Red Wolf walked on the beach at Clear Lake, where he had grown up. Darkness was falling, but he could still make out the bluffs and trees that sheltered the beach from the strong north wind, and he could see the ridge where the wolves sometimes howled. He snuggled between his grandfather and his grandmother, their furs draped over his shoulders, his sleepy eyes watching the orange-blue tongues of fire lick the embers. HeWhoWhistles and the other hunters sat around the big drum. With powerful forearms the men pounded their sticks against the skin, their high-pitched voices throbbing in time with the rhythm.
The women danced around the men in a circle, the old ones shuffling in the gravelly sand, the younger ones pointing their toes and lifting their feet in time to the strong heartbeat of the drum. StarWoman laughed and copied her younger sister, who had broken loose with a spinning dance that took her on a path outside the circle of more stately women.
Suddenly HeWhoWhistles’ piercing voice soared above the drumbeat. StarWoman danced over to her husband and stood behind him, lending her support and spiritual power to his voice. This was the way of The People, and Red Wolf knew that it was his way too. HeWhoWhistles’ song gave thanks to Creator and to the four-legged that had given their lives in order that the lives of The People would be sustained. He gave thanks to Mother Earth for providing yet again, enabling them to survive another long hard winter, and for the upcoming bounty of summer that would allow them to refill their baskets and prepare for another season of hardship. This, too, was the Anishnaabe way.
Red Wolf followed the bright sparks that rode a distance on the wind. He felt something warm inside his chest. It wasn’t just the fire, or the furs. He glanced up at the ridge and saw them! The wolves! He listened to their howl and his heart was filled with joy.
A bell clanged and Red Wolf knew something was wrong. Bells did not ring on the beach at Clear Lake. He looked at the sparks from the fire and watched them get snuffed into blackness.
He awoke. He could have wept.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Other than a word here or there, the only time that Red Wolf and Turtle could talk was when they were both assigned to Frank’s work crew. Whenever the farm manager was out of earshot, Top Boy Frank ignored the rule of silence. Even so, Turtle was cautious. He was a year older than Red Wolf and knew that having friends was not allowed, that they would be punished and separated. But between furtive glances he answered Red Wolf’s questions and explained the meaning of words and phrases. He taught Red Wolf how to lower his eyes and say with the right degree of contriteness, “I sorry, mother, I bad Indian.” Or “Please forgive filthy savage.”
Sometimes these supplications averted a caning.
At 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 softly. The mouse scurried over his boot and up his leg. It gnawed anxiously at the crust of bread. Red Wolf longed to touch it, to stroke its velvety coat, to feel its warmth, but when he gingerly stretched out a hand, the mouse scampered away.
Reaching inside his coverall and deep into his trouser pocket, his fingers rubbed the wolf pendant. In a moment of inspiration he took the lace from his left boot, threaded it through the hole in the pendant and tied it around his neck. With the pendant tucked carefully inside his clothing and nestled against his chest, he felt better. Silently he prayed, Brother wolf, help me get away from here. But his prayer was answered by feelings of home that were almost too much for him to bear.
As darkness fell, cold seeped into his bones. He tucked himself into a ball, warming his hands under his armpits. Far off in the distance he heard the lonely howl of a wolf. He threw back his head and, as loud as he dared, howled a reply.
CHAPTER NINE
By the end of the first term Red Wolf had made a transition in language. Instead of translating English to Anishnaabemowin in his head, he now thought in English. He was stunned when he woke up one morning and realized that his dream had even been in English. He understood most of the instructions he was given throughout the day and many of the words in the lessons, although the concepts were confusing, especially in the religious studies classes. And due to the code of silence that was enforced for so much of the day, he had limited his opportunity to practice speaking the new language.
It was a school tradition that the Grade One class performed the pageant on Christmas Eve. Red Wolf didn’t understand what it was all about. Weeks ahead of time, Master Evans picked children to play the different roles. He chose the smallest boy in the class to be Mary. The boy was dressed in a blue robe and wore a sheet draped over his head, tied with a cord so it flowed over his shoulders and back. Master Evans announced that the biggest boy in the class would play the part of Joseph, but then changed his mind when he realized that Henry was the biggest boy. He gave the Joseph costume to the second biggest boy instead. Henry was not in the play, at least not dressed up as an actor. He had a special job as Master Evans’ assistant, working behind the scenes.
The three best boys in the class were selected as wise men. Their outfits were colourful and grand, with trailing cloaks, sparkling necklaces, and shiny crowns covered in glass beads. Red Wolf wished he were a wise man. He couldn’t stop wondering what gifts were inside the carved wooden boxes they carried. His own robe was simple and dull, coarse and itchy, and loosely tied at the waist with twine, but his headband reminded him of those worn by The People, and he went barefoot! It felt nice compared to the school uniform.
On the evening of the big show the children went to the barn. A silver star had been hung from the roof on a long piece of wire, and it glittered in the light from the lanterns. One of the cow stalls had been thoroughly cleaned and fresh straw strewn over the stone floor. A feed trough, so new you could smell the pine, was positioned in the middle of the stall, and a white baby doll, wrapped in a shawl, lay in the trough on an overflowing bed of hay.
The curious cows in the neighbouring stalls poked their heads over the dividing wall. Red Wolf was mesmerized. One, called Jersey, had a coat the colour of the forest floor in autumn, big brown eyes, large furry ears, and a wet black nose. She reminded Red Wolf of a deer. He stifled a laugh when her long pink tongue reached out to lick her own nostrils. Red Wolf stuck out his own tongue and stretched it upward. It didn’t go as far as his nose.
One grade at a time, the children came to the barn to see the show. Mary, in the blue robe, sat on a stool behind the feed trough and obeyed Master Evans’ directions to look down lovingly at the doll in the hay. Joseph stood next to the boy in blue and gently rested a hand on his shoulder. In response to Master Evans’ cue, Red Wolf led the shepherds excitedly down the barn aisle and through the open door of the stall. They each knelt at the feed trough and peered adoringly into the face of the doll, then regrouped on the right side of Joseph. Finally, the three wise men marched regally down the barn aisle and bowed respectfully in front of the feed trough. They put their gifts worshipfully on the ground, then stood on the left side of Joseph in what Master Evans called a balanced stage.
The actors then stood quietly while all of the children in the grade had the opportunity to look through the stall door at the scene, or peer over the wall if they were tall enough. Red Wolf felt uncomfortable with everyone staring at him. Then everyone sang the song that the entire school had spent weeks learning.
Away in a manger no crib for a bed
The little Lord Jesus laid down his sweet head.
The stars in the bright sky looked down where he lay
(The silver star twinkled and twirled in the moving air … right over the feed trough.)
The little Lord Jesus asleep in the hay.
The cattle are lowing
(The cows mooed, as if on cue.)
The baby awakes, but little Lord Jesus no crying he makes.
(The boy in the blue robe picked up the doll and rocked it in his arms.)
I love Thee, Lord Jesus, look down from the sky
(The shepherds and wise men stared at the doll with smiles pasted on their faces.)
And stay by my side, until morning is nigh.
At the end of the song, Father Thomas beamed and the teacher ushered his class back to the school building, humming as he went. The wise men picked up their gift boxes and retreated to the far end of the barn, followed by the shepherds, where they all awaited the arrival of the next grade.
It wasn’t until the following Christmas, when Red Wolf watched other Grade Ones perform the identical p
ageant, that he realized “Mary” was a girl’s name, that the boy in blue was supposed to be the mother of Jesus, and the boxes that the wise men carried were empty.
CHAPTER TEN
After the small Upright had disappeared into the waves of sun-bleached grass, Crooked Ear had waited in the shelter of the forest for the child to return, but the tall Upright had come back alone. The days were becoming shorter and instinct was tugging at his paws, telling them to go back to the place of his birth, back to the granite ridge at Clear Lake. But there was a stronger force tugging at him, also, and he followed it … right to the barbed-wire fence of the school. Under the cover of darkness he trotted around the perimeter, looking for a way past the fence, but there was none. He stood on his hind legs and stretched his forelegs as far as they would go, feeling the sharp barbs of the wire. He whined softly and scrabbled at the base of the fence, but the wire went into the earth also. He could smell his little Upright, but there were many other smells too, ones that filled him with fear. He spun, broke into a lope, and started the journey back to Clear Lake.
Snow was falling long before Crooked Ear reached the place of his birth. He pushed on through the cold, his limbs cramping with exhaustion, his instinct telling him that respite was not far away. He loped the last few miles and rushed into the old pack with tail wagging and a lupine smile across his face.
His mother and father and siblings were not there to greet him.
The pack stared at him with an aloofness that bordered on hostility. Crooked Ear knew what to do. He lowered his head, tail, and ears. He averted his gaze from their amber and yellow eyes. He flattened his body toward the ground. He held this pose for a few seconds, his keen senses judging the reaction among the other wolves. One, alone, bared his fangs and snarled. Crooked Ear discerned that this wolf was the pack’s new alpha male, and he recognized him: his Uncle Seraph, Tall-Legs’s younger brother. The rest of the pack waited for Seraph to make the decision as to whether or not Crooked Ear would be allowed back into the family. In the silence Crooked Ear judged that things were not going well. He was about to roll onto his back in the ultimate gesture of submission when Seraph charged.
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