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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