Salt (5 page)
Authors: Helen Frost
against the sycamore's white bark.
A chipmunk pokes its head up from a hole beside
a maple tree. Father rests his eyes on me.
We want our children's
children's children,
he says quietly,
to grow old
in their own home.
Is that cranes I hear? It makes no senseâit's the middle of the morning,
and it sounds like five or six of them. They usually fly in at sunset.
I watch the sky for a long time and I don't see any cranes come in,
but there it is again, same sound. Maybe Anikwa, mimicking again?
I climb a tree near the stockade gate and look around. Yes, there he is,
hands to his mouth, making crane calls. I play a blackbird song on my
whistle, and he looks up, like he's trying to see if there are blackbirds
in this tree. When he sees me up here, I wave to him, jump down
and head for the gate to go say,
Aya
. But then Pa calls:
James, I need your
help in the trading post.
Strange thing, thoughâwhen I go to help him,
he can't think of anything for me to do. No one's here to trade. The floor
is clean. No spiderwebs to sweep away. Pa sees the question on my face
and says,
I might get busy a little later on. Stay around in case I need you.
He wants me to stay inside the stockade, but he doesn't want to say so.
Toontwa
heard it, tooânot
blackbirds, exactly, but someone
trying to sound like them.
I told him it was James,
and then we saw
James
wave his handâhe
was coming down to see us.
But he just disappearedâwe didn't
hear him whistling like blackbirds anymore;
he didn't come out through the stockade gate, or
through the place we know, where a board
is loose, and he can push it back
and squeeze through. Some
people are saying we
should stay away
from here.
Mink
heard someone say
they might close the trading post.
She thinks we should get everything we need
while we still can.
Come on, Toontwa,
let's go home,
I say.
Ma's face is like the sky on a day the weather changes. Smiling like the sun
came out, because she received a parcel from her family in Philadelphia.
Crying when she reads that her sister's baby, Lucy, only lived for seven days.
Aunt Amanda made a quilt for Lucy, and she's giving it to Ma for Molly.
Ma says it's the color of the ocean she remembers from before she came here,
when she was seventeen.
I hear the seagulls crying when I look at it,
she says.
I hold up the quilt for Ma to step back and admire. She lays it down, sets Molly
on itâwe smile when Molly tries to pick one of the stitched-on flowers.
Pa comes in and eats his lunch without saying anything to Ma or me.
Something's wrong. Finally, he puts down his mug, looks up at Ma,
and tells her,
The soldiers are worried. They've asked me to stop selling essential
provisions to anyone outside the fort.
A hundred questions fly across Ma's face,
but she doesn't ask them.
Just in case,
Pa adds. Ma looks out the window, silent.
Just in caseâwhat? In case Isaac's right, and there's a siege. Starting when?
Mink
lays a pack of beaver pelts across
Rain Bird's arms and gives the berry basket to Toontwa.
Grandma says,
Remember, we need wiihkapaakani.
Do you know what they call it?
Father scowls.
“Salt,”
he says.
They take it
from our land, then sell it back to us.
He needs a beaver trap, ammunition for his rifle.
When we start off down the river trail, the sky is streaked
bright orange-red above the water. We'll have rain sometime today.
I tell Father where I saw a pair of coyotes, but he barely listens.
His steps are long, and I run to keep up. (He's been angry
ever since Grandma mentioned salt.) A hard
rain starts to fall just as we arrive
at the trading post. We walk in
and lay our furs out
on the counter.
Aya
, Father says. James smiles.
Mr. Gray says,
Hello.
But he's looking at the floor.
He isn't smiling, and he doesn't touch the furs. James looks
back and forth from his father to mine,
to Toontwa, to me.
Old Raccoon says,
We need salt,
and I reach for the salt scoop,
but Pa's next words slap my hand out of the air as fast as if he'd
reached out and grabbed it:
No more salt,
he says to Old Raccoon.
Pa is lying? Even Toontwa is tall enough to see that the salt barrel
is more than halfway full. Old Raccoon stares right down into it.
When he looks back up at Pa, it's a short glance. He doesn't smile.
Mink doesn't give me maple sugar, or call me
myaamiinse.
They pick up their furs and walk straight out the door. Anikwa
glances at the jar of licorice sticks, but not at me, as they walk out,
and he and his whole family start down the trail toward Kekionga.
After they leave, I can't look at Pa. I've never heard him lie before.
Then he says,
No need to tell your mother about that.
Soâhe knows
Ma wouldn't like this.
We'll need this salt,
he says. Who does Pa mean
by “we”? Our family couldn't use this much salt in a hundred years.
Father
walks fast when he's mad,
stepping over a fallen log like it's a stick.
I climb up on the log, jump down,
half run, trying to keep up.
He slows down some,
walks like each step
is a drumbeat. Two ducks fly by.
He aims his rifle, lowers it.
Better not waste
my ammunition,
he says.
I might need it for something
bigger.
After a while, I ask,
Why don't we go get our own salt?
You could show Toontwa and me where to find it.
Father doesn't answer
right away. He walks beside me in the rain, searching for words.
Every treaty says the same thing,
he begins
. They
give us
permission
to use our land like we always haveâ
“as long as the grasses grow and rivers flow.”
We still have the right to use our trails.
We know where the salt licks are.
But now it's dangerous
for us to travel in our own country.
The new settlers don't know our trails, or where
we're going, or why.
He stands still, watching the river.
Does it look to you,
he asks,
like siipiiwi
has stopped flowing?
At
the salt lick,
an arrow hits its target.
       The heart of the deer
             stops beating. The deer falls.
       Blood slows in its veins,
muscle-bound or flowing
onto salt-crusted
earth.
Six soldiers walk into the trading post.
We've come to move provisions
to the fort,
says Mr. Briggs. Pa helps carry the salt barrel to their wagon.
They're taking everything: rifles, ammunition, pots and pans, traps,
spoons, ladles, cloth, nails, needles, licorice, flour, oatmeal, beans, boots.
What's going on?
I ask.
They want us to close the trading post,
Pa answers,
for a week or so
. Isaac came in with the soldiersâI thought he came to see
me. Turns out he's here to help.
James,
he says,
give me a hand with this
bag of oats.
We lift it and carry it outside. It's raining, but the soldiers
aren't complaining, so I don't either. One of themâhis name is Rupertâ
lifts a big bag of flour and tosses it in the wagon like it's no weight at all.
I act like I know all about this, but when Isaac whispers,
Did you hear?
I don't answer.
The siege is about to start,
he says.
Hundreds of Indians
are coming to Kekionga. We have to stay inside the fort until the army gets here.
No one knows how long it will last. Could be a few daysâor it might be weeks.
It's raining.
Like everyone in Kekionga,
we've invited people we don't know
to stay with us. The man we saw
standing in the hole is here.
He's OjibweâFather
remembers him
from the Greenville treaty-signing,
and tells us the man's name means “Brings In Light.”
It's trueâlight from the fire bounces off his face and shines on us.
Wedaase is here, too, sitting beside Father, telling everyone about the time
he saw me with James. He asks if I'm a spy for the Americans. (Does he mean it?)
My face turns hot, and Father answers for me:
We trust James and his family.
His mother has always been kind to us. She took care of Anikwa's mother
when we were too sick to care for her ourselves. Ever since, we've
called her Sister. James is like a cousin to our children.
Wedaase says,
Be careful, friend. That kind
of cousin can turn his back on you
when you need him most.
Father looks at Wedaase, then at me.
Is he remembering the kindness Mrs. Gray showed
my mother long ago, or is he thinking about the other day,
when Mr. Gray looked at the floor and said,
No more salt
?
Oatmeal for lunch again? Two raisins each for me and Ma, three for Pa.
Same as we had for lunch and breakfast yesterday! I'm sick of oatmeal.
Why can't we have bread and cheese for lunch?
I ask. Ma looks at Pa.
Don't
complain,
he says. (I didn't complainâI only asked.)
We have to make
our provisions last.
(For how long?) He's already told me we can't go out
hunting or fishing “until this is over with.” I look at my feet, and Molly's,
thinking about the moccasins Mink makes, and the socks Ma knits
for our Miami friends. Not just trading, more like friends or relatives.
Ma's being quiet. Could I talk to Pa about what Isaac said?
Pa,
I say,
Isaac says the Indians are on the British side. I thought they were on ours.
He answers:
They're coming here from all aroundâwe don't know them all.
It's hard to say who our friends are.
Ma looks out the doorway. Dark clouds
are gathering behind the flag.
As long as we have no evidence to the contrary,
she says,
we'll continue to treat the Miami as the friends they've always been.
The corn is almost ripe,
but not quite ready to be picked. Still,
we're picking it, working together from dawn to dark.
We don't know how much time we have,
says Grandma.
We hope the corn will be dry enough to bury
so we can keep it out of sight,
away from soldiers.
My job is to dig deep holes
in places we hope no one will look, while
Rain Bird braids the husks together and hangs the corn
up to dry. I work harder than I ever have, ignoring the blisters
on my hands as I keep digging. Harder, faster. At first, Kwaahkwa helped.
Now he spends all his time with the young men, who argue:
We have to
be
ready when it happens
. Cleaning rifles, making arrowheads,
bullets.
There will be more soldiers than we've ever seen.
Even if
the British get here first, we don't know
how much
ammunition they will bring
.
Grandma stands behind me,
her hands on my head
pressing gently, as if she could
keep me from growing. Doing what she can
to give me strength and courage.
I've always hoped,
she says,
that you would not become a man
in a time of war.
Mrs. Briggs begs Ma,
Come with us! You'll be the only woman left behind.
Think about your children! What ifâ
Ma cuts her off:
I will stay in my home.
Ma can sure be stubborn. All the women and children in the fort are going
to Piqua, Ohio, so they won't be here when the war starts. (Everyone stopped