Crooked River Read Online Free PDF Page A

She turned the bowl on its side and poured the six beads into my hand. “But don't you dare tell Pa what I done,” she said.
    And now I could count six handsome beads from an Indian as mine.
    each morning
,
    Bird Eyes and
    Tall Girl Who Follows
    bring me
    a wooden bowl
    filled with
    salty meat
,
    bitter yellow fruits
,
    and coarse bread
    made from
    dirt and dust.
    i do not
    refuse
    their food.
    but i eat
    slowly
,
    and i think of
    deer meat sweet with maple sugar
,
    pumpkins boiled soft
    in the fat of the bear
,
    and thick corn soup
    at sunrise.

By the time another week had passed, our fears about being kilt by the Indian were hushed some. To my way of thinking, the Indian wouldn't give me and Laura gifts of beads and such if he was planning to bring any terrible harm on our heads. And if we were bringing him plates of food, perhaps he understood he needn't fear a thing from us either.
    I began to go up to the loft by myself again to fetch the things we needed for our cooking. Me and Lorenzo were the only ones who could walk beneath the sloping roof without stooping over much. When I went up for onions or some apples for a pie, I would often give a sideways glance at where the Indian was sitting.
    Seemed like I noticed something different about him each time. Something I hadn't seen before. “Doyou know the Indian has a big piece of copper dangling from his neck?” I would tell Laura. “It's in the shape of a half-moon. I imagine it was from an old kettle, don't you think?”
    Another morning, I noticed that the feathers on his head were hawk feathers, on account of how they were brown and square-shaped. And I saw he had two silver disks, the size of shillings, hanging from his earlobes.
    I think Laura was as filled with curiosity as I was about the Indian. Every time I carried the empty bowl or dinner plate downstairs, she would hurry to ask what he had left for us. Sometimes it was beads, and other times it was odd and peculiar things like red-dyed porcupine quills or small tin cones with tufts of horsehair stuck inside. Once he even left a tarnished buckle that looked exactly like a little silver sun.
    Still, Laura kept on worrying that Pa would find out about the gifts. “I should never have let you keep the beads in the first place,” she fretted. “If Pa learns what I did, he will punish me so severely, I might as well go and shake hands with the devil himself. Our Ma would be downright ashamed with how I'm raising you. Downright ashamed.”
    I told Laura she was fine at raising me.
    But I didn't tell her that I had started to give small things to the Indian, too.
    i do not know why
    the Bird Eye girl
    leaves the nest
    of the grass-weaving bird
    near my moccasins.
    or why she brings
    the white flower
    that heals sore eyes
,
    or the new green leaves
    from the mouse-ear tree
,
    or one smooth brown acorn.
    but i am pleased
    to see them.

May 1812
    When Mercy was being a pesky little bother one morning, I took out some of the beads and such for her to see. We kept all of the things from Indian John hidden in the chest at the foot of our bed. They were tucked underneath the embroidered pillowcases that Laura had stitched for her married life—when she found someone for marrying, that is.
    Carefully, I put everything we had been given on the bed. They made a peculiar, colorful line. Mercy crawled onto the bed to watch and Laura perched on the edge of our wooden chest. She had just returned from the Hawleys, who had finally recovered their senses after two weeks of the fever.
    “Look at this little quill, Mercy.” I waggled one of the red-dyed ones in front of her. The quill reminded me of a long stem of meadow grass, with tiny white ridges where it appeared to have been bent and folded.
    “Lemme see,” Mercy demanded, reaching for it with her small fingers.
    “Don't you ruin it,” I said loudly, and Laura glared at me.
    I picked up another quill and held it in my hand, studying it. “What do you suppose the