Sparrow in the Wind

by S. Rose

  My mother stayed close to home in case I found my way back, while John Wind returned to the reservation with my father and grandfather. It wasn’t until the men were alone in the truck that he told them about the bad bear. Even Reuben Parsons put aside his animosity. The chief rounded up a couple more men from the reservation, one of them known to be pretty good at taking down a bear. The Parsons went ahead by flashlight with the armed men behind. They started out optimistic but six hours later, figured I was good and lost. My father reported me officially missing; the sheriff called for the bloodhounds to be brought out at daylight. He said the bear would likely be asleep for the time being, but he’d be awake soon enough.

  Piotr Gorski came crashing through the woods breathless and disheveled, arriving at Parsons’ Lodge just as the brace of bloodhounds were taking scent from one of my dirty t-shirts. The animals immediately set off a raucous, baying excitedly and straining their twenty-foot leashes to get at Mr. Gorski; having had contact with me less than an hour ago, he carried the freshest scent. He drew back in fear as the sheriff approached, intimidated by the heavyset lawman and utterly terrified of the dogs. The sheriff gruffly demanded identification while the old man leaned against a tree, panting for breath and eyeing the dogs warily. Fortunately, my mother had the good sense to grasp that the stranger had only come to help. She ran to his aid and stepped between Mr. Gorski and the hounds to ask if he had any news of the missing girl. It took a few tries and much gesturing for Mr. Gorski to deliver his message; the only thing he could say in a thick Polish accent was, “Cassandra okay!At da house now. Dat you girl, no?”

  Piotr Gorski had just joined his daughter from Poland earlier that year. They spoke Polish at home, and he knew very little English. In all the excitement, everyone forgot that small detail when they sent him off to report my whereabouts—even Mr. Gorski.

  16

  THERE WAS A shift in the wind. Though not yet September, the days were noticeably shorter. Sunlight slanted through the tall pines at a sharper angle, painting the forest floor in mottled patterns of golden copper and russet brown, punctuated by bursts of wild blueberries ripe for the picking.

  I was having the best summer of my life, and it was coming to an end too soon. Sparrow and I spent every day together those last precious weeks of August, running wild as two young deer. With feathers in our hair, we plunged ourselves back in time to become Ojibwe Indians, living hundreds of years before the white man came. Sparrow called herself Chief Wildcat; I was her squaw, Owl Woman.

  We built our “teepee” by the river from pine boughs, tied with bits of twine and draped with a sheet of plastic and spent even rainy afternoons in our woodland haven. If it was hot and sunny, we shed our clothes and swam in a shallow river pool we constructed by building a little damn with rocks. I secretly went barefoot all day and got dirtier than my mother ever knew was possible. From my blackened, calloused feet, Mom must’ve guessed what I was up to but didn’t complain, so long as I bathed before bed.

  As we played, Sparrow taught survival skills that were for her, second nature. I learned to fish—everything from digging for earthworms, to gutting our catch, and roasting it on a stick over an open campfire. I’d been trained early to fear fire and had never been allowed to light a match, but I learned to safely contain it within a ring of stones and smother it with dirt when done. The first time I successfully ignited the kindling and watched the little flame grow, I felt the thrill of a caveman discovering fire. Even though I doubted I’d ever be put to the test, it was deeply satisfying to know that with practically nothing, I could eat and stay warm in the woods.

  Before Sparrow was free to roam, she had to get up early seven days a week to tend the livestock. I usually got up and went over to help. My life in Racine had afforded me no opportunity for animal husbandry, so feeding chickens and milking goats seemed more like play than a chore—although I probably wouldn’t have thought so if I had to do it twice a day all winter.

  There were five goats in all, two young ones and three in milk. The mature Toggenburg does looked like carbon copies of Grandpa Wind’s goats, gray with distinctive white markings, but the other was a different breed, called a Nubian. They said she gave extra rich milk, but I thought she was a pretty funny-looking goat. Like a cow, she was piebald brown, with a convex face and long floppy ears that made her resemble a lop-eared rabbit or a spaniel—those ears could flap like a chicken when she shook her head. Nana’s two kids were even stranger looking than their mother—half Nubian and half Toggenburg. Their ears couldn’t decide whether to stand up or hang down, so they stuck straight out like bat wings.

  Anna explained that a doe freshens each spring when she gives birth to a kid and comes into fresh milk, but I still didn’t understand how Olaf fit in. Of course, I knew that all animals had babies. I’d seen a litter of newborn kittens, and a neighbor’s beagle had the most adorable puppies—but I had no idea how she came to havethem. How exactly did they get there? Only weeks away from my eleventh birthday, I was pretty sure it wasn’t the stork. My mother still studiously avoided any explanation of the birth process and wordlessly conveyed the message that I shouldn’t be interested in that detail. I didn’t want to embarrass myself by asking more dumb questions; I figured if I hung around the goats long enough, I’d soon find out.

  I got to know Cousin Timmy Schimschack, and he sure was an odd duck, as Dad put it. It wasn’t just his slow, peculiar way of moving or rolls of fat; that was only physical.

  Timmy was deeply involved in a world of his own making, the epicenter of which was his Angora rabbits. One inner wall of the goat shed was sectioned off and lined with wooden hutches. There were eight in all, holding over a dozen rabbits. Each hutch had a wire-mesh window to the outside via a little trap door with hinges on top, cut through the outer wall. In good weather, the door was raised up in the morning and hooked into place, so it functioned like an awning for shade, or to keep out the rain.

  Timmy was agonizingly shy at first and hardly spoke when I was around; once he warmed up to me, he talked nonstop—mostly about his rabbits. He didn’t only talk about them; he talked to them, or more accurately, with them. Timmy conversed with his bunnies as he cleaned their cages and fed them and especially as he groomed their long, wooly coats, which he did meticulously on a daily basis. It was unsettling at first to hear him suddenly chuckle out loud at something Uncle Wooly-pants just said or stop to pick dandelion leaves because baby Joe-Joe had specifically asked for them. I guess I just got used to it.

  Naturally, each bunny had a name, and Timmy introduced me to them one by one, expounding upon their personalities and attributes like a proud mother over her children. I’d never thought of rabbits as very interesting, but then I’d never seen anything like Timmy’s rabbits. Some were the more typical colors of gray, black, or white, but they also came in golden blonde and copper red. Their wool was so long and thick that I couldn’t see their legs—they looked like a giant muff with a rabbit face on one end. The finest of all was Snowy, a pure white female with blue eyes that had won many ribbons at the county fair. But Timmy didn’t keep the ribbons in the house; they were tacked over her cage on the inside of the shed where all the rabbits could admire them, so I was told. Snowy was accustomed to being thoroughly groomed and petted for hours at a time, so she lay still however Timmy placed her, on her side or even flat on her back, while he brushed and combed. She was so docile that she looked more like a fancy stuffed toy than a real live animal. When the grooming was finished, Timmy cradled Snowy in his arms like a lover and whispered sweet nothings into her long bunny ears.

  Every evening before dark, he carefully lowered the outside doors to the cages and locked them with a metal slide bolt. He checked each one at least three times to make sure it was tight.

  “Got to be sure to lock up every night . . . else a raccoon might come and open the cage door with his nasty little black hands. Cousin Cassandra?”

  “Ya, Timmy?”

  “Did you kno
w a raccoon can open a door if it ain’t locked, ’cause he’s got little fingers, just like a human?” He held up his slender white fingers and wiggled them to demonstrate.

  “Ya sure, I did. You told me the other day.” And the day before that, I thought.

  “If I don’t lock up right, a raccoon might come and get at my rabbits. Oh, I don’t know what I’d ever do if a raccoon ate my poor little bunnies.” He twisted his fingers in distress.

  “Don’t worry, Timmy; you’re always careful to lock up. You won’t let that happen.”

  “But . . . what if the bad bear comes around and tears a door off—”

  “Schimmy Tinschack! You quit you’re worryin’,” Sparrow interrupted with a holler. She’d just come from the outhouse with one suspender of her overalls hitched, in the process of hooking up the other. “That old bear’s gone for good. My Grandpa Wind bashed him in the face with a hatchet—nearly took ’is nose off. He’s ascared to come around here.”

  Timmy smiled at his sister and seemed to relax a bit. “You sure ’bout that?”

  “Yeah . . . ’course I am. Nothin’s gonna bother your old bunnies.”

  SPARROW CERTAINLY HAD the most interesting family I’d ever known. Her Ojibwe father lived apart from her Polish mother and only came to visit one or two nights a week. I was very curious about the arrangement but thoroughly trained not to ask personal questions. If I was lucky enough to be around when her dad turned up, I studied him from a respectful distance, the way you would some noble, wild beast on a safari.

  John Wind had a quiet dignity about him, like an ancient tree with deep strong roots. He was tall and broad, with a chestnut-brown complexion and high cheek bones. Unlike many of the men I’d encountered in the backwoods, Sparrow’s father did not chew tobacco; he had fine, white teeth, though it took me a while to notice. The chief didn’t talk much, and he smiled even less, but his words were carefully chosen. And when he smiled upon Sparrow it was warm and real, like the sun breaking through the clouds. I thought he must be in his early forties, but it was hard to say. His face was lined, yet he seemed ageless, as if a lifetime of bright Wisconsin sunshine and pine-scented air radiated from his skin, his dark, flashing eyes, and his full, heavy hair, shining black as a crow.

  I soon learned that John Wind didn’t only visit the Schimschack to see his daughter.

  One morning I came skipping down the woodland path, bright and early and eager to help with the milking. Grandpa Gorski was chopping wood at a furious pace as Sparrow collected and stacked the split logs—I heard the resounding thwack of his axe long before I saw him. Timmy was sitting on a plastic beach chair brushing a coal black rabbit stretched across his ample lap. I think it was Uncle Wooly-pants. Now and again, he picked up his head and listened intently.

  “Uh . . . uh . . . uh . . .”

  “Ah . . . ah . . . ah . . .”

  The cries weren’t made by any goat; they emanated from inside the house. Each time Timmy heard the moaning and groaning, he pressed his small hands over his ears and rocked himself a bit. “Mmmmmm.” He hummed a monotonous note, as if trying to drown out the noise.

  “Ah . . . Ah . . . Ah . . . Ah . . . Ooh-Ohhh . . . Ma-Ma . . . Maaahh.”

  Even Grandpa Gorski’s axe couldn’t drown out the crescendo. When it was over, he swung it once more, sinking it deep into the tree stump that served as a chopping block. The old man straightened himself up, huffing and puffing for breath, as he wiped the sweat from his brow with his shirtsleeve, his face beet red from labor.

  No one greeted me as I approached. “Hi,” I said awkwardly. Sparrow sighed with relief and plopped down on her heinie to catch her breath, acknowledging my presence with a slight nod and a halfhearted wave. She appeared to study her toes. I was puzzled by her lack of enthusiasm. No matter how tired Sparrow was, she’d always been happy to see me. I was about to ask what was wrong, when I remembered my manners. “Good morning, Mr. Gorski.”

  “Hallo,” he huffed, then turned to Sparrow. “You go . . . go play . . . go swim. It hot today.”

  “Goats are done,” she said as she stood up again. “We got ’em milked early so . . . so I could help Grandpa with the firewood.”

  “Okay.” I shrugged, wondering why we were still standing around and what the heckwas going on in there. I wanted to ask, and a younger or less astute child might have done just that. As if reading my thoughts, Sparrow looked past me toward the dirt road that led in from Highway 2. I followed her gaze and for the first time, noticed Mr. Wind’s truck. “Oh, your dad’s visiting?” It was a rhetorical question. “Uh, maybe I should come back later . . . maybe you can call on me when . . . uh . . . after . . .” I had no idea after what.

  “Pa,” Sparrow shouted as he emerged from the doorway, smiling and having himself a comfortable stretch. She let out a little whoop and took a flying leap straight at her father, who caught her in midair and swung her around in an arc before raising her high above his head in his powerful arms.

  “Almost as much as a heifer,” he said with a hearty laugh. His half-grown child beamed with joy and shed her weariness like a heavy coat on the first warm day of spring.

  “Hallo,” Grandpa Gorski said curtly with a stiff little bow as he passed them on his way into the house.

  EVERY SATURDAY AFTER milking, Sparrow hiked through the woods to visit her father and Grandpa Wind. I tagged along a couple of times and gradually became acquainted with her Ojibwe family. I was struck by how different they were from the Schimschacks and old Grandpa Gorski. Sometimes it seemed as if Sparrow straddled two worlds, with one foot in Ojibwe territory and the other in the white man’s, never fully at home in either.

  During my visits to the rez, I was never sure if I was welcome or not. One time we happened to cross paths with an old Indian called Eats Dog; when Sparrow introduced me, he looked me up and down with sharp eagle eyes, then suddenly grabbed my hand with an iron grip and pressed it deep into his ribcage. “Feel that? It’s shrapnel!” Against their will, my fingertips palpated the hard pellets embedded in his soft old flesh. “A white man shot me when I was cuttin’ across his field. I was ten years old.” I was too terrified to answer. Eats Dog released me and walked away without another word, his grizzly gray head held high.

  “Don’t worry,” Sparrow reassured. “He does that to everybody he meets the first time.”

  I was still shaken. “Why is he called Eats Dog?”

  “One time during the depression, he got so hungry he killed a stray dog and ate it.”

  “Aw.” My natural inclination was to feel sorry for the dog.

  “It was starving—probably woulda died anyway.”

  “Oh.” I shrugged.

  At least Eats Dog actually talked to me; whenever I was around Grandpa Wind, he only grunted a greeting in my direction with scarcely a nod, although he didn’t say much to Sparrow either. That made it all the more surprising when he suddenly questioned me in detail about my family.

  The weather was fine, and we rested from our hike on the back porch, eagerly awaiting her father’s return from town—he always brought home donuts on Saturday. Grandpa Wind sat with an elderly neighbor as they silently smoked their pipes. One of his sisters was visiting with her two young grandsons, who played with the baby goats. When Sparrow’s dad drove up and tooted the horn, the little boys squealed with delight and ran to greet him. I was pretty excited too; the long hike always gave me a big appetite.

  Great Aunt Becky doled out the donuts, first the men and then the children. I got a jelly-filled log and was eating contentedly, unaware that I was the object of scrutiny. When I saw the old woman studying my face, I thought I had jelly smeared on it and self-consciously wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.

  Then Grandpa Wind cleared his throat and asked abruptly, “That pretty little blond Norske woman—she’s your mother, eh?”

  “Yes, sir; her name is Kristina. She was a Sigurdsson before she married my dad. Her parents came over from Norway. I have an Aunt Gud
run, too, back in Racine.”

  “Umph,” he replied. “So, she was married before, eh?” Sparrow sat by looking embarrassed but didn’t dare interfere with his interrogation.

  “No, sir, Aunt Gudrun never married . . .”

  “I mean, your mother.”

  “Joseph,” his sister interjected, shaking her head no, but the old man would have his answers.

  “Oh . . . uh, no, she only married once.” I was shocked at the very idea. “She married George Parsons when she was just nineteen,” I added, sure that he’d be satisfied. I was in for a surprise.

  “Well then . . . who is your father?”

  “That’s enough, Pa,” his son interrupted.

  “My father? But you already met him—George Parsons is my father,” I insisted, on the verge of being rude.

  “Hmm,” he said. A smile slowly spread across his leathery face, showing creases so deep you could’ve planted rows of soybeans in ’em. Then he turned to his sister and said something in Ojibwe. All I caught is the English word airplane and something about a Toggenburg goat. He put his hands to his ears and made them stick out like a donkey. I had no idea what he was up to, but the old Indians found it pretty funny. They all began to laugh. The usually dour Grandpa Wind cackled like a hen about to lay an egg.

  17

  SPENDING THE NIGHT lost in the woods turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to the relationship between my father and me. Faced with the possibility of my being eaten by a bear, he seemed to look at me with fresh eyes and a degree of appreciation, harkening back to the Dad of my earlier childhood. We started to talk again, and what’s more, he started to listen.