He ate more of the soup, feeling the strength of the deer that had given its life enter his own body, feeling the love that his mother put into every meal that she prepared. Perhaps his father was out hunting right now, seeking more game to sustain them. And his mother was surely doing something useful as well. Perhaps she was smoke-tanning a deerskin or working on a pair of moccasins.

While he, Okwaho, was doing nothing for anyone.

What could he do to be useful?

The stockade wall, that was it. He’d heard Burnt Hair talking about how it needed to be reinforced on the side toward the sunrise.

He poured some water into his spoon from the clay pot set off to the side and drank it. He wiped his spoon dry with the corner of his loin cloth and then stuck the toggle back under his belt.

It was a bright day. Elder Brother Sun was giving his warmth gladly to the earth. Okwaho smelled the scent of the smoke from fire across the compound where his mother and some of the other women were sitting next to a set of racks where deerskins were drying. He nodded at his mother, who nodded back to him before going back to her task of softening deerskin by chewing it before stitching it into the uppers of moccasins. Bird Flying, the mother of Tawis, was there too. She did not look up at him. She almost never looked at him now.

Okwaho bit his lip and continued walking. Three men were working on preparing a post to be added to the stockade wall. One of them was Burnt Hair. Okwaho went over to them. He didn’t need any instructions on what had to be done. While they were scraping the post, which was as thick as Burnt Hair’s muscular thigh and twice the height of a tall man, someone should be readying the hole into which its base would be dropped. Okwaho knelt by that hole. It was not yet ready. It had only been dug down to ankle depth and would have to be at least four times deeper to hold the stockade post in place. A stick that had been shaped from an oak branch into a spoon-shaped digging tool was there on the ground. When any sort of tool was left out that way, Okwaho knew, it was meant for someone to use.

He began to dig, sometimes reversing the digging tool to use its sharpened other end to loosen soil and pry out stones. As he did so, a new song came to him.

Digging, digging

I am digging

Stones rise up

As I am digging

He piled the earth to one side of the hole, the stones to the other. Those rocks, pounded in around the post, would hold it even more firmly.