“No,” said Holy Track.
Relieved, the priest let out his breath. The boy had formed himself into a ball on the floor. The priest’s face worked back and forth between expressions of pity and disgust, and at last settled on peevish disappointment.
“I suppose you are here to confess.” His voice was shaky and shrill. His breath was agitated. “You have done a monstrous thing!” He seemed to gather himself and stepped backwards.
“I will feed you, only that,” he said, and left. But when Father Severine returned, he had such food. There were tears in his weak eyes as he watched his favorite eat the tinned crackers and the dried peaches, cold fried venison, a jar of honey, and bread soft as flower petals. Mooshum kept quiet although his stomach yawned.
Holy Track ate with gravity, devotion, and lust. He spoke with his cheeks bulging.
“They were all dead but the baby.”
By the time he swallowed, there were men outside. The priest got up. His eyes were swimming.
“Nothing, we did nothing…we never,” said the boy, but his tongue was weighed down with honey and his mouth too dry to swallow the food.
“They led you to it,” said Father Severine, his eyes spilling over, the tears running down the furrows beside his beaky nose, splashing down inside his collar. “Stay hidden, I will talk.”
The Sisters
THE DOOR SLAMMED with a deliberate whack. Mooshum spat. Joseph started. I jumped up. Mama had Geraldine with her now and as they passed I heard my aunt say, “Who told you?” Then they were halfway down the yard, past the tangled brushy trees and the hanging clothes, which Mama didn’t bother to touch for dryness this time. They were lost in a conversation. Mama’s shoulders were hunched and her head was turned just a bit toward Geraldine. They looked a lot like each other from behind — their permanented black hair bobbed prettily just over their collars. Mama wore a green blouse and Geraldine’s was yellow. Their dark skirts were long and full, belted tight with elastic cinch belts. Their feet were dainty in Keds shoes and anklets. Mama painted her canvas shoes with white polish to keep them spotless. Their clothing was always secondhand but they still looked dashing. People thought they went to Fargo to shop when their clothes really came from the mission.
They walked to the end of the yard where the old outhouse stood, now cluttered inside with hoes and shovels. There, they folded their arms and faced each other, mouths moving, skirts whipping in the hot rain-smelling breeze. Mooshum began to talk again, knowing that Mama’s attention was absorbed. It wasn’t like he was talking to us, though, or even using his usual storytelling voice. He wasn’t drawing us in, or gesturing. This was different. Now it was like he was stuck in some way, on some track, like he couldn’t stop the story from forcing its way out. This was the one time he told the story whole.
The Party
OUTSIDE THE CHURCH, the men’s voices were a tumble. First the priest’s choked pleas, then a rolling barrel full of words. Mooshum made no sense of it, but dreamily shoved in the food Holy Track pushed over. He caught the back and forth of the talk. The words jammed together until the men and the horses made one sound, a heavy confusion of breath and stomping blood. Then a brief quiet in which the wind came up whining in the eaves. Suddenly Holy Track leapt up, stuffing bits of the boiled meat into his pockets, and rolled underneath the darkest bench with Mooshum.
The white men knocked Father Severine aside and banged into the church. They strode down the church aisle in their heavy boots and each genuflected. Some crossed themselves. Then they looked behind the altar and into the confessional.
“He run again,” said a bright, clear voice.
“We got one anyhow, let’s hang the one we got,” sang a man from outside. It was a lovely, melodious voice with a German buzz.
As the men outside dragged Asiginak past Father Severine, the priest went rigid. He opened and shut his mouth like he was choking, and tried jerkily to bless the old man. Asiginak slapped his hands away.
“Don’t be useless,” he cried. “Get them off me!”
From under the bench, Holy Track heard his uncle cry out. Asiginak gave a wail of penetrating fear and shouted in Ojibwe, “I don’t want to die alone!”
Father Severine swayed and propped himself against a tree in the yard. Suddenly everyone stopped. They sensed that someone had come to stand in the doorway of the church. They all turned as one.
“Uncle, I will go with you,” said the boy.
Mooshum crawled from under the pew and jumped up to pull Holy Track inside. He struggled to bar the door against the men, but the Buckendorfs surged in and caught them both fast in their big hay-pitching arms. The men hoisted Mooshum and the boy out into the light. One held the boy by the nape of his neck. When he saw the horror and the shame on Asiginak’s face, Mooshum knew that Holy Track regretted showing himself. But he stood his ground and made the sign of the cross over and over until the white men pinned his hands behind his back. They tied his wrists together and threw the boy along with Mooshum and Asiginak into the bed of their wagon. Father Severine cried something out in Latin and bolted to life. He clawed at the sides of the wagon and tottered awkwardly beside them. He blurted crazily useless threats and conflicted blessings as they rattled down the hill. Soon, his croaking died away. Asiginak hunched over at first, staring at his feet, and would not speak. At last, in a voice filled with anguish, he said to Holy Track. “I never knew you were hiding in there. My words were not for you to hear.”
Holy Track glared, angry at his uncle for a moment, then he shrugged and pretended that he didn’t care.
Wild plum trees were blooming in the scrub. Willow had leafed out narrow and green, and the sloughs glittered in the early light. The question of a tree and a place arose among the chimookamanag. However, they were diverted by two others who appeared dragging Cuthbert behind a horse. They pulled him slowly, so they could hang him, too. Cuthbert looked like a big caterpillar coated with gray dust. They cut him out of his ropes and hoisted him into the wagon. He lay still, blinking up at the others.
“Ah,” said Cuthbert after a little while, from his bloody face, “they have rubbed off the worst of my nose. It is a pity to die now that I am handsome.”
“You’re still ugly, my brother,” said Asiginak.
“Then I won’t be such a loss to the women,” said Cuthbert. “It is a comfort.”
The wagon jostled them along in a friendly way. As they crossed the boundary into the fields and roads off the reservation, a farmer or two stood in his field, stilled and planted, and watched the slow procession of men, horses, dogs, wagon, and trussed Indians, pass by.
The Baby
MOOSHUM LOOKED OVER at his daughters, who had begun arguing away at the end of the yard. He swigged precisely at his medicine. Suddenly, Mama and Geraldine quit talking and frowned up at the sky. They walked over to the clothesline, but before they had even plucked off one clothespin, they resumed arguing. Instead of taking in the rest of the wash, the two looked over at us to make sure that we weren’t listening. When they saw us watching, they swished their skirts and strode swiftly around to the front of the house. We turned back to Mooshum. He told us other things he knew. How the little brother of a woman named Electa Hoag — well, he wasn’t little, exactly, at seventeen — had run away in the night just after the murder, taking two of her newly baked loaves, his shoes, a woolen jacket, and an extra pair of overalls. Her husband Oric’s cap was also missing from the hook by the door. Oric had gone off so quickly, summoned by Colonel Benton Lungsford and the sheriff, that he’d forgotten to wonder where he’d put the cap. Electa might have said something about Tobek running off when the men came back from the farm, not long after. She might have said something, but she was too surprised by the baby Oric held up there on the horse. She was too distracted by it, and then absorbed when he leaned over the saddle and transferred it into her arms. Instead of screaming, the baby just gave her a calm and trusting look, a direct look, like it was all grown up now but still caught in the tiny body. Oh, it screamed later, she told Mooshum, it turned into a baby again. That was once the men had rustled up some food for themselves and gone and she was alone cleaning it and trying to feed it. After she knew about the murders, Electa decided that she would tell Oric that he must have taken the cap with him and lost it, laid it down in shock somewhere on the farm. Knowing what had happened, she decided that she would not let on that Tobek was missing, run off, not for a while, not for as long as she could.