The Marsh King's Daughter(50)

Until I saw that family, I wasn’t sure how this could all work out. But now I had ideas.

—

MY FATHER WENT OUT three times during those weeks to shoot our spring deer, and each time, he came back empty-handed. My father said the reason he wasn’t able to shoot a deer was that the land was cursed. He said the gods were punishing us. He didn’t say for what.

The fourth time he brought me with him. My father thought that if I took the shot, this would lift the curse. I didn’t know if this was true, but if this meant I got to shoot another deer at last, I was happy to go along with it. Every year since I’d shot my first deer I asked my father if I could go deer hunting again, and every year my father said no. I didn’t understand why he went to all of the trouble of teaching me how to shoot if he wasn’t going to let me share the job of putting venison on our table.

Cousteau and Calypso stayed at home. My father didn’t like it when I said their names or played with them. Sometimes I did this on purpose to annoy him, but not today. My father was so angry all of the time because of the curse, I was thinking of sending them away. (“Cousteau and Calypso Visit the Yanomami in the Rain Forest Without Helena.”) Rambo was tied in the woodshed. Rambo was fine for flushing a bear from its den or treeing a coon, my father said, but not when it came to deer hunting because deer were too easily spooked. I couldn’t see why this would be a problem. Even if Rambo scared the deer, he could chase them down easily, since he could run on top of the snow crust while the deer’s thin legs would break through. Then all we would have to do was walk up and shoot one. Sometimes I wondered if the only reason my father made so many rules and restrictions was because he could.

I was in the lead because I was carrying the rifle. I liked that this meant my father had to follow where I wanted to go. I thought about the pet name he gave me, Bangii-Agawaateyaa, and smiled. I was no longer his Little Shadow.

I was heading for the ridge where I shot my first deer because that ridge brought me luck. And I was still hoping to shoot a doe that was pregnant with twins.

When we came to the abandoned beaver lodge where my father used to set his traps, I signaled my father to get down, then pulled off my mittens and crouched beside him. I wet my finger to test the wind and counted to one hundred to give any deer who heard us time to settle down. Slowly I raised my head.

On the other side of the beaver lodge, halfway between us and the cedar swamp where the deer were supposed to be, standing out in the open as bold and as fearless as you please, was a wolf. It was a male, twice as big as a coyote and three times as big as my dog, with a massive head and a wide forehead and a heavy chest and a thick dark ruff. I’d never seen a wolf except for the skin in our utility shed, but there was no mistaking this was what it was. Now I understood why my father hadn’t been able to shoot a deer. The land wasn’t cursed—it was just home to a new hunter.

My father tugged on my sleeve and pointed to the rifle. Take the shot, he mouthed. He tapped his chest to show where I should shoot so I didn’t ruin the skin. I brought up the rifle as carefully as I knew how and sighted through the scope. The wolf looked back calmly, intelligently, like he knew we were there and didn’t care. I slipped my finger through the trigger. The wolf didn’t move. I thought about my father’s stories. How Gitche Manitou sent the wolf to keep Original Man company while he walked the Earth naming the plants and the animals. How when they finished, Gitche Manitou decreed that Mai’iigan and Man should travel separate paths, but by then they’d spent so much time together they were as close as brothers. How to the Anishinaabe, killing a wolf was the same as killing a person.

My father squeezed my arm. I could feel his excitement, his anger, his impatience. Take the shot, he would have hissed if he could. My stomach got tight. I thought about the piles of furs in the utility shed. How because of my father’s trapping, the beaver that used to live in the lodge we were crouching behind were all gone. How the wolf was so trusting, shooting Mai’iigan would be no different from shooting my dog.

I lowered the rifle. Stood up and clapped my hands and shouted. The wolf looked back a moment longer. Then, with two great, beautiful bounds, it ran off.

—

I KNEW WHEN I DECIDED not to shoot the wolf that I would end up in the well. I didn’t know that my father would grab the rifle away from me and slam me across the face with the butt end so hard, I landed on my backside in the snow. I also didn’t expect him to march me home to the cabin with the gun at my back like I was his prisoner. I wish I could say I didn’t care. Still, I couldn’t see where I could have done anything differently. I didn’t like going against my father. I knew how much he wanted that wolf’s skin. But so did the wolf.

I thought about these things as I squatted on my heels in the darkness. I couldn’t sit because my father had filled the bottom of the well with deer antlers and rib bones and broken glass and shattered dishes—anything that would hurt or cut me if I tried to sit down. When I was little, I used to be able to curl up on my side and lie down in the leaf litter on the bottom. Sometimes I’d fall asleep. I think this was why my father started filling the well with debris. Contemplation time wasn’t supposed to be comfortable.

The shaft was deep and narrow. The only way I could fully stretch out my arms was if I put them over my head. I did this whenever my hands started to tingle. I would have had to grow another six feet to reach the cover.