20 
The bright eyes that surveyed him from behind the shared desks watched him studiously, but he got the distinct feeling that it had nothing to do with the subject he was trying to teach.
His neck hair stood up each time he turned his back on them, and there was a general feeling of uneasiness in the pit of his stomach.
So far the most he’d had to do was pull apart boys who were fighting. American-born kids against Cornish kids against Swedish kids, and all of them ganging up on the Irish kids, who were tough little nuts that could hold their own. Rocks were sometimes involved. Broken bones. Knocked-out teeth.
The last thing on any of these kids’ minds was books and learning. With the exception of some of the sweeter, more serious girls, they were all too busy planning their next battle. At first he’d tried to integrate them within the classroom, a place where he thought democracy should hold sway, but that had turned into a disaster. Now the different factions each held to their own geographic location in the classroom, and the physical distance between those factions had become wider and wider as those on the outskirts imperceptibly scooted their chairs farther and farther away from those not of their own countrymen.
Something hit his neck. He smacked at it, and his hand came away with a spit wad. He whirled around to see who had thrown it.
Everyone feigned innocence, except two of the littlest girls who looked at him with sad eyes and three older girls who stared at the floor and blushed at the indignity he had just endured.
The hollowed-out tube that blew the spit wad at him was probably stuffed up someone’s sleeve or pants leg right now. He’d have to inspect every last child to find out who the culprit was. How was one to teach under these circumstances?
Even though he was facing them, another spit wad hit him on the side of the face. Again, everyone on that side of the school feigned innocence, and the others snickered.
He’d thought it had been too quiet in the classroom but couldn’t put his finger on what was bothering him. Evidently, he’d been sensing the fact that the children had called a temporary truce between themselves in order to get rid of the new teacher. They weren’t happy about being kept in class during the month of July. Their truce gave them the energy to more fully concentrate on their objective.
He could have given any one of them a good shake or even a good smack. No one in this town would care one iota. Definitely not Mr. Turney. Such punishment was mild compared to what he saw some of the rougher parents doling out to their children on the street. But he had a feeling that if he did use his superior strength on them, things would only get worse. He would become the enemy indeed from that point, and the battle would be on.
On the other hand, he couldn’t exactly call recess to get them out of his hair until he could reclaim his equilibrium. That would be rewarding bad behavior.
He glanced out the window, praying for inspiration, and saw something that gave him an idea.
“I believe we’re all feeling a little restless with summer here,” he said. “Let’s go for a walk.”
“All of us?” the little girl on the front row said. She was still so small, her feet did not touch the ground when she sat on the school bench.
“All of us,” he said. “I’m thinking about having a contest.”
“What’s the prize?” one of the bigger boys, an American-born boy named Rupert, asked.
Prize, indeed. He glanced around the schoolroom. Nothing much popped out at him. Then he remembered dinner last night.
“The woman who runs the boardinghouse where I live makes the best chocolate pies I’ve ever tasted. How about I buy a whole chocolate pie for whoever wins the contest.”
There was a general affirmation at this. He had their attention. The spit wads, temporarily, ceased.
As they trooped out behind him, he hoped that he could keep this from turning into a free-for-all and prayed that he could finish out the day without anyone getting hurt—including himself.
The thing that had caught his eye outside was an enormous woodpile that needed to get chopped before next winter. Judging from the height of the pile, there was no end to the need for firewood here. He’d been whittling away at it himself at odd times, splitting the chunks of wood into smaller sections that would fit into the woodstove they kept at the back of the schoolroom/church building that the mining company had provided. There were two axes locked away in the storage shed. Both, thanks to his attention, were sharp as razors.
Most of the children, especially the boys, were used to being sent out to the woodpile to bring in kindling and firewood. They would know their way around an axe.
He divided the older boys and those girls who wanted to participate into two teams at random, after sitting the smaller children in a group off to one side far enough away to be safe once the chips started to fly.
There were complaints. He had anticipated there would be.
“I don’t want to be on his team,” one boy said, pointing to a redheaded Irish boy who immediately piled into him with his fists.
Skypilot pulled the two boys apart and held them by the scruff of their necks while they took ineffective swings at each other.
“Look at me. Does it look like I care if you want to be on the same team?” He gave them both a shake. “Does it?”
“No, sir,” the older boy said. The Irish boy simply put his hands in his pockets as his way of calling a truce. Skypilot let go of them.
“Whichever team wins today gets chocolate pie tomorrow!” he called out. Then he showed them what he wanted them to do.
During what was left of the school hour, the two teams tried to beat each other at who could split the biggest pile of wood. Skypilot used his watch and called “time” every five minutes, whereupon one would put down their axe, and another boy or girl would take their place. He kept the two teams far apart in case anyone’s axe swing went wild.
From time to time, he would call out in a singsong voice, “Chocolate pie,” and their efforts would be renewed. Some of the older children actually had some skill and did a respectable job. It pleased him when some of the children, getting into the spirit of the thing, called out encouragement to teammates even though they were from different backgrounds.
Finally he called it quits and measured the two woodpiles. The team that won happily congratulated themselves.
“I forgot to tell you.” He rolled up his sleeves. “There’s a third team. Those little ones over there. Since most of them can barely lift an axe, I’ll be their team captain. If I win, the little kids’ team wins the pie.”
He handed his pocket watch to one of the smaller girls.
“Call out ‘time’ when fifteen minutes is up, Abbey. You”—he pointed to one of the older boys—“watch over her shoulder and make sure she gets it right.”
Then he had all the children stand back. He spit on his hands and started splitting wood.
He had always had a special affinity for an axe. Like some men had a talent for playing the violin, he could practically make his axe sing as it sailed through that pile, splitting it into chunks of firewood perfectly sized for their school stove. When the little girl called out “time,” his pile of wood was three times the size of either of the ones the children had cut.
“Guess my team gets the chocolate pie.” He rested his axe over his shoulder. The smaller children started laughing, clapping, and hugging each other.
“That’s not fair,” one of the older boys said. “You’re bigger and stronger than we are.”
“Exactly,” Skypilot said. “I’m bigger, I’m stronger, and I could break any one of you in half for the trick you pulled this morning. In fact”—he stood close to the boy and deliberately towered over him—“there’s a big part of me that would love to do that. Fortunately for you, an even bigger part of me wants to march all of you in there right now and finish our arithmetic lesson for the day.”
That was exactly what he did. Maybe it was the physical exertion that had calmed everyone down. Maybe it was the demonstration of his superior size and strength. Maybe it was simply the change in scenery for a few moments that helped the children concentrate. But they paid attention and did their work. He was surprised how proud he felt of this small accomplishment. Getting and keeping the attention of those ornery youngsters and beating them at their own game had given him a heady feeling that he seldom experienced. Teaching a room filled with wriggling children was one of the hardest things he had ever done, and strangely enough . . . the most satisfying.
He smiled thinking about the surprise he had planned for them tomorrow for their noon meal. It might cost him a week’s wages, but he intended to have enough chocolate pie for everyone to get a nice, thick piece.
For once, they would all be on the same team.
Fallen Arrow was still quite weak, but she was getting better. She could sit up for longer and longer periods of time. Her delight in little Standing Bear was limitless, and Moon Song felt great joy watching Grandmother play with him, as she went about organizing their small space by hanging supplies and clothing from the ceiling and walls where she could get to them quickly and not have to sort through the pile she’d brought with her.
She also religiously set and checked her snares each day, gathered the wild strawberries and anything else that was ripe and edible, and fished whenever possible. With the other women of her tribe, she had put in a large communal vegetable garden. Each woman knew that when the winter came, the strips of dried squash and the leathery beans and the dried corn and potatoes might be all that stood between them and hunger.
Moon Song had a bit of time now to do several housekeeping chores—gathering fresh rushes into mats to cover the floor, removing the old ones, sweeping out the dirt floor with a handful of twigs. She wanted to keep things fresh and clean for little Standing Bear, especially since he was toddling everywhere now and putting everything his hands could grab right into his mouth. She had to remove an earthworm only yesterday.
It was during her housekeeping, while Fallen Arrow was sitting outside in the sun keeping an eye on little Standing Bear, that she discovered a small cache buried in the ground beneath her grandmother’s bed. Inside was a tin box she had never seen before among her grandmother’s possessions. There were few secrets in Indian society, especially among close family members. She was surprised to discover this item. She drew it out, took it outside, and showed it to her grandmother.
“Where did this come from?” she asked.
Fallen Arrow looked embarrassed. “Oh, it is just something a white man brought.”
“A white man gave you this? When?”
“One moon after you left.”
“Why did you not tell me?”
“I was not sure what the box contained. There is much writing in there. I was afraid it held things we did not want to know.”
“This white man, what did he look like?”
“I do not know,” Fallen Arrow said. “I was checking snares, and Snowbird took it from him. She said only that he was a white man and looked ill.”
Moon Song fingered the box. In spite of being buried in the ground, it was still new enough to be shiny. “May I open it?”
Fallen Arrow looked frightened. “No good ever comes from white men’s papers.”
“What are you afraid of?” She could tell that Fallen Arrow was hiding something. “What are you not telling me?”
“Snowbird does not speak English well, but she says she thinks the man was sent by your father.”
“My father?”
“If those papers are from your father, I’m afraid they will say something that will take you and Standing Bear away.”
It broke Moon Song’s heart to see the fear in her grandmother’s eyes. Fallen Arrow had lost her daughter because of Moon Song’s father, and now she was afraid even of a few papers he might have sent.
“There is nothing my father can do that will force me and my son to leave you.” She laid a gentle hand upon her grandmother’s arm. “Do you hear me?”
Fallen Arrow nodded, but Moon Song could tell that she was not convinced.
Most of Moon Song’s cloudy memories of her father had been woven by Fallen Arrow after he brought her back following her mother’s death. It was no secret to her or to the rest of the tribe that Fallen Arrow hated the man who had broken her daughter’s heart. Because of that, Moon Song had no love for the man, either. The fact that he had sent papers here that had upset Fallen Arrow made Moon Song angry. He had been silent all these years, ignoring her existence. He should have continued to be silent!
“May I open it?”
Fallen Arrow took a deep breath. “Yes. Perhaps you can read it. I can make no sense of the marks.”
Moon Song unloosed the latches on the shiny tin box and opened the lid. The item lying in the box appeared to be a large Bible. She sounded out the letters on the front of it. Sure enough. They said “Holy Bible.”
Why in the world would her father be sending her a Bible after a silence of nearly sixteen years? And why should it give her such a stab of disappointment that this was all it was? A white man’s Bible from a man who had abandoned her mother and then, upon her mother’s death, had abandoned her. She shook her head and closed the box. White men could be such a mystery.
“There is something inside of that big book,” Fallen Arrow said.
“Oh?”
She opened the box and pulled the Bible out. Sure enough, there were two envelopes. She opened the larger one. It was very official looking and had handwriting that was extremely difficult to read and had a shiny seal upon it. The other one appeared to be some sort of a letter, but again, her ability to read was limited. With time she could sound out some printed letters, but it was impossible for her to read this fancy handwriting.
The envelopes and the writing looked important. She wished she had someone nearby who could read them, someone she trusted, but she didn’t. Her tribesmen were even more limited in their ability to read English than she.
She wished Skypilot was here. He could read all these words, make sense of them, explain them to her, and would keep whatever was inside of them private if privacy was necessary. It was the gold seal that bothered her the most. She had a feeling those papers could be very important.
There were white men in town who could read this, of course, but she trusted none of them. Father Slovic could, but he was several days’ journey away. She could not leave her grandmother alone for so long to walk so far.
“Can you tell what it is?” Fallen Arrow asked nervously.
“I think it is probably nothing,” Moon Song said. “We won’t worry about it for now.”
She put the box back into her grandmother’s hiding place and covered it with the mat. Her curiosity would have to wait until she could choose the right person to do the reading.
She did not know what she felt for the strange man who had fathered her and then walked away. She never had known what to feel or what to think about him. When she was little, she had sometimes pondered the fact that he had been so willing to leave her behind. She had wondered what was so wrong with her that he never cared enough to come back. As an adult, all she knew for sure about him was that regardless of her mixed blood, she was grateful that her heart was all Chippewa.
Skypilot was thankful when he made it to the end of July and closed the school down for a month. When he released the reluctant scholars to race into a late summer, they ran leaping out into the outdoors, practically drunk on freedom.
He didn’t blame them. If he weren’t the teacher, he would be leaping for joy right now himself.
Mainly, he was just grateful to have survived the past few weeks in the classroom. He would use the rest of August to prepare for the fall . . . and to find Moon Song.
Slovic said that he would send her word, and if she chose to come to him, she would. The problem was he had no way of knowing if Slovic’s message had reached her or not. Right now he didn’t even know if she was aware that he was back in her part of the country.
There was, however, a small tribe of Chippewa who lived not far outside of Rockland, and he intended to pay them a visit and see if he could find out anything. It might be like trying to find a needle in a haystack, but he needed to at least try to get word to her.
He felt awkward about walking into the Indian village, but he blundered in nonetheless. He did have the wisdom to carry with him a few items he thought the villagers might be interested in. A red blanket draped over his arm. A good pocketknife. A large cooking pot filled with several dozen sugar cookies he’d bought from the woman who kept his boardinghouse.
“You have whiskey?” one of the younger women asked hopefully when he walked into the middle of the small village of wigwams.
“No whiskey.”
An older man, leather-faced and angry-looking, accosted him. “Why you here?”
Ah, this was more like it. A direct question. “I’m looking for information. There’s a Chippewa girl and her grandmother I want to find.”
“Why they hiding?”
“They’re not hiding from me.” At least he hoped not. “We’re friends. It’s just that I lost track of her. Her name is Moon Song. Her grandmother’s name is Fallen Arrow. She has a small papoose she calls Ayasha.”
The Indian walked away in apparent disgust. Skypilot wondered if whiskey would have sweetened his disposition.
An ancient-looking woman sidled up to him. “I know Fallen Arrow.” She glanced at the pot filled with cookies. “Taste?”
He pulled one out and handed it to her, which she practically inhaled in spite of having no visible teeth. “Taste?” she asked again.
“Tell me about Fallen Arrow.”
“Live near lake, that way.” The old woman pointed west. “On reservation.”
He gave her another sugar cookie. “Can you take me to her?”
“Grandson, Little Gray Squirrel, take.”
He glanced down; a small boy about ten had crept up beside his grandmother and was eyeing the pot of cookies.
“You know where Fallen Arrow and Moon Song live?” he asked.
The boy nodded eagerly, his eyes glued to the cookies.
“Will you take me there?”
The boy nodded again, holding out his hand.
“Me take pot,” the grandmother said, grasping hold of the handle and the blanket, “and boy show you Fallen Arrow.”
Skypilot had a strong suspicion he was being lied to, but he handed over the pot and strode off toward the west after the small boy, who appeared to know where he was going. His hope was that there would not be anyone waiting farther on to rob him or worse, but he had no other ideas about how to find Moon Song, besides going back to Marquette and wringing the information out of Slovic. He had a strong feeling that wouldn’t work with the Jesuit.
To his surprise, several hours later, after following the child for many miles, he could hear the lake. They came upon a small village of cabins nestled into a grove of large hemlock trees. The boy, who had not said a word the whole time, led him straight to one cabin off to the side, and then stood back.
Skypilot stared nervously at the cabin. It was possible that Moon Song was behind that door. If she was, would she be happy to see him or angry? She had been so adamant that he not follow her here—and yet he had. He took a deep breath and knocked. “Moon Song?” Skypilot called. “Are you there?”
Moon Song was coming home with a fine brace of rabbits, the best she’d captured in a while. Even though the rabbits did not have the thickness of their winter coats yet, they would still make good eating, and she was already planning the fine small blanket she would make from the pelts. There were few things softer than a blanket made from rabbit fur, and her little son would enjoy such a blanket.
“Grandmother, I . . .” She walked into the open door to their cabin and nearly fell to her knees from surprise. There. Right there. In the middle of the cabin sat Skypilot, cross-legged on the floor with a little Chippewa cousin who was chattering away, catching her grandmother up on all the family living over near the Minnesota Mine.
“Skypilot!” She dropped the rabbits inside the door. Her grandmother’s eyes were watching her avidly and disapprovingly. “Where did you come from? I thought you were in Bay City or . . . or Virginia!”
He stood up, and he was so tall, his head was only a few inches from the low ceiling. In fact, his bulk felt like it filled up the whole cabin. But it wasn’t just his physical size that filled the space—it was the enormous love for her that she saw in his face.
She had thought of him so often these past weeks and dreamed of him too. To actually have him here in front of her, the man she had never expected to see again, seemed so unreal. It was as though she was having a vision, but instead of melting away, he was there as solid and sturdy as she remembered. Everything within her wanted to fly to him, but she held her ground.
She needed to know exactly what this man wanted and why he was here.