Motorcycles & Sweetgrass Read Free

practically every student in the building, could understand the quandary. Many wrestled with it every day. Some won. Some lost—but there were always more arriving to fill their places.
    It was too cold to sleep, and the growling from his stomach kept him awake. Gradually he dragged the book across the dirt floor, struggling to read in the shifting patterns of moonlight.
    His lone voice broke the silence. One line, after the monologue in Act 1, Scene iv, caught his eye. “‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.’”
    Boy, he thought, I don’t know what or where the hell thisDenmark is but it can’t smell nearly as bad as this place. Denmark would have to be an improvement.
    “Sam! Wake up! Sam Aandeg! Hurry and wake up!”
    Amazingly, Sam had managed to fall asleep sometime before dawn, worn down by the cold and strain of trying to read in the darkness. The book had been his pillow. It was a few moments before he could manage a response to his cousin’s tense knocking on the shed’s splintered wall.
    “What!” he snapped groggily. He tried to unroll from a fetal position, but couldn’t. Waking up in this place was painful. He longed for his bed back home.
    “It’s me, Lillian. You okay?”
    All he could make out was one brown eye peering through a gap, and a bit of the plain grey dress she, like all the girls, wore.
    “I hate that name. You’re not Lillian.”
    By now, he had managed to move to his hands and knees, and he stretched like a cat.
    “Don’t be like that. I can’t stay long. Here, I brought you something to eat.”
    “I’m not hungry.” They both knew that was a lie. “What… what did you bring?”
    Near the bottom of the rear wall of the shed, about a foot of one plank was missing, broken off when a shovel had once been carelessly tossed into the back. Through it, she passed a wrapped-up packet, and Sam groaned in pain as he reached for it.
    “It’s just some toast and jam. That’s all I could sneak out.”
    Trying not to look ungrateful, he took the offering and slowly opened it. He was an angry boy, and life was unfair, and a largepart of him wanted to piss off the entire world. But there was still enough of the little boy from the Otter Lake Reserve to know right from wrong. And to be gracious when someone was being kind.
    “Thank you” he managed to mumble. Trying to show some restraint, he ate the toast as slowly as possible.
    “You shouldn’t be here. They’ll catch you and you’ll be on the inside looking out, like me.” He watched as his cousin looked around warily.
    “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
    “I’m cold. I’m hungry. I’m mad. But I’m okay.”
    All of this was spoken in Anishnawbe, the forbidden language. Sam revelled in it, but Lillian switched quickly back to English. It was bad enough that she was here now, but if anyone overheard them, who knew what they would be in for.
    “Why do you always get yourself in trouble like this?” whispered Lillian. Licking his fingers of the last remnants of jam, Sam just shrugged. “I can’t keep sneaking around in the middle of the night to bring you food. If either of us gets caught… And someday, you’ll get yourself into so much trouble that they’ll send you away and I won’t be able to help at all. You should just do what they say. It’s less trouble.”
    “I don’t care about trouble, I just want to get back home. This place is no good. I’m going to run away,” he answered in Anishnawbe.
    Lillian shook her head. “You’ll get yourself killed. You don’t even know which way home is. Remember Daniel River and James Magood.” They were both silent for the moment.
    “I’m not them. I know where home is. I saw it in that book. I saw the river and the islands. I’m sure that’s them. And I knowthe bush.” Sam paused for a moment. “Wanna come?” From somewhere near the kitchen, they both heard some of the kids yelling as they played a quick game of soccer before classes.