Woman on the Edge of Time - Marge Piercy [134]
“You’re playing them along, aren’t you?” She came up beside him as he was mopping the day room.
“Why not?” he asked her. He had become friendly again, but he no longer flirted or told her wild stories. He was numb, stripped to a wire of will she could feel. They had not burned out or cut out as much as they thought, she hoped. Something of Skip survived.
FOURTEEN
Jackrabbit went on defense. For a week Luciente sank into a low energy state that made it hard for them to connect. Then she took a day’s retreat at Treefrog and seemed herself to Connie.
Lunch at Mattapoisett was yellow soup thickened with tidbits of shrimp, crab, clam, and fish. Hawk was eating with them again, after several weeks with her friend Thunderbolt’s family.
“It got dull, sitting at the table with mems I can’t talk to. Now the taboo’s off, I’m back. I think I’d warm to stay in our family. See, today I brought a guest for lunch.”
Connie had often seen visitors besides herself, mostly people from nearby villages or others on their way through, traveling on some piece of business. Sometimes a whole troupe of players or musicians stopped for a week. Old friends or former mems came visiting. Then there were the people without village called politely drifters and impolitely puffs. Once she had seen a man with a small tattoo on his palm, which Luciente told her marked a crime of violence. Unlike the other guests, drifters often sat apart. People seemed uncomfortable with them. Sometimes they seemed to know each other, and when Connie passed near them, she heard a slang she did not recognize.
Why did Hawk bring this guest to the table? Connie saw on his palm that same tattoo, that warning mark. He was a big-boned oversized man with little flesh on him, perhaps in his late thirties.
“Waclaw just got done studying with the Cree!” Hawk bubbled.
“On the Attawapiskat. That flows into James Bay from the west.” He spoke in a hesitant voice from deep in his barrel chest.
“How long did you have to wait to study there?” Hawk asked. “Did you have to wait long?”
“Six years,” Waclaw said. “I was lucky they took me at all.”
“Six years!” Hawk’s face sagged. “That’s bottoming!”
“If they let everyone come who wants to study with them, they’d be swamped,” Waclaw said reasonably. “Most people won’t wait and so they don’t have to say no.”
“Was it worth it, waiting so long?” Hawk asked, still whining with disappointment.
Waclaw nodded. “It firmed me. I almost stayed. I am going to see my old village and decide. They say I can come back if I choose, to the Attawapiskat.”
As soon as lunch was over, Connie asked Luciente, “He’s a criminal, isn’t he? I saw a tattoo.”
“Not anymore. Person atoned. Has been studying up north.”
“The Cree, he said? Like Indians. You still have real Indians?”
Luciente nodded. “Those lands are strongly protected, under their control. Only hunting, gathering, and some scientific activities go on … . The Cree have a mixed way of living. They hunt and fish, they’ve created some Far North agriculture, some handicraft, limited manufacture. They have to take care, for the land is fragile.”
“What’s to study there?”
“A discipline, a sense of wholeness. Something ancient. They are often part-time hunters or gatherers, part time shamans, part-time scientists.”
“But was that his atoning? Going up north and living that way?”
“Never!” Luciente laughed from the belly. “That’s a great privilege. That’s why Waclaw had to wait six years. Don’t know what person did to atone. Ask, if you must, but we usually don’t. We feel it’s closed—healed. Forget!”
Connie followed at Luciente’s heels into the experimental fields where Luciente was recording comments on performance. “This chews it up. I think we found some good strains to work on next year.”
“How come you leave so much woods?” Connie asked. “Like that argument at the council. All over Mouth-of-Mattapoisett I see patches of woods, meadows, swamps, marshes. You could clear a lot more land.”
“We have far more land growing food than you did. But, Connie, aside from the water