Transcripts

SPEAKER: Suddenly, one day, we came to a huge river. The people cried, remembering the Ohio. The soldier told me it was the Mississippi. We would cross it into Missouri. We camped under the cover of brush and watched the ice chunks float by Green's ferry landing.

The Earth and the sky were ghost white in the frozen air. Sometimes there was a wailing. Look at the terrible outcropping of rock up river, a bluff, the soldier called it. The hills were higher than they had been when we crossed the Ohio and the tree shorter, allowing the heavy sky to push down on us.

Many more of us died waiting for the ice to pass. Nabodi and the men sat spitting into the fire. That bluff is where the Earth steps up to the sky world. Anna Oscoda said, I felt my fear of the river grow. How can we cross that water? I cried in panic to Tanner one evening, we'll die, will drown like the others.

Mark and Ephraim heard me and they cried too. My father didn't say anything. His hair had grayed and his eyes were dull and hollow in his head. Lucy held her boys. We'll make it the rest of the way. Look at it, Quatie Lewis said. It's a spirit river.

I watched the ice pass for a few more days. Then one morning I woke with a taste of peaches in my mouth. I heard the soldiers preparing to cross the river. We had always been toward the front of the line. We would be among the first ones to cross. My heart pounded wildly. I held something in my hands, but always I found they were empty.

The bear camped before me as usual. I tried to push him away, but he did not move. I felt the stirring of his breath in the cold morning. Old bear, I cried to him, today we crossed the river. I patted his hide. Move over, I go even if it's to the afterlife with mother and the baby.

The boys fretted as we waited for the raft that would take us across the river. They cried frantically when the soldiers herded us toward the landing. I felt a tightness in my chest. My arms hurt. Surely, the land and the trail we walked would fold under the Earth with the sun.

I heard the trees mourning for us. We go, I told the boys. They would not hold still. Don't run, I told them again. Above us the clouds were my grandmother's bone carved hairpin. Grandmother, I called. She smiled. Her face was now Gray and lovely above the wind that snarled up river.

I saw the spirits eating from my feather edged dishes. I heard them in the wind. They put down their knives and forks. They came and held the sides of the tossing raft as we stepped onto it, some of us falling, others crying out. The spirits wore bright tunics and turbans, and I couldn't see beyond them as we crossed the river.

They held a raft steady as it jerked between large pieces of ice. I spooned more cornbread to them, more squirrel meat and peach cobbler. I had cooked it just this morning in my dream. Hold on, hold on, I heard them say, as we crossed the river, their ghost voices laughing to the freezing wind.