hell, I’ll even share my bread with you. I’ll yield to your wisdom when we at sea. But after? You a southern enemy, nothing more.”

  “Fair enough.” Francisco peered at the sky. “Long day ‘til we see Boston. Perhaps we should take a meal.”

  “Nah let us keep ridin ‘til we in Boston. Ain’t ‘gon be more than a few hours and a stretch. I know from the look of these hills and from the stink of the city,” said Herb.

  “You must have a hound’s nose then,” replied Isaac.

  “In fact I do!” said Herb.

  “Then we shall do whatever you suggest,” snapped Francisco.

  Isaac trailed the two men for the stretch of the journey as the sky at last turned a darker blue and a wolf-pack howled from some far hinterlands behind them. The jangle of Boston was almost audible through the hills and forests as they picked up their gait while the frost set in a crueler tone with the dark.