Читать книгу White Feather 3-Book Bundle - Jennifer Dance - Страница 9

Crooked Ear followed the child and his father for five days, his pads falling softly on the narrow trail, but when the forest ended and the track headed diagonally across a meadow, he would go no further. He needed to feel the protection of the trees. Open spaces made him anxious. So he sat on his haunches just within the tree line, one ear pricked to the sky, the other folded in half, his amber eyes following the two Uprights. The little one ran back to him and buried a wet face into his ruff, but the soothing feeling was not there.

The tall Upright took the little one by the hand and led him into the gentle waves of sun-bleached grass. Crooked Ear trembled and whined, wanting to follow, but the feral part of his nature kept him rooted. The little Upright vanished first, then the tall one disappeared. Their scent hung on the air, and Crooked Ear raised his nostrils to the breeze and inhaled. Then he sat on his haunches and waited.

Red Wolf reached out and clutched his father’s hand. In silence they walked the last few miles, their pace slowing until, some ten feet from the gate, they stopped.

“I am frightened,” Red Wolf whispered.

Man and boy stared through the iron bars of the gate to the large building that stood in a grassy clearing. It was like nothing they had ever seen; big, solid and symmetrical, with three rows of small barred windows neatly stacked, one on top of the other.

“I don’t want to go to school,” Red Wolf said, gazing without comprehension at the mandate etched over the main doorway: To rescue the heathens from their evil ways and integrate them into Christian society.

“We have no choice,” his father replied. “It is the white man’s law. You must learn their ways. It is the only hope for The People.”

The boy’s chin quivered. “I want to go home,” he said, the back of his hand quickly wiping a tear from his cheek.

Tears stung HeWhoWhistles’ eyes, but he would not allow them to fall.

“It will be exciting for you,” he said, forcing a smile, “like going to summer camp! You will have new friends to play with.”

Red Wolf remembered how he had felt each spring when his family left their small camp on the beach at Clear Lake and made the annual migration to the larger summer camp in the northern forest. It was exciting to pack the entire contents of their home into canoes and paddle for days across lakes and up rivers, sleeping under the stars, and waking to the calls of loons. He wished he were back in the canoe now, trailing a hand in the clear water, watching his father’s muscular shoulders, listening to the quiet dip of the paddle, the slap of a hand on a mosquito, or the rasp of fingernails on bitten flesh. He remembered how eager he had been to sleep in the new summer wiigwam, even though it was identical to the winter one, right down to the mats, the furs, and the birch-bark containers that they brought along. But he didn’t feel any excitement now, only apprehension and gut-wrenching sadness.

“Soon you will understand the white man’s signs just as you understand the signs of the animals,” HeWhoWhistles said, “then you will make marks and send them to me.”

The child lowered his head and stared at his feet, working the toe of his elk-hide moccasin into the dusty surface of the laneway. “But how will you understand the marks, Father?”

HeWhoWhistles sighed. “I will visit soon … as soon as they let me leave the reserve. Time will pass quickly. Winter will come. And go. And then you will return to us.”

The sound of a key turning in a lock brought father and son back to the world around them. They looked through the iron bars of the gate directly into the round face of a man who had not one hair on his head.

“You’re late. Very late! Days late!” the man said in stilted Algonquian. “Come. Biindigek. Hurry.”

He opened the gate and yanked the child through, slamming the bars in the face of HeWhoWhistles and turning the key with a loud clunk.

“I must see where he will be,” HeWhoWhistles demanded. “His mother, she must know.”

“Come back at the end of June,” the man shouted, dragging the child toward the building.

“June?” HeWhoWhistles said.

“When the sun is high in the sky,” the man explained. “When the days are long.”

“He needs this,” HeWhoWhistles protested, offering up an elk-skin pouch.

“Take it home!” the bald man yelled. “And get out of here right now or I’ll set the dog on you.”

Red Wolf dug in his heels and used all of his strength to resist the force of the big man who was taking him from his father. Impatient with the slow progress, the man gripped the boy’s ear and lifted him to his toes. Red Wolf squealed and lashed out blindly with his fists. The man let him go and doubled over, hands between legs, blotches of scarlet spreading up his neck and over his head. Red Wolf dashed toward his father, throwing himself against the locked gate, scrambling to get a foothold, trying to climb up and over.

HeWhoWhistles pointed to the top of the tall gate, where barbed wire lay coiled like a sleeping snake. “The wire has teeth! It will eat your flesh! ”

Red Wolf continued scrambling upward. He was inches from the top when the man’s powerful arms grabbed him, jerked him away from the gate, and carried him through the school door. He fought to look back at his father. HeWhoWhistles had sunk to his knees and was wailing.

The school door slammed shut. “Listen well,” the man growled, tossing Red Wolf against the wall as though he had no more weight than a leaf. “I will talk in your tongue so you will understand. I am Mister Hall. I run things here.”

He lowered his voice to a whisper and hissed through crooked yellow teeth. “I can make your life very uncomfortable, or we can be friends. You get to choose. See, it all depends on how you behave. Understand?”

Before he could respond, Red Wolf was shoved into the wall a second time. He gasped, struggling to breathe.

“As far as I’m concerned, you’re a worthless Indian,” the man said, spittle flying from his mouth along with the mixture of Algonquian and English words. “And it’s a waste of everybody’s time trying to educate you, civilize you, and integrate you. You’ll never be anything but a filthy savage!”

A glob of saliva fell on Red Wolf’s shin. It crept along the slope of his foot toward the porcupine quills that his mother had sewn on his moccasin. He watched as though all of this was happening to a different child, a different foot, a different moccasin.

The man released his grip and stepped back a pace, wagging a finger vigorously in the air and barking strange words. “I don’t enjoy this job, but it’s a good income for me and the wife. So what I’m saying is this —”

Red Wolf struggled to focus on the tip of the finger that was moving closer and closer to his face. And then it happened — he felt himself stretching upward, growing taller and thinner until he was looking down on the man’s bald head. He saw sweat gleaming there.

“— don’t make my job more difficult, or you’ll be sorry.”

Red Wolf floated peacefully. Beneath him, the man’s meaty fist engulfed the fragile hand of a small boy, a boy whose eyes were wide with fear. Red Wolf noticed the whiskers that sprouted from the man’s ears. They were the colour of autumn leaves and he thought it strange that Mister Hall had orange hair on his ears, but none on his head. He wondered if the hair of white-skins changed colour in the autumn and fell from their heads like the leaves fall from the trees.

The man’s demeanour softened, his mouth stretching into a grin. “But if you behave yourself, you’ll be just fine.”

Red Wolf slid back into his own moccasins, but he felt no reassurance from the man’s words, and no comfort from the man’s smile. The grey-blue eyes did not twinkle with warmth and kindness like those of The People. And, as Mister Hall led him along the corridor, he felt something he had never felt before: dread.

“This is your house-mother, your wiigwam mother,” Mister Hall said, speaking loudly in stilted Algonquian. “She’s my wife, my woman. But you call her Mother Hall. Understand?”

The woman’s voice was shrill and she spoke words that had no meaning. “Take off your clothes so I can disinfect you. We don’t want your lice and fleas in the building.”

Red Wolf stared blankly at her.

“Quickly!”

Her mouth continued to move as she spat sounds into the air. Red Wolf watched, but he didn’t understand the words. He noticed the thin, colourless hair that was pulled tightly from her face, creating the illusion that she had no hair at all. He noticed that her long grey skirt was fastened at the waist with a leather belt and that rawhide strips hung from the belt, dangling almost to the ground. The woman fingered them as she spoke. Suddenly, with a flick of the wrist, she sent the strips flying though the air. They snaked around Red Wolf’s bare calves with a stinging slap. He jumped away, yelping at the unexpected pain. He bit his bottom lip and wiped away the tears with the back of his hands.

The woman continued to make the strange sounds, her whole face involved in her speech, but Red Wolf kept his eyes focused on her hands, especially the right hand. When it brushed against the rawhide strips, he braced for more stinging pain, but it didn’t come. Instead the woman thrust both her hands skyward and looked up. Red Wolf looked up too.

“Good grief!” she exclaimed. “Here’s another one that don’t speak English, not a single word!”

Slower and louder still, she tried again. “Take … off … your … clothes.”

She pulled the soft hide shirt over his head and tossed it into the open lid of the potbellied stove. The fire belched smoke. The child was distraught. He had failed to protect his mother’s handiwork and her disappointment weighed on him. He told the woman how hard his mother had worked making the shirt, and how she had made the fringe extra long because he had wanted it that way.

The rawhide strips coiled around his legs and ankles.

“Don’t speak that savage language!”

It was fear, not comprehension that made him obey.

Why did Father leave me here? Why doesn’t he come and take me home?

The silence was soon shattered by another shrill outburst from the woman. Red Wolf stood immobile and mute. Mother Hall reached out to remove his breechcloth. Red Wolf held on fast, but after a brief struggle the woman won and, except for the wolf’s head pendant that hung around his neck on a strip of leather, he was naked.

“Superstitious witchcraft!” she shrieked, snatching the pendant with a force that broke the leather and bruised his neck. She turned to poke at the fire, not noticing that the pendant had slipped from the leather to the floor.

Red Wolf’s foot reacted instantly, pushing the pendant under the desk, where it was out of sight. As his bare toes made contact with the carved bone, he remembered when his father had made it. It had been in the days following the summer hunt when the weary hunters had rested and when the women had worked at preparing the meat.

HeWhoWhistles was sitting at the edge of the lake, holding a piece of bone in his palm and running his fingers over it, listening to it, he had said, so he could free the spirit within. But then Grandmother had spoiled everything! Usually Red Wolf enjoyed spending time with the old woman; she told him the names of the plants, the ailments they cured, the colour dye they gave, what was good for brewing tea or flavouring stew. But on this day he had just wanted to sit with his father and watch the magical transformation that was about to happen.

Later, when he returned to his father’s side, the pelvic bone of the deer had become the head of a wolf. Red Wolf was thrilled when his father tied it around his neck on a rawhide strip.

Now, naked in front of this stranger, with his hands clasped over his groin, a tear slipped onto his cheek. He didn’t notice Mother Hall pick up the shears. Before he had the chance to realize what was happening, both of his braids had been chopped off and tossed into the potbellied stove. The boy was aghast. His hands left his private parts and flew to his head, reaching for the remaining hair that bounced around his ears. He knew hair was sacred! It should be cut only when someone died.

Has Mother died? Is that why Father brought me here? The odour of burning hair filled his lungs and he could no longer hold back the torrent of tears.

“Only babies cry,” Mother Hall said, flicking the whip again, but Red Wolf jumped away in time.

She shook the whip toward him, steering him backward to the far side of the room, all the while speaking the language that he couldn’t understand. “Stay away from the stove! I’ve got to wash your hair in kerosene to kill the lice. We don’t want you going up in flames and setting fire to the whole building.”

He understood the sternness in her voice.

“Shut your eyes,” she ordered, closing her own eyes to demonstrate. When the boy obliged, she forced his head over a chipped enamel bowl and poured a strong-smelling liquid over his scalp.

“Keep ’em shut.”

His head started to sting. He squeezed his eyes even tighter and tried not to breathe, but tears were choking him and some of the liquid ran into his mouth. It burned. He spat and spat again. When he thought he could stand it no longer he was lifted into a metal tub and warm water was poured over his head. Ignoring his coughing and spluttering, the house-mother lathered his head with soap. Finally, she pulled him out, wrapped him in a towel, and prodded him back toward the stove. For a horrifying second Red Wolf thought that she was going to toss him into the flames. He almost collapsed with relief when he realized that he was just supposed to stand close to the stove to dry.

The woman handed him clean clothes and mimed putting them on. The thick underpants and trousers felt rough and scratchy on his skin, unlike the soft deerskin breechcloth and leggings he had grown up in. He stared blankly at the unfamiliar fasteners on the white cotton shirt.

“It goes like this,” Mother Hall said, slipping the tiny button through the equally tiny hole. He clumsily tried to fasten one. “You’ll soon be able to do it. Here, put these on your feet.”

She helped him lace and tie the brown leather boots. They felt uncomfortable. The rough leather chafed his bare skin. He was unable to stretch and wiggle his toes as he had always done in his moccasins. But worst of all, he could not feel the earth beneath his feet.

“You’ll get wool socks when the weather gets cold, and a jacket and cap, too,” she said, wrapping a stiff collar tightly around his neck and attaching it with a stud. It was so tight he could barely breathe.

“Now pull the suspenders up over your shoulders, like this. And put your arms into this waistcoat.”

Standing back to admire the transformation, the woman smiled. “Good,” she said. “You look almost civilized.” Without understanding any of the words, Red Wolf knew she was happier now. Her tone was lighter and he felt less threatened. “Now let me straighten things up here and I’ll take you to the office.”

Red Wolf ran his hands down his new clothes, discovering two deep pockets in his trousers. As soon as the woman turned her back, he snatched up the wolf pendant from under the desk and plunged it into the right pocket. He fingered the smooth bone and traced its outline, seeing the face of the wolf in his mind. The bone became warm to his touch and comforted him. He had this one thing, this one memory of home, and he was determined to keep it at all cost.

Mother Hall finished her chores and turned her attention back to the boy. “Take your hands out of your pocket, boy,” she ordered.

He remained still and silent, not risking another slap by confessing that he did not understand.

“Hand,” she said, lifting his left hand from his pocket.

The child’s heart raced. Don’t let her find my pendant. Holding out her own large hands, she repeated the word, “Hand.”

Red Wolf realized that she wanted him to make the same sound. Tentatively at first, expecting the rawhide strips to wrap around his legs, he said the word.

The woman smiled. “Good,” she exclaimed, tousling his new short hair, “that’s a start. You’ll be talking English in no time. Come on. I’ll take you to meet Father Thomas.”