The Warriors

by Joseph Bruchac

  Jake had watched for Grampa Sky at the game. When he scored the final goal, Grampa Sky was the first person Jake saw, standing up with his right hand on his heart and his eyes locked on Jake. Jake’s heart had swelled with pride just then. Now he had let himself get depressed.

  Jake closed the locker door. He slipped his feet into his sneakers and pulled on the T-shirt with a picture of Litefoot, the Iroquois rapper. Jake clipped his Walkman to his belt, slipped the earphones onto his head, and stood up. It was time to go see his mom.

  As Jake walked out the back door, a tall figure walked out from behind the maple tree. Jake stepped back in surprise. It seemed as if the tall old man had been a part of the tree and was emerging from it.

  “Grampa Sky,” Jake said, “I didn’t see you there.”

  Grampa Sky’s leathery face opened up into a smile. “Old Indian trick,” he said. “You know that story about the lacrosse game and the maple tree, don’t you? Seems there was this boy who was always bullying everyone else when they played lacrosse. He was a real good player, but that wasn’t enough for him. He thought he had to be the best. So he’d always play with the smaller boys. That way he could just push them around. The elders warned him not to act that way, but he didn’t listen. Finally, one of the old men, one who had power, picked that boy up and shoved him into a maple tree. That tree just opened up as he went in and then closed around him so that his head stuck out one side, and his feet stuck out the other side. They left him there like that all day. Finally, just before the sun went down, that old man pulled him out of the tree. From then on, that boy didn’t bully anyone.”

  “I see,” Jake said. He understood what Grampa Sky was saying. His story was meant to both praise Jake for being the best player on the field that day and to remind him to stay humble.

  Grampa Sky reached out to take Jake’s hand. He gently shook it. “Niaweh skanoh, grandchild. Good game you played there.”

  “Niaweh,” Jake said. Grampa Sky’s hand was rough and cool in his grasp. He wanted to keep holding onto it, as if it would keep him from having to leave.

  “Just wanted a minute to talk before we get up to the social,” Grampa Sky said as they walked along. “It’s hard to get a word in edgewise there.”

  Jake tried not to smile. Everyone respected Grampa Sky so much that any time he started to talk, they stopped so they could hear what he had to say.

  Grampa Sky tapped his palm against Jake’s chest. Thump-thump, thump-thump. The heartbeat rhythm. “You know that sound, Jake?”

  Jake nodded. The drumbeat of the heart was the first sound each person heard. Even before you were born, you could hear the beating of your mother’s heart.

  Grampa Sky nodded. “Just keep listening,” he said.

  Neither one of them said anything more as they walked the rest of the way. Grampa Sky slipped away when they rounded the corner of the longhouse. Chairs and tables had been put out in the open area between the buildings.

  Lots of people were there, but, as always, the first person Jake saw was his mother. She always stood out in a crowd, and not just because she was taller than many of the other women. There was always a sort of presence about his mom, the same kind of strength that Grampa Sky had, a self-assurance that made most people pay attention to her. It was only when she was around Jake that she seemed uncertain of what to say.

  Is that because I haven’t been listening? Jake wondered, thinking of Grampa Sky’s advice.

  She hadn’t seen Jake yet because she was turned the other way. She had on her favorite denim jacket, the one with the shape of a Wolf, their clan animal, beaded on the back.

  “Listen,” Jake whispered to himself. “I have to listen.”

  Just then his mother turned around and saw him. Her face lit up in a smile, warmer than the sun that shone low in the late afternoon sky just behind her.

  “I missed you,” she said when he walked up to her. Then she hesitated, suddenly uncertain about whether or not to embrace him.

  “I missed you, too, Mom,” Jake said, wrapping his arms around her.

  “Jakey,” his mother said, pressing his head against her shoulder. From there, he could hear the drumming of her heart.

  C H A P T E R F O U R

  DEER RUN

  TOO MUCH PAVEMENT. That was all he could think as he looked at the wide, empty, black road that curved through Deer Run.

  Jake sat on the paved driveway next to the small patch of brilliant green that pretended to be a lawn in front of his mother’s Maryland condo. It was grass all right, but Jake had never seen grass like this before. Every blade was neat and shiny and exactly the same height. But it shouldn’t have been surprising.

  After all, Jake thought, they bring this stuff in rolls on the back of trucks. Two days ago he’d watched—there’d been nothing else to do—while workers unrolled an instant lawn at the condo down the road. They pegged it in place, watered it, and then sprayed it with something that Jake suspected was deadly to all known life. They had taken down the little red plastic warning signs this afternoon, but Jake wasn’t about to forget them. And he wasn’t going to do any sunbathing lying out on their own so-called lawn. He didn’t trust it. At least the asphalt was safer.

  Jake picked up his skateboard, turned it upside down in his lap, and idly spun the wheels with his palm. Some kids might think this was skateboard heaven. Not a car to be seen. Nobody to tell you to get out of the road. No trucks throwing gravel up in your face like on the rez. And no other kids. There were no rules against having kids in Deer Run, but most of the people who lived in these units didn’t have kids. If they did, they’d move to Upper Deer Run half a mile away.

  The Upper Run offered each family six whole rooms instead of the four-and-a-half pre-fabricated cubicles (with attached private garage) like his mom’s unit. Some kids in the Upper Run were probably his age, but his mom had told him that whatever new friends he would have here in Maryland, he’d most likely have to find at his new school. Right now, with everyone at work, even finding another living human being seemed unlikely.

  It was weird. It was like one of those scenes in a science-fiction movie when someone wakes up to find out everyone else in the world has vanished and he’s completely alone. All Jake had to do was look overhead to know that wasn’t true. Air Force and commercial jets were constantly up there, criss-crossing back and forth, the highest ones leaving straight, white trails like lines of chalk drawn on the blue pavement of the sky.

  Jake could also hear the neverending traffic. The sign by the gated entrance said that Deer Run was “a secluded escape from the busy world.” But this commuters’ community, where nobody knew anybody else and a mass exodus began every morning right at sunup, wasn’t that isolated. Even at night Jake heard, and even felt, the rumble of trucks and cars on the big highway a mile away. Because of the street lights, the night sky was never really dark.

  Jake spun the wheels of his skateboard again. Yesterday he had probably gone ten miles on it, up and down one little street after another, where just about every building looked the same. Only the numbers and the cute little names told him where he was. Cougar Court. Beaver Lane. Woodchuck Terrace. Moose Walk. As if any animal bigger than a fly could even get in here—and once inside find anything to eat besides the poisoned green grass and the neatly spaced little maple trees with withered leaves. Deer Run, Jake thought. Good name. It’s what any deer that finds itself here would do as fast as it could—run away.

  Jake picked up his skateboard. He walked to the side door, checked the numbers his mother had printed on his armband, and then keyed in the combination. He was careful to do it exactly right. The keypad was hooked up to the guard box at the gate of Deer Run. Yesterday, when he’d tried three times before hitting the right combination, the phone was already ringing when he stepped inside. It was security, checking to make sure an “unauthorized entry” had not occurred.

  Jake looked at the cell phone on the table. It was his mom’s spare, one of those min
iature phones that he could clip on his belt. He’d used it almost all day the first day he was left here alone while Mom had to go in to her office. He’d called Uncle Irwin’s mobile phone in his truck and Aunt Alice’s bright yellow wall phone that hung in her kitchen. He’d called Grampa Sky’s old black phone that sat on the table in the entry room to their old house, the room that Grampa Sky called the mudroom. He had even reached his best buddy Rick Jamieson, catching him at home just before he went out to the lacrosse box to do shooting drills like “Around the World” with the rest of the team. It was like magic that day. Every number he called, the person always answered on the first ring and was really glad to hear from him. Jake talked and talked. As soon as one conversation was over, he punched in another number and hit the green SEND button. He couldn’t remember much of what he said to anyone, but he knew he still had more to say.

  After talking to everyone whose number he could remember, he started the round of calls again. The tone in Uncle Irwin’s voice changed the third time he answered his mobile phone and heard Jake’s voice saying, “Hey, Uncle Irwin. It’s me. What’s up?”

  “Jake,” Uncle Irwin said, “I love to hear from you, but I think you need to be where you are, nephew. You can’t live inside a phone.”

  Now remembering yesterday’s embarrassing phone lesson, Jake slumped into the family room and collapsed onto the Mad Scientist Chair in front of the TV. He’d given it that name because even though it was cushioned and comfortable to sit in, it was all strange angles. It had this control box you could use to make it change shapes. It could go up and down, recline, and lift back up again. With his eyes closed and the MSC reclined, Jake could imagine himself being lifted up toward the roof that would swing open so the lightning bolt could come down and strike him, just like in Frankenstein.

  Jake picked up the remote, but he didn’t turn on the giant home entertainment system. Instead he closed his eyes and held his hands in front of him, trying to imagine the feel of his lacrosse stick, the scent of the field behind the Nation School, the sound of a yellow-bellied sapsucker drumming against the big hollow oak tree in the woods behind the sunrise edge of the field.

  Then he sighed and opened his eyes. This was his last day here. Tomorrow was the start of school. He’d be out there at the gatehouse, wearing his new school blazer, waiting to be picked up by the private bus at 6:28 A.M.for Weltimore Academy. He thought maybe he should turn on the bigger-than-a-drive-in-movie-screen TV and take advantage of the 23 million different cable stations.

  But Jake didn’t turn on the TV. It didn’t interest him. It was funny—that was how he felt about everything right now. Not happy, not sad, just not interested. It was sort of like this was all happening to someone else.

  It was funny, too, how happy his mom was about everything. She was ecstatic about her job, about this condo— which she said was the first place she’d ever owned. She was delighted—she said—to have Jake with her.

  Jake kind of liked being with her, too, but so far it hadn’t felt real to him. It had been more like a vacation with a friendly stranger who looked like someone you used to know really well. Plus, even though his mom had intended to be with him pretty much 24/7 until he started school, things had come up at her job and she’d had to go to work, even though she supposedly had the whole week off. So Jake and his mom hadn’t spent much time together, except evenings when she just talked nonstop about her job while Jake mostly said, “Unh-hunh.”

  At least I’m making her happy by being here, he thought. I suppose I should at least be glad of that.

  She seemed especially happy about the way Jake took her big decision about what he couldn’t do. Jake remembered the scene back at the social. After hugging him and telling him how much he’d grown, his mom had taken him outside onto the back steps and sat down beside him. She told him how important this opportunity was for him. Going to this new school would open doors for him, taking him where the other Indian kids at the rez wouldn’t have a chance to go. He could get the kind of education that would make it possible for him to do great things for his people. That was what she had done, she told him, and she’d had to make sacrifices, too.

  She’d been nervous. Jake knew because she kept touching her left earring while she was talking. He had first noticed her special sign of nervousness when he was a very little kid. She had been doing it more often since his dad had died.

  “Jake,” she had said that day, “I have something really important to tell you.”

  “Unh-hunh,” Jake said. “Unh-hunh” was his all-purpose reply to grown-ups and friends alike. He had worked on it so much that he guessed he had more than twenty different ways to say it. This particular “unh-hunh” was the bright, attentive, I-am-reallylistening-to-you one, always accompanied by brief eye contact and a nod of the head.

  His mom rubbed at her earring. “Jake . . . ,” she said again.

  “Unh-hunh,” he answered, meaning something along the lines of “Yup, you guessed it. That’s who I am.”

  “Jake, your teachers here all say that you are not working up to your ability. I think that’s because you need to focus. Weltimore has the highest academic requirements. I was lucky to get you in. They had an opening at the very last minute. You are going to have to work extra-hard, son.”

  “Unh, hunnh.” Saying it just a little slower this way meant Jake knew something was coming that he wasn’t going to like.

  “Jake, you know what they say about us.”

  Jake knew. He’d heard it often enough from his mother to know that the word “us” meant all Indians, just as “they” meant the white people who thought Indians were nothing more than lazy bums and ignorant savages. His mom had felt so much hurt when she was in school and discovered that some people thought of her in that way. Because of this, Jake knew that his mom was determined to be not only as good as a white lawyer, but even better than any of them. He also knew that saying “unh-hunh” would not satisfy his mother this time.

  “I know, Mom,” he said.

  Jake’s mom looked at him. “Then you will understand why I have decided that you will have to give up something you love.”

  She looked intently at him. Jake kept his gaze toward the ground, limiting any sign of emotion on his face, as he thought, Only one thing? I thought you were already asking me to give up my whole life here.

  His mom took a deep breath. “Jake,” she said, her voice taking on a business-like tone, “I am going to ask you to promise—just for this first term—not to play lacrosse.”

  She looked hard at her son, expecting to see his defiant “buffalo look.”

  Instead, and without hesitation, Jake held out his hand to her. “I promise, Mom,” he said.

  C H A P T E R F I V E

  WELTIMORE

  THE OTHER KIDS ON THE BUS were talking to each other, but Jake, who was way in the back, wasn’t listening. For now, at least, they didn’t seem to even see him. He hadn’t moved his backpack off the seat next to him when other kids started getting on the bus. He just kept staring out the window. They’d taken the hint: Leave the new kid alone.

  The bus wasn’t much bigger than a van, two-thirds the size of one of the “June Bugs.” That was what the kids back on the rez called the four buses in the orange fleet that served the Nation School. Jake had never had to take a bus before, living only two hundred yards down the road from the school. But it was different here. Deer Run was three miles away from Weltimore. Even if he’d wanted to go that distance on foot, the crazy maze of highways and streets that the bus negotiated would have made it impossible. Close as it was, with the nineteen stops to pick up the thirty-one other boys who rode the bus, with all the merges and stoplights, and so many turns that Jake thought they were going to meet themselves coming and going, it took more than half an hour to reach the tree-lined entrance to his new school.

  Jake saw right away that the trees were all maples. Jake loved maples. He remembered his uncle telling him about how the maple became
the leader of the trees. It was the first tree to offer its gift to the people each year, giving its annual harvest of syrup. Just seeing the trees made him think of the late-winter smell of maple sap cooking down in the sugaring house behind the Nation School.

  Then Jake noticed something. The Weltimore maples were different from the ones back on the rez. They had no broken branches, no dead limbs, no small marks on the sides left by decades of tapping. These trees looked like pictures of maples, perfect models instead of the real thing. Every one of the trees was exactly the same, pruned into conformity. They were as alike as every boy on the bus, all wearing the same school uniform.

  Jake looked further out the window, past the perfect maples. The drive led half a mile uphill to the impressive stone facade of Weltimore’s main building. Jake rubbed his hands together. It wasn’t really hot on the bus, but for some reason his palms were all sweaty. He started to wipe them on his legs, and then stopped. He didn’t want to stain his new gray slacks or make a moist spot on them. He looked around and then pulled a handkerchief out of the side pocket of his backpack to dry his hands.

  The driveway was long, but it wasn’t long enough for Jake. He hoped it would go on forever so he wouldn’t have to get out and go into that building. He’d never gone to a school where he didn’t know anyone. That morning, his mom told him she had faith in his “adaptability.” He’d just said, “Unh-hunh,” and nodded. But after he’d looked the word up in his dictionary, he decided he’d agreed too soon. He doubted that he could “adjust, accommodate, or conform to new surroundings.” In fact, he was sure he couldn’t.