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By Root 712 0

intrigued by Corwin’s unusual treatment of the instrument. I could not help thinking of his ancestors, the Peace brothers, Henri and Lafayette. Perhaps there was a dormant talent. And perhaps as they had saved my grandfather, I was meant to rescue their descendant. These sorts of complications are simply part of tribal justice. I decided to take advantage of my prerogative to use tribally based traditions in sentencing and to set precedent. First, I cleared my decision with Shamengwa. Then I sentenced Corwin to apprentice himself with the old master. Six days a week, three hours in the morning. Three hours of practice after work in the early evening. He would either learn to play the violin, or he would do time. In truth, I didn’t know who was being punished, the boy or the old man. But now at least, from the house we began to hear the violin.

IT WAS THE middle of September on the reservation, the mornings chill, the afternoons warm, the leaves still thick and poignant in their final sweetness. All the hay was mown. The wild rice was beaten flat. The radiators in the tribal offices went on at night but by noon we still had to open the windows to cool off. The woodsmoke of parching fires and the spent breeze of diesel entered, then, and sometimes the squawl of Corwin’s music from just down the hill. The first weeks were not promising, and I was reminded of the fact that in order to play any instrument well, a person usually must begin as a child. Perhaps, I thought, it was just too late. Then the days turned uniformly cold, we kept the windows shut, and until spring the only news of Corwin’s progress came through Geraldine and from reports made by Corwin’s probation officer. I didn’t expect much. But Corwin showed up at Shamengwa’s every day at eight A.M. It was not until the first hot afternoon in early May that I opened my window and actually heard Corwin playing.

“Not half bad,” I said that night when I visited Shamengwa. “I listened to your student.”

“He’s clumsy as hell, but he’s got the fire,” said Shamengwa, touching his chest. He had improved, physically, along with Corwin’s musicianship. I could tell that he was proud of Corwin, and I allowed myself to consider the possibility that history is sometimes on our side, and an act as idealistic as putting an old man and a hard-core juvenile delinquent together had worked, or had had some effect, or hadn’t ended up, anyway, a disaster.

The lessons and the relationship outlasted, in fact, the sentence and through the summer we heard further slow improvement. Fall came and we closed the windows again. In spring we opened them, and one or two times heard Corwin playing. The summer went, and we heard assurance in the music, so much so that we were reminded, sometimes, of the master. Then Shamengwa died.

His was an ideal and peaceful death, the sort of death we used to pray to Saint Joseph to give us all. Asleep, his violin next to the bed, covers pulled to his chin. Found in the morning by Geraldine. There was a large funeral with the usual viewing, at which people filed up to his body and tucked flowers and pipe tobacco and small tokens into his coffin to accompany Shamengwa into the earth. Everybody said, as they do, Oh, he looks at peace, the old man. Geraldine placed a monarch butterfly upon her uncle’s shoulder. She said she had found it that morning on the grille of her car. Clemence and Whitey held each other outside the church. Then I saw Clemence was holding Whitey up—he was drunk. Edward came and supported Whitey from the other side and went in and got into one pew. Shamengwa’s brother, Seraph, was settled in between Evelina and Joseph. They were patting his shoulders and arms. He was speechless for once. He looked broken, or brokenhearted. He didn’t even look up when Father Cassidy walked to the pulpit and solemnly, with much grinding of the gears, clearing of the throat, and springing up and down on his toes, began the eulogy.

I come now before you in the holy spirit of forgiveness to bless the soul of Seraph Milk

“What?” hissed Geraldine, “he’s got the