The Light in the Forest (10 page)

The boy knew it was a long way from the Tuscarawas to the banks of the Susquehanna, but word of mouth had been passed farther than that. There was always a way. Traders and hunters traveled back and forth. A message could even be sent by hand. The whites were not the only people able to make marks on wood or paper. He had seen his Indian father carve signs on the bark of a tree far in the woods, telling how he had shot a bear at this spot and that if the traveler left the path toward the west, he could find a spring of water where the elk or woods horse came to drink.

But winter passed and no word for him ever came that he knew about. The first green leaves of
the Schka’ak lettuce scented the marshes. Birch buds stung the tongue, and the blossoms of the Tree of the Schwanammek lay in drifts on the mountainside like remnants of last year’s snow. Hardly dare he look at them for homesickness. But it was the call of Memedhakemo, the turtle dove, that spoke to the very center of his being. Whenever he heard its note of lonely solitude, it carried him back on swift wings to the village on the Tuscarawas. It could almost be the same bird that used to sit on the hill of the High Spring and call in the early morning when the sun was breaking through the river mists. Then he could feel the bark town coming to life around him. Soon he and Half Arrow would be leaving for their day’s freedom in the forest, chewing hunks of dried venison as they went. Where the river widened into a cattail swamp, their blood would race with the noisy talk of ducks and their fingers itch for the guns denied them. They complained of lost arrows shot across the water, but their fathers said if they had guns, they wouldn’t get the bullets back either.

Other times they fished for Namespema, the rock fish, and waded in riffles for Machewachtey, the red-bellied terrapin. Often they didn’t come back till Memedhakemo called again from the hill,
and the village hung wreathed in woodsmoke flavored with the scent of roasting meat and of burning red-willow tobacco.

Oh, that was the life of young gods in the forest, and how could one think to live without it! All through the winter and early spring he told himself that when Hattawaniminschi, the dogwood, bloomed, he would have some word of greeting and encouragement from his Indian father, some message to keep up his courage and to say that the time of deliverance was near. But the fragile petals fell from the shad tree. Dogwood came into broad bloom. Now the leaves of Wipunquok, the gnarled and powerful white oak, hung tiny, pink and furry on massive branches. And still he heard nothing on the breeze that blew most every day from the Tuscarawas. It came over him that he was dead to his Indian people, his body buried, his grave neglected, his name forgotten as last autumn’s leaves that had floated down the river never to be seen again.

The worst of it was that something had happened to his unquenchable Indian soul. When first they had taken him from the Lenni Lenape, he would have fought an army for the chance of returning. But now he had stayed in the insidious
company of white people too long. Their milk-warm water had got into his blood. He had become tamed, submissive as a plough horse in the field. At first he had rebelled against the hoe. He had told his white father how once as a small boy the squaws had got him to help them hoe their corn. His Indian father had sternly reproved him. He was a manchild and should never dishonor himself with the labor of squaws.

But his white father could see no point in the story.

“We look at things differently here,” he said.

A day or two later, old black Bejance came hobbling up the road on his two sticks. He gazed gravely over the fence at True Son and his hoe.

“They got the harness on you, Injun boy,” he said. “The straps is buckled and the single-tree lugged.”

The boy kept on down the row. That evening his white father spoke to him in the house.

“It wasn’t so bad, was it, Johnny?” he smiled. “You did tolerable well for the first time.”

His praise meant little to the boy, coming as it did from this man whose fondest place was his desk, his bald head bulging like a storehouse with useless figures of land, crops and money. He was still incomprehensible
to his son, in dress and sex like a man and yet unable to rule his own squaw, but being ruled by her, obeying her slightest wish, paying others to do her work while she spent her life in her room like a sleek white rat in its cage, concerned mostly with newspapers, books and letters such as white rats liked to chew upon. Beside her, the memory of his Indian mother was like a spreading sugar maple providing them all with food and warmth, while beside this feeble white man at his desk, his Indian father had been an oak sheltering them from both the heat of the sun and the fury of the thunderbolt.

When they had put him to bed, his white mother, supported by his father and Aunt Kate, came to his room to read to him from the black book she said God had given the white people. Later the white medicine man appeared, smelling of horses, practicing the white man’s superstition of bleeding the feet and purging with powders. The boy let them do with him as they would. In his heart he felt there was no use. Let the whites tie the Indian, imprison him, surround him with guards night and day, still they couldn’t hold him. There was provided for him a way of escape. He need not walk or run in it, only yield to the inward voice telling him
what to do, let himself sink, permit the light of day to close over him, and the prison cell would be left empty above him.

He was dimly aware this evening that something out of the ordinary had happened. He heard the gallop of a horse. Later the sounds of commotion rose from the back porch.

“Go ’way! Vamoose!” he heard Aunt Kate call. She sounded very cross.

Soon Gordie came to bed in excitement. He said Aunt Kate had seen an Indian looking through the kitchen window. The Indian had run like a coward when she went to the door with her broom.

True Son lay very still, letting the words sink into his mind. So one of his people was near! Perhaps the long-awaited message had come. At the thought, a lump long hard and dried up inside of him melted. A door he had never seen opened in his breast and the first trickle of life-giving substance came through. Motionless he waited till Gordie slept in bed beside him. Then he sat up.

He felt very weak but stronger than he expected. The room stretched about him, faintly light with the night. After a while he put his feet to the floor. His Indian dress, he saw, hung beside his white clothes from a peg. He had not been forgotten by
the Great Spirit. Everything had been provided. From time to time he rested on the chair from his small exertions. At last he climbed out of the open window, lowering himself till his moccasins touched the roof tiles of the low kitchen wing. Then he let himself fall and slide like a crumpled ball of spider down to the lap of his mother, the Earth.

His aunt, the Night, with her cool hands, received him. His brother-in-law, the West Wind, with his clear breath revived him. His very old uncle, the Moon, shone down upon him. When from the shadow of the barn he looked back, the big white stone house stood like some monster created by the white people, staring after him with one hostile yellow lamplit eye. It was good to look the other way in the soft, endless Indian moonlight, which was never shut up in houses, never having to be bought in white man’s posts or lighted in a pot, but free to all the earth and its creatures.

Across the big field of tiny corn, he stopped where the fence row of sassafras trees made a shadow in which he could hide. There was no sound save of distant hounds. Into the stillness he threw out the regular spaced notes of Chingokhos, the big-eared owl. Utter quiet followed as if even the dogs listened. After an interval he called again,
telling a listener what white men would never notice that, although owls called from near and far in flight, his own calls came from the same place. Still there was silence. He called the third time, and now he added the unmistakable rasping whoo-haw of Schachachgokhos, the barred owl, on the end.

This time an answer rang so close from across the fence row in front of him that he almost jumped. He guessed that all the time the answerer had been moving noiselessly toward him.

“
Auween khackev?
Who are you?” he called very low in Delaware.

“
Lenape n’hackey
. I am Indian,” a guarded voice he was sure he had heard before, answered.
“Auween khackev?”

“I am Lenape, too. Come out and let me look on you.”

But the unseen speaker in the fence row did not stir. True Son moved closer and still he could see nothing.

“
Lenni Lenape ta koom?
Delaware, where do you come from?” he asked.

“
Otenink Tuscarawas noom
. From the town on the Tuscarawas,” the answer came, and now True Son was sure of the voice. A surge of joy lightened him.

“Half Arrow!
Ili kleheleche!
Do you still breathe!” he cried. A bush detached itself from another bush and in the dim light the two boys rushed to each other. They embraced and cried out, gripping each other’s arms. Half Arrow’s fingers were iron.

“Cousin! I didn’t know you. Your voice was like a Yengwe’s trying to be Indian.”

“
Ehih!
Am I that bad?” True Son muttered.

“But now with me you will soon talk better!” Half Arrow promised.

“I hope. Let us go to the house.”

But Half Arrow drew back.

“Cousin. It’s better not to. I don’t dare trust the white people. Already I am chased off by your white mother. She called bad names. She would not like to see me again.”

“It wasn’t my white mother, only Piwitak, the aunt. You mustn’t let the rudeness of white people affect you. They are young and haven’t learned yet the hospitality of our Indian houses. If I ask them to, they will feed you.”

“No, I am not hungry. I ate yesterday with Little Crane.”

“Little Crane!” True Son said the name with delight.
“Does he still breathe! Is he already a papa and how is his feeling for his young white squaw?”

“All the way from the Tuscarawas he talked of her. But she is still two days’ journey off.”

“I hope he’s not gone to her so I can still see him,” True Son said.

“No, he’s not gone, and you can see him,” Half Arrow promised, but his voice sounded strange.

On the way, one ahead of the other, True Son plied questions, and Half Arrow answered. It was like medicine to hear the familiar boyhood tongue with the good whistling sound of the Indian consonant which white people did not have, and to speak without having to set his lips or tongue for the foolish Yengwe V and R which the Lenape did not need. All the way his spirits lifted so that he didn’t notice where they were going. Then suddenly he saw they approached Mehargue’s pasture and that Half Arrow had stopped speaking and was moving with slowness and caution.

“Why do you drag?” True Son asked. “If you whistle like the crane, then he will answer unless now since he is a papa he has become deaf.”

“He is deaf enough,” Half Arrow answered, moving from tree to tree where he paused and listened
as if not for a friend but an enemy. At last he halted.

“I said I would bring you to him. Here he is,” he said in a dull voice.

“Where? I see no one, unless he’s a tree.”

“He is something like a tree. Do you see him now?”

True Son strained his eyes through the shadows. All the trees he saw bore limbs and leaves. Then slowly he became conscious of a dark mark on the ground. He had taken it for one of the short logs of the white people.

“That which lies like a cut tree isn’t he?” he asked.

For answer Half Arrow ran and knelt at the dark mound.

“Ai, for the Lenni Lenape!” he cried and gave a long Indian moan.

True Son came slowly closer. Even in the dimness he could make out the design of the familiar match coat Little Crane had worn last fall. It had been spread like a blanket, but the body beneath it neither moved nor spoke. True Son stared in rigid disbelief.

“Cousin. It was not sickness that brought him down?”

“No, it was not the sickness.”

“It was not the Frightener that white people call the rattlesnake?”

“No, it was not the Frightener.”

As True Son bent over the body, he felt a terrible hate for the ones who had done this. Could this hard and dried blood on the match coat be the life fluid that only a few hours ago had flowed through Little Crane’s veins and had brought him all this distance but now could carry him no farther?

“Cousin. Who did this evil thing?”

“The shots came from behind. When I looked the butchers were over there behind the trees.”

“Cousin. Where were you and what did you do that men would shoot after you in peace?”

“We did nothing and stopped at only two places. The first place we asked for you. They sent us to the second place. It was your white uncle who has men making kegs and barrels. But you were not there.”

“Did you or Little Crane say anything to make him cross?”

“Cousin. Before we went in, Little Crane said we must remember we are guests of the white man. We must be polite. If you look at the skin of a white
man, he said, you can see how thin and weak it is. Even such a small thing as words will bruise and cut it open. So we must not remind the white man what he knows very well, that his land rightfully belongs to the Indian from whom he stole it. No, we must be happy and tell happy stories. So when we went in, Little Crane was happy and told happy stories.”

“Do you remember any of these happy stories?”

“Two I remember. They were very funny. Once some Mingue stopped with a white missionary overnight and put their horses in his grass field. The missionary chased their horses out of the field. He said he intended mowing the grass for hay. The Mingue said, Friend, the field is on Indian land. Then how is it your grass? Oh, yes it is my grass, the missionary said. I fenced it in. But who grew the grass, you or the Great Spirit? the Mingue asked. The Great Spirit grew it, the missionary had to say. Then our horses have a right in it, the Mingue said, because we are the Great Spirit’s children. Little Crane said you had to laugh at the missionary’s face when the Mingue put their horses back in and ate up the grass. He was not a real Quekel but wore a big hat like the Quekel. Little Crane himself had to laugh when he told it. Is
there anything so funny, he asked the white men, as a man thinking he owns Indian land if he fences it in?”