White Feather 3-Book Bundle. Jennifer Dance
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first the two boys communicated in the language of The People, then a mix of English and Anishnaabemowin, until, finally, they spoke mostly in English. But questions arose in Red Wolf’s mind that he couldn’t ask his friend in either language; questions that were too difficult to speak aloud, such as why his parents had left him at the school, why they didn’t come to take him home, why they didn’t want him anymore. He wondered if it was because he was a dirty savage and a good-for-nothing Indian.
Red Wolf thought about the wrinkle-faced infant who had arrived in the wiigwam just before the family had moved to the reserve, just before his father had left him here at the school. The baby had demanded so much of his mother’s time, and he remembered being mad at both StarWoman and the noisy baby, because they were so engrossed by one another. He wondered if his mother had sent him away because he was angry, or because she loved the new baby more than him. He kept these thoughts to himself.
But one afternoon when the two boys were bagging corn cobs, one of Red Wolf’s unspeakable questions came flying out of his mouth, unbidden.
“Do you ever stop missing your mother and father?”
Turtle sighed. “No!”
A sob heaved from Red Wolf’s chest. He couldn’t contain it. Brimming tears stung his eyes and he thought his heart was breaking.
Turtle’s voice quivered. “My sister is here, too.”
Red Wolf pushed his knuckles into his eyelids, forcing back the tide of tears. “Girls? Here? Where?” he said, smearing dirt over his contorted face.
“On the other side.”
Red Wolf frowned.
“Don’t you know?” Turtle continued. “There’s a line right through the middle of the school. Upstairs it’s a wall, but downstairs it’s a door, just past Father Thomas’s office. The girls stay on one side and the boys stay on the other.”
Red Wolf was disbelieving. “I’ve never seen any girls! Where are they now? Don’t they have to work?”
“They don’t work on the farm. They work in the laundry.”
Red Wolf’s brow furrowed.
“Mother Hall doesn’t wash our sheets and clothes. The girls do,” Turtle said.
“Where do they eat?” Red Wolf asked, wondering how he had lived in the building for all these weeks without seeing a single girl.
“I don’t know,” Turtle said.
“But if your sister is here, why can’t you see her?”
“They won’t let me!”
Red Wolf was perplexed. “But —”
Turtle raised his voice. “I don’t know why not! They just won’t let me! But I’m going over to the other side one day. I’ll find her. I don’t care what they do to me.”
Red Wolf continued bagging cobs in silence. “Do we ever get to eat any of this?” he eventually asked.
“No! It goes to a place called Market. The teachers get some, I think, but not us.” Checking on the whereabouts of the farm manager, Turtle peeled back the green leaves from an ear of corn and sank his teeth into the yellow cob. “You take what you can, when you can.” A kernel flew from his mouth along with the words.
Red Wolf followed Turtle’s example and chomped into a cob, the raw kernels tasting sweet and starchy. Suddenly another question came unbidden. “What does savage mean?”
Turtle didn’t reply until he had nibbled every trace of yellow from the cob and was busy picking corn from his teeth. “It’s what we are,” he said.
Someone sounded a warning, a good imitation of a jay’s call. The Indian agent and his dog were walking across the field. The two boys pushed the gnawed cobs deep into the sacks and headed toward the wagon.
The dog once again sought out Red Wolf. The child smiled as he stroked the soft brown coat, unfortunately exposing a telltale piece of yellow corn still caught between his front teeth.
“Horse Thief!” shouted the Indian agent, grabbing Red Wolf’s jaw and parting his lips to reveal the evidence. “Or should I say Corn Thief. Once a thief, always a thief, is what I say. Here’s the lesson I promised you about property; everything is ours and nothing is yours! You own nothing, you have nothing, you are nothing! Understand? I tried to warn you, I tried to spare you the pain of punishment, but I see that you didn’t heed my friendly advice. That was a mistake, boy. And now you’ve exhausted my generosity and my goodwill. Mister Hall has a special place to put bad boys like you. Let’s go.”
Red Wolf curled up and watched the sky through the narrow cracks between the rough-sawn boards. The Crate was aptly named, having started life as a packing crate. Twenty years earlier, it had brought all of Mother Hall’s worldly possessions across the sea from England; her bed linens and clothes, some dishes, pans, and trinkets. There was barely enough space for a small boy to turn around, and if he had stood upright he would have hit his head on the ceiling. Everything in his body yelled move, run, get away, be free. But he was trapped like an animal in a cage.
Even more than the ache in his cramped limbs, Red Wolf ached for his mother. Tears came just at the thought of her. He rocked back and forth, clutching his knees to his chest, convulsive sobs heaving from his chest. He was totally alone, utterly abandoned. Someone pushed a cup of water and a chunk of bread through a small flap. A boy whispered. Red Wolf stopped crying and listened. He didn’t understand the words, but the voice was kind and Red Wolf thought that the boy was saying something encouraging.
“Stay with me, please,” Red Wolf begged in Anishnaabemowin, his voice small and faltering, but the boy went away and Red Wolf was alone again. He held the bread on his lap but couldn’t eat. He wasn’t hungry.
He closed his eyes and dozed. The line between memory and dream faded, taking him back to the summer camp of The People. HeWhoWhistles was teaching him, finding lessons in the most unlikely places.
“Look well, and the story will tell itself,” he advised, studying two pairs of entangled antlers that pointed skyward. “Two moose fought here for the right to father the next generation. Their antlers became entangled and one of them died from a broken neck. See? The other could have died slowly from thirst. But I think not. Look at Crooked Ear.”
The young wolf was whining softly while snuffling his nose deep into the ground.
“I think that wolves found this trapped moose and they ended his life swiftly. Crooked Ear can smell them! Perhaps they were part of his family.
“And look at these tiny teeth marks on the bones! A mouse has gnawed here. The strong bones of the moose have passed even into the frail body of a mouse! The mouse will be eaten by an owl or a hawk or maybe even a wolf. And eventually the bleached bones that remain here will become part of the earth, enriching it and allowing it to grow grass that another generation of grazing animals. Everything in death returns to give life to others. A bird has even made a nest here in the crook of the antlers.”
Half asleep and half awake, Red Wolf watched strands of hair unravel from the abandoned nest and flutter in the breeze. The hair was long and dark like his mother’s. He wondered if it had been hers.
He opened his eyes and the crate closed in on him again. He was a prisoner. Fresh tears stung his sore eyes. He wondered if Crooked Ear had indeed been able to smell his family in the soil around the moose antlers. He hoped so. He wished that he had something to snuffle, something that would give him the faintest trace of his mother. He had nothing.
The light started to fade and a deer mouse darted though a gap between the boards. It paused, sat back on its haunches, and raised one dainty forepaw. Its delicate ears trembled and its long whiskers twitched, as though it was weighing the scent of danger against the aroma of food. Red Wolf breathed