Dance Boots

Three Seasons

biboon: maggie in winter When Maggie fled her family home on the Mozhay Point Indian Reservation headed for the railroad tracks that led to Duluth,it was without her husband,who was because of her lying unconscious on the floor next to the woodstove,or her three oldest children,who in the fall had been blown from home by the winds of seasonal change and federal Indian policy to boarding school. She did take her two small boys and—tied into a flowered quilt—some children’s clothing ,several potatoes,and a pan of lugallette.And his rifle,which she wrapped in a gunnysack and slung on her back,like an infant.Then she left him, that bastard she hit over the head with the frying pan after he had passed out, unconscious but breathing, on the floor of the two-room tarpapered house that had been her grandma’s, on the forty-acre land allotment in SweetgrassTownship that had been taken from that renegade devil-Indian Joe Muskrat and assigned to the LaForce family when Maggie was a little girl. Andre,that bastard.She had just come in the door with an armful three seasons three sea sons 21 of wood, which stuck to her shawl. When she set the wood down on the floor, it left bits of snow and bark against the plaid wool crossed over her chest. Giizis and Biikwaastigwaan were asleep at the bottom of the bed, their hair stuck to their heads in that damp sleep sweat, from that hard work that children do in their dreams, Giizis snoring and Biik so still in his labor that she placed a hand on his chest to ease for a second her endless worrying that those two, the littlest, her last, would leave, too, in the relentless gusty wake of the three before them. “Biik? Ginibaa?” He breathed. Ah. And she smoothed the quilt over their bodies, faded maroon and pink flowers against a summer sky fogging and running after years of wear and washing to snow and sleet, her wedding quilt. Sixteen irregular large pieces of ladies’ dresses crazy-stitched together. Her wedding quilt. Remember that day. Andre, good-looking little man he was, with those short bowed legs that she couldn’t help but follow the first time she saw him walk past her.But he was mean to her when he drank. She knew everybody could see that but nobody said anything,and she was as big as he was anyway and should be able to take care of herself.And Sonny was there too,not showing yet,him,a tiny boy carried right inside Maggie and nobody knew except Andre, not even the priest, so she committed mortal sin going to confession and leaving that out, and right before the sacrament of marriage, too. She supposed her mother knew, the way she was looking at her. Mother had made that quilt in a real hurry, stitched the top together in two days and batted, tied, and finished in two more,pieced so large that sleeves and bodices could be clearly seen clutching and elbowing expanses of skirt. When it was spread on the bed,the quilt told a hundred stories about Mother and Nokom and the aunts and the ladies who had donated whatever they could spare that was suitable for a wedding quilt that needed to be finished quickly. He pushed open the door and leaned on the frame,Andre,right 22 th ree sea sons after she set the wood down, and told her to move her big old hind end and get him something to eat. She put the frying pan on the woodstove,put some lard in to melt,started cutting up the potatoes, and said, “Go wash up, you. Where you been? You stink like Old Man Dommage’s place.”Next thing she knew,he had her by the hair and he was gasping and wheezing with the work it was to swing her around, and she could smell his breath—bad enough to make her sick—snoose and meat and rotgut wet on her face asking,“Where the hell’s Louis?”In their embrace,her mouth so close to his ear she whispered hoarsely, “Hold on, hold on. The supper’s gonna burn.” He let go and stood there swaying, head down but eyes up staring without focus, putting a lot of work into...