It had not been hard growing old. He had outlived all of them, the powerful friends in government, and the spiteful, petty tyrants who had tried to tame him. He had finally earned the annuities that had been taken, and earned the respect of the missionaries. He was 77 years old. He had beaten everyone but Steven. He reached back to Michigan in his dream. Where was Steven now? Eshtonoquot had heard from him when he had his 13th child. Last year? The year before? Perhaps he was cutting lumber on the marsh. If he strained, perhaps he could see him urging his horse across the fields to the dock. Steven was always trying to get rich. A man with that many children needed coin. But he felt rich, too. He had the red wing, the snow goose, the track of the black bear. He had ancestors and children. And tonight, he had a dream. He shut his eyes and resisted his body’s urge to cough and struggle for breath again. He would send his soul on one last flight, too. That’s why he had refused the food the women had brought. Beyond Steven’s silhouette he thought he saw canoes tied to the dock. Perhaps Fafard and the other Makoons had come for him. They would know him now, he had his name. They were great travelers, those Canadians, always ready with a song and a pack. But they couldn’t recognize him before, without the help of his totem, his name. In his dream, a deer started from behind a cluster of sumac but his grandfathers did not react. A beam of sunlight was shining through the leaves of a single sugarbush overhead. He began to run. He was surprised how easy it was. No clay was gluing his feet to the ground. His bad knees weren’t even aching. He could move freely toward the sunlight. He stopped for a minute and looked back. He saw a dark, old man lying there, oddly silent in quilts and feather tick. His eyes were dark and his fists clenched. Two feathers hung from the post of the bed, a string of silver beads and bells. Was that his father? No, his father had been beaten, been bloodied by the men he thought were his friends. This Ojibwa wasn’t beaten, wasn’t in pain at all. He was at peace. And so was his soul. He could leave him there and pursue his dream.

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