Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese Read Free Book Online

nothing to offer you anymore.”
    “He’s a trapper.”
    “He’s a heathen.”
    “He’s Ojibway.”
    “He is unbaptized and impure of spirit. When you use the word father at this school, it is your Heavenly Father you make reference to.”
    “I don’t want no other father.”
    “You have no choice.”
    “I’ll run.”
    The Sister smiled. It was chilling because there was no laughter in her eyes. They were a cold, pale blue, like the eyes of a husky, and when she reached behind her and brought a leather paddle into view she had a terrible calm about her. The paddle was blunt and wide and drilled with holes across its face. She cradled it in both palms, and with a blur of motion she twisted Lonnie around by the collar and pushed him to his knees. He screamed as the paddle struck his back. The nun yanked him to his feet as though he were a rag toy and struck him repeatedly behind the knees and on the back of the thighs. It sounded like she was beating a hide. Lonnie squirmed and struggled but her grip was incredible. She kept hitting him until he collapsed. Father Quinney stood with his hands behind his back and watched.
    “Obedience is the measure of our worthiness.” She spun Lonnie around to face her. “Here you will learn to be worthy. Do you hear me?”
    “Yes,” Lonnie said.
    “Yes, Sister.”
    “Yes, Sister.”
    “That’s a good boy.” She reached out to lay a hand on his face. He flinched. She smiled again with the same ghastly lack of feeling. “At St. Jerome’s we work to remove the Indian from our children so that the blessings of the Lord may be evidenced upon them.”
    “Industry, boys,” Father Quinney said. “Good, honest work and earnest study. That’s what you’ll do here. That’s what will prepare you for the world.”
    Sister Ignacia took us each by a hand and, with a firm nod to the priest, led us from the office and out into the school. Her hands like dried birch bark. Her face composed, the slight press of a grin at the edges of her mouth. Beatific. That’s another word I learned much later. As the Sister walked us through the school that first day, she had that saintly look on her face. The whistle of the leather still hung in the air. She was a large woman, tall, and I’d never known such terror.
    In what seemed like an instant, the world I had known was replaced by an ominous black cloud.

12
    At St. Germ’s the kids called me “Zhaunagush” because I could speak and read English. Most of them had been pulled from the deep North and knew only Ojibway. Speaking a word in that language could get you beaten or banished to the box in the basement the older ones had come to call the Iron Sister. There was no tolerance for Indian talk. On the second day I was there, a boy named Curtis White Fox had his mouth washed out with lye soap for speaking Ojibway. He choked on it and died right there in the classroom. He was ten. So the kids whispered to each other. They learned to speak without moving their lips, an odd ventriloquism that allowed them to keep their talk alive. They’d bend their heads close together as they mopped the halls or mucked out the barn stalls and speak Ojibway. I learned that ventriloquism eventually, but in the beginning they saw me as an outsider.
    I didn’t mind that. I was sore inside. The tearing away of the bush and my people was like ripped flesh in my belly. Every time I moved or was forced to speak, it roared its incredible pain. And so I took to isolation. I wasn’t a large boy and I could disappear easily. I learned that I could draw the boundaries of my physical self inward, collapse the space I occupied and become a mote, a speck, an indifferent atom in its own peculiar orbit. Maybe it was the hurt itself that allowed me that odd grace. Maybe it was the memory of my grandmother’s frozen arms around me or that last glimpse of my parents disappearing into the portage at Gods Lake. I don’t know. But in my chrysalis of silence I turned to