The Game of Silence

by Louise Erdrich

  ZEEGWUN

  SPRING

  FOURTEEN

  DEYDEY GUIDES THE BLACK ROBE

  “The Black Robe spoke with me. He asked me to show him the way to the camp of the far point people. He is hoping to grab a few more souls, I guess.” Deydey laughed, but it was clear that he was planning to guide the priest to the place he wished to go.

  “He doesn’t know how to read the ice,” Deydey continued, shaking his head. “This time of year, he’ll step on a rotten patch! I better show him the way. You know, he has told me himself that he sometimes gets lost and wanders in circles.”

  “You should be here,” grumped Yellow Kettle, “getting ready for the ice breakup and for the sugaring.”

  The trees were not yet ready to tap, and wouldn’t be for a good amount of time. But snow was falling from the pine boughs. The bits of snow made soft little plopping noises when they hit the ground. Gradually, the winter was letting go. Still, Deydey knew that Yellow Kettle’s reasons for objecting were different. He would only be gone a few sleeps there, a few back. Yet she would miss him. She didn’t want him to go. Because she was Yellow Kettle, it was hard for her to say this. She was very brave, but she was worried, or maybe she had an inkling even then of what would happen to Deydey and Father Baraga. Maybe she saw ahead and read the danger.

  THE LAKE SPLITS

  Deep in the night, it began to complain. All day, the great booming sounds of the ice cracking came and went. Sounds traveled like gunshots from every side of the island. Everyone went down to stand onshore and watch. Of course, the whole family was worried about Deydey, but he knew the ice. Certainly, he would not get caught on the cracking surface. He would wait on the mainland, hire a canoe, and venture out until the water was open. Yellow Kettle sighed in irritation. Now it would be a little more time until he returned.

  The children ran up and down the beach, following the loud reports, watching for a crashing collision of ice shards. On the shore, Auntie Muskrat stood beaming into the sweet blue sky, her hands on her round hips. With her stood Miskobines, the chief, Red Thunder. He had become like a grandfather to her children, and as his strength increased with every good meal Auntie Muskrat fed him, he had begun to use his skills in hunting and fishing to help the family. They were all dressed warmly and wore new makizanan.

  Suddenly, from all the way out on the lake, a great black crack began. The children saw it and pointed in excitement. The crack traveled toward them fast as a moving snake. It came straight toward them, and when it hit the shore there was a vast and resounding boom! Auntie Muskrat and Miskobines were standing right where the crack hit shore. The force of the air that built up as the crack traveled struck them full force. They went flying right out of their blankets, backward into the sand!

  Knocked over all of a sudden, they sat stunned. They shook their heads, addled, confused. Unhurt, they jumped up in excitement. Owah! Auntie Muskrat laughed hardest, describing the force of the wind that knocked them over. The lake was breaking. Things were changing. Spring was coming. The power of the world would show itself in new growth. All the animals would return.

  THE DREAM

  After Deydey was gone with Father Baraga for half the turn of the moon, Yellow Kettle said right out loud that she wondered where he was. When she said this, everything stopped. It was not the words that she said, but the sudden sound of distress in her voice. She knew just how long it took for him to get to the far point, and she also knew he should have been back before now. Together, once their fears were out in the open, the little family sat around the outside cooking fire and stared into the flames.

  “Daga, n’gaa, smoke your pipe on this,” Yellow Kettle asked Nokomis in a low voice.

  Nokomis brought her pipe and then the family sat with her and they smoked it together, or touched the pipe, to show they were of one mind in their concern and prayers. Even Pinch was very quiet, his hands twisting. He didn’t pull Omakayas’s braid or even try to burn her foot with a hot stick. Angeline’s heart was clearly stretched already from her worry about Fishtail, and she was close to shedding tears. Yellow Kettle breathed in tiny breaths and kept her eyes narrowed and her brow set. She had to keep up an angry and concentrated front, or it was clear she might cry too. As Nokomis passed the red stone pipe to her, the smoke carried their thoughts up into the sky to the great, kind spirit who showed pity to the Anishinabeg. Omakayas felt a sense of peace. No human hand touched her, but she felt as though someone infinitely kind laid a palm on her forehead.

  She took a tiny puff of the sacred smoke and asked for her Deydey’s safe return.

  Maybe it was the pipe, or the heat of the flames. Maybe it was her fear, or perhaps it was the way her mind worked. Whatever it was, that night Omakayas dreamed:

  She was balancing in the air. She was rising, then flying so quickly that the wind pulled at her clothes. Below, she saw the island where eagles made their nest. Omakayas’s heart leaped. She recognized an island where Deydey often stopped to lay tobacco on the shore. He was there, sitting next to a black rock. In his hands, he held his long counting stick and his knife. He was about to put another cut in his stick, when she heard her mother’s voice.

  The dream was so real that as she halfway woke, while her eyes were still shut, she wasn’t sure where she was. Then she heard her mother’s voice outside the cabin, raised in annoyance. Omakayas opened her eyes. She was in her rabbit blanket, her feet toward the cold ashes of last night’s fire. The morning had already begun.

  When Omakayas stepped out of the lodge, her mother was jiggling Bizheens on her hip and glaring at the burnt stuff in the bottom of a kettle.

  “Nobody notices anything around here but me! Why do I always have to be the one who remembers to take the pot off the fire!”

  Yellow Kettle shoved the akik onto the ground in a fit of temper. Omakayas stepped back and stood beside the cabin. When her mother fell into a fury, it was best to let her rage all by herself, to fume and fuss into the wind. But it was too late. Yellow Kettle had seen her, and her frustrated eye caught sight of Omakayas’s messy hair and dragging makazin ties.

  “Is that my daughter with the sticky hair? Is Omakayas so full of important things to do she can’t bend down and tie the makazinan, the ones I made for her? Aaarghuf!”

  Poor Bizheens was jiggled so hard he shook all over. His plump cheeks shook and his solemn little face vibrated. If Yellow Kettle hadn’t been so mad, the sight of him would have been comical. But right now the last thing Omakayas wanted to do was laugh. When Yellow Kettle’s rage fixed on Omakayas, she knew that she should just stay still and let it roll like a loud but harmless storm high in the clouds. Yellow Kettle stamped, ranted, threw down the kettle, but always, at last, her anger blew out. She suddenly deflated. She sat down on the rock next to the fire and cried out for her husband.

  “Where are you, my husband?” she asked in a still voice that sounded very young in the ears of Omakayas. Now she was safe to approach, and Omakayas did.

  “N’gaa, I dreamed he was at the island where the migiziwag have their big nest. I dreamed he was sitting there, notching his counting stick.”

  “Aaaaaruf!”

  Maybe she had spoken too soon. Maybe Yellow Kettle would say that it was foolish, just a dream, and that it should be disregarded. Nokomis, however, had come near while Omakayas was speaking and now she asked her granddaughter to repeat the dream. Omakayas told the dream as she had before.

  “This girl has dreamed a dream,” said Nokomis firmly. “Let’s get men to go and look. The lake has broken. The two may be trapped on that island.”

  THE RESCUE

  Miskobines was ready to go and look for Deydey. He wanted very much, in fact, to find this man whose family had been so good to him and to his people. The Angry One insisted he would go too, and his father agreed. Old Tallow wanted to go too. She took the canoe with the odd roof on the end, and Miskobines and Little Thunder took theirs. Miskobines had taught his boy to paddle ex
pertly and told him how to read all things in the sky, the water, the earth.

  The rescue party set off as soon as they had offered tobacco. They would trace their way to the island of the eagles—everyone knew about that island. It would take one day to get there and one to return. Not long, and the family would know one way or the other.

  Those two days were the longest days of Omakayas’s life.

  Pinch was no help. As though he was jealous of people thinking of anybody but Pinch, he clung to Mama. Omakayas was disgusted and felt sorry for Yellow Kettle. She had two babies—one to hold and one who tagged along begging for syrup or a little grease for his bannock. That last one had a runny nose and darting eyes. His hair poked every which way. His voice was loud and his demands were constant. It seemed to Omakayas that whenever there was a time of danger Pinch turned back into a baby. Mama had to listen to constant demands. Usually she did as he asked and calmed him when his voice got rough. Omakayas didn’t understand how Mama could have so much patience sometimes, when her temper was so bad at other times. Yellow Kettle was gentle with Pinch and gentle with Omakayas too. She kept soothing and giving, reassuring them both, and holding Bizheens if he made the slightest sound.

  “Your mother has a river of patience,” said Nokomis, late the first day, when Omakayas spoke of this. “The river is very broad and deep. But there are big rocks in it!”

  It was the first thing that made Omakayas laugh.

  “How do you know?” she asked.

  “I was like that too. The Anishinabeg study of patience is a lifetime task. You must start young.”

  “I can’t stand Pinch,” Omakayas admitted. “He whines, he burns off the feet of my dolls, he tried to steal my red stone. I had to pry it out of his mouth. That’s where he was hiding it.”

  “You love him anyway,” said Nokomis.

  Omakayas thought of the times Pinch had been her only friend, the times he’d admitted he was scared. She thought of how she’d helped calm him after he cut himself with a hatchet, and remembered the times he’d quietly snuggled close to her when Nokomis told her aadizookaanag. She thought of the time he told her of Two Strike’s war. She nodded at Nokomis and then sighed when she looked over at Pinch. He was making a fish trap out of ridiculously long sticks, and using messy ties to fasten the sides and top. His fish trap looked like a goose nest. Omakayas was annoyed with him all over.

  “Just look what he’s doing!” she said to her grandmother.

  Nokomis just shook her head and laughed.

  They all had fat and juicy fish that night, for the odd fish trap that Pinch made worked perfectly, of course. Omakayas certainly couldn’t complain. There were enough fish to dry in the morning, and extra fish to salt down and sell to the trader. Tomorrow the fish trap would catch more fish to cook for the men when they returned. For although her night was black and deep, her sleep like falling off a cliff, Omakayas had to hope that her dream was true. She hoped, but she really did not know if she should believe.

  Why should the spirits tell her things? She was small, she told herself, and ordinary to everybody except Nokomis and Bizheens, and sometimes Old Tallow.

  The hours dragged, each longer than the next, and Omakayas grew fearful. Inside, her heart shook. At first she worried that only Miskobines and Little Thunder would return, without Deydey and the priest. Then as her thoughts tried to light here, or there, the concern included Little Thunder. She was startled to realize she worried about him too. Suddenly she felt her heart pinch. She felt sorry for Angeline. How hard it must be for her to miss her beloved Fishtail.

  The long afternoon, spent cleaning and skinning fish, dragged to a long shadowed close, and the women went down to the dock to wait for nightfall.

  “It means nothing,” said Yellow Kettle, “if they don’t arrive tonight. It means only that they decided to camp a bit longer. We can’t expect them to have Deydey, either. The dream was strong, but there are many ways to see it. The men may be wandering the mainland. So many places they could be…”

  As Yellow Kettle spoke, Omakayas knew that she was trying desperately to hide her anxiety and to extinguish any hope from forming in her heart. If she had no hope, she would not be disappointed. She could still keep imagining that Deydey was somewhere else, safe, with the hard-traveling priest.

  “That soul stealer probably convinced my husband to take him even farther along! Deydey shouldn’t listen to him!” As they approached the shore around the dock, Yellow Kettle’s voice became more agitated. Nokomis tried to take Bizheens from her, but Yellow Kettle held on to the baby anxiously, finding comfort in his warmth. Angeline was silent, her look sorrowful and intense. She sat down, in the last of the sun, and stared bleakly out into the ice and waves.

  Usually the late sunlight, slanting long beneath the clouds, was Omakayas’s favorite time of day. Nokomis had called it the time when the Creator shows us the most beauty in the light, just so that we can remember it in our dreams, and believe in it until the next morning. Omakayas put her hand into her grandmother’s hand. Nokomis’s hand was tough and kind, just like her. Her touch was gentle, but the strength in her fingers could pull a tough medicine root or pinch off a bleeding vein. Nokomis held Omakayas close, as though one set of thoughts traveled between them. They sat still. They waited. Nobody returned.

  That night, everyone slept restlessly. Even Nokomis finally gave up on sleep. Early, while the light was still gray, she was up to boil a tea of medicine barks for Yellow Kettle to drink. Nokomis wanted to strengthen her daughter’s blood, for she feared that the worry over Mikwam was beginning to make her skinny. Nokomis filled a makuk with clear, cold water, shaved bark into it, and added some dried leaves of wild raspberry. She heated up a pile of small stones in the fire. Omakayas heard her outside and joined her beside the fire. Together, they used two long ironwood sticks as pincers to remove the red-hot stones. Omakayas dropped each stone into the makuk of water. It sizzled, then sank to the bottom, heating the water. The tea was ready for Yellow Kettle when she dragged herself from the cabin. Gratefully, she sipped it. Suddenly, her face brightened.

  “You know how things happen when you don’t expect them?” she asked, “Let’s not expect anything today!”

  That day was better then because instead of waiting they made themselves very, very busy. Nokomis set up the hide stretcher and Omakayas went to work scraping a deerskin. Angeline finished Fishtail’s vest, and hung it out for everyone to admire. Pinch made yet another fish trap, stranger than the other. This one looked like a crazed beaver had got hold of it and chewed on it. He was very proud of his work and went down to set it in the water. Two Strike came by, jumping into the camp with a great shout, and they sent her down to put the fish trap in with Pinch. Twilight, Little Bee, and Auntie Muskrat came over to stay with them. They made a great pot of soup. They gathered and cut wood. Nokomis carefully examined the canoe and painted its seams with her special caulking mixture of pinesap and charcoal. Yellow Kettle growled under her breath, breathing fire at the priest, swearing he was the cause of this and many other miseries they faced ever since the first black robe appeared in their land.

  “We should send them back to where the sun comes up,” she said in a menacing voice. She stopped work to sit near Omakayas and rest. “You have done well with your dog,” she noticed, after a time. Makataywazi sat alertly next to Omakayas as she worked, and often attended to the others, but liked being close to his favorite human.

  “Meegwech,” said Omakayas. Any praise from her mother was rare and, given the way she felt about dogs, this was a special tribute.

  Auntie Muskrat had some lead and decided to use Deydey’s bullet mold to make some bullets. Everyone was concentrating on some task when Makataywazi whined, jumped up, and sped into the woods. Only Omakayas noticed and, before she could drop everything and follow, the lost ones returned. Deydey, Miskobines, Old Tallow, and Little Thunder were suddenly in the camp. Omakayas caught sight of Deydey first, but he put a finger to his l
ips and indicated that she be quiet. Yellow Kettle had her back to him. With one foot, she was jiggling Bizheens in his cradle board. In her lap, there was a great mound of diaper cattail fluff that she was cleaning and stuffing into a woven string bag. Silently, Deydey crept up to her. He plucked a thin twig, kneeled behind her, and lightly touched her neck. Yellow Kettle slapped her neck. He touched the side of her ear. She grabbed at air. He touched the top of her head.

  “Gego, Pinch!” said Yellow Kettle.

  Deydey almost laughed. He touched the side of her cheek.

  “Pinch!” Mama jumped up in a sudden rage and fell into her husband’s arms. Emotions clashed in her face—irritation turned to shock. Wonder overcame her, and then simple joy. Mama buried her face in Deydey’s shirt and her shoulders shook in a combination of tears and laughter.

  The feast they had was not only to celebrate the return of the men, but to honor a powerful dreamer. That is what the gray and wise Miskobines called Omakayas when he heard the story of what she’d done. Omakayas herself felt as though she were in a dream. She really hadn’t tried to dream, or asked for a dream, or done anything but put out tobacco for the spirits. And yet this dream had chosen her. The dream had saved her father. For he and Father Baraga were indeed on that island of the eagles and they were stranded. At the feast, Deydey told the story of what had happened.

  THE ICE CANOE

  “When we got to the place of the far point people,” said Deydey, “they had moved on except for two families, both of whom were already baptized. Father Baraga was happy enough to deliver their ceremony, and then we started back for home. Partway back, it seemed to me that we shouldn’t go as we’d come. I told the priest we must go the long way around. We must go where there was no current under the ice. I feared there would be a breakup soon.”

  Deydey stopped, shook his head at the stubbornness of the Black Robe.