When Breaks the Dawn (Canadian West) (10 page)

He shook his head. He did not know.

I was frustrated. I walked back to his desk and opened the scribbler to the two pages of fish. Placing a finger under Wawasee’s chin, a signal we had developed to let him know we wanted him to watch our lips, I said again, “Fish. It is the same. Fish.” I pointed to the board, “F-I-S-H.” I pointed to his pages. “The same,” but Wawasee merely shrugged his shoulders.

Lifting his eyes to my face again, I asked gently, “Do you understand?”

He looked at me evenly, as though asking me to see it his way, “Not same,” he dared to say. “Yours white, mine black.” Wawasee thought in color.

I realized then that I needed a new way to relate to Wawasee. If only I had many bright books with colored pages. Perhaps then he would be interested in learning. But I did not have them, and it would be months before it would be possible to get some. In the meantime I would simply do the best I could.

One of my disappointments was that Wawasee’s two younger sisters did not come to school. I asked Wawasee about them many times. At first his answer, through Nimmie’s translation, was that they were not interested in drawing. When we reminded him that school was so much more than that, he looked for other answers. Each time we asked him, his reply was a little different, but it all came down to the fact that the little girls just were not interested and did not feel that classes were sufficient reason to leave the sheltered warmth of the cabin.

After the fourth week Kanika dropped out. I felt like crying. I went to their cabin after school was dismissed hoping to learn that she had been ill or needed at home. She was fine and was playing rather than doing an assigned home task. Her mother just shrugged her shoulders.

“Why you not go?” she asked the girl in English for my benefit, as though she had just realized that Kanika was at home and not at school.

Kanika barely raised her head to answer. She looked puzzled, as though she couldn’t understand why she should be called upon to explain herself. It was plain to see that she just didn’t feel like going, so she didn’t go—that was all.

Now we had four students. Wawasee was hardly to be counted, for though we worked with him to the best of our ability, his attention was on his artwork only.

Jim Buck, Susie Crooked Leg and Brown Duck were doing well. All three were eager to learn.

Then we had another disappointment. Brown Duck’s husband came home from his trapline for a few days and learned of her involvement in the classes. He could not understand her hunger for knowledge. He only knew that she was the only woman in the settlement who was leaving her work at home to go to class each morning. He could also see that skins were not getting tanned, moccasins were not getting sewn, and the cabin fire was not kept burning.

We could understand the attitude of Crying Dog, Brown Duck’s husband. He saw the schooling as a waste of time for a lazy wife and he forbade Brown Duck to return to class again.

We were sorry to lose Brown Duck, but neither Nimmie nor I would have encouraged her to disobey her husband.

It was no longer reasonable to expect Nimmie to come to the schoolroom each morning when I had only three students. The students and I understood one another well enough now that we could manage. I had a little of their language, they were learning more and more words in English. I knew they should learn English, because they needed it to communicate outside their own small world; but I was sorry they were unable to have textbooks in their native tongue. They should have had the privilege of learning their own language in written form, but at this point they did not.

The weather grew colder, the winds blew more drifts of snow, tucking our little village in blankets of white. We needed snowshoes to get about. The women of the village were kept constantly busy supplying fuel for their cabin fires.

I was wrestling with a question. Was it sensible to have Wynn go to the little cabin each morning and start a fire for just the four of us? Wouldn’t it make more sense to move my students over to my cabin for their lessons? But if I stayed where I was, there might be those who would return to class. I finally talked it over with Wynn.

“What should I do?” I asked him after I had thoroughly explained my predicament.

“I would like to believe that there might be those who will rejoin you, Elizabeth,” he said slowly, “but to be honest, I don’t suppose they will. They have had no reason to believe that education from books will benefit them. That still has to be proven to them.”

“But how can we show them?” I wailed.

“We can’t—not overnight. It is going to take a long time. Perhaps,” he went on thoughtfully, “we are a negative example to them.”

“Negative? I don’t follow.”

“Well, I have education. You have education. And yet we need to learn their skills to live here in their wilderness.”

I began to understand what Wynn was saying. I looked out our frosted window at the swirl of the winter storm. Wynn was right. Here my teaching degree would benefit me very little unless I also knew the art of survival.

“What should I do, Wynn?” I asked again, sincerely, humbly.

He reached out and pulled me into his arms. He smiled into my eyes as he stroked back the wisp of hair forever tormenting me by curling about my cheeks and refusing to stay combed in its proper place. “You’re doing a great job,” he said, “and I’m proud of you for trying, for caring. You might not realize it yet, but those two pupils of yours, just those two eager learners—yes, even Wawasee too—could someday be the means of educating this entire village.”

I closed my eyes and leaned hard against my husband. With all my heart I hoped he was right.

FIFTEEN

Another Christmas

For some reason I dreaded the coming Christmas away from family even more than I had my first one. Perhaps it was because on my first year away I was still a new bride with the excitement of creating a home for my husband. Now I was beginning to notice the loneliness of the months without family. The coming of Christmas made me feel even more homesick.

I did not go crying to Wynn. He had enough troubles of his own. Reports were coming in from the traplines about a marauding bear robbing the traps. At first Wynn found the rumors hard to believe. All the bears should have been in hibernation months earlier. Whatever would one be doing out, still foraging for food, this time of year? The reports persisted. Wynn decided he must check into them.

According to those who brought the tales to the village, the bear was mammoth. It swung deadly blows with paws the size of pine branches and was gone again before a hunter could even lift his rifle. Soon other details were added to the stories. The bear was ten feet tall, bullets would not pierce him, and when he ran he left no tracks. The people of the village were sure the bear was a spirit animal and that it had come back to avenge some wrong, hitherto undetected. So afraid had they become that when Wynn decided to go out after “the spirit bear,” he could find no one willing to go with him.

I don’t know if some of the Indians’ superstitions affected me, or what was the true nature of my despair, but I pleaded with Wynn not to go. I was sure that if he did, I would never see him again.

Wynn tried to assure me that he would be fine and would soon be home again, but I still feared for his life. He did not let this sway his decision, however. Already two trappers had been attacked by the bear. One had lost a leg in the attack and the other was mauled badly about the head and face.

The bear had also attacked sled dogs. It had killed one outright, another had to be destroyed because of a serious injury, and a third one seemed to be slowly healing. I knew Wynn was right, that something had to be done, but how I hated to see him leave on the trail of the killer bear.

“Something is wrong,” Wynn said to me. “There are too many stories for me to doubt, but why a bear should be up and about this time of year is a mystery.”

With a tearstained face I watched Wynn fill his pack with an extra large emergency supply. I had seen him pack many times during our time spent up North, and I realized he was preparing for a long time on the trail, if necessary. I was even more frightened.

After watching Wynn and the dog team disappear from view through the swirling snow, I went back to my room and cried some more.
Perhaps this Christmas I won’t even have Wynn,
I mourned.

When I awoke after crying myself to sleep, I felt worse, not better. My head ached and my eyes were swollen and sore. My throat felt sore, too, and I thought I might be coming down with something dreadful.
What if Wynn comes back to a cold cabin and lifeless wife?
But, no, that was foolishness. I really was letting my imagination run away with me.

If only the cabin didn’t feel so empty when Wynn was gone. I thought again of the baby I wanted so badly. I had been married for almost a year and a half, and I still had no prospects of becoming a mother. Nimmie, who already had one little one, was already expecting another. Every day that I went to the settlement, I saw young women who were with child. It was a sad reminder to me that my arms were still empty. I shivered in the stillness and then suddenly realized that I had a good reason to shiver: It was cold in the cabin. I pulled myself from the bed and went to rebuild the fire.

I had prepared myself emotionally for many long, long days without Wynn. But by lunchtime the next day he was back. On the sled was tied the carcass of the largest bear I had ever seen. Though it was big, it was gaunt and empty, like it had already been skinned out and only the hide remained. One of its front paws was badly damaged, which, Wynn said, was the reason for our trouble.

“It couldn’t hunt with that damaged paw and was starving slowly. It refused to go into hibernation without having the fat stored up to see it through the winter, so it stayed out to hunt. But it still had trouble finding enough to eat. Ordinarily it wouldn’t have attacked dogs or men, but this bear was desperate.”

I was so glad to see Wynn back that I didn’t pay much attention to the bear. The Indian people did, though. They kept circling the sled, pointing at the carcass and talking in excited tones. They noticed the gaunt body, the visible ribs, the weakness of the big frame. They took it as an omen. It was not good, they said, that “brother bear” went hungry. Perhaps he was sent by the Great Spirit to warn of coming hunger for the people as well.

It was not a nice thought, and I will admit it made shivers run up and down my spine. Wynn seemed to pay no attention to the clucking tongues and shaking heads, but I do think he began to wish he had left that bear where he had shot it, instead of bringing it back to the settlement to prove to the people that it was no ghost.

Now that Wynn was safely back and the bear had been taken care of, I again gave my attention to Christmas. Actually I tried not to think about it, but I could not help myself. I tried to keep myself busy so I wouldn’t have time to think, but that didn’t work either.

Two days before Christmas, Wynn came home in the morning to find the students (who had begun coming to our home) and me poring over our books. He looked rather surprised and apologized for interrupting us. I assured him he had not troubled us and dismissed my students early.

“Aren’t you even going to take a Christmas break?” Wynn inquired when the students had left for the day.

“Of course,” I answered, as though Christmas were still far in the future. And then I remembered I hadn’t told the students not to return the next morning, the twenty-fourth.
Well, I can’t help it,
I reasoned. I just couldn’t bear to spend the days alone.

Even when I worked, my thoughts kept going home. I remembered the Christmases spent with my family in Toronto. I could visualize just what preparations my mother would be making. I could see her, bending over her stove, her cheeks flushed from the warmth, her hair curling softly about her cheeks as she turned out pan after pan of delicious-smelling cookies. I could see Father as he entered the room with the fine tree, smelling as tangy as the very outdoors. Soon Julie and I, and perhaps Matthew, would enter the room with our arms full of boxes of Christmas decorations, and we would trim the tree and hang the garlands and place the wreaths in the windows and on the doors.

By this time my eyes would be filled with tears, and I’d resolve to keep my thoughts on safer ground. I honestly would try, but soon I’d be seeing the red-bowed wrappings on the gifts stacked beneath the tree. I could see myself sitting at the table in our elegant dining room, head bowed while Father said the grace. Then as he carved the turkey we would chat and laugh, just for the joy of being alive and together.

Wiping my eyes on the corner of my apron when no one was looking, I tried to gather my thoughts back to safer ground. And then I would find myself thinking of Jon and Mary and their family in Calgary. They, too, would be preparing for Christmas. I could see the house. I knew where every candle and holly wreath would be placed. I could see the children, their faces shining as they sat before the open fire listening to the familiar-yet-ever-new Christmas story. How I longed to be with them!

I wept. I prayed. I struggled. I felt I would never make it through this Christmas. Never in all of my life had I been so homesick.

Just hang on,
I kept telling myself;
just keep yourself in hand. Soon it will be over and then you’ll be all right again.
But I was beginning to wonder, to fear lest I would lose complete control, or at least make a scene. I did not want to give Wynn reason to be concerned about me. I tried even harder.

On December twenty-four we had class as usual. At noon I dismissed the children and tried to find something constructive to fill my afternoon. I didn’t have the ingredients for special baking, nor gifts to wrap in pretty Christmasy tissue paper. Mostly I puttered around in the kitchen, feeling alone and empty.

Soon it would be time for Wynn to be coming home. It would officially be Christmas Eve. I stiffened my upper lip, breathed a little prayer and hoped to be able to stay in control. One eye watched the clock, while the other watched the stew I was stirring. My ears were waiting for the sound of approaching feet.