Salt (9 page)

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 men—

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 homes—those made of cattail mats and those we've built with logs.

All our cornfields. Everything. Nothing left but ashes

where Kekionga was.

JAMES

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 table—deer 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.

ANIKWA

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 tree—

see it, at the edge of the clearing? If we call for you,

come quickly.

JAMES

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 all—dang! 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 time—he 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 in—they'd have to make new ones. Hey! What about the fox den?

ANIKWA

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.

JAMES

Fast as they marched in two days ago, the army's gone. Sixty soldiers

staying here to guard the fort. The rest—almost five thousand—marched

west and north this morning. The ground's all trampled everywhere.

Camps littered with scraps of animals they killed—they 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.

ANIKWA

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 day—I'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?

JAMES

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 far—past the blackberry bushes,

near the oak tree that got split by lightning—you know the one I mean?
But wait—

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 post—

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 log—the 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.

ANIKWA

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 quiet—waiting, 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 food—enough 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 butterflies—thousands

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.

JAMES

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 Ma—I can't. But her face says she knows something's wrong.

Molly wakes up from her nap, crying worse than I did—no 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 saw—a dead fox.
Dang.

Can't help it—I 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.

ANIKWA

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 listen—what 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 …