by Rose Christo
"You look like a soldier!" he yelled.
He was six years old. His voice only came in one volume.
"Are you doing summer homework?" I asked him. I put my hands on his face and my palms swallowed up his round cheeks. I reveled in his soft baby skin, his big, bright eyes. "Are you being good for Grandma?"
"No," he said candidly, squirming in a kind of restless half-dance.
I looked to Mrs. Kabocha for confirmation. She sat on her sealskin chair, a half-finished wampum belt on her lap. She was hard of hearing these days.
"What are you doing here?"
I looked up when the side door opened. Fawn slid through it and it snapped closed again.
All Indian women look good when they're wearing their tribe's clothes. The same was true for Fawn. Her ribbon dress was short-sleeved, spring green from the waist up, winter blue from the waist down. The tassels were orange and pink and red and they fanned down her chest, down the bunched up flares of her crushed velvet skirt. Her thick hair was the color of bottled ink.
Fawn and I got along exactly once in our lives. Rabbit was born nine months later and we haven't gotten along since.
"Can he stay with me?" I asked, standing. "Until I go back."
"No," Fawn said.
"But I want to," Rabbit put in.
"You're not going to," Fawn said.
Sometimes when I looked at Fawn I saw a very angry person. Other times I looked at her and saw the heavy brown lids of her eyes, weighed down with exhaustion. Maybe it was exhausting being a woman. In the old days the women were the politicians. They elected the peace chief and the war chief. They gave the feathers to the oskapi. When I looked at Fawn I saw wasted opportunities. We didn't have politicians anymore, not since we were chased off the Plains. Our only politician these days was some white guy who visited from the mainland once a year, tried to make us pay property taxes. We don't even have a word for property in Cree. That ought to tell you a few things about us.
"Fawn," I said.
I've never been good at words. I used my face instead. I relaxed my eyes, my mouth. I put my hands on Rabbit's shoulders.
"Fine," Fawn said, and turned away.
She reminded me just then of the girl back in Wasserleben, the one who ran the Essbar. It was a strange thing to think of, but it really struck me. It struck me that strangers living thousands of miles apart shared any similarities at all. People have more in common with each other than they don't. If they'd stop killing each other long enough, they'd see it, too.
* * * * *
Rabbit hopped along behind me and we walked a way's south. My house was on the coastal inlet. Nearby a bore tide had rushed in from the ocean and glazed over in a smooth sheet of ice. Mussels, driftwood, even the knotted remnants of gnarled fishing nets were trapped under the clear glass surface.
"I wanna go ice fishing!" Rabbit announced, his pudgy fists flying on the air.
"Too shallow for that," I told him.
My house was small and square and birchbark. The icebox stood next to the door and the slippery sealskins hung from the roof's drooping eaves, untouched in the months since I'd been away. Out back was the wash tub, unless the snow quails had made a nest of it. My boat leaned against the south-facing wall. I wondered if I'd have to cut it free with a chisel.
I opened the front door and Rabbit bounced into the kitchen at the front of the house. He told me all about Miss Theresa, his school teacher, how she had a real radio in her house, electric lights and everything. I shut the door behind us. The nice thing about birchbark is that it warms itself. You don't need a hearth. I didn't have a hearth. I opened the kitchen drawers and filled tin dishes with whale oil. I lit the oil candles with a flint stick. A warm glow danced over the old brown walls, the sweetgrass carpet, the fishing net dangling from the ceiling rafters.
"Dad!" Rabbit yelled from the next room. "Can I put on your uniform?"
I didn't see the harm in it. The fatigues were clean. I went into the bedroom and put a whale oil dish on top of the cabinet. I drew back the netted drapes on the filmy window and a sliver of sun trickled inside. I changed out of uniform and into a stale-smelling shirt and a pair of brown slacks. Rabbit pulled the dull green tweed shirt over his head and he all but drowned in it. He flapped his arms in the air and I rolled the sleeves as far back as his shoulders, twice.
"I'm a soldier!" Rabbit yelled.
"Voice," I chided.
"I'm a soldier," he whispered--loudly.
"Want some lunch?" I asked. "You wanna go get riceroot?"
I grabbed a sweetgrass basket from underneath the cabinet and we went back outside the house. We trekked east and the air grew hot and misty. I heard the whispering of the warm springs long before I saw them, sea-green water welling up through the cracks in the mottled gray ground. The springs pooled together underneath the spiked lodgepole pines and an old man sat with his legs in the water. He didn't notice us.
On the other side of the springs was a low hill. I took Rabbit's hand and we climbed it. At the bottom of the hill there was an icy cove, where the middle of a blue-white glacier had melted over time to make the shallow, murky pool in front of it. Hardy flowers grew at the edge of the water, spidery flowers in red-brown and bell flowers in red-violet and fat, bright blue saskatoon berries teeming on the ends of low, prickly shrubs.
Rabbit pulled the riceroot out of the ground and ate the pale stems. I plucked the drooping chocolate lilies and piled them high in the sweetgrass basket.
"Daddy, how come you don't dress Cree?"
I looked at my slacks, at my Oxfords. I looked at the little boy in camouflage, his hair dark and long, his fingers sticky while he snacked.
"I don't know," I said.
"Oh," he said.
When our baskets were full we went home. In the kitchen I mashed the chocolate lilies for candy. Rabbit regaled me with tales of childhood camaraderie. Just before summer break he'd made friends with a boy from the schoolhouse who had promised to share bannock with him. I was sorry I'd missed that.
"Do you remember the dreams you have?" I asked him.
Rabbit stuck his hand in the mashed candy bowl. I didn't have it in me to scold him.
"Dreams are very important," I told him. "Great Spirit talks to you when you sleep."
"I dreamt about a marshmallow who had monster eyes," Rabbit told me.
I ruffled his hair with a great deal of pride.
* * * * *
At night I pulled the down beds out of the wall closet. I spread them out on the sweetgrass carpet. Rabbit flopped down on his bed and I wrapped him up in a thick star blanket my mother had knitted years and years ago. The candle waned low on the cabinet. I got up and filled the tin dish with whale oil.
"I hear owls," Rabbit whispered loudly.
I lay on the bed next to his. "They're talking to the spirits," I said.
"Are they good spirits or bad spirits?" Rabbit wanted to know.
"Spirits are never bad," I told him. I didn't add that spirits were seldom good, either.
Rabbit shimmied his mattress closer to mine. He wormed insistently underneath my arms. The wind whistled outside the birchbark walls and I tucked the star blanket tight around his shoulders.
"You're my boy," I told him. "You're my Rabbit."
"I'm like the Trickster," Rabbit said.
"You are," I said. "And he's always getting into trouble." I gave Rabbit a stern Look. "You won't get into trouble, will you?"
"Maybe," Rabbit said, fidgeting.
"Miss Theresa won't like it if you start trouble in class."
"How do you know?" Rabbit asked.
"Because she didn't like it when I started trouble in class."
"Daddy, you're old."
I palmed the crown of his hard little head. His hair was scratchy under my fingers. "Maybe you're right."
* * * * *
The moon leaked in through the window. I got up and fixed the net drapes so the light didn't shine on Rabbit. He slept so
undly, his breath leaving his mouth in tiny little whinnies. I'd never loved anyone more.
I'd loved two people in my life. I remembered Mom with the sewing awls, sitting on the roof while she knitted her star blankets. She wore her hair in pin curls. She wore her skirts pleated, her blouses with square shoulders. Dad never used to let her dress like an Indian. He said the old ways were for barbarians.
Dad never knew that when he was away at night--at the bingo hall on the mainland--Mom used to get out the otiny, the caribou bone harp, and we sang old Cree songs together. She sat me on her bony knees, the top of the harp beneath her chin.
"Little Nee-Hee-Low," she used to sing. "Oh how bright you are. You touch my heart when you dance."
When I think about it: It was a strange choice in song. I was her little Nee-Hee-Low, her little Cree boy, but I'd never danced before, not even once. The dances were something Dad forbade, same as the Indian clothes.
I sat on the carpet beside Rabbit. I touched his hair lightly, desperate to love him but afraid to wake him. He was so perfect, so beautiful. You don't really know the kind of love a parent feels until you're a parent yourself. It doesn't feel like any other kind of love. I understood that now; and I wished Mom were here so I could share it with her.
I heard the snowy owls on the rooftop. They hooted softly, calling for the spirits over the rough ocean wind. Those owls, they can see right into the next world. If they could talk I wonder what they would say. I wonder what they would tell us.
I thought suddenly of the people we'd pulled out of Buchenwald. My skin raised in gooseflesh. How many of them had died in the field hospital? How many of them had died before we'd even come looking for them? We'd killed Jerries. I'd killed six. Those Jerries, they'd done things I couldn't begin to understand. I couldn't understand why any human being would starve and torture another. But that doesn't mean the Jerries weren't people. They were people, and I'd killed them, and now they weren't people anymore.
I did that.
There's only one other species on this planet that wages war the way humans do. If there are two ant nests in the same area the ants crawl out from underground, line up, and start killing each other. They tear each other's legs off. The winning army raids the loser's nest, smashes all the eggs, and drags the survivors home to work for them.
Out of the entire animal kingdom, our closest relative is an insect that eats its own excrement.
* * * * *
The next morning I dressed Rabbit in a brown ribbon shirt and bundled him up in a hooded capote. We were going out on the ocean to catch sheefish.
"I'm a fisherman!" Rabbit yelled.
I mashed saskatoon berries and made him porridge for breakfast. He sat at the whalebone table in the kitchen and ate from a bone bowl and told me his mom made porridge better.
"She doesn't have lumps," he explained.
"If she had lumps," I said, "we'd take her to the hospital."
We went outside and the sun was higher than usual, a smoked saffron color. The polar day was coming soon. I laid the whalebone boat on the ground and pulled a few sealskins off the roof eaves. I sent Rabbit inside to get the whale oil and he came back out with it and I showed him how to waterproof the skins.
"They'll last a long time if you do this," I said.
"My hands are wet," he said loudly.
We rubbed the whale oil into the sinewy sealskins and stretched the skins taut over the whalebones. Rabbit danced out onto the frozen bore tide and sneezed when he fell on his rear end. I went inside and got the fishing net and came back out with it. I tucked the net into the boat.
"Can I carry the boat?" Rabbit asked, sliding off the bore tide.
"When you're older," I said.
"Someday I'm gonna be older than you and then I'll be the dad."
"Just don't give me a bedtime."
I hoisted the whalebone boat over my head. Despite the width the boat was very lightweight, the bones hollow on the inside. Rabbit skipped at my side while we walked. We walked past the inlet to the south of the island. The fat snow quails were scattered all over the ground, their summer plumage speckled silver. We drew near and they trilled at us, but didn't fly away. A girl in a striped green capote stood feeding them breadcrumbs. She wrinkled her nose and smiled shyly at us when we passed her.
"I'm a fisherman!" Rabbit yelled at her.
I apologized hastily and whisked him away.
To the south of the island the wooden jetties plunged into the calm sea. A few fishing boats bobbed in the water, moored at the splintered posts. The ice floes hovered farther out on the ocean, partway thawed with summer. The watery white specks touched the skyline and the coppery clouds reached down to blanket them.
"Ready to meet the white whales?" I asked Rabbit.
He looked at me so curiously, I had to laugh. I slid the boat on the water and told him to jump in it. He did. I climbed in after him and picked up the oars and we drifted off.
The ocean was placid today. The water was the color of a blunt knife, gray and metallic with a dull sheen. Rabbit bounced excitedly on his seat. The waves plashed gently against the sides of the boat, sloshing, gurgling. It was a morning lullaby, relaxing as a long night's sleep. I rowed us away from the shore and my arms strained.
"We're going far," Rabbit commented, in all his six-year-old wisdom.
The ocean enveloped us. Sea-salts settled on my tongue and the chill reached into my bones. Wapu Island was a dot in the distance. The water was as clear as a diamond, frothy with white foam, and the fragile ice floes trailed past us, hard and glittering. The clouds abandoned the sun in favor of roaming the distant horizon. The sun hung high over our heads and cut through the sleepy pink sky with simmering red rays. It breathed a chilly breath that streaked the canvas behind it in Arctic blues.
I felt the current shift underneath us. I moved the boat sidelong against it and let go of the oars. The boat held still. I pulled the sinew net off the floor and told Rabbit to help me untangle it. His eyes were very big while we worked together, his fingers tiny, clumsy, my hands fast and big.
"Sheefish like shiny things," I said. "So we're going to put a spoon on the net."
"Now they can eat breakfast."
"Kid, you got it."
I lowered the fishing net into the water. I let Rabbit help me. The net sank below the surface and Rabbit bounced so vigorously, I was glad he weighed next to nothing, else he might have tipped the boat.
"When do the fish come?" Rabbit asked.
"Wait," I said.
"But they should come," Rabbit said. "I want to see them."
"They'll come," I said. "You have to be patient about these things. If you're in a rush all the time you miss the things that matter."
"Like going to the bathroom."
"I told you to go before we left."
"I don't have to go."
A giant shadow swam underneath the boat. I nudged Rabbit and he gaped at it.
"That's a big fish," he said.
"That's not a fish," I said.
A low song rose up from the ocean. It was belly-deep and keening, slow and rich and ancient. My fingers itched. In the space between my thoughts I saw heaven.
Rabbit leaned over the side of the boat. I pulled him back to safety by the back of his capote. A beluga whale broke the surface of the sea, his baby-shaped head gleaming and white. He swam by us at a leisurely pace. A second beluga joined him. A third joined them. Their voices echoed on the salted wind, a story of the deep, a story of a time before ours and a time before time.
"The white whales taught us our songs," I told Rabbit.
"All of them?" Rabbit asked.
"All of them," I said.
The fishing net felt heavy. I started to pull it up. Rabbit sat in transfixed silence.
Little Nee-Hee-Low, the white whales sang.
My little boy; my bright little Cree boy.
* * * * *
When we got back to the island I borrowed a wagon from the otter
trapper. I hauled the heavy fishing net into the wagon and Rabbit eyed the dead sheefish squeamishly. Sheefish are big; even the smaller ones tend to measure about half an arm's width. But I don't think it was their size that bothered Rabbit so much as the way they'd flopped about when we'd first reeled them in.
"It doesn't hurt," I'd told him. "Fish can't feel pain."
Rabbit was quiet when we pulled the wagon north. Eventually he found his spirits and tucked his hand in mine. I told him we were going to leave fish outside our neighbors' houses.
"But they're ours," he said.
"They're everyone's," I said. "If everyone takes care of everyone, then everyone is taken care of."
I reproached him. "If you're selfish," I warned, "you'll turn into a Windigo."
"But I don't wanna eat people!" Rabbit cried.
"Then don't be selfish."
He perked up when I gave him the task of knocking on doors. If there was one thing that kid loved, it was meeting new faces. He said "Hello," and "How are you," and I lugged fish out of the wagon and left them on the doorsteps.
We went home with the last of the sheefish and I showed Rabbit how to fillet it. I didn't want him using the knife but I let him peel the scales away when I'd cut along the spine. We put the meat in the icebox and took the viscera indoors. I lit kindling on the wood stove and we made soup stock out of the fish bones.
"Are you gonna stay this time?" Rabbit asked suddenly.
I strained the bones from the broth. "What do you mean?"
"Don't be a soldier anymore," he said. "You should just stay with me."
He had a button nose, Rabbit. I didn't know where he'd gotten it from because his mother and I both had long bridges. His eyes were big and bright and brown. All his teeth were baby teeth, but he had this one tooth, a snaggletooth, a little longer than the others. I'd be sad to see it fall out.
I put my hands on his face. My hands were bigger than his cheeks. I thought it was some kind of miracle. He was a miracle. He was half of me but more than me, so much more than I'd ever been.