“We cannot,” said Asiginak.
“I will not go in that house again,” said Cuthbert.
“You know how to write,” said Asiginak to the boy. “You will write this down: One lives yet on Lochren. Tonight, I will place your message in the sheriff ’s box where he receives his papers. They will come for the baby in the morning.”
Cuthbert nodded slowly and gave the baby to Asiginak, who went back into the house. When he came out, he was looking at the ground. He noticed the tracks.
“We must brush your tracks out wherever we find them,” he said, in a serious, distracted voice. “Take your shoes off.”
The men walked around the yard brushing out marks of the cross in the loose dirt. When they were satisfied, they left, melting down along the edge of the cow pasture, off into the woods, then down paths that raveled out for miles.
A Little Medicine
MOOSHUM QUIT. WE thought he’d had enough of talking, and as this was such a strange and awful thing that he was telling us, we just sat there. I twisted my hair around and around my finger and Joseph frowned at the rock-hard ground.
The door creaked open, and Mama leaned out to look at the sky. The blazing balls of clouds were getting sucked back into the dark, though the rain seemed far away yet. The wind had started up in the box elder grove and the laundry flapped on the line. She bent her head like she was shouldering a yoke, and let the door slam behind her. She strode over to the line to feel whether the clothing was dry enough. Something was definitely bothering her that day, but we did not find out until later what that was. Maybe if she hadn’t been so absorbed in her irritation she would have stopped Mooshum from telling us the whole story, or from sipping at the brown medicine bottle under his green zippered Sears work jacket. He drew the bottle out, swirled its contents round and round, and popped a small slug back into his throat. We caught a whiff of bitter, wild leaves. His eyes watered as he replaced the bottle.
Mama took down a couple of flat sheets, leaving some of her own nylon underwear on the line. I’d never seen her underwear right out there on the line. The pale blue and tissuey pink panties puffed with air and stayed true to her rounded shape. She walked past and said to Mooshum, “Geraldine’s coming and I know what she’s going to tell me already.” She went up the steps and shouted back down to Mooshum. “And I don’t like it.”
Mooshum popped his eyes out comically as the door slammed, and made an oooh, she’s mad ducking gesture.
“What happened to the baby?” Joseph asked.
“A man named Hoag came and got that baby,” said Mooshum. I thought the story was over and got up to follow Mama — she was going to want me to help her fold the clothing, or roll it for ironing. She was so perturbed already that I didn’t want to test her patience. But then Mooshum took another toot from his medicine bottle and said, “They came for Asiginak at night.”
“They?” I turned back.
“They who?” said Joseph.
“The town men,” said Mooshum. “That’s why I’m telling this to you. Wildstrand, the Buckendorfs…”
“The Buckendorfs?” I said.
“Oh yai! They’re the ones! They came for Asiginak at night, but he heard them first and bolted. Me, I had come to warn them and I dragged the boy out just in time.”
Confessional
THE LITTLE CABIN had a tiny window out back covered with a flap of hide. Holy Track and Mooshum were out that window in an iced second — blown by terror into the woods. They landed like leaves, sprang into the trees, and crept into a tangle of chokecherry and willow. Then they floundered into a slough and sank down among the reeds. There were dogs with the men, but they were cow dogs, not trained hounds, and they barked at everything. They smelled an animal or maybe Asiginak and started off in another direction. The men’s torches played over the surface of the water. There was more trampling, shuffling, the dogs’ mad barking, and they were gone. The noise got smaller and smaller. The two pulled themselves through the muck until they were on solid ground. There was no choice now but to run to Father Severine. Though he was unreliable and didn’t like Mooshum anymore, he very much loved Holy Track.
As the two made their way down the trail that led around the hills, along pastures, the birds started up singing in the alder and wild raspberry. Mooshum asked the little birds for help, and Holy Track said Hail Marys. As they walked along, they talked about the priest’s habits — how he took forever to fraction the Host and drawled his prayers out so it was nearly impossible to keep one’s eyes open and not pitch forward on the floor. How soft the floor looked while listening to Severine’s sermons and how dreadful it was when a louse or flea began to bite, or when a piss was necessary. They agreed that the most agonizing itches always developed while serving Mass. They revealed that both of their butt ends knew a sharp corner attached to the kneeler that afforded a merciful, secret scratch.
On the swelling side of a hill, along a small stream that ran slough to slough, they heard horses and rolled into the torn system of a tipped-up cottonwood tree. They hid in the cage of black roots and froze as the white men passed. Asiginak had not been caught.
“They might give up on us,” said Holy Track.
The air was still fresh with night dew when Holy Track and Mooshum pulled open the door to the church and slipped inside. There was the odor of rotting burlap and field dust from all of the potato bags placed down as rugs. One tiny lamp flickered before the carved wooden cabinet where the priest kept the Hosts. It was covered with a towel embroidered in red letters.
“I don’t like the taste of that bread!” Mooshum made a face. “You cannot call it bread! Not even a cracker. You could eat a thousand and not live.”
“You’re supposed to get everlasting life from it,” said Joseph.
“That did not work for Holy Track,” said Mooshum.
The boy knelt for a moment before the cabinet. Then he pushed aside the towel, opened the gilded door in its side, and ate all the wafers. He closed the door, and blew out the flame of the lamp. He told Mooshum that he hadn’t eaten for days — ever since Asiginak had come home raving with fear saying there was drunk talk and now the white sheriff and maybe some farmers, also, knew that Indians had been in the presence of the murdered family. Holy Track’s hands reached forward and he drank the rancid fat from the bowl of the lamp. His stomach immediately cramped up. He broke out in a sweat, ran outside, and leaned his head against the back wall of the church. He forced himself to keep down the spirit bread by breathing hard and concentrating on the presence inside of him. Father Severine had explained his soul to him. Now, he told Mooshum, it made sense that the bread he had eaten would feed this soul, this spirit, and increase its strength. He thought he would need this strength.
At last, when the boy felt better, Mooshum helped him creep back inside. There was an aperture of enclosed space in the church where the priest heard confessions. A sack curtain hung down the front. Holy Track ducked in and crouched on the dirt floor with his knees drawn up to his chin.
Mooshum left him there and sipped like an animal at the stale font of holy water. Then he fell asleep underneath a pew until morning sun filtered through the rough curtains. He peered into the brown light of the church. The door opened and a narrow band of white light struck across the floor. Father Severine approached the confessional with long, delicate, strides, and looked inside.
“My son!” he breathed. A dark cleft of anxiety formed between the priest’s eyebrows. “Are the others here too?”