Slow Smoke/Tamarack Blue

by Lew Sarett

TAMARACK BLUE

 

Red Lake Reservation
Lac la Croix
Superior National Forest
Rainy River
Cross Lake,
Minnesota

TAMARACK BLUE

As any brush-wolf, driven from the hills
By winter famine, waits upon the fringe
Of a settlement for cover of the dusk,
And enters it by furtive, devious route,
Cowering among the shadows, freezing taut
With every sound,—so came the widow Blue
In winter-moons to parish Pointe aux Trembles,
Doubled to earth beneath her pack of furs,
To ply her trade, to barter at the Post.
And if she ventured near the village inn,
Baring their yellow tusks the roustabouts
Would toss a dry slow leer at her and stone
Old Tamarack numb with "Mag, the Indian hag,"
With ribald epithet and jibe and gesture.
And when they waxed melodious with rye,
Pounding their ribs, and knew no way to free
The head of steam that hammered in their breasts,
Save in a raucous music, they would blare:
"She wears for petticoat a gunny bag"—
Adding, with many ponderous knowing winks,
"Oh, Skinflint Blue, with a shin of flint, too."
And thus to the end they thumped their beery song
With laughter raw, big-bellied. There were days
When the Christian gentlemen of Pointe aux Trembles
Would welcome Tamarack with such fusillade
Of bilious humor that the harried squaw,
Bruised by their epithets, with swimming eyes
Intent upon the dust, seemed well-nigh gone,
Stoned to the earth; there came a stumbling hour
When I put an arm around her bag of ribs,
And felt her bosom pounding with such fear
That had I dared to place my weight of thumb
Upon her heart, I could have pressed the life
From her as from a fluttering crippled wren
Held in my hand.

Held in my hand.Nor was the widow's perfume
Of name and reputation without reason:
Penurious, forgetful of her own
Hungering flesh, she strangled every coin
And hoarded it against some secret need;
And slattern she was,—a juiceless crone, more drab
To contemplate than venison long-cured
By the slow smoke of burning maple logs—
And quite as pungent with the wilderness.
What with the fight to draw the sap of life
From grudging soil, in sun and wind and snow,
Twenty-one years of Indian widowhood
Will parch a soul and weather any hide
To the texture of a withered russet apple:
A moon of hauling sap in the sugar-bush,
Of boiling maple-syrup; a moon for netting
Whitefish and smoking them upon the racks;
Two moons among the berries, plums, and cherries;
A moon in the cranberry bog; another moon
For harvesting the wild-rice in the ponds;
Odd days for trailing moose and jerking meat;
And then the snow—and trap-lines to be strung
Among the hills for twenty swampy miles,
For minks and martens, otters, beavers, wolves.
So steadfast was the bronzed coureuse de bois
On her yearly round—like hands upon a clock—
Given the week and weather, I could tell
As surely as the needle of a compass
Finds the magnetic pole, what grove of spruce,
What jutting rock or lonely waste of swamp
Sheltered the widow's bones at night from beat
Of rain or snow.

Of rain or snow.And when the spring thaws came,
And bread was low, and her pagan stomach lay
As flat against her spine as any trout's
After a spawning-season, there were nights
When Tamarack's ears were sensitive to silver—
Evenings when any lumberjack on drive,
Gone rampant with the solitude of winter
And hungry for affection, might persuade
The otherwise forlorn and famished widow
To join him in a moment of romance.
Oh, not without demurring did she yield—
And not without reason: otter pelts are rare,
Cranberries buy no silken petticoats,
No singing lessons—for there was Susie Blue.

Whenever Tamarack touched the world in shame
Or drudgery or barter, she had for end
The wringing of a comfort for her daughter—
As when a cactus pushes down its roots
Among the hostile sands for food and moisture,
And sends the stream and sparkle of its life
Up to a creaming blossom. None of us
In parish Pointe aux Trembles could fathom why
The outcast crucified herself for Susie.
Some said that Susie Blue was all the kin
The starveling had; and others, among the elders,
Held that the half-breed daughter carried every
Feature of Antoine Blue, who fathered her,
As clearly as a tranquil mountain-pool
Holds on its breast the overhanging sky;
And added that the pagan drab was proud
That she had crossed to the issue of her flesh
The pure white strain, the color of a Frenchman.
Whatever the reason, when the voyageur
Let out his quart of blood upon the floor
After a drunken brawl at Jock McKay's,
The widow set herself to live for Susie,
Bustling from crimson dawn to purple dusk—
And sometimes in the furtive black of night—
Hither and yon, in every wind and weather,
Scratching the mulch for morsels of the earth,
And salvaging the tender bits—a grouse
With a solitary chick. Of luxuries
Wrung from the widow's frame there was no end:
Ribbons and scarves and laces—all for Susie;
And four long years at Indian boarding-school;
A year at Fort de Bois in business-college
For higher education; and, topping all,
Three seasons spent in culture of the voice.
Oh, such a dream as stirred the widow's heart!—
A hope that put a savor in her world,
A zest for life; a dream of cities thralled
By silver music fountaining from Susie,
Cities that flashed upon the velvet night
In scrawling fire the name of Susie Blue;
A dream wherein the widow would declare
In glory, comfort, rest, her dividends
Upon the flesh put in for capital.

How clearly I recall the eventful spring
When Sue returned from her gilding at the Fort!
Old Tamarack was away—at Lac la Croix
Netting for fish—and could not come to town
To welcome her. But when the run of trout
Was at an end, she cached her nets and floats
And paddled down in time for Corpus Christi.
Some circumstance conspired to keep the two
Apart until the eucharistic feast—
Perhaps the village folk who always took
A Christian interest in Susie's morals.
But Thursday found the wistful derelict
Stiff on a bench in Mission Sacré Cœur
More taut for the high sweet moment of her life
Than quivering catgut strung upon a fiddle—
For Susie was to sing in Corpus Christi;
The pagan was about to claim her own.

I'd never seen the squaw in her Sunday-best:
Soft doeskin moccasins of corn-flower blue,
Patterned with lemon beads and lemon quills;
Checkered vermilion gown of calico
To hide her flinty shins, her thin flat hips;
An umber shawl, drawn tight about her head
And anchored at her breast by leather hands—
A dubious madonna of the pines.
Somehow the crone had burst her dull cocoon
Upon this day, was almost radiant
With loveliness, as if upon the new-born
Wings of desire she were about to leave
The earth and know the luxury of sunlight.
The apologetic eyes, the mien of one
Bludgeoned to earth by rancid drollery,
Had vanished; on her face there was the look
That glorifies a partridge once in life—
When, after endless labor, pain, and trouble
Rearing her first-born brood, she contemplates
Her young ones pattering among the leaves
On steady legs, and, clucking pridefully,
Outspreads her shining feathers to the wind.
And when the widow shot a wisp of smile
At me from underneath her umber cowl—
A smile so tremulous, so fragmentary,
And yet so shyly confident that all
The dawning world this day was exquisite,
A whisk of overture so diffident
And yet so palpitant for friendliness—
Somehow the poignant silver of it slipped
Between my ribs and touched me at the quick,
And I was moved to join her in her pew.

Oh, how her eyes, like embers in a breeze,
Flared up to life when Father Bruno led
Her daughter from the choir and Susie set
Herself to sing. Susie was beautiful,
Sullenly beautiful with sagging color:
Blue was the half-seen valley of her breast;
Her blue hair held the dusk; beneath her lids
Blue were the cryptic shadows, stealthy blue,
Skulking with wraiths that spoke of intimate,
Too intimate, communion with the night,
The languor of the moon. Beneath the glass
Of hothouse culture she had come to fruit,
A dusky grape grown redolent with wine,
A grape whose velvet-silver bloom reveals
The finger-smudge of too many dawdling thumbs.

She braced herself and tossed a cataract
Of treble notes among the mission rafters,
While Sister Mercy followed on the organ.
Something distressed me in the melody—
A hint of metal, a subtle dissonance;
Perhaps the trouble lay with Sister Mercy,
Or else the organ needful of repair.
To me there seemed a mellow spirit wanting,
As if the chambers of the half-breed's soul—
Like a fiddle-box, unseasoned by the long
Slow sun and wind, and weathered too rapidly
Beside a comfortable hothouse flame—
Lacked in the power to resonate the tone.
But the widow sat beatified, enthralled;
To her the cold flat notes were dulcet-clear,
As golden in their tones as the slow bronze bell
That swung among the girders overhead
And echoed in the hills. And Susie sang,
Serene, oblivious of all the world—
Save in a dim far pew a florid white man
Whose glance went up her bosom to her lips
And inventoried all of Susie's charms.
Was it for him she chanted? lifted up
The tawny blue-veined marble of her arm
In casual gesture to pat a random lock?
For him she shook her perfume on the air?—
Bold as a young deer rutting in October,
Drenching its heavy musk upon the wind,
And waiting—silhouetted on the moon—
Waiting the beat of coming cloven hoofs.

When Sue dispatched her final vibrant note
In a lingering amen and came to earth,
She undulated down the aisle with swash
Of silken petticoat to greet and join
Her glorified old mother—so it seemed.
And when she came within the pagan's reach,
The widow, bright with tears, and tremulous,
Uttered a rivulet of ecstasy
As wistful as the wind in autumn boughs,
And strove to touch the hand of Sue, half stood
To welcome her. The daughter paused, uncertain,
The passing of a breath. Haunted her face;
The dear dim ghosts of wildwood yesterdays
Laid gentle hands upon the half-breed's heart,
Struggled to bring her soul to life again.
She wavered. Then conscious of the battery
Of parish eyes upon her, the village code
Rich with taboos of blue and flinty flesh,
And mindful of the gulf between the two,
Sprung from her Christian culture at the Fort,
She gathered up her new-born pride, and froze.
With eyes as cold and stony as a pike's
She looked at Tamarack—as on a vagrant wind;
With but the tremor of a lip, a fleeting
Hail and farewell, she slipped her flaccid palm
From out the pagan's gnarled and weathered hand
And rustled down the room and out the door,
The stranger at her heels—a coyote warm
And drooling on the trail of musky deer.

The widow held her posture, breathless, stunned;
Swayed for a moment, blindly groped her way,
And wilted to the bench—as when a mallard,
High on a lift of buoyant homing wind,
Before a blast of whistling lead, careers,
Hovers bewildered, and, crumpling up its wings,
Plummets to earth, to lie upon the dust
A bleeding thing suffused with anguish, broken.
At last she gathered the remnants of her strength;
Huddling within her corner, stoic, cold,
And burying her head within her cowl,
She parried all the gimlet eyes that strove
To penetrate the shadows to her mood.
And when the curé lifted up his hands
And blessed his flock, the derelict went shuffling
Along the aisle and vanished in the mist
Of Lac la Croix.

Of Lac la Croix.Some untoward circumstance
Stifled my breath—perhaps the atmosphere,
The fetid body-odors in the room.
I hurried from the hall to sun-washed air.
Bridling my sorrel mare, I found the trail
That skirts the mossy banks of Stonybrook,
And cantered homeward to all the kindred-folk
That ever wait my coming with high heart:
My setter bitch asprawl beside the door,
Drowsy, at peace with all the droning flies;
The woodchucks, quizzical and palpitant,
That venture from their den among the logs
To query me for crumbs; the crippled doe,
Who, lodging with me, crops my meadow-grass
And tramples havoc in my bed of beets,
Gloriously confident that I shall never
Muster the will to serve her with a notice!—
To all that blessed vagrom company
With whom I band myself against the world.
And all its high concerns and tribulations.

Somehow the valley was uncommonly
Serene and lovely, following the rain,
The mellow benediction of the sun.
The beaver-ponds that held upon their glass
The clean clear blue of noon, the pebbly brook
Meandering its twisted silver rope
Through hemlock arches, loitering in pools
Clear-hued as brimming morning-glories, placid,
Save when a trout would put a slow round kiss
Upon the water—these were beautiful.
The rustle of winds among the aspen-trees,
The fragrance on the air when my sorrel mount,
Loping upon the trail, flung down her hoofs
Upon the wintergreen and left it bruised
And dripping—these were very clean and cool.
And I was glad for the wild plums crimsoning
Among the leaves, and for the frail blue millers
Glinting above them—chips of a splintered sky;
Glad for the blossoming alfalfa fields
Robust with wining sap, and the asters bobbing
And chuckling at the whimsies of the breeze;
Glad for the far jang-jangling cattle-bells
That intimated a land of deep wet grass
And lazy water, a world of no distress,
No pain, no sorrow, a valley of contentment.

Until I came upon a mullein stalk,
Withered and bended almost to the ground
Beneath the weight of a raucous purple grackle,
A weed so scrawny of twig, so gnarled, so old,
That when I flung a pebble at the bird
Heavy upon the bough, the mullein failed
To spring its ragged blades from earth again—
The suppleness of life had gone from it;
Something in this distressed me, haunted me.
Something in mullein, stricken, drooping, doomed—
When I can hear the rustle of a ghost
Upon November wind, a ghost that whispers
Of chill white nights and brittle stars to come,
Of solitude with never a creature sounding,
Save lowing moose, bewildered by the snow,
Forlornly rumped against the howling wind—
Something in palsied mullein troubles me.