The House

By Dawn Natelle

Sorry for the long gap. I had trouble with this chapter, and it isn’t one of my best. But when I finished it the next chapter or two came to me, and thus will be written sooner: Dawn

Judge Susan Pettersen was in the president’s office of the Madoc Legion, having lunch with the other members of her team: the crown attorney, the court reporter and the court clerk. The Ontario lower level court, known as Provincial Court until 1999, was now know as the Ontario Court of Justice. Judge Pettersen was based in Peterborough, but came to rural courts in Madoc and Lakefield on alternate Wednesdays. Normally the courts run from 10 a.m. until the docket was cleared, but today there was a more serious case to be dealt with – armed robbery – and therefore a second sitting was set for 2 p.m. to deal with that.

The crown attorney was first to leave the lunch at 1:45. He wanted to meet the defense attorney, who he hadn’t faced before. He found John Jenson in the courtroom (actually the main meeting room of the Legion, set up to resemble a normal court.)

At 1:55 the accused was brought into the court by OPP officers, who handled courtroom security. Red Eagleclaw was seated in the dock, with a police officer standing next to him. Red was glad to see familiar faces in the courtroom. As well as John; Hawk, Sun, Grey and even Dary were in the public gallery.

At 2 sharp the clerk announced the judge, and everyone stood until she was seated. The clerk then announced the charge of robbery with a weapon, not being a firearm. Next up was the crown attorney, Charles Tomis, who recounted the alleged crime.

“On February 4 a person entered the Glowmart Variety Store at the intersection of Lansdown Street East and Ashburnham Drive. The sole clerk at the time, Tanya Keith, finished checking out the only person in the store at the time. The goods requested were valued at $42.53. Instead of offering payment, the accused, Red Eagleclaw, pulled a knife from his pocket, and pointed it at the clerk, insisting she open the register. She did, and he pocketed $95 in coin and bills. He then ran out the door. The clerk was unable to continue working alone at the store, and quit the following day. She has since left her college course due to inability to concentrate on her courses. Upon information received, the OPP arrested the accused two days ago.”

“Is that the knife?” The judge said, pointing to Red’s small knife on the evidence table.

“Yes ma’am. That knife was found on the accused’s person when he was arrested by Madoc OPP two nights ago.”

The clerk instructed Red to stand, and read the charge out to him, ending with “How do you plead?”

“Guilty ma’am. I did it and I want to serve my time. I have since learned that our First Nation’s codes do not look well on those who act like I did. I cannot deny any of the things that man said. I with to atone.”

“How old are you?” the judge asked.

“I am 15, ma’am,” Red said.

“Why is this being tried in adult court,” the judge asked.

“There have been many cases of youth robbing or stealing from variety stores,” the crown attorney said. “Our office decided to make an example for others. Robbery is a very serious crime, and we want to put a stop to it immediately.”

“And the fact that the accused is a First Nation’s boy with no family makes it easier, no doubt,” the judge said. She turned to Red: “Don’t you have a lawyer? A plea of guilty on a charge this serious is most unusual.”

“I speak for Mr. Eagleclaw,” John said. “We discussed the case in some detail. I especially wanted to fight the decision to send him to an adult court. But he refused that and insisted on pleading guilty and saving the court from the expenses of a trial. We do wish to speak to sentence, and to bond if sentence will not be given today.”

“The Crown does not recommend any bond, and that the accused be held in Peterborough Jail until sentencing,” Mr. Tomis said.

“There will be no sentencing until I return here in two weeks,” the judge said. “Mr. Jenson, can you explain why you think that bond should be granted?”

“Yes ma’am. The Crown précis of the case left out several key facts. Red was not arrested as a result of information received. He confessed his crime to OPP officer Cindy Smith, nee Rohmer, who then arrested him and brought him into the Madoc detachment cells, where I understand he had been a model prisoner.”

“Since he confessed to the crime, and pled guilty today, I can see no reason why he would not appear for sentencing. We have a location where he can live until that time, and it is our hope that he will start home-schooling there with another student in the house. He will spend time working with the horses at the mill, and be exposed to the trades of millwork, carpentry, lumber management, auto mechanics and blacksmithing. A third facet of his time will be to spend time with the natives in the community, and to learn more about his heritage.”

The judge looked to the Crown: “Comments?”

“We will insist on bail of $25,000 for such a serious crime,” Mr. Tomis said.

“I don’t have any money,” Red exclaimed.

“No, but you have friends who love you and trust you,” John said. “Your honor, we have $10,000 here for bail. If you set a higher level, then we ask two days to raise it.”

“I set bail at $15,000,” the judge said. “Two days to remit the last $5000 at Peterborough courthouse. Bail is revoked immediately if the accused sets foot off the property that has been described. I expect to see you back here in two weeks, young man.”

That was about all Red could take. He blurted out a “Yes ma’am. Thank you ma’am,” before collapsing into tears. He barely could rise while the judge left the room.

Once she was gone, Sun hurried up to the dock and took Red into her arms, lifting the young boy clear of the small barrier. She sat down on a nearby chair and took Red onto her lap, rocking and comforting him. He flashed back to when he was younger, and his mother was still alive: Sun was holding him and rocking him gently like she did.

For a few minutes he just sobbed in joy, and then looked up and saw that all the people from the house were watching, except for John, who was off signing papers and paying the money for bail: money that they had all given because they trusted him. Red could never repay that trust, he thought. Then he noticed Dary smiling at him.

He immediately stopped sobbing: he wouldn’t let her see him cry. He got up from Sun’s lap, but not before she gave him a kiss on the cheek. It nearly brought the tears back. When John was done they all piled into the two vehicles that had come to court. John rode the pickup with Sun with Red, and the rest drove behind in Daisy’s LTD.

On the short ride home John explained the terms of the bail to Red. He could go anywhere on the extensive house property, but if he left it then his new friends would lose the $15,000. If he appeared for court in two weeks, then the money would be returned. He was told that as an adult, he could be sentenced to three to five years in jail. Had the robbery been with a gun rather than a knife, five years would be the minimum. So at least one thing had gone right on that day.

At the house Cooper immediately took Dary, who had missed class to attend the court, into the little classroom in the basement. She was assigned a three-page paper on how a court works. Red accompanied her, and Cooper started assessing his new student to see where his skills were.

The teacher was less than pleased. The boy read at a Grade three level, and was only slightly better in math. His spelling was horrible, of course, and he hadn’t seemed to retain much science or history after two years on the street. He admitted that he hadn’t enjoyed anything about school except for recess. Cooper started him reading. A half hour later Dary was done her paper, and handed it to the teacher, and then curled up next to Red and looked into the book he was reading from. Cooper left the boy with Dary, and went off to mark her paper, which was excellent as normal.

Meanwhile the two continued to read, with Dary helping when Red stumbled over a word, making him sound it out, and then correcting it if still wrong. Red was a bit tense with the pretty girl sitting so close, but concentrated as hard as he could for her, and as a result made more progress than he had with Cooper.

The class lasted until nearly supper, and then Dary darted off to set the table, one of her chores. Red asked to help, and the pair soon had the table set and helped Willow and Nora bring out the food.

Red had not experienced family style dining like this. His uncle’s family had just cooked up packaged meals, seldom cooking anything other than stovetop or microwave meals. The one exception was grilling, which his uncle did often after the welfare checks came in and there was money for steaks. Red never got a full steak, but would have one split three ways with his cousins, with Red always getting the small piece.

But dinner here was done with big bowls or platters of food passed around. The meat tonight was a venison roast, and when Red took the smallest slice, Dary, sitting next to him, took another slice and plopped it on his plate before taking her own. The sides were corn, carrots, a potato salad, mashed potatoes and pie and pastry for dessert. Red was full at the end of the meal, probably for the first time since he had run away two years earlier.

After the meal the entire family met in the Great Hall after the dishes were cleared and washed. Dary had Red wash as she dried, so he could learn where various items went. When they joined the others in the Hall, Grey called Red over. He was making wooden blocks for the babies to play with when they got older. He handed Red a large carving knife, and showed him how to whittle the blocks into shape. The boy was amazed that they trusted him with a knife, but then realized they had entrusted him with a large amount of their money. His faith in the people of the house just grew stronger and stronger.

Dary helped. She took each block that the men cut and sketched the faces with a pencil. One side of each block would represent a letter: there would be 26 in total. She drew the shape of the capital letter on one face, and then the lower case letter on the opposite side. The other four faces would have pictures of items that started with that letter. On the A, for instance, there was an apple, an arrow, an anvil, and an amik, the Ojibwe word for beaver: all things that the babies would find in or near the house. The use of Ojibwe would help the babies learn the language later.

Once she was done, Grey used other whittling tools to start to carve out the pictures, showing Red how the various tools in his set worked. Soon Red was shaping out some of the simpler shapes, like the blueberries on the B block. Eventually Grey decided that they should clean up and head off to bed. He did promise that he would take Red out to the Grove after school on Friday.

Thursday the boy’s day was split into three parts. He started the morning by going out to the stable with Dary while she fed the horses and got her eggs for breakfast. She decided that Red would feed the horses. Pierre looked suspiciously at the boy he had trapped earlier in the week, but when the boy put clean water in his trough, and filled his hay and grain bins they were friends for life.

Dary came back from delivering her eggs, and showed the boy how to groom the horses, starting with the younger ones. Then she groomed Madame, and Red groomed Pierre, with the huge horse getting more and more accustomed to the boy.

After breakfast, George took Red and started up the forge, showing the boy the various tools and a few techniques. George decided that Red might grow big enough to be a smith, especially if he spent a good amount of time pumping the bellows for the forge.

“Will we be able to work more after lunch, George?” Red asked.

“Not likely,” George said. “I likes to have a little nap after I eats. And I don’t want you startin’ the forge up when I’se not with you. Couple of weeks larning and you kin give it a go, but not afore. Asides, I think Cooper will want you for some book larning after lunch.”

It was true: after the meal was cleared up, the two youngsters went to school. Dary explained that she had spent the morning babysitting, her favorite task at the house. It allowed Sun spend all morning at the mill. Sun would get her baby time after lunch while the older ladies napped, and then when they were up they would baby-sit while Sun went back to the mill.

In the classroom Cooper explained that Grey’s trip to the grove on Friday was actually a science lesson, and told Grey that when he came back he was expected to explain the differences between various type of tree: bark, leaf, and shape. Dary reminded Cooper that there would be no leafs on the deciduous trees. The teacher amended the instructions to describing the needles on the conifers he saw, and made Dary explain what deciduous meant, since Red clearly had not understood. Cooper also wanted the boy to identify and describe 10 different animals that he would see.

After class, which included two hours of Dary helping Red improve his reading, the two helped with dinner. Dary was becoming a good little cook, and she helped Red learn to make a hearty stew with the leftover venison and fresh root vegetables. The boy learned that he enjoyed being in the kitchen – in fact he enjoyed being anywhere near Dary, to tell the truth.

Another evening was spent working on the blocks and then the kids were sent to bed.

Friday morning Red went to tend to the animals on his own, as Dary collected her eggs. After breakfast Red went back to the stable with George, and was shown how to harness the horses. First Madame and Pierre were on the wagon, and George climbed up into the box and soon had Red holding the reins as they took a ride to the Grove and back to give the animals exercise. Afterwards they took up the tack and Red rubbed down the pair.

The younger horses were Elysa and Stone, and these were saddled and ridden. George said he was too old to ride, so Red rode each of the two horses around the property, rubbing them down when finished. This took the better part of the morning, and Sun came in from the mill to collect the two for lunch. After lunch Grey took Red to the Grove.

They each carried a full backpack, and went out on snowshoes, which Red took to easily. There was about a six-inch snowpack, and they avoided the wagon tracks that Red and George had made in the morning. They bypassed the grove and were in a clearing when Grey dropped his pack in the snow, and told Red to do the same.

Grey then stood close behind the boy, and started to sing the song to attract the spirit animals to find out what Red would see first. It was a coyote. (Grey pronounced it koi-oat, not the American pronunciation of ki-o-tee.) The animal ran away and the men picked up their packs and continued on to the camp.

Red gathered wood while Grey got water for the camp, and then unpacked the tools. He had started using the camp for building canoes, and was out here three or four days a week, often with John, Hawk, or Dan with him. He had found that when they worked near the mill, with it’s myriad of tools, it was too easy to use a mechanical tool to do a job, rather than hand tools. Flint had objected in his head, claiming that they were making a factory out of a handcraft, and Grey had agreed, moving the work to the camp.

After Red had gathered enough deadwood to provide a good fire for the evening, Grey started showing him how to build the cedar strip canoe which was partially under construction. They worked on it for six hours, with a stop for a supper of venison stew that Grey had filched from the kitchen. It had not been enough for another family dinner, but was perfect for four meals: supper tonight and lunch tomorrow.

When the early winter dusk fell, the fire was lit, and the two sat in its warmth as Grey told native tales that Flint, Mimiha and Redoak had passed on to him in the past. The boy just lapped up the tales, which were his heritage.

They went to bed earlier than they did at the house, but both fell asleep quickly after all the work they had done.

It was still dark when Grey roused the boy. After a quick trip to the latrine he got two sticks of venison jerky for breakfast and then donned his snowshoes and followed Grey to the river.

Grey had brought a hatchet, and they chopped holes in the three-inch thick river ice in five sections about 20 yards apart. Then they stepped back and leaned against a fallen tree and watched as the animals appeared. There were moose, deer, rabbits, a porcupine, beaver, chipmunks, squirrels, raccoon, and a lone wolf.

“That is only nine,” Red said as he lamented the assignment Cooper had given him. “I need ten.”

“There was a coyote yesterday,” Grey reminded him.

“Oh yeah. That’s ten,” the boy said happily. “And it was so cool seeing all of them like this. Thanks for bringing me out here. And for telling me all those stories last night. It makes me really feel like I am First Nations now. I’ve never felt this way before. You know, proud. Before it was like being ‘Indian’ was something negative. Thanks so much.”

Grey felt more than a little happy to be able to make the boy feel more confident and proud as he led the way to the grove. He explained the job of tending the trees that he had inherited from Lone Goose, and showed Red the old native’s grave, where they both prayed and gave thanks to the work that the old man had done for so many years.

Red learned all about the big trees in the grove, and compared them with the bark of their younger saplings. Then they went into the forest proper and looked at the cedars, pines, and spruce that grew there, and compared them to the hardwoods. Finally they came back and Red showed that he remembered all the wood types, and was able to identify the saplings in between, where a sapling could be from one of the two species on either side.

Then it was lunch, the rest of the stew, which Grey had placed in a rope hanging from a tree to keep the raccoons from getting to it. Soon they had reheated the frozen stew over the fire, and had a good meal. Then it was five more hours working on the canoe, and finally a walk home under the darkening skies.

After dinner there was no carving: instead Grey made Red recall the stories he had told the boy the night previous, knowing that retelling the tales would cement them into his mind. Grey filled in the odd bit, but Red did most of the telling, and Dary drank up the tales just as Red had, sitting on her legs in that way that girls did.

“We need to write these down,” Dary said. “We will make books for the babies: Flint and Mimihaha. You can tell the stories, and I will write them out, and then we can both draw pictures. When the babies are old enough, we can read them aloud.