Salt Read Free Page A

long enough to hold it up and decide where to toss it next.
    Miililo, Kwaahkwa shouts. Give it to me! Toontwa forgets about
    the licorice and throws the ball to Kwaahkwa—happy
    because Kwaahkwa noticed him. Kwaahkwa’s
    happy too, because Rain Bird is watching
    when he makes a goal—she
    has that same smile
    on her face.
    When the game is over,
    we gather round the fire to eat:
    roasted raccoon, hot corn, beaver soup.
    Fireflies light up the edge
    of the dark forest.

JAMES
    Wish Molly would hurry up and get big so she could help
    find moss to plug the cracks between the logs. Gotta do it,
    or the wind will blow right through our walls. Ma never stops
    fretting about winter, even now when we’re all sweating
    in the summer sun. We’ve never yet frozen to death—I doubt
    it will happen this year. But Ma handed me a sack and said,
    See if you can fill it, so here I am, lifting moss from rocks, shaking
    off the sticks and spiders. When I look up, a mother deer with two
    fawns is watching me—one of them has a white patch on its leg.
    Now here come two bucks. They all stand there together, trying
    to make me lonesome. When they turn and walk away, I could follow
    to see where they go. I could tell Pa where they are so he could go out
    and get one. He’d be happy; the meat would taste good. But those little
    ones … naw. My moss sack is full. I go home and help Ma stuff the cracks.

ANIKWA
    We’re down by the river,
    cutting cattails to make walls for the longhouse.
    Toontwa calls us over: Look, he says, fresh tracks in the mud.
    One set of big tracks, two sets of small ones—
    a mother black bear and her cubs
    came here to drink, early
    this morning,
    and we don’t want
    to surprise them or disturb them.
    Grandma speaks quietly, in case they’re nearby:
    We’ll go home on the other trail, and come back later. We’ve
    been here all afternoon, and now we spread the cattails in the sun.
    We should have enough to sew together into three more mats,
    to cover the frame we’re working on. We’ve cut saplings,
    dug holes to set them in the ground. Next, we’ll tie
    the frame together. We’ll finish this longhouse
    before the geese fly south. When it’s cold,
    the cattail walls will keep out
    wind and snow.
    Our fire will keep us warm
    inside while we tell winter stories. Today,
    these cattails spread out on the ground make me think
    of winter. In winter, the longhouse will
    remind me of this summer day.

JAMES
    Isaac comes to the door. Let’s go do something. Not sure I want to—
    doing things with Isaac usually leads to trouble. But we head out,
    walking by the river. He finds some cattails and whacks them on a tree
    to make the brown parts burst. All the fluff goes flying—looks like fun.
    Let me try that, I say. Where’d you get those? Then I see: cattail reeds are
    laid out on the ground beside the long green leaves, drying in the sun.
    Isaac grabs as many reeds as he can hold. Leave them alone, I say. People
    put these here—they’ll be back to get them. But Isaac never listens to me.
    He keeps busting up the cattails’ fluffy parts and walking on the reeds,
    leaving muddy boot prints all over them. Then he stomps across all the
    animal tracks so I can’t see what animals have been here. Hey, look! he says,
    pointing. A hornet nest! Before I can stop him, he whacks it with a stick—
    the hornets come raging out, and we run off. I get stung six times! Isaac:
    not once. I’m hollering in pain. He’s laughing his head off—just like usual.

ANIKWA
    Four men
    went out looking for
    the black bears—they followed
    the tracks around a bend
    in the river, then
    farther, until,
    two hours
    from Kekionga, they saw
    where the tracks crossed a shallow place
    to the other side. Even though they didn’t find the bears,
    now we know it’s safe to go back for our cattails. They should be
    lighter, easier to