Five Little Indians: Chapter 1: Kenny Summary & Analysis

After another one of Kenny’s attempts to escape the mission school ends quickly (the engine of the punt boat he stole died leaving him adrift and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police picked him up), Brother subjects him to brutal and humiliating public punishment. One day, Lucy slips him a handwritten note that says “Yor brave.”

Kenny wakes up on the day of his next escape attempt feeling lucky. Brother didn’t come for him in the night. As Sister rouses the children, she becomes frustrated with a boy named Howie who is still nestled under the covers. She grabs the mattress to roll him onto the floor, and he falls without waking up or moving. A monk hurries his bruised and bloodied body out of the dormitory as the boys whisper to each other. Brother came for Howie in the middle of the night. Kenny thinks he should be dead instead of Howie, but his friend Wilfred reminds him that none of them should have to suffer Brother’s abuse.

After mass, in the dining hall, Kenny approaches Lucy. He tells her that he thinks she is brave, too. The staff, distracted by Howie’s death, neither notice nor separate the two and they stand together, holding hands, for a long time. In the afternoon, taking advantage of the distraction, Kenny slips down to the dock where he steals the school’s new boat. He heads north, hoping to reach Port McNeill and find his Uncle Clifford. In the afternoon, Kenny approaches a port city. He splashes to shore, leaving the boat afloat in hopes of making the authorities believe that he drowned. Then he sneaks onto the docks where he hides in a fishing skiff overnight.

In the morning, a fisherman named Mack discovers Kenny. Mack is an Indigenous person, too, and he knows Clifford. But at first, he plans to turn the boy in to the authorities, afraid of getting in trouble for harboring a runaway. Eventually, he relents and agrees to take Kenny to Clifford’s boat. Clifford is also reluctant to let Kenny stay; the penalties are steep for harboring runaways. But, having been protected from the residential school system himself, he doesn’t know how bad it is.

Kenny takes off his shirt to show Clifford his bruises and describes some of the starvation and abuse he’s endured. He asks why his mother never visited or wrote, and Clifford explains that Kenny’s mother Bella had tried to do both. But the school threatened to arrest her if she tried to visit, it intercepted the letters she sent to Kenny, and it ignored the letters she sent to Father Levesque. Clifford relents and tells Kenny he will take him home to his mother in Simpson.

Things are not as Kenny remembers them when he arrives in Simpson. Bella hasn’t been using or maintaining the smokehouse where she and Kenny used to work together before he was taken to the mission school. She hasn’t been maintaining her house, either, and in her despair has become an alcoholic. Still, she’s happy to see Kenny again. Together, they clean the house and the smokehouse. When Clifford comes back with a bin of salmon for them, they work together smoking and preserving it. Each night, Bella tucks Kenny into his own bed, where he sleeps safely and soundly through the night. But the trauma of their years-long separation haunts both, and they begin to drift apart.

Kenny takes odd jobs where he can, bringing the money home to Bella. When he’s not working, he wanders around town. Bella can’t stop drinking, and sometimes she disappears for days at a time. One day, Kenny finds her sitting near the empty smokehouse. He asks her if she’s glad to have him home. She says she is, but that she feels like she cannot escape her trauma or her sadness. On December 31, 1967, Kenny returns home to find her drinking with two strangers. The next morning, he sets out to sea on a fishing run with Mack.