Summary

The first chapter of Part Two, “The Visitors,” begins from the perspective of a man named Bernard Shaawano. Bernard works at a hospital and is often called upon by the people who live on the Ojibwe reservation where he resides to assist them with things. One day, a woman named Chook calls Bernard and asks if Bernard will help her exhume her husband’s body so that she can retrieve scripts for a painted drum that has been returned to the reservation by “two ladies from out east” (Faye and Elsie). Bernard, aware of the drum’s significance, decides to at least go visit the judge, to whom the drum has been returned.

Bernard makes his way to the judge’s house and let in by the judge’s wife, Geraldine. Faye and Elsie are sitting in the living room...