should go, too. No one thinks the army will stop at Kekionga. He tells us
where the others are. We’ve been there before. It’s near the riverbank,
where willows grow, their branches hanging down over the water.
We’ll hide underneath them for a while. I imagine I can hear
the sound of distant voices. Soldiers paddling toward us.
Horses, wagons, an army like a marching forest.
(What are they eating?) I can almost
hear the gunfire,
see the flames. A great danger
close to us, and coming closer. Quickly,
we rouse everyone from sleep. Mothers keep
their babies quiet as we walk
into the cornfields.
JAMES
Fast as they marched in two days ago, the army’s gone. Sixty soldiers
staying here to guard the fort. The rest—almost five thousand—marched
west and north this morning. The ground’s all trampled everywhere.
Camps littered with scraps of animals they killed—they ate what they
were hungry for, leaving piles of hides and bones and guts all over.
The doe that had two fawns before comes up the hill with only one,
looking like she’s asking me: What happened? No grass to eat. No trees
to stand behind. Where will the animals go? Will there be enough deer
for everyone to hunt next winter? Pa, I ask, is the war over? What will
happen now? He answers, The British turned back. And then, as the Captain
put it: “When the Indians saw how bad they were outnumbered, they all
melted away into the forest.” Ma stands up and takes a long, deep breath,
like she’s lifting something heavy, hard to carry. How can we find out, I ask,
what happened to everyone in Kekionga? She answers, We will wait and see.
ANIKWA
We walk between long rows
of corn until the sun is high above us.
Tall stalks swish like dancers as we pass. The corn
is sweet, ready to be picked; there’s plenty
to eat when we get hungry. Look,
says Grandma, how carefully
they’ve planted it,
how beautifully it’s grown.
We’ll help them with the harvest, before
we go back home. A red-winged blackbird sings to us.
I answer it, as if this is an ordinary day—I’m just out walking
with my family. Rain Bird stays close to Kwaahkwa’s mother. No one
knows where Kwaahkwa went. He said, I’ll meet you tomorrow night.
He has his horse, and we’re on foot, so he may arrive before us.
Now we’ve passed the cornfields, and we’re on the trail
beside the river. A pair of herons fly in, land,
rest awhile, then take off, flying
east. When they’re high
in the sky, I call:
What do you see? But I
don’t understand their answer.
Rain Bird asks: Are you sure you want to know
what they see when they look back
at where we came from?
JAMES
Pa picks up his gun and heads out to see what’s left of the forest. I follow
and he warns, This won’t be easy, James. I don’t know what we’ll find out there.
I tell him I want to check the fox den. It’s not far—past the blackberry bushes,
near the oak tree that got split by lightning—you know the one I mean? But wait—
the bushes and the tree aren’t here. Where are we? Is that the rock I sit on,
to watch the trail for rabbits? It’s hard to tell. Pa stomps along beside me.
What a waste, he says. We have to rebuild our house, the stockade, the trading post—
now we’ll have to haul logs three times as far. They could have let us cut the trees
before they burned the underbrush. When we get to where the fox den was,
it’s covered in ashes. A burned tree fell across the opening. At first I think
the foxes have all gone. Then, from under the blackened log, one peers out.
When I go up for a closer look, it tries to run away, but its leg’s all busted up
so it can’t walk. I lift the log—the fox snaps at my hand. Stand back, says Pa.
I have to do this, Son. And before I get his meaning, he shoots that fox dead.
ANIKWA
A tree root
poked into my back all night.
My damp blanket didn’t keep me warm.
Is it already morning? No one slept.
We’re quiet—waiting, listening,
sniffing the air, and asking,
Do you smell smoke?
Friends from a village north of us
arrive here, like we did two days ago, carrying
their blankets and a little food—enough to last a day or two.
Late afternoon and early evening, people come in from the south.
Grandma meets each group as they arrive. She speaks to the elders,
then tells us what she learns: Everything is burned or burning.
All the houses, cornfields, food they dried and couldn’t hide
or bury. All the cattail mats they couldn’t carry.
All the cornfields? The ones that took a whole morning to walk
through? What about
the milkweed,
about to burst its seedpods?
The black-and-orange butterflies—thousands
of them, in a field of yellow flowers. I’m looking around at
all these people when Kwaahkwa comes riding in,
silent as a brewing storm.
JAMES
Stop that crying, Pa commands. I hiccup to a stop, clamp my mouth shut
to stop myself from yelling: It didn’t even bite me! We could’ve tamed it!
We head for home. Can’t get the picture of that fox out of my mind.
I don’t tell Ma—I can’t. But her face says she knows something’s wrong.
Molly wakes up from her nap, crying worse than I did—no one yells at her
to stop it. Ma lifts her up and sings to her till she calms down, and then
she turns to me and asks, What did you see this morning? I tell her, Lots of
burned-down trees. That’s all I have to say about it. But later on, when Pa’s
not here, I say, You know that deer we saw, with one fawn? She had two before.
Ma nods. I know the ones you mean. The missing fawn had a white patch
on her leg. That’s them. I take a deep breath. We saw—a dead fox. Dang.
Can’t help it—I bust out crying. Ma says, I heard a shot. It sounded like
your father’s gun. She knows. She puts Molly down, comes to me. Brushes
hair off my forehead, puts her hand on my shoulder. Leaves it there.
ANIKWA
Kwaahkwa
spreads his arms as wide
as they will reach, moves his fingers
up and down like flames,
his face like fire, too,
eyes wide open,
smoldering.
Father and the other
men have embers in their eyes
as they listen—what are they remembering?
Kwaahkwa leans in, drawing in the dirt: Here, he says,
and here. Here. And here. Stabbing a pointed stick into the ground
along a curvy line he’s drawn to represent the river, he shows
us where the army burned each village, all the cornfields.
He points his stick at a spot between two villages.
Is he talking about my best fishing place?
I hid my horse and walked over
to the water’s edge, close
to the herons’ nest.
A heron flew out of a tree. I heard …
a shot. It f
ell in the water … and they … they left it there.
We stand with him in silence. I try to find words for my question:
Do the herons know the difference between them and us?
Grandma says, Iihia. Yes. They do.
JAMES
Pa and Ma are arguing. The American army went west for a few days; now
they’re here again, getting ready to head back east where they came from.
They’ll be going through Piqua, and the women and children are ready
to come home. Pa doesn’t know where Old Raccoon and Piyeeto are,
so he volunteered to go to Piqua and bring everyone back home. Ma says,
No! How would we get along without you if … She doesn’t finish, but I know.
It’s dangerous. Pa could get captured—or killed. After all that’s happened,
won’t everyone be mad? I can speak the languages along the way, Pa says,
at least enough to ask for help. Ma says what I’m thinking: What makes you so
sure anyone will help you? Pa answers, If you were at Piqua … Ma interrupts:
I’m not at Piqua! I’m here with James and Molly! And I don’t want to stay
in this fort any longer. When will you start cutting logs for our new house?
They go on like that, longer than I’ve ever heard them argue. I think Ma will
win, but I fall asleep before she does, and when I wake up, Pa’s not here.
ANIKWA
The sun
shines on a circle of white
hair, all the grandparents, talking to each other.
We have survived hard times before.
They talk all morning, then
all afternoon, on
into evening.
This comforts me.
They’ll know what to do,
where we should go, how we can
stay together. But their faces, when they rise
from the circle, hold no answers, only sorrow. They’ve found
no way for us to stay together. Some will go to live with
relatives in other places, west or north or south.
Kwaahkwa’s family is going so far west, we
don’t know if we’ll see them again.
Rain Bird turns her face away.
What will our family do?
Grandma’s sister
lives six days’ journey to the west.
But Father says, If none of us return to Kekionga,
they’ll treat our home as if we have abandoned it. They’ll say
we don’t need it anymore. He looks at Grandma.
We will go back, they agree.
SALT STREAKS
Tears come from earth and sky,
from words moving through us.
We taste them as they fall,
leaving salt streaks on our faces.
We bear witness as they splash
back to earth, and are absorbed.
JAMES
I hate staying in the fort without Pa. Last night some of the soldiers
got in a big fight. Ma covered Molly’s ears, but I heard the whole thing.
Those men miss their wives and children, Ma explained. It won’t be so bad
when things get back to normal. But will that ever happen? How can it?
So far, none of the Miami have come back to Kekionga. I heard a soldier
say, If they leave for good, I have a real nice place picked out for my house,
where the river curves around that big rock. Good fishing. The trees will
grow again, and we’ll have shade. I know the place he means, not far
from where Anikwa’s house used to be—before it got burned down.
Ma won’t let me go look. When your pa gets home, we’ll all go, she says.
A few streaks of orange splash the evening sky, and pretty soon
it’s red and purple. What’s that sound? Quiet at first, then louder.
Sandhill cranes are flying in, hundreds of them, thousands.
Calling back and forth as they land in the burned cornfields.
ANIKWA
It’s raining
as we begin our long walk home.
Soft rain, like the sky is crying, and it isn’t going to stop.
The geese form into arrows pointing south, calling
down to us as they fly over. Cold, dark
days are coming. We won’t
be ready for them.
I’m trying not to be so hungry,
not to think about the snow that will soon
cover the ground, how ice will slow the river to a stop.
The army’s gone, but tracks are everywhere—grass and flowers
trampled down. Where are the animals? Did they kill them, or scare
them into hiding? Toontwa walks beside me. He’s hungry too,
and since I don’t have food to share, I tell him stories.
In one, I imitate the sound of sandhill cranes
and right then, hundreds of them fly
up from a burned cornfield—
there must be
a little corn
still left on the ground.
At the edge of the field, I see a deer, running.
Look, Toontwa—moohswa, I say. See her white tail flashing?
She stops and stands still for a minute
watching us.
JAMES
Ma keeps talking about her sister: I wonder if Amanda could convince
Ethan to leave Philadelphia. I hear it’s getting crowded out east—
I’m sure there would be room for them here. Think of it, James!
She breaks into a big smile—the first one I’ve seen since Pa left.
You’d have cousins to play with! It’s true, I’d like that. Uncle Ethan
could help us build our new house and then we’d help them build theirs.
I’ve never met my cousins, but I’d like to. Twin boys a little older than me,
a girl a year and a half younger. A boy about two years older than Molly.
With both families working together, Ma says, we’d make the trading post
and they have money—they could help replace what we lost in the fire.
She spends all day writing a letter. I’ll mail it when I can, she says.
Rupert hears her talking and reminds us: This part of the territory isn’t open
for settlement yet. They still have to work out some details in the treaties.
ANIKWA
It’s almost dark
when we walk into Kekionga.
Or where it used to be. Now it’s … ashes.
Kwaahkwa told us, but no one could
imagine how terrible it is:
every house
torn apart
and burned. The fish
we had to leave on drying racks
scattered everywhere, and trampled.
Corncobs and fish heads covered with flies—
the army must have eaten what they wanted, and then
destroyed whatever was left over. Didn’t they know—
they must have known—it’s too late to grow more
corn, and we won’t be able to catch many
fish before the river freezes.
Will the animals find
their way
back?
Will deer give us
hides for warmth and shelter, meat
for winter food? Father says, It’s worse than I thought.
Grandma says, You helped them go to Piqua.
They should help us now.
JAMES
I’m sitting on a rock near the burned-down trading post, trying out
a new tune on my whistle, when Old Raccoon walks up, holding
a white cloth on a stick to show he comes in peace. Aya, James, he says.
Hello, I answer. You looking for Pa? He went to Piqua. Ma sees us talk
ing
and walks over. Aya, she says. I expect Mr. Gray to be home tomorrow
or the next day. Old Raccoon says, I’ll come back. Please tell him I need
credit for tools and blankets. Ma says she’ll tell him. I ask, Will you bring
Anikwa next time you come? Old Raccoon doesn’t answer yes or no.
He looks at the charred ruins of our house. We didn’t start the fire, he says.
Ma replies, We know that. She sweeps her arm toward Kekionga and says,
I’m sorry. There must be bigger words somewhere, but none of us
can find them. Old Raccoon turns away. As we watch him walking
down the trail, I remember how some people cheered when they saw
Kekionga burning. What will they do now? I ask. Ma has no answer.
ANIKWA
Soldiers found
the food we buried in the forest
but, as we hoped, they didn’t think of looking
under fire pits. We dig through ashes, lift
out the food we hid, and carry it
to where we’re building
our new wiikiaami.
Eleven other families
are making houses close to ours.
Later, we’ll all work together, building
a new longhouse. We won’t have time, before snow
falls, to build new homes with logs, but cattail walls and elk hides
will keep out the coldest winds. Grandma says, This
may be the hardest winter we have ever known.
But we will survive—we always have.
Here, where the river curves
around a rock that used
to stand in the shade
of seven maple
trees, my parents
and my grandparents are
buried. When summer comes again,
a cool breeze will blow across
their graves.
JAMES
When’s Pa going to get back? Maybe then Ma will quit scrubbing
tables, floors, and walls. Not just the room we stay in—she’s cleaning
the whole fort. Take Molly outside? she asks. Molly reaches out her hand
and smiles. I take her to the yard inside the fort, then out to where