Specimen Song Read Free Page B

tattered cloth off and squeezed it till he found it hidden somewhere in the tangled folds.
    Madelaine came back. Benetsee struggled for several minutes and finally he pulled a little canoe out of the crumpled cloth of his coat.
    It was a carving, in some fine-grained wood. All the struts and braces and thwarts and ribs were carved in, too, and the outside of the canoe carved like birch bark. Du Pré could see some stains on the carving—on the seams, where the pitch went. Ah.
    It was the carving of the bâteau gros ventre —the big-bellied boat. These canoes had been made up to thirty feet long and eight feet wide. They could carry a heavy load. A thirty foot canoe would take six men to portage it around a falls or rapids, maybe eight men; those bark canoes were heavy. Then the voyageurs would move the heavy packs of furs. They would load one another with as many packs as a man could stagger with and then they would bull up or down the trail around the river. There were many songs about especially tough voyageurs and how many packs of furs they could carry.
    Du Pré thought a man might take two, three if he was very strong, but any song that said a man carried more than that was just a song. The packs of furs weighed over a hundred pounds apiece.
    “You see this here?” said Benetsee, pointing to a thwart. The thwart curved in a lot, giving the canoe a waist. “Easier to paddle.” He lifted the canoe carving and pointed to the stern, which was undercut with a roll on the bottom.
    “They hang a piece of birch right there off its ass, make it go in the water better,” said Benetsee. A birch round with rounded ends. Du Pré had never seen anything like this.
    This old goat never tell me he know about canoes, Du Pré thought, though he seem to know everything somehow.
    Benetsee drained the big glass of wine Madelaine had brought. He got to his feet.
    “I go see now,” he said, moving off toward the little creek that wound through Du Pré’s backyard. There was a path there, older than the house, probably there before the whites came.
    “I go see now”—Du Pré had heard that so many times over the years.
    The old man hopped across the creek; the tag alders on the far side swallowed him up. A squirrel chirred angrily. Du Pré heard the scrawk of a blue jay.
    But he was gone, like smoke on a summer morning.
    Du Pré turned the model around in his hands. He thought of his people paddling one of these, pulling out at the portage, reaching into the pouch at the end of their red sashes for pipe and tobacco. Jokes. Thinking about their women at the end of the journey.
    “Du Pré!” Madelaine called from the back door. “You have a telephone! Sound like someone from far away.”
    Who the hell be calling me from far away? Du Pré thought. I don’t know anybody from far away. He put the canoe model down on the grass next to the pull knife.
    It was Paul Chase. He wanted to know if Du Pré would want to go on a journey—paid, of course—by canoe over a portion of the old fur-trade route. Starting on the first of August.
    “We thought we’d try for the best weather,” said Chase. “We have a grant and can pay you, oh, four hundred a week plus your expenses.”
    “Where is this route you want to take, there?” said Du Pré.
    Saskatchewan and Manitoba, the route home, through chain lakes and down little rivers between them. On the way, they would come to a falls where archaeologists were recovering a mass of trade goods from the pool beneath left by voyageurs who had miscalculated and wrecked. Du Pré should bring his fiddle.
    “How long this take?” asked Du Pré.
    “Six weeks.”
    “I don’t think that I want to,” said Du Pré.
    “Just think about it,” said Chase.
    Du Pré said he would, but he wouldn’t change his mind.

CHAPTER 5
    D U P RÉ FINISHED “B APTISTE’S L AMENT .” He let the last note fade off and he stood still till the man in the sound booth pointed his thumb up. Du Pré sighed. He had