Caleb's Crossing

by Geraldine Brooks

At fifteen, I have taken up the burdens of a woman, and have come to feel I am one. Furthermore, I am glad of it. For I now no longer have the time to fall into such sins as I committed as a girl, when hours that were my own to spend spread before me like a gift. Those hot, salt-scoured afternoons when the shore curved away in its long glistening arc toward the distant bluffs. The leaf-dappled, loamy mornings in the cool bottoms, where I picked the sky-colored berries and felt each one burst, sweet and juicy, in my mouth. I made this island mine, mile by mile, from the soft, oozing clay of the rainbow cliffs to the rough chill of the granite boulders that rise abruptly in the fields, thwarting the plough, shading the sheep. I love the fogs that wreathe us all in milky veils, and the winds that moan and keen in the chimney piece at night. Even when the wrack line is crusted with salty ice and the ways through the woods crunch under my clogs, I drink the cold air in the low blue gleam that sparkles on the snow. Every inlet and outcrop of this place, I love. We are taught early here to see Nature as a foe to be subdued. But I came, by stages, to worship it. You could say that for me, this island and her bounties became the first of my false gods, the original sin that begot so much idolatry.

“Your grandfather felt he could do better. So he bought these patents, which were outside the purview of Winthrop’s governance, and gathered several like-minded men who were prepared to accept the light hand of his direction. Me, he sent—in 1642—to make the first crossing. It is a matter of pride to me, son, that your grandfather insisted, even though he had paid the English authorities for the patents, on paying the sonquem of this place also. Every hut and house we have built here is on land willingly sold to us through negotiations that I conducted honorably. You will hear, perhaps, that not all the sonquem’s followers agreed with their chief in this matter, and some now say that he himself did not fully understand that we meant to keep the land from them forever. Be that as it may, what’s done is done and it was done lawfully.” I thought, but did not say, that grandfather could hardly have expected the fine points of English property law to count for much to some three thousand people whose reputation, prior to our landing, had been ferocious. If there was pride to be taken in the matter, it could only be pride in the canniness of grandfather’s plan, and of father’s courage and tact in executing it.

On one bright day, when the weather had warmed and steadied, I rode Speckle to the south shore. The prospect is remarkable there, where the wide white sands run uninterrupted for many leagues. I watched the heaving waves, smooth as glass, unspooling down the rim of my known world. I dismounted, untied my boots, stripped my hose and let the seafoam froth about my toes. I led the mare along the wrack line, studying white shells shaped like angels’ wings, and bleached bones, light as air, which I took to be from a seabird. I picked up scallop shells in diverse colors and sizes—warm reds and yellows; cool, stippled grays—and reflected on the diversity of God’s creation, and what might be the use and meaning of his making so many varieties of a single thing. If he created scallops simply for our nourishment, why paint each shell with delicate and particular colors? And why, indeed, trouble to make so many different things to nourish us, when in the Bible we read that a simple manna fed the Hebrews day following day? 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.

Below me, Wampanoag were dancing in a wide circle, shaking corn-filled gourds and beating rhythmically on small skin drums. My first thought was to drop my burden of wood and run back to the beach, to warn the others that the Wampanoag were not on distant Nomin’s island, but nearby, and in numbers large enough to threaten us if they caught us red to the elbows with the blood of a whale that was rightfully their own. But then a voice rose, high and fierce, in notes that I had not known a human throat could produce. The sounds went through to the very core of me. I could not turn away. Indeed, I felt drawn towards the maker of those sounds. I told myself that I needed to give an exact count of the band, and the number of them who might be armed. I left the path, which led down into the clearing and would have put me in plain sight, and pushed my way through the dense heath plants that gave me cover should anyone look upward. Soon, I was close enough to understand some few words of the song. The pawaaw was calling upon his gods, praising, thanking, beseeching. The drums beat in tempo to the rhythm of my heart, which seemed to be swelling at the sound. I felt my soul hum and vibrate in sympathy with his prayers. There was power here; spiritual power. It moved me in some profound way. I had striven for this feeling, week following week, as the dutiful minister’s daughter at Lord’s Day meeting. But our austere worship had never stirred my soul as did this heathen’s song. Thou sh...

“That is where he lives, is it not, your one God? Up there, beyond the inconstant clouds?” I did not dignify his ridicule, for so I deemed it, with any answer. This merely emboldened him. “Only one god. Strange, that you English, who gather about you so many things, are content with one only. And so distant, up there in the sky. I do not have to look so far. I can see my skygod clear enough, right there,” he said, stretching out an arm towards the sun. “By day Keesakand. Tonight Nanpawshat, moon god, will take his place. And there will be Potanit, god of the fire . . .” He prattled on, cataloguing his pantheon of heathenish idols. Trees, fish, animals and the like vanities, all of them invested with souls, all wielding powers. I kept a count as he enumerated, the final tally of his gods reaching thirty-seven. I said nothing. At first, because I hardly knew what to say to one so lost. But then, I remembered the singing under the cliffs. An inner voice, barely audible: the merest hiss. Satan’s voice, I am sure of it now, whispering to me that I already knew Keesakand, that I had already worshipped him many times as I bathed in the radiance of a sunrise, or paused to witness the glory of his sunset. And did not Nanpawshat have power over me, governing the swelling, salty tides of my own body, which, not so very long since, had begun to ebb and flow with the moon. It was good, the voice whispered. It was right and well to know these powers, to live in a world aswirl with spiri...

“Give me this,” he said. I felt the ground shift uncertainly. That book was not mine to give. 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. Makepeace challenged father and said that the Indian generosity was nothing more than the product of a pagan superstition, not to be likened to Christian agape, or selfless love of others. I did not know enough, then, to have an opinion. But what I have learned since tells me that neither Makepeace nor father truly grasped the root of the matter, which is that we see this world, and our place in it through entirely different eyes.

And so I commenced that very day to teach Caleb his letters: “A,” I said, tracing the shape in the wet sand. “It has two sounds. Remember them thusly: ‘Adam ate the apple.’ ” At once there was a difficulty: he had never seen an apple. I promised to bring him one from our small orchard, which father planted when first he came here. But this snag was nought to the briars yet to ensnare us. I commenced to introduce Adam to him, to describe the garden and the fall, and how that first sin comes down to besmirch all of us. I had then to explain sin, of which he had no ready concept. He would not concede that he had ever sinned himself, and seemed much offended when I assured him of it. His brow drew itself heavier and heavier, until he waved a hand as if sweeping away noxious smoke. “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?”

There were some half-dozen children running in the fields or about the wetus—fewer than you would expect, given the size of the settlement, which was more than a dozen and a half families. It was just as well they were few, because those there were seemed to run entirely wild, with no check or correction, barreling through the fields in the way of the hoes, interrupting the men’s talk, or snatching at their jacks so as to disrupt the game, piercing the quiet with loud hallows and curdling shrieks. An English child would have been whipped for half of what these were about. Yet I saw no elder do so much as wag a finger at them. I remarked on this to father. He nodded. “They are, as you say, remarkably indulgent. I have remonstrated with them on the matter, asking them why they do not correct their children. But they say that since adult life is full of hardship, childhood should be free of it. It is a kindly view, even if misguided.”

Over time, I had come to grasp that the chief principle of their grammar is whether a thing to them is possessed of an animating soul. How they determine this is outlandish to our way of thinking, so profligate are they in giving out souls to all manner of things. A canoe paddle is animate, because it causes something else to move. Even a humble onion has, in their view, a soul, since it causes action—pulling tears from the eyes.

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.

“You are abroad early.” “Always,” he replied. “Not a morning has passed, for as long as I can remember, that I did not sing a greeting to Keesakand upon his rising.” I stopped sharply in my tracks. Was he then, as my brother held, an idolator still? I was glad I no longer had charge of the water. I might have spilled it. He smiled. “Do not look at me so, Storm Eyes. Did not God create the sun? Mayn’t I make a hymn of gladness upon it? Your father has never taught me that the only one place to pray is in the dim confines of your meeting house. God’s spirit shines out in every goodly thing. Do not wonder that I stretch up my hands and reach out for his grace.” We were at the door by then. I lifted the latch for him. The others were stirring. Makepeace had Solace, who had wakened, in his arms. I took her from him and fed her some clabber, wondering what father would make of our exchange. All morning, as I went about my tasks, I thought about braiding together two beliefs that seemed at first so much at odds, and how so doing might sit with our precisian faith. How easily Caleb had taken the teachings of his youth—the many gods, the animate spirit world—and simply recast them in terms of our teaching. And father, so it seemed, was satisfied.

“Not long ago, Bethia, when your father yet lived and taught us every day, your brother was struggling, as is his wont, with the Greek. When he could not get it, he became very agitated, and at the last he turned to your father, and demanded to know why we, as would-be ministers, must needs learn these things.” I have set down before that Caleb was a natural mimic, and here he pitched his voice higher and gave it a hectoring edge, becoming, to the life, the mouthpiece of my brother. “ ‘What has Apollo to do with Christ? Is not the study of these pagans akin to Eve and Adam’s prideful seeking after forbidden knowledge?’ ” As Caleb spoke, I could easily imagine the scene in my mind’s eye. Despite my agitation, my lips twitched with amusement. “And what did father say?” “He said that of course all learning must have Christ in the bottom, as the only foundation. But since God had seen fit to give us Christ’s gospel in Greek, there was surely a sign for us in that. And then he told us the Greeks’ story, of how Prometheus stole fire from the gods. He said that fire represented the lamp of learning that had been lit by the ancient Greeks and passed to us, to keep alight. So am I a thief of fire, Bethia. And since it seems that knowledge is no respecter of boundaries, I will take it wheresoever I can. By light of day, in your schoolrooms. By candlelight, from your books. And if necessary, I will go into the dark to get it.”

“And our minister let you read heretical testimony?” My cheeks were on fire now. “I did not apply to the minister.” My voice had shrunk to a bat squeak, almost inaudible. “How, then?” “I asked the sexton.” That poor man, simple and frail, had hardly understood what I required. But he had been glad to give me his broom when I offered to sweep the floors for him. He had fallen into a doze in the corner, and so I had ample time to search out the old record and page through it, to marvel at how she had parried every thrust of Winthrop and the others, shielding herself with both wit and prodigious knowledge of scripture so that they could not land a blow. And then, just at the end, when they would have been forced to let her walk free, exonerated, she offers to set forth to them her heretical beliefs. Offers. And so indicts herself. Exactly as I had just done. Master Corlett shook his head and wagged a crooked finger at me. “It was very wrong in you, Bethia. These things are not fit for eyes such as yours. You would not, I hope, drink from a spring that was befouled by a rotting corpse. Why then foul your mind with the rantings of a heretic?” There were many ways in which I could have answered him. I could have said that Hutchinson’s words, though clearly contrary to accepted doctrine, were by no means rantings. I could have said that one must study even incorrect opinions in order to learn how to discern their flaws. I could have said that I ached to read the words of a learne...

“What do you want from me? You, who have already taken all. Leave me in peace to mourn my nephew.” “Please.” My voice was thin, reedy. “Please show me how to help him.” He drew himself up to his full height and stared down at me for a long time. Though my skin crawled under his searching gaze, I willed myself not to look away. I felt my mind was naked to him, that he probed my every thought. Finally, he gave a great sigh. “You truly want to help him.” I nodded. “Then follow me. I will show you how.” He lifted the mat and gestured for me to enter. Noah gave a shout but I turned back to him and shook my head. “Wait for me,” I said. Then I followed the wizard into the dark. I cannot write of what took place in that wetu, because I made a solemn oath, which I have never broken. Some would say it was a pact with the devil, and therefore I am not bound by it. But after that day I was no longer certain that Tequamuck was Satan’s servant. To be sure, father and every other minister in my lifetime has warned that Satan is guileful and adept at concealing his true purpose. But since that day I have come to believe that it is not for us to know the subtle mind of God. It may be, as Caleb thought, that Satan is God’s angel still, and works in ways that are obscure to us, to do his will. Blasphemy? Heresy? Perhaps. And perhaps I am damned for it. I will know, soon enough. This much of what took place I will set down. In the dim light of his wetu, Tequamuck spoke to me of what he had ...