by Rudy Wiebe
“Yes, sir. The girl is badly hurt, but with care she will survive.”
“Good, then she must be treated with such care. These women, I believe, are accustomed to being beaten. Perhaps her family should be given presents and sent away, with the others, to one of the farther lakes.”
“They are hard to send — Keskarrah comes to me daily for salve for his ulcerated wife, and now this.…”
“Bigfoot could perhaps take them somewhere?”
Richardson says, carefully, “I believe, sir, it is Bigfoot who asks Keskarrah for advice about where to go. Yes?” He looks to St. Germain.
“Yes,” the translator says. “They think, this my land, I go where I want.”
“I do not think it well to move the girl far, for some time.”
“Very well, take her back, both of them,” Lieutenant Franklin gestures, and turns, “to their lodging. This barracks is no place to care for them.”
Greenstockings feels her father tense, and hears the words rising from him: “Twospeaker. I have something to say to Thick English.”
Twospeaker hesitates. “He says you should both return to your own place.”
Keskarrah declares: “I have never spoken to him, but I will speak now.”
Lieutenant Franklin asks, “What does he say?”
“He say it, to you.”
“The middle of the night, in a barracks … is not the time nor place for a council. Tell him, tomorrow.”
“No council, just say now.”
“Very well” — wearily. “What?”
Keskarrah declares: “No one has died since you Whitemuds came, not yet. That is different from what we know happens in the south, so we know Richard Sun has good medicine. Now tell them: if they travel to the Everlasting Ice when the long light comes, we will not see them again.”
Lieutenant Franklin nods thoughtfully to St. Germain’s translation. “What does he mean?” he asks in his ponderous way. “If we go to the Polar Sea, who will die, they or we?”
Keskarrah eases Greenstockings aside; with Richard Sun’s assistance in holding her, he gets slowly to his feet. He says, standing,
“The land teaches us how to live, not how to kill ourselves. We know the names of every place you will meet. And we have seen this: your journey will end at the double rapids on the River of Copperwoman.”
St. Germain translates the first two sentences fast, as usual, then stops, a frown deepening over his cold- and wind-burned face. Keskarrah will not look at him, but looks steadily into the plain future of the darkness before him. So very slowly St. Germain renders the last sentence as flat and direct as he can:
“He see double rapids, Copperwoman River, finish, there land kill you.”
And Lieutenant Franklin’s excellent English manners cannot prevent him from smiling slightly. Which smile Keskarrah sees, and understands its arrogance perfectly.
“Tell him,” Franklin says, turning to go, while his big, well-fed men stand staring, lean in their underwear about the logs that will continue to protect them enough to live through the rest of the winter, so they can sleep and wait for the light to return, and finally move on into what they have not yet seen and cannot anticipate, for reasons most of them will never comprehend, “tell him, in the name of my Expedition, I thank him for telling me this. Tell him also that I am sure, their land being so very large as we already know, that with his warning we will thankfully be able to avoid, wherever they may be, those fatal double rapids.”
Keskarrah listens impassively to the translation. Then for an instant his eye catches Twospeaker’s: they both know there is no escape, nor could either imagine what an escape from the inevitability of the land might be in order to want it. Obviously, these Whitemuds will be dead before they recognize this.
Keskarrah gestures at Greenstockings. “We will carry her, to our place.”
And Hood is there! Materializing from the darkness behind the Halfmuds, and kneels as if Richard Sun were not there. Greenstockings hears, smells his movement: when she opens her eyes it is as if he has always been beside her, his hand on her arm, his eyes blue as sky filled with the tenderest longing and concern, his warm, weeping face leaning forwards to touch hers.
A man so gentle and delicately perceptive and intense; and ultimately useless. In the fixed conjunction of her mother’s and father’s power, they two have lived this strange — almost as if they were hidden, sweetly, under furs in the long darkness — lived this strange, short moment of profound difference. But the log walls built by These English and Michel’s groping fists have shown her what she has always known and should have remembered: they are all men, and there are too many of them. Wherever many men are, they can exist only within a certain violence, and they will try to break you again and again. If you were to live in delight and difference with one for long, you would have to kill all the other men in the world.
Her head is still breaking. She cannot look at Hood with longing or even tenderness. There is no strength in his tears, he is so weak and useless. And stupid.
“Mr. Hood,” Lieutenant Franklin orders, “get up, and stand aside.”
Outside the fetid house the sky is a gasp of cold, and bright with stars. Bright enough for Greenstockings to see the narrow black spruce retreating down the esker to that known distance of silver hills. And so many People stand motionlessly on the snow, disappearing into the shadows between the houses where darkness clusters: they are watching Twospeaker and Hep Burn carry her, back. She has never felt either of them before, but they seem to have the same rock-like strength, a power of muscle, and a certain skill, and concentrated, narrow ignorance.
And then she recognizes Michel: his shape is the darkness sitting on firewood, bent forwards as if his hands were tied tight behind his back. Two huge Halfmuds hunch beside him. What will Thick English do with him now? Nothing; he is so strong and they need him to carry them to the Everlasting Ice. When Broadface returns, if he does, she will not have to think about him. If he doesn’t return.…
Well. In the hard cold of squeaking snow her father opens the lodgehide, and inside her hidden mother, still alive, will take her in her arms. She has been stolen for the first time. Her life will continue to circle now, in and out of whatever pain is patiently waiting for her. That is the way it is.
DOCTOR JOHN RICHARDSON
Saturday March 17th 1821 Fort Enterprise
Mr. Back arrived at last from Fort Chipewyan, having performed since he left us a journey of over 1,100 miles on foot. He brought such further stores as he could acquire from the traders, who he reports are themselves almost destitute. Mr. Franklin said he had every reason to be much pleased with his conduct.
St. Germain continues to evince great apprehensions respecting the dangers of a sea voyage. A message from The Hook and Longleg imports that if they are now sent a supply of ammunition, they would meet us in the summer on the banks of the Coppermine and bring provisions. Mr. Franklin agreed to pay them for their provisions but could not spare them any ammunition.
Friday April 27th 1821 Fort Enterprise
The movement of the reindeer north and subsequent cold weather have resulted in the pounded meat that was laid up for our summer stock being all expended. We had nothing to eat today. During the night, however, a deer was brought in which had been killed by old Keskarrah. Our men suffer much from snow blindness. Ice on the lakes about seven feet thick.
TuesdayMay 8th I82I Fort Enterprise
A fly seen today. A party of men was sent off again to get meat, and the women also sent to live at Bigfoot’s encampment to diminish the consumption at the Fort.
9
GEESE
Broadface is considering the length of Greenstockings’ legs hidden in wool. “Do you ever take that off?” he asks her.
“Maybe in summer,” she says. “When it’s warm.”
“It’s warm now, I saw a grey goose today.”
“A caribou would be better.”
“Huh!” he grunts, and r
efuses to speak about the caribou migration already past, or about the many lodges of People again gathered motionless around the leaking log houses on the esker, though the light is long and the snow and ice excellent for travel. “My grandmother, she once told me about geese.”
“What?” Greenstockings murmurs, leaning back, stretching out, her head surrounded in his lap of warm muscle.
“It was spring, my grandmother told me, when she was little and People were starving, like we do. The men hunted every day, and they were starving so bad they had to tie brush on their bellies. But that didn’t help enough. They had to move with the animals going north, save themselves that big walk back. But she was weak, she couldn’t walk. Her mother said to her, ‘There’s nothing I can do. I’m too weak to carry you, and there’s nothing to eat.’
“People were just down, there was no hope. So they left my grandmother there, they travelled away, followed the caribou like we do.
“She was little then, all alone. And after a while she heard someone singing songs about love, my grandmother said, because it was spring. Trails showing up everywhere in the sky and the melting snow, and singing, singing. Tender, quiet songs, they were all in love, travelling north. So then some came to her, she said, they walked on the ground like People. They gave her food, and they tied strings around and around her legs because she was just bones, she couldn’t get up, she had no strength in her flesh. They asked her where her parents were, and she told them,
“ ‘It’s a long time since they left, I don’t know, how far.’
“But they said, ‘What do you mean, how far? They’re just right here, see, we can see them.’
“And they left her. She felt so good, there was no weakness left inside her. They fed her, but she couldn’t say what exactly, just goose grass. They were geese going north in the spring, and they told my grandmother her parents were close, so she followed them. And there they were, all the People, with lots to eat, all kinds of meat. She had been given up for dead, my grandmother once told me, but they were singing songs of love with the geese, all travelling north to meet each other — and there she was too.”
Past Broadface’s black mane draped about her, Greenstockings sees deep into the brilliant sky, the wisps of clouds travelling north on some wind she cannot feel. She is listening, hard, and cannot hear the great birds, but she hears the silence of small water, travelling too, of sunlight reflected hot from the craggy erratic, the long dazzling slashes of melting snow.
“It’s good Michel stole you,” Broadface says. “Otherwise I’d have killed Hood for you.”
“And Boy English, would you have done that to him too?”
“Back,” Broadface grins, his mouth crinkled in both disparagement and admiration, “he’s a little shit, he dragged more stuff away from those traders, to bring back here, more stuff than they had for themselves to live through the winter, he just talked the shit out of them — but when he has what he wants he travels, fast, wo-o-o-o! his short little snowshoes travel!”
“Could you keep up?”
He looks at her along the slant of his black eyes. “I had to wait on the trail for him a few times.”
And then answers her previous question, his masculinity fingered, “You’re mine — he’s strong, but bleeds easy enough.” He grips her shoulders suddenly, his face almost touching hers. “Back fucks every woman he can, morning and evening, he wants everything he sees. Why do you think he stayed away from Thick English all winter, all that time at Fort Chipewyan? He grabs women in front of the traders, he doesn’t care, he shoves his hand up between their legs when they bring him food, while they’re eating.”
Greenstockings is smiling up at him, feeling so warm and bright, thinking of something interesting and so she won’t anger him again by mentioning Little Marten, who wouldn’t leave Fort Chipewyan because she decided on a man there; she merely teases him, lightly:
“So you watched him fuck them.”
“Huh, why watch him, I was busy myself.”
“Falling down, drunk stiff as a log, that busy?”
“You’ll scream, I’ll make you,” he promises her, his hard breath almost blasting into her mouth.
“Make me.”
But his eyes change, he is mesmerized by her mouth. “He … likes this … to do this, to women.…” And Broadface lays his lips over hers, then lunges, crushes them against her teeth. She thrusts him away.
“That hurts!”
Broadface is puzzled. “Back calls that ‘kiss’, he says a woman always likes it.…”
“ ‘Kiss’,” she says softly, and draws him down to her. “Open your mouth,” she says against his lips. “Gently … gently.…”
And his eyes widen, darken into deeper black, as her tongue touches the tips of his teeth, his tongue, slips along its bending roll to the delicate lining of his cheeks — this is not anything Back could show him. She travels around his mouth again.
“That’s ‘kiss’, she tells him. “That’s ‘geese flying’.”
So he flies gently too, into her.
DOCTOR JOHN RICHARDSON
Monday June 4th 1821 Fort Enterprise
The snow having melted and run off the lake ice, I took charge of the advance party and we left the Fort at 4 o’clock this morning and set out for the Coppermine River, down which we intend to proceed to the Polar Sea. Besides numerous women I had 15 Canadians and Yellowknives, three conducting dog sledges, seven dragging their own sledges, and five carrying their burdens on their backs. The average pack was about 80 lbs. exclusive of personal baggage which might be rated at 40 lbs. more.
Lieutenant Franklin and the other officers and voyageurs and the remaining Indians will follow shortly, carrying the canoes and the rest of our supplies.
Our hunters killed nothing today, but just before we halted the carcass of a reindeer which had been strangled and partly eaten by a wolf was found. This afforded one meal to the party.
SaturdayJuly 7th I82I Coppermine River
At 7 a. m. our united party with Bigfoot’s followers encountered The Hook’s encampment situated on the summit of a sand cliff whose base is washed by the river where it turns due north towards the Copper Mountains. The Hook had only three hunters with him, the rest of his band having remained at their reindeer snares on Great Bear Lake, but his party was increased by Longleg and Keskarrah with his family who preceded us. A formal conference was held with The Hook when he was decorated with a medal by Lieutenant Franklin and he cheerfully gave us all the provision he had, sufficient to make 2½ bags of pemmican. Having completed these arrangements, we embarked the next day at 11 a. m.
Here the Yellowknives all left us, except for the hunters who will accompany us to the sea, to proceed to their summer hunting grounds. Broadface, one of Bigfoot’s hunters being enamoured of Keskarrah’s daughter, chose to go with them and The Hook to Great Bear Lake, a vast body of water we are told lies to the west.
Thursday July 26th I82I Polar Sea
A great deal of ice drifted into the strait overnight. Embarked at 4 a. m. and attempted to force a passage, when the first canoe got enclosed and remained in a very perilous position, the pieces of ice crowded together and pressing strongly on its feeble sides. A partial opening, however, occurring, we landed without serious injury. Sea covered with ice as far as the eye can reach.
Since leaving the mouth of the Coppermine River we have encountered neither Indians nor Esquimaux. Our small stock of provisions is waning rapidly, and to add to the evil, part of them have become mouldy from dampness.
Saturday August 18th 1821 Point Turnagain
This then is the limit of our voyage along the coast, which has occupied us for a month, but in which we have traced the open sea only five degrees and a half eastward of the mouth of the Coppermine River. But if the length of our voyage round the much indented coast is considered, we have sailed our bark canoes upwards of 550 miles through icy sea, which is very little less than the estimated direct distance, in a straight
line, between the Coppermine and Hudson Bay.
Thursday August 23rd I82I Bathurst Inlet
The last of our pemmican gone, we embarked at 2 a. m, without breakfast and steering for Point Evrette, and we made, without the least remonstrance from the Canadians, an open traverse of 25 miles, running all the time before a strong wind and a very heavy sea. The privation of food under which our voyageurs are at present labouring absorbed every other terror, otherwise the most powerful eloquence would not have induced them to attempt such a traverse. The swell and the height of the waves was such that the mast-head of the other canoe was often hid from our view, although it was sailing within hail of us. We put ashore at last through surf on the open beach, without further injury than smashing the sides of one canoe and splitting the head of the second.
The whole party went hunting but saw no animals.
Sunday September 23rd 1821 Barren Grounds
The men found some skin and a few bones of a deer that had been devoured by wolves in spring. They lighted a fire and devoured the remains with avidity, and also ate several of their old shoes.
Our last canoe was broken today by the men falling and left behind, notwithstanding every remonstrance. They are desperate and perfectly regardless of the commands of their officers. We have now walked over the barren grounds in direct distance from Bathurst Inlet 184 and 1/2 miles, though in actuality much farther due to lakes, rivers and rocky terrain.