Thieving Forest (38 page)

The day is not as warm as yesterday, and the trees are shedding large yellow leaves. Nadoko promises it will be a great treat to watch the young boys at their games, but Susanna has already made up her mind to dislike Hato. She is still mad at Naomi. She rolls Ellen’s button around in her fingers and then puts it into her new pouch—this is the gift that Nadoko gave her yesterday. It is a pretty pouch, decorated with small blue and yellow beads, and it is useful, but Susanna doesn’t like it.

The lodge is at the far end of the village set off by itself. While they walk, Nadoko gives them each a handful of small, dark blueberries to eat. They pass women harvesting a line of hemp growing along a wattle fence, not a proper field but nevertheless land that can be used. After that the grass grows taller and there are no more people about. Susanna eats her last blueberry and flicks away the stem, as tiny as an eyelash. She wonders again how late in the summer it is. But then she thinks: What does it matter? I can’t get away by myself.

At last they come to a long meadow with a large bark lodge with two chimneys at its easternmost end. This is where the boys eat and sleep during the month of their training. The men have chosen the heartiest boys from the village, Nadoko is saying while Naomi translates. She explains that during the time of schooling they are completely isolated from everyone else.

“We are allowed to grind their corn but not cook it,” Nadoko says.

The noise of the village is long behind them. The women stop behind a short fence and put down their baskets. The boys are in the clearing playing a wrestling game: pairs of them wrangle over a skunk skin on the ground; the first one who touches the skin with any part of his body loses.

“The training helps them become great hunters and fighters,” Nadoko says as they watch. “The white man has no school such as this.”

She lifts her chin. She is proud of her son, the teacher, and of the boys of her village. The boys’ faces are serious as they wrestle, intent on finding an advantage. They are twelve or thirteen years old, Susanna guesses, just this side of manhood. Heel-sized mud holes with spoonfuls of rainwater inside dot the ground, evidence of weeks of such games. A young man, maybe twenty years old, watches and acts as judge. He does not speak to the women and he does not look over, but Susanna feels sure he is aware they are there.

“Hato,” Naomi says.

Susanna says, “I guessed.”

Hato is wearing deerskin trousers and a white shirt, and he holds a spear with a sharpened flint on one end. He is tall and good-looking with even features and a strong, straight nose. After the boys win or lose at wrestling, they select spears from a pile near Hato and begin to throw them at each other.

Nadoko speaks rapidly. Naomi smiles as she translates: “When Hato was a boy with short hair, he was the best spear thrower in the village. Even better than his teacher.” Naomi pauses, watching him. Then she says, “Well, she is his mother. But it is true that he is very skilled. Once I watched him fell a buck through the trees with one arrow.”

But Susanna is watching Naomi, not Hato. Naomi is wearing the faraway look she used to get when she was deep inside her music. A look of concentration mixed with something fey. The violin pulled up at an angle, her fingers working hard over the neck. Sometimes when she was playing something particularly difficult she would lean forward with one leg pushed out in front of her, and later in bed she’d complain: why is my leg sore? After she got herself into a certain state she didn’t notice anything else. Penelope used to say that their parents indulged Naomi but Susanna, when she was younger, felt a little in awe. What would it be like to be able to close yourself off so completely, to be in your own imagination so far, that even your senses, your hunger or discomfort, didn’t bring you out?

Nadoko takes the baskets of corn and starts toward the lodge, telling Naomi and Susanna that they should stay to watch more. She will deliver the corn to the man there, the cook, and then return for them. Naomi goes back to watching Hato. Her hair is in a long braid down her back but wisps of it near her forehead blow forward in the wind. From this angle she looks beautiful.

“Nami,” Susanna says. “You can’t stay here, you know.”

For a moment Naomi says nothing. Hato claps his hands and the boys put down their spears and form a wide circle around him. When they are assembled, Hato pulls a piece of meat from a basket at his feet and pierces it on the end of his own spear. Then, quickly, he throws the spear at one of his students. The boy catches it and pulls off the meat. This is his meal. The boy throws the empty spear back to Hato, who does the same thing again, now whirling around to choose a boy behind him.

“You can’t be an Indian,” Susanna says.

“I’m not an Indian,” Naomi answers without taking her eyes from Hato. “I’m a woman who is married to a man who is Wyandot. Like someone who marries an Italian, or a Welshman.”

Susanna feels a sweep of annoyance. “You know it’s not the same thing.”

“Why not?”

“He’s a Wyandot, Nami, not a Welshman. Our lives are entirely different.”

“How is your life so different? After everything you’ve told me, the Black Swamp, your friend Meera.”

“She’s not my friend. And that was all temporary. When I leave here I’ll live like a white woman again. I want to go back to that.”

“Well I don’t.”

“Well you should!”

Naomi laughs a short laugh. “Why?”

“Be reasonable. It’s a hard life here.”

“Harder than Sirus and Ellen’s?”

Susanna looks off at the lodge. Nadoko is still inside. How can she persuade her sister? “Naomi, Indians are completely different from Christians.” This is what the farmers always said. “We don’t understand their ways. How can we live with them if we don’t understand them?”

But Naomi is able to read her thoughts. “Those farmers are just ignorant, you know that.”

“About some things...”

“And intolerant.”

“It’s not intolerance, it’s...”

Naomi waits: what is it, then? Susanna feels her position slipping further. “Just look at how they live! Even here in a settled village. Why don’t they build real houses? We’ve shown them how.”

“You think I need to live in a house to be happy?”

“Yes! A brick house! A proper brick house! Or stone.” What is she saying? She sounds foolish even to herself. Susanna puts a hand on her pouch and tries to feel Ellen’s button through the thin, pounded hide. The wind blows hard against them for a moment and Naomi wraps her arms around her body. Susanna looks at the boys in their little hide breechclouts and bare feet. She wants to sound as if she is just being reasonable.

“People are different, Nami. You have to accept that.”

“I do accept that,” Naomi says. “It is you who do not.”

Susanna presses her lips together. Soon it will be too late in the year to travel. She needs Naomi. She can’t escape on her own. One by one her sisters have abandoned her. Even Meera. Susanna could almost make herself believe that there never was a band of Potawatomi but instead her sisters all went willingly into Thieving Forest by themselves, like a nightmare you might have as a child: you wake up to find that everyone has left, your house is empty, and you are alone.

Hato is still spearing meat and throwing it to the boys, but one boy is taken off guard and can’t reach it in time. Susanna watches as the spear sails past him, bounces once, and then falls flat among the grass. The boy looks younger than the others, smaller and disadvantaged.

“Now that one will go hungry,” Naomi says.

In the morning Susanna finds another cherry button on the rock.

This time she pockets it and does not tell Naomi. Somehow Tako must have found out about the buttons, that’s the only explanation. And he’s doling them out as gifts to win her favor. Susanna looks for him while she sits outside the longhouse with Onaway grinding hickory nuts, which they mix with sugar from tree bark to make hickory milk. Onaway wants to give Nadoko the milk as a gift. Later they plan to start parching corn to store for the winter. Back in Severne the farmers said that when food is scarce Indians eat horses’ ears and entrails. They boil old bones and then drink the liquid. What will happen when it snows? Susanna wonders for the first time if Onaway will be able to feed her all winter.

“What do you eat in the winter besides corn?” Susanna asks Onaway as they work, but she doesn’t know enough Wendat to make her meaning clear and Naomi is inside with Nadoko.

The clouds are low and gray. Several parties of men have gone off to hunt—the first of the season—even though corn is still growing in the fields. It has been a long summer, which according to Sirus means that autumn will be short. When Susanna looks up again she sees that the clouds are all bunched together: a storm piling up. Women begin making their huts ready for rain, bringing skins and kettles inside. For a moment, Susanna thinks she sees a flash of green trousers near the trees. Tako?

“I’m going to fetch more kindling,” Susanna tells Onaway. “
Ndata-skwija
.” Twigs.

The sky grows brighter for a moment before it settles into a more permanent gloom. She wants to ask Tako directly about the buttons, but when she gets to the trees he’s not there. She can smell the sharp tang of the coming rain so she quickly picks up a few sticks and turns to leave. A gust of wind presses hard against her clothes and something sweeps over her, a premonition. She peers through the trees but sees no one. Their branches are beginning to wave harder in the wind.

“Susanna,” someone whispers.

She drops the twigs and whirls around. A man steps out from behind a tree. An Indian. She doesn’t recognize him. How does he know her real name? Her heart starts beating hard against her ribs.

“Susanna...”

Someone else is with him, another man. An oriole’s nest hangs like a low pouch from the branches, partially obscuring her view, but as he comes closer she hears a sob coming out of her mouth as though it’s been waiting a very long time to leave her. The other man is Seth.

He’s taller and broader than she remembers, and his dark hair is loose around his shoulders. He’s wearing a hide tunic and trousers, and small dry leaves stick to his sleeves. Probably she shouldn’t run to him but she isn’t thinking. He catches her and holds her tightly.

“Are you all right?” He pulls back to look. “Are you hurt?”

“How did you know to come here?” she asks. And then, “Beatrice,” she answers for him.

“I thought you must have gotten lost in the Swamp,” Seth says. “I talked to every ferryman on the Maumee just about, paying for news of a red-haired woman. Finally one told me he had crossed a red-headed boy with a little Indian wife. I had almost given up.”

She can hear the rain start falling. It’s in the tree branches above them, caught in the foliage. She’s holding both of his hands in hers and wants to tell him about everything that happened to her in the Black Swamp, but a noise redirects her attention.

She’s forgotten about the native. He isn’t a Wyandot. She isn’t sure what he is. He’s wearing the plainest hide trousers and tunic imaginable, as though deliberately hiding any affiliation to his tribe. She thinks to herself: I must be quick. Neither man is Wyandot, and if they are caught here in their woods they’ll be killed. So she begins telling Seth instead about Naomi, how she found her but can’t persuade her to leave. He listens with that intent gaze of his. Why did she treat him so badly? As for his father selling their wagon and then lying about it—does it really matter? That was a long way back on the river, as Sirus used to say. The rain quickens and a few drops begin falling through the leaves.

“Perhaps it’s just despair?” Seth suggests. “Maybe if she knew that escape was possible?”

“I don’t think so. She thinks she’s in love. But he’s an Indian. How can she hope to be happy?”

Seth turns away slightly at that and looks down at her with an expression she can’t read. She waits, not sure what he is thinking. At last he says, “They’ve cut your hair.”

So that’s it. She’s grown thin and unattractive, she’s forgotten that. The wind shifts the branches above them and suddenly the rain comes down heavily, soaking her shoulders.

“I’m a slave here,” she tells him.