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
