Salt Page 5
JAMES
Hey! There’s Anikwa, walking off with my rabbit! I thought
it was a fox that got them. But now I see what really happened—
Anikwa stole them! So it’s true, what Pa said—sometimes it’s hard
to say who our friends are. Looks like Anikwa turned into my enemy!
Well, if that’s what happened, I know how to get my rabbit back.
I raise my arm to punch Anikwa. He drops the rabbit, grabs my arm,
stares at me like I’m a stranger. We’ve never fought before—I’ve always
thought I’d beat him if we did, but now I’m not so sure. He shoves me
and I fall in the mud. (Dang. Ma will find out everything.) Anikwa says
something I don’t understand. “Papa come on?” Why can’t he talk English?
He turns toward the rabbit, but I grab his foot so he falls in the mud, and he
can’t reach it. I’m so hungry, I can taste that rabbit! I hold Anikwa down
with one arm and grab the rabbit with the other. Then I get up and run.
When I stop and look back, Anikwa is standing on the trail. Watching me.
ANIKWA
He thinks
I stole that waapanswa
from his snare! I tried to tell him, It was
paapankamwa, not me! But I couldn’t
think of his word while he was
trying to punch me!
(Is it “fox”?)
Why can’t he speak
our language? He’s lived here
all his life, he should have learned by now.
Maybe it’s true, what Wedaase said: That kind of cousin
can turn his back on you. Now I wish James had gone to Piqua.
He didn’t hurt me any. I could have pushed him harder if I
wanted to. That crow flew up into a tree and now he’s
laughing at me. I say, You might taste just as good
as waapanswa. He stops laughing, flies ahead
of me all the way home. Seems like
he wants to keep laughing,
but instead he’s
saying, James, ha ha, James.
Calling me names and teasing me for
getting pushed in the mud by a mihŠi-maalhseensa.
Wedaase is right—we don’t need
any of them.
JAMES
I stop at the pond and wash up—better to go home wet than muddy.
Anikwa never stole from me before. I would’ve given him a rabbit if
I got more than one. Why did he go and steal one before I had a chance?
Look at that beaver carrying branches into its house for winter food.
Most years, about this time, we’re storing food for winter, too. Butchering pigs,
making bacon, picking up nuts, drying apples. This year, we just hope
we kept enough provisions for ourselves, to last until the siege is over.
What if we run out, and can’t get any more? Will Ma change her mind
and move into the fort? If we’re starving, she’ll have to. Won’t she?
Is there enough food in the fort for everyone? What’s that—I hear someone
laughing—the kind of laugh where you try not to make a sound but you can’t
help it. There’s someone behind that bush, three Indians I’ve never seen before—
not from Kekionga—crouching down, trying to hide. I walk slowly past,
pretending I don’t know they’re there. Then I start walking faster. Then I run.
ANIKWA
Kwaahkwa
got another deer today,
and we’re cooking a big pot of soup
because a lot of people will eat
with us tonight. More and
more people arrive
every day.
Potawatomi, Delaware,
Ottawa, Ojibwe, Kickapoo, Peoria,
Shawnee, and Miami. All the warriors agree,
we have to be ready to fight on the side of the British
when they get here. But Grandma and the other elders are still
trying to keep the war away from Kekionga. They’ve seen
what happens when there’s fighting on our land.
Grandma says, We barely have enough food
to last us through a mild winter—
if war comes, the soldiers
will take our food.
Maybe burn
our houses. How can we
survive all that again? It scares me. My
grandfather, father, and uncle were all killed in battle.
Kwaahkwa is ready to fight. And Father
will fight if he has to.
JAMES
Ma meets me at the door: Where have you been? I drop the rabbit at her feet.
She looks me up and down, sees I’m soaking wet. And mad. Her face says
three things at once: We told you to stay inside the stockade. Get in here
right now and change into dry clothes. But also: James, you got a rabbit!
She puts Molly down and picks it up. Should’ve been three of ’em, I say.
Anikwa must have got there first. Two rabbits hop across my mind—
but before I have a chance to think about them, Ma starts asking a hundred
questions, and, like usual, I end up telling her too much. Pa comes home,
smells the rabbit cooking, asks Ma where it came from—and she tells him
everything, including (wish I hadn’t told her) about the men I heard laughing.
When he hears that, Pa gets serious. James, he says, look at me. I look at him.
I thought you understood this: you are to stay inside the stockade at all times.
Then, in that same voice, Lydia, we have to move into the fort until we see
what’s going to happen. Ma looks like she’s about to cry, but she agrees.
ANIKWA
Kwaahkwa
teases me: I heard you had
a fight with your friend James this afternoon.
Three men saw the whole thing and
now they’re telling everyone
that I’m a better
fisherman
than fighter. I wasn’t
trying to win a fight, I say. I was trying
to make him see that I’m no thief! Grandma looks up
from the deerskin she’s scraping. I thought all the children
over there went to Piqua with their mothers, she says. But if James
and the baby and their mother are still here—we have to find out
if they’re still in their house. It’s right inside the stockade.
Mink and Rain Bird both look worried. Why?
It’s easier to burn down houses of people
you don’t know, says Rain Bird.
That’s how I figure out
what’s going on:
someone is planning
to set the stockade on fire! When?
What if they burn down James’s house?
Is anyone thinking of a way
to warn them?
VEINS LIKE RIVERS
The hunter lifts the deer,
holds the weight
of muscle, bone, and skin
as blood flows
through his own veins like rivers,
and sweat moves
through his skin, leaving,
when it dries,
a layer of translucent
crystals—salt.
JAMES
Ma folds our clothes and puts them in her trunk. Here’s the first pair
of moccasins Mink ever made for you, she says. They’d fit Molly now.
I put my finger through a hole I wore through the deerskin when I
first learned to walk. Under this pair is another pair, a little bigger;
under them, another—nine pairs, right up to the size I’m wearing now.
One time Pa got me a pair of boots, but I hated how they pinched my feet
.
When Mink makes moccasins, she sews the seams on top so they’re
soft and comfortable, and I can run fast when I’m wearing them.
Ma puts the moccasins on top of the trunk, covers them with the quilt
from Aunt Amanda, closes the lid, and looks up. I’m ready, she says.
Pa has a wagon right outside the house. When I go out to help load it up,
I hear spring peepers on the other side of the stockade. Makes no sense—
it isn’t spring, and we’re not close to water. It can only mean one thing:
Anikwa is close by, trying to get my attention. Wonder what he wants.
ANIKWA
I can see
through the stockade gate:
The trading post is empty. It looks like
James and his family are moving
out of their house,
into the fort.
A soldier
is outside in a field,
feeding the cows and pigs, taking
eggs from those birds they call “chickens.”
Why do they keep their animals penned in like that,
so they have to feed them every day? They could let them loose
to get their own food. Wedaase and Father argued about that.
They hunt our animals, everywhere they go, Wedaase said.
We should take theirs to replace them. Father answered,
They have their ways, we have ours. We’ve lived
with these people for a long time.
Some of them are friendly.
A few are relatives.
Don’t give the Americans a reason
to attack us when they get here. Wedaase said,
Do you think they’ll need a reason? There’s only one way
to keep them out: attack them first, harder
than they attack us.
JAMES
Now I see why we’re adding water to bean soup that’s already thin,
and why we’re almost out of oatmeal. There’s eighty men in this fort,
with hardly any food. We brought what we had to share but it wasn’t
enough, even for our family—it’s like nothing for all these hungry men.
A soldier named Patrick comes in carrying a basket: eighteen eggs,
an onion, and seven potatoes. That’s what we all have for supper.
Pa says, We’ll manage. Let’s hope the hens keep laying. We can always kill
the cows and pig. We’ll be able to last a week—as long as the stockade holds.
Ma puts a blanket on the floor for me, and I lie down, but I can’t sleep.
I keep thinking about what Pa said: a week? as long as the stockade holds?
The soldiers are saying the British have cannons that could knock a hole
in the stockade. I think about that as I fall asleep, and a picture comes to
me: a hole, rabbits running out of it, jumping through a hoop of fire. Fire …
Guns can’t protect us against fire. And rabbits … I just thought of something.
ANIKWA
Father is home!
We go to the longhouse to hear
what he and Piyeeto have seen and heard.
We got them all to Piqua, Father says,
and took some time to look around.
The Americans have several
thousand soldiers.
About as many more are coming
from Kentucky—then they’ll march this way.
They could be here within a week. Mink and Grandma
listen quietly. Later, I stay awake to hear them talk. If the men
decide to go ahead with what they’re planning, Mink says, everything
will change after tonight. Grandma doesn’t answer for a long time.
Then she says: We can’t stop things from changing. I hope
the children will remember how our life has been.
Moonlight shines through an opening
in the door. A mouse scuffles
around in the fire pit.
Something
is starting that no one can
stop. I don’t know which army will be
stronger, or how big the cannonballs will be. All I
can do is what Grandma hopes:
I can remember.
JAMES
I can’t sleep. I keep thinking about that fight I had with Anikwa.
He had one rabbit in his hand—what about the other two? That “papa”
word he kept saying—is that the same word he said when he showed me
his fox pelt? Was he telling me a fox got my rabbits? Maybe he took
that last one so the fox wouldn’t get it. Maybe … What’s that smell?
What’s all the noise out there? Smoke! I shake Ma and Pa awake, and Pa
runs out to see what’s happening. He comes back in, red-faced, angry.
Lydia, he says, it’s the trading post! Maybe our house, too. He grabs a bucket
and runs out. I start to follow. No, James! Ma says. Stay here—you’re too young.
I can’t stay in here while our house burns down! Ma, I’m big enough, I say.
I can carry water. She looks back and forth from me to the fire, scared of two
things at once. She takes a deep breath. Go ahead, she finally says. Be careful.
I find Pa in a line of men passing buckets from the pump to the trading post.
Go back insi— he begins, then looks from me to the fire and hands me a bucket.
ANIKWA
Rain Bird
is shaking my shoulder.
Wake up, she whispers, I smell smoke!
I sniff the air. What’s burning?
Father and Mink are
still asleep, but
Grandma
comes in from outside.
When she opens the door, the smell
of smoke gets stronger. She wakes the others,
her voice low and sad. It’s happening, she says. One side
of the stockade. Our sister’s house. The walls of the trading post
are falling. A few men chased all their animals into the forest
and they’re shooting them with arrows as if they were
deer and elk. Those animals don’t know how
to run and hide. I think about their
birds—noisy chickens—
and about
the man
taking their eggs.
Who started the fire? I ask.
No one answers. Then Grandma says, Grief
gathered kindling. Fear struck the flint.
Anger fans the flames.
JAMES
In the morning, Ma, who never cries, is crying. Smoke burns my throat
like held-back tears. I swallow hard and go outside again to stand by Pa.
The pig, the cows, the hens, the rooster, and the goat are gone. We can’t go out
to fish or hunt or set snares or pick berries. We’re out of beans and oatmeal.
Pa, what will we eat? I try to make my voice sound normal, but it comes out
squeaky. Pa makes his own voice sound like he knows how to get food,
but all he says is, We’ll think of something. If he had a real idea, he’d tell me.
We’re standing here, looking at our burned-down house, not talking, when
I hear the sound of peepers on the other side of where the stockade gate
used to be. Pa, I say, there’s no peepers around here this time of year—I think
that’s Anikwa. At first, he doesn’t know what I’m talking about, but then
he listens hard and says, He shouldn’t come so close, with the fire still smoldering.
I think about it. Pa, I say, he might be trying to help. Can I go see? Pa answers, No.
Then he looks at the empty pasture. Be quick, he says, and come straight back.
ANIKWA
Good,
James heard me.
He’s coming over to find out
what I want. He’s looking
up and down, and all
around.
Aya,
I whisper.
He sees me. Aya,
he whispers back. I point to
the venison I brought, wrapped up
in a deerskin, hidden inside the hollow oak tree.
I point to him. His mouth falls open—he can’t believe
we’re giving it to them. He blinks back tears,
then picks up the meat and smiles big.
Thank you, he says. He repeats it
in Miami: Neewe … niihka.
I say the words Father
told me to say:
We did not start the fire.
James’s face turns red. He looks like he’s
thinking about something else, besides this meat.
Fox got my waapanswa, he says.
It wasn’t you.
JAMES
Ma helps the cook fry up the meat, and all the men crowd in to get some.
My stomach hurts, but I try not to push. Ma puts her arm around me,
pulls me in, and serves me plenty. Thank you, James, she whispers.
She’s not telling anyone where we got the meat—trying to protect me
and Anikwa. Mink and Wiinicia must have wrapped it in the deerskin.
I wonder why they gave us food. I tell Pa, The Miami didn’t start the fire.
Pa says, I hope that’s true. No one is sure of anything. Two soldiers went out
four days ago and just got back; they barely managed to run past everyone
outside the fort on their way in. What did they find out? The Americans
are closer than the British, but we still don’t know when either army will arrive.
There’s enough meat left for tomorrow. Maybe one more meal after that.
This is cooked the way I like it—juicy and hot, exactly the right amount of salt.
I hold it on my tongue—and the salty taste makes me ashamed. (Salt in the barrel,
pelts on the counter, empty salt scoop in my hand.) Pa, I say, they need salt.
ANIKWA
Wedaase
doesn’t know we gave them meat.
Will James’s family keep it for themselves,
or share it with the soldiers in the fort