Indian Horse

At “St. Germ’s,” Saul is known as “Zhaunagush” by the other children because he can read and speak English. This leads him to isolate himself and retreat into books. Meanwhile, other children suffer horrible fates at the hands of the nuns. Arden Little Light, who constantly has a runny nose and is punished by having his hands tied behind his back so that he won’t wipe his nose on his sleeve, hangs himself in despair. He is buried in the graveyard referred to as the Indian Yard. Sheila Jack is the granddaughter of a shaman, and is thus respected and has a regal air. However, the nuns endeavor to break her and make her recite her catechism at all hours. She goes mad and is taken away to a psychiatric facility. Shane Big Canoe, who runs away, is put in the “Iron Sister,” a box in the basement, for ten days. He comes back broken.

This chapter describes a short vignette that highlights the children’s longing and isolation. They escape the school to a nearby creek, where they catch and release fish, because they have “no knives to clean them…no fire to smoke them over…no place to store them” (54). They fall asleep smelling the fish smell on their hands and cry, seeing themselves in those fish they saw gasping for air on the grass.

This very short (single paragraph) chapter emphasizes the horror the children experienced. Saul describes yet more deaths and disappearances from tuberculosis, pneumonia, and suicide. He again states that he was only able to survive by retreating unto himself.

Father Gaston Leboutilier is introduced as a new priest who came to the school the same year as Saul. Unlike the others, he has humor and kindness, and soon introduces hockey to the students. Saul’s interest in the game in sparked first through books, then in seeing a game on TV for the first time. Once the boys start playing, Saul notices that he can “see not just the physical properties of the game and the action but the intent” (58). He likens this immediate intuition to his great-grandfather’s intuitive gift. He is deemed too young to play, but is given permission to mind the ice.

Saul begins cleaning the rink in the mornings before anyone else is awake. Soon, he begins hiding a hockey stick in the snow and practicing with horse turds that he treats as pucks, practicing the stickhandling he sees on Hockey Night in Canada on Father Leboutilier’s TV. At night, too, he gets out of bed when others are sleeping and envisions the linoleum as ice, and practices still more. As he envisions himself playing, he “would face the picture of Jesus hung there on the wall, [his] salvation coming instead through wood and rubber and ice and the dream of a game” (62).

By his second winter, now aged nine, Saul begins hiding skates as well as a stick, and practices skating as well as stickhandling. He copies moves he sees on TV, envisioning moves before executing them, silently so that he isn’t discovered. He “no longer felt the hopeless, chill air around [him] because [he] had Father Leboutilier, the ice, the mornings and the promise of a game that [he] would soon be old enough to play” (66).

Soon, the boys are preparing for their first game and Father Leboutilier is working them hard. While at practice, one boy falls on the ice and is injured. When someone asks how they’ll make a team without him, Saul offers to sub in. Father Leboutilier is surprised, but lets him play “‘for the scrimmage.’” As when he first saw the game played, he “saw the direction of the game before it happened” (69) and quickly awes the other boys and Father Leboutilier by making a goal. As practice ends, the older boys make a spot for him among within the team, and he is no longer the outsider.

At first, Father Quinney and Sister Ignacia protest, but Father Quinney declares Saul has a ‘God-given gift’ (72) after seeing him play. He becomes a team member, though he still maintains the ice. Now he openly practices, creating his own skating drills. Though he still feels loneliness and longing for his lost family, he “knew that loneliness would be dispelled by the sheen of the rink in the sunlight, the feel of cold air on [his] face, the sound of a wooden stick shuffling frozen rubber” (73).

Three weeks later, they have their first game. His teammates and the crowd laugh at his small body drowning in his uniform, and they feel out of place in the indoor arena. Father Leboutilier warns them of the team’s skills and tells them to just play for fun and experience. Even on the bench, Saul’s vision kicks in and he is able to “see what they were going to do before they did it” (75). He is brought into the game and uses his considerable talent to score a goal. The crowd and players stop snickering, and he scores two more goals. Their team wins by a goal.

The narrative returns to tales of the hardships endured at St. Jerome’s, which Saul refers to as “hell on earth” (78). He describes how they eat essentially gruel and are forced to perform manual labor and complete only an hour of schooling a day. They have no grades or tests, “the only test was our ability to endure” (79). They are continually beaten and are “like stock” (80). Saul also refers to “nighttime invasions,” or implied sexual encounters between the children and priests in the night.

Hockey is Saul’s escape from that hell. Father Leboutilier begins to come to his practices, and is the only player able to challenge him. As spring arrives, Saul continues training himself by running each day, with Father Leboutilier joining him. He also practices firing shots with a small piece of pipe standing in as a puck, which he fires through small holes in a piece of plywood. The other boys join in and they hold tournaments. Though Saul wins handily, he finally feels a sense of camaraderie. “I ceased to be the Zhaunagush. I became Saul Indian Horse, Ojibway kid and hockey player. I became a brother” (86).