• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 291 0

came into her mind suddenly. She realized that her father’s ceremonial pipe, a sacred pipe, had survived the fire. It was the only thing besides what they were wearing, and the blankets on the ground outside the house, now under the snow. The pipe had survived exactly because she was so careless with these old beliefs. Her father had told her that when he died she should put his pipe in the woods, in a hidden place, and go and get it when she needed it. There were plenty of times since then she might have needed it, but the truth was she had forgotten all about her father’s pipe. Well, she’d go out there now and she’d find it, hidden in a hollow log under rocks in a place halfway to Bernard’s.

“I don’t know about these things,” she said out loud. “I don’t know.” This business about the drum sounding. This man with the eyes not closing. What, had Morris seen too much? Join the club. Was it the war maybe? Was it looking at himself in the mirror? But he had a kind face as long as he closed his eyes. Even, he would be called good-looking. Basically. Without the eyes, again. I’m starting to like him. Ira grabbed her hair. I hate looking at my face now. I don’t know. And I don’t know either about myself as a mother. No good, maybe. I know I love them. I know I give up things for them. I don’t have men. I don’t have lots of things. But why did I go in that bar on this one night of all fucking nights instead of going home? How did all of this get set into motion? Was it the oatmeal? The last pan of fucking slop? How come I didn’t walk to Bernard’s then, and borrow some food and catch a ride in and out with a trustworthy person? Was it because I never thought of it, or was it because I wanted—just for a moment, or one night, just an evening, really—to get away from my kids?

She had put her hands on her head again and tugged at and messed up her hair. After a while she smoothed it down and wiped her face. Stupid drama. She whispered to Apitchi, “I am going to take care of you real good when you get well.” She put her hand on his chest and felt his ribs go up and down. The regularity of his breath calmed her and she sat for a long time with him like that, just letting her hand rise and fall.

The sun blared down, slats of blinding white through the hospital blinds, the intense brilliance after a storm. Ira woke. Apitchi woke. The girls woke. Morris. Even Bernard, who got a nap in, woke. It was that disorienting day that always occurs after a storm, when there is no school so kids come in to work with parents, or the parents stay home and change shifts around. All routine is shot to hell, yet everything that needs to run, does run. The roads are not yet plowed out. Houses are covered. Or the ashes of houses. Snow blankets the whole reservation. The trees glitter. The open fields are long swoops of white. The reeds sticking out of the sloughs are spears of glowing frost. Under the whiteness the world looks perfectly arranged. Things look settled and planned and accounted for. The business of building and digging and tearing up the earth is halted. And yet, you will see that the roads that matter, the ones most necessary, are cleared between people. Just one lane at first. The plows push away the snow with a cheerful energy. By the end of the day there will again be a pattern of trails.

In the service bathroom, Bernard washed his face and combed back his hair. He smoothed his shirt down his arms and adjusted his belt, then brushed his teeth and stuck his toothbrush in his shirt pocket. He got some tea and talked to a few people, telling them that he was going to use the drum. He went back to the office area and punched his time card out. As he walked up the back stairs he sang low, under his breath, the first song that the little girl had taught to Old Shaawano. But he prayed his own prayer, and as he climbed toward the drum, he begged the guardians from the earth’s four directions, and the one from beneath, and the one from above, to draw close and listen.

PART FOUR

REVIVAL ROAD

LAST CHAPTER

The Chain

Faye Travers