60
RUNS WITH COURAGE
All around me I began to notice that the same sticks and
words were on other things in the white world; on maps,
pictures, and papers. As my understanding unfolded, I felt
like the prairie awakening in the spring. I was hit with the
ruler less. My name was called out in anger less. And I
began to feel more settled.
At night, I would look up at the picture of the man on
the wall in our sleeping room and feel less afraid that I
would be punished as he was.
It was in the church service that I learned more about
this man on the wall, the man the whites called Jesus. On
the day called Sunday, we didn’t have school lessons. Instead,
we went into the church building for a church service. The
only man I ever saw at the school, Pastor Huber, would be
waiting there.
He was always dressed in black, and his hair was cut as
short as the boy William’s. The teachers called him brother,
but he was not a real brother to any of them.
“God is in everything,” he would say during church
service, pounding his fist on his wooden stand with each
word. “He is in all things. Above all else, this you must
understand! He will punish the sinners and the
nonbelievers.”
