One Native Life Read Online Free Page B

time to show me how to write properly. Every day, before and after school, she and I sat at a desk and worked through the primary writing books. I shaped letters time after time after time, until I gradually unlearned the awkward process I’d taught myself. Unlearning something is a lot harder than learning it. I struggled to break down my method, and at times it seemed I would never get it right. But I persisted with the help and encouragement of that teacher.
    I write on a keyboard these days. But there isn’t a time when I set pen to paper that I don’t remember learning how to write and what it took to get me there. I still shape my Gs and Ds wrong, though. I still write them back to front.
    Sometimes life turns us upside down and backwards. It’s caring that gets us back on our feet again and pointed in the right direction.

Bringing in the Sheaves
    . . .
    I LEARNED TO drive when I was ten, on an old grey Allis-Chalmers tractor. My job was to pull the wagon while the men of my adopted family forked sheaves of wheat at threshing time. I had to drive carefully, so that the men on the top of the load were safe.
    Threshing time was big. Hereditary farms like my adopted grandfather’s still flourished in Huron County back then, and there was a strong sense of community along the dusty concession roads. Neighbours had been neighbours for generations, and folks looked out for each other. Help was always needed for one thing or another and, in those times, help was always there.
    Bringing in the crop was an event. People came from all along the line to pitch in. It gave the work the feel of importance, and I was proud to be part of it. The only thing I could do at my age was drive, and I took to it quickly. My driving had to be smooth and steady. When I turned I made sure I did it evenly, conscious of both the load and the men atop it. When the wagon was full I drove up the lane to the barn, where the threshing machine waited. I could hear the men chatting and laughing on the wagon behind me.
    When we stopped for lunch there was a virtual feast laid out for us. The women and girls had worked in the kitchen all the time we were in the fields. There was roast beef and mashed potatoes and four kinds of pie and ice cream for dessert. The talk was lively and quick, with lots of jokes and teasing. I watched it all with a kind of awe.
    As a foster kid I had rarely felt like a real part of family things. At celebrations I was ignored for the most part. There was always a sharp sense of difference, of separation, and I learned to see things from the sidelines. Being included felt wonderful to me, and I revelled in it. Those meals felt like a passageway into a whole new world. But what happened after those lunches is what sticks with me most today.
    The men gathered on the veranda. They sat in chairs, slumped on the railings or lazed on the stairs. They smoked, drank a beer or two, talked and laughed. It was as if the work had created a different kind of space for them, filled them with a light that you could cup in your hands, relax into the warmth of the sun on your back. I felt manly in that space, allowed entry by virtue of my labour.
    I was a boy of ten, working for the first time, and in the loose togetherness of those people I got a sense of what it took to accomplish things. These were farmer folk, and threshing was something they took seriously. It wasn’t just work to them. It was purpose, a matter-of-fact need, and they just got down to it.
    You could tell the way they felt about the land. It was in their easy talk and the way they squinted earnestly at the fields, maybe rubbed a head of wheat in their palms, then sniffed deeply with their eyes closed. The land defined them, gave them substance, gave them breath.
    Years later, working with my people, I’d see that connection again. It was in the easy talk of the elders, the way they squinted earnestly at the land, maybe rubbed a bit of sage or cedar in their hands, then