by P.L. Yizzi
eels, sounds awful.”
“You think with fear, like a boy. You must believe you are stronger than what it is you fear most. You must believe it, Nunshetu. You must believe.”
I assent, hoping to please him that indeed he has gotten through to me, taught me something he wished to teach me. But I still say I would not have gone.
“Well, I am thankful the snakes and eels did not eat you or your brother, Grandfather,” I say, briefly touching his arm as he laughs.
“It wasn’t the snakes and eels that frightened us. It was the pirates.”
“Pirates?” What a magic word I find that.
Grandfather yanked the knot taut. “Back then, they used the caves along the river for their gambling and hiding their stolen things. Bad men, but men, just men, not like our imaginings. Eh, those men put us on their ship and set to take us away with them to sea.”
Suddenly, Grandfather seems new to me. He’s no longer the melancholy totem smoking up the sitting room, but an enchanting changeling. Ah, an adventurer! “How ever did you both escape?”
His affected silence spurs my curiosity until I feel myself searing to burst. This is pure cruelty, and he seems to be reveling in my captivation.
“How would you have escaped?” he asks.
This is a story already written. Why ask me what my actions would have been? But my imagination being what it is, I quickly answer. “I would have rushed the largest man and stolen his sword, slashing and driving back all the others as I made my way to the bow and dove to my freedom.”
Grandfather is laughing so heartily he has tears in his eyes. After many fits and false starts, he says, “There is more than one way to fight. Sometimes you use your bare hands, sometimes your weapons, but always your mind. Your way, they would have encircled you, come from behind, and overpowered you.”
“Well, then, how was it that a ship full of pirates—a cankerous, evil band, I presume—allowed their prisoners to escape?” I say, more than a bit insulted.
“Eh, they no longer cared about me and my brother.” He waves that foolhardy notion away with one swipe of the air, then looks me eye to eye. “They was escaping too!”
Bewildered, I ask, “From what were they escaping?”
With a mischievous twinkle in his eyes, he says, “Their burning ship,” as if I should have known. “We fought them hard, but we was boys, strong boys, but just boys.” He shrugs and gives a quick shake of his head. “There were too many of them pushing and punching, forcing us up the gangway and aboard. They surrounded us.”
“Oh, the way you say they would have me?”
Grandfather tilts his head with a sheepish smile. “I speak what I know.”
I smile back like a cat having just dined on a fat mouse.
“Eh, they thought we gave up and moved back, relaxed their interest in us some. Then my brother nodded to me and moved toward the cabin. I followed, watching his every move, thinking: What is he going to do?” Grandfather laughs so hard it brings on one of his coughing spells, which takes some time to clear.
“The cabin door opened, and a man come up from below with a lantern. I say to my brother, ‘It is day, why he have a light?’ ‘Must be dark down there,’ he say. The thought of the darkness below frightened me all the more. Eh, then the man from below hollered at one of the others, and as he put his lantern down on a crate next to the cabin door, they began to argue, argue fierce.
“With this, my brother began to shake like he was taking a fit and raised his hands like this,” Grandfather lifts his hands heavenward the way Preacher does on Sunday and shakes them. “Then he shouts, ‘The Great Spirit is upon us’ and starts to dance. What a time to go bad in the head, I think. Eh, I wanted to strike him. I did not want to go to sea with these men, but I knew my brother did not want to go either. So I trusted my brother, and I began to dance too. As I danced like a grog-room idiot, a strange-looking man reached for me, tried to grab me with his big, black hands, but I danced away, danced faster. He hollered, ‘You damned daft Indians!’ Eh, so I flicked my hands at him like I was putting a curse to him. His eyes went big and white against his skin, skin black as night and tattooed with picture scars.”
“Picture scars?”
“Yes, scars that looked like pictures, dots and curling lines all over his face and body, I tell you. And I know not if he started life so black or if the sun done it to him, or why he took up a knife and painted his flesh so, or if it were a punishment for something he done or didn’t do. I cannot say. I never before saw a Negro like him, and I don’t think he ever saw Indians like us.
Grandfather pauses a moment, catches his memory, and continues.
“Eh, so they all stood back, but their eyes was to us, looking at us then to each other, afeared, as if their devil just come landed on their ship. We danced and danced, pounding our feet, wild and crazed as my brother led me in circles, closer and closer to the edge of the ship. This is when he began to spin, arms out, hopping and spinning like a whirlwind, then he reached out for the lantern and smashed it to the deck, setting the ship afire.”
“Whatever did you and your brother do?”
He upholds his crooked finger. “It was then that me and my brother was looking for a clear way off the ship, when the strange-looking man jumped for me. Eh, the Great Spirit must have been upon us, for I punched him harder than I ever hit my brother. Felled him like a tall tree. But it did not take him long to get back up, I tell. No, no, he was up again in a breath and coming straight for me. It was then the Great Spirit must have taken his leave, for we felt the need to run like all hell was at us. Which it was.”
Grandfather and I howl with laughter until I feel certain my ribs are cracking.
“That cove was where we learned to be men. We faced what we feared most.” Grandfather squints as he gazes toward the city and then looks to me, “Where will you go, Nunshetu? Where will you learn?”
“I learn at the schoolhouse, Grandfather.”
His eyes grow wet as he studies me. Then he grunts and returns to his stitching.
“I never knew you to have a brother.”
“He died. Smallpox. Eh, I was away upland hunting white-tailed deer.” He points to where I know not. “Your grandmother was with me, your mother too. She was a baby then, still taking her mother’s milk, but she could run like a squirrel, fast and far. Beautiful little thing.” He nods in absolute agreement with himself. “My brother, my mother, my father, and his father did not leave with us. They were going to come later. Summer was long that year; the harvest came late. There was not much time lef before the snows. It is like that some years, hot to cold, nothing between. Eh, when we lef, my mother was sewing the otter skins closed. She lined them with leaves and filled them with corn and nuts and dried fruit. I remember, my brother was digging the holes to bury the foods, our winter foods—that is what we did then,” he says, briefly regarding me. “As your grandmother and I walked up the road with your mother, they waved.” Grandfather’s hand relives the memory; his open hand is suspended in midair as he softly mumbles, “Lapi knewelch.”
After a moment, he clears his throat. “My family had a house. Not like your father’s. Ours was made of timber and bark and tall grass—built long, not high,” he motions. “My mother made it very pleasing. It was our home. It was where my family died that winter. The Dutch burned it afore I come back. They say’d our ways made the disease. They burned everything we had to the ground.”
Caught in an embarrassing snare of youth, all I find I can do is sit, open mouthed. I am forced to see that for all my learning I am still too inept and inexperienced at life to intelligently comment or provide aid and comfort for such a memory. All I can do is wonder what Father would say, but I come up short. So I am forced to follow Grandfather’s lead, and in keeping with his stoicism, I ask, “Where was it? Where did you live? Was it near here, Grandfather?”
“I do not remember where our place was. Everthin’ looks so different now. I cannot find it anymore.” He snor
ts and lifts his attention to another flock of mallards honking overhead as they fly southerly.
“More go, see? Yuh, much snow will come this time.”
“Mother has stocked the pantry, and we have a large store of wood. You need not worry, Grandfather.”
“I live off the comforts your good father shares with me.”
I pause as if in a moment of reverent silence for Mother and then say, “He thinks well of you.”
Grandfather ignores my small confidence. I believe he feels ashamed for taking from an Englishman, eating his food, sleeping under his slates.
I reach out, giving a tug on Grandfather’s sleeve. “Do have a ride in his carriage. It is quite a thing. You shall like it, I think.”
“I walk.”
“You’ll not be harmed. He’s made it well. Father makes the best carriages in Philadelphia.”
“I walk.”
“It is faster travel than by foot.”
“It is not my way, Nunshetu.”
“Your way can be anything that you like.”
“No, that is not my way. My way is my father’s way and his father’s way and his father’s—that is my way. It was your grandmother’s way too, but your mother . . . There was a time when the only people here were our people. But then the others came, then more of the others. They brought new ways, each different. The Swedes and the Dutch and the English and the Germans—now no one knows their way. My people, those who are