No, the reason he stayed had not come clear until it was piercingly apparent. He’d stayed for the drum. He had the most intimate knowledge of it, knew the sequence of all the songs, could bring together those who possessed those songs he’d forgotten. He alone could fit the scraps together. And he had, as best he could, in these past few months. His waiting was over now and he and Morris would sing the healing songs, softly enough, after the doctors did their rounds. Seraphine would come. He thought of Seraphine and of the strange thing about her scar.
Seraphine had been raised in a traditional way by her grandparents and she spoke little English. But then her grandparents died and Seraphine was sent to boarding school. Bernard recalled that life well, for he had been there, too, in his own day. Sometimes all of the children in the rows of beds cried at night and it was the saddest sound Bernard had ever heard. It was forbidden to speak what the teachers called Indian; sometimes those words seemed to inflame a special wrath from the teachers and the matrons who took care of the children. One day, Seraphine forgot or rebelled and began to speak her own language and would not stop. The matron was showing girls how to mend cushioned chairs. In her hand there was a thick needle for sewing together upholstery. She turned and struck Seraphine. The needle ripped across the girl’s face, and although the doctor who sewed the wound together was sensitive and careful, the scar of speaking her language remained across her lips all of her life.
Bernard thought about Seraphine as a little girl and about the wolves who had talked to Ira’s father and about the curved bones in the drum. He thought about Shawnee and her stark little heart-shaped face. And about those women who had brought the drum here from the east. Everything now fit. The little girl had come home and she had saved a girl, a relative, a sister. Bernard promised the drum that he would teach Shawnee everything he could, before she went away. She and her brother and sister would not be with him long, not if Morris had anything to say about it. But then, who knew? Who could tell what Ira was thinking?
Ira was staring at Apitchi. She couldn’t sleep. She had got up to watch him. It was impossible to tell whether he was better or worse or just the same. His arm seemed even thinner than a few hours ago, and as she stroked it she felt his slim bones and tried not to let her throat shut with fear. You’ll be all right, you’ll be all right, she prayed. She closed her eyes and tried to send her spirit out of her body into his body, she tried to make her spirit fight everything that hurt him, she tried to make him well. She opened her eyes, tears fell on her hands, and she thought, Any moment I’ll start raving at the mouth. I’ll start making those God bargains people do. I’ll scream my fucking head off and I’ll beat myself up. But she did nothing, only sat there for a long time more, holding his arm.
She was no Christian, certainly no Catholic, but she wasn’t of her father’s conviction, either. An odd thing 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
Over the entryway of our local general store, the head of an eastern coyote is mounted, teeth set and bared in pink, plastic gums, yellow glass eyes fierce and wide. It pains me to look at the poor, snarling mask, such a misrepresentation of coyote nature. The two I’ve seen gave penetrating stares and were calm. They veered from my presence and disappeared into the cut over undergrowth. One of them carried a limp, brown mouse. People generally believe that our east coast coyotes are crossed with dogs, but that is not true. They have actually crossed with the Canadian gray wolf, and in the process have grown large or fallen mysteriously silent. Like many who have adapted to survive in the eastern seaboard states, coyotes have become reserved and self-contained. They almost never raise yipping howls of joy over a kill, nor do they cry out when returning to their dens. They know better. There is no closed season and no hunting limit on their lives.