A Certain Kind of Hero (22 page)

Gideon signaled the waiter who had been patiently waiting for a break in their tête-à-tête. “What's going on?”

The young man handed Raina an open menu. “Just a little commotion at the boat landing.”

Distracted, Gideon ignored the menu he was offered. “What kind of commotion?”

The dining room supervisor paused on his way back from the window. “We'll do our best to see that the disturbance doesn't interfere with your dinner, sir.”

Gideon rose from his chair as the white-haired man in charge hurried away. He turned to the young waiter, who had already assumed the proper pose—hands clasped behind his
back—for his presentation of the evening specials. “What's going on out there?”

The waiter chafed at the question. “I don't exactly know how to say this without, uh… What it looks like is some kind of a protest or something. Some Indians and, you know, some…other guys sort of yelling—”

“Don't go away,” Gideon told Raina. He dropped his cloth napkin on top of the silverware next to his plate. “I'll check it out, and I'll be right back.”

Raina tried to wait. She knew the best course was to stay out of the way. The voices sounded angry, and they were getting angrier by the second. She heard one of the waiters say that the police had been called. Then she heard another one mention that there were teenagers involved. “Just a bunch of Indian kids, got caught using spears.” Someone else laughed and added, “They probably didn't even catch anything.”

Raina was out the door in a heartbeat. She walked quickly, homing in on the shouting.

At first all she saw was a crowd of fuming people, mostly men wearing baseball caps, some carrying placards, and some brandishing what looked like bumper stickers. She saw a few red-slashed circles containing images of nets and spears. Great form of expression, she thought. What happened to the peace sign? She didn't see any “I-heart-Indians.”

The bend in the shoreline suddenly afforded her a view of the far end of the boat landing. Her stride went from a walk to a trot when she got her first glimpse of the little group the protestors had surrounded. It wasn't just teenagers. Marvin Strikes Many and four other men had landed at the big public dock in two boats. But among the younger faces Raina recognized were Peter and his friends, Oscar and Tom.

The confrontation was quickly escalating toward violence.
Each side was doing its best to shout the other down, and Gideon was trying to muscle his way into the center of it all.

“Get back on the boats,” Gideon shouted. Then, to the sign-carriers, “Listen, you people, the police have been called. Why don't you just back off and—”

The answers came from the crowd, which had become a single entity, a mindless animal with numerous mouths.

“We're staying right here until somebody gets here to investigate.”

“Nobody gets off this dock now!”

“Did somebody call the game wardens, too? Tell 'em to come see for themselves what these people are up to.”

“We got a treaty that says your state wardens got no say,” Marvin Strikes Many shouted.

“And we've also got a right to use the public landing,” his son put in.

Gideon waved his arm as he pushed his way to the fore. “Would you guys just settle down—”

“We got a right to see what you
think
you got a right to take out of this lake,” one of the bumper-sticker wavers said.

“Yeah, and what methods you're using.” The crowd surged like an inchworm, its body gaining a few planks' worth of dock space. “Look, they've got spears!”

“They got spears, and they got nets!”

“Where's the media when they could do some good?”

“They'll be here.”

“This isn't Wisconsin. Damn Indians took over on the fishing there, but nobody's gettin' away with that here.”

“Hell, you know what they say over there,” one of the mouths shouted. “Save a walleye, spear a squaw!”

“Hey, spear a pregnant squaw, save two walleye!”

The threat stabbed Raina in the stomach. Real, physical pain. She felt sick. She was close enough now to see the fear
in Peter's eyes. He'd suffered some stares, some thoughtless, ignorant remarks in his young life, but nothing like this. And Raina had felt a mother's pain at cruelties perpetrated on her child, but this,
this
was insufferable. Her rage was bigger than she was, and she about to leave some claw marks on somebody.

All she could see was Peter, and all she sought was a way to get to him. He was scared, but he wasn't cowed by the threats. And when he saw her running up the wooden steps, he was afraid only for his mother.

“Mom! Stay back! I'll be okay, we're just—”

“Mom?”
The animal's myriad eyes shifted her way, and one of its mouths laughed. “How'd you whelp anything that dark, lady? You oughta be—”

The anger welled deep in her throat as she clawed her way through the belly of the animal. She saw no faces. She had no interest in names. She had blood in her eye and bile in her throat. She was going to reach her son, and the hairy arms and knobby knees were
going
to get out of her way.

The calm summer evening was no more. The clear sky was ugly with murky bedlam. The air crackled with explosive charges. Raina had no sense of herself anymore. She was a she-wolf, and her pup was behind a wall of cruel, sweaty bodies. The shouts came fast and furious now, but only a few penetrated her red rage.

“Raina, don't!”

“Mom!”

“That kid's got some kind of spear!”

The violence erupted so suddenly that it was hard to recount the incident later. No one was supposed to be armed. There was not supposed to be any physical contact. The protesters had all agreed. Even the man who drew the pistol claimed later that he didn't even realize it was in his hand. There was a lot
of pushing and shoving, a boy with a weapon, and everybody was mad. Everybody was just plain damn mad.

And madness reigned.

Raina saw it all in bleary, smeary slow motion. Peter was on one side. A gun appeared on the other. The din turned into background noise for her scream when Gideon lunged for the gun. It sounded like a car backfiring, startling but unremarkable until Gideon's big body fell across the gunman, like a defensive tackle flattening the opposing quarterback. Both sides shrank back as the two men came thudding down on the wooden planking.

Shouts of “Look out! They're shooting!” and “Somebody's shot!” threw the mob into a panic. Raina's wrath and fear injected her with the physical strength to push her way past the jostling bodies.

“Somebody call the police!”

“Somebody call an ambulance!”

“Somebody call 911!”

But the shriek of sirens already filled the air.

Raina reached Gideon just as Marvin Strikes Many went down on his knees next to him, calling his name.

Pinned beneath his victim, the gunman was wild-eyed, blood vessels bulging in his forehead. “Get him up! The gun went off! The gun just went off on me!”

Marvin helped Raina pull Gideon onto her lap. His eyes were closed, but she could feel the pulse in his neck. His arm slid away from his body, pulling his jacket open. The front of his shirt was soaked with blood.

“Oh, God, get some help! Please!”

“Open his shirt up,” Marvin ordered. He pulled his own T-shirt over his head and wadded it into a compress.

Raina tore at the front of Gideon's shirt, crooning to him
as her fingers flew about their task. “Gideon, can you hear me? It's going to be all right.”

Her eyes met Marvin's as he pressed the cloth against Gideon's side. The eyes of an ally. The caring hands of a friend. “Hold it tight,” she pleaded.

“You hold
him
tight,” Marvin advised hoarsely. “He saved that boy. Don't you let him go.”

She leaned over him protectively, cradling his head in her arm, rubbing her lips over his forehead. “I won't,” she whispered. “I'm staying with you, Gideon. I'm holding on. You hold on, too, okay?”

The gunman scrambled away, but he was met by a policeman before he reached the end of the dock. The gun lay close by. Raina's peripheral vision clouded. Shock dimmed her awareness of people milling around, closing in, moving away. Shock permeated the crowd. It was tangible, heavy, stupefying. The hot scene had suddenly shattered, and the mob had broken into jagged shards. The people who came with the sirens seemed to flow into the cracks, rounding up the pieces.

“Mom! He's not gonna die, is he?”

Raina blinked back the tears as she reached for her son's arm. “Peter, are you all right?”

“That guy was gonna shoot me. We'd been praying on our way over with… All I had was this.” Peter knelt near Gideon's head. The object in his outstretched hand was a small ceremonial pipe. “Oh, God, there wasn't supposed to be any fighting,” he said as he touched Gideon's cheek. “Mom, that gun was aimed at me. He saved my life, and now he's hurt bad.”

Raina understood the plea in her son's voice.
Do something, Mom.
And because her hands were busy doing what they could, she leaned across Gideon's face, touched her forehead
to Peter's and whispered, “I'm praying for him. How about you?” She felt his nod.

“Who is he?” a bystander asked.

“Is that Gideon Defender?”

“Defender? Isn't he the tribal chief?”

The white dentalium shells lay against the ridge of his collar bone in stark contrast with his skin.

“The ambulance is here.” A uniformed policeman knelt beside Marvin. “The paramedics will be able to help him.”

“I'm staying with him,” Raina told the next pair of shoes. They were black. Her eyes traveled up the black pants, over the paramedic's sleeve patch, to a woman's sympathetic eyes. “He needs me,” Raina said. “I have to be with him.”

“That's fine.” The paramedic started checking vital signs. “You did fine. You slowed the bleeding. We'll help him now.”

A stretcher appeared, along with more uniforms and the hands of people trying to take Gideon from her.

“You can ride with him,” one of them told her. “Are you his—”

“Peter!” He was gone. Raina turned to the woman with the kind eyes. “Get my son. Please. I can't leave my son.”

“The police are taking care of—”

“No, you don't understand. He's only twelve. He—”

“I'll look after Peter,” Marvin promised. He stepped back as Gideon's large, limp body was moved to the stretcher. “You go with the chairman. You see they take care of him.”

R
aina climbed into the ambulance behind the stretcher. Someone told her to keep talking to him, which she did. He was going to be all right, she promised quietly. The doctors would take care of him. She stroked his hair. The sirens, the flashing lights and the measures taken by the paramedics all dimmed for her when he turned his head toward the sound of her voice.

“Raina?” He struggled against the strap that immobilized his arm. “Where's Peter? Is he okay?”

“Peter's fine.” She ran her hand along the length of his arm, found his hand and held it tight. “You took the bullet that was meant for him.”

“Chimau…ni…do,
” he muttered, drifting. “Thank God.”

“We're going to have to get that necklace off him,” one of the paramedics said. “Does it matter if we cut it?”

“Yes, it matters,” Raina said. She slid her hand under the
back of his neck, found the leather tie and pulled it loose. “I'll take care of this for you, Gideon. Okay?”

He groaned.

She closed her eyes and brushed her lips against his temple, whispering, “Can you hear me, darling?” No response. “Please know that I love you.”

At the local clinic a yawning garage door admitted the ambulance, and several people dressed in white were there to meet them. Gideon's stretcher soon disappeared behind double doors. Carl Earlie came running down the hall just as the doors swung shut.

“How is he?”

“He's been shot.”

“I heard.”

“He's terribly hurt. His side—” Raina gripped her own side and noticed the blood on her skirt for the first time. Gideon's precious blood, spilled in such large drops over the yards of soft pastel field flowers he'd asked her to wear for him. She looked up at his friend, whose eyes matched hers for near panic. “I don't know.”

“Is he conscious?”

“He was for a minute. He asked about Peter.”

“I got there when they were rounding people up. I took charge of the boy.”

“Rounding people up? You mean the man with the gun?”

“They got him, yeah. And some other arrests were made.”

“Peter?”

“Marvin and some other guys, but I've got Peter. And I sent somebody out to Arlen's place to get the old man. He's family.”

One of the women in white came barreling through the doors again. “Mrs. Defender?”

“Yes.” She glanced meaningfully at Carl. “I'm Raina Defender.”

“He needs surgery, and we don't have the facilities. We've got him stabilized, but something's still bleeding. The bus leaves
right now,
” the woman recited, as though she anticipated some dawdling. “We'll take next of kin, but we're moving fast.”

So was Raina. She clutched the shell necklace to her breast. It was all she carried. “My purse is at the restaurant, but Peter has a key to Gideon's house. I should—”

“You should be with the chief. We'll be along, too, but you—” He lifted his hand beseechingly. “You stay right with him.”

“Bring Peter,” she said over her shoulder, and she followed the woman in white.

Gideon's condition was critical. He was flown by helicopter to the nearest hospital of any size, which was in Duluth. Raina waited, taking the calls that came from Gideon's secretary, Judge Half and others. No word yet. She would let them know. Tell everyone to stay calm.

Carl called from Gideon's house. Before he put Peter on the phone, he told her that Arlen had just gotten there, and they would be on their way soon. Peter said he could just see the sun coming up, and it made him think everything would be okay. Raina permitted herself a hopeful smile. She'd lost all track of time. She wasn't even sure how far Duluth was from Pine Lake, or how long it might take anyone to drive there. But it was good to hear her son's voice telling her that he believed in the sunrise.

When Gideon was brought from the recovery room to ICU, Raina was waiting for him. She was determined to
be there when he woke up. There were moments when she thought he was lucid—when he looked at her and called her by name—but he was just as likely to call her Rosie and ask her to get someone on the phone. The someone's name was usually garbled. Raina had to give him credit for some kind of subconscious control, for he never called her Tomasina. At least, not in English. She didn't know what he was saying in Ojibwa.

But there were other things that he could not control, mainly his rebellious stomach. The nurses assured Raina that it was all part of the normal response to the anesthesia. But for a while he was a very sick man, and she was glad he was oblivious to it all.

She was also glad when Arlen and Carl finally brought Peter to the hospital. He was only allowed to see Gideon for a few minutes, which was just as well. The monitors, the tubes and bottles, and the sight of one so strong and vigorous now lying helpless, were distressing to a twelve-year-old boy. Especially when, as he said, “It could have been me.”

Arlen was given permission to perform a pipe ceremony and burn sweet grass for purification. Raina found the scent a bit cloying, but it definitely had a soothing effect on Gideon. While he rested and Carl kept vigil outside ICU, Raina had supper with Peter and Arlen in the hospital cafeteria. She couldn't remember what she'd eaten in the last twenty-four hours. Not much. The last normal, sensible moment she remembered seemed part of a distant past, another life. She and Gideon had gone out for dinner together. But they'd never gotten around to ordering any food.

“I guess I screwed up, Mom.” Peter's hamburger was fast disappearing into his stomach without being chewed. “I couldn't hit anything with a spear, but we did use a net, and
we did catch some fish. And that's what those guys are angry about. But it's a Chippewa treaty right.”

Raina nodded, then quietly asked, “Why did you let him go with them, Arlen?”

Peter was quick to defend his grandfather. “
Nimishoomis
didn't know. I didn't ask. See, it was kind of a civil disobedience thing, like Martin Luther King, you know? It was, like, to make a statement about our rights and stuff.” The boy shook his head. “Nobody thought it would turn out the way it did.”

“Strikes Manys were talking to the wrong people.” Arlen stirred two teaspoons of sugar into his coffee. “That anglers' club, or whatever they call themselves. They have no respect. It's no good to listen to people who don't know the meaning of respect.”

“Respect for what?” Peter asked.

“Respect for any way that isn't
their
way. They see only this much of the world.” The old man bracketed his eyes with leathery hands, demonstrating blinders. “They see only their own straight line. The rest of the circle is invisible to them.”

“But Marvin says that we have to stand up for our rights in court.”

“And maybe we do.” Arlen glanced at a fluorescent ceiling light. “But the man who's lying up in that room, bad hurt, that's the man who was chosen to speak for us. To go behind his back and make plans with people who shout in our faces and call our women ‘squaws' and threaten to spear them—”

Raina grimaced. “You don't think they
mean
that, do you?”

“Is it supposed to be a joke? Is that what makes them laugh?” The old man shook his head in amazement. “No wonder they don't understand Indian humor.” Then he tested her with, “Do you think they
meant
to shoot the chairman?”

“I think that guy meant to shoot
me,
” Peter said around a mouthful of sesame-seed bun.

Raina recalled the scene on the boat dock—the rising heat, the growing tension, the words shooting like missiles. “It was a mob. It was terrible, totally irrational. It felt like…something inhuman. Evil, maybe.” And she remembered Gideon's mission. “This is what the attempt to reach a settlement is all about. This is what Gideon hoped to avoid by offering to compromise.”

Arlen ignored her observation. “What do the doctors say?”

“That he's a very strong man. That ‘barring any unforeseen complications,' he should pull through.” Raina touched Peter's arm. “He's going to be all right. I'm sure of it.”

“That bossy secretary of his wants you to call her as soon as he's well enough to talk about tribal business,” Arlen said. “She seems to think the Pine Lake Chippewa will be on hold until their chairman speaks. Since they don't want us in his room too much, I'm going to stay with my grandson at Pine Lake, if that's all right with you. There's a telephone at his…at Gideon's house.”

“Of course.”

Arlen smiled gently. “When he speaks, you must call us, too.”

Raina nodded, as she struggled to recall the right phrase. “My brain's turned to mush. How do you say ‘thank you' in Ojibwa?”

With a nod Arlen deferred to Peter.

“Mii gwech,”
the boy told his mother. She repeated the words to Arlen.

 

She lowered the guard rail and rested her head in her arms on the side of Gideon's bed, her face near his hand. It was the
familiar heads-down-on-your-desks posture. She had given the command many times, but it had been a long time since she'd assumed the position herself. She only wanted to close her eyes for a few minutes, and this was as good a way as any. The IV was stuck in his other arm. This arm was free. She could stay close to it. If it moved the slightest bit, she would know.

But when it did, she was dozing, drifting on a cloud-white sheet draped over a wooden lift-top desk in her first-grade classroom. She was only half listening to Mrs. Wrist's reading of a story called “The Loon's Necklace.” Oddly, her teacher called the loon
mahng.
She could feel Mrs. Wrist's fingers combing through her hair, and she could hear her watch going beep-beep-beep. But she wanted to keep her eyes closed. She really didn't want to answer when her name was called.

“Raina?”

The voice was deep and painfully raspy. It hardly sounded like the voice of Mrs….

Her hair sifted through his fingers as she raised her head. He couldn't seem to lift his own head off the pillow, but he knew she was there. He knew her by touch and by smell. He knew he was alive, and he knew she was there. Somewhere. He heard her call his name, felt her lips pressed against the backs of his fingers. He was alive, and she was there beside him.

Her face rose over him like a sleepy morning sun. She smiled and brushed her hair back after he'd mussed it up, waking her. He had news for her. She'd never looked more beautiful. In fact, he would have done some more mussing if his arm hadn't felt so heavy.

So did his tongue. Thick and heavy. He started small. “Hi.”

“Hi, yourself, sleepyhead.”

“You're the one—” Muzzy-headed, he didn't have much voice, wasn't sure where he was except that he was down, and she was up. “You must be the one…sleeping on my bed, Goldilocks.”

She smiled at him exultantly, as though he'd just said something remarkable. “Sorry.”

“You're welcome to my bed…anytime.” He needed to do something about the needles in his throat, but swallowing didn't seem to be one of his options. “Could use a shot of water.”

“I'll have to ask. You've really been sick to your stomach.” She laid her hand there comfortingly. He could almost feel her rubbing his abdomen, sort of off to one side. “I'll bet you're sore from it.”

He felt as though he were probably on the verge of a lot of pain all over. But mostly he felt mummified. “Feel like I've been on a six-day binge. How many has it been?”

“Not to worry. Less than two.”

“Where's Peter?”

“He's safe, thanks to you. He's with Arlen.” She closed her eyes, leaned down and snuggled her face against the side of his neck. “He's fine, darling. He's fine, he's fine.”

“Darling? That's a…first.” Articulating his elbow was a matter of foggy mind over heavy matter, but he managed to bring his hand up to her face. He found a damp cheek. “Hey, what's this?” He felt a shudder slide through her. “Hmm? What's this? Am I in for some bad—” His words kept getting sanded off at the end. “Throat's killing me, honey. Please. A little water.”

“It's probably from the tubes.” She sat up and stroked his hair back from his face. “You've had tubes everywhere. Mouth, nose—” He started to test out his other arm—to see if he could do something about sitting up—but she stopped
him. “Careful. You've still got one in your arm. And, um…other places.”

“Question is, am I—” The details were fuzzy, but he remembered hearing gunfire, then feeling a flash of fire somewhere in his gut. “Am I missing any parts?” He meant to be funny. Sort of. But she wasn't smiling. “What?”

“Your right kidney.”

“My—”

“It'll be fine,” she told him quickly, but the way her voice was trembling, he wasn't so sure she was giving it to him straight. “The doctor says you'll be perfectly, perfectly fine. People donate kidneys every day. They wouldn't take a kidney from a healthy person and put it into someone else if a person couldn't live a normal, healthy life with just—”

He lifted the arm that seemed to be the only part of him he could get working and tried to touch her chin. The back of his hand slid over her breast. She grabbed it before it retreated ignominiously back to the bed and held it close to her heart. Her dress felt smooth and soft. The same one she'd worn to the restaurant. Two days, he was thinking, same dress? How un-Raina of her.

But he asked, “What else?”

“That's all. That's enough.” She squeezed his hand tight and tucked it possessively between her breasts. Just where it wanted to be. “We almost lost you.”

“We?”
You almost lost me?
You and… “We almost lost… Peter.” Now he remembered where the gun had been pointed. He remembered his own insides freezing up in that horrifying, endless moment before the gun had been fired.