Red Earth White Earth. Will Weaver

      

      Red Earth, White Earth

      Red Earth,

      White Earth

      WILL WEAVER

      Borealis Books is an imprint of the Minnesota Historical Society Press.

      www.borealisbooks.org

      Copyright © 1986 by Will Weaver. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, write to Borealis Books, 345 Kellogg Blvd. W., St. Paul, MN 55102-1906.

      The Minnesota Historical Society Press is a member of the Association of American University Presses.

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1984.

      International Standard Book Numbers

      10-digit: 0-87351-555-2 (paper)

      13-digit: 978-0-87351-555-9 (paper)

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Weaver, Will.

      Red earth, white earth / Will Weaver.

      p. cm.

      ISBN-13: 978-0-87351-555-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)

      ISBN-10: 0-87351-555-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)

      1. Indians of North America—Fiction.

      2. Land tenure—Fiction.

      3. Minnesota—Fiction.

      I. Title.

      Ebook ISBN: 978-0-87351-693-8

      PS3573.E192R4 2006

      813’.54—dc22

      2006014945

      To Rosalie Nonnemacher Weaver

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      I wish to thank the following individuals and institutions for their help: Bemidji State University, for crucial writing time; Jonathon and Wendy Lazear, for believing in books; my sister, Judy Weaver Post, for her typing, proofreading, and general advice; the Minnesota State Arts Board and the McKnight Foundation, for their generous financial support; Stanford University’s John L’Heureux and Nancy Packer, for showing me the short story; my editor, Patricia B. Soliman, and Susan Kamil, for their early and unflagging belief in Red Earth, White Earth; and thanks, finally, to my parents, who always had time.

      AUTHOR’S NOTE

      Zhingwaak’s stories are traditional Ojibwe legends. In some cases I have slightly altered their content and language. Special thanks go to Earl Nyholm, Indian man and maker of books, berry pies, and birch bark canoes, for his help with matters of Ojibwe culture and language.

      Red Earth, White Earth

      Prologue

      The letter came to his office. Its writing, in pencil, wobbled diagonally across the envelope, fell over the edge, came back on a new track. No return address but the postmark was from Minnesota.

      March 15, 1984

      Guy—

      Trouble here. Come home when you can.

      Sincerely,

      Your grandfather, Helmer Pehrsson

      Guy Pehrsson, thirty, tall, fair-haired, with wide, bony shoulders, turned off his phone. He swung around in his chair to look out the high window of his office. His view was east. Across the blue end of San Francisco Bay were the inland foothills. It was March in California. The air was rain-scrubbed and clear. The hills rose up rounded and green. A thin blanket of gray clouds drifted just above their summits. Beyond the hills two thousand miles were Minnesota and the farm Guy had grown up on.

      Guy looked again at the letter. He was surprised his grandfather could write. Twelve years ago Helmer’s stroke had left him as stiff as a garden hose left outside in December. But some parts of him must have thawed.

      Trouble.

      Guy had left Minnesota because of trouble. Trouble with Martin, his father.

      Trouble with the farm, with the bank, with Helmer.

      No trouble with Madeline, his mother. But in the twelve years Guy had been gone she seldom wrote. The first year in California he waited for his mother’s letters. When they did come he was always angry at their brevity. Her notes told of early killing frosts. Of Guy’s classmates killed in farming or trucking accidents. Of the need for rain.

      Guy wrote equally short notes in reply. After a year he stopped writing at all. Madeline’s notes continued to come, usually around Christmas, his birthday, Easter, and other holidays, but Guy did not bother a reply. He had his own life now. A new life. He had nothing to say to his family.

      He left his office early and drove home. His house sat in the foothills above Palo Alto. It was a square, steep-roofed house made of redwood with a glass front. As Guy pulled into his garage, inside the house Kennedy began to bark. Kennedy was his dachshund.

      He fixed Kennedy a bowl of food and poured a glass of cold Chablis for himself. He stood with the wine, reading the letter again. Afterward, he looked out his picture window. The sun shone. Three houses down the hill, alongside the blue kidney bean of her swimming pool, the red-haired lady sunbathed topless while two Mexican men mowed her lawn. She always sunbathed when the gardeners were there.

      Farther down, cars moved silently on Highway 280 toward Sunnyvale and San Jose. Down there beneath the flat lid of city haze was Guy’s company, a white, supermarket-size building. Inside, a hundred men and women rolled carts of green and copper printed circuit boards from station to station. Outside, pink Toyota speedy-delivery trucks came and went like tropical ants as they shuttled Guy’s circuit boards to the receiving doors of the big computer companies in the Bay Area. Doors and mouths. His company spit out circuit boards as fast as it could make them. The large electronic factories of Silicon Valley swallowed them up in great, endless gulps.

      Guy was glad he could not see his company from his house. He did not like to think about it when he was not there. He paid people to do that. Paid them well. Well enough that they took care of everything. Guy usually worked a half day, then drove up to the library at Stanford to read, or else up to the city, San Francisco, to the art galleries or to concerts. California had been good to him.

      He unfolded his grandfather’s letter again. The writing was as faint as sparrow tracks in sand. He ran his fingers across the words. Below on the page was a faint baby’s foot of oil from the side of Helmer’s hand. Guy held the smudged page up to his nose. When he closed his eyes he smelled straw, old wool, cows.

      Come home.

      He looked about his house. He was home. On one wall were his books, the rolling oak library ladder that reached the top shelves.

      On another wall were his paintings. Centered was a wide oil entitled “A Thousand Cows.” The cows were black and white Holsteins, the cow lot was walnut-brown mud with a chartreuse June hillside behind, and every cow had turned its head to look out of the canvas into the room; when he first saw the painting in a gallery, Guy imagined that someone near the cows had fired a gun. Beside the big oil was a print of Friedensreich Hundertwasser’s Der Traum des toten Indianers; its Indian lay dreaming at the bottom of a city.

      On an opposite wall were stereo gear and shelves of records. Alongside the turntable were two albums, B. B. King and Strauss. He put on the Strauss. Some waltzes.