Chickadee

  The next morning Chickadee could hardly stir.

  “Wake up, little nephew,” said Uncle Quill.

  Chickadee’s mind was sunk in sleep now. After so many nights on bare ground, cold and hungry, the buffalo robe was so comfortable that once he fell asleep, his body wanted to stay asleep. Quill shook his shoulder.

  “I brought you tea and bannock,” said Quill. “Get up, get in the cart.”

  Chickadee rolled over and tried to get to his feet, but fell over. He was so sleepy that Uncle Quill lifted him into the cart and nestled him back into the robe. There, Chickadee sat as the oxcart train began to move. He nibbled the bannock and drank the hot brewed black tea, sweetened with maple sugar, from Quill’s tin cup. The terrible screeching of the wheels started again and Chickadee put the plugs of wax back into his ears. For that first day, he dozed on and off as the cart slowly made its way along the trail. It was as though he had been in another world, out in the woods, and had to sleep his way into the new world of the oxcarts and Uncle Quill.

  At last, when the cool sun was halfway up in the sky, Chickadee crept over to sit beside his uncle. And there they rode. Folded blankets cushioned their bottoms, a comfortable strap made of buffalo hide was tied so they could lean back against it. No sound that they made could penetrate the vast screech in which they moved, so they tried to communicate through signs. There wasn’t much they could say yet with signs—that would come later. Mostly they sat companionably together, jouncing back and forth as the cart rolled across the ruts and over the holes in the Red River Trail.

  The days and nights began to blur. Their oxcart broke down once, splitting an axle. Uncle Quill cut a new poplar axle from a nearby tree, and lashed it into place with wet strips of buffalo hide. As the strips dried, they shrank, fixing the axle firmly into place. Quill and Chickadee got right back into the train an hour later. Every piece of the cart was made ingeniously of local materials—wood, hide, rope—and could be repaired along the way. There was no metal in the cart, which turned out to be a very good thing one night, as they waited out a lightning storm in some high bare hills.

  Although the heavens raged and the rain poured down in sheets, Chickadee and Quill were dry and warm underneath the cart. Lightning struck down everywhere, crashing so hard the earth shook. The oxen were slightly worried but very tired, too, and merely slept with heads bent under the driving rain.

  “We are safe from the thunderbirds under these carts,” said Quill. “They love biwabik, you know, things of metal. When the U.S. cavalry comes out on the Plains with its iron tent poles, the thunderbirds amuse themselves by striking them!”

  Quill knew lots of things. He told Chickadee about the people with the colorful clothing.

  “They are Metis. They are the sons and daughters of the French and Anishinabe and Cree all mixed together. My Deydey, your grandfather, knows how to talk with them. Listen to the way they speak! They mix all of the languages into one language. After a while you’ll pick it right up, as I have.”

  “They sing French songs,” said Chickadee.

  “Their fathers taught them songs from the days when they paddled canoes. Before these trails, that was the only way to carry furs! I remember it!”

  “What are those crying instruments they play?”

  “Those are fiddles. You’ll see.”

  “And their clothing—it is all colors and yet some is like ours.”

  “They like to wear moccasins. Who would ever want to wear white men’s shoes? But the women wear big skirts. The men wear blouses. They like some of our clothes. We like some of theirs.”

  “Why do you know so much about these people, Uncle Quill?”

  “Because I am married to one!”

  Chickadee was silent. He had forgotten that his uncle had married. Chickadee was out of questions.

  The next day, as Uncle Quill brewed tea and fried some bannock on a little fire, a Metis woman came up to him and began to talk in her language. Quill answered her, and Chickadee tried to make out what they were saying. He caught a few words here and there—it sounded like they were talking about him. The woman made gestures all about herself, slapping her knee, rubbing her elbow. Chickadee realized that she was describing the rips and tears in his clothing. Quill was smiling and nodding now. The woman left.

  “She’s going to make you a new shirt, new moccasins, and fix your pants and vest,” he said. “She said such a nice-looking boy as you shouldn’t be dressed so poor.”

  “Am I dressed so poor?”

  Chickadee looked down at his clothing, and noticed the rips and tears and spots of grease he’d gotten used to.

  “Yes, I guess I look pretty bad, my uncle.”

  “Your mama would have fixed you up by now. But your Uncle Quill can’t do much.”

  The woman came back and made Chickadee stand still. She took a piece of sinew and measured his feet, his arms, his chest. She took his vest away and fixed it that very afternoon. When she brought it back, the woolen vest had been cleaned. The rips were neatly sewn, and where there had been holes she had cleverly beaded on circles of hide. Two days later, the woman brought back a shirt of bright blue calico. It had wide sleeves and a collar that peeked from the vest. She took away his old shirt and fixed that too, and by adding more fringe and pieces of tanned deerhide, she made it into a jacket. New moccasins came next. Chickadee gave up his pants overnight and in the morning she brought them back, all repaired and with a piece of hide stitched around the bottom so that his ankles were covered.

  “I look so fine,” said Chickadee.

  He was delighted with himself, and the woman could tell, and laughed. She had big white teeth in her round face and wore lots of bead necklaces. Her braids were gray when they came unbound from her neat bun. As she walked, her skirt swirled around her quick steps. Her name was French, Antoinette. She had two children—her grandchildren—with her, and they were well dressed too. Antoinette had her own cart. Her granddaughter drove it; the other child, a small boy, usually walked beside the ox and kept an eye out for game he might catch.

  After she made Chickadee’s new clothing, Quill invited them to hitch their ox to the back of his cart. That way the young driver could take a rest once in a while, as Quill kept the animals moving. And so the pack train went on and on until a small river stopped them.

  The flood and force of the river had dissipated, and it was a mild flow now, though broad. There was no ferry. There was no way to cross it except to change their versatile carts into boats.

  This was being done all up and down the river, as each cart and driver reached the banks.

  To Chickadee’s surprise, he saw that some carts were already in the water, floating across. Uncle Quill and another man worked together. First they wrenched off the wheels and lashed them together. Then they dismantled the carts and used the poles for siding so the baggage would not slide off into the water. The oxen and horses would swim across, and Uncle Quill and Chickadee would swim too, holding on to the poles and attempting to guide the raft.

  Uncle Quill helped Antoinette to transform her cart, too, and one after the next the little cart train forded the river. The river was still very cold, and on the other side fires were quickly made to dry out clothing and warm numb fingers. The oxen and horses shook themselves and lowered their heads to graze. The sun was so low by the time all of the carts had crossed that everyone made camp on the banks of the river.

  That night, the fiddle playing was extra lively, and Antoinette and her grandchildren invited Chickadee to join in the fun. Uncle Quill already knew the Red River jig, and he shouted with joy, dancing with the rest of the men. Chickadee caught the spirit and the flames leaped high. The fiddles wailed and jumped. Antoinette danced like a young woman, kicking up her skirts, her white teeth gleaming in the firelight.

  “Here is how we jig, little Chickadee,” she called, and her small feet in pretty moccasins flashed fast in fancy steps.

  As Chickadee watched, he remembered how his m
other danced and clapped when she was happy. He remembered how Zozie trilled like a bird when she was excited, how his father played his beautiful hand drum and joyously sang a traveling song or a hunting song. Most of all, he remembered how Makoons jumped up and down, threw his head back, and laughed so hard he fell on the ground and rolled when things were too funny to bear. His chest swelled with confusion. If only his twin were here! He was happy, he was going home, eventually, someday. But could he stand it? Could he wait to see his brother? How long would it be?

  TWENTY

  MAKOONS

  Ever since his father and Two Strike had returned, with news that they had lost Chickadee’s trail, Makoons had begun to feel the strangeness of his life. One morning, fishing for goldeneyes as usual, he fell into the cold Red River. He let the current take him downstream quite a way before he roused himself, panicked, and swam wildly for the shore.

  After that, Makoons just felt wrong. It was the chill, Nokomis thought, and she dosed him with many cups of thick black tea. He had a cough, which she treated with boiled cherrybark. His chest hurt. Nokomis put a plaster of steaming lily-pad root right over his heart. Makoons cried at the sting of heat, but his chest cleared. Still, he dragged from place to place and could hardly manage to set one foot before the other on some days. When he sat down, he leaned over, closed his eyes, and quickly fell asleep. When he woke, it was to the sad memory of his brother’s absence.

  Omakayas was worried.

  “Come here, my boy,” she said gently. “Sit with me. We are missing your brother, aren’t we?”

  “Yes,” said Makoons.

  “Let us sit here and think about him then,” said Omakayas. Tears came into her eyes.

  “I know he is alive,” Makoons said. “I feel his presence. I know he’s looking for us.”

  “He is strong and he will find us,” said Omakayas. “We have to be patient and wait.”

  Makoons looked at her helplessly. Waiting was very hard. It was so difficult to stay in one place waiting for your twin, the other half of you, to show up. Any moment he might appear. Or he might not appear. There was no certainty. That’s what was hardest. That’s what tired him.

  Makoons crept next to his mother, lay against her. Exhaustion crept over him. The chill from the river came back and he shivered, even though the day was warm. His mother made tea from wild rose hips, covered him with a blanket. Omakayas sang to him and stroked his hair until he slept. She was very worried.

  “Nokomis,” she said when her grandmother appeared. “We need to make another, better, strengthening tea for Makoons. We have to feed him well. We must keep him from growing ill.”

  “I know,” said Nokomis. “I, too, am worried that he could pine away for his twin. I am going out to gather medicines, plant food, and watch the horizon. One day, from that distance, I know our boy will appear.”

  Nokomis took her bean seeds from the little pouch she had carried across Minnesota. Even when most of their things had been stolen, she’d saved a few seeds. She loved to make gardens, and had a nose for whom to ask for seeds. She’d added to those few seeds with others that she traded for from the people of Garden Island, in Lake of the Woods. All around that great and complicated lake, there had been women who planted corn, gourds, beans.

  Now, bending over the soft earth, Nokomis took a few bean seeds and carefully buried them. She marked each seed with a tall stick. She worked the fish bones, the heads and fins and scales, into the soil between the seeds. Then she carried water in a wooden bucket to each one. It used to be, she reflected, that she could make a new container from birchbark any time she wanted. She just had to find a tree, remove the bark, and fashion her vessel. Nokomis sighed at the memory. On the Plains, there were few birch trees. And even those few had thin and crinkly skin. They made frail baskets, and terrible buckets. This one wooden bucket had to do a lot of work. It was the only one they had.

  Angeline and Yellow Kettle straightened their backs. They were planting seed potatoes given to them by Father Belcourt. At that same moment, using a saw borrowed from the priest, and hinges traded for with maple sugar, Mikwam and Fishtail were making a little trapdoor in the wood floor of the cabin. They were digging out a root cellar, anticipating that there would be potatoes to keep there by fall. They were hauling sand to line the bottoms of the bins—they had learned that this trick kept the potatoes and squash at the right temperature all winter.

  After the cellar was dug and the door finished off with a rope handle, the two went out to work on the pole fences. They had put to use old poles left behind, setting them in place between shorter logs pounded into the earth. They now had a small fenced yard, and a shanty for Brownie and Brownie to shelter inside when the rain poured. Otherwise the horses were tough and grazed the grasses all around on staked lines. Their bellies grew, though one Brownie’s belly was growing bigger than the other’s.

  Zozie had joined Nokomis in the garden. She pointed at the horses and said, “Nokomis, I think one of the Brownies is going to have a foal.”

  “You’re right,” said Nokomis, nodding happily. “It won’t be long. We are lucky that Two Strike knows what to do.”

  Two Strike, who had taken charge of the horses, cared for them religiously. At night, she slept near them in a pile of sweet, dry grass. By day, she worked and trained them. She practiced riding, along with Animikiins. As soon as possible, they planned to take those two horses and hunt buffalo. They were making friends among the other Anishinabeg, and also among the Metis who lived all around the town and up into the low hills. Once the Red River carts returned and the families were again together, they would follow the buffalo off into the Plains and hunt them to fill those carts again.

  They would use each part of the buffalo and build up their winter stores of dried meat. They would make pemmican, tan hides, make beautiful fluffy robes, and keep the horns to make powder carriers, knife handles, spoons, even buttons and tobacco boxes. How Two Strike looked forward to that hunt.

  But even as Two Strike made plans, Animikiins fell silent. His heart was heavy. He worked as hard as he could. But waiting and wondering about Chickadee weighed so heavy on his heart, sometimes, that he couldn’t breathe. There were times when he sat with Omakayas, holding her hand, neither of them saying a word hour after hour. How could they go on? Yet they did go on, waiting for their son.

  TWENTY-ONE

  ST. PAUL

  The oxcart train jogged and wobbled, in a sea of noise, down a path that became a wide road. This road broadened and smoothed itself out and at last became a series of streets lined with wooden buildings. Chickadee sat beside Uncle Quill and looked with amazement at the ornamented tops of the buildings. There were many log cabins and many more plank houses, too. For which reason, of course, there was not a tree in sight. The signs that marked the glass windows of the stores were bright and bold. The people walked on wooden paths and stared at the oxcarts and held their hands over their ears.

  The muddy path took them along the river, where each cart would unload. As the cart jounced along, Chickadee stared up at the bluff above the river.

  Towering high over the slope he saw the biggest houses in the world. They were carved of trees. Each was of a different shape and color. Great windows like staring eyes glared over the river. Doors like mouths swung open as people came out, drawn by the outrageous noise of the oxcarts. The people stood high on the bluff, shading their eyes, pointing down at the carts and the drivers and the children, who shaded their eyes, too, and pointed right back up at them.

  It was not polite to point. Nokomis had always stopped Chickadee from pointing at a person.

  “You are stabbing at that person’s spirit,” she had told Chickadee. “And never point at clouds because there might be a thunderbird up there, or at the water because you must not challenge water, or at the islands because they are also alive.”

  Nokomis pointed by puckering her lips and nodding at whatever she wanted to indicate. Most other Anishinabeg did t
oo.

  Chickadee had rarely pointed at anything or anybody in his life. But he was so astonished at those houses, which Uncle Quill called mansions, that he pointed right up at them, and nobody stopped him.

  Uncle Quill just smiled at his nephew’s surprise. He’d been in St. Paul before.

  The oxcart train made camp by a lake.

  Although he was excited to be in St. Paul, he also wanted to go home. He looked at the ground. One hawk feather, blown by the wind and trampled by passing carts, stuck raggedly out of the mud. Chickadee plucked it out of the road and carefully tucked it into his shirt. There weren’t very many birds in St. Paul, but one of his helpers had passed over.

  One by one, each cart was unloaded at the trader’s warehouse. The bales of fur were weighed, their quality assessed. The horn spoons and bowls, the baskets and quilled shirts were bargained for. Antoinette sold seven pairs of embroidered moccasins and eight calico shirts that she’d made on the way. She was such a quick and clever seamstress that she’d make as many on the way back and sell another batch in Pembina.

  Once a cart had been emptied, it would then be reloaded with things that people back home had requested from the St. Paul traders. The people up north, around Pembina, needed metal dishes, bolts of wool and calico, rifles, ammunition, ribbons, beads, door latches, bucket handles, ingots of metal, and reams of paper. Tar paper, writing paper, wrapping paper, oil paper were loaded into the carts. There were lanterns and lantern oil. Coffeepots. Coffee beans. Tea. Sugar. Flour. Nails. Hammers. Delicate windows. Packets of bright candy.