Gives Light(Gives Light Series) (16 page)

I grinned.  I kind of thought I'd look like an ass no matter what I did, but Rafael didn't need to know that.

"Yeah, right.  Anyway...see ya."

I watched him lope off into the night, shoulders hunched, until I couldn't see him anymore.

I went back inside Granny's house.  The warm air came as a relief against my cold arms.  At the same time, the silence, the solitude, left me alone with my thoughts.

I was the kind of boy who liked to touch other boys.  At least, I liked to touch Rafael.  I wasn't sure how normal that was.  I only knew that it felt normal to touch him.

I touched my lips and imagined I could still feel Rafael on them.

Maybe Dad would scream at me when he found out, the way he screamed at the opposing baseball team.

As long as he came home, I thought, he could scream at me all he wanted.

15

Owns Forty

I stood outside Rafael's house, more nervous than I'd felt in a long time.

A goldfinch chirped encouragingly at me from the drooping, green-gold boughs of the southern oak tree. 
Just knock!
I imagined him saying.  (Or her.)  I thanked the goldfinch silently but sincerely for the vote of confidence.  Still, I wasn't feeling so confident myself.

The door swung open before I'd even touched it. 

It was Rafael's uncle Gabriel in the doorway, tall and strapping.  On the whole, he didn't look especially surprised to see me.  He held his hand over his eyes as shade against the sun.

"You really are a quiet little thing, aren't you?  I didn't hear you knock."

I smiled at him.  I was trying to figure out a way to explain the reason behind my visit when Gabriel turned over his shoulder and shouted, "Rafael!  Your buddy's here!"

People in Nettlebush really didn't need phones, I thought, when shouting was just as effective.

"Well, you two have fun, Skylar.  I've got a date with a dead pine tree."  Gabriel grimaced, looking none too pleased at his upcoming task, but gave me a friendly nod and took off across the reservation.

Seconds later, Rafael took his place in the doorway.

"What, did he just leave you standing here?  Dumbass..."

I was starting to wonder whether I should keep a swear jar with Rafael, because he sure had a mouth like a sailor on him.  Swear jars are great.  I used to keep one with Dad until he declared a ban on it after I'd collected something like $2.50 in nickels.  He didn't know that I'd added nickels every time I thought a swear word, too, though.

Rafael's jacket was open, lightweight, and gray; his hair, lightless and prominent under a bright sun, spilled carelessly, torturously across his shoulder.  I think he caught me staring.  I smiled lightly.  I was afraid he might have changed his mind since the night before--but he only mumbled "Come in" and skulked into the house.  I went in after him, closed the door behind me, and tried very hard not to look at the dead animals hanging from the ceiling rafters.

Rafael's room seemed to have acquired even more clutter since the last time I'd seen it.  He had a stack of fresh notebooks sitting on top of his desk, unfolded laundry draped across the back of the chair.  From the looks of it, he was in the process of converting his bed, unmade, into a makeshift bookshelf; mismatched titles like
Half Magic
and
Z for Zachariah
and
Murder on the Orient Express
all lay together in a discordial mess.  I noticed for the first time a photograph taped across the closet door:  A younger Rafael, his hair only shoulder-length, had his arms around an older girl, a sunny, uncommon smile on his face.  The girl's hair was heavily teased, her makeup dark and dramatic, a devil-may-care grin around her painted mouth that reminded me distantly of Lila.  I recognized her from his sketches as his sister, Mary.

I thought Rafael was going to sing again, as he'd done the night before; but he knelt on the floor and I saw him adjust the tape deck on his radio.  A woman's voice sprang softly from the speakers.  I wondered whether it was his mother's voice.  When I looked at him, and he looked at me, and I saw the closed expression behind his eyes, I got my answer.

Learning a song by ear definitely wasn't an easy task, especially converting it from vocals to the flute, but within a couple of hours I'd managed to muddle my way through the first half of Land of Enchantment.  With Rafael, as always, the one thing I could count on was the versatility of his stormy moods.  He hated being indoors for long periods at a time.  He'd stretched himself to his limit when he finally shut off the tape deck, grabbed my hand, and dragged me after him out the door.  He only calmed down once we'd reached the windmills.  I laughed when he flopped heavily on the grass, tranquilized like a charmed snake.  I sat down next to him and shoved his shoulder playfully.  He tried to shove me back, but missed by a lethargic margin.

"Keep playing," he said listlessly.  "I'll tell you when you screw up."

I raised my eyebrows at him.  It's pretty sad when a goldfinch has more confidence in you than your friend does.

I played the plains flute, stopping and starting again whenever I lost my place.  Incidentally, that afternoon marked the first time our privacy, at least our privacy in the windmill field, was interrupted.

The guy coming toward us was exceptionally bony.  He couldn't have been much older than either of us, but he walked with a sort of artificial poise that made me want to laugh.  I refrained.  A good portion of his hair was shaved close to his scalp, the rest of his hair, long, combed to one side.  I'd seen other men around the reservation with hair like that and figured it was a traditional style.  The closer he drew, the more I made out of his smile, excited and a little frantic, but not at all kind.  Instantly, I knew what kind of boy he was.  I'd gone to school with boys like him for a long time.

"If you're going to murder the kid, try not to do it here, okay?  Because I own this place."

Rafael sat up suddenly and scowled.  "You don't own anything," he said.  "Get lost."

"Excuse me.  What's my name?  'Owns Forty.'  How many windmill blades are there in this field?  Forty.  You do the math."

The guy looked from Rafael to me, his smile becoming brighter, crueler.  "Aren't you kind of like the bird that flies into the cat's claws?"

When I meet someone like this guy, normally I try to find something, anything, that I can like, and then I just focus on that one trait for as long as I can.  Failing that, I usually let my silence speak for me.

I smiled.  I really liked his hair.  It was interesting.

"Hey," said the guy, his eyes flashing toward my neck.  Initially I thought he was looking at the scars--Granny hadn't given back my jacket yet--but I realized his attention was actually on the plains flute.  He took a step forward.  "What's that?"

What happened next happened incredibly fast.  I had only the briefest of moments to register the boy's hand reaching toward my neck.  The next thing I knew, he flew off his feet; he made a winded sound, like a cough, and sprawled on his back, dazed.  Rafael, standing, wrung out his hand.  Rage crossed his face, short-lived but strong.

When the Owns Forty boy sat up, gripping the side of his face, he was laughing.

"Just like your old man, eh?  You just do whatever you want!  I could tell you all about the things he did to my big sister.  Maybe you could try them out on your buddy here!"

So that's what it was.  He wasn't cruel--he was hurting. 

I felt terrible.  I wished I had a voice, because I very badly wanted to talk to him.  I didn't know what I would have said, but anything was better than nothing.  Nothing was all that I got, though, because he rose off the ground and sauntered away before I'd even caught his eye.

Rafael rubbed his fist, the closed expression back in his eyes.  "I thought he was going to hurt you," he murmured.

Punching someone, I thought, probably wasn't the best reaction to that sort of envisioned scenario, so it made me incredibly guilty when I realized how much I appreciated his protective instincts.  I smiled fleetingly.  The way Rafael kept clenching his hand, it looked like he was in pain.  I worried that he might have broken one of his fingers.  This one time, a kid in my class had broken his thumb in a fistfight because he didn't realize you're supposed to keep it untucked when you punch.

I got up and took Rafael's hand--lightly, because if any part of it was broken, I didn't want to make it worse.  I kneaded his hand with my fingertips.  Nothing felt fractured.

Rafael eased his hand out of mine.  For a moment, I thought I might have made him uncomfortable.

His hands came to a rest on my bare arms.  He slid his palms down my arms.  My skin tingled.  I was afraid he could feel it.

"You've got so many freckles."

Only on my arms, though.  And my stomach.  It's weird.

Rafael's eyes trailed over my skin.  I wondered if he was counting my freckles like I'd counted his chain links.  If he was, I thought, he wouldn't have an easy time of it; I'd tried counting them when I was nine, but too many of them overlapped.  His fingers coasted down to my wrists, where the freckles stopped.  When the freckles stopped, so did he. 

His eyes met mine.

"You smell like a girl."

Lavender oil, I thought.

His lips met mine.

I thought:  This is a public place.  Anyone could find us here.  That boy we'd spoken with had just proven as much.  But if Rafael didn't mind, I wasn't sure that I minded all that much myself.  The gentle slide of his lips on mine, his hands rising to cup my face, rendered my thoughts immaterial and void.  I smiled against his mouth, my hands on his shoulders, and I know he felt it because I felt him smile back. 

Rafael was the first to break the kiss.  I searched my pockets until I found the post-it pad.  I didn't have a pen; but Rafael, conveniently, had the habit of tucking pencils behind his ears.  I stole his pencil and wrote a quick note while he watched me, frowning, confused.

I ripped the sticky note off of its pad and slapped it onto his forehead.  He started, indignant.  He peeled it off and read it.

Stop punching people!
I had written.

Rafael looked at me slowly, dubiously.  I grinned.

When Rafael smiled, it was lupine and innocent, shy but forthright, brighter than daylight and warmer than the warm pulse beating heavily in my chest.

"You're a dumbass," Rafael said.

I really was considering that swear jar.

At dinner that night, I got to thinking.  Mom's murderer had taken too many lives.  Even one life was too many.  I felt like there ought to be something I could do for his still-living victims, like that boy who had accosted us in the windmill field.  I tried to come up with an idea; but I came up short.

Annie came and sat next to me by the bonfire.

What's wrong?
I signed to her, alarmed.  She looked exhausted, heavy bags under her eyes, her eyelids sliding closed.

"Oh, nothing," she said, half-lucid.  "Joseph needs immunizations before he can start the first grade and he just
wouldn't
sit still, and then we were halfway home and I realized I had forgotten the transcript..."

I felt a spark of rare anger. 
Why are you doing that?
I asked. 
Shouldn't your dad be the one to take him to the doctor?

Annie didn't reply; she had fallen asleep on my shoulder.

That spark of anger flared into a real fire.  I looked around until I spotted Mr. Little Hawk sitting under a ponderosa with a couple of his friends.  I wanted badly to tell him that he had better shape up and be more of a father to his kids in his wife's absence.  But that wasn't my business; it would have been incredibly inappropriate of me to stick my head in their affairs.  Maybe, I thought, I could convince Annie to talk to him instead.  When she was awake, anyway.

Aubrey helped me get Annie home after dinner.  He grimaced when we stood together on her porch, the moon full and heavy, a coywolf yipping in the trees.  "I think her mom comes back in November," he said.  "That should be good, right?"

Not if she was on active duty leave, I thought.  I smiled anyway. 

I was almost as sleepy as Annie by the time I went home.  Granny sang Place of Great Mystery for me a couple of times before she sent me off to bed.  I slept fitfully, the kind of restless sleep where you're not sure whether you're awake or not.  I kept thinking--or maybe dreaming--about Annie and her dad; about the Owns Forty boy and the rest of the families who had lost their loved ones to tragedy.

Consequently, I was a little frazzled when I awoke the next morning, the clanging alarm clock jolting me out of a half-sleep.  I dozed off during breakfast and Granny rapped me awake with her knuckles.  I forgot to ask whether I could have my jacket back.  I set up Granny's loom on the lawn and she asked me to collect pinyon nuts for a soup she wanted to make. 

I went back into the house and fetched a basket from the closet.  And when I went outside again, I came face-to-face with Officer Hargrove.

"Hey," she said, "how's it going?"  She managed a smile, but I still thought she looked very harrowed.  "Could I have a word?"