Chickadee by Louise Erdrich Read Free Book Online Page A

insulation. Nokomis went inside to start the fire.
    The snow stopped for a moment, and then the storm hit with a huge blast of wind. The cruel gust took the entire house into the air. Off it went, sailing into the snowy nothingness, tumbling over the icy ground, bouncing off the hard drifts with nothing to stop it.
    This was the last time the family would ever make a house of birchbark. Their house blew away, and they never saw it again. Such houses were for the woods. They were now people of the Great Plains. But they hadn’t learned yet how to live there.
    And there was Nokomis, striker in her hand, nursing a tiny circle of flame that immediately went out.
    â€œGet into the fur packs!” shouted Omakayas.
    Each pack of furs was bundled tightly with sinew, but by pulling out the middle furs each one of them could wiggle in. Nokomis and Makoons got in first. The snow began to drive against them, but Omakayas and Zozie tied the packs together before they got in themselves. The dogs curled near, hiding their noses in the warm curls of their tails. All together, in a heap, the family waited out the storm.
    Ahead of them, on the banks of the Red River where the snow was deep, Two Strike and Animikiins had caught up with Mikwam. Together, the three made a snow cave and curled up in their blankets to sleep there.

TEN
TWO STRIKE’S KNIVES

    T he snow had lightly dusted the cabin of Babiche and Batiste before gathering force and moving eastward to bury Chickadee’s family. Exhausted from his second day as a servant, his stomach aching from another day of bouyah, Chickadee fell asleep. He slept so hard that he didn’t hear the mail carrier arrive from St. Paul.
    The man, Orph Carter, had ridden through the storm, knowing that to stop was death. His horse had gone this route before and was now munching from a pile of dried slough grass in the shanty with the two brown horses. Orph crawled into the cabin with the mail sacks and unrolled his blanket. Soon his snores joined forces with the roaring rapids of snores from the brothers. All that sleep noise became a mighty cataract. Chickadee slept right through it.
    At first light, while the men were still sleeping, Chickadee crept out of his covers and noticed that there was another lump of blankets in the cabin. He kindled the fire from the banked ashes, and added buffalo chips. Because there was another lump on the floor, which he assumed was a person, Chickadee added an extra big chunk of moldy old meat to the kettle, and slipped out for an extra dollop of snow. As the bouyah slowly warmed, he stirred in the flour. There were also plenty of mice droppings from the night before. No matter how tightly Chickadee put the lid on the kettle, mice somehow got into the stew pot. He was already used to the musty taste.
    As the stew heated up, the cabin air filled with the unsavory steam so beloved by the Zhigaag brothers.
    â€œAh,” said Babiche, stirring and yawning, “how good it is to have a servant!”
    â€œAwee,” said Batiste, “he creates a good bouyah, this boy. He makes bouyah like our mother used to make!”
    The brothers paused and made the sign of the cross and kissed their lips.
    â€œMon dieu!” they cried. “This boy was well worth stealing.”
    â€œStealing?” Orph Carter had awakened. “You stole him?”
    â€œHar, har, har,” said Babiche. “We stole this boy from the family of Mikwam, Ice, and the hunter Animikiins, whose wife is Omakayas and whose brother is Quill. She has a sister, Angeline, whose husband is Fishtail. They have a grandmother with them and they sometimes travel with a strange woman called Two Strike.”
    â€œTwo Strike?”
    Orph Carter jumped out of his blankets.
    â€œHave some bouyah,” said Batiste, spooning a glop of the stuff onto a slab of wood and passing it to Orph.
    â€œAre you fellows crazy?”
    â€œYou would be the crazy one,” said Babiche,