Caleb's Crossing

by Geraldine Brooks

For most of the narrative, Bethia’s conflicts are internal: how can she teach herself to exist with the narrow confines of the lives women in her world are expected to lead?

We must be fettler, baker, apothecary, grave digger. Whatever the task, we must do it, or else do without.

Why put seven miles of confounding currents between himself and the other English, at a time when there was land to spare on the mainland for any who wanted to hive out a new settlement?

as a young man, had served others, putting his skills to work as factor for a wealthy nobleman who rewarded him by laying baseless charges against him. While grandfather was able to exonerate himself, the experience left him bitter, and he resolved to answer to others no more. That included John Winthrop, the governor of the Massachusetts Bay colony, a man of estimable parts, but a man increasingly willing to wield cruel punishments against those whose ideas did not accord with his own.

was a rule that none might walk nor ride alone more than one mile from the edge of our settlement. But my aunt was harried to a raveling by all her other chores, and was more than happy, one mild day, when a softer air had touched my cheek and I offered to do her clamming for her. That was the first time I broke the commandment of obedience, for I did not tarry for another companion as she bade me, but rode off by a new way, alone.

Aside from the Bible and Foxe’s Martyrs, father held that it was undesirable for a young girl to be too much at her book.

did not see Zuriel overbalance and so I could not cry out to father, whose back was turned to us, driving the cart. Before we knew that Zuriel had fallen, the rear cartwheel, made of iron, had run right across his leg and severed it to the bone.

Women are not made like men. You risk addling your brain by thinking on scholarly matters that need not concern you. I care only for your present health and your future happiness. It is not seemly for a wife to know more than her husband . . .”

A husband must rule his home, Bethia, as God rules his faithful. If we lived still in England, or even on the mainland, you could have your choice of educated men. But on this island, that is not the way of it.

Somewhen, she would take me with her to visit a goodwife who was with child. If the woman did not mind it, she would lay my hands on the swollen belly and show me where to feel for the shapeling that grew within. She taught me how to reckon, from its size, the exact number of weeks since the child was got, and to figure when she would be called upon to midwife it. I became skilled at this, judging several births to the very week.

It came to me then that God must desire us to use each of our senses, to take delight in the varied tastes and sights and textures of his world.

the wind, the voices of the band carried toward me. They were laughing and calling out one to another. The sounds were of merriment, not warfare. Taking care that Speckle remained well concealed, I fell down upon my belly and crept along to a parting between the sand hills from whence I could look back along the beach. I saw then what my first fear had obscured from me: they were unarmed, carrying neither bow nor warclub.

had to look away then, for they were clad in Adam’s livery, save that their fig leaf was a scrap of hide slung from a tie at their waists.

They were about the age of Makepeace, perhaps a little older, but their form was nothing like—they were another sort of man entirely. Makepeace, who farms as little as he must and cannot forebear from shearing the sugarloaf anytime he feels himself unobserved, is of milky complexion, slight at the shoulders, soft at the middle and pitifully tooth shaken.

These youths were all of them very tall, lean in muscle, taut at the waist and broad in the chest, their long black hair flying and whipping about their shoulders. The colored stuff they had used to decorate their bodies must have been made with grease, for they gleamed and shone in the sunlight, so that you could see the...

He was, I judged, and it later proved, a youth of my own age, some two or three years younger than the warriors at play upon the beach. Unlike them, he was clad for hunting, wearing a kind of deerskin breechclout tied with a belt fashioned of snake skins. To this was laced a pair of hide leggings. Around his upper arms were twines of beadwork, cunningly worked in purple and white. All else about him was open and naked, save for three glossy feathers tied into a sort of topknot in his thick, jetty hair, which was very long, the forelock pulled hard back from his coppery face and bound up as one might dress a horse’s mane. His smile was unguarded, his teeth very fine and white, and something in his expression made it impossible to fear him.

It was the first of many times I followed that feathered head through eel grass and over sand dune, to clay pit and to kettle pond. He showed me where the wild strawberries sweetened and fattened in the sunshine, some of them above two inches around, and so numerous that I could gather a bushel in a forenoon. He taught me to see where the blueberry bushes dapple with fruit in summer and the cranberry bogs yield crimson gems come fall.

He said we wouId eat it, and I said it was not meal time. He laughed at that, and said that he had heard that the English needed a bell to tell them when they were hungry. Even as he mocked me, I realized that I was, in fact, ravenous.

It was many weeks before he would even give me his name, that being considered a grave intimacy among his people. And when he did finally confide it to me, I understood why it is that they feel so. For with his name came an idea of who he truly was.

And with that knowledge came the venom of temptation that would inflame my blood.

But the whale was generally alive when they commenced to carve it, and the eye, so human like, would move from one to another of us, as if seeking for some pity.

They made even greater employ of the creatures’ every part than we did, thought the flesh a very great delicacy and cause for feasting, and had strict customs for its fair distribution.

They stood for a time, their hands raised up before them so that their blanket covered them entire. They looked like a flock of roosting birds. Then, as if to some invisible signal, they all began to move with the music. All my life I had been taught that dance was the devil’s business. Only whores, the daughters of Salome, danced, or so I had been instructed. But there was nothing lewd or wanton here. The women’s movements were stately, dignified, entirely graceful.

Names, he said, flow into one like a drink of cool water, remain for a year or a season, and then, maybe, give way to another, more apt one. Who could tell how his present name had fallen upon him?

He said he would call me Storm Eyes, since my eyes were the color of a thunderhead. Well and good, said I. But I will rename you, also, because to me you are not hateful. I told him I would call him Caleb, after the companion of Moses in the wilderness, who was noted for his powers of observation and his fearlessness. “Who is Moses?” he asked. I had forgotten that he would not know. I explained that Moses was a very great sonquem, who led his tribe across the water and into a fertile land. “You mean Moshup,” he said. No, I corrected him. “Moses. Many, many moons since. Far away from here.” “Yes, many moons since, but here. Right here.” He was becoming impatient with me, as if I were a stubborn child who would not attend to her lessons. “Moshup made this island. He dragged his toe through the water and cut this land from the mainland.” He went on then, with much animation, to relate a fabulous tale of giants and whales and shape-shifting spirits. I let him speak, because I did not want to vex him, but also because I liked to listen to the story as he told it, with expression and vivid gesture. Of course, I thought it all outlandish. But as I rode home that afternoon, it came to me that our story of a burning bush and a parted sea might also seem fabulous, to one not raised up knowing it was true.

But I feared he would not understand this. Father had spoken often about his difficulties with Indian ideas about gift giving. For them, personal property had but little meaning. A man might easily give away every bowl or belt, canoe or spear he had and think nothing of it, knowing that soon enough he would receive goods in turn from his sonquem at a gathering or from some other person seeking a god’s favor, which they held might be won by such generosity. Father and Makepeace had argued, once, when father had mused that in this, the Indians were more Christ-like than we Christians, who clung to our possessions even as we read the gospel’s clear injunction to give up all we owned.

“Your story is foolishness. Why should a father make a garden for his children and then forbid them its fruit? Our god of the southwest, Kiehtan, made the beans and corn, but he rejoiced for us to have them. And in any wise, even if this man Adam and his woman displeased your God, why should he be angry with me for it, who knew not of it until today?”

In their minds religion and medicine mean much the same thing. Since they have given up their pawaaw in coming here, I suppose I must do what good I can.

“After today, I will not walk with you anymore. Do not look for me,” he said. This sudden pronouncement stung me like a switch. Tears welled in my eyes. “Why do you cry?” he demanded curtly. “I do not cry,” I lied. His people consider tears a sign of lappity character.

Tequamuck will take me to the deep woods, far from this place. There I will pass the long nights moon, the snow moon and the hunger moon alone.” His task was to survive and endure through the harsh winter months, winnowing his soul until it could cross to the spirit world. There, he would undertake the search for his guide, a god embodied in some kind of beast or bird, who would protect him throughout his life. His spirit guide would enlighten his mind and guide his steps in myriad ways, until the end of his life. In those cold woods, he would learn his destiny. He said that if the spirit guide came to him in the form of a snake, then he would gain his heart’s desire, and become pawaaw.

I touched my hand to my burning, swollen lips, but there was no sensation in my fingers and I could not feel my face.

I did not know then that God would not wait unto the afterlife, but move so swiftly in this world to punish my sin.

I overheard her confide to Goody Branch, not long after, that she had never carried easier than she did with that babe, who would become our Solace, and her mortal bane. Perhaps the joy she found in those last months was a mote of God’s mercy, gifted to her, even as he shaped within her the instrument of his retribution unto me.

“You come here to disturb my rest with your tales of hell and damnation, but your tales are hollow threats, meant to scare us out of our customs and make us stand in awe of you. I will not hear your words.” He ordered father and Iacoomis banished from the Nobnocket lands.

And now Caleb is to quit Manitouwatootan to come here and live with us, so that father may increase his hours of instruction. He will take lessons alongside Makepeace and Joel, the young son of Iacoomis.

But Caleb is coming this day. And what will become of me thereafter, I cannot say.

They say the Lord’s Day is a day of rest, but those who preach this generally are not women. Even on the Sabbath, a fire must be laid, water drawn, victuals prepared, infants washed and dressed in meeting clothes. Those in purse to have a cow must see to it, for no one has preached to the cow that she must not let down the milk that stiffens her udders. So it is a great rush to get all in order and be at the meeting house in good time for the first service. None has leisure to linger and exchange greetings. All simply hasten hence, heads bent, and take our assigned benches. And so we did that day.

My first vague and half formed thought was to wonder that an unknown young man had come to Great Harbor unremarked. Then he cast off his mantua and turned his face. The beam of light that shafted through a gap in the planking fell direct upon it, and I gasped. His chief distinguishing feature—his long, elaborately dressed hair—had been shorn away.

Is this legit a love story???

amount of buffing could conceal their defects. Caleb made to join Iacoomis and his sons, who by custom sat on a small and rickety bench at the rear of the meeting house,

Bc they r less?

for where one sat in our meeting house was fixed by age, sex, estate and dignity, and those who cared for such things were ever trying to get themselves into a better seat.

Truly I was tested that day, as I watched Alden choke out words of praise and welcome for the stranger, who has left a native land and come “to a people whom you did not know before.” Giles Alden had a full, rich voice, and was a good reader, but one who had not heard him before that day would not have said so. He fumbled through the passage, stopping many times to clear his throat, I suppose because the words he was compelled to utter stuck in his craw: “The Lord recompense you for what you have done, and a full reward be given you from the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge. . . .” When he had done, he slammed the book shut. I could see the dust motes rise in the thin shaft of sunshine.

He smiled, and said a mannerly thank you, and I turned away, blushing.

was a strange thing, that we, who had spoken easily and for so long on this and every other matter would not now be able to converse beyond the most hasty exchange in a rare unobserved moment,

Even though we shared a single roof, the distance between us was become as great as if the years of our friendship had never been.

Makepeace was lumbering through a translation of Gaius Mucius Scaevola, butchering his fourth conjugations. I noted that father was even more forbearing than usual with his corrections, letting several errors pass unremarked, not wishing to reduce Makepeace before Joel and Caleb. When Makepeace reached the end of his short passage, father called upon the boys to recite the first declensions of vita and mensa, which he had set them to conning, and each managed well enough.

When I brought it up, I could tell, even in the twilight, that something dark and unwholesome floated there. I plunged a hand into the icy water and pulled it back at once, having touched the fur of a dead rat that had contrived to fall in and perish, though how, with the cover in place, I could not think. Then I realized that I had left it off, in the morning, distracted when Caleb had appeared. Someone else must have replaced it later in the day.

As the weather softened, I would see them walking out together, two dark, cropped heads bent over some book or smiling at some private jest, and I felt a stab of envy for a lost intimacy that could not be mine again.

Gay??

was determined to be worthy of the charge God had set for me. I let my mind run on ahead, seeing us together as she grew into her girlhood. She would be always at my side, and I would open to her the world and all that I had learned of it. If she wished to study her book, she would not be obliged to go to it alone. I would see to that. I would carve out the time to instruct her, no matter what father or Makepeace had to say of it. And I would not marry any man without wit and heart to understand that Solace was my sacred charge and the first of all my duties.

“Planting is women’s work, is it not, among Wampanoag? The menfolk shun such tasks, I think?” Caleb smiled, sensible of father’s kindness. “True. But since I eat at your board, how not help raise the food set down upon it? Cum Roma es, fac qualiter Romani facit.”

So it was that instead of ploughing up the whole field into straight rows and hauling hods of manure—all of which was back-breaking work—we left the earth be. We made small mounds and buried a herring in each, digging in handfuls of sea wrack that had the salt washed off it. When the soil was warm enough, we planted a corn kernel in each mound, and when it sprouted, we placed our beans all around to climb upon the stalks, saving the trouble of staking out air rows. We followed that with the squash as the heat increased, and presently the vines covered all the unploughed ground, smothering unwanted growth.

Magic