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There was a yellow tarpaulin tentedacross her middle.
They looked like mere
sticksin the vast sea of green that had swallowed the old village. As we slid
through the water, hour after hour, I found myselflistening for the
OO-oo-oooeo. I felt like a thief taking possession of anothers things
withoutleave. At the sound of thekey in the rusty lock, rats scuttled away.
A
fierce sun burned down as ifit wanted to expose every ugliness and forlorness.
Taut,motionless, uttering no word, she watched them grow. The school teacher
had left everything shipshape. As dawn came I watched things slowlypoke out of
the black.
She summed up the depth and charm of the whole forest,driving away
its menace. It was cut offfrom the school house by space filled with desperate
loneliness.
Sophies other neighbour, Susan, produced and buried babies almostas
fast as Sophie herself.
The girl was rigging a ragged flour sack in the canoe
for a sail. It was like beingswallowed again and again by some terrible
monster, but never goingdown.
She drew a humped wrist across her nose andsaid,
I dunno, I dunno, after each remark. Tommy knew that day had come when he felt
Jenny Two-Bits stickjab him. The nettles that were above my headreached only to
her knee.
Thewind and the waves were crisp and sparkling.
The barefoot children
swarmedover her side and waded ashore. So we went to Gittex and Angedar, two
old village sites on the NaasRiver. It had hardly beenout of them since I had
taken it to her a week before. Susans hand crept from beneath her shawl to
touch a babys leg. These children belongedto the beach, and were as much a part
of it as the drift-logs andthe stones. This was DSonoqua, and she was a
supernatural being, who belongedto these Indians. When they were all linked
together they madevery strong talk for the people.
One of the women came in and
tried to free me. The old man and the woman, where are they? There was a baby
tucked into the womans shawl; the shawlbound the child close to her body.
She
was a friendly soul, but she spoke no English. When they saw me, the boy hung
back and stared.
The creatures faces were swollen into wrong shapes. Storms had
robbedhim of both wings, and his head had a resentful twist, as if heblamed
somebody. But each had alittle new grave in the cemetery.
They had hung a tent
from the limb of the old willow tree thatlolled over the sand from the bank.
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