BOOK THREE
From Canada back to Neespaugot
In the following years, Long Rib turned into a treasure. The girl’s small black eyes were charged with a stubborn goodwill and sharp generosity. She had plain features and ill-fitting joints, was a head shorter than her mother, but had battled gravity to a standstill, walking stooped but walking, rebounding from a youth of constant malady and weakness. The girl had grown strong in all ways. She managed the chores, cooked, fished and hunted (she was a dead shot) and had taken on Nero’s care.
After being a wise pupil at the missionary, Long Rib became a teacher. Her straight black hair tied into a bun, donning a stiff dress, she lectured white and Native children in a stone and timber room alongside the church refectory. She was centuries ahead of her time in developing reading and writing skills in the mentally handicapped, having a mental retard to see to at home. She would never marry.
The poor apoplectic Nero, hump-backed and stub-armed, only slobbered. "Nero!" Guy de Meunier hooted, shaking his head at the idiot who blathered and flounced through his sister's patiently crafted exercises. "My cousin was a great one for names, no?"
Pierre-Guy died of pneumonia in the summer of 1708, leaving Melba his farm.
The following autumn, Melba was evicted from sleep by the dissolving dream of her long lost son. It was an agony without an end. Soaked in sweat she groped to the cabin window and lifted the fur. Morning was still hours away. Long Rib lay uncovered on her pallet bed, next to Nero, his misshapen head lolled to a side, his mouth a gaping tragedy. Melba covered them both, lifted the latch and went outside to relieve herself.
Millions of celestial fires burned in the arching night. The cool air dried her sweat. She shook out her moccasins for bugs and slipped them on. As she neared the woodpile, the same large animal she had seen two nights previous bolted and made a branch-cracking retreat into the forest. She peed and returned to the cabin, where Long Rib stood on the porch, rifle in arm. Melba chuckled. Her daughter made a perfect picture of a proud Coatman. “Was it that wolf back digging in the vegetable patch?”
“It’s not a wolf. It’s more a cross between a wolf and a bear. It has a most unusual color. Almost blue.”
“When it returns, I’ll get off a clean shot.” Her daughter had become a pious catholic, with scant regard for the spirit of what she blasted.
Melba went inside and returned with her leggings and a knife. Long Rib was puzzled. “You leave now? You can’t go after a monster like that with a knife.”
“I don’t intend to stab it. I’m going to talk to it.”
“Talk to it! Mother, you aren’t thinking well. Look, I’m coming too.”
“No,” ordered Melba, stopping the time to touch her dear daughter’s cheek. “I go alone.”
Free download of book three : From Canada back to Neespaugot. |
