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The engagés, dizzy with the narcotic effect of deep forest, stumbled on sprawling spruce roots. Bébites assailed them, minuscule no-seeums like heated needles, blackflies with a painless bite that dispersed slow toxins, swarms of mosquitoes in such millions that their shrill keening was the sound of the woods. At a bog Monsieur Trépagny told them to smear mud over their exposed skin, especially behind the ears and on the crown of the head. The insects crept through the hair and stabbed the scalp. That, said Monsieur Trépagny, was why he wore a tuque in this damnable country. René thought an iron helmet would be a better choice. Monsieur Trépagny said the sauvages made a protective salve from spruce needle oil and animal fat but he had none. Mud would do. They walked on through the dim woods, climbing over mossy humps, passing under branches drooping like dark funeral swags. The engagés' legs, weakened by the long ocean voyage, cramped with fatigue.
"How big is this forest?" asked Duquet in his whinging treble voice. He was scarcely larger than a child.
"It is the forest of the world. It is infinite. It twists around as a snake swallows its own tail and has no end and no beginning. No one has ever seen its farthest dimension."
Monsieur Trépagny stopped. With his stick he smashed out dry spruce twigs at the base of a tree. From beneath his cloak he took a fire bundle and made a small blaze. They crouched around it, stretching out their purple hands. He unfolded a cloth wrapping revealing a piece of moose meat, cut pieces for each of them. Famished, René, who had only hoped for bread, bit and tore at the meat. The grey mosquitoes hummed at his ears. Duquet looked out from puffed slits and, unable to chew, he sucked the meat. Beneath Monsieur Trépagny's generosity they sensed contempt.
They walked on through a chaos of deadfalls, victims of some great windstorm, Monsieur Trépagny following no discernible path but frequently looking upward. René saw he was following cut marks on certain trees, marks ten feet above the ground. Later he learned someone had blazed the trees in winter striding high above the earth in snowshoes like a kind of weightless wizard.
The forest had many edges, like a lace altarpiece. Its moody darkness eased in the clearings. Unknown plants and curious blossoms caught their eyes, funeral spruce and hemlock, the bright newgrowth puffs at the tips of the pine branches, silvery tossing willow, the mint green of new birch—a place where even the sunlight was green. As they approached one opening they heard an irregular clacking sound like sticks—grey bones tied in a tree, stirred by the wind. Monsieur Trépagny said that the sauvages often hung up the bones of a killed animal after thanking its spirit. He led them around beaver ponds protected by almost impenetrable alder queaches, warning that the narrow pathways were moose runs. They passed through wet country. Hollows brimmed with tea-colored rainwater. The quaking sphagnum, punctuated with pitcher plants, sucked at every step. The young men had never imagined country so wild and wet, so thickly wooded. When an alder branch tore Duquet's jacket he swore in a low voice. Monsieur Trépagny heard him and said he must never curse a tree, especially the alder, which had medicinal powers. They drank at streams, crossed shallow riffles curved like damascened scimitar blades. Oh, how much longer, muttered Duquet, one hand to the side of his face.
They came again to open forest, where it was easy to stride under the trees. Sauvages burned away the underbrush, said their new master in a disparaging tone. In late afternoon Monsieur Trépagny cried "porc-épic!" and suddenly hurled his walking stick. It whirled once and struck the porcupine a blow on the nose. The animal pitched down like a falling star, trailed by blood drops. Monsieur Trépagny built a big fire and when the flames subsided into purple rods suspended the gutted animal over the coals. The burning quills stank, but when he took the carcass off the fire, beneath the blackened crust the meat was good. From his bottomless pockets Monsieur Trépagny drew a bag of salt and gave them each a pinch. The leftover meat he wrapped in a greasy cloth.
Excerpted from Barskins: A Novel by Annie Proulx. Copyright © 2016 by Dead Line, Ltd. Excerpted with permission by Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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