Authors: Helen Frost
No one knows why everyone
has gone away from here.
As the sun goes down,
two people ride in at almost
the same time. First, from the north, a man
from this village returns to tell us they sent out a spy
who learned that the British turned back. If we decide to fight
the Americans, we will fight alone. They have five thousand menâ
and even with all the warriors who are here now, we have
no more than fifteen hundred. A dark cloud crosses
Father's face. And then the second person
rides in from the east. At first,
I don't recognize this angry
red-faced man:
Kwaahkwa
has come to tell us,
I stayed
out of sight and watched the army burn our longhouse,
all our homesâthose made of cattail mats and those we've built with logs.
All our cornfields. Everything. Nothing left but ashes
where Kekionga was.
All this smoke is choking me. What's going on? Pa comes in with food,
but not 'cause he went hunting. He puts it on the tableâdeer meat, corn,
maple sugar. And then a copper pot. The fiddle that belongs to Old Raccoon.
Pa,
I ask,
who gave this to you?
He answers:
No one. They've all gone away.
I took this from Old Raccoon's house before the soldiers set it on fire.
Pa stole
from our friends? He slumps into a chair. Ma brings him water,
and we wait for him to tell us what's happening. Ma keeps coughing.
Her eyes are all red. Might be from the smoke, but it's also from crying.
Pa starts talking:
As far as I can tell, almost everyone in Kekionga left before
the army got here. Probably went to a village west of here. When the General
couldn't find anyone to fight, he said, “We'll make sure no one comes back later
to cause trouble.”
Ma objects,
But most of the people in Kekionga don't even want
to fight this war!
Pa nods.
I know that. You know that. I couldn't stop them, Lydia.
I ask,
How will they make new houses before winter?
Pa mutters,
That is the idea.
The cornfields here
go on and on, the wind blows
softly through them. Will we stay here with
our relatives this winter? We didn't bring
enough food. What kind of fish
can you catch here?
Father is quiet
for a long time. Then, as if he
hears the questions I'm not asking, he says,
I suppose they'll do for us what we do for others. When people
from the east are pushed west, we've always made room on our land.
What else can we do? So far, our fish and animals and cornfields have been enough
to feed us all.
He stops talking for a minute. Then:
Tomorrow I'll show you
a good fishing place not far from here.
That should make me happy,
but the sadness in Father's voice is so deep and heavy
I can barely hear the words he speaks.
Gently, Grandma calls me
over to her.
Noohse,
will you go find some firewood?
Toontwa can help you.
Good, I think, a chance
to explore, but then she adds,
Don't go farther than that oak treeâ
see it, at the edge of the clearing? If we call for you,
come quickly.
I've never seen so many people in one place. They say there's five thousand
soldiers around here! Who can even count that high? Some of them seem
disappointed that the people they were going to fight went away before
they had a chance to fight them. The smoke from Kekionga settled down
by late last night, but when we woke up this morning, there was more of it!
Look at it allâdang! It's getting worse. Seems like the whole forest is on fire.
Pa comes storming in.
They're burning everything, from here down to the river!
Ma gasps. I ask,
Why, Pa? There's not even any houses there!
Pa says,
Remember
that day we took salt to Anikwa, and he hid somewhere, until he saw where we left it?
Not only that timeâhe always likes to hide.
Well,
says Pa,
they're trying to clear
out any hiding places, so no one can sneak up and attack us.
By burning everything?
Is that why those woodpeckers flew into the fort this morning, pecking holes
in the back wall? If someone burned down their trees, and all the nesting holes
they live inâthey'd have to make new ones. Hey! What about the fox den?
I'm awake
before the sun comes up. The river
here sounds different than it does in Kekionga.
A woodpecker hammers on a tree.
Kwaahkwa has been gone
all night, trying to
find out why
the people who live here
went away, and where they are. Now he
comes in and wakes his parents, and Grandma, Mink,
and Father.
Everyone has gone upriver,
he reports.
They say we
should go, too. No one thinks the army will stop at Kekionga.
He tells us
where the others are. We've been there before. It's near the riverbank,
where willows grow, their branches hanging down over the water.
We'll hide underneath them for a while. I imagine I can hear
the sound of distant voices. Soldiers paddling toward us.
Horses, wagons, an army like a marching forest.
(What are they eating?) I can almost
hear the gunfire,
see the flames. A great danger
close to us, and coming closer. Quickly,
we rouse everyone from sleep. Mothers keep
their babies quiet as we walk
into the cornfields.
Fast as they marched in two days ago, the army's gone. Sixty soldiers
staying here to guard the fort. The restâalmost five thousandâmarched
west and north this morning. The ground's all trampled everywhere.
Camps littered with scraps of animals they killedâthey ate what they
were hungry for, leaving piles of hides and bones and guts all over.
The doe that had two fawns before comes up the hill with only one,
looking like she's asking me:
What happened? No grass to eat. No trees
to stand behind.
Where will the animals go? Will there be enough deer
for everyone to hunt next winter?
Pa,
I ask,
is the war over? What will
happen now?
He answers,
The British turned back. And then, as the Captain
put it: “When the Indians saw how bad they were outnumbered, they all
melted away into the forest.”
Ma stands up and takes a long, deep breath,
like she's lifting something heavy, hard to carry.
How can we find out,
I ask,
what happened to everyone in Kekionga?
She answers,
We will wait and see.
We walk between long rows
of corn until the sun is high above us.
Tall stalks swish like dancers as we pass. The corn
is sweet, ready to be picked; there's plenty
to eat when we get hungry.
Look,
says Grandma,
how carefully
they've planted it,
how beautifully it's grown.
We'll help them with the harvest, before
we go back home.
A red-winged blackbird sings to us.
I answer it, as if this is an ordinary dayâI'm just out walking
with my family. Rain Bird stays close to Kwaahkwa's mother. No one
knows where Kwaahkwa went. He said,
I'll meet you tomorrow night.
He has his horse, and we're on foot, so he may arrive before us.
Now we've passed the cornfields, and we're on the trail
beside the river. A pair of herons fly in, land,
rest awhile, then take off, flying
east. When they're high
in the sky, I call:
What do you see?
But I
don't understand their answer.
Rain Bird asks:
Are you sure you want to know
what they see when they look back
at where we came from?
Pa picks up his gun and heads out to see what's left of the forest. I follow
and he warns,
This won't be easy, James
.
I don't know what we'll find out there
.
I tell him I want to check the fox den.
It's not farâpast the blackberry bushes,
near the oak tree that got split by lightningâyou know the one I mean?
But waitâ
the bushes and the tree aren't here. Where are we? Is that the rock I sit on,
to watch the trail for rabbits? It's hard to tell. Pa stomps along beside me.
What a waste,
he says.
We have to rebuild our house, the stockade, the trading postâ
now we'll have to haul logs three times as far. They could have let us cut the trees
before they burned the underbrush.
When we get to where the fox den was,
it's covered in ashes. A burned tree fell across the opening. At first I think
the foxes have all gone. Then, from under the blackened log, one peers out.
When I go up for a closer look, it tries to run away, but its leg's all busted up
so it can't walk. I lift the logâthe fox snaps at my hand.
Stand back,
says Pa.
I have to do this, Son.
And before I get his meaning, he shoots that fox dead.
A tree root
poked into my back all night.
My damp blanket didn't keep me warm.
Is it already morning? No one slept.
We're quietâwaiting, listening,
sniffing the air, and asking,
Do you smell smoke?
Friends from a village north of us
arrive here, like we did two days ago, carrying
their blankets and a little foodâenough to last a day or two.
Late afternoon and early evening, people come in from the south.
Grandma meets each group as they arrive. She speaks to the elders,
then tells us what she learns:
Everything is burned or burning.
All the houses, cornfields, food they dried and couldn't hide
or bury. All the cattail mats they couldn't carry.
All the cornfields? The ones that took a whole morning to walk
through? What about
the milkweed,
about to burst its seedpods?
The black-and-orange butterfliesâthousands
of them, in a field of yellow flowers. I'm looking around at
all these people when Kwaahkwa comes riding in,
silent as a brewing storm.
Stop that crying,
Pa commands. I hiccup to a stop, clamp my mouth shut
to stop myself from yelling:
It didn't even bite me! We could've tamed it!
We head for home. Can't get the picture of that fox out of my mind.
I don't tell MaâI can't. But her face says she knows something's wrong.
Molly wakes up from her nap, crying worse than I didâno one yells at her
to stop it. Ma lifts her up and sings to her till she calms down, and then
she turns to me and asks,
What did you see this morning?
I tell her,
Lots of
burned-down trees.
That's all I have to say about it. But later on, when Pa's
not here, I say,
You know that deer we saw, with one fawn? She had two before.
Ma nods.
I know the ones you mean. The missing fawn had a white patch
on her leg.
That's them. I take a deep breath.
We sawâa dead fox.
Dang.
Can't help itâI bust out crying. Ma says,
I heard a shot. It sounded like
your father's gun.
She knows. She puts Molly down, comes to me. Brushes
hair off my forehead, puts her hand on my shoulder. Leaves it there.
Kwaahkwa
spreads his arms as wide
as they will reach, moves his fingers
up and down like flames,
his face like fire, too,
eyes wide open,
smoldering.
Father and the other
men have embers in their eyes
as they listenâwhat are they remembering?
Kwaahkwa leans in, drawing in the dirt:
Here,
he says,
and here. Here. And here.
Stabbing a pointed stick into the ground
along a curvy line he's drawn to represent the river, he shows
us where the army burned each village, all the cornfields.
He points his stick at a spot between two villages.
Is he talking about my best fishing place?
I hid my horse and walked over
to the water's edge, close
to the herons' nest.
A heron flew out of a tree. I heard â¦