For once, they would all be on the same team.
Fallen Arrow was still quite weak, but she was getting better. She could sit up for longer and longer periods of time. Her delight in little Standing Bear was limitless, and Moon Song felt great joy watching Grandmother play with him, as she went about organizing their small space by hanging supplies and clothing from the ceiling and walls where she could get to them quickly and not have to sort through the pile she’d brought with her.
She also religiously set and checked her snares each day, gathered the wild strawberries and anything else that was ripe and edible, and fished whenever possible. With the other women of her tribe, she had put in a large communal vegetable garden. Each woman knew that when the winter came, the strips of dried squash and the leathery beans and the dried corn and potatoes might be all that stood between them and hunger.
Moon Song had a bit of time now to do several housekeeping chores—gathering fresh rushes into mats to cover the floor, removing the old ones, sweeping out the dirt floor with a handful of twigs. She wanted to keep things fresh and clean for little Standing Bear, especially since he was toddling everywhere now and putting everything his hands could grab right into his mouth. She had to remove an earthworm only yesterday.
It was during her housekeeping, while Fallen Arrow was sitting outside in the sun keeping an eye on little Standing Bear, that she discovered a small cache buried in the ground beneath her grandmother’s bed. Inside was a tin box she had never seen before among her grandmother’s possessions. There were few secrets in Indian society, especially among close family members. She was surprised to discover this item. She drew it out, took it outside, and showed it to her grandmother.
“Where did this come from?” she asked.
Fallen Arrow looked embarrassed. “Oh, it is just something a white man brought.”
“A white man gave you this? When?”
“One moon after you left.”
“Why did you not tell me?”
“I was not sure what the box contained. There is much writing in there. I was afraid it held things we did not want to know.”
“This white man, what did he look like?”
“I do not know,” Fallen Arrow said. “I was checking snares, and Snowbird took it from him. She said only that he was a white man and looked ill.”
Moon Song fingered the box. In spite of being buried in the ground, it was still new enough to be shiny. “May I open it?”
Fallen Arrow looked frightened. “No good ever comes from white men’s papers.”
“What are you afraid of?” She could tell that Fallen Arrow was hiding something. “What are you not telling me?”
“Snowbird does not speak English well, but she says she thinks the man was sent by your father.”
“My father?”
“If those papers are from your father, I’m afraid they will say something that will take you and Standing Bear away.”
It broke Moon Song’s heart to see the fear in her grandmother’s eyes. Fallen Arrow had lost her daughter because of Moon Song’s father, and now she was afraid even of a few papers he might have sent.
“There is nothing my father can do that will force me and my son to leave you.” She laid a gentle hand upon her grandmother’s arm. “Do you hear me?”
Fallen Arrow nodded, but Moon Song could tell that she was not convinced.
Most of Moon Song’s cloudy memories of her father had been woven by Fallen Arrow after he brought her back following her mother’s death. It was no secret to her or to the rest of the tribe that Fallen Arrow hated the man who had broken her daughter’s heart. Because of that, Moon Song had no love for the man, either. The fact that he had sent papers here that had upset Fallen Arrow made Moon Song angry. He had been silent all these years, ignoring her existence. He should have continued to be silent!
“May I open it?”
Fallen Arrow took a deep breath. “Yes. Perhaps you can read it. I can make no sense of the marks.”
Moon Song unloosed the latches on the shiny tin box and opened the lid. The item lying in the box appeared to be a large Bible. She sounded out the letters on the front of it. Sure enough. They said “Holy Bible.”
Why in the world would her father be sending her a Bible after a silence of nearly sixteen years? And why should it give her such a stab of disappointment that this was all it was? A white man’s Bible from a man who had abandoned her mother and then, upon her mother’s death, had abandoned her. She shook her head and closed the box. White men could be such a mystery.
“There is something inside of that big book,” Fallen Arrow said.
“Oh?”
She opened the box and pulled the Bible out. Sure enough, there were two envelopes. She opened the larger one. It was very official looking and had handwriting that was extremely difficult to read and had a shiny seal upon it. The other one appeared to be some sort of a letter, but again, her ability to read was limited. With time she could sound out some printed letters, but it was impossible for her to read this fancy handwriting.
The envelopes and the writing looked important. She wished she had someone nearby who could read them, someone she trusted, but she didn’t. Her tribesmen were even more limited in their ability to read English than she.
She wished Skypilot was here. He could read all these words, make sense of them, explain them to her, and would keep whatever was inside of them private if privacy was necessary. It was the gold seal that bothered her the most. She had a feeling those papers could be very important.
There were white men in town who could read this, of course, but she trusted none of them. Father Slovic could, but he was several days’ journey away. She could not leave her grandmother alone for so long to walk so far.
“Can you tell what it is?” Fallen Arrow asked nervously.
“I think it is probably nothing,” Moon Song said. “We won’t worry about it for now.”
She put the box back into her grandmother’s hiding place and covered it with the mat. Her curiosity would have to wait until she could choose the right person to do the reading.
She did not know what she felt for the strange man who had fathered her and then walked away. She never had known what to feel or what to think about him. When she was little, she had sometimes pondered the fact that he had been so willing to leave her behind. She had wondered what was so wrong with her that he never cared enough to come back. As an adult, all she knew for sure about him was that regardless of her mixed blood, she was grateful that her heart was all Chippewa.
Skypilot was thankful when he made it to the end of July and closed the school down for a month. When he released the reluctant scholars to race into a late summer, they ran leaping out into the outdoors, practically drunk on freedom.
He didn’t blame them. If he weren’t the teacher, he would be leaping for joy right now himself.
Mainly, he was just grateful to have survived the past few weeks in the classroom. He would use the rest of August to prepare for the fall . . . and to find Moon Song.
Slovic said that he would send her word, and if she chose to come to him, she would. The problem was he had no way of knowing if Slovic’s message had reached her or not. Right now he didn’t even know if she was aware that he was back in her part of the country.
There was, however, a small tribe of Chippewa who lived not far outside of Rockland, and he intended to pay them a visit and see if he could find out anything. It might be like trying to find a needle in a haystack, but he needed to at least try to get word to her.
He felt awkward about walking into the Indian village, but he blundered in nonetheless. He did have the wisdom to carry with him a few items he thought the villagers might be interested in. A red blanket draped over his arm. A good pocketknife. A large cooking pot filled with several dozen sugar cookies he’d bought from the woman who kept his boardinghouse.
“You have whiskey?” one of the younger women asked hopefully when he walked into the
middle of the small village of wigwams.
“No whiskey.”
An older man, leather-faced and angry-looking, accosted him. “Why you here?”
Ah, this was more like it. A direct question. “I’m looking for information. There’s a Chippewa girl and her grandmother I want to find.”
“Why they hiding?”
“They’re not hiding from me.” At least he hoped not. “We’re friends. It’s just that I lost track of her. Her name is Moon Song. Her grandmother’s name is Fallen Arrow. She has a small papoose she calls Ayasha.”
The Indian walked away in apparent disgust. Skypilot wondered if whiskey would have sweetened his disposition.
An ancient-looking woman sidled up to him. “I know Fallen Arrow.” She glanced at the pot filled with cookies. “Taste?”
He pulled one out and handed it to her, which she practically inhaled in spite of having no visible teeth. “Taste?” she asked again.
“Tell me about Fallen Arrow.”
“Live near lake, that way.” The old woman pointed west. “On reservation.”
He gave her another sugar cookie. “Can you take me to her?”
“Grandson, Little Gray Squirrel, take.”
He glanced down; a small boy about ten had crept up beside his grandmother and was eyeing the pot of cookies.
“You know where Fallen Arrow and Moon Song live?” he asked.
The boy nodded eagerly, his eyes glued to the cookies.
“Will you take me there?”
The boy nodded again, holding out his hand.
“Me take pot,” the grandmother said, grasping hold of the handle and the blanket, “and boy show you Fallen Arrow.”
Skypilot had a strong suspicion he was being lied to, but he handed over the pot and strode off toward the west after the small boy, who appeared to know where he was going. His hope was that there would not be anyone waiting farther on to rob him or worse, but he had no other ideas about how to find Moon Song, besides going back to Marquette and wringing the information out of Slovic. He had a strong feeling that wouldn’t work with the Jesuit.
To his surprise, several hours later, after following the child for many miles, he could hear the lake. They came upon a small village of cabins nestled into a grove of large hemlock trees. The boy, who had not said a word the whole time, led him straight to one cabin off to the side, and then stood back.
Skypilot stared nervously at the cabin. It was possible that Moon Song was behind that door. If she was, would she be happy to see him or angry? She had been so adamant that he not follow her here—and yet he had. He took a deep breath and knocked. “Moon Song?” Skypilot called. “Are you there?”
Moon Song was coming home with a fine brace of rabbits, the best she’d captured in a while. Even though the rabbits did not have the thickness of their winter coats yet, they would still make good eating, and she was already planning the fine small blanket she would make from the pelts. There were few things softer than a blanket made from rabbit fur, and her little son would enjoy such a blanket.
“Grandmother, I . . .” She walked into the open door to their cabin and nearly fell to her knees from surprise. There. Right there. In the middle of the cabin sat Skypilot, cross-legged on the floor with a little Chippewa cousin who was chattering away, catching her grandmother up on all the family living over near the Minnesota Mine.
“Skypilot!” She dropped the rabbits inside the door. Her grandmother’s eyes were watching her avidly and disapprovingly. “Where did you come from? I thought you were in Bay City or . . . or Virginia!”
He stood up, and he was so tall, his head was only a few inches from the low ceiling. In fact, his bulk felt like it filled up the whole cabin. But it wasn’t just his physical size that filled the space—it was the enormous love for her that she saw in his face.
She had thought of him so often these past weeks and dreamed of him too. To actually have him here in front of her, the man she had never expected to see again, seemed so unreal. It was as though she was having a vision, but instead of melting away, he was there as solid and sturdy as she remembered. Everything within her wanted to fly to him, but she held her ground.
She needed to know exactly what this man wanted and why he was here.
21
The minute he saw her, he knew that no matter what Slovic might think, he had not made a mistake in coming. The priest was wise, but he could not read everything that was written within another man’s heart. Or a woman’s. He saw the way Moon Song’s eyes lit up the moment she saw him. That told him everything he needed to know.
“How did you find me?” she asked.
“Good question.” He smiled ruefully. “It wasn’t easy.”
He reached to touch her, but she gave a quick shake of her head, warning him that she was concerned about the fact that there were others around.
“Are you hungry?” she asked.
Now that he thought about it, he was. “Is there enough?”
“I have good hunting today. I think little cousin is hungry too, after long walk. I will get rabbit roasting and then we talk.”
Little Gray Squirrel was most definitely hungry, and Moon Song quickly started a meal of the rabbits she’d just brought home, roasted over her grandmother’s open fire pit.
Skypilot reacquainted himself with little Ayasha, whom Moon Song informed him was now to be referred to as Standing Bear, playing with the child by holding his hands and letting him walk toward him. Little Standing Bear chortled, delighted with all the attention. He wondered if the child’s mind might hold some memories of their trek together, or even their winter together. He hoped so.
“I’ve been teaching school in Rockland,” he told her as she worked over the food. “Father Slovic helped get me the position a couple months ago.”
“You are in Rockland two moons?”
“You didn’t know?”
“No.”
“Slovic said he would send word.”
She shook her head. “I hear nothing.”
“I wonder what happened? Slovic isn’t exactly a liar.”
“Wait here.” She disappeared into the cabin.
He heard her talking to her grandmother in a language he could not understand. Then she returned, frowning.
“What was that all about?”
“Broken Crane tell Grandmother. Grandmother not tell me. On purpose.”
“Ah. Grandmother is not happy about me being here.”
Moon Song shrugged in reply.
“Slovic wasn’t exactly happy about me coming back here either.”
“I understand,” she said. “But you are good teacher. Children are lucky you teach them.”
He chuckled. “I don’t know about that. But some of the children know a little more than when we started. School will start again in a month, and I plan to get better at it.”
“You like to teach?”
“It is a challenge, but I like teaching. I’m making progress with the children. I plan to continue.”
“You teach long time there?” Her hand was poised above the roasting rabbit, waiting for his answer. “In Rockland? You teach there forever?”
“No.” Little Gray Squirrel broke into the conversation with English that Skypilot had not realized he possessed. No wonder she had warned him to be careful what he said. “The mine will close soon. There is less and less copper. Many miners are moving away.”
Moon Song did not seem to be surprised at Little Gray Squirrel’s sudden mastery of English. “Is this true?” Actually, it was news to him. He had been so engrossed in keeping up with the lessons he had to prepare each night to stay afloat as a teacher, he’d had little time to talk with people about the mine. “If it closes, I suppose I could find another school somewhere.”
The look she gave him was brimming with questions, but they were questions she obviously did not want him to answer in front of Fallen Arrow and the boy.
She knew that Fallen Arrow could not understand
a word they said, but the old woman had grown morose and silent, and Moon Song knew why. She had lost her only daughter to a white man and she had no intention of losing her only granddaughter. Some Chippewa saw nothing wrong with intermarrying with whites and even encouraged it, but those Chippewa were not Fallen Arrow.
Fallen Arrow had been angry enough about Moon Song’s marriage to her French-Canadian trapper husband, and he had been half Menominee. Skypilot? Grandmother was going to explode the minute he left, if she even bothered to wait.
She didn’t wait. “What is this big ox doing here?” Fallen Arrow asked in Chippewa.
“He’s my friend, Grandmother.”
“He is a white man!”
“It is his mule that brought all the good foods to you.”
“Humph! White men like to give gifts . . . at first. Your father gave your mother many, many gifts in the beginning.”
“I know, Grandmother. Skypilot isn’t like my father. He is a good man.”
Skypilot glanced up at the sound of his name. He knew they were talking about him. She would have to be careful and avoid the use of his name, even when she was speaking in Chippewa.
“All of them are like that.”
“Not him, Grandmother.”
“You already love him so much you would kill your own grandmother in order to have this love?”
“No one is killing anyone. I am merely roasting rabbit for a friend. You make a big story out of nothing.”
“If you go with him and take Standing Bear, it will kill me.”
“I will send him away with Little Gray Squirrel in the morning.”
“And you will never see him again?”
“I cannot promise that.”
“You will never see him again!” Grandmother pounded her frail fist against the outside of the cabin.
“I promise that I will never seek him out, but I cannot promise to run like a scared rabbit if he crosses my path.”
That compromise seemed to mollify her grandmother for the time being, and the old lady accepted a crisp rabbit leg from her hand. She even smacked her lips appreciatively as she ate it, and then sucked the marrow from its fragile bones. Moon Song wished the good, fat rabbit would sweeten Fallen Arrow’s attitude toward Skypilot, but she knew that was not going to happen. The wounds went too deep in the old woman.
Under a Blackberry Moon Page 21