Barkskins

by Annie Proulx

I am your adoring papa and wish to know if there is any wish, no matter how picayune, I might grant you. You have only to speak.” “Very well. It is this: I do not want to be ‘finished.’ Nor do I want to ‘come out’ nor catch a beau nor marry.” She took a breath. “I want to learn the timber trade.”

“The thing is,” said Armenius, “there is here a complete lack of knowledge of forest management. Americans do not understand shelter belts, they have never heard of thinning trees nor pruning them, they cannot believe that soil has anything to do with forests, nor water. Hedgerows? What an idea! They do not believe in hedgerows. Nor coppices. The most elemental precepts of forestry are as Chinese.”

‘Why is the air clean and fresh near the forest but not in the city?’ one can ask. The answer is ‘Because God made it thus.’ So extensive are the forests here that Americans cannot see an end to them. Therefore, they have no interest in preserving them.”

“Do not your employers see the economic advantages of maintained forests? Is there no reforestation at all?” “None. They do not even leave seed trees in their vast cutover lands. One hard rain or a deep snow comes and the soil begins to run downhill like molten gold. If I say anything to the Dukes about commonsense ways to protect and repair their cut forestlands for the future they look at me as if I were mad. Well, perhaps I am mad. I hate aiding them in their quest to destroy every forest in North America.”

The Indians were better managers of the forest than these settlers. They were very good observers of water, weather, all animals and growing things. And they forbore to cut lavishly. They used many parts of many trees for different tools and medicines, not unlike the old German peasantry.”

A fourth clerk, Lavinia Duke, would remain at the Boston office and work for Edward, Freegrace and James for a year arranging markets for their Michigan lumber. Edward had not been scandalized—Lavinia was blood kin. She was cleverer than any clerk Edward remembered. She brought order to chaos.

Edward peered. The purchaser of these northern timber lots was the RBB Timber Company. “Who are they? Maine men? How did they learn about this?” “RBB stands for Rotstein, Breitsprecher and Breitsprecher. Our old landlooker has become our formidable competitor. You may remember his cousin, the manager of an estate forest in Prussia?” “Ichabod Crane. I remember him perfectly. Dreadful fellow.” “The dreadful fellow is related to Graf Ernst-August von Rotstein. He is enormously wealthy and already their holdings almost equal ours.”

“Papa! Treachery!” she shouted. “Breitsprecher and his cousin and a rich man have bought a quarter million acres of Michigan pine. They are now our enemies.” And so a rivalry began.

Afterward, when her injured throat allowed her to speak, she whispered she had twice chased the cats off the vacated dining room table that evening. She intended to clear it after she and Chef Laliberte had their own dinner and a restorative glass. She surmised the cats had knocked over the candle on the sideboard. They often romped on the furniture. “When Mrs. Duke was alive the cats were not permitted in the dining room,” she said and wept. “But after she passed on Mr. Duke doted so on Casimir and Vaughn that he allowed anything, even letting them sleep on his bed though it be well known that cats will suck your breath at night.”

James, impressed by both his daughter’s business acumen and her cool and unsentimental regard for the wardrobe, said she had his approval.

For the hundredth time James thought that his daughter had an unusually canny eye for business. She was—always had been—a go-ahead type. If she had been a man she would have been in the thick of every business fray, following the go-ahead method, accelerating, progressive!

“Yes, but I want you to do it. If you know from experience what others must do to earn a living you will be a better person with deeper knowledge of others. I have no use for the weak and helpless woman. You may need independence in your life, for women are too often taken advantage of—no one knows this better than I.” But when Lavinia pressed her for those details she said, “Never mind, you need not know. It is only that I do not want you to be helpless if your expectations are dashed. You will thank me someday.”

James felt a frisson of fear—it would take many thousands to replicate Sedley’s Boston house. But he could afford the expense, and what better way to use the money now coming in from the Michigan pines? And there were the legacies from Edward and Freegrace, even from Lennart. He did not hesitate. “Yes. We can do this. I will contact an architect. We might even have a few embellishments added, as bathing tubs. Bigger stables and new equipages. A chapel dedicated to your mother. But I put my foot down on one thing—that monstrous mahogany hall stand will not come to Detroit.”

“Why should I not go?” she said. “Because you are a girl—a woman. It isn’t done. It is impossible.” “Papa, it is not impossible. It is not customary, perhaps, but I will make it so. I insist. If I do not know the jobbers and see how the camps operate there is no way I can judge their worth—or the cut.

The endless procession of huge trees aroused a new sensation in Lavinia—a powerful sense of ownership; they were her trees, she could cause these giants to fall and be devoured by the saws. She regarded their monolithic forms with scorn. Her trees—well, her trees with James and Cyrus. And the birds that rested in them, her birds, her squirrels and porcupines; all of it.

Lavinia determined to learn scaling; it was useless to say that you had five hundred logs with an average diameter of thirty-seven inches. How many feet of inch-thick boards would come out of that log? How did you allow for the bark, for the saw kerf, for the taper of the log? She wanted to learn the mathematics of scaling. She knew there were log rules that took all of these variances into account and let the scaler make at least an estimate of the number of boards in a single tree.

He knew which side was up, smiled, said he would look for her in spring. As they disappeared into the trees he beckoned to the man in the red tuque. He did not know how Lavinia had picked the one troublemaker in the crew, but she was right, somehow she could judge men.

“I hope you have some knowledge of mathematics,” he wrote. “Few women do, but familiarity with numbers is quite essential in estimating log volumes. I would be pleased to tutor you in the rudiments of the art and if it is to your liking you may advance to more difficult problems.” He thought she would not reply; he made the work sound disagreeable and difficult. She wrote back with a list of dates she could be in Monroe and assured him she had no fear of arithmetic nor mathematics and particularly enjoyed calculus above all things—not quite the truth.

“I quite agree that surety is preferable to the most advanced surmising,” said Lavinia, “I will do as you say,” and she offered him tea.

The blazing autumn faded and November rain began the morning after Guy Fawkes Day, which Bostonians still called Pope Day, drowning the last smoldering bonfires.

In his stateroom on the steamer Liberty Tree he read the last Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine and was disturbed by a story, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” the opening paragraphs unpleasantly reminiscent of his cousin’s ravaged house.

The wind pushed the helpless Liberty Tree on and a quarter mile from a desolate stump-choked shore she smashed onto the foaming rocks; he knew he would never drink that damn Madeira, but with a bizarre sense of victory he felt his headache become a dwindling spicule.

I had a bit of difficulty yesterday but am quite all right today.” That moment, she told herself, had been her last emotional expression; from now on she would reject sympathy and condolences as evidence of weakness. She would feel nothing for anyone.

Get these things at the lowest price. I can take on a buyer’s duty if you wish. Then charge a little higher than the merchants in town and you will get back a considerable part of what you lay out in wages.” She nodded. She interpreted these suggestions to mean “pay as little as you can in wages and sell your goods to the workers for as much as they can stand.”

Some of the most desirable timber is distant from water and deemed too much trouble to cut. Though of course a railroad would be frightfully expensive.” “You have to spend money to make money. Do not fear innovation—that is where money grows.”

“We may look abroad as well—oh, I do not mean Europe with its worn-out old lands—Europe is not our source but our market—yet there are other countries, places we do not know about. Not now, but in future years. What fabulous kinds of wood may not grow in distant places?” Far to the east, deep under leaf mold and black forest soil, the bones of Charles Duquet relaxed.

She cultivated newspapermen who praised Duke Logging and Lumber as a philanthropic, job-giving business of impeccable moral distinction and Lavinia as a rare and progressive businesswoman.

When she heard that the shanty boys at one camp had played three old cat on a Sunday she decreed that work should stop at Saturday noon in Duke camps and the afternoon be given over to pastimes such as baseball, but that no amusements would occur on Sunday, the holy day of rest. For this she was held up as a devout but modern sportswoman and invited to Hoboken to attend a Knickerbockers’ game.

“You know,” she said to Mr. Flense, “it is unpleasantly clear that I am the last surviving Duke.” “Nonsense, Lavinia. There must be heirs out there. You must employ someone to search for them.”

He had a certain respect for Lavinia and remembered how quickly in the long-ago years she had learned the basics of scaling; he doubted she had ever used the knowledge—why should she?—she had competent employees, several lured away from the Breitsprechers.

But Lavinia sensed it might be more diplomatic to offer a partnership. Despite their peculiar ideas on clear-cutting and replanting stumpland, Breitsprechers had the reputation of a highly reputable business that dealt fairly with loggers and dealers. And while Armenius was alive they had been successful. They also had the reputation of being honest, and while too much honesty could hold a company back, there were many people who still believed it a virtue. A partnership would add luster to Duke Logging, considered ruthless and devious by other timbermen. Lavinia was still grateful to Dieter for his help in teaching her how to read and apply the Scribner and Doyle scale rules to raw logs; and she was curious to know the details of Armenius’s rumor-tainted death two years past.

“Good day. Do I have the pleasure of greeting Van Dipp and Brace?” “Don’t guarantee how much pleasure is in it, but that’s us,” said Van Dipp. “Who-all mought you be?”

Charles Duquet adopted three sons, Nicolaus and Jan from an Amsterdam orphanage and another, Bernard, from the streets of La Rochelle. In those times adoptions were very informal, though he treated the boys as his sons and left them his goods in equal parts. You likely know that you are descended from Nicolaus, who married Mercy and with whom he had three children—Patience, Piet and Sedley, the last named your grandfather. In other words, you have no Duquet blood flowing in your veins, only that of the adopted son Nicolaus.” He took a great swig of coffee and watched Lavinia’s complexion redden.

“It seems Beatrix Duquet and Kuntaw Sel, who were legally married, had two sons—Josime Sel and Francis-Outger Sel. The only living bloodline descendants of Charles Duquet are the grandchildren of Josime and Francis-Outger. I have not finished my investigation as to these specific descendants’ names and dwelling places. It would involve trips to Canada and contact with remnants of the Indian tribes. I did not endeavor to undertake this until I knew your wishes. However, these people would be the rightful heirs of Charles Duquet—if one counts only blood relationship as meaningful. I personally think the adopted sons’ lines of descent have a stronger claim to the family fortune than the still-unidentified Indians. After all, we know that possession is nine points of the law. Here. It is all in my report.”

think you need not disturb the Canadian situation. We will consider the investigation closed.”

“I’ll just put this into the stove,” said Annag, carrying the bin into the front office, where she rattled the stove door but carefully placed Tetrazinni’s report at the back of the supplies closet under her rain cape.

“I can’t have construction in the ballroom,” he said. “It would scar the floor. It is essential we keep the floor in flawless condition fit for satin-soled slippers. Balls are our principal income.” “For all you know annual exhibits during the season when there are no balls may become a lucrative source of income,” said Mr. Pye, who was managing the exhibition. “Ah, perhaps.” Drimmel smiled, hoping it was not to be. He very much liked the music, the perfume, excitement and beauty of the balls, the pretty gowns and shining ruddy faces.

“I have heard, Dieter, that you have bought up a good deal of cutover lands. Is that true?” “It is. Such land can be had for almost nothing, and it gives me pleasure to replant and make it good and valuable forest again.” “But surely it will take many years before it can be cut, before it has value.” “Of course. But in Europe people consider the past and the future with greater seriousness. We have been managing forests for centuries and it is an ingrained habit to consider the future. Americans have no sense of years beyond three—last year, this year and next year. I suppose I keep to my old ways. I like to know that there will be a forest when I am gone.”

We employ Indians in spring and summer to plant for us. White woodsmen who cut trees scorn such work. But the Indians have a deeper understanding of nature and time, and we employ them when we can.”

“Why, Lavinia, you have preserved this beautiful little forest. I commend you.” He quoted from Uhland: “ ‘The sweetest joys on earth are found/ In forests green and deep,’ ” and thought that she was not entirely lost to the lust for money.

“Much the same,” he said. “I am too picky, too demanding of certain traits which I have never found in a female.” “And what traits might those be, Mr. Breitsprecher?” “Why, grace, handsomeness, intelligence, the ability to tell red wine from white, a fondness for robins—and, rarest of all, the ability to scale logs.” She burst into a fit of laughter and he started as well; they stood whooping in the gloom until a shocked owl swooped soundlessly over their heads. “Lavinia,” he said when he could speak. “Shall we marry?” “I think that is a very good question,” she said. “I think we had better see to it.”

He may well persuade her to take up his conservative ideas of forestry and we shall see income drop even as it dropped for Breitsprechers when the cousin left.” Lawyer Flense said something so grossly raw that Mr. Pye had to pretend he had not heard it.

This vulnerable man could not protect her. Their positions had been reversed. Her desire for money and success swelled back into the space vacated by Dieter—that at least was permanent.

she intended to go through with the marriage as soon as he was well. She liked him very much, she wanted a husband. But never had business been more absorbing: for the first time Duke was opening foreign markets.

If Lavinia cared less for Dieter Breitsprecher after his accident, he fell into a gyre of dangerous love. He could not escape. He sensed it would be a mistake if they married, but he was caught in the immediacy of the whirlpool and did not have the strength to stroke away.

“You would do well to give a little reception for him—a gold watch or a watch fob in the shape of a pinecone? What is the company policy?” “I don’t think we have one. My father was never a sentimental man and I expect anyone who retired got a gold piece and a handshake. But I think you are right.

Few now saw the forest as a great oppressive enemy; some even honored individual trees, especially those that were massive or stood as landmarks. A Unitarian minister in western Massachusetts gave a series of sermons on trees, sermons later published as a slender volume—Trees of Life. Dieter had a copy.

disputation but he was interested in the American shift from hatred of the forest to something approaching veneration, a feeling he had known since his German childhood.

“I wish you every happiness, dear Goosey,” she said, immediately planning to cut Goosey’s bequest from her will.

“He looks at everyone. You may look back at him, for a cat may look at a king.” Lawyer Flense had presented her with an amusing book—Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. And this remark sent Miss Heinrich into tears. “I am not a cat!”