and over.
HeWhoWhistles pointed to the top of the tall gate, where barbed wire lay coiled like a sleeping snake. “The wire has teeth! It will eat your flesh! ”
Red Wolf continued scrambling upward. He was inches from the top when the man’s powerful arms grabbed him, jerked him away from the gate, and carried him through the school door. He fought to look back at his father. HeWhoWhistles had sunk to his knees and was wailing.
The school door slammed shut. “Listen well,” the man growled, tossing Red Wolf against the wall as though he had no more weight than a leaf. “I will talk in your tongue so you will understand. I am Mister Hall. I run things here.”
He lowered his voice to a whisper and hissed through crooked yellow teeth. “I can make your life very uncomfortable, or we can be friends. You get to choose. See, it all depends on how you behave. Understand?”
Before he could respond, Red Wolf was shoved into the wall a second time. He gasped, struggling to breathe.
“As far as I’m concerned, you’re a worthless Indian,” the man said, spittle flying from his mouth along with the mixture of Algonquian and English words. “And it’s a waste of everybody’s time trying to educate you, civilize you, and integrate you. You’ll never be anything but a filthy savage!”
A glob of saliva fell on Red Wolf’s shin. It crept along the slope of his foot toward the porcupine quills that his mother had sewn on his moccasin. He watched as though all of this was happening to a different child, a different foot, a different moccasin.
The man released his grip and stepped back a pace, wagging a finger vigorously in the air and barking strange words. “I don’t enjoy this job, but it’s a good income for me and the wife. So what I’m saying is this —”
Red Wolf struggled to focus on the tip of the finger that was moving closer and closer to his face. And then it happened — he felt himself stretching upward, growing taller and thinner until he was looking down on the man’s bald head. He saw sweat gleaming there.
“— don’t make my job more difficult, or you’ll be sorry.”
Red Wolf floated peacefully. Beneath him, the man’s meaty fist engulfed the fragile hand of a small boy, a boy whose eyes were wide with fear. Red Wolf noticed the whiskers that sprouted from the man’s ears. They were the colour of autumn leaves and he thought it strange that Mister Hall had orange hair on his ears, but none on his head. He wondered if the hair of white-skins changed colour in the autumn and fell from their heads like the leaves fall from the trees.
The man’s demeanour softened, his mouth stretching into a grin. “But if you behave yourself, you’ll be just fine.”
Red Wolf slid back into his own moccasins, but he felt no reassurance from the man’s words, and no comfort from the man’s smile. The grey-blue eyes did not twinkle with warmth and kindness like those of The People. And, as Mister Hall led him along the corridor, he felt something he had never felt before: dread.
“This is your house-mother, your wiigwam mother,” Mister Hall said, speaking loudly in stilted Algonquian. “She’s my wife, my woman. But you call her Mother Hall. Understand?”
The woman’s voice was shrill and she spoke words that had no meaning. “Take off your clothes so I can disinfect you. We don’t want your lice and fleas in the building.”
Red Wolf stared blankly at her.
“Quickly!”
Her mouth continued to move as she spat sounds into the air. Red Wolf watched, but he didn’t understand the words. He noticed the thin, colourless hair that was pulled tightly from her face, creating the illusion that she had no hair at all. He noticed that her long grey skirt was fastened at the waist with a leather belt and that rawhide strips hung from the belt, dangling almost to the ground. The woman fingered them as she spoke. Suddenly, with a flick of the wrist, she sent the strips flying though the air. They snaked around Red Wolf’s bare calves with a stinging slap. He jumped away, yelping at the unexpected pain. He bit his bottom lip and wiped away the tears with the back of his hands.
The woman continued to make the strange sounds, her whole face involved in her speech, but Red Wolf kept his eyes focused on her hands, especially the right hand. When it brushed against the rawhide strips, he braced for more stinging pain, but it didn’t come. Instead the woman thrust both her hands skyward and looked up. Red Wolf looked up too.
“Good grief!” she exclaimed. “Here’s another one that don’t speak English, not a single word!”
Slower and louder still, she tried again. “Take … off … your … clothes.”
She pulled the soft hide shirt over his head and tossed it into the open lid of the potbellied stove. The fire belched smoke. The child was distraught. He had failed to protect his mother’s handiwork and her disappointment weighed on him. He told the woman how hard his mother had worked making the shirt, and how she had made the fringe extra long because he had wanted it that way.
The rawhide strips coiled around his legs and ankles.
“Don’t speak that savage language!”
It was fear, not comprehension that made him obey.
Why did Father leave me here? Why doesn’t he come and take me home?
The silence was soon shattered by another shrill outburst from the woman. Red Wolf stood immobile and mute. Mother Hall reached out to remove his breechcloth. Red Wolf held on fast, but after a brief struggle the woman won and, except for the wolf’s head pendant that hung around his neck on a strip of leather, he was naked.
“Superstitious witchcraft!” she shrieked, snatching the pendant with a force that broke the leather and bruised his neck. She turned to poke at the fire, not noticing that the pendant had slipped from the leather to the floor.
Red Wolf’s foot reacted instantly, pushing the pendant under the desk, where it was out of sight. As his bare toes made contact with the carved bone, he remembered when his father had made it. It had been in the days following the summer hunt when the weary hunters had rested and when the women had worked at preparing the meat.
HeWhoWhistles was sitting at the edge of the lake, holding a piece of bone in his palm and running his fingers over it, listening to it, he had said, so he could free the spirit within. But then Grandmother had spoiled everything! Usually Red Wolf enjoyed spending time with the old woman; she told him the names of the plants, the ailments they cured, the colour dye they gave, what was good for brewing tea or flavouring stew. But on this day he had just wanted to sit with his father and watch the magical transformation that was about to happen.
Later, when he returned to his father’s side, the pelvic bone of the deer had become the head of a wolf. Red Wolf was thrilled when his father tied it around his neck on a rawhide strip.
Now, naked in front of this stranger, with his hands clasped over his groin, a tear slipped onto his cheek. He didn’t notice Mother Hall pick up the shears. Before he had the chance to realize what was happening, both of his braids had been chopped off and tossed into the potbellied stove. The boy was aghast. His hands left his private parts and flew to his head, reaching for the remaining hair that bounced around his ears. He knew hair was sacred! It should be cut only when someone
