had loved in their exotic perfection. Cacti, orchids, lizards. Precious and fragilethings that could be protected from the cruelties of the world, waiting through their dormancy to restore themselves in the summer, thriving somehow even in the midst of an Electric City blizzard.
The library was where Martin could be hidden by choice instead of the way he felt disregarded so often by other places, at least other places with people inside them. Electric City seemed content to use native names for streets and buildings, but otherwise any living presence of Indians was altogether avoided. Too dark-skinned, too dark-haired, too long-haired. Seemed like where most white people were concerned, Martin was always too much of one thing and not enough of the other.
He couldn’t help feeling the unmistakable vibration of attitudes, brushing up against him with prickly heat or icy cold. He would have preferred to stay home or walk alone in the woods, sit on the river’s cliff-edge and watch the silt-thickened movements of water. But there were times like now that he needed the books on these shelves. If he had to sit and walk and learn among the offspring of scientists, he wanted to make sure that he was still in charge of what details gathered in his mind, still able to select and examine the images and information that mattered most to him.
That’s why he was in the stacks, reading about the Erie Canal and studying one of the black-and-white photographs of skaters on its frozen surface, with the credit naming the photographer as Charles Proteus Steinmetz, 1899. Martin carried with him the photo of his grandfather that used to hang black-framed on the wall, the one Annie said looked so much like him, from the shape of his eyebrows to the line of his jawbone.
There was one drawer of photos in his grandmother’s house that had been taken by Steinmetz: images of his dog Sir, who was nothing at alllike Martin’s dog Bear; the cabin he’d built beside the river; a self-portrait of the hunchbacked man inside his dark wool overcoat and wearing a coonskin cap. Did my grandfather make that for you too?
Martin glanced back at the image of the skaters again, thinking about Steinmetz and his photos of his grandfather. Lately Martin had been trying to write down certain stories of Joseph’s, before he forgot everything.
He did more than write them down. He had managed to record his now-dead grandfather speaking in Mohawk, telling the story of a bridge disaster, and tales older than that one. His grandmother singing, the melody she made up in honor of Martin’s birth, the one that sang him into the world. When Annie explained how she’d learned to weave baskets or repair beadwork on a ceremonial headpiece, Martin held a microphone nearby, not wanting to disturb her, determined not to lose the chance.
Nowadays there was so much talk about Mother Earth and ecology in school, and sometimes Martin wanted to stand up and make them listen to one of his recordings. His people knew for centuries that the land underfoot and all around was sacred, full of spirit and power, with rights that mustn’t be violated or taken for granted. Teachers lectured about pollution and clear-cutting and damming rivers and DDT in the bodies of dead birds. Martin could have played them just one of his tapes, just one, but he was sure they wouldn’t recognize the sound of the truth.
Just then he felt something peculiar at the back of his neck, an electric warning, and in the space just wide enough between two shelves of oversized books he could see that the girl was watching him. It felt to him as if they had just bumped heads. He thought she was about to come over and say something, ask what he was reading. But she pivoted away and vanished.
S OPHIE WATCHED S IMON leave early each July morning in his used Mustang, off to spend his days perched on a high wooden chair at the shoreline of the public beach on Lake George. His back and arm muscles had suddenly
The library was where Martin could be hidden by choice instead of the way he felt disregarded so often by other places, at least other places with people inside them. Electric City seemed content to use native names for streets and buildings, but otherwise any living presence of Indians was altogether avoided. Too dark-skinned, too dark-haired, too long-haired. Seemed like where most white people were concerned, Martin was always too much of one thing and not enough of the other.
He couldn’t help feeling the unmistakable vibration of attitudes, brushing up against him with prickly heat or icy cold. He would have preferred to stay home or walk alone in the woods, sit on the river’s cliff-edge and watch the silt-thickened movements of water. But there were times like now that he needed the books on these shelves. If he had to sit and walk and learn among the offspring of scientists, he wanted to make sure that he was still in charge of what details gathered in his mind, still able to select and examine the images and information that mattered most to him.
That’s why he was in the stacks, reading about the Erie Canal and studying one of the black-and-white photographs of skaters on its frozen surface, with the credit naming the photographer as Charles Proteus Steinmetz, 1899. Martin carried with him the photo of his grandfather that used to hang black-framed on the wall, the one Annie said looked so much like him, from the shape of his eyebrows to the line of his jawbone.
There was one drawer of photos in his grandmother’s house that had been taken by Steinmetz: images of his dog Sir, who was nothing at alllike Martin’s dog Bear; the cabin he’d built beside the river; a self-portrait of the hunchbacked man inside his dark wool overcoat and wearing a coonskin cap. Did my grandfather make that for you too?
Martin glanced back at the image of the skaters again, thinking about Steinmetz and his photos of his grandfather. Lately Martin had been trying to write down certain stories of Joseph’s, before he forgot everything.
He did more than write them down. He had managed to record his now-dead grandfather speaking in Mohawk, telling the story of a bridge disaster, and tales older than that one. His grandmother singing, the melody she made up in honor of Martin’s birth, the one that sang him into the world. When Annie explained how she’d learned to weave baskets or repair beadwork on a ceremonial headpiece, Martin held a microphone nearby, not wanting to disturb her, determined not to lose the chance.
Nowadays there was so much talk about Mother Earth and ecology in school, and sometimes Martin wanted to stand up and make them listen to one of his recordings. His people knew for centuries that the land underfoot and all around was sacred, full of spirit and power, with rights that mustn’t be violated or taken for granted. Teachers lectured about pollution and clear-cutting and damming rivers and DDT in the bodies of dead birds. Martin could have played them just one of his tapes, just one, but he was sure they wouldn’t recognize the sound of the truth.
Just then he felt something peculiar at the back of his neck, an electric warning, and in the space just wide enough between two shelves of oversized books he could see that the girl was watching him. It felt to him as if they had just bumped heads. He thought she was about to come over and say something, ask what he was reading. But she pivoted away and vanished.
S OPHIE WATCHED S IMON leave early each July morning in his used Mustang, off to spend his days perched on a high wooden chair at the shoreline of the public beach on Lake George. His back and arm muscles had suddenly
Similar Books
