The Marrow Thieves PDF

# On the Road Everything was different. We were faster without our youngest and oldest, but now we were without deep roots, without the acute need to protect and make better. And I had taken up a spot that’d opened up in the middle of it all, somewhere between desperation and resolve. We'd decided...

# On the Road Everything was different. We were faster without our youngest and oldest, but now we were without deep roots, without the acute need to protect and make better. And I had taken up a spot that’d opened up in the middle of it all, somewhere between desperation and resolve. We'd decided to find the resistance, and we knew there was a pocket of it near Espanola. We needed information to figure out which school Minerva would have been taken to. Chi-Boy and Miig never questioned the plan. We moved the same way as always, Miig as our leader, Chi-Boy the scout, but now I was with them, helping to shape our path forward. After all, I was the one who had put us here. It was a burden so heavy I could barely sleep at night for lack of breath. What if I was leading us to our deaths? What if we were walking into a place full of more trickster Indians? What if there were no Indians at all? Instead of sleep I counted the stars and kept six on the individual breathing of each remaining member sleeping in their tents around me. ## The Marrow Thieves The weather was shifting fast, and you couldn't see your breath anymore, not even in the hour before the sun rose. Miig and I were out collecting water from our tarp traps when we found the first sign that we were getting close. “French, here.” He motioned me over to a thin elm in front of a semicircle of pine. He pointed out a small dent in the side of the trunk. I bent closer and the dent turned into a scar, and then the scar revealed itself to be a series of deliberate cuts. “What is it?” Miig ran his fingers over the marks and gave a short laugh. “Huh, I think they’re syllabics.” “What’s that?” “That is our written language.” I reached out to feel the language on my skin for the first time since Minerva had breathed her words over my forehead when she thought I was sleeping during her nightly check-ins. An arrow, a line, a couple of dots. “What does it mean?” “I don’t know syllabics. Isaac was the linguist. But I do know it means there are Nish close by who do.” He sounded more hopeful about an impending meeting than I would have imagined, especially after the last one. Maybe he felt something in the tree that I didn’t. The next day we spent taking stock and repacking our gear. We needed to know exactly what we had if we were getting close to Espanola. And we needed to make sure there was nothing unnecessary left in our packs. Speed and agility were the benefits of a tighter group, and we needed both now. “Hey, French, you want to come with me to look for mushrooms?” It was Rose. Something about her voice made my neck tickle. It had to be her voice because there was nothing exciting about looking for squat fungus in the bush. “Sure.” I tried to play it cool. We didn’t have much time to hang out these days, not with the ferocious pace I'd set and the breadth of my self-assigned duties: moodiness, anxiety for the safety of every person, insomnia… “S’go then.” She motioned to me to follow with a tilt of her head, her long hair loose against her faded grey T-shirt. I got up from where I’d set up by the tent to count and recount ammo and followed her through the pines. The forest was quiet in here, like a room so full of small voices it hummed with silence. We walked for almost an hour, just listening, enjoying being close to each other without the distraction of the others and the reminder that we were so much less than before. She stopped short in front of me, and I almost slammed into her back. “See mushrooms?” She shook her head. “No. But I smell something.” I opened my nostrils and tried to inhale slowly. She was right: there was something else there, something different in the woods. “I think it’s water.” Her voice was a whisper, as if she could startle the water and it would rush off into the denser bush, leaving us behind. We walked in a small circle, sniffing at the air like dogs. Finally, she chose a direction and we rushed forward. The trees were dotted with scabs. They sat like blisters on the smooth white of birch. They caught our hair as we passed, combing it across our skin. We left a few strands there, and I was happy in the leaving. I followed her to the smell of water, ecstatic, almost crazed with hope and the small bundle that was building to a fire in my chest. She moved ahead, pushing through the dense bush like a coyote. I was seconds behind her, muscles pumping, face smiling, watching her break free and throw arms forward and back in wide strides. She was so beautiful. I wanted to catch her, and I wanted to watch her flee. I could find no satisfaction in my intentions; they were too tiny for the wholeness of her and who I was with her. I loved her. The certainty of the feeling was clear and bright and brown and lean and it hit me in my throat so that breathing became weeping. And then she screamed from the other side of the trees. My pace doubled, eyes stinging. I jumped through the bush where she’d disappeared. I was ready to fight, fists already heavy. I was a man then, not a sixteen-year-old too skinny and awkward for real strength. And there she was, breathing so heavy her shoulders heaved up and down. She was standing still in a clearing, and I pulled up beside her, grabbing her elbow both to stop myself and to take measure. “What? What’s wrong?” I could barely breathe. I bent forward, hands on my knees, to catch my breath. Her voice was high with excitement. “Water. Real water. And I saw a fish right there.” She pointed somewhere in the middle where the water tore into frills around rocks. It was a thin brown brook, pulling itself like a ribbon across the curve cut into the rock just ahead. It didn’t rage or wave or crash. It bled from somewhere up the hill and carried itself with quiet grace across the tortured ground, over the glassy rocks, feeding bundles of greens with tenacious roots, some pulled from the split earth and dangling under the cool surface like old ladies dipping vein-bruised legs into a pool. I fell to my knees, crunching into the early spring crust of leaves and dirt, laughing. It was too much. It was too much. Her and the bundle I carried for her and the water and the bush and everything. Everything made to ache and splinter and seek and throb by the loss of our parents, our homes, our words, our Elder and our RiRi, our safety. I laughed until I was crying, and she moved closer, pulling my head to her legs so that I leaned there at first, then clutched at her. She pushed a slight hand into my hair, brushing the branches and leaves out of its length. I pulled at her legs until she fell to my side, and I reached, taking as much of her as I could in my too-skinny arms, pulling her into my chest, warm from the bundle burning there. There were sounds now that came from a memory of my uncle. My uncle and his old stereo and his army of battered CDs lined up on the kitchen counter, two stacks of cooking pots as bookends. He slurred even when he was sober, which was hardly ever. He pointed with palsy-fingers. “Grab one there, boy.” He dropped his arm and took a swig from a brown bottle. “And make it a good one, by the Jesus,” he growled before taking another swallow. Mom and Dad were back in the house still, trying to figure out what was going on. They’d sent me and Mitch to our uncle’s cabin out by Huron since there were whispers of danger and missing kids. I was young enough to remain silent most of the time. Mitch was old enough to be loud, so Uncle preferred my company. Even now Mitch was running wild with our cousins somewhere outside. I grabbed a thin plastic case from the middle of the stack, the way Uncle had taught me to choose a card when presented with a fanned-out deck. I hoped this one was the good one he’d asked for. I carried it to where he sat on a low stool with his bottle and belly fighting for room in his lap. He took another deep gulp and wiped his lips with the back of his hand, setting the empty bottle on the ground by his feet. “Let’s see here.” He took the CD from my hands and struggled to focus on the cover. “Ho, ho!” He smiled real big, and I released my breath. “Oh boy, you some kinda seer or something?” He lowered his gaze to my face like a lion stooping to smell a daisy. I shook my head. “I think you must be. This here…” He held the case up so I could see a bouquet of hands reaching for the sky or each other, on a pink background with white letters behind them. “This here is exactly what we need.” He took two tries to get onto his feet and took a minute to unplug some things and plug in others, and then finally the stereo whirred to life. He deposited the shiny disc, pushed some buttons, and picked his selection, then turned to face me where I’d taken his spot on the stool. He closed his eyes and straightened his back up against the counter and waited for the music to begin. “Pearl Jam. Real tradish, these boys.” It started with an echo turned inside out, and a small yell like a man captured. Then the bottom fell out and he escaped and I tumbled along on his release. Snapping drums, a flexing of sound, and a high threading of guitar over a smoother cadence and then the man sang. Wrapping up and then throwing off. Wrapping up and then throwing off. The sounds were relentless, and I wiggled a bit on the stool, uncomfortable in its strength. “Whaddya think, boy?” Uncle yelled over the high whine stacked on deep bottom notes. I thought for a long while. Long enough for the song to start to spiral back into its first echo, and I answered as honestly as I could manage. “It sounds like if grey could make noise.” That’s what I heard here, now, beside the water with this beautiful girl pulled into the bony shell of my arms. I heard capture and release and a high whine over something that echoed off the trees growing downwards towards the brook like pious monks in all manner of fancy dress, voluminous green silks peeking out of their austere brown habits. How could anything be as bad as it was when this moment existed in the span of eternity? How could I have fear when this girl would allow me this close? How could anything matter but this small miracle of having someone I could love? And I kissed her and I kissed her and I didn’t stop. I had no way of knowing things would shift again, that I wasn’t as alone as I thought after all. # Found FOR THE SECOND time in what seemed to be a very long life, I was woken up by the crash and yell of confrontation just outside my tent. “Oh, hell no.” I jumped up this time, gun already in hand. “Slopper, don’t move.” I crept to the flap, heard Rose cursing outside, and unzipped it enough to get a one-eyed peek and to push the barrel of the gun out. Instead, a barrel poked in from the outside. “Shit.” “That’s right, boy, I’ll be taking that.” Someone yanked the zipper up and over the curve, and the flap folded inside. The man, his face covered with a red bandana and dark sunglasses, pulled the gun out of my hands. “Now put your hands right up in the air where I can see them.” I was furious with myself. Disarmed while I was still on my knees. It was like I hadn’t learned anything since RiRi, I raised my hands, palms out, to face height and folded myself up and out of the tent. I stood my ground in front of my captor, keeping my gaze narrow and pinned on my reflection in his shades. He stood tall, and I couldn’t be sure if he even bothered to look at me until he said, “That’s right. You can give me the evil eye all you want, boy, just keep those hands in the clear.” Still staring, I yelled out, “Chi-Boy?” “Yeah,” he answered from somewhere to my left. “Everyone okay?” “Okay. We’re all here.” A second man came into view, his face similarly covered, and pulled Slopper out of the tent behind me. The boy grumbled and flopped onto the ground beside me, pulling the second man over with him. “Jesus, kid. Be careful.” This one was female. Hard to tell with the getup they had on, layers of dark clothes and faces covered. The one guarding me laughed a bit. “Who are you?” I was pleased to hear my voice remain steady. I got no response except to be pulled by my sweater across the clearing and pushed to sit beside the rest of the group. I saw two more bandana-clad intruders; these two held crossbows at waist height, not really aiming them anywhere, though they were loaded. Everyone looked to be fine, not tied up or roughed up. Slopper was placed beside me. Our captors stood in front of us, lined up in their bandanas and sunglasses. “French,” Miig called to me from the other end of our lineup. “Remember that carving in the woods?” “That’s enough, old-timer.” The female guard kicked at the sole of Miig’s shoe. I looked down the line at him. He pointed at the intruders with his lips. I raised my eyebrows. These were the people who’d left the carving? The ones who knew the old syllabics system? He nodded, and we leaned back into our respective places. I cleared my throat. “I think you’re who we’ve been looking for.” No answer. “We need help.” One of the figures holding a crossbow snorted. “Don’t we all, little cousin. Don’t we all.” So Miig was right: they were Indigenous. “Maybe we can help each other.” The woman answered this time. “We don’t need help from anyone. Nobody helps nobody no more. And we certainly don’t need help from you. Probably working for the schools. Little snitches, looks like.” I addressed her, shrugging. “How do we look like snitches? Do we have new clothes or good weapons? Are we too well fed?” She glanced at Slopper, whose shirt hem didn’t quite connect with the waistband on his jogging pants. “Lady, we’ve seen snitches.” I paused, lowering my voice a bit, readying myself to yell it out. “We’ve killed snitches.” They all looked over at me now. There was no boastful pride in my face. Just five and a half years of hard living. One of the guys with a crossbow leaned into the female to whisper, and she turned and jogged away from the camp. Rose shivered against my shoulder, and it was the first time that morning I’d realized she was right beside me. It was warm now, coming on May by Miig’s calculations, but the mornings were still bitey and she was in her pajamas – an old T-shirt and a cut pair of long johns. Keeping my eyes on the guard directly in front of me, I slowly raised my arm and placed it over her shoulders, drawing her into me, the other hand still raised at face level. There was no protest from either of them. “Getting real sick of these mornings,” Wab grumbled. Just then the female jogged back. Behind her, an older man followed. His face was not covered at all, and he was very clearly Nish. In fact, there was something about him that was familiar beyond the general. I flipped through the pile of faces in my memory but couldn’t solidly place him. Maybe we’d run into him for a day or a meal out on the road? “So, who are you then?” He stood in front of us, hands clasped at his back so that his impressive paunch greeted us first. His question wasn’t unfriendly. “Miigwans Kiwenzie, anish de kaz.” Miig spoke first, giving him his full name. The man opened his eyes real big. “Get up, please.” Then he gestured to the guards around him. “Help them all up, please. These are our guests, not our prisoners.” “Coulda fooled me.” Wab was still bitter as she stood, brushing the grass off the back of her faded sweatpants, the initials of a university she’d never attended stamped across the seat. “And help them pack up camp. They are joining us for breakfast.” He turned on a heel and left the same way he came, without waiting for a reply from any of us. “What if I don’t want to join you for breakfast?” I challenged, stepping into the space between me and the guard who’d disarmed me earlier. I was still sore about that. He laughed into his bandana and then pulled it down to reveal a smile wide with white teeth. “Come on, little cousin. I’ll help you pull up camp. Later on I might even let you have your gun back.” He pulled down his hood and revealed a head of long, dark hair, pulled back into a ponytail at the nape of his neck. I flushed hot. Turned out this guy was not much older than me, and his arrogance was unbearable. “I’m not your cousin.” It was all I could manage before he cut me off to address Rose, still at my side. "Though I’d much rather help you." He gave her one of those big smiles. "But I'm sure you are quite capable.” “I am very capable,” she responded before walking back to her own tent. I was a little upset that she hadn’t given him more attitude than that. “We don’t need your help at all.” I tried to lace my words with poison, but that only made him laugh. “Suit yourself.” He wandered off to chat with his friends, several of whom had also pulled down their bandanas. “Asshole.” It was under my breath, but I still said it. I packed quickly, shoving and stuffing instead of folding away. I placed bags puffy with chaos by the doused firepit and joined Miig at his site. I rolled up his tent around the pegs while he carefully folded his blankets. "Who do you think they are?” I didn’t bother to whisper; we’d been left largely alone while the intruders chatted by the firepit. I cringed to see the asshole using my tent bag as a seat. "Not sure yet. But I do know the old guy." “You do?” I spun around to face him. “Who is it? Did we meet him on the road?” “No.” He was slow to answer. “I can’t be sure right now.” He was being evasive, and that, on top of being sassed by someone my own age, frustrated me. I left him to finish up and joined Rose, who was now dressed in a pair of jeans and a grey shirt. She had braided her long, curly hair in one thick rope that fell over her shoulder. Even now I couldn’t help but notice how beautiful she was. She saw me and smiled me over to a stump where she’d helped prepare supper the night before. “You’re a mess. Sit down.” My own braid was two days old, and tufts stuck up here and there. She untied the bottom and pulled it apart. I noticed the asshole watching us, a peculiar look on his face like jealousy, and I smirked. She brushed my hair hard and re-braided it for me. Much better than a stupid ponytail like some people. I felt real nishin. Ready to go now, I followed Miig’s lead and walked behind the newcomers into the woods. Despite our recent tragedies, he seemed less stressed about this new development than I was. Though I was still acutely aware of my missing gun. They walked us through the bush, in a semicircle, and then southeast. After about half an hour we arrived at a tree-lined hill and stopped. “What the heck? There’s not even anything here.” Slopper sat on a rock, exhausted and cranky at having to wait for his breakfast this long. “Look closer, big man.” One of the crossbowers clapped his hands, and two bodies in camouflage stepped out of the trees at the base of the hill, bows pointed at us. "These are the guests, coming to join us," he called out, and they stepped back into the trees. We walked towards the hill, and now I could see a cave carved into it. This is where we went, single file, into the hill itself. I felt panic when we’d gone through the door, past more guards and into the dark. I thought of RiRi and Minerva then, and aggression filled my limbs like adrenaline. Miig put his hand on my shoulder and I deflated, but only just a bit. The cave opened into a low, wide room filled on both sides with tents and makeshift abodes of impressive structure: panel walls, blanket doorways. The space was clean and orderly with a hum of activity. Children were gathered in one corner, taking turns reading from a paperback book under the stern eye of an older woman who watched us with a face that revealed no interest as she shushed the children back to work. Some faces appeared in the doorways of the “homes,” but they quickly disappeared. We were a quiet sensation. We were led to the back of the cave and into a smaller tunnel than the entrance, one of four branching off the back wall. I hesitated at the mouth and had to be pushed forward by Rose, who walked behind me. “We’re good. All good.” “What if we’re not?” I whispered back. “Nothing we can do about it anyway. There’s too many of them.” This was very true. We were kind of screwed if they turned out to be Recruiters, or traders, or some kind of cannibal tribe like the twins’ wiindigo people. She left her hand on the small of my back, and I reached behind to grasp it in mine. I decided right then that I might be okay with dying at this point. I had lived. I recalled the moment we’d found water, and even here, in this tunnel with the potential of being eaten by cannibal Indians still undecided, all the blood rushed away from my head. At first I thought that this was what made my eyes squint, what made them take in too much light. But then I saw we were coming to the end of the path and daylight was up ahead. We emerged into a valley, surrounded on all sides by high walls of smooth rock. It was about thirty meters in diameter, and the ground was lush. Here the grass and weeds were sharp and thick and grazed our shins. I was so busy looking down and holding onto Rose's hand that I forgot all about being anxious. Then I smelled it. Tobacco. Cedar. And the thick curl of something more, something I thought I’d only ever smelled with the memory of smell. “Holah, that’s sweetgrass!” Rose slipped into her old accent, picked up from years with the elderly before she’d come to us. “We grow sweetgrass here.” It was the man from the woods. “That’s what you see all around you.” He was smiling, patting the tips of the longer strands we stood in. “Miigwans.” He approached us, arms open. “We are so pleased to have you with us. When the Council gets out of the lodge we’ll all talk.” I looked back to where he pointed, against the far stone wall. There, at the base, was a squat, round structure, piled with layers of old blankets and tarps. In front of it burned a low fire and two piles: one of wood, the other of round rocks. “Is that a sweat lodge?” I could barely breathe. An honest-to-God sweat lodge? Here, in this weird valley hidden by stone hills? Where the hell were we? Then I heard the other word. Council. “Council?” Just then the flap on the front of the lodge was opened, a gust of steam poured out and up like a giant’s breath, and men started to crawl out. One by one, naked to their briefs, old and young, Native men came out on their knees and stretched back to full height. Each one smiled our way, and Miigwans started to smile back. He smiled so big his eyes almost disappeared in the folds of it. The last man out of the lodge took an extra minute to stretch out to his full height. He leaned heavily on the man beside him, and I saw that the bottom half of his right leg was missing. I was distracted by it, too distracted to look into his face until he spoke. “Francis?” His hair was longer and his face sagged a bit more at his hard jaw, and then there was the missing lower half of his leg. But there he was. “Dad?” I crossed the distance between us with my packs still strapped to my back. I don’t remember when I pulled them off. All I know is that when I threw myself to the ground and into the circle of his arms I was small again: no baggage, no years in the bush, no murder. I was small and he was huge and everything was okay. We cried together like that, happy in a way that had no words, until he suddenly pulled back and scanned the group behind me. And I knew what he was looking for. I caught his gaze and shook my head slowly. Then we cried for a different reason. Time moved slowly and quickly and we didn’t care. Eventually we were sitting at a round table on stumps and rocks, all level to the same height. I sat between my father and Miig, who had embraced, as they made introductions between their respective groups. “This is the Council, what’s left of the original one and newer members we’ve picked up along the way.” Dad went clockwise around the table. “Clarence, Cree from the old prairies territory. Mint, Anishnaabe from south in America. Bullet, she’s Inuit. Jo-jo is Salish and came to us just last month. This was his introductory sweat we just had, to bring him onto the Council. General is Haudenosaunee and Migmaw. And Rebecca is Ho-Chunk, also from across the border. Seven of us all together.” They were passing around a copper vessel, sharing water that embroidered the outside with beads of cool condensation. Miig spoke for us. He knew some of the men there but not all. It was different; usually we spoke for ourselves, but I could tell some protocol was set aside. The group was worn out from their sweat, and everyone, not least of all me and Dad, was drained and emotional. He was quick, pointing around the table to our faces with his palm up. “Chi-Boy, Wab, Rose, Zheegwon and Tree, I’m Miigwans, Slopper, and this is Jean's boy, Frenchie.” He paused. “There’s eight left.” “Left?” Bullet, who was clearly blind in one eye, turned towards Miig. “You’ve had some recent losses?” “Yes, I’m afraid so. Our little girl, RiRi, passed on in the middle of a kidnapping attempt. Damn traders. And our Elder, Minerva, was taken from us by Recruiters.” Bullet’s head swung to her right. The older man with the yellowed mustache, General, leaned in to whisper to the small man with the bald head they called Mint. “What? What is it?” I asked the table. It was my dad who answered. “We’ve heard of your Minerva.” “What? Where is she?” Chi-Boy used his seldom-heard voice and sprang from his chair as if he would run to her right that moment. “That’s why we came this way, to try to find her. We thought someone in Espanola or thereabouts would have some idea of which school we could go to try to find her,” Miig explained. General and Mint whispered again before the older man answered. “She’s not in a school. She’s here, in town, I mean. In Espanola. ## The Miracle of Minerva The Council had a man on the inside, so their information was good. They told us what they had learned of Minerva after she was taken away from us. We had been wrong about the marrow, but not about the theft. Three Recruiters drove an Anishnaabe elder, female, to School #47E, the school closest to the Espanola settlement. She was compliant, jovial even, and Recruiter #1 noted in his log that there might be something fatally wrong with the subject’s mind. She hummed on the five-hour drive in and began singing in increasing volume as they processed her: cutting her hair, shaving her skin, scrubbing her body, and preparing her to be hooked up to the conductor. Sensible words – English words – could not be made out, and she refused to answer any questions, not that that was integral to the process. All they needed was to insert the probes, tether the wires, and begin the drain. Recruiter #2 left halfway through the preparation. He’d been on the job for over a decade and had never encountered someone so “spooky” (in his own words) and suffered nervous twitching that spread to his bowels. He rushed to the washroom on the seventh floor, sadly in a removed area of the building without a local fire escape, sealing his fate in a stall filled with his own anxious stench. Really, the Recruiters were just there as added sentries at this point. Being at the delicate cerebral stage, it was time for the Headmistress to take over and the Cardinals to carry out the procedure. Recruiter #3 stayed to satisfy his sadistic nature, and Recruiter #1 slouched off to sleep at his desk behind the storage closet with its cages of balls and padding; he didn’t find this part interesting. The chase was the crux; after that, who cared how the savages screamed or cried? The Recruiters would later be identified through dental records. Minerva hummed and drummed out an old song on her flannel thighs throughout it all. But when the wires were fastened to her own neural connectors, and the probes reached into her heartbeat and instinct, that’s when she opened her mouth. That’s when she called on her blood memory, her teachings, her ancestors. That’s when she brought the whole thing down. She sang. She sang with volume and pitch and a heartbreaking wail that echoed through her relatives’ bones, rattling them in the ground under the school itself. Wave after wave, changing her heartbeat to drum, morphing her singular voice to many, pulling every dream from her own marrow and into her song. And there were words: words in the language that the conductor couldn’t process, words the Cardinals couldn’t bear, words the wires couldn’t transfer. As it turns out, every dream Minerva had ever dreamed was in the language. It was her gift, her secret, her plan. She’d collected the dreams like bright beads on a string of nights that wound around her each day, every day until this one. The wires sparked, the probes malfunctioned. Bodies rushed around the room in a flurry of black robes like frantic wings beating against mechanics. The system failed, failed all the way through the complication of mechanics and computers, burning each one down like the pop and sizzle of a string of Christmas lights, shuddered to ruin one by one. The Council’s man on the inside was called to School #47E the day after the incident to take stock and investigate. He noted that several Indigenous people were on site, camping around the edges of the property while it still burned, low now but full of thick smoke, unafraid of the inhabitants and curious as to the cause of destruction. Gossip spread fast. The school had been imposing: a fallacy of glass and steel against the dusty expanse of the north shore clearing, like a middle finger thrown into the sky, built in record time. Now it was nothing more than one storey, maybe two, of jagged edges, melted poles, and broken cement. A spew of office chairs, smashed computer parts, and chewed-up bricks lay on the ground around it. The fence was mostly thrown down, but the fortified gates still stood. When the Council’s man exited his black vehicle and walked the remaining path to the gate, strewn with debris from the explosions and subsequent fires and maybe even some looting, the campers moved in closer. Soon the road behind him was dotted with spectators following him to the useless gates holding nothing from a broken system, torn down by the words of a dreaming old lady. The wind shifted so that the heat and smell bore down on the road. And with the Council’s man watching, the campers made their hands into shallow cups and pulled the air over their heads and faces, making prayers out of ashes and smoke. Real old-timey. # Loss That night we slept in the clearing. We chose to stay outside. Inside seemed too claustrophobic, and besides, we were more than happy to be close to the lodge. “Son, plenty of room in my place.” I’d helped my dad to his place and had waited in the main living space while he went behind a screen to change and get ready for bed. His spot backed into a natural corner in the cave so that two of the four walls were stone. The other two had been crafted with a wooden frame hung with wool blankets. The structure had a roof, an old hospital blanket that sealed in the idea of privacy if nothing else. In the space was a cot and a small shelf made from planks of wood separated with cut logs and filled with books, folded clothes, papers, and some braided and bunched herbs. His rosary beads hung from a corner of the shelf, and in between a pile of sweaters and a stack of spineless books was a framed plastic ID card. I went in close, checking that he was still busy behind the screen first. It was my mother’s health card. The green plastic embedded with white letters that spelled out her name: MARY E. DUSOME.