Red Wolf

by Jennifer Dance

  “Aaniish ezhi baked?” HeWhoWhistles asked.

  Red Wolf looked blankly at his father.

  “Nwii-mwaa giigoonh.”

  The boy still did not respond.

  “Why do you not understand me?” HeWhoWhistles asked. “What have they done to you?”

  Red Wolf did not recall the words to tell his father that it didn’t matter if they couldn’t understand each other, it was enough just to be together.

  HeWhoWhistles waded into the brook with a sharpened stick. “Giigoohn,” he said, “Wiisnin giigoohn.”

  “Yes!” Red Wolf said excitedly. “Wiisnin giigoohn.”

  HeWhoWhistles smiled.

  The brook trout was the most satisfying meal that Red Wolf had eaten in ten months. When they reached the edge of the forest, his spirits lifted even more. The trees surrounded him in soft green light. He felt safe. Not even the mosquitoes that buzzed in his ears and bit at his skin could spoil his mood. Summer stretched ahead of him. It would last forever.

  A wet nose slid under his hand. He turned to run, but then he saw Crooked Ear. The wolf was no longer a gangling pup. He stood as tall as the boy’s shoulder, but his left ear was still crooked. The expression in his eyes was still the same, and Red Wolf recognized him instantly.

  Crooked Ear trembled, wanting to roll on the ground with the child as he would with another wolf, but something warned him that the Upright pup needed to be treated gently. So he raced in circles until he was calm enough to sit on his haunches and allow the child to throw his arms around him. He licked behind the boy’s ear, Red Wolf’s giggles making the animal’s tail swish back and forth.

  Then they chased each other along the trail. On the steep hills the boy held on to Crooked Ear’s ruff and allowed the wolf to pull him up the incline. Then they both raced down the other side, the wolf taking the lead and the boy, with arms held wide, pretending to fly like a bird.

  But as night fell and HeWhoWhistles made camp, the wolf faded into the night and Red Wolf snuggled into the warmth of his father.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Red Wolf’s heart had ached for ten months to return to his family. Now that he was home he was disappointed. Everything was strange. It was as if they had sent him back to the wrong home, the wrong family.

  In his memory, home was a fur-lined, birch-bark wiigwam. The reality was a shack made of pine boards topped with a rusting metal roof. It reminded him of the potting shed at school where dead children, it was said, waited for spring when they would be planted in the ground. Red Wolf’s baby sister had made a stunning transformation from a helpless infant to a boisterous, inquisitive little girl. She could walk and even talk, although he could not understand her words — but at first he couldn’t understand anyone’s words, not even his mother’s. And when he spoke in English, they looked at him with blank stares.

  He still didn’t understand why he had been sent away to school. His father had said they had no choice, that it was the white man’s law. But Red Wolf believed that his father could defy Father Thomas, and the Halls, and the Indian agent, and all the laws that the white man had set in place, if he wanted to.

  Father Thomas had given the children a summer assignment, to turn their parents away from the sinful, savage ways that led to Hell, and guide them instead on the path to Jesus. Red Wolf had not completely understood the lesson, and Father Thomas’s words did not easily translate into Anishnaabemowin, which was beginning to return to him. However, the boy had learned quite thoroughly that he was a filthy Indian and a savage. The knowledge had left him feeling sullied and ashamed. If he told his parents that they too were filthy Indians and savages, they would be dishonoured and ashamed also.

  An unnatural silence settled over the family. When they spoke to him, he answered in monosyllables, or not at all. But Red Wolf was comfortable with silence. He had learned over the past year that silence usually meant safety. For his parents, however, the silence in the small cabin was deafening.

  StarWoman didn’t know what was wrong with her son and didn’t know how to fix it. She ached to hold him in her arms as she had when he was a baby, but he was cool in response to her warmth. He was getting bigger, she mused, too big to be treated like a toddler. His baby skin had started to change even before he had gone away to school. It bore the marks of growing up, of moving out into the world beyond her constant protection. But there were other marks on his skin now that she thought must have come from rough play with the boys at school. When she pointed and asked about them, he pushed her hand away and remained silent. StarWoman struggled to accept that her firstborn was growing up. It saddened her that she was being left behind. She gave her daughter the hugs she longed to give her son.

  HeWhoWhistles, aware that his son had entered a new world, took sanctuary in the outdoors. Sometimes Red Wolf joined his father in the bush, and wherever the boy went, Crooked Ear followed, bounding in and out of the bushes or ambling along with the child’s hand resting on his back. HeWhoWhistles felt that the wolf understood his son better than he did, and when the creature melted back into the forest, leaving him alone with Red Wolf, he was uncomfortable. They walked close, but there was distance between them.

  “What did you learn at the white man’s school?” HeWhoWhistles blurted out one day, not really expecting an answer.

  Red Wolf was refamiliarizing himself with Anishnaabemowin, but the answers to his father’s question formed in his head in English, not in his mother tongue.

  I learned to never talk in Anishnaabemowin.

  I learned to be quiet and not draw attention to myself.

  I learned to never let my pain, or my fear, or my anger show on my face.

  I learned that I am a savage.

  That The People are heathens and pagans.

  That we are all dirty Indians.

  I learned that if they educate us and cut our hair and give us white boys’ clothes, and if we say we love Jesus … then we will be saved. We will no longer be dirty Indians. But I don’t know what we shall be. I don’t think we shall ever be white boys.

  I learned to hide inside myself and pretend I wasn’t there.

  I learned to bury my head in the pillow and shut my eyes and pretend I couldn’t see, or hear, or feel the things that were happening in the night.

  He shuddered then answered his father in the language of The People, which rolled slowly from his tongue.

  “I learned about Jesus.”

  “Who is Jesus?”

  “A good white man.”

  HeWhoWhistles looked dubious.

  “He smiles … almost,” Red Wolf added.

  “Does he teach you the scratchy lines?”

  “No!” the boy replied. “Jesus is dead. His head is on the wall at school!”

  HeWhoWhistles was confused. “His head?”

  “Yes, father. Like a picture drawn in the sand. He is son of their chief, son of Father Thomas, I think.” A frown spread over the boy’s brow. “But he must have been bad, because they nailed him to a tree, like this.” Red Wolf spread his hands and dropped his head on his chest.

  HeWhoWhistles was skeptical, wondering if his son had learned the white man’s lesson correctly. But he remembered the sacred story of Nanabozho and the Great Spirit Wolf. He reflected that Nanabozho and Ma’een’gun had disobeyed Creator and as a result there were consequences for eternity; wolf and man had been set on separate paths, their close bond broken. Maybe Creator had punished Jesus in the same way.

  While HeWhoWhistles pondered this, Red Wolf was mentally translating his next thoughts into the language of The People.

  “Jesus looks like you, father. He has long hair and doe eyes.”

  Understanding lit HeWhoWhistles’ face. “That is why they killed him! They do not like The True People, or ones that look like us.”

  Red Wolf nodded his agreement. “Father Thomas says, ‘Believe Jesus, or go to Hell.’”

  HeWhoWhistles frowned. “Where is Hell? Is it a reserve?”

&nb
sp; “Hell is a bad wiigwam under the earth. The fire in Hell-wiigwam is hot. It smells bad. The people in Hell-wiigwam cry forever. ForEverAndEverAmen,” he added in English.

  “Can they not throw open the door flap?” HeWhoWhistles asked.

  “No, they never get out! It’s their place in the spirit world forever.”

  HeWhoWhistles pondered his son’s words for a long time, his breath moving in rhythm with his soft footfalls. “My son, the white man makes this life very hard for us. I am not yet dead, but already I am in Hell! They can do no more to me.”

  Father and son walked on in silence, heads down, eyes on their moving feet. HeWhoWhistles reached down and plucked a stem of horsetail. Absently he pulled it in two, feeling the spray of water that sprang from the break. He handed one half to Red Wolf and used the other to thoughtfully scrape his teeth. Red Wolf did the same.

  “Did you learn the scratchy lines?” HeWhoWhistles asked after a while.

  “Yes.”

  “Then, son, you will make sure we are not lied to again.”

  August came to a close. HeWhoWhistles had been given a ten-day pass and was ready to walk his son back to school. Red Wolf said goodbye to his mother with little emotion. He saw the grief on her face, but he was angry they were sending him back, and he didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of a tearful goodbye.

  When they reached the place where the forest met the meadow, Crooked Ear would go no further. Red Wolf understood that this was the moment to say goodbye. He grasped the wolf around the neck and buried his head in the warm, thick coat, breathing in the lupine odour. Tears came unexpectedly and furiously. He let them seep into the wolf’s fur.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Red Wolf settled back into the routine of being George.

  Henry moved up to Grade Two along with George, and the older boy never missed an opportunity to torment the younger. Henry would give George a swift kick on his backside when the teacher wasn’t looking; he would steal George’s slate or his chalk and try in all manner of ways to get him into trouble with the teacher. He did all this while telling George he was a stupid Indian.

  George longed to tell Henry that he was the stupid Indian because he still had to go to the Grade One classroom during lunch break for remedial reading lessons with Master Evans. But George kept quiet because he was intimidated, not just by Henry’s size but by his spitefulness.

  During his education thus far, George had learned as much about chickens as he had about reading, writing, and arithmetic, so it was plain to him that the pecking order in the chicken coop was no different from the pecking order in the school. The top chicken asserted its dominance by pecking at another chicken, who rarely fought back. Instead it turned on the next one down the line. At the very bottom of the order the lowliest bird became balder and balder as more and more feathers were plucked out. Once blood was drawn the hens ganged up, drilling at the blood spots in a manner that reminded George of a woodpecker hammering at a tree. They attacked the lowly hen until it lay featherless and bloody and dead.

  Before coming to school George would have empathized with the victimized bird and would have tried to stop the carnage, but his tender heart had hardened, and his childish desire to help the helpless and rectify injustice had been replaced with a cold neutrality. It was as if his heart and mind were detached from what his eyes saw. He accepted the pecking order in the school just as he accepted it in the chicken coop. He watched strong boys bully weaker ones, who in turn bullied those who were weaker still. In George’s world, Henry was at the top of the pecking order. And since George had no intention of ending up at the bottom he did his fair share of bullying, too.

  The Grade Two teacher was called Sir. When children couldn’t answer Sir’s questions, he made them kneel in a pan of grit. Henry knelt there more than anyone else. His knees were almost always pockmarked. This was one of the few things that gave George any gratification.

  George hated Henry! It was as simple as that.

  Until he had started school, he hadn’t hated anyone or anything. He had sometimes been impatient and occasionally angry, but these were short-lived moods, not the all-encompassing hatred that festered in him now. He hated school. He hated the routines. He hated the staff. But more than all these things he hated Henry.

  George wished with all his heart that Henry would die.

  Sickness arrived with the winter, rampaging through the school like wildfire. Henry was one of the first to be taken to the infirmary. George was elated! For once in his life, something he wished for might come true: Henry was sick. All he had to do now was die! But Henry recovered quickly and came back to class. That same day, Turtle’s face was flushed with fever and Mother Hall sent him straight to the infirmary. George was distraught. He was convinced that the God of the School was punishing him for wishing such wickedness on Henry. He prayed to Godthefather-Godtheson-and-Godtheholyspirit, asking forgiveness for being such a stupid savage and such an ungrateful sinner, and begging that Turtle would get better.

  Healthy children were banned from going anywhere close to the infirmary, but George broke the rule and sneaked into the corridor in the hope of seeing Turtle. He was shocked when he saw the large number of beds that spilled out of the infirmary and were lined up in the corridor. More children were sick than he had realized. He didn’t see Turtle.

  “You can’t be here!” the nurse exclaimed. “You’ll catch the sickness.”

  “Is Turtle here … 298?” George asked, backing away.

  The nurse looked very sad. “You have to leave right now, George.”

  “Is he here?” George insisted.

  “No. He’s gone.”

  “Where’s he gone?” George asked.

  The nurse had tears in her eyes. “He’s not in pain anymore, George. He’s home.”

  George was relieved.

  The young nurse barely slept. She worked around the clock. The job at Bruce County Indian Residential School was her first job since training and she so wanted to nurse the children back to health, but there were too many children and she was overwhelmed. She longed to get away, to go home to her mother and father. In desperation she went down on her knees and with tears brimming from her closed eyes she prayed, “God, find me a way out.”

  She had never heard the voice of God, and she didn’t expect a verbal answer, but in her heart she suddenly knew that she had to stay with the children, to treat their ailments as best she could, but more importantly to comfort them and hold their hands and be with them when their sad souls left their bodies. She promised herself that no child would die alone, unnoticed. She prayed that God would help her.

  The nurse was too busy with the living and the dying to know that the dead were taken, unceremoniously, to the potting shed in a wheelbarrow. Mother Hall wrote the tags that Mister Hall then wired onto the big toes of the cold corpses. If, during its short life, a child had imprinted itself onto the mind of a staff member, a Christian name was written on the toe-tag, but those who had not been particularly memorable went to “heaven” with the same identity they had lived by: a number.

  Initially the bodies were placed in rough-sawn pine boxes, stacked from the ground up to economize on space. Rakes, hoes, shovels, and forks once spread at random throughout the shed were leaned up against the stacked boxes with a semblance of order. But when the carpenter could no longer keep pace with the demand for coffins, the bodies, wrapped in sheets, were placed directly on the slatted tables. They remained there, guarded by rat traps, until the ground thawed in the spring.

  For a while George believed that Turtle had gone home to his parents, but one day in religious knowledge class, Father Thomas referred to Heaven as “Our Eternal Home.”

  There was a jolt inside George’s chest. And he knew the truth.

  The next morning when Mother Hall came to the dormitory, Red Wolf raised his hand and waited until she permitted him to speak.

  “Please, Mother, I ask for haircut.”

  Everyon
e looked at him as if he had gone mad.

  Mother Hall smiled with delight. “Of course, 366. Tomorrow is haircut day for this dormitory, so you won’t have to wait much longer.”

  The following day, as his hair fell to the ground, Red Wolf closed his eyes tight to prevent the spill of tears and, in the way of The People, he said goodbye to his friend.

  Spring came. The afternoon sun beat down on the shiny metal roof of the potting shed, releasing the faintest scent of death through the cracks in the timbers. But the nights were still cool and an early morning fog settled over the grounds of Bruce County School. It dampened the coveralls of the gaunt youths who wielded long-handled shovels. The Indian agent’s dog joined them as they dug, scrabbling vigorously with his front paws, sending dirt flying through his hind legs. A safe distance away, three ravens attempted to alight on the same wooden cross. They jockeyed for dominance, flapping and squawking until the cross gave way and collapsed onto the grass, sending the birds back into the air.

  They flew in a circle of reconnaissance, landing this time on a rectangular box that lay untended on the grass. United in a common task, they pecked at the wood, pulling fibres away with their strong beaks and claws. The smell, barely discernible to human senses, drove them into a frenzy of activity. But their efforts were thwarted. Father Thomas appeared at the back door of the school and lumbered toward the birds, waving his arms and shouting. The dog joined the chase, forcing the ravens to disappear into the mist. They retreated to the safety of the roof, where they preened and waited. But this was not their lucky day, and before the sun had burned away the mist, the corpses had been buried deep in the ground.

  Father Thomas added the final touches. He smoothed the fresh mounds of soil with the back of the shovel and pushed newly cut pine crosses into the soft dirt. He frowned, annoyed that the sap from the fresh wood was sticking to his hands. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and tried to rub off the resin, but it only smeared. Sighing, he crossed himself and beseeched God to save the souls of the little savages. Then he went about his day.