Read Online Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Geraldine Brooks
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you die, and today I will answer you. Englishmen, and you and all the world, when they die, their souls go not to the southwest, as you have been taught. All that know the one God, who love and fear him, they go up to heaven. They ever live in joy. In God’s own house. They that know not God, who love and fear him not—liars, thieves, idle persons, murderers, they who lie with other’s wives or husbands, oppressors or the cruel, these go to hell, to the very deep. There they shall ever lament.”
Beside me, two men started muttering together, thinking that I could not understand them.
“Why should we believe our English friend, when our own fathers told us that our souls go to the southwest, to the lands of Kiehtan?”
“Well, but did you ever see a soul go to the southwest? I have not.”
“No, and when did he, yonder, see one go up to heaven or down to hell?”
“He says he has it from the book, which God himself has written.”
“What he says may be true for English, but why should I want to go to this God’s house if only English are there? If God wanted us in this house then he would have sent our ancestors such a book.”
Listening to this exchange, I realized my difficulties were no different in kind to my father’s, and that I should just have to persevere, and trust that in time God would give me the words that would turn Caleb’s heart to him.
About midway through my father’s sermon, I noticed that the people seemed restless of a sudden, their eyes glancing from father and over to the place where the clearing ended in dense oak woodland. I followed their gaze, squinting in the sunlight. Soon enough, I saw what they saw: A man, very tall, his face painted and his body decked in a great cloak of turkey feathers. He stood stock still, his arm raised, and in his hand some kind of mannekin or poppet, I couldn’t clearly see. Then, from the trees beside him, another appeared. A youth, also painted garishly.
Some of the crowd started to edge away from father. The man who had remarked about Kiehtan elbowed his companion. I heard him say the name Tequamuck. I flinched, recognizing the name: Caleb’s uncle. I squinted even harder, to discern the features of the wizard and his apprentice. But their faces were so fully painted over I could not tell if what I feared was true or not. Their presence clearly agitated the crowd. Father had long held that the pawaaws were the strongest cord that bound the Indians to their own way, and that breaking their spiritual power mattered far more than interfering with the ways and privileges of the sonquems.
The man who spoke Tequamuck’s name was the first to leave. Soon, five or six more followed. They headed towards the woods, greeting Tequamuck with great deference. When I looked again, all of them were gone.
VII
I never did ask Caleb if he was the painted youth at the right hand of the pawaaw. I did not want to hear his answer.
As that ripe summer turned to autumn, the sunlight cooled to a slantwise gleam, bronzing the beach grass and setting the beetlebung trees afire. Caleb learned his letters faster than I could credit. Before the singing of the cider, he could read and speak a serviceable kind of English. I think that because he had learned from childhood to mimic the chirps of birds in order to lure waterfowl, his ear was uncommonly attuned to pitch and tone. Once he learned a word, he soon spoke it without accent, exactly as an Englishman would. In a short while, he would not have me speak Wampanaontoaonk to him except to explicate something he could not grasp, and before long we had switched from communicating with each other only in his language, to conversing most times in mine. But as much progress as we made in that direction, in the matter of his soul he resisted and mocked me, using wit that seemed to me devil-inspired. One day, when we had been discussing Genesis, he turned to me with a gleam in his brown eyes. “So you say that all was
Beside me, two men started muttering together, thinking that I could not understand them.
“Why should we believe our English friend, when our own fathers told us that our souls go to the southwest, to the lands of Kiehtan?”
“Well, but did you ever see a soul go to the southwest? I have not.”
“No, and when did he, yonder, see one go up to heaven or down to hell?”
“He says he has it from the book, which God himself has written.”
“What he says may be true for English, but why should I want to go to this God’s house if only English are there? If God wanted us in this house then he would have sent our ancestors such a book.”
Listening to this exchange, I realized my difficulties were no different in kind to my father’s, and that I should just have to persevere, and trust that in time God would give me the words that would turn Caleb’s heart to him.
About midway through my father’s sermon, I noticed that the people seemed restless of a sudden, their eyes glancing from father and over to the place where the clearing ended in dense oak woodland. I followed their gaze, squinting in the sunlight. Soon enough, I saw what they saw: A man, very tall, his face painted and his body decked in a great cloak of turkey feathers. He stood stock still, his arm raised, and in his hand some kind of mannekin or poppet, I couldn’t clearly see. Then, from the trees beside him, another appeared. A youth, also painted garishly.
Some of the crowd started to edge away from father. The man who had remarked about Kiehtan elbowed his companion. I heard him say the name Tequamuck. I flinched, recognizing the name: Caleb’s uncle. I squinted even harder, to discern the features of the wizard and his apprentice. But their faces were so fully painted over I could not tell if what I feared was true or not. Their presence clearly agitated the crowd. Father had long held that the pawaaws were the strongest cord that bound the Indians to their own way, and that breaking their spiritual power mattered far more than interfering with the ways and privileges of the sonquems.
The man who spoke Tequamuck’s name was the first to leave. Soon, five or six more followed. They headed towards the woods, greeting Tequamuck with great deference. When I looked again, all of them were gone.
VII
I never did ask Caleb if he was the painted youth at the right hand of the pawaaw. I did not want to hear his answer.
As that ripe summer turned to autumn, the sunlight cooled to a slantwise gleam, bronzing the beach grass and setting the beetlebung trees afire. Caleb learned his letters faster than I could credit. Before the singing of the cider, he could read and speak a serviceable kind of English. I think that because he had learned from childhood to mimic the chirps of birds in order to lure waterfowl, his ear was uncommonly attuned to pitch and tone. Once he learned a word, he soon spoke it without accent, exactly as an Englishman would. In a short while, he would not have me speak Wampanaontoaonk to him except to explicate something he could not grasp, and before long we had switched from communicating with each other only in his language, to conversing most times in mine. But as much progress as we made in that direction, in the matter of his soul he resisted and mocked me, using wit that seemed to me devil-inspired. One day, when we had been discussing Genesis, he turned to me with a gleam in his brown eyes. “So you say that all was
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