Barkskins

by Annie Proulx

“You quite shook me! It’s uncanny how you resemble your late father.” Trumbull drank off half his glass of rum and waved his hand at the window, where the flying snow half-obliterated the street and the buildings across the way. “Would you believe that I have killed deer from this window?” he asked. “Of course it was many years ago and deer are now scarce. Now, sir,” he said, “to business,” and over the next hour laid out the details of Sedley Duke’s will.

Elated and confused James Duke returned to the Pine Tree with a weight of keys in his pocket. In essence, Sedley Duke had regretted his long hatred and left half of his rich estate to James, including his dwelling house north of Tremont Street complete with six acres of garden land, a fruit orchard, twenty acres of fresh meadow, a twelve-stall stable, two carriages and six matched pair of horses, nearly two million acres of forest in Maine (passed to Sedley from Charles Duke’s old partner, Forgeron), a collection of Indian relics, a stuffed crocodile, eight silver platters, four and twenty pewter plates, a turtle-shell hafted knife, a library of eighty-four books, two hogsheads of Portuguese vinho, eight barrels of rum, two waistcoats embroidered with bucolic scenes, five turkey carpets, six warehouses of lumber, twenty-seven acres of salt marsh, part interests in several ships, potash manufactories, a shingle factory, Ohio timberlands, bank accounts and stocks. And more that he could not remember. Trumbull had enjoyed detailing the provisions of the will. “The servants are staying on at the house and hope that you will retain them. You may remember that your father called the property Black Swan and populated his pond with those birds. Sixty-odd years ago it was all rough, gloomy forest, and now we see handsome estates. I would advise you to keep the servants as they understand the peculiarities and virtues of the place and will make the transition to Boston pleasanter fo...

“Mrs. Trumbull and I hope you will do us the favor of dinner with us a week hence? Some of your cousins will be in attendance and we thought you might wish to meet them away from the offices.”

His head aching fiercely and his throat a raw ribbon of fire, he took to his bed at the Pine Tree for the next four days and lay swooning and dreaming of the delights that lay before him. He would move to the house as soon as he was well, and then pay a call on the Winthrop Brandons and thank Mistress Brandon properly with a gift. But he was embarrassed to have been pulled from the water by a woman. He should have saved her.

He directed the hired coachman to his father’s—now his—house. They rolled up a curved drive to a house of rosy brick with a black lacquer door set off by pedimented windows. He counted eight smoking chimneys. A grey-haired woman wearing a grey linsey-woolsey dress opened the door and her eyes widened as she took him in. She curtsied and said, in a welcome English voice, that she was Mrs. Tubjoy, “Mr. Sedley’s housekeeper, sir. And now in your service. We all welcome you.”

the terrible hall stand, ten feet high, intensely authoritarian. This piece of furniture with its blotched looking glass, its hat hooks and cloak holders was the ceremonial guard of the house. Every day when Sedley came home he had placed his umbrella in the crooked holder, hung his tall black hat on the hook, his greatcoat on another and, divested of his city exterior, passed into the world of “home.”

“Yes, Mr. Trumbull said so as well. But I cannot help it. I never saw the late Mr. Duke—my father—from the time I was a boy. So I did not know of the resemblance.”

Out on the high road he pointed out landmarks and distinguished points, the establishments and houses of leading merchants and men of account. He moved on to the likes and dislikes of Mr. Sedley, and so James came to know his father through the impressions of his coachman.

Unable to think of more conversation—after the disclosures of the damaged husband it was too late to introduce the topic of weather—James Duke, suddenly glib, began to rattle off details of his good fortune, his surprise and delight at receiving a large inheritance from his long-estranged father.

“Indeed!” cried Mistress Brandon. “Did you say Duke and Sons? The great timber company?” Her eyes were forest pools.

“Yes. It is the family business and I am joining it. I have been asked to serve on the Board—as my father did. But the truth is that I am somewhat nervous as I know very little about the timber trade.” “My dear Mr. Duke! Perhaps I may be of help to you. I am the daughter of Phineas Breeley of the Breeley Lumber Contractors in New Brunswick. He has had many dealings in Maine. As a girl I assisted my father in his paperwork. I know something of the business and all that I know I shall impart to you. And then we must find you a wife.”

Mr. Brandon was nowhere in sight—“closeted with another fit,” said Mistress Brandon, whose first name, he learned, was Posey. She smiled, she looked at his lips when he spoke, questioned him about his cousins and the Duke business, asked his advice on the choice between a deep blue shawl and one of rose cashmere, and then, from the corner cupboard, she pulled out a sheaf of closely inscribed pages held together by a dressmaker’s pin detailing the structure and proceedings of her father’s timber contracting business—his work as timber looker, the cheapest kinds of lumber camps, where to find the best men (Penobscot men, found in Bangor). He thought he had never met so intelligent and fine a woman and told her so. To himself he thought that not only were her eyes beautiful, but she had the grace of a swan, the voice of a dove. Batting those beautiful eyes and blushing from cleavage to hairline, she begged him to call on her again the next week, when he should have digested all the workings of her timber business scrawls. She would answer his questions and even quiz him if he thought it beneficial. But before then came the dinner at the Trumbulls’—seven the next evening. He would at last meet the Duke cousins.

Cousin Freegrace Duke was plump and short, breathing with asthmatic stertor. Freegrace’s brother, Edward, was a large heavy man like his father, George Pickering Duke. Neither resembled the backwoodsmen of James’s imagination. Freegrace’s wife, Lenore, was a pale beauty with smoky eyes and a flaxen chignon, who would attract attention in any gathering. James was astonished. How had such a fat little man got such a beautiful wife? Edward’s wife, Lydia, was of a more common type, brown braids wound around her head, and a habit of clearing her throat before she spoke.

“Forgive the scrutiny, but you are uncommon similar in appearance to Sedley. It is as if he went away for six months to the fountain of youth and tonight has rejoined us.”

Here we must wrap in furs to keep alive. Going out in the winter or a spring like this one is always a dangerous adventure.”

“I beg you tell me more of the family,” said James. “I remember a large number of cousins. Are not some of them involved in the family business?”

“My dear,” he said and took her hand. “You shall not endure this another day. I shall hire a woman to come in and do for you at once. Let us now forget the tea, go into the parlor and have a little talk about what must be done,” for he intended to pay up those nagging past-due accounts, intended to have Mr. Brandon put in an asylum, intended much more. He had money and he would put it to use. He could get what he wanted and he wanted Posey Brandon.

But the next day he called again to say that books would not be allowed; books could cause brain fever even in people who had not been struck by lightning.

“I almost understand why God laid this affliction on him,” said the judge to Dr. Hudson, whom he had discovered after a short search. “The city has become a stinking mire of corruption and evildoing. I see this as a sign of God’s punishing vengeance. And yet I cannot feel my nephew was guilty of strangling this farmer over disagreeable suppers. He was ever a gentle man.”

The wedding night was an extreme experience for James Duke. He knew what was expected of him and even looked forward to it, but in no way was he prepared for the flying tigress who leapt on him, tore open the falls of his trousers and seized his penis, in no way was he prepared for her biting and scratching, thrusting and wriggling, tearing at his and her own clothes, nor for the wrestling and panting. All night long Posey kept him going. Just before dawn he fell into a near-delirious sleep, his body shockingly embroidered with the experiences of the previous hours.

“We must talk all of this out.” He believed in reason, though it was unreasonable to do so.

“It’s Lively down here. I enjoy the Lively. Maunderville’s quiet as a dead horse. Quieter. Your dead horse passes gas.”

“What next?” roared James, who despised low culture, “an Italian with a hurdy-gurdy? A trained bear with gilded ears? You show your New Brunswick origin with these jinks.” But temper was unusual as the husband and wife had reached a kind of equilibrium free from harangues and rages except for extreme provocation, such as turbaned men with boa constrictors.

Lavinia was bright and sweet-tempered, someone both parents could love without the intrusive need to love each other.

Phineas Breeley was forbidden to come near the child. “There are reasons,” said Posey,

Maine had been freed from Massachusetts, although there were many people who expected all-out war with the Bay State; a meteor dashing its bloody sparks through the sky had foretold it. But nothing happened

“Hell is that?” said Swanee. The wind increased and it bent the stump’s tower of flame to the ground. Immediately fire spread out like spilled water. They could see bulging black smoke to the southwest. Cinders and ash flew overhead. Joe Wax pointed south and Jinot saw a sight he could never forget. Behind the pine ridge billowed a mountain-scape of smoke and a brightness grew behind the ridge, silhouetting the jagged crest of pines. The roaring sound was tremendous, and with fear they now grasped that it was the wind and fire in a concert of combustion. With a harsh snarl like an exhalation from hell, the entire five-mile-long ridge burst into orange streamers that ran up the pines. Great slabs of flame broke free from the main fire and sprang at the sky. A hail of burning twigs and coals came down on the men. Rivulets of fire snaked up trees they had planned to cut. A nearby pine exploded. The noise from the approaching holocaust and the hurricane wind deafened them. Trees burst open. Nothing could exist in that massive furnace.

And there were useful decoctions and teas which he would teach Jinot to make himself from the good ingredients. For the scar was now his master and it would demand a lifetime of care. The fire had been the salient point of his life. He had an absolute knowledge that nothing—nothing—would ever be as it had been.

“Well, I come to ask if you want to go back out west, work the Gatineau?” Jinot, unable to stop thinking about Amboise, shook his head. “I just told you I can’t do nothin now. And I got no clothes cept what Sillyboy got from the priest, can’t do no work. Not a chance I can do woods work now.” “Hell, y’can cook, can’t ya? That’s the law, people get hurt in the woods, they cook.” “I can’t cook nothin but fish. Can’t stand up for long, just two, three minutes. I tell ya, the burn pulls my leg up hard. I don’t know how I’ll get along. I want to get away from here.

The son, Beeto Sillyboy, showed him there was something more that could be done besides the gentle massage and softening salves. He coaxed the stiff, scar-bound leg into positions that hurt, very gradually stretching the clenching scar, moving the leg carefully, carefully, not to tear the stiff tissue. So by September, almost a year after the fire, Jinot could limp slowly.

When Vic Goochey came in October, Jinot told him he wanted to go to Boston and find Elise, to see his nieces and nephews. He wanted next to find Josime on Manitoulin Island and count up more nieces and nephews. He had come out of the year of trial by fire wanting children.

Bone talked, his words flowing into the mist. “I have a particular regard for Indians. I know English newcomers practiced great injustices on them and in my life I have tried to make up for those malfeasances. I have ever believed that if your people had resisted the first explorers you would still be living in the forest gathering nuts. I have, in my own way, sought to repair injustices when I can.” As he talked he strolled back to his office, limiting his stride to accommodate Jinot’s limp. “To that end I hire some Indians. I find Indians have an instinctive ability for mechanical improvements and invention.

The months slid into years before Mr. Bone was satisfied that the tools Jinot made could withstand thousands of heavy strikes. • • • It was the richest and strangest part of his life, for he felt he was no longer Jinot Sel, but someone else, a hybrid creature in a contrived space. Mr. Bone took an interest in him. There were many good Indian men in the factory but he had fastened on Jinot, who, with his fresh, smiling face, looked younger than he was.

“Why favor me, Mr. Bone? I do wonder.” There was a long silence, then Mr. Bone stirred, sighed and spoke. “When I saw the great injustices that my race visited on the native population I took a private vow to encourage young Indian men to take up a trade. It is the Christian way. Had I not become a smith I might have been drawn to the missionary life among the heathen. It is my hope that you may become the first Indian businessman, a part of the society in which you now live. Do you visit your people often? If not, you should, for there may be excellent business opportunities to be discovered. I think I have shown you how to see those opportunities.” Jinot shuddered inwardly.

They sat together at the blue-painted kitchen table, their hands locked as though all that could not be said could be understood through gripping fingers.

There is no better thirst quencher than good water. Mr. Woodlawn was always proud of our well water.”

Only the thought of the interminable return voyage to Boston and a lack of passage money—for Mr. Bone had paid him no wages since they left Boston—kept him silent. He was fated to continue with the ax maker.

Through the strange trees flew birds of shocking colors, iridescent and violently noisy, birds with headdresses and wings like burning angels, flying apparitions from dreams. But in the month the travelers lingered in the colony awaiting passage, whenever they walked out they saw creatures that surpassed any nightmare, springing fur-covered beasts with rudder-like tails, lizards swelling out their throats in gruesome puffs, assorted spiders said to be fatally poisonous.

The labor of axing down a tree with the girth of a village church was monstrous. The bushmen tried every way, whittling around the sides for weeks until the trunk began to resemble a pencil, chipping and chopping until a saw could finish the cut. Or chopping out a commodious room within the living tree, room enough to swing an ax, a great waste of good timber. They built platforms to lift them above the stack of debris at the base of every kauri. It took weeks to bring down a single giant. The ax alone was not enough and the trader ordered ten-foot felling saws—double-tooth rakers every four teeth—onto the job. When the saws arrived the kauri began to come down by the hundreds.

Joseph Dogg said in a low voice, “Perhaps you do not know that Jinot Sel was not Mr. Bone’s ‘servant’ as you surmise, but was greatly favored by him as a friend and business associate and it is to him that Mr. Bone has willed all his works and possessions, which include the ax factory in Massachusetts. And if truly he is dead, and if Jinot is also dead, then likely Mr. Bone’s holdings will shift into Jinot’s estate and go to his son, Aaron. I have the responsibility to bring all details back to Aaron Sel, who could not make the interminable journey.”

“How dare you, sir, imply that I am a thief?” Mr. Rainburrow swelled up. The word sir hissed through his teeth. “Why, Mr. Rainbillow, I see that you are a clergyman of sorts, and it has been my experience that pastors, ministers, clergymen and church officials of all kinds feel entitled to use any stray funds that come their way to further their influence and control of local affairs—as well as building new churches, adding wings to existing churches, gilding the altar and such so-called good works, especially improving the parsonage or the wine cellar.” “I will have you know that I have not touched a ha’pence,” lied the missionary, who had, in fact, used more than a hundred pounds of Mr. Bone’s money to build the storeroom where he cached his bales of flax.

These whitemen come to Kuntaw and ask him to take them to good fishing places. No harm can come from that.” Joe Dogg rolled his eyes and said emphatically, “It is dangerous to bring whitemen into your country. However rough the trail, they remember it and soon begin to want it.”

Near the oaks James picked up a fallen stick and pointed it like a gun; the squirrels fled.

“Great gods,” said James. “A thousand men could not cut all this in a thousand years. We’ll get them. We’ll get a thousand men.” Armenius Breitsprecher gazed into the fire and said nothing. Not for the first time he saw the acquisitive hunger of Duke & Sons was so great they intended to clear the continent. And he was helping them. He hated the American clear-cut despoliation, the insane wastage of sound valuable wood, the destruction of the soil, the gullying and erosion, the ruin of the forest world with no thought for the future—the choppers considered the supply to be endless—there was always another forest. Rapine had been a force in the affairs of Duke & Sons since its beginnings, but with this find it would likely become the company’s engine.

“Duke and Sons have never bought on credit,” said Edward stiffly. “We pay cash and that is why our custom is favored. It is our signature.”

Armenius could almost see Dieter before him, tall and with gooseberry eyes. He had studied privately with Heinrich von Cotta in Saxony and now was working as a forester on the estate of Graf Ernst-August von Rotstein. The estate’s most distinguished feature, he wrote, was a large forest. Armenius moaned with envy at Dieter’s description of his catalog of the forest’s insects and how they affected the different species of trees, temperature diaries and rainfall measurements, boundary plantings, a coppice experiment. Yet Armenius had seen enough wild American forest to slightly dampen his enthusiasm for management. How could one possibly control the fantastic complexity of the New World forests?

Hopeless, hopeless to try to describe the situation in North America, where people spurned the age-old craft of forestry, a craft he knew only partially from books, his father’s lectures and his own observations. He had to get Dieter to come and see for himself the Michigan forest, a massive but innocent forest standing complete before the slaughter began.

“Dear cousin, while I get warm with some hot spirit and water you will tell me all about the Dukes, their plan to seize the forests of the earth, their fiendish little ways.”

Edward Duke did not take to Dieter Breitsprecher. Later he complained to Freegrace. “Why, he looks like Ichabod Crane, a great thin tall gawk. And how he stares!” “Yes, but Armenius says he is a forester on a great estate in Germany. He manages a large forest. He might be useful to us.” “God’s sake, how on earth does he ‘manage’ a forest?” snorted Edward. “Cut ’em down! That’s forest managing. Tell Ichabod to take his managing back to Germany. No use to us.”

“It drips honey,” she said and unaccountably began to laugh at James with his tower of cold toast when the whole world knew he liked it hot and crunchy. “Yes, that is a known property of honey—it drips. Would you care for toast without honey?” “Yes.” She took the toast, put it on a plate, went to the sideboard and slid a poached egg onto the toast, brought the plate back to the table and began to cut up her breakfast. James observed that the egg also dripped, perhaps more fluidly than honey. They sat in companionable understanding while they ate.