Wildfire!
by
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I knew Mom, my older brother Chris and I visited her father the week before my third birthday. Chris was only nine then but he remembered their argument. Mom wouldn’t let our grandfather drive us to town because he had been drinking. Hot words were hurled between them when he told her to “crawl home to your white boy and take your mongrels with you.” Mom, mad and crying, told us to go out and get in the car. Chris said he remembered her picking up a rock and threw it at the house. She called Dad from a phone booth and said we were on our way home because her father was mean-drunk. Chris told me things my Dad hadn’t. Chris said he heard our grandfather call us mongrels, half-breeds. Chris said he hated our grandfather. And I did, too.
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About the Book
I’m a thirteen-year-old-half-breed, a mongrel, according to my mom’s father. He’s full-blooded Kootenai Indian and I am only half-Indian. My dad’s heritage is a mix of Scot, Irish, French and Ger-man. So maybe the old man is right, I am a mongrel, like most Americans, a mix of nationalities. But, with him, it’s not a simple fact. It was spoken with disgust and loathing ten years ago and my mother died because of it. My older brother Chris and I hate him.
For ten years, no one heard from the old man and we were fine with that. Then a letter shows up saying he wants me to spend the summer with him. Dad said my mother would have wanted her youngest son to know her people. I fought against it and lost in the end. I always do when it’s ‘what Mom would have wanted.’
So I’m stuck on the Kootenai-Salish Indian Reservation in northwestern Montana. All I have to do is find his stash of booze and I’ll be on my way home.
About the Author
I’m a thirteen-year-old-half-breed, a mongrel, according to my mom’s father. He’s full-blooded Kootenai Indian and I am only half-Indian. My dad’s heritage is a mix of Scot, Irish, French and Ger-man. So maybe the old man is right, I am a mongrel, like most Americans, a mix of nationalities. But, with him, it’s not a simple fact. It was spoken with disgust and loathing ten years ago and my mother died because of it. My older brother Chris and I hate him.
For ten years, no one heard from the old man and we were fine with that. Then a letter shows up saying he wants me to spend the summer with him. Dad said my mother would have wanted her youngest son to know her people. I fought against it and lost in the end. I always do when it’s ‘what Mom would have wanted.’
So I’m stuck on the Kootenai-Salish Indian Reservation in northwestern Montana. All I have to do is find his stash of booze and I’ll be on my way home.
TRISHA DAVISlived in Montana during the wildfire season of 2000 and worked at the Perma fire camp. She now shares a homestead lifestyle in south-central Alaska with her husband, Chuck, and a Great Pyrenees named Chato.
www.deadfallmtn.com