Lily's Story by Don Gutteridge Read Free Book Online

holding out his hand towards her.
    “ For you, little fawn,” he
said, averting his eyes.
    It was a gift. A buckskin jacket with
intricate configurations of beading that might have been inspired
by the Big Dipper or the Pleiades.
     
     
     
    Papa spent a lot of time talking with the
officers and other white men from the boat and the town. Many times
he laughed, out loud. Sometimes his eyes would cloud over the way
they did when he talked about Mama. Twice his gaze had searched Lil
out among the comings and goings, looked relieved, and then
twinkled. Sounder hopped and skittered, chattered and horse-traded,
threw the dice and snoozed beside her in the afternoon grass.
     
     
     
    I’ll give you a half-dollar for it, ancient
one.” The officer held the piece up to the sun as if it were a
jewel or a talisman. The old Pottawatomie chief followed its
flight, tempted. His hands unconsciously rubbed the black walnut
warclub they had polished with their affection these many years
since the wars ended.
    “ This club belong to my
father,” he said, more to himself than to the pot-bellied Canadian
before him.
    “ Two half-dollars,
then.”
    The old one looked momentarily puzzled, then
hurt. Finally he said, “One half-dollar,” letting the officer reach
across and draw the club from its accustomed grip.
    Papa was about to step forward when
something in the Indian’s expression made him pause. Papa watched
him put the silver coin into his pouch without examining it, and
turn towards the river. Lil saw the look on Papa’s face; it was the
one he used just before he swung the hatchet at the beaver or
muskrat not drowned by the trap.
    “ Sun-in-bitch Canadian,”
said Sounder behind them. Then, after a decent interval: “They
start dancing now.”
     
     
    The dancers were not human. Against the
squandered tangerine sun they were silhouettes freed from gravity,
embodiment, the etching of light. They moved to the will of the
drum only. You could see the dancers’ feet strike the ground like
the skin of a living tom-tom, like the heartbeat of the hunted,
like the music bones make when breaking. The air above the
performers shook with their cries. They danced towards enchantment,
expiation, communion – but the sun flattened and gave out behind
them. The drum ceased.
     
     
     
    Lil’s heart was like a sparrow’s. She
skipped across the field, letting it flit and sail at will. She
squeezed her eyes shut and dared the earth. She reached their spot,
unscathed.
    “ We’ve been asked over to
the Reserve,” Papa said, ignoring her exhilaration. As they packed
up their few belongings, Lil turned for a final look at her River.
No doubt she observed the last image recorded by Major Richardson
as the Hastings swung round in the bay to head south: the old Pottawatomie
seated on the river-bank, unmoving, his single eagle’s feather
brittle against the horizon. The Major waves. The figure remains
still. The Major, remembering Tecumseh and the mist of blood along
the Thames, waves again. It is too dark to see whether the shadow
has responded.
     
     
     
    4
     
    The Indians’ homes were scattered across the
fifteen square miles of their allotted territory. The wigwams were
grouped in threes and fours as family size or friendship dictated.
The area that Lil, Papa, Sounder and Acorn were led to was probably
the largest of such communities with six ample bark-and-skin
wigwams arranged in a rough circle with some cleared space behind
each dwelling for the gardens, still swollen with late pumpkins,
squash and marrow. This was the home of the Pottawatomie clan,
whose fathers had taken in the dispossessed Attawandaron and then
themselves been driven off their lands.
    Small fires were lit in the wigwams and a
large one in the circle among them. The night closed in, quick and
black. No stars, no moon. Each fire held its adherents captive;
food was heated, shared, consumed; brave talk floated over the
pipe-smoke, languished and was revived.