He searched stones, wandered, looked at the insects on the leaves. Moths with large eyes, birds, the cormorant, all lived there. He examined the faces of the people, their voices, practiced the songs. Moon. Rain. They loved his physical presence. He was air and light. Their world was a tight knot that his job was to unravel. There were no rules but he followed them anyway. There was heated water for him in the winter when the old women filled a tub for him with heated containers of water. He was told about the treachery on the other side. His mother visited often and she didn’t have to tell him the news. He had grown sensitive. Each time she saw him, she also told him a make-believe story. One time it was how Marco Polo sailed the seas. The seven seas.

He was happy with the elders and the water was slightly warmer and Marco swam daily. Sometimes too far, Ruth thought when she and Hoist visited. Nevertheless, this was the beginning of Marco’s conflict, the one he would have to face one day. He was recognized. The elders held him in a special place, this quiet boy who held himself straight and looked at the world with a clear, calm eye. He had the prayers and songs. Others, on the other side of water, knew it, too. Because of this, much responsibility would fall on him. At times it worried him.

“Mother,” he said, “what will I become when I’m so different?”

She smiled at him. “I don’t know, son. I guess you’ll have to get a job in a paper mill, such an impossible feat, I’d assume.”

RUTH

Ruth placed the dishes on the shelf, lined the cups on the rubber mat so they would not slide off in powerful waves. She was strong, or so people thought. When she stretched her arms, they were lean, dark, and muscular, the veins standing out. Inside the muscle, inside the flesh, inside the long body and even the skin beginning to age, the older life was beginning in its way toward a new form and inside all of that she still felt grief, even anger, but she would not let her people slide down to the bottom and she could see the people falling, sliding. Her hands hurt from holding on, as if to a rope that would keep the slide from happening.

The people her own age had not ever recovered from the war. The older people are still in the pain of history. Some say it is over, the A’atsika way. It isn’t, Ruth wanted to tell the world that she hangs by her strength. Alone. Don’t be fooled. This is just America happening to us again. She would like to keep them from ruining themselves altogether. All together. That is what a tribe is. There was an old person watching her. She felt it. That person had wisdom and pride and the beauty that came with their history, and that person or spirit or ancestor loved Ruth.