The lithic emblem of New Hampshire, severe yet broadly approving, strikes its profile against the sky, then, staying still while you turn against the mountain, out on the New Hampshire roads far away somewhere.This is our Old Man in the Mountain.
In the latest book by Ernest Hebert, professor of English and creative writing, "The Old American" is an Algonkian, son of King Phillip, named Caucus-Meteor.
Most of his family recently dead, he had created an migr's community in Canada. This nomadic community provides safe harbor for exiles such as the men, women and children displaced from the colonial battles between the French and English and Mohawks in the mid-18th century.
Caucus-Meteor, king of Conissadawaga, wishes to be King of all the North -- of Canada and New England, to reign from Mount Hope Bay and to exercise his wisdom and experience and deep-hearted desire for power over many people.
He is bald and wears a turban to hide the baldness to preserve his pride. He had been taken as a slave when a child, taken to Europe, loved by his master, taught to speak the European languages and let escape.
To raise money for the tribunes and taxes levied on his village by the French throne by way of the local Quebecois intendant, he fights as a mercenary for a French raiding party in New Hampshire.
As the book opens he takes as loot Nathan Blake, a homesteader of great woodworking know-how and contemplative and yearning disposition. He transports Nathan, his slave, back to Conissadawaga, to provide services as a servant.
Caucus-Meteor is wise. His philosophy is not that of the Americans to come. When he comes into money, through trade or bets or fighting, he disburses all of it to his people. Through his poverty he is rich in power and venerability.
Nathan Blake, gaining currency as full citizen in the village, fulfills his wish to build a house, an Englishman's house. With this house, and the transformation from nomadic to agricultural society, and to the engagement of a Catholic Church in the town (to provide "protection" from the French throne -- that is, to prevent having to pay such egregious taxes), the splitting of the village to meet the needs of all its constituents once the strong central leader was gone resulted in the fall, perhaps inevitable, of Conissadawaga.
Professor Hebert has written a wise book, a fine old book that is fresh, open, gentle and true. The prose is clean. Caucus-Meteor's words, and Hebert's words, are free from the "Western" rut of "social contracts" and "industrial progress" and "cultured-ness."
There is a vast desire, when reading, to underline everything and quote everything and nod yes. And to read slowly, and repeatedly; to skim, then settle down, backing up chapters to catch some more. Yet the book's words are neither didactic nor reactionary.
At times the Old American seems a bit more loquacious than one would expect him to be, and the story might go on just the same without a few bon mots ("Sharing comes naturally to us. It doesn't necessarily mean I am less of a king, and you are less of a slave").
But much of the wonder of this book and of its central character is that he sounds, to nave ears, innocent or unprepared, and then, after our repeated shocks of embarrassment and humility, we read on to find we are the innocents and the immature, and the king speaks honestly and rightly.
But he also has humor, levity and goodwill; he is not the mystically sterile medicine-man of "historical fiction."
Out on the water, the conjuring fades and Caucus-Meteor is thinking that he doesn't like paddling, especially now when he has to do it all by himself.
An old Algonkian saying: you can't cheat at paddling when there is only one paddler. Well, it isn't an old saying, but it should be. In some future life and time, perhaps he will be one who creates sayings, for a people with good sayings are a good people. The conniving old man is spent; it's unlikely he can ever again give his people anything of value but his unwanted and untrustworthy advice.
"The Old American," perhaps not quite incidental to its major themes, presents one of the most satisfyingly complex views of Christianity in its genre. And with its moral ambiguity towards the Church -- or more than ambiguity, legitimate diversity of perspective -- comes ambiguity towards most moral situations. And so like the rock up to the north, this book will withstand many storms and many angles and much appreciation.