The Game of Silence Read online

  One day, Deydey and Omakayas went to visit the priest, bringing him a bundle of dried fish. Father Baraga came out of his little cabin with a sleepy look on his face, rubbing his eyes. He showed them inside and rustled the papers at his table.

  “I am writing down your language,” he said.

  He showed them the tracks. These written tracks formed a design that held the sounds of words—not just chimookoman but Ojibwe words. It was a marvel to them both that the signs his pen scratched out could be transformed into the things they said with their mouths.

  “Will you teach this to me?” Deydey asked. Omakayas’s heart pounded. She was on the trail of this learning, but she had written only white people sounds. She wanted to know how she could write words out of sounds in her own language.

  “If you become baptized and allow me to baptize your little girl, I’ll teach you,” said Father Baraga.

  “I’ll have to think about that,” Deydey said, regretfully patting Omakayas’s hair. She felt good at his strong touch. Although she wanted to learn the scratching and the meanings of the marks, she was also glad. She would learn the secrets, but she wouldn’t give her spirit in return. Her Deydey was careful and did not simply do everything the priest suggested. There were some who would do anything to please the priest in case his God happened to be powerful.

  “Mikwam, the only way you can gain everlasting life is through my church,” said Father Baraga.

  His eyes were kind, almost pleading as though he was watching them suffer. He pitied them, she thought with surprise, and it almost made her laugh because they pitied him right back.

  “Everlasting life,” he said again, softly.

  “Will my father, my mother, my grandfathers, and my grandmothers be there in this everlasting life?” asked Deydey.

  “Were they baptized?” asked Father Baraga.

  “No,” said Deydey.

  “Then they will not,” the priest answered in a sad voice.

  “Then of course I can’t go,” said Deydey, “I want to see them!”

  Father Baraga only scratched his head, underneath his tiny useless cap, and sighed. There was nothing he could do about this family, nothing.

  PINCH’S STRANGE FISH

  It took a long time for Pinch to learn how to hold the fishing spear just right, balanced over the hole in the ice. It took him an even longer time to learn how to stay motionless. The last was hardest for Pinch, but he was learning from his new cousin, the Angry One. They two spent long hours at the fishing holes, sometimes not far from Deydey. They used the fish decoys that Deydey had carved and carefully balanced, so they floated just right in the water. With one hand, each boy moved the decoys so that they would wiggle just so. With the other hand, each held his spear. Over their heads they draped blankets so that they could see into the water and spear the moving fish.

  All day, Pinch had caught only one tiny fish, while the Angry One and Deydey had filled a makuk each with fat mean-looking pike. Pinch brooded on his failure, and that night, as they sat near the fire after they had eaten the fish and praised their flavor, Pinch asked Deydey if he could make his own fish decoy to use the next day. Somehow he felt sure that if he made his own, he would attract fish and spear them with no trouble.

  So Deydey took out wood, his carving knife, and some leads, which he heated up in a small metal can and would use to weight the fish carved of wood. All that night, and the next, Pinch worked on his fish decoy. He nicked his hands many times. He got frustrated with his poor carving. He poured a bit of hot lead on his foot and burned himself. All in all, it was a terrible task. But, at last, he completed his decoy.

  As he showed it proudly to everyone, they tried not to laugh. It was the oddest shaped fish anyone had ever seen, with a fat lump on its head and a lopsided belly. One fin swam one way, one fin aimed the other. Pinch had rubbed a bit of red ocher into the sides for decorations. The spots were nothing ever seen on a fish before.

  “We’ll see how it works tomorrow,” said Deydey, his mouth twitching as he looked meaningfully at Yellow Kettle. She put her hand on Pinch’s frowzy head and told him she was very proud. But Omakayas saw that when Pinch held the fish up high and crowed, Mama had trouble holding back her laughter. It was a very strange, probably useless fish, for sure.

  The next day the Angry One came by for Pinch and the two started out for the fishing places. When he saw the decoy Pinch had carved, the Angry One put his lips together in a firm line and raised his eyebrows, but said nothing.

  “Tonight, I’ll have enough for a feast,” Pinch declared.

  “I’ll keep the kettle ready,” said Nokomis. She seemed to believe in him. “Ishtay, my grandson, you’re becoming a mighty hunter!”

  And Pinch walked proudly down the trail.

  To everyone’s complete shock, the fish that Pinch carved was apparently the most delicious-looking fish in the world. All the fish that lived underneath the ice wanted it. No sooner had he dropped it in than a big fish came hungrily with open mouth and Pinch speared it. Again, again. Deydey left his own fishing hole and came over to marvel. The odd-looking decoy fish worked every time.

  THE GIFT

  Omakayas wrapped Bizheens warmly and took him outside into a beautiful winter day. Behind the sweat lodge, underneath the pines, she had her own snow house. The walls were made with snowballs and chunks of ice. Omakayas took some jerky and bits of bannock bread. She hoped that Pinch had not yet found her snow house and wrecked it. When the two ducked under the soft fronds of winter pine, she saw that her house was still there, and she smiled with pleasure. Only a few snowballs were dislodged by wind.

  “Neshkey,” she said, jiggling her baby brother. “Our place is beautiful, isn’t it?”

  While she held him in her lap, she used her other hand to pat the snow into place. Bizheens watched all she did with shrewd eyes, approving of all her actions. She picked up some pinecones knocked down by snow and stuck them on top of the walls for decoration. Then she swept away the needles that had fallen on her snow house floor, and rested on her one chair, a flat rock around which she’d built the walls.

  The beautiful arms of the pines reached down all around them, and the wind made a friendly rushing sound high in the needles. She could almost make out words.

  “The pines are singing to us, baby brother,” she said. “They are telling us Fishtail is all right.”

  Omakayas said this although in her heart, she didn’t know if it was true or she just wanted to believe it was true. Bizheens looked up into the pine branches, as though he understood. He seemed to see something up there. He watched carefully, and then he burst into a babbling song that made Omakayas laugh. The shadows of the moving fronds moved back and forth over his happy face. Omakayas softened bits of bannock and jerky in her own mouth, then put them in his toothless mouth. Whenever he tasted something, his face always registered a look of comical concentration. Yellow Kettle said it was because a baby’s taste is very sharp, and usually babies got nothing but mother’s milk. Whatever the reason, the look was always hilarious and now Omakayas could not help but laugh out loud.

  “Who’s in there?”

  It was the Angry One, come looking for Pinch, probably, to throw the snow snakes. Or maybe to fish. After all, he carried a long fishing spear on his back and the snow snakes in one chapped and mittenless hand.

  “I live in here,” Omakayas laughed. “Go away!”

  “Sure,” said the Angry One, and he actually did go away. Had she imagined his visit? Omakayas poked her head out and looked around. He was just about to vanish into the line of trees on the other side of the clearing.

  “Come back!” she yelled. “I didn’t mean it!”

  The Angry One turned slightly and looked directly at the branches from which she was poking her head. He didn’t seem to hear her. Then she surprised herself.

  “What’s your real name?” she yelled.

  “Animikiins,” he yelled back.

  His name meant Little Th
under. While Omakayas was taking this in, he stepped away into the low brush and was gone.

  Omakayas did not visit the snow house again for many days, but when she finally did, she found a gift. On the very end of her snow wall a little round stone had been placed. It was one of those rare finds that wash in from the deepest part of the lake. Sometimes, as though taking special care, the waves rolled these stones along the bottom until a perfect sphere was formed.

  These stones contained protective spirits. She dropped it carefully from one palm to the other, her asin, her stone, and she thought about Little Thunder. He still didn’t laugh much, or act foolish, or tease. That wasn’t his way. But some of his sorrow and his anger was gone. He didn’t look like steam was rising off the top of his head all of the time. He didn’t always frown when people greeted him. Sometimes he smiled, and when he did, what burst from his face was the sunny look and pleasant spirit of the boy he’d been before his mother was killed.

  The smooth asin rolled back and forth, back and forth. How many years had it lain underneath the waves?

  TWELVE

  THE MESSENGER

  Omakayas was always to think back on the pair of bloody snowshoes propped up next to the door of their cabin. The blood was fresh, and it belonged to the messenger whose poor feet were raw with frostbite. He was a scrawny man, yellow-skinned and weak. It took a moment or two for Omakayas to recognize Cloud, who had left the island a strong and hearty young man. He sat in the warmest place before the fire and hungrily gulped hot soup. The grown-ups around him were very quiet, waiting. Soon more grown-ups arrived. The children were given soup and a roasted piece of weyass, but they were not allowed to talk at all. Nokomis sang the game of silence song to them low, and they listened hard for the words. The prizes were few, just a hastily made bow and some lumps of maple sugar obviously scared up for the emergency. Still, the children, including the boy cousins usually so exuberant nothing could persuade them to be quiet, did fall quiet and bundled together beyond the light of the fire. For when he’d eaten, the messenger began to talk in a scratchy voice, through painfully cracked lips.

  “It is all lies,” he said.

  His words fell into the breaths of the listeners, woven together in a basket of silence. He went on.

  “Brothers and sisters, we have looked to the east, we have looked to the south, to the west, to the north. None of the Anishinabeg has killed a chimookoman. We have not broken our treaty.”

  There was silence, a sigh of relief, and then grumbling. If the Anishinabeg had not broken the treaty, it meant that the chimookomanag had. The messenger went on. His face was pinched and desperate, his voice hoarse with pain.

  “When the government tried to lure us out of our country by giving payments in the land of the Bwaanag, we went. Our Anishinabeg men waited at the place the land payments were supposed to be given out. Sandy Lake. Waited so long we became hungry, and hunted everything for miles around us. When that was gone, we talked of leaving, but the storehouse agent talked us into staying. Not a one of us even spoke of breaking into that storehouse. But the agent, drinking the water that scorches the throat, ishkodewaaboo, destroyed the storehouse anyway and all around him! It burned to the ground one night!”

  “Were the payments inside of it burned too?”

  Yellow Kettle could not help but ask. She held her graceful arms around the tiny Bizheens, who cuddled close to her. In answer to her question, Cloud laughed. The sound of his laughter was awful, like the scratching of two rocks ground against each other. Omakayas put her hands up to her ears. It was a long time before the messenger spoke.

  “We sifted through the ashes and found two coins. Exactly two. We gave ourselves the land payment then.”

  The messenger breathed hard, as though the talking had cost him all of his breath, but at last, with a deep sigh of pain, he spoke again.

  “A boat arrived, filled with spoiled food. The boatman said that he was followed by the money and we must wait there for the good of our families. You can eat this, he said, dividing up the rations. Some did and some didn’t. The meat was gookoosh, pork, and rotten. Maybe even poisoned. The flour was mainly worms and flour fleas. By then, however, some of our men were too sick to move on. Waiting had made them helpless. Those who couldn’t move fell sick most quickly, followed by the men who stayed to take care of them. At last”—here Cloud’s voice faltered. He sounded like a cracked piece of wood, his voice was no longer human—“I saw my brother die. My father. When I left, many were dead or nearly so and groaning for help. But the agents were gone. The boat was gone. Nothing was left. Nothing.”

  There was a loud moan, another and another, as people whose relatives had gone to see about the payments took in the terrible news. Omakayas was sitting near Angeline, who made no sound. She looked suddenly as though she was carved of stone. Her eyes stared straight into the black wall. Her lips moved faintly. Omakayas went to her, but Nokomis got their first and sat beside Angeline. Nokomis took her in her arms, let her sag hopelessly into the shape of a little girl.

  “We don’t know,” said Deydey later.

  Although he was shaken, he refused to declare Fishtail dead. He said they must be thoughtful, reserved. “Cloud is no liar. He speaks the truth. He saw with his own eyes what was happening. He saw most of the men dying, and knew he must return. But he did not see Fishtail die. He did not even see Fishtail sick.”

  “That is right,” said Angeline, her voice firm, her lovely mouth held in a tough straight line. “I know in my heart he lives. I will pray he stays strong.” But as she said these words her mouth trembled with fear she could not put aside. She crept into her blankets and later, in her sleep, Omakayas heard her sister whispering, as though she talked to her loved one in her dreams.

  As for Omakayas, the next day and the next her heart was very heavy. She could not keep her thoughts strong. Every so often, when she thought of Fishtail suffering, tears came into her eyes and she ran to Bizheens. Omakayas decided that she would play with Bizheens all day and take care of him. Bizheens was the only one who would help her keep her heart hopeful. He had survived, after all, when everything looked impossible. The woman who had given Bizheens to Yellow Kettle said that he’d had nothing to eat for weeks but water, cedar tea, and a bit of rabbit soup. Yet, even without his mother’s milk, he had lived. Though tiny at first he was now plump and cheerful and he knew how to play. Bizheens didn’t know Fishtail and he didn’t know that people could die. He didn’t know that the agents of the government could lie and cheat. He didn’t understand what had happened to him in his life. He only knew that he loved Omakayas.

  THIRTEEN

  THE WEDDING VEST

  As though to show exactly how deeply she believed in the return of Fishtail, Angeline began work on the piece of black velvet she had bought at the trader’s. First she cut out the vest with the precious pair of scissors that Yellow Kettle was so proud to own. Next, she beaded each of the pieces with a design she drew onto the velvet with a stick of chalk that the Break-Apart Girl had smuggled to her. The beading took a very long time, and it had to be perfect. Omakayas watched her pluck out beads that were hardly crooked at all. When she took apart one whole beaded flower, Omakayas thought maybe Angeline didn’t want to finish the vest. Maybe as long as she worked on the vest she could believe in Fishtail’s return.

  The beads kept collecting. The flowers kept growing on the ends of beautiful twisting vines. The leaves were sewed on in beautiful ways. There were maple leaves, for the sugaring tree that they loved so much in spring. There were tiny twisting leaves of vines that grew on the edges of the woods. Omakayas marveled at her sister’s work.

  “I wish I could bead like you,” she said, and she really meant it.

  “Oh,” said Angeline, dropping the pieces of velvet into her lap, “I don’t know…do you think…”

  Omakayas sat next to her sister.

  “Don’t be scared,” she said, “he’s all right.”

  Angeline’s
head drooped, her breath caught. Reports were coming in now, every week or so, of another man known to be dead. There were houses who had lost more than one of their men. People were packing up to move on, to live on the mainland with relatives, for the end of the winter was harsh. Angeline lived in fear of another messenger walking into their house with bad news. Every day that bad news didn’t arrive, she fell asleep relieved. Every morning, she felt a new dread that the day would bring bad news. Now, she did something that surprised Omakayas so much she could hardly breathe.

  “Here,” said Angeline, holding out a piece of the velvet, “I want you to bead one of the flowers. I know you love Fishtail too, and he would be glad to know you helped with this vest.”

  Omakayas was stunned, even a little afraid, for two reasons. First, her sister was so nice to her that it frightened her. She was most often remote these days and regarded Omakayas as too small to bother with. Her sudden kindness made Omakayas think that Angeline might have sickened herself with worry. The other thing she was afraid of was messing up the beadwork.

  “I’ll show you,” said Angeline. Omakayas sat down next to her. Angeline had made beading hoops out of split ash. The two hoops were carefully made, one just a tiny bit bigger than the next so that the material would be pulled snug when the top was set over the bottom. Then, in and out of the taut hoop with the material in between, Omakayas pulled her needle, securing bead after bead. Her hand shook when she started, and she was careful to select each bead to fit with the next. It took her all afternoon. When her flower was done, she showed it to Angeline, who scared her even more by saying it was very beautiful.