Between Earth and Sky(26)
“You dawdler! Come on,” he said, disappearing behind a bend.
Alma scowled and pressed onward.
Several twists in the road later, Asku came back into view. He stood where the road crossed the railroad tracks at the far edge of town, brushing the dust from his clothes with an ear-to-ear grin. Despite the stitch in her side, Alma sprinted the last stretch. When she reached her friend, she stopped and bent forward, wrapping her arms around her waist and panting.
“Not fair,” she said when at last she could speak. “You’re not wearing ten pounds of silk.”
“No, but I was carrying this.” He tossed her his duffle.
Alma staggered back beneath the bag’s weight. “How many sets of clothes do you have in here?”
“It’s books.” He took back the bag and slung it over his shoulder. “Your father let me borrow a few before I left.”
“How many is a few?”
Asku chuckled. “Ambe.” Let’s go.
They skirted the eastern edge of town following the railroad tracks that wended northward. With arms outstretched for balance, they shuffled side by side atop the iron rails, or leapt from tie to tie to see who could jump the farthest. The blue-gray waters of the Mississippi winked at them from the far western horizon. At State Street they headed east, fields of windrowed hay flanking them on either side, then cut diagonally between a break in the bluffs on a narrow wagon road.
The sheer faces of craggy rock gave way to rolling hills overlain with trees. With the sun directly above them, they stopped beside a small stream to rest. Asku unwrapped a wedge of cornbread and handed a piece to Alma. She sat on a flattened boulder at the edge of the water and devoured the bread in three bites.
“Hungry?”
Embarrassed, Alma straightened and brushed the crumbs from her skirt. She tossed her head, hoping for the same graceful effect Lily had achieved, but succeeded only in wrenching her neck and entangling her hair. Hopefully, Asku hadn’t noticed. “Are you glad you stayed the summer with the Colemans? I mean, instead of going home?”
He shrugged.
“Do you miss it, the reservation?”
“I miss my family. The sound of drum circle and my grandfather’s stories . . .” He seemed to lose himself amid the memories, his eyes going uncharacteristically blank, the rise and fall of his chest slowing. A moment later he blinked, squared his shoulders, and said as if by rote, “This is better. The way of the future for my people.”
A gust of wind whipped by, rustling the trees and sending a shock of orange and yellow foliage showering down around them. Alma laughed, if just to lighten the mood, and stood, shaking the leaves from the folds of her skirt.
Asku moved beside her, their faces only inches apart. He smiled and plucked a leaf from her hair. He held it out between them, twirling its stem between his fingers, his brown eyes locked with hers.
Alma’s throat went dry, as if a chunk of cornbread had lodged there and would not go down. A strange electricity hummed in her core—at once both pleasurable and disquieting. Part of her ached to lean in closer, to touch his hand, his cheek, his lips. Would the heady sensation surge or diminish? After a moment’s contemplation, she took a step back. Asku was like a brother to her, after all. With forced levity she plucked the leaf from his hand and declared, “Wiigwaas,” recognizing the jagged edge of the tear-shaped birch leaf.
Asku looked down, the corners of his mouth dropping slightly, and nodded.
Before coming to Wisconsin, Alma had known little about the varying types of trees. Aside from Fairmount Park, Philadelphia had few trees to speak of and she saw them all the same. But her Indian friends called each type of tree a different name—mitigwaabaak, aninaatig, wiigwaas—and taught her to identify the shaggy bark of the hickory, sweet sap of the sugar maple, and saw-toothed leaves of the white birch. Azaadiins, the name Asku had given her their first year together at Stover, meant “little aspen.”
She dropped the leaf in the stream, watched it sail away atop the glassy water toward the Mississippi, and then turned back to Asku. The short brim of his cap cast a shadow over his downturned face, but she could still read the somberness in his expression.
Half an hour later, they rounded the final bend. The thick fringe of trees cleared, and the school’s brick fa?ade appeared before them. A wrought-iron arch rose above the rutted road where the browning lawn butted up to the tree line. Block letters crowned the arch: STOVER SCHOOL FOR INDIANS. Alma passed beneath, but Asku hesitated. He had the wary look of a fox again, his eyes sweeping the full length of the arch.
“Father commissioned it at the start of summer,” she said. “Eventually, he wants to put a matching fence around the entire grounds.”
“To keep the Indian in or the white onlookers out?”
Alma shrugged. “Both, I guess.”
Asku ran his hand down the side of the arch and nodded. “Min-waabaminaagwad,” he said, and stepped through. “It looks good.”
They walked in silence down the remaining drive. Aside from the fresh coat of white paint gleaming from the pillars, the scene reminded her of the first day she had ever met an Indian.
Mrs. Simms clucked around a long table heaped with food and pitchers of lemonade. Miss Wells strode around the house carrying a tidy stack of uniforms.
“Five new pupils this year,” Alma said. “Another Anishinaabe. One from Oneida and three Menominees.”