#ther'es no plot......there's no direction.....

[mykingdomforapen]

first light of dawn

Yvon has read more words than many have spoken in their lifetime. In several languages, too. He carries a book in his belongings even when they take up too much room, John Milton immortalised by sheets of paper. The works of poets and scholars can live on without a single utterance, their words and stories carried onward by black ink. 

Even so, when he reads, he reads out loud, so that he can taste the weight of them on his tongue, and hear them ride on the backs of breezes so that it carries forth, as if Paradise Lost is a pebble dropped in a still lake, and it ripples forward until it reaches the ocean. After all, the hemlock trees and the riverbank pebbles have no eyes to read; he does not tell anyone this, but he reads poetry from his little black book so that the forests can listen along, until they all can recite the stanzas nearly from memory. 

Hamish finds this politely exasperating. 

“Does it have to be Milton?” he says. 

Yvon does not look up from his book. 

“Have you got anything better?” he says. 

“I prefer Bradstreet,” says Hamish. “She isn’t quite as long-winded.” 

Yvon turns a page, but he permits himself a smile.

“That sounds like a personal problem,” he says. 

His companion scowls, but saves the rest of his protesting for later. Yvon defends Milton not out of favour. Milton is a master of the English language, naturally, and he retells ancient stories with fresh blood--a practise that Yvon finds familiar, even if the story itself is not. Milton puts into lilting verse the dark beasts in each man, and Yvon finds comfort in their company.

But no matter how many stanzas of the fall of Lucifer that Yvon can memorise, Milton is a lease more than a gift--the English have given Milton to him in exchange for gratitude and devotion. They think that the fact that he can read and write English is a testament to the victory of their presence in this land. Never mind that Yvon can speak about three different languages from his mother’s side, and has learned English and French on his own before attending Harvard. Sometimes, as he quotes, “Neither man nor angel can discern hypocrisy, the only evil that walks invisible except to God alone”--he hears the English pat themselves on the back, and the thoughtful words taste bitter. 

No, Yvon defends Milton simply because it irritates Hamish, and he finds that amusing. 

“Tell a story that I haven’t heard before instead,” says Hamish. 

The request makes Yvon laugh. Hamish has likely seen fewer winters than some of the bears wading in the river. There are thousands of stories he has not yet heard. Yvon closes his book, as he does not need it. 

“Then let me tell you about Wenebojo,” he says, and Hamish listens. 

-

When Yvon first met Hamish Goames, he expected to underestimate him. Hamish was young, barely past twenty-seven years of age, and he had that perpetual sullenness about him that only emphasised his youth. Yvon heard in passing that Hamish’s brother-in-law also worked for the Hudson Bay Company, which gave Yvon an amusing impression of a little boy tagging along with his older brother’s gang. 

“Hamish Goames,” he had said with the sort of tone one would reserve for a funeral. “At your service.” 

He had pale grey eyes, like the sky after a heavy storm had already passed, and his lips were constantly fixed in a worried line. He looked not the type that would last here. He seemed like someone who cared too much, and the Company wanted little to do with those sort. 

“Yvon Fitzpatrick,” Yvon said. “At the Company’s, or whoever is putting the coin in my purse.”

There was a hint of cautious curiosity in Hamish’s eyes as he tried to affix the French name to Yvon’s face. Yvon smiled in spite of himself.

“It is not my only name,” he said, “if that is what you were wondering.” 

Hamish had the right mind to look humbled. 

“What other names are yours, then?” he said. 

“I have given you one already,” Yvon said. “Don’t be too greedy.” 

Their colleagues of the Company laughed at Hamish. Don’t mind Yvon, they said. You won’t find it easy to understand him. He speaks in riddles.

But Hamish shook his head. No, he said. Yvon had spoken very plainly. You just don’t like to understand when you’ve been refused. 

Hamish was earnest, and honest men do not survive Turtle Island when they live among the English and the French. Yvon knew not to get too attached, but he already knew he would be sad to see Hamish go. 

-

Some of the Company do not hide their distaste of the Iroquois. Savages, heathens, uncivilised--white men come up with many dramatic synonyms just to declare someone different. 

“Skin crawls at the sight of them,” one Company man says, with a shudder. “Always feel their eyes on the back of my head when I go out. Can’t even take a piss without feeling watched.”

“I wouldn’t flatter yourself like that,” Yvon says. “There isn’t much to see.” 

Only Hamish hears him. Yvon knows this because he sees Hamish choke on his drink.

“Their lot wear nothing but skins,” says another. “And usually, just their own. Bloody mad.” 

Yvon resists to comment, because that is obviously bullshit. Especially in the dead of winter. The company he keeps do not resist to pitch in their two cents, because men will hallucinate rumours when they apparently have nothing better to do. 

“Oi, Richards,” says another. His eyes dart sheepishly towards Yvon with a semblance of discomfort.

“Who, Fitzpatrick?” says the one named Richards. “He’s different, isn’t he? Wearing britches and a proper hat, like a proper Christian man.” 

The man nibbles on their supper, satisfied with the answer. Yvon finds himself surprisingly disappointed. 

“And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed,” Yvon recites. 

The men’s heads turn to Yvon, as if only just now comprehending that he can hear them. Yvon regards their attention with a slight smile. 

“In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him,” recites Yvon. “Buck naked, too.”

Now all conversation has been silenced. Yvon is unbothered. Normally, he would carefully consider preserving the peace of the community, but that is apparently Anishinaabe priorities--which, according to the English, is not applicable to them. So Yvon does not give a shit. 

“It’s been a while since I studied all of your books,” he said. “But I think I remember correctly that it wasn’t until the devil got a hold of man did man start wearing underwear.” He shrugs and takes a bite of an apple. “But what do I know?” 

Richards sputters. 

“You are a sensible man, Fitzpatrick,” says Richards. “Now that you’ve come to live in our world, would you ever truly want to go back into the dark?”

Yvon crunches through his apple methodically. 

“Does that mean that you think you turn into the devil’s spawn every time you strip to take a bath?” he says. He rubs his nose for good measure. “That would explain much.” 

Someone snorts with amusement. Everyone’s head turns to see who it was, but whoever it is covers themselves quickly. Yvon has a sneaking suspicion he knows who it is, because when he excuses himself to walk along the creek, Hamish leaves the group and follows him.

-

Hamish is naturally inquisitive. Behind the glower and the monotone is a young man in a new world who wants to know everything about the rivers, the mist in the mountains, the incense of a burning hemlock. It turns out that Yvon is the only one who has the patience to temper that curiosity. 

“How can you tell it is a hemlock?” he asks, and Yvon shows him the hair-thin white stripes on the back of its pines, and the tough mushrooms that sprout from the jagged bark.

“What are your stars’ stories?” he asks, and Yvon tells him of Biboonkeonini, and the coming frost ahead. When the mornings grow colder, and Hamish has to blow into his hands to feel his fingertips, Yvon hears him mutter complaints of the Wintermaker. It makes Yvon snort. 

“Do you have a family?” he asks, and Yvon says, That’s enough questions for today. He spoons an extra heap of beans into Hamish’s bowl, and it shuts him up, for now.

-

Yvon still dreams of his mother. She looks the way he last saw her, before he left for Harvard. She is cooking soup of wild rice for him, even though he is grown and can look after himself. I do not know when will be the next time I can share a meal with you, she says. 

He is no longer dressed in coats and stiff boots. He sits cross-legged beside her; there is no book of Englishmen’s words in his bag, no musket around his shoulder. He speaks in his mother’s language, and in his dreams he never stumbles over his words. 

In his dreams, she is just about the same age as he is now. She had departed at least twenty-five years ago. The fires have died down, the tobacco reduced to ash, the grief internalised. And yet his mother returns, and brushes the hair behind his ears as if he is small again. 

I’ve gone too far, haven’t I? he asks her.

She smiles. She calls him by the name the elders gave him. It is only in dreams now when anyone calls him such. He holds his breath for the morning when he will wake up and forget what it is. 

How far can you possibly go, she says, before you can never come westward? My son, you can never go far enough that you cannot come to me one day. Follow the setting sun, and you will. 

Before her hand can touch his head, he wakes up, twenty years older, in white men’s clothes with a white man’s name. 

-

Yvon is reminded of his mother by the snowfall, when he presses a handful of the freshly fallen winter against his cheek. Hamish remembers his mother through his sister. 

He carries the miniature of his sister’s face wherever he goes. Yvon initially assumed her to be his wife, and when he made a passing comment with that belief, Hamish narrowed his eyes and protectively shifted the miniature away. Alice is my sister, he said mulishly. Although any man would be lucky to have her. Which makes Randall an idiot. 

“Isn’t she beautiful?” Hamish would say when he showed Yvon the miniature. And Yvon would agree to be polite. 

From what Yvon gathers, Hamish’s mother had passed not long after he was born. Alice was his close companion as together they navigated a childhood coloured by London fires, tumultuous revolutions, and an imposing father. Yvon risks to ask, and Hamish pretends he does not hear. Yvon does not push. Neither of them want to speak of their fathers. 

“It’s strange to think,” Hamish says once, in a rare moment of honesty, “that with an ocean between us, she and I do not share the same sunrise or sunset.” 

The simple longing makes him seem childlike, which Yvon does not tell him this because Hamish becomes defensive easily. 

“Well,” Yvon says. “It’s still the same sun, isn’t it? Or do you English believe we don’t even share that?” 

Hamish smiles wryly. He does not protest. 

-

“Waaseyaa,” his mother calls him, in his dreams. 

He wakes at the first light of dawn, and so he remembers.