excerpt
Anton couldn’t agree more, in George’s shoes he would
had done the same, he told him.
Later when time came for lunch, Anton went to the eating
area where the teachers brought the children. Sister Anna was
on duty on the girls’ side and Father Peter who was responsible
for the boys. They led them as any other time, they asked them
to say their prayer and then they were allowed to go and get
their plateful of food. Anton sat with Mary and had their meals
together. Tyson and his assistant took the food for the teachers
to the personnel eating area.
Almost two months passed as indifferently as all other
months, indifferent to the calamities befell on the children of
the Kamloops Indian Residential School, indifferent to the fast
passing of the strap over their hardened skin, whether that was
the skin of a chest or of an extremity whether it was covered
by clothes or exposed to the harsh elements of the upcoming
Kamloops winter. Trees and shrubs of the periphery showed
their first signs of the approaching cold by slowly baring their
limbs and getting ready to resist the first frost which wasn’t too
far away. The archon of the sky with its withered light was sometimes
swelling up in the firmament assuming faint leaden hued
mascara and other times as if remembering bygone hot days it
exerted itself trying to spread its odd warm rays over the faces
of the whipped kids as well as over the skin of the old folks of
this city: Kamloops in the center of a corridor trucks from the
East followed before they descended through the Fraser canyon
to the West Coast, to the city of Vancouver the business center
of the West. And then as if by surprise some odd hours the same
almighty archon would appear as if from an unknown place and
stay around languidly caressing the early frost of people’s skin
and nature’s bosom.
Libros Libertad 