“Just like us!” Hotchkiss leaned over and slammed the butt of his rifle against Cuthbert’s head. “Not hardly.”
“You are right,” said Asiginak in Ojibwe. “You are a madness on this earth.”
Cuthbert’s head was all blood now. His eyes were hidden in his bloody hair, his neck awash with blood, his dirty shirt was blood all up and down. He spoke Ojibwe from inside the bloody mask and said to Holy Track, “Don’t worry. There is another boy among them. Pretty soon one of them will notice and remember the sheriff ’s words. They’ll let you go. When you speak of my death to others, tell them of my courage. I am going to sing my death song.”
“I hope you can remember it before you shit your pants,” said Asiginak.
“Aiii! I am trying to think how it goes.”
Both men began to hum very softly.
“To tell you the truth,” said Cuthbert, after a little while, “I was never given a death song. I was not considered worth it.”
“Make one up,” said Asiginak. “I will help you.”
They began to tap their knees and mumble a whine of melody beneath their breaths again. They did not address a single word to Mooshum. He gazed out over the fields, which were newly plowed and planted, the furrows straight and just sprouting a faint green fuzz. The sky was the sweetest color of blue. The horizon was dusty with a hint of green, just like the egg of a robin, and the clouds were delicate, no more than tiny white breast feathers way up high.
They came to a tree that looked all right, but the white men thought the limbs were too slanted and thin. They came to another tree and the men argued underneath it and measured with their arms and hands. Apparently, that tree wasn’t good, either.
“They are giving us time to practice our song, anyway,” said Cuthbert. He wiped his face. It looked as though his nose-lump had been shorn away smoothly.
“Now that I look at you closely,” said Asiginak, “I think you would have been handsome, my friend.”
“Thank you,” Cuthbert said.
“That tree over there will do,” said Emil Buckendorf.
Mooshum heard someone begin to sob and he thought at first it was himself — it sounded just like himself — but then he realized that it was Johann Vogeli. The boy was riding next to him, his hands clutching the mane of his horse. His tears rushed down and wet the leather of the saddle. Frederic Vogeli rode up beside his son and swung his arm back, then smashed his knuckles and forearm across his son’s face. Johann nearly fell off the back of his horse, but he caught himself. As he gained his balance, he changed, grew broader, bigger, and something in him could be seen to light. This thing took fire, and blew him right up. It propelled him off his horse: he lunged into an embrace with his father, who flew sideways out of his saddle and was still underneath his son when the two men landed and skidded — Frederic’s back the sled. Johann sat on his father’s chest and began to hit his face with the side of his fist like he was pounding on a table. He pounded with all his arm’s strength, like he would strike through the wood, or the flesh. His other hand had closed around his father’s throat. The wagon lurched on and the other men traveled with it, leaving the two rolling and kicking, then standing, then swinging and punching. Down again, then up, their battle looked more comical as they receded into the distance. Finally they were two black toy figures popping up and down against an endless horizon and beneath a boundless sky.
“The boy’s heart was good, anyway,” said Cuthbert.
“I hope he doesn’t kill his father, yet,” said Asiginak. “He could carry that hard.”
Cuthbert agreed.
“So you talked to Cuthbert, too,” said Joseph, his voice strained. “And Holy Track? Asiginak? They lived to be old men, right?”
“No,” said Mooshum. “Oh,” said Joseph.
The Clatter of Wings
THE OAK TREE had a generous spread. It had probably grown there quietly for a hundred years.
“I can show you that tree to this day, on the edge of Wolde’s land,” said Mooshum. “There’s tobacco put down there. Prayer flags in its branches.”
The men rode up to it and got down and walked around the base, peering up into the branches and pointing at one particular limb that ran straight on both sides of the tree and then bent upward, as if in a gesture of praise. They decided that it was the tree they had been looking for and drew the wagon up beneath it. Five or six ropes were neatly coiled underneath the straw on the wagon bed. Enery Mantle and the Buckendorfs took the ropes out and argued over which ones to use. Then they tried and repaired the knots, clumsily, several times, still arguing, and threw the ropes over the limb. They tested the slip of the rope and discussed who would hit the horses, and when.
“They don’t know how to snare a rabbit,” said Cuthbert, “or drop a man. This will not go easy.”
Holy Track was sick and wild. Asiginak did not answer. Mooshum was staring into space and pretending to be already dead.
“The Michif will do all right,” said Cuthbert, meaning Mooshum. “He knows how to jig.”
Asiginak roused himself from deep thought and touched his nephew’s shoulder.
“I regard you as my son,” he said to Holy Track. “We will walk to the spirit world together. I would not have liked to walk that road alone. Howah! You made my old heart proud when you showed yourself in that church door!”
“Thank you, my uncle,” said the boy, his voice soft and formal. “I regard you as my father, too.”
“We will see them soon,” said Cuthbert. “All our relatives.” He touched the boy’s arm, and smiled. His smile was awful in the dried blood. “Aniin ezhinikaazoyan?”
“Charles.”
Cuthbert shook his head. “Not the priest’s name. Not even our nickname for you, Holy Track. How do the spirits know you?”
Holy Track told him.
“Everlasting Sky. Good, you were named well. Give that name to the Person who will be waiting for you on the other side. Then you will go to the Anishinaabeg spirit world. Your mama and deydey will be waiting for you there, my boy. Don’t be afraid.”
“Don’t fight the rope,” said Asiginak. His voice shook.
Wildstrand made the four stand up and he refastened the ropes that tied their hands behind them. Emil Buckendorf arranged them on the wagon bed and lowered the loops of rope over their heads and then tightened the loops to fit more snugly.
Henric Gostlin stepped up to the wagon.
“He says he doesn’t want the boy to hang,” said Emil Buckendorf.
One of his brothers said, “Yah, just leave him.”
Eugene Wildstrand’s face darkened with a sudden rush of blood. “Were you there,” he said, looking at Gostlin and the others, one after another. “Were you there, at the place? You were there. You seen it.”
He held their gazes and his face burned strangely in the light.
“The girl,” he continued. “The wife. The two boys. My old friend, too. All of them.”
Emil stared at his brothers until they nodded and looked down at their feet. Henric Gostlin walked away, back down the path, slapping his hat on his thigh. The other men standing next to the horses started as Asiginak and Cuthbert suddenly burst out singing. They began high — Cuthbert’s voice a wild falsetto that cut the air. Asiginak joined him and Holy Track felt almost good, hearing the strength and power of their voices. And the words in the old language.
These white men are nothing
What they do cannot harm me
I will see the face of mystery
They sang the song twice before the Buckendorfs shook themselves and prepared the wagon. Emil steadied the two horses and counted down to whip them at the same time. The boy tried to open his mouth to join in his uncle’s song, but could only hum to himself the tuneless lullaby that his mother had always used to sing him to sleep. The Buckendorfs threw their arms back, cut the horses at the same time, then again, harder. The wagon lurched, stopped, then bucked forward. The men stumbled but did not stop singing. Finally, the horses bolted away. They halted after twenty feet. The men tried to keep singing even as they strangled. The boy was too light for death to give him an easy time of it. He slowly choked as he kicked air and spun. He heard it when Cuthbert, then his uncle, stopped singing and gurgling. Behind his shut eyes, he was seized by black fear, until he heard his mother say, Open your eyes, and he stared into the dusty blue. Then it was better. The little wisps of clouds, way up high, had resolved into wings and they swept across the sky now, faster and faster.