Jinot opened his mouth to say something, then consulted the atlas. It was far, far — a long skinny wasp-waisted country at the bottom of the world.
“I— Mr. Bone, I have sworn to keep Aaron close to me until he attains manhood. You know my sad history, sir. He is all I have left.”
“Quite simple. Tell him to pack his trunk. He shall come with us. A husky lad is useful when traveling.”
• • •
But Aaron only shook his head and went into one of his long, silent spells. For days he did not respond to Jinot’s badgering and pleading. He smiled distantly as if his thoughts were too lofty to share.
“Father, I do not wish to go on the ocean. It is my desire to go to Nova Scotia and find our family, whatever Sel relatives may be there. I wish to know that life.”
“Then you would do better to go west to Manitoulin Island and seek out your uncle Josime. He returned to the old ways.”
“But not Mi’kmaq!”
“No, because Mi’kmaw old ways no longer exist. And because he loved that Odaawa girl I have told you about many times. If you wish to know the old forest life of our people you must find Josime. But you are too young to make that journey alone. Come with us to this New Zealand and on our return I will go with you to Manitoulin Island and together we will find Josime.” But secretly he thought the shadow of whitemen ways might have lengthened far across the land to touch even Manitoulin Island and the Odaawa.
Aaron listened to all of this; it did seem best to find Josime, a person with a name and a place. But he would not go over the ocean. He wrote a short letter and pinned it to Jinot’s black coat.
Dear Father. I do not go to Newzeelum. I go Nova Scohsia then I go find uncle Josime. When I return you hear my good stories.
He believed the old Mi’kmaw ways — whatever they were — could not be utterly lost, and started walking north, hopeful.
Jinot wrote to Elise that he was going with Mr. Bone across the ocean. Anything might happen to him, for he was crippled and not young, and he wanted her to know where he was. Aaron, he wrote, had refused to come with him. “I will write to you,” he promised. Two days before he left he had a long answer from Elise, who was unhappy with his news of New Zealand. “It seems everyone is going far away Aaron is repeated here with Skerry i fear we must allow these boys their desires even know how cruel the world may treat them.” She described the upsetting scene between Skerry and Dr. Hallagher.
Skerry come home from that dartmouth college very sad What is wrong with you Skerry are you not pleased to be at home again among those who love you you are unnatural quiet said the doctor dear Jinot I fetched a venison pasty from the pantry Skerry’s favorite food I thought sad because he was morning Humphrey we all morn him you know but doctor told us many times that the end was come we try to make his hour on earth with us as happy Skerry said i have known that for years as you then what is the matter is it the school Doctor spoke very loud but Skerry would not say nothing doctor said it is the school something has happen is that not so Skerry made a sore face and said they want us who came there because we have Indian blood they want us to be missionaries All are to be missionaries, return to our tribe and preach gospel I was never in a tribe I have no body to preach to I want study law but they said the onli study for Indans was thology and preachin so it is useless for me to go to that school Instead Skerry said papa I wish you let me read law with judge foster I wish you to ask him I can do this Jinot to Doctor this was unwelcome request as he once treat judge fosters daughter lauraRose for consumption and she die he explain to the judge that disease was far gone nothing save her but the judge turned his grieve into hate for Doctor So he could not ask that And Skerry left home he said he would go to canada and find his tribe he was very angry and he left
Ps forgive I forget writing like Beatrix showed us
52. kauri
Jinot felt as a fallen pine must feel, hurled into another world. London was not the larger Boston he had expected but a sweating, boiling turmoil of thieves, cloudy-eyed horses with bad legs, miry streets, each with its equine corpse, the stink of excrement and coal smoke and burned cabbage and extraordinary glimpses of silk and exotic feather where crossing sweepers with brooms cleared a way for pedestrians. Mr. Bone had leased quarters for a month in a shabby-genteel neighborhood a mile from the great wharves and bustle of shipping. The ax maker’s rooms were pleasant with a sitting room and a bedroom featuring a carved mahogany bedstead enclosed by only slightly moldy bed curtains. Jinot’s adjoining room was small and dark, but Mr. Bone graciously invited him to share the sitting room.
“Come, Mr. Jinot Sel,” said Mr. Bone on the first morning ashore. “Let us walk about in this greatest city in the world. I will show you the wonders of the place. Let us go down to the wharves.”
They left the avenue of decaying Georgian residences for a street of ironmongers, red piles of metal and dumps of coal. Jinot flinched at the sight of a family of ragged adults and their swarm of filthy, emaciated children—“likely refugees forced off rural lands by enclosure,” Mr. Bone remarked. Hundreds of workers rushed about, navvies and dockworkers, cobble setters laying stones, scavengers, sooty sweeps emptying their buckets into the river. They heard cheers and shouts nearby.
“What is that hullie-balloo?” said Mr. Bone. “Let us see.” Rounding the corner they came on a pair of fighting men circled by forty or more shouting onlookers. Jinot remarked that the English seemed to enjoy fisticuffs as much as drunken barkskins.
“We are a fighting race,” said Mr. Bone with relish as they walked on. Newspaper hawkers thrust their wares in the men’s faces, and among a dozen bills pasted on the side of a warehouse one shouted in swollen letters: EMIGRATION TO NEW ZEALAND.
“Ah, Mr. Edward Wakefield, the gentleman behind the New Zealand Company, is an immensely clever Englishman,” said Mr. Bone. “He has very sound ideas on colonization. He has a sense of feeling for the solid English workingman and small businessman as well as the gentry. He understands that random settlement, as happened in the American colonies, is contrary to clear reason and scientific method. His plan of systematic colonization is admirable, for then society is stratified from the beginning with correct classes. Had England done this with the American colonies and Canada, those countries would not be ruled by the pigheaded creatures of today.” He looked at his watch and said, “Enough sightseeing. Let us hurry. I have a meeting.”
Mr. Bone’s chief adviser was a missionary of obscure Protestant denomination, the Reverend Mr. Edward Torrents Rainburrow, possessed of a thick jaw blue with crowding whiskers, a mouth as wide as his face and inside it a set of pale green teeth. His basso completed the picture of an overbearing bully, but he had tamed his voice to a quiet pitch, and he smiled.
• • •
There were a dozen travelers at the meeting. A tall-headed fellow speculated how long the voyage from London to New Zealand might take. “Depending on weather and the favor of God it might be as swift as five months — or considerably more,” said a jowly missionary who repeatedly filled his wineglass. “First port of call will be Port Jackson, the convict colony which will also be the departure point for New Zealand. The convict transports go on to that island and pick up a load of masts before returning to England. The trees are of high quality.”