Keeper'n Me Read Free Page B

a plan for all of us.
    According to my sister, Jane, who’s the oldest of us and the one who remembers the most from those days, they showed up one afternoon, a young woman and an older white-haired man. They pulled up while we kids were playin’ tag and swinging from an old tire hung from a tree in the front yard. My granny was out back doin’ something or other. Anyway, they called us over to this big green station wagon and handed out chocolates all around. Well, for some wild little bush Indians raised on bannock and beaver, chocolate was pretty close to heaven, so when they offered us more if we hopped into their car, well, we all piled in.
    We wound up in a group home on a farm outside of Kenora, in the custody of Children’s Aid.
    About a year later I was taken away from my brothers and sister and put in another home by myself. Jane tells it like this. See, the foster home we had on that farm had about six other kids in their care. We all stayed in a kind of dormitory on the third floor of their farmhouse in bunkbeds and we had to help out with the work around the farm too. Anyway, these people didn’t exactly go out of their way to show us any kind of real welcome. At Christmastime while their kids were whooping it up in the living room the foster kids were made to sit at a long table in the porch. There weren’t any gifts for us either. But my brothers and sisters had somehow managed to scrape up a little cash and bought me a toy truck for Christmas. They wrapped it up in plain brown paper and put it beside my pillow so I’d find it come Christmas morning.
    It was just a little toy truck, nothing like the big Tonka trucks kids get these days that they can ride around, just a little blue and red truck with one wheel missing. Well, according to Jane I loved that little truck. I slept with it and carried it with me wherever I went. It never seemed to matter that it had one wheel missing. I’d be plowing roads, chasing bad guys and building cities all over the yard with that little truck.
    Well, one morning I was sitting in the sandbox playing with my truck when the schoolbus came to pick up the other kids. I guess my brothers and sister had beentold the night before that I was getting sent away and Jane said they all figured it was better to just let it happen rather than let me know about it. So, I’m out there playing that morning and Jane came and grabbed me up in a big, warm hug and just held on for a long, long time. I guess I got a little irritated and pushed her away finally and got back to my play.
    â€œJane, jeez,” was all I said.
    She says those were the last words she heard, and the last sight she had of me for twenty years was from the back window of that schoolbus. A little Ojibway boy all hunched over in the sandbox with a little red truck with one wheel missing, growin’ smaller’n smaller, till it looked like the land just swallowed me up. When she got home that night the sandbox was empty except for that little blue and red truck, the wind already busy burying it in the sand. When we met again twenty years later she grabbed me in that same big, warm hug and just held on for a long, long time.
    By the time I made it back here I was lost. At twenty-five years old I never figured on bein’ no Indian. I didn’t remember a thing about my earlier life and when I disappeared alone into the foster homes I disappeared completely from the Indian world. Everywhere they moved me I was the only Indian and no one ever took the time to tell me who I was, where I came from or even what the hell was going on. I mean, being from a nomadic culture is one thing but keeping a kid on themove for twelve years is ridiculous. I was in and out of more homes than your average cat burglar.
    Anyway, I lost touch with who I was pretty quick. Growing up in all-white homes, going to all-white schools, playing with all-white kids can get a guy to thinking and reacting all-white