Читать книгу White Feather 3-Book Bundle - Jennifer Dance - Страница 20

Red Wolf’s heart had ached for ten months to return to his family. Now that he was home he was disappointed. Everything was strange. It was as if they had sent him back to the wrong home, the wrong family.

In his memory, home was a fur-lined, birch-bark wiigwam. The reality was a shack made of pine boards topped with a rusting metal roof. It reminded him of the potting shed at school where dead children, it was said, waited for spring when they would be planted in the ground. Red Wolf’s baby sister had made a stunning transformation from a helpless infant to a boisterous, inquisitive little girl. She could walk and even talk, although he could not understand her words — but at first he couldn’t understand anyone’s words, not even his mother’s. And when he spoke in English, they looked at him with blank stares.

He still didn’t understand why he had been sent away to school. His father had said they had no choice, that it was the white man’s law. But Red Wolf believed that his father could defy Father Thomas, and the Halls, and the Indian agent, and all the laws that the white man had set in place, if he wanted to.

Father Thomas had given the children a summer assignment, to turn their parents away from the sinful, savage ways that led to Hell, and guide them instead on the path to Jesus. Red Wolf had not completely understood the lesson, and Father Thomas’s words did not easily translate into Anishnaabemowin, which was beginning to return to him. However, the boy had learned quite thoroughly that he was a filthy Indian and a savage. The knowledge had left him feeling sullied and ashamed. If he told his parents that they too were filthy Indians and savages, they would be dishonoured and ashamed also.

An unnatural silence settled over the family. When they spoke to him, he answered in monosyllables, or not at all. But Red Wolf was comfortable with silence. He had learned over the past year that silence usually meant safety. For his parents, however, the silence in the small cabin was deafening.

StarWoman didn’t know what was wrong with her son and didn’t know how to fix it. She ached to hold him in her arms as she had when he was a baby, but he was cool in response to her warmth. He was getting bigger, she mused, too big to be treated like a toddler. His baby skin had started to change even before he had gone away to school. It bore the marks of growing up, of moving out into the world beyond her constant protection. But there were other marks on his skin now that she thought must have come from rough play with the boys at school. When she pointed and asked about them, he pushed her hand away and remained silent. StarWoman struggled to accept that her firstborn was growing up. It saddened her that she was being left behind. She gave her daughter the hugs she longed to give her son.

HeWhoWhistles, aware that his son had entered a new world, took sanctuary in the outdoors. Sometimes Red Wolf joined his father in the bush, and wherever the boy went, Crooked Ear followed, bounding in and out of the bushes or ambling along with the child’s hand resting on his back. HeWhoWhistles felt that the wolf understood his son better than he did, and when the creature melted back into the forest, leaving him alone with Red Wolf, he was uncomfortable. They walked close, but there was distance between them.

“What did you learn at the white man’s school?” HeWhoWhistles blurted out one day, not really expecting an answer.

Red Wolf was refamiliarizing himself with Anishnaabemowin, but the answers to his father’s question formed in his head in English, not in his mother tongue.

I learned to never talk in Anishnaabemowin.

I learned to be quiet and not draw attention to myself.

I learned to never let my pain, or my fear, or my anger show on my face.

I learned that I am a savage.

That The People are heathens and pagans.

That we are all dirty Indians.

I learned that if they educate us and cut our hair and give us white boys’ clothes, and if we say we love Jesus … then we will be saved. We will no longer be dirty Indians. But I don’t know what we shall be. I don’t think we shall ever be white boys.

I learned to hide inside myself and pretend I wasn’t there.

I learned to bury my head in the pillow and shut my eyes and pretend I couldn’t see, or hear, or feel the things that were happening in the night.

He shuddered then answered his father in the language of The People, which rolled slowly from his tongue.

“I learned about Jesus.”

“Who is Jesus?”

“A good white man.”

HeWhoWhistles looked dubious.

“He smiles … almost,” Red Wolf added.

“Does he teach you the scratchy lines?”

“No!” the boy replied. “Jesus is dead. His head is on the wall at school!”

HeWhoWhistles was confused. “His head?”

“Yes, father. Like a picture drawn in the sand. He is son of their chief, son of Father Thomas, I think.” A frown spread over the boy’s brow. “But he must have been bad, because they nailed him to a tree, like this.” Red Wolf spread his hands and dropped his head on his chest.

HeWhoWhistles was skeptical, wondering if his son had learned the white man’s lesson correctly. But he remembered the sacred story of Nanabozho and the Great Spirit Wolf. He reflected that Nanabozho and Ma’een’gun had disobeyed Creator and as a result there were consequences for eternity; wolf and man had been set on separate paths, their close bond broken. Maybe Creator had punished Jesus in the same way.

While HeWhoWhistles pondered this, Red Wolf was mentally translating his next thoughts into the language of The People.

“Jesus looks like you, father. He has long hair and doe eyes.”

Understanding lit HeWhoWhistles’ face. “That is why they killed him! They do not like The True People, or ones that look like us.”

Red Wolf nodded his agreement. “Father Thomas says, ‘Believe Jesus, or go to Hell.’”

HeWhoWhistles frowned. “Where is Hell? Is it a reserve?”

“Hell is a bad wiigwam under the earth. The fire in Hell-wiigwam is hot. It smells bad. The people in Hell-wiigwam cry forever. ForEverAndEverAmen,” he added in English.

“Can they not throw open the door flap?” HeWhoWhistles asked.

“No, they never get out! It’s their place in the spirit world forever.”

HeWhoWhistles pondered his son’s words for a long time, his breath moving in rhythm with his soft footfalls. “My son, the white man makes this life very hard for us. I am not yet dead, but already I am in Hell! They can do no more to me.”

Father and son walked on in silence, heads down, eyes on their moving feet. HeWhoWhistles reached down and plucked a stem of horsetail. Absently he pulled it in two, feeling the spray of water that sprang from the break. He handed one half to Red Wolf and used the other to thoughtfully scrape his teeth. Red Wolf did the same.

“Did you learn the scratchy lines?” HeWhoWhistles asked after a while.

“Yes.”

“Then, son, you will make sure we are not lied to again.”

August came to a close. HeWhoWhistles had been given a ten-day pass and was ready to walk his son back to school. Red Wolf said goodbye to his mother with little emotion. He saw the grief on her face, but he was angry they were sending him back, and he didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of a tearful goodbye.

When they reached the place where the forest met the meadow, Crooked Ear would go no further. Red Wolf understood that this was the moment to say goodbye. He grasped the wolf around the neck and buried his head in the warm, thick coat, breathing in the lupine odour. Tears came unexpectedly and furiously. He let them seep into the wolf’s fur.