Chapter 10
In the crowded rest area’s parking lot, Xavier stretched his arms and then rubbed the back of his sore neck. Watching the steady traffic flow of cars and trucks on the I-95, he leaned up against the hood of the car, and dug into his jeans for the squashed pack of Camels.
It was around noon and he’d been driving for thirteen hours straight. In the quiet of the night, going through the Adirondak Mountains, he’d recalled his father telling him of the land, and how adirondak, in the Mohawk language, meant porcupine, eater of bark. Xavier had realized how hard his father had worked at teaching him these little bits of Native American history, and how natural it had all seemed to him growing up. The Adirondaks were where the Iroquois nations had hunted and thrived, until the French
