Читать книгу White Feather 3-Book Bundle - Jennifer Dance - Страница 21

Red Wolf settled back into the routine of being George.

Henry moved up to Grade Two along with George, and the older boy never missed an opportunity to torment the younger. Henry would give George a swift kick on his backside when the teacher wasn’t looking; he would steal George’s slate or his chalk and try in all manner of ways to get him into trouble with the teacher. He did all this while telling George he was a stupid Indian.

George longed to tell Henry that he was the stupid Indian because he still had to go to the Grade One classroom during lunch break for remedial reading lessons with Master Evans. But George kept quiet because he was intimidated, not just by Henry’s size but by his spitefulness.

During his education thus far, George had learned as much about chickens as he had about reading, writing, and arithmetic, so it was plain to him that the pecking order in the chicken coop was no different from the pecking order in the school. The top chicken asserted its dominance by pecking at another chicken, who rarely fought back. Instead it turned on the next one down the line. At the very bottom of the order the lowliest bird became balder and balder as more and more feathers were plucked out. Once blood was drawn the hens ganged up, drilling at the blood spots in a manner that reminded George of a woodpecker hammering at a tree. They attacked the lowly hen until it lay featherless and bloody and dead.

Before coming to school George would have empathized with the victimized bird and would have tried to stop the carnage, but his tender heart had hardened, and his childish desire to help the helpless and rectify injustice had been replaced with a cold neutrality. It was as if his heart and mind were detached from what his eyes saw. He accepted the pecking order in the school just as he accepted it in the chicken coop. He watched strong boys bully weaker ones, who in turn bullied those who were weaker still. In George’s world, Henry was at the top of the pecking order. And since George had no intention of ending up at the bottom he did his fair share of bullying, too.

The Grade Two teacher was called Sir. When children couldn’t answer Sir’s questions, he made them kneel in a pan of grit. Henry knelt there more than anyone else. His knees were almost always pockmarked. This was one of the few things that gave George any gratification.

George hated Henry! It was as simple as that.

Until he had started school, he hadn’t hated anyone or anything. He had sometimes been impatient and occasionally angry, but these were short-lived moods, not the all-encompassing hatred that festered in him now. He hated school. He hated the routines. He hated the staff. But more than all these things he hated Henry.

George wished with all his heart that Henry would die.

Sickness arrived with the winter, rampaging through the school like wildfire. Henry was one of the first to be taken to the infirmary. George was elated! For once in his life, something he wished for might come true: Henry was sick. All he had to do now was die! But Henry recovered quickly and came back to class. That same day, Turtle’s face was flushed with fever and Mother Hall sent him straight to the infirmary. George was distraught. He was convinced that the God of the School was punishing him for wishing such wickedness on Henry. He prayed to Godthefather-Godtheson-and-Godtheholyspirit, asking forgiveness for being such a stupid savage and such an ungrateful sinner, and begging that Turtle would get better.

Healthy children were banned from going anywhere close to the infirmary, but George broke the rule and sneaked into the corridor in the hope of seeing Turtle. He was shocked when he saw the large number of beds that spilled out of the infirmary and were lined up in the corridor. More children were sick than he had realized. He didn’t see Turtle.

“You can’t be here!” the nurse exclaimed. “You’ll catch the sickness.”

“Is Turtle here … 298?” George asked, backing away.

The nurse looked very sad. “You have to leave right now, George.”

“Is he here?” George insisted.

“No. He’s gone.”

“Where’s he gone?” George asked.

The nurse had tears in her eyes. “He’s not in pain anymore, George. He’s home.”

George was relieved.

The young nurse barely slept. She worked around the clock. The job at Bruce County Indian Residential School was her first job since training and she so wanted to nurse the children back to health, but there were too many children and she was overwhelmed. She longed to get away, to go home to her mother and father. In desperation she went down on her knees and with tears brimming from her closed eyes she prayed, “God, find me a way out.”

She had never heard the voice of God, and she didn’t expect a verbal answer, but in her heart she suddenly knew that she had to stay with the children, to treat their ailments as best she could, but more importantly to comfort them and hold their hands and be with them when their sad souls left their bodies. She promised herself that no child would die alone, unnoticed. She prayed that God would help her.

The nurse was too busy with the living and the dying to know that the dead were taken, unceremoniously, to the potting shed in a wheelbarrow. Mother Hall wrote the tags that Mister Hall then wired onto the big toes of the cold corpses. If, during its short life, a child had imprinted itself onto the mind of a staff member, a Christian name was written on the toe-tag, but those who had not been particularly memorable went to “heaven” with the same identity they had lived by: a number.

Initially the bodies were placed in rough-sawn pine boxes, stacked from the ground up to economize on space. Rakes, hoes, shovels, and forks once spread at random throughout the shed were leaned up against the stacked boxes with a semblance of order. But when the carpenter could no longer keep pace with the demand for coffins, the bodies, wrapped in sheets, were placed directly on the slatted tables. They remained there, guarded by rat traps, until the ground thawed in the spring.

For a while George believed that Turtle had gone home to his parents, but one day in religious knowledge class, Father Thomas referred to Heaven as “Our Eternal Home.”

There was a jolt inside George’s chest. And he knew the truth.

The next morning when Mother Hall came to the dormitory, Red Wolf raised his hand and waited until she permitted him to speak.

“Please, Mother, I ask for haircut.”

Everyone looked at him as if he had gone mad.

Mother Hall smiled with delight. “Of course, 366. Tomorrow is haircut day for this dormitory, so you won’t have to wait much longer.”

The following day, as his hair fell to the ground, Red Wolf closed his eyes tight to prevent the spill of tears and, in the way of The People, he said goodbye to his friend.

Spring came. The afternoon sun beat down on the shiny metal roof of the potting shed, releasing the faintest scent of death through the cracks in the timbers. But the nights were still cool and an early morning fog settled over the grounds of Bruce County School. It dampened the coveralls of the gaunt youths who wielded long-handled shovels. The Indian agent’s dog joined them as they dug, scrabbling vigorously with his front paws, sending dirt flying through his hind legs. A safe distance away, three ravens attempted to alight on the same wooden cross. They jockeyed for dominance, flapping and squawking until the cross gave way and collapsed onto the grass, sending the birds back into the air.

They flew in a circle of reconnaissance, landing this time on a rectangular box that lay untended on the grass. United in a common task, they pecked at the wood, pulling fibres away with their strong beaks and claws. The smell, barely discernible to human senses, drove them into a frenzy of activity. But their efforts were thwarted. Father Thomas appeared at the back door of the school and lumbered toward the birds, waving his arms and shouting. The dog joined the chase, forcing the ravens to disappear into the mist. They retreated to the safety of the roof, where they preened and waited. But this was not their lucky day, and before the sun had burned away the mist, the corpses had been buried deep in the ground.

Father Thomas added the final touches. He smoothed the fresh mounds of soil with the back of the shovel and pushed newly cut pine crosses into the soft dirt. He frowned, annoyed that the sap from the fresh wood was sticking to his hands. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and tried to rub off the resin, but it only smeared. Sighing, he crossed himself and beseeched God to save the souls of the little savages. Then he went about his day.