Remember the Morning

by Thomas Fleming

  “Ho!” said Leaping Deer, holding out the tankard. “That is very good rum.”

  Stannard filled the tankard again. Leaping Deer drank it down, shouldered his pack of skins and followed him into the twisting streets of the trading town. Over the next two days, this scene was repeated a dozen times. Stannard or someone else armed with a bottle of rum stationed himself close enough to our tents to intercept every Indian Clara or I persuaded to look at our goods. It soon became painfully evident that rum was the missing ingredient in Catalyntie Van Vorst’s wonderful plan to grow rich in the fur trade.

  By the end of the second day, I was so humiliated I could not face Clara or Malcolm. Especially Malcolm, whom I was convinced still disliked me and was hoping I would fail. I wandered down to the shore of the lake in near despair. Maybe I should sell our goods to Stannard and his friends and let them have me for five shillings a night. Everyone in New York assumed I was a whore. Why not act like one—and make enough money to go back to the city in triumph?

  No—Clara would never let me do such a thing.

  “Now what are you going to do?” said a voice in the twilight. It was Malcolm Stapleton. He loomed against the shadowy lake, a tower of mockery. Clara was with him. Had they been enjoying each other in the tall grass along the shore? The possibility redoubled my bitterness.

  “Go ahead,” I said. “Laugh at me. I’ve made a fool of myself.”

  “Maybe there’s another way to sell our goods,” Clara said. “If we went to the villages, where the women could see the stuff firsthand—”

  “That would violate the treaty,” I said. “The chiefs of the Iroquois want to keep the traders out of the villages—because of the rum.”

  “But we have no rum.”

  “How can two women call a council to change the treaty?”

  “You don’t need every tribe’s permission,” Clara said. “Why not start with the Seneca? If we give presents to one of the chief sachems—”

  Clara was right. Presents, to an Indian, were not a bribe. They created an obligation to grant favors in return. They formed a kind of alliance between the giver and the receiver.

  “Where can we find one of the sachems?” I said.

  “Perhaps our friend Leaping Deer would know.”

  We plunged into the trading town around the fort. In a few minutes we located Leaping Deer. He was playing a favorite Iroquois game, casting three dice in a bowl. Around him was piled two packs of beaver skins, as big as his own. “Ho,” he said, recognizing us, although he was very drunk. “You women have brought me much luck. I’m winning on every toss. Look at how much I’ve won.”

  He offered us rum, which we politely refused, and asked him if he was acquainted with any of the Seneca’s ruling sachems. He said one of them lived in his village. His name was Peaceful Lake. He said the village was less than a day’s paddle away toward the setting sun, on the lake shore. “Tell him you are a friend of Leaping Deer. Tell my wife I will soon be home with enough goods to shut her mouth for ten winters!”

  The next day we left most of our goods in the padlocked fort armory, piled enough to trade in a single village into the large canoe, and headed down the lake. By the end of the day we reached the sachem’s village, where we were greeted with vast excitement. Everyone marveled at Malcolm’s stupendous size, the hump on Duycinck’s back, and the white woman and the African woman who spoke their language so well. We were soon in the presence of the grand sachem, Peaceful Lake. He was a stern old man who bluntly asked if we were witches come to enchant the village.

  I assured him we were not witches and offered to let the village shaman examine us to prove it. I presented the sachem with a belt of white wampum, a bright red and blue blanket, and a pearl necklace for his wife or daughter. “We seek your permission to trade here and in the other villages of the Seneca,” I said. “We have tried to trade at the fort of your father and mine, King George, at Oswego, but it was impossible because we refused to give rum to any Indian. Apparently there is no law that prevents this—or if there is one, the king’s people do not enforce it.”

  Peaceful Lake’s expression remained grave. It was impossible to tell if he was offended by my suggestion that there was a defect in the treaty the Iroquois had negotiated with the British to create Oswego. There was no reason for him to be impressed with my words, which were spoken in the apologetic manner of a lowly member of the Turtle Clan.

  The meeting still hung in the balance when Clara stepped forward to speak. She exuded the serene self-confidence she always displayed in public, thanks to her privileged childhood. Clara presented the sachem with a silver horn filled with gunpowder. “Help us to begin a new kind of trading, in which no rum will be permitted. Let us show it can be done, from the quality of our goods,” she said.

  With vivid detail, she denounced the drunkenness and cheating that prevailed at Oswego. “The League of the Iroquois has acted wisely, as always, to keep the evil drink out of our villages. But they must renew their efforts to purify Oswego.”

  Clara painted a heartbreaking picture of a warrior starving and freezing for months in a winter camp to gather his furs, then losing his hard-won catch in a night of dice and drinking. “In the end he comes home to his family and village empty-handed. Can such a man find it within himself to be a great warrior, after such a defeat? I do not believe I exaggerate when I say Oswego is in the grip of the Evil Brother. We serve the Master of Life.”

  As always, Clara’s orenda had enormous impact on her audience. Even the village shaman, who usually disliked admitting anyone else had spiritual gifts, confessed she spoke with the power of the Manitou on her tongue.

  Peaceful Lake had listened to Clara’s speech in dignified silence, as befitted a grand sachem. Now he rose, raised his hand palm outward, the traditional gesture of peace and friendship, and spoke. “These are true daughters of the Seneca,” he said. “You may trade in this village or any other village of our tribe, under my protection. If anyone challenges you, tell him to send a swift runner to me and I will confirm your privileges in my own voice.”

  My reaction to this good news should have been exultant. We had won an opportunity to trade in a way that was almost guaranteed to make us successful. But my euphoria was curtailed by the way Malcolm Stapleton was gazing at Clara with unqualified admiration. By returning to the Indian world, I had become awkward She-Is-Alert, the Moon Woman, and Clara was ever triumphant Nothing-But-Flowers once more. For the first time I questioned this arrangement, which had seemed for long years to be part of the natural order of things.

  FOUR

  WITH CRIES OF DELIGHT, THE WOMEN of Peaceful Lake’s village swarmed to examine our goods. They draped the deep red and dark blue bolts of cloth around each other and hefted the blankets and exclaimed over their quality. The know-it-alls of New York, who had sneered that “savages” could not tell one piece of cloth from another, did not know what they were talking about. Clara and I had grown up listening to our Seneca mothers compare the quality of the goods their husbands had brought home from the French in Montreal and the English in Albany. The English cloth was superior in every way—better woven, a thicker, finer nap, warmer, more durable. We also knew what every Seneca woman liked—deep shades of color, a blue that was almost black, a red that was almost burgundy.

  “My husband returns from winter camp tomorrow. He will stop here to see me for a few days before going to the Oswego fort,” one woman said. “We will trade with you—I promise you.”

  “My husband will soon be here too,” pleaded another woman. “Can you wait for him?”

  “My husband is here already,” announced another woman in triumphant tones. “I will speak to him. We will trade—now!”

  The third woman’s husband soon appeared lugging a huge pack of beaver skins. I carefully explained the prices we would pay for each skin—and how much we would charge for each yard of cloth. The husband, a tall, fierce-looking warrior named Stalking Bear, protested that he could get bette
r terms at Oswego.

  “You are talking nonsense!” his wife said. “You have never brought a decent piece of cloth back from that place. You want to go there for the rum. For once you will consider your wife and children before your gullet!”

  Stalking Bear’s expression suggested he would gladly tomahawk me and Clara if he ever encountered us in the woods. Clara drew me aside and wondered if we were wrecking every marriage in the village. But I dismissed such troubling thoughts. I urged Stalking Bear’s wife, who was named Light-On-Snow, to choose a bracelet from the jewelry cask, free. Light-On-Snow selected a bracelet and added one for her daughter, plus a necklace and a set of earrings, which they paid for in well-cured beaver skins.

  “You have made me a happy wife!” she cried, as they headed for their longhouse with a roll of strouds, the jewelry, and several blankets.

  “I hope you will make your husband happy in return,” Clara said.

  Light-On-Snow, who was at least forty years old and growing fat, contemplated Stalking Bear’s glum expression and sighed. “I will try,” she said.

  Stalking Bear and succeeding warriors were somewhat mollified when I urged them to let Adam Duycinck repair their muskets, free of charge. In a half hour Adam was up to his knees in broken guns, cursing under his breath, demanding a charcoal fire hot enough to bend metal. He said it would take him a week, at least, to repair that many guns.

  I soothed him by going to Peaceful Lake and asking if one of the village’s unmarried young women could overcome her dislike of Adam’s hump and come to him that night. I told the sachem that Adam was a sorcerer who would reward the girl with the power to repel evil spirits. There was nothing unusual about entertaining visitors in this fashion, and Peaceful Lake agreed. Adam’s attitude was transformed from glum obedience to cheerful industry the instant he heard the news.

  The following night the village had a feast. Malcolm Stapleton had gone into the woods that afternoon with several warriors and they returned with a great buck. The women roasted it over the fire and we ate it with fish from the lake and corn cakes from the village granary. The harvest had been good last fall. There had been no starving time this spring. After the food, the women, led by the matron of the Bear Clan, announced they wished to perform the Eagle Dance.

  Four of the village’s prettiest young women stripped off their clothes and coated their bodies with bear grease. They chose four young men and stripped away their leggings and breechclouts and greased their bodies too, while drums began to beat and the village shaman shrilled the music of the four winds on his pipe. The women sprang into the firelight and caressed each other, weaving and whirling in front of the shaman. They were the flowers, the grass, the green corn of spring and summer.

  The women sprang over the blazing coals and whirled around the warriors, standing as silent as trees, watching them. Then the young men raised their arms, like green boughs greeting the warm sun, and began to move in circles around the weaving writhing women. I sat beside Malcolm Stapleton and Clara, watching this, remembering how I had felt in our girlhood village when this dance was performed. Clara was often chosen to lead it. I remembered how beautiful her brown body had been in the firelight, how violently every young man in the village had desired her. While the Moon Woman sat disconsolate, ignored, among the lesser members of the Turtle Clan.

  Now, on Malcolm Stapleton’s face I saw the same desire the dancers were saluting with their cries and gestures. It was stirring in my body too. I was part of the earth again, part of the vast slow movement from winter to spring to summer and back to winter. In my white life on the streets of New York, I had almost forgotten this fundamental reality. City people separated themselves from the earth, they almost ignored its irresistible powers.

  I saw desire on Clara’s face too as the naked dancers awoke memories of her triumphant youth. I saw Malcolm’s arm encircle Clara’s waist, his lips brush her neck. She did not shun him—as any sensible denizen of the white world, with its laws and maxims and supposed wisdom about the wages of sin and lessons learned the hard way, would do. Here in the wilderness we were restored to a world without clocks or calculation, to the simplicities of impulse and wish, to happiness seized as a moment without reference to tomorrow.

  Now the dancing warriors were circling the women, waving their arms in great loops, like the wings of eagles, sweeping the winds of spring around them, asking them if they were ready to accept the seeds of life, the gifts of the Manitou, in their bodies. Yes, no, yes, the women said, covering their eyes, their mouths, their cunts, with the same reluctance that the winter earth yielded to spring.

  Malcolm’s lips were on Clara’s throat, he was whispering in her ear. Yes, she nodded, yes—and no. Tears streamed down her face. She was haunted by winter memories that no spring wind, however warm, however scented, could dispel. Watching, the Moon Woman of the Turtle Clan rejoiced—and a moment later wept, horrified by the wishes of her treacherous heart. For the rest of the night I lay a few feet from the fire, pretending to sleep, while my mind exploded with images of warriors and women, husbands and wives in the longhouses, satisfying the desires aroused by the Eagle Dance.

  By the end of the next day we had traded all the goods we had brought from Oswego. I decided to leave Adam and Clara in the village and return to the fort with Malcolm Stapleton and the purchased skins. Clara would obtain from Peaceful Lake and other warriors the information to sketch a map of the Seneca villages to the west. We would come back with more goods and paddle down the lake to trade with them.

  The wind blew from the northeast and paddling the heavily laden canoe was backbreaking labor. Malcolm had urged me to hire two Indians but I said I did not want to spend the money—or be responsible for bringing them to Oswego and its temptations. Actually, I had other reasons, which only became apparent to me as the afternoon waned and I said my arms were breaking and we would have to camp for the night.

  We went ashore and I briskly built a fire on the beach. By now I knew why I had arranged to leave Clara behind. The drums of the Eagle Dance still thudded in my blood, the images of the naked warriors and women whirled in my brain. Were they doing the same thing in Malcolm’s brain? I hoped so.

  “I’m so hot from all that paddling,” I said. “I think I’ll take a swim before supper.”

  Slowly, deliberately, I pulled off my clothes and plunged into the freezing lake. How wonderful the water felt on my skin! But it did nothing to extinguish the conflagration in my soul. Malcolm Stapleton sat on the shore, watching me, bafflement and desire mingling on his face. He did not realize he was no longer in the company of Catalyntie Van Vorst, the virago who had hurled vituperation in his face in Albany. My Seneca self had consumed that city creature.

  “Why don’t you join me?” I called from the water. “You must be as hot as I am. Can you swim?”

  “I can swim,” Malcolm said.

  “Then what are you waiting for?”

  Malcolm stood up and stripped. When I saw him naked, I knew the Evil Brother had possessed my soul but I did not care. The massive chest covered with light blond hair, the rippling muscles of his arms and neck were more beautiful than any sculptor or painter could ever create. I wanted wanted wanted him and whether he loved or hated me did not matter. I was the earth and he was the west wind, born to caress me. It was totally different from the sentimental literary love I had felt for Robert Nicolls.

  Malcolm dove in and disappeared for a full minute. Terror clutched at my heart. Had he drowned? He burst to the surface only a few yards from me, a strange half smile on his face. I could not tell what he was thinking.

  “Did you like the Eagle Dance?” I said.

  “Yes,” he said. “Did you?”

  “I’ve seen it many times,” I said.

  “It didn’t arouse you?”

  “Did it arouse you?”

  “What do you think? What do you think you’re doing now? Are you trying to drive me crazy?”

  He swam toward me as he sai
d this. It occurred to me that he might be going to drown me. I did not care. Before he killed me, I wanted him to take me. I wanted him so badly, my life had ceased to matter.

  “I know you love Clara. But you can’t have her anymore. Why not take me?” I said.

  “Do you mean that?” Malcolm said.

  “I seldom say anything I don’t mean.”

  Now I knew the Evil Brother was in control of my heart. He was forcing me to deny my love for this man—the love I had felt from the moment I saw him on that morning in the meadow of the peace council. But what else could the Moon Woman do when she was competing with Nothing-But-Flowers?

  Malcolm’s lips, cold from the frigid waters of the lake, were on my mouth. His hands roved my body, clutched my breasts, my rump. Then his long legs found the lake’s bottom, he opened my thighs and filled me with the pine tree of his manhood, filled and filled and filled me but without leaving the bone-chilling waters that surrounded us. Clutching fistfuls of my streaming hair, he thrust his tongue down my choking throat and filled me again and again with an icy angry passion that was the total opposite of what I had imagined and desired. But I told myself it was enough, it was better than nothing, it was all the Moon Woman could expect.

  Then Malcolm’s seed leaped in me and I thought my heart would explode. It was beyond anything I had ever felt or imagined with Robert Nicolls in our fevered trysts. For the first time I saw a hope, however faint, that I might have a contented life. But the hope vanished in the very moment of its birth.

  “Is that what you wanted?” Malcolm said, holding me at arm’s length, empty yet full, satisfied but not happy.

  “Wasn’t it what you wanted?” I said.

  “Yes,” he said.

  He shoved me away—as if he wished I would float into the lake’s vastness like a piece of driftwood, or sink like a stone to the muddy bottom. I did neither, of course. I swam ashore and lay on the sand, letting the wind dry me, thinking: without a single caress. Maybe the wind can console me. Maybe the wind will become a caress. But the wind remained the wind.