Firekeeper's Daughter

Jamie and Daunis leave Marquette and drive straight to Coach Bobby’s Labor Day cookout. It is their first time actively pretending to be a couple in front of other people. During the car ride, Jamie tells Daunis the truth about his scar—that he was held down and sliced with a knife. Levi is ecstatic to have Daunis at the cookout with Jamie, and she realizes that the reason he’s been so accepting of Jamie and their new (pretend) love is because it’s caused Daunis to “blur the lines between Regular World and Hockey World” (170). Daunis realizes for the first time the lasting relational damage that might result from her involvement in the investigation. After Heather tells off Macy (two girls who played hockey with Daunis in high school) for making fun of Daunis’s new relationship with Jamie, Heather offers Daunis something from a pouch full of drugs she brought to the party. Daunis sees pills that look like speckled candy and Molly, but she refuses. She tells off Heather for offering her drugs so soon after Lily’s death. Heather comes back at Daunis with a dig about her showing off her new boyfriend at a party while supposedly grieving her best friend in a weird way to show she’s in mourning. 

On their daily morning run, Jamie asks Daunis what Levi meant when he called her “The Firekeeper’s Daughter” at the cookout the night before. Daunis explains how the daughter of the original firekeeper starts each day by lifting the sun into the sky and singing. Daunis doesn’t like the firekeeper’s daughter’s story because she doesn’t even get her own name. She is known by her father first and then her husband and then her sons, who are named after every direction. When the two run by Dana and Levi’s house, Daunis tells Jamie that Stormy, Levi’s friend, lives with Dana and Levi most of the time. Dana cares for Stormy like her own son because she grew up poor on Sugar Island like Stormy. When Levi and Stormy catch up to Daunis and Jamie on their run, they continue the conversation about money and the “per-cap” funds that they receive from the casino. Stormy tells Jamie that the distinction between him and Levi and someone like Daunis is that Daunis comes from “old money,” inherited wealth from her mother’s side of the family. Daunis has complicated feelings about her trust fund, which GrandMary said was for “her education, a car and a good start in life” (177). Stormy also has complicated feelings about money, Daunis thinks about why—because Stormy’s mother has taken every check that Stormy received as a minor, whereas Dana kept Levi’s saved in an account for him and him alone to access.

Levi then tells Jamie the story of him falling off the top of the climbing gym when they were kids, how Daunis ordered someone to call an ambulance and hovered over Levi until they got there to make sure the rain wasn’t falling on him. Daunis thinks about how this moment changed her relationship with Dana, as Dana embraced Daunis in this moment and realized that they were connected by their shared love for Levi. When Daunis later goes to EverCare, the long-term facility where housing GrandMary, she thinks again about her mother’s insistence that Uncle David had not relapsed. Daunis wishes she could tell her mother the truth about Uncle David—she admires her mother’s faith and willingness to stand by the truth of her brother even after his death.

On her first day of classes at Lake State, Daunis feels rattled by both the presence of her ex-boyfriend TJ and the absence of Lily. Robin, an old friend of Daunis’s from school and hockey, sees her throw a book at TJ and pulls her into the student union to talk. Robin encourages Daunis to take a step back from overwhelming herself at school while she’s grieving. She tells Daunis to only stay enrolled in the class she is most excited about, and the class Lily was most excited about, and to drop all the rest. The next day, Daunis bring Granny June to the Elder Lunch, where Jonsy tells Daunis that he brought TJ to the landfill to look for the bag that they found but that is was already gone. Daunis deflects Jonsy’s questioning of her taking the bag. Daunis agrees to help Jonsy’s brother, Jimmer, download music from iTunes, and there is an announcement that the Tribal Youth Council will be visiting the Elder Center to help them set up cellphones for things like emergency alerts. The Elder Center Director then shares the news that Heather Nodin is missing. While Daunis is helping Jimmer with his iTunes, she asks him about the east side of Sugar Island, where the caves are. Bucky Nodin, Heather’s uncle, asks Daunis about downloading music and reveals to Daunis that he used to go mushroom hunting on Duck Island. Daunis remembers Ron telling her where the hallucinogenic mushrooms had been found as well as where her Uncle David had been found dead—Duck Lake on Sugar Island, and she remembers that Duck Island is bordered by Duck Lake. Jimmer confirms that there are many mushrooms on Duck Island because of the soil and moisture of the place.