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.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
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