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?”
“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
