Free Lone Wolves by John Smelcer Page B

who would sing and drum later, had as many as three or four rifles.
    In preparation for the dance, called the hwtiitł c’edzes, the blue tarps were folded up and put away, the floor hastily swept, and a string stretched about seven or eight feet high across the center of the room, over which were hung hundreds of colorful handkerchiefs. Several elder men with traditional skin drums, called ghleli, took their special place and began to beat their drum and sing in their native language. And while most people danced, almost no one understood a word of any of the songs.
    Denny sometimes worried what would happen to the potlatch when, in a matter of a few years, none of the elder men would be around to sing and drum. As far back as she could recall, women never sang or drummed. Who would take their place? Who would tell the old stories and teach the old ways? As the only young person who could speak the language, she wondered what her role would be in the uncertain future. For years, she had been writing down the words she learned from elders, hundreds of words, perhaps a thousand. Would they call on her to help carry on the language and customs? Or would they turn their backs on her because she was a blue-eyed half-breed with light-colored skin whose father didn’t love her?
    Already, some Indians wouldn’t have anything to do with Denny, no matter how nice she was to them, like Alexie Senungutuk, who was almost the same age, but from a different tribe.
    â€œWe true skins ain’t gonna have nothin’ to do with someone like you, someone with an eyedropper-full of Indian blood!” he had once told her, his voice as vicious as a wolverine with its paw stuck in a steel trap. “We’ll never accept you! You ain’t nothin’!”
    After that, Alexie did his best to convince other Indians to exclude Denny from everything. He tried to turn her into a cowering shadow for other Indians to stomp on. For the most part, it worked. Denny learned the hard way that whoever said words can’t hurt was wrong. Alexie wielded his tongue like a switchblade that he flicked open to cut anyone in his way, and his sharp-edged words left scars.
    The rejection Denny felt was like a hole in her chest big enough for a moose to step through. Lots of people are like Alexie—figuring the only way they can elevate their standing in society is by destroying others, even in such a small, closed group. Truth be told, Alexie wasn’t full-blood either, but he liked to think he was. He liked to think he knew everything and spoke for all Indians. But he didn’t. He was a big bully who didn’t even speak his grandmother’s language or hunt and fish like other men.
    He had never caught a salmon in his life.
    The summer before he and Denny were to start high school, Alexie drowned when his uncle’s boat capsized on the river.
    But the scars he left never went away.
    With a handkerchief in each hand, Denny danced the way her grandfather had taught her, stomping the floor hard, the way boys and men did.
    â€œYou have to stomp so hard that the floor shakes,” she remembered him once telling her. “If your feet don’t hurt, you not doin’ it right.”
    For over an hour Denny danced in the inner circle, where only boys and men usually danced. Girls and women usually formed a large slow-moving circle around the center. Out of the corner of her eye, Denny saw her father dancing his way toward her. For a long time, they danced side by side, each bent over, trying to stomp out all the hurt and grief inside. It was as if they were both trying to stomp the past into dust.
    Finally, her father leaned in close.
    â€œI’m sorry about your grandfather,” he said just loud enough to be heard above the drums and singing and stomping. “He was a good man.”
    Still dancing, Denny nodded in a way that merely acknowledged that she had heard and agreed with his words.
    But no matter how