by Peter Bowen
“Soon as we get all this shit loaded,” said Nappy. “I say maybe two weeks.”
The pile wasn’t that bad, though, everything had been duffeled or put in dry bags. Du Pré asked about food, and Nappy said the Smithsonian had a whole department got good food together for expeditions.
“Somehow that don’t make me feel much better,” said Du Pré.
“We got a whole bunch in our two canoes, too,” said Felix, laughing, “and there’s plenty fish and a couple rifles. Deer and moose along the river and not too many them game wardens, you know. Lots of porcupines.”
Du Pré had eaten porcupine. The meat was horrible, what there was of it. The flabby animals moved slowly and didn’t need much muscle. But the liver, which was large, was delicious.
The gear was laid in the canoes; the members of the expedition got in and paddled off before noon. The day was calm. Lac La Ronge was big enough to have good-sized waves on it. They would hug the shore for the first couple of days, until they came to the lake’s outlet and went down the river to the next lake.
Du Pré asked Nappy what river. He was riding in Nappy’s canoe and helping the man paddle.
“All Red River,” said Nappy. There were a lot of local names for the little stretches—had to be so the voyageurs would know where they were and what they were talking about. Du Pré took out a notebook and began to list them. The first was a twelve-mile stretch between Lac La Ronge and a small and unnamed lake called the Le Vieux.
They were paddling in to shore to make the first camp when Du Pré had a thought, one coming out of his buried mind into the light. He had once heard a song that went “La Ronge, Le Vieux…” but he couldn’t remember the rest. A lot of the voyageurs’ songs must have been maps. They were illiterate. They had to move through a flattish country that had no high, unmistakable landmarks. Songs were easy to remember. So somewhere there was or had been some songs which described the landscape the entire length and breadth of the fur trade, all of it.
“How much miles you make in a day, average?” said Du Pré to Nappy.
“We do maybe twenty. Long river stretch, maybe more. Takes a long time put up and take down these camps. Just you and me, we could maybe do sixty, even mostly paddling. That’s hard work, though.”
The shore was coming up. Du Pré thought he could see clouds of bloodthirsty mosquitoes banked up, waiting.
He could. The canoes were drawn up and people cursed and slapped and smeared themselves with repellent.
Nappy walked off toward a little sluggish feeder brook. He pulled up some bushy plant and stripped it of leaves. He pounded the leaves with the handle of his knife and then rubbed them on his face.
“What plant is this?” said Du Pré.
“Bug plant,” said Felix. “It works better than them creams, keeps the blackflies and no-see-ums off, too. Them no-see-um, can’t get people to bite they eat rotten fish or meat. So when they bite you, you get a little bad spot where they bite.”
“Yeah,” said Nappy. “These pretty girls, they look like they kissing porcupines before we get to York Factory. Shame, lose them nice complexions they got.”
Chase and his assistants were setting up a big wall tent and laughing too hard about it.
I am not thinking this expedition will make it, thought Du Pré.
The Indians were putting up tattered and stained pup tents, three of them, and they already had a little fire going.
Paul Chase opened one of the big food bags and found “Food—15 people. Supper.”
We got thirteen here, Du Pré thought suddenly. No, we got fourteen, I guess. I am not superstitious. Like hell. I still go to that Catholic Church, yes.
The food the Smithsonian had sent was freeze-dried, everything from chow mein to pork chops to Irish stew.
Nappy and Felix had built a big fire. People sat on logs or duffel and poured boiling water on their plates and then they ate.
This is pretty good, Du Pré thought.
The firelight danced on the dark faces of the Indians and the bright faces of Chase and his young people. After a time, Chase rose and made the same introductions that he had the night before.
The two blond young men were Tim and Sean, the women, one redheaded and one brunette, were Hilary and Susan.
The Indian women from Quebec were Françoise and Eloise. The men were Lucky, Hervé, Guillaume, and Herbert.
Du Pré, Nappy, and Felix sat pretty much to themselves, the Indians pretty much to theirs, Chase and his four young assistants to themselves.
Du Pré got out his fiddle; the Indians dug out a couple of drums and an old flute, a plain silver one.
The mosquitoes whined and the smoke drifted up to the stars.
Du Pré fiddled for a while, then he listened to the Crees.
He wondered who would crack first.
First night out and this thing is already coming to pieces, thought Du Pré. I am here because of Benetsee. Chase and his people are here because it is their job to do fool things like this.
The Cree are here…I don’t know why. They got rivers where they live.
He wondered about that.
Nappy and Felix are here because they are paid to be here.
So I will trust them the most.
Suddenly Du Pré wished, without knowing why, that he had his gun with him.
These Canadians didn’t like pistols, though, at all. They had gone through Du Pré’s car with tweezers. Asked him flat out. Told him how long he’d be in prison if he did manage to smuggle one in.
For some reason, I had a nine-millimeter and a couple clips, I’d like this better, Du Pré thought.
The mosquitoes whined in front of his face, furiously. They couldn’t stand the bug plant’s juices and they couldn’t land, but they smelled blood.
Du Pré heard an eerie, lilting cry.
A loon.
It sounded beautiful and quite insane.
CHAPTER 9
THEY PLOWED ON THROUGH the clear waters; the dark forest spilled down to the shore. The ravens sat in the tops of the trees, a pair every few miles, silent.
Make this country bloom, it needs to burn, Du Pré thought. My people used fire to bring up the grass and the game. But the paper companies see all that money on fire, they put it out pretty quick.
At midday, they heard the throb of diesel engines, came on a survey camp. A tall yellow derrick stuck above the dark trees. A big well-drill whirled.
“Lookin’ for that nickel,” said Nappy, “like the big mines down in Sudbury. For a long time there, the rainfall, it eat the clothes off the kids playing outside, eat the paint off the cars. Lots of people got the cancer. They are looking for another nickel mine.”
They paddled on until the late afternoon.
A little river came into the bigger one at the campsite, and the bars in the little river were covered with wild strawberries. Du Pré and the others gathered fresh fruit, enough to feed everyone all they could eat. Once, Du Pré bent over to pluck the berries from a runner and he looked off maybe three feet to his left and saw a fawn lying motionless, still spotted this late in the year.
Du Pré mentioned the fawn to Nappy, who said it was a too-late one and wouldn’t be strong enough to make it through the winter. The deer weren’t numerous, and something seemed wrong with the ones Nappy killed. He didn’t know what. They seemed weaker.
“Got some cousins, Wood Crees, say the deer will soon be gone; they can see it in their dreams. But they don’t know why, either,” said Nappy.
They were far off and away from the rest of the party.
“I don’t think that Chase and his friends stay,” said Nappy, “so I guess I don’t get all my money.”
Du Pré had thought the same thing. The whites barely spoke to Du Pré and the Florissants, and never to the Quebec Indians. They moved along each day, set up camps, Du Pré and the Quebec Indians made some music, and then they slept and broke camp and went on.
Du Pré was hard put to see a point to thi
s expedition.
The next night, Du Pré took the slingshot from his violin case and walked down the lakeshore to a gravel bar. He picked up a rounded stone and put it in the pouch and whirled the thing like he’d seen Benetsee do. The rock crashed into the water at his feet. Du Pré frowned. He fiddled with the tongs for a while and tried again.
He stood there for an hour, practicing. The rocks began to go more or less in the direction he wished, but accuracy would take some time. Amazing, though, the extra velocity you could get from this. One awfully fortunate throw went four times as far as Du Pré could have managed by hand.
Du Pré rolled the slingshot Up and headed back to camp. He found Nappy sitting on a log, smoking a little curved meerschaum pipe. The fingernails he had left were flat black under the tips.
“Had me an uncle used one of those,” said Nappy. “Knock a duck right out of the air with it, he could.”
“I feel pretty good, I can hit Canada,” said Du Pré.
“Got some weather coming in,” said Nappy. He was looking toward the west. The sky had been cloudless and pale blue all day. There was no wind.
Different country and I cannot read it, Du Pré thought. At home, I can tell you when a blizzard is tree hundred miles away. I just know. But this country, it is different; I can’t read it.
Pretty boring, too.
All that dark green forest. See a few ducks, hear a loon, see a raven once in a while.
Du Pré didn’t feel like fiddling that night. He went for a walk in the moonlight on the lakeshore. The rocks were slick and large. After kneeling in the canoe all day, his legs ached, and once he had a bad charley-horse in his left calf. He had to rub it hard for several minutes before it loosened.
Goddamn, Du Pré thought before he drifted off to sleep, canoeloads of trade goods out and furs back in this country, take you six months to get to the other end of it and back, pretty crazy-making. But if that was all you knew, maybe not.
Du Pré was wakened by screams and yells, a crash of cooking utensils, and a sound like a hog rooting. Bear. He slipped out of his bedroll, pulled on his boots, took his big flashlight out, and shone it toward the noise.
Chase, wearing only underwear, was trying to climb a small tree.
The brunette woman, Susan, was screaming and holding her forehead. Blood welled out between her fingers.
Nappy and Felix were banging some pots together.
There was a little black bear sitting in the scattered contents of one of the food sacks, looking surprised. Bears can look more surprised than anything.
The bear didn’t even weigh a hundred pounds, Du Pré thought. I have shot a lot of bears and that is a very small bear there.
The bear stuck his head down in the food and hiked up his rear end. Du Pré took a few strides, like a football placekicker, and kicked the bear’s ass. The startled animal bawled, rolled a little, and took off at top speed for the night.
Everybody shut up. The hurt woman turned out to have stumbled and fallen on a protruding stub on a log lying near her tent.
Chase was up in the little tree, blinking. He began to descend, making loud noises of pain.
Ain’t this some chickenshit, Du Pré thought.
Du Pré got his little first-aid kit and cleaned the woman’s wound. Nappy appeared with a few mashed leaves in his grubby hand.
“Have her chew these and then smear this on,” he said. “It will stop the bleeding and help keep the skin from scarring.”
The woman shook her head no.
Nappy shrugged. Du Pré waited a little till the wound quit dribbling blood and then he closed the cut with butterfly stitches. Not a bad cut, but these head wounds always bled a lot. She would have a scar there among all those insect bites.
She had shaken her head no at the bug plant Nappy had offered her, too. A couple of the bites had festered badly enough that they would be pits on what had once been a creamy forehead.
Chase was cursing, or, rather, whining.
That man, he think only about himself, Du Pré thought. I don’t like him, the Florissants, they despise him, the Quebec Indians don’t like him. But he got these fool white kids need him for something, I guess.
Du Pré wished he hadn’t come. But he had.
He would see this through to York Factory.
Maybe finally that dark forest would speak to him.
Ravens.
CHAPTER 10
THE BAD WEATHER NAPPY had smelled coming came on late in the day, when the canoe party was rounding a headland with a long tongue of gravel snaking off it out into the lake. The canoes were a good half mile from shore when the wind came spanking over the water from the west. Dark clouds had suddenly piled up and the lake bloomed with a quick chop that quickly swelled to small waves.
Nappy motioned to everyone to paddle for shore in the straightest line they could.
The Indians from Quebec had the worst job. Their canoes were big and heavy and hard to move, as laden as they were. But they dug in their paddles and the heavy boats made good way.
Felix had the girl with the cut head in his canoe. Du Pré and Nappy hung back. Chase, the two men, and the other woman were in two slender canoes, and they should have been all right. But Chase seemed to panic; he lost his rhythm and more or less fought his partner.
Nappy let loose a string of curses.
Chase’s canoe hit something in the water—maybe a tree so waterlogged, it floated barely beneath the surface. They never did find out.
The canoe swung broadside to the wind. Chase actually stood up in the tippy craft, and over it went, foundered. Dunnage floated for a moment and then sank. Chase was wearing a life vest, but the other man wasn’t and he couldn’t swim very well.
Nappy and Du Pré came alongside the wreck, and Du Pré actually had to crack Chase’s hands with the canoe paddle or he would have pulled them over, too. They managed finally to get the other man into their canoe. Chase was screaming something, but no one paid any attention. The waves were not very big and Chase was in no danger, so they left him shrieking and drove for shore while sleet pelted them, the front behind the wind was wet and cold.
They let the man wade in to the others, who were setting up tents, and went back out for Chase. He was clinging to the floundered canoe, red-eyed and out of breath. Du Pré was beginning to dislike this Chase a lot.
They finally got the man into the boat and ran in. The wind was screaming at the west end of the little lake and just as they pulled the canoe out, a rolling front hit, the booms of thunder felt as if they were right overhead. Hail bashed down, some as big as eggs. Big enough to hurt you bad. They all huddled in the tents.
Chase had been a long time in cold water and he was shivering too much to speak.
The storm passed. Du Pré went out to the beach and saw Chase’s canoe, and a lot of the waterlogged dunnage he had been carrying, had been driven in toward shore. He waded out and grabbed the canoe and dragged it in.
Felix saw him and came to help.
They turned the canoe over to drain and waited a minute, smoking, for some of the water to seep out of the bags.
Chase had recovered enough to start screaming at Nappy.
Nappy walked out to Felix and Du Pré, calmly lighting his pipe.
“Would that God had let him drown,” said Nappy.
They nodded.
The man Du Pré and Nappy had rescued came over to them and thanked them.
“I think Paul forgot to take his medication,” the man said. Du Pré thought his name was Tim, but not for sure. Weeks on this trip and I don’t even know his name for sure. We are one tight team, Du Pré thought.
“We are two, three days from that archaeological place,” said Nappy. “I think that we have to get there before Chase can get a plane to get him out of here.”
“Leave?” said Tim. “He hasn’t said anything about that.”
“He will,” said Du Pré.
They carried the bags up to the camp. Chase started scrabbling
in them. He took a vial of pills out and swallowed two.
“We’ll break this expedition off at the dig,” he said after a minute.
“We’ll go on,” said the canoe builder. The rest of the Quebec Indians nodded in agreement.
“So will I,” said Du Pré.
“I am in command!” Chase screamed.
“No,” said Nappy, “I am. You are not shit. Chase.”
“You won’t be paid!” Chase screamed.
Nappy shrugged and walked away. Chase jumped after him and grabbed his shoulder.
Nappy punched him expertly. Chase folded up like a wet bag dropped. His assistants looked startled, then they started to laugh.
They all laughed. Chase was out cold.
“I don’t work for him no more, he should not grab my shoulder, eh?” said Nappy.
More laughter.
Du Pré thought he heard the sound of an airplane. Engines snarling out there to the west. He saw a glint in the livid blue behind the storm front.
In twenty minutes, the clouds overhead had gone on, leaving a bright, washed sky.
The airplane came down from the north and roared overhead. The pilot wiggled the wings.
“One them de Havilland Otters,” said Nappy. “What the hell he want here, anyway?”
Du Pré started to laugh.
The plane floated over the trees at the far side of the lake and slid into the water. The pilot throttled back. The plane roared on toward them. The pilot turned the plane broadside a hundred yards offshore and stopped engines.
The door opened. Big sunburned face in it. Big red hand waving.
Bart, the idiot.
A raft plopped out on the water. Bart lowered himself into it, screwed the paddles together, and began to row in, sort of—he wasn’t very good at it.
“I got worried,” he said to Du Pré, “And so did Madelaine, so I said, ‘Hell, I’ll go see.”
Du Pré introduced Bart.
“So how’s it going?” said Bart.
Du Pré shrugged.
Bart described the goings-on in Toussaint. Not much. Jacqueline was pregnant again.
Du Pré shrugged. Jacqueline was always pregnant. One more grandchild. Du Pré needed to write down their names, carry a card.