The sloughs turned to shallow lakes and then the lakes deepened. Abruptly there began vast lumbered areas of rotting pine stumps surrounded by springy popple. He feared his father didn’t know where he was going and had forgotten where he’d murdered the harmless old woman.
“Here is the place,” said his father at last. He put down the cracker tin. “Here is where I betrayed the silent light in which I was raised. Here is what desire made of me, and foolishness, and an irresistible and bloody impulse.”
Scranton lay down in some poison ivy.
“Cut my throat, please,” he said to Augustus, and handed his son the whetted knife he kept in his belt.
Augustus kept the knife and spoke gently to his father. “Let time do its work,” he said. “Perhaps you will be pardoned.” Eventually he convinced Scranton that they must travel to the place where the Indians had fled.
“Where did they go?” he asked.
His father pointed in all directions. Augustus chose north, and again picked up the cracker tin.
The Ones
Inevitably, they crossed paths with Indians.
“Are these the ones?” asked Augustus.
His father looked carefully at the people, but shook his head and said no, that the people he’d killed were beautifully dressed in calico, buckskins, beads and strips of velvet. They’d been strong and well fed. These two people were skinny and ragged and they walked with a discouraged air. The man frowned and the woman glared suspiciously at the two white men.
“I think these are the ones,” said Augustus, who longed to put down the cracker tin. “I think these are the children who survived, all grown up. Look what you did to them, father!”
“My Lord,” said Scranton Roy.
He took the tin of money from his son. As the people edged away from the two, he held it out with an awful smile and pressed it forward.
“That’s all right,” said the woman. “We don’t need crackers.”
Scranton’s sleeve was rolled up and she looked at his arm, then nudged her husband, who craned his head sideways and carefully mouthed the letters of the word.
“All right,” said the Indian man, startled. “You can follow us. We don’t have much to eat, but we’ll shoot something. We live over there.”
He pointed at a place that seemed empty. Augustus, sensing that he’d soon be relieved of the tin, followed eagerly so that his father was forced to stumble along behind.
Old Shawano
The man who read the word scored into Scranton Roy’s arm was named for the southern wind, just like his father and grandfather. Shawano. His wife was Victoria Muskrat. They knew about the old woman who was slaughtered and they knew about the woman’s great-nieces. Shawano had taken them after their mother disappeared. They were pretty girls but something was not right about them. Victoria thought they were coldhearted liars. Shawano said he pitied them, but did not trust them. The two white men and the Indians now ached to be delivered of different burdens. Both of the old people hurried along, sensing that they soon might be relieved of the girls’ disquieting presence.
The Number Blue
When the number two in any of its permutations entered Augustus Roy’s thoughts a limpid blue atmosphere surrounded it. The color darkened, tinged with indigo, as it climbed into the solid sky of twoness. Entering the tar-paper and scrap-board house of the people to whom he was determined to give the cracker tin, he saw the spectrum of blue that went with the number when he saw the twins. Zosie and Mary were identical. They dressed alike in flour-sacking frocks, gray with white piping, and they both wore their hair pulled back in long braids. Their eyes were cool and watchful. Their hands moved constantly at endless tasks that they took up and put down without seeming to notice. Augustus was too shy to look at them straight on, but he was moved by their uncanny harmony.
His father seemed dazzled, struck dumb. His clothes had grown huge around him and he sat in a puddle of cloth, itching already from the leaves he’d lain in, and smiling. Idiotically, Augustus thought, with weary concern. He brought the cracker tin to a wooden table, the only piece of furniture besides the one chair Augustus occupied. He set the tin down with a solid metallic clunking jingle that could only be the sound of money. The heads of the twins turned with a jerk and their eyes fixed on the tin.
“It is money,” said Augustus Roy. “It is for you. Many years ago my father killed an old lady of your tribe and he wants forgiveness. He has been saving up.”
The old people and the girls were absolutely silent for some time. Then one or another of the twins spoke.
“You’ve come to the right place.”
AFTER THE OJIBWE PEOPLE accepted the money and told Scranton Roy that he was forgiven, his eyes shed water. He was not exactly weeping because his teeth showed in a broad and grateful smile. He was scratching madly now. Water trickled down the angular creases at either side of his mouth and collected against the curb of his collarbone.
“My father wants to sleep,” said Augustus.
Victoria Muskrat pointed to a heap of blankets on the floor, in the corner, and said that he could lie down there and sleep as long as he wanted. Scranton thanked her, lay down in the corner, and pulled a blanket over himself. Old Shawano indicated a place on another blanket and Augustus sat. His eyes itched drowsily but he did not sleep. He read the walls, which were covered with catalog, magazine, and newspaper pages neatly pasted around the window frames. Land! the pages shouted. Rich, cheap, fertile, easy title! Indian Land for Sale! The wood slats were from broken-up cracker crates, probably salvaged from lumber camps. The slats were stamped with accidental word puzzles based on the word cracker. No wonder they didn’t want more crackers, Augustus thought. The family busied themselves, went in and went out. After a while Augustus roused himself. He noticed that his foot was getting wet, looked down, and saw that a trickle of blood was flowing from beneath his father’s blanket. Augustus reached for the knife his father had offered him, knowing it was gone. All four of the Ojibwe people entered. They studied the flow of blood and bowed their heads. For a long while, nobody spoke. The unmistakable still form in the corner dominated the room. At last one or the other of the twins turned to Augustus and said, “We will bury him in our own way. We will wrap him in that blanket and make him a fire. We will stand watch and help his spirit onto the road to the next life. We will feed his spirit and sing for him.”
“Thank you,” said Augustus.
He continued to sit on the floor. When everyone moved outdoors, he followed and sat down. Other people came with water drums, pipes, feathers, food, whiskey, more blankets. His father’s body was removed from the house through a window. The fire was lit for his spirit to follow. Sometimes Augustus lay on the ground near the fire. Sometimes he ate. The days came and went and in the flow of singing and drumming he seemed to pass into another life along with his father. At last, they told him that his father was safe on the other side. They showed him the small grave house, which was carefully made of boards, roofed, painted red, and placed over the spot where his father was buried. They waited for him to leave.
Niizhoodenhyag
Augustus Roy did not leave. The family spoke English with him, wrote in a finer script than he did, and used better grammar. They had been whipped into shape by the government. They’d been to boarding school. He got a job. Every day he walked to a bank in the nearest town, four miles each way. The work involved the essence of things as defined by number, and counting, his favorite pastime. His days were filled with color because of the pleasurable flow in numbers. He also enjoyed walking back and forth, especially after one or the other of the twins began to meet him on the way home. They walked along silently at first, not even holding hands. He was thrilled by each young woman’s singularity and by the game of trying to figure out whether she was Zosie or Mary. Sometimes both women came to meet him. Then the twoness, the blueness, flowed over him. He was lost in its choreography. Their voices and their movements were mirrors within mirrors. He decided they defined eternity although they lied and mocked him. They grew sly and bold. Spied on him, poked him, threw twigs at him. Kissed him. He was never certain. He would not be sure which one he married the Indian way. He would not be sure which one he slept with on whatever was their wedding night. Which one he got pregnant.