Three Day Road: Kiskinohanaasowin: Learning Summary & Analysis

Xavier wakes coughing. “Are you all right, Nephew?” Niska asks. “Do you want to know something, Auntie?” Xavier asks. “So many dead men lay buried over there that if the bush grows back the trees will hold skulls in their branches.” He has seen it happen. They once left a battlefield and returned months later to find it full of “flowers redder than blood.” The flowers grew everywhere, “even out of rotting corpses.” Xavier winces in pain. “Those flowers grew back, but that was all,” he says. “Useless things.” Niska looks at him. “Sleep, Xavier,” she says, and he closes his eyes.

The rain falls relentlessly for five days in the trenches, and it makes Xavier “wonder if manitous are unhappy with [him].” Elijah, however, “is happy.” He wears an old German helmet he found in a crater and has begun speaking with an “English accent.” The other men think he is hilarious, but Xavier thinks Elijah “wants to become something that he’s not.” To the other soldiers, Elijah is “a hero,” but Xavier “won’t give in to this army’s ways so easy.” He learns their language but pretends he doesn’t. When an officer speaks to him, Xavier answers in Cree.

Xavier dreams of home and holds the medicine bundle that hangs from his neck. Grey Eyes tries “to talk Elijah into going to the medicine world with him,” but Xavier doesn’t think Elijah has tried any yet. Sometimes, Grey Eyes takes so much medicine that he “goes unconscious.” Other times, he takes only a little and is “glassy-eyed and calm.” Xavier wonders what Grey Eyes will do if the trench is raided while he is unconscious.

Elijah and Xavier’s unit are relived for rest after ten days. “I’ll miss the excitement,” Elijah says. “But yes, it will be good to relax.” They rest and go back to the front lines, and this continues until spring turns to summer. They are sent to Saint-Eloi, and Thompson begins to teach Elijah and Xavier “the art of the sniper.” They practice for hours each day, and Thompson teaches them to account for distance, wind speed, and trajectory. He is “an excellent teacher, patient and calm.”

Thompson teaches Elijah and Xavier to blend into their surroundings, and they become “a part of the earth.” They wrap their rifles in rags to avoid glinting off the sun, and they learn to only shoot when they know they can kill. They must move immediately after shooting so as not to give away their position by the smoke from their rifles. “I am made for this,” Xavier thinks to himself.

Elijah and Xavier construct a shooting “nest” that is impossible to see and wait for hours on end, looking down their scopes. “There,” Xavier says in Cree and motions toward the bobbing head of a German soldier. Elijah fires, and the soldier’s head “explodes.” Xavier leans over and vomits. Elijah smiles. “I got him, didn’t I?” Elijah asks.