Gives Light(Gives Light Series) (17 page)

"Excuse me," Granny said irately.  "The boy has chores!"

I looked between the two of them, worried; Granny looking righteous, Officer Hargrove looking cross.  I waved my hands until I got their attention.  I pointed toward the front door.  Granny relented with a "Tuh!" of impatience; she clomped up the steps and into the house.  Officer Hargrove and I followed her.

The two of them sat down at the kitchen table and I got them glasses of ice water.  Granny didn't touch hers.

"I'll cut to the point," Officer Hargrove said.  She looked straight at me.  "Your house has been repossessed.  I'm here to take you to the police station.  You can pick up whatever items you want.  The rest of it'll go into storage."

I felt like an icy weight had settled in my stomach.  Repossession?  Could they really do something like that?  Did that mean the police weren't so confident about finding Dad?  I looked to Granny for some kind of indication.  Her lips were pressed into a tight line, her wet gray eyes affixed to the kitchen window.  Every now and then she took a slow breath, like a disappointed sigh.

"We'll leave now," said Officer Hargrove, "if you're ready."

Granny didn't say a word.  I reached across the table to touch the back of her veined hand.  She let me; and then she slid her hand out from underneath mine and waved me away.  I guessed that meant I was free to leave for the morning.

I walked with Officer Hargrove through the reservation.  She was nice enough to let me stop by Annie's house and tell her I might not be around until later.  Annie nodded, tired.  I followed Officer Hargrove back to her squad car, and we drove away from Nettlebush.

Returning to Angel Falls felt surreal in a way I hadn't thought to anticipate.  My jumbo cardboard city was just as I'd left it, only I had somehow managed to forget exactly how bright and childlike the crayon-inspired tenements were.  I felt homesick--but whether for Angel Falls, chaotic and desolate, or Nettlebush, rustic and ageless, I wasn't sure.  Both, probably.

Officer Hargrove drove me to the police station.  I climbed out of the squad car and looked around at the familiar storefront apartments, windows barred with wrought iron; at the peeling playground on the adjacent corner; at the old hat boutique across the street.

She cleared her throat.  I followed her inside.

From the very start, I could tell that this wasn't going to be a simple pick-up and take-off.  To begin with, Officer Hargrove led me straight to a door whose sign read "Interrogation."  I couldn't help but wonder whether I was being tricked.  To make matters worse, she had me go inside on my own. 

The interior of the interrogation room was overwhelmingly gray.  The walls, the floor, the ceiling--they all blended and blurred together in a dismally drab portrait.  Even the table was gray.  It was the kind of room that sucked the spirit out of you the moment you stepped into it.  I decided I would delegate the grayness to a more pleasant memory.  Rafael in gray Plains regalia, Rafael in a gray jacket, the gray revealing the hidden blue in his eyes.

The table was laden with cardboard boxes and plastic bags.  No way was this everything Dad and I owned.  I thought, maybe the cops had already moved the bulkier stuff--like the furniture--into storage.  It's not like I could have brought a bed frame back to Nettlebush, anyway.

Standing on the other side of the table was a man in a brown suit.

"You Skylar?"

I nodded.

"Good.  You wanna pick out your stuff?"

I flashed him an unsteady smile and leaned over the table.

Only some of the items on the table were Dad's--most of them were mine.  I saw the dreamcatcher Dad had made for me when I was a small boy and knew I'd be taking it back to Nettlebush.  I found my walkman and my Dhafer Youssef cassette tapes and scooped them off the table decisively.  I have no idea why I didn't take those tapes the first time Officer Hargrove brought me to Nettlebush; they don't play Dhafer's stuff on the radio, and there's nobody better than him.  I'd almost decided to abandon my old schoolbooks when I remembered that Rafael really liked to read.  I picked out a couple I thought would appeal to him.  The empty fish tank, as memorable as it was, wouldn't serve a very practical purpose in Granny's house.  And I'd never liked that creepy cat clock, the one that used to hang on the kitchen wall, but Dad was crazy about cats; I decided I'd take that with me and hang it up in his old room.

And then I spotted something that definitely didn't belong to either one of us.  Resting on the table in a plastic bag was a black beeper.

I gestured to the detective.

"What?"

I pointed at the beeper and shook my head.

"You don't want it?  Then don't take it."

It had to be some kind of mistake.  But the longer I looked at the beeper, the less certain I was.  On principle, I'd never gone into Dad's bedroom or his closet; I thought he deserved some level of privacy, which isn't easy to come by when you live with a teenager.  Maybe, I thought, maybe it was possible that Dad owned a beeper but never told me.  But why wouldn't he tell me?  Wouldn't it be more convenient if I knew?  Or was this another of those things he had wanted to keep a secret from me, like his impromptu trip to Wyoming?

I looked warily at the detective.  He met my eyes, plainly uninterested.    If the beeper was a plant, and the police were just trying to pick up information on Dad...   But that didn't make sense.  It wasn't like I could use the beeper to call him, wherever he was; beepers only receive information, they don't transmit it.  And if it was the other way around, if they were waiting for Dad to call the beeper with something incriminating, then why would they let me take it back to Nettlebush with me?

I decided I'd better take it, just in case.  Supposing it really did belong to somebody else, and the police had messed up the labels or something, I could always hope the original owner paged me to let me know.  I tossed the beeper into the box with the dreamcatcher and the clock.  I smiled sheepishly at the detective.  He rolled his eyes at me.  He had me sign a couple of forms confirming that the items were mine.

I thought to leave the interrogation room, boxes under my arms, when he stopped me.

"Where you going, Skylar?  Let's sit and chat."

I gave the cop a long look, a little disappointed.  It was Dad who had taught me that the police can't force you to stay put for an interrogation unless they've read you your rights--and this guy hadn't done that.  I thought he was in a weird position, though.  How do you tell someone "You have the right to remain silent" if they can't do anything else?

Apologetically, I shook my head.  I carried my boxes out of the interrogation room, Officer Hargrove waiting on the other side.

The ride back to Nettlebush passed without conversation.  Visiting Angel Falls without Dad had left me in a surprising state of melancholy.  I couldn't stop thinking about the not-so-distant past:  Sunday trips to the diner; that awkward sex talk he'd given me four years ago, hand puppets and all; that horrific night when we'd both lost Mom forever.  When the reservation's pine trees finally loomed back in view, I was relieved.  I thought how odd it was that the sight of Nettlebush relieved me, when my first visceral reaction, months ago, had been illness and apprehension.  Officer Hargrove got out of the squad car with me and helped me carry my boxes back to Granny's house.  We waved goodbye, a smile on my face; she promised she'd keep in touch.

But as Officer Hargrove loped away and Granny appeared in the doorway, stern and reproachful, thrusting the empty pinyon nut basket into my hands, I felt the smile slide off of my face.  I was thinking about that night again--the night when Mom had died.  Mom on the bed, messy and still, her murderer a hulking shadow from which I couldn't run. 

Mom on the bed, messy and still.  Her murderer...

Mom and her murderer and me.

Why wasn't Dad home the night Mom died?

16

Hippie Soulbonder

Annie's vivacity made a comeback in the next few days.  She baked big batches of blueberry popovers and candied yams and she was pretty and resilient and bright, like a diamond.  It was way too artificial.  Actually, it was kind of scary.  Aubrey agreed.  We got together one afternoon to discuss how we could help her calm down. 

I think she needs to confront her dad
, I signed. 
About sharing responsibilities.

"Ah, you're doing the shoulder thing, that means duty!"  Aubrey, I'd learned, was a very astute observer.  He'd picked up on a handful of signs within a very short period of time.  "You're right, Annie hasn't had her coming of age, she shouldn't be in charge of the household.  But I don't know that she'll ever cross her father..."

That was the problem, we agreed.  It wasn't like we could tackle Mr. Little Hawk and pummel fatherly instincts into him.  Anyway, Annie needed to relax in the meantime.  I wasn't sure how much she appreciated the two of us orbiting her like busybody satellites.  I decided I'd give her my walkman, and the Dhafer Youssef tapes.  Nobody calms you down like Dhafer.

"We're not a very confrontational sort," Aubrey said awkwardly.  He sat on the gate outside his family's farm.  "If we see something happening, and we don't approve of it, we just...keep quiet about it."

I looked up, alarmed.

"No, no, not violence," Aubrey said quickly. "The Shoshone way is peace.  If there's someone hurting someone else, well, that's not natural.  We have to stop it."

I wondered:  Who had stopped Rafael's father?  Which prison was he living in?  Probably the federal one in Phoenix.  I couldn't see law enforcement lumping him in with first-time offenders. 

Rafael had said that Aubrey lost his aunt eleven years ago.  I looked sideways at Aubrey.  He was so peaceful and good-natured.  He caught my eye and beamed, oblivious.  He didn't deserve to have lost someone he loved.  Nobody deserved that.

And speaking of Rafael, he had found a new favorite hideout: an old flourmill out by the farms.

I definitely liked the flourmill more than the promontory.  It was aging and tall, its exterior pale with changing weather and passing years.  Apparently it was still in use; sometimes I could hear the heavy whirring of a hand crank through the thin wood walls.  Rafael and I sat behind the building every afternoon, backs to the peeling wood, me practicing the flute for the ghost dance, him rapidly devouring the books I'd brought back for him.  His varying reactions to the stories he read were always amusing.  He was very opinionated about the
Four Comedies
, especially the unfinished one, which annoyed him to no end. 
Medea
seemed to scare him pretty badly, maybe because he couldn't comprehend a mother killing her own children for revenge.  I hadn't liked that part myself.  He closed the
Metamorphoses
about three pages in, scowled darkly, and declared it "trash." 
On the Road
was his favorite--which took me by surprise, because it's pretty much nothing but a bunch of guys driving around in their car all day with a sixpack.  I think.  Like most of my schoolbooks, I'd never finished it.  Anyway, Rafael certainly liked something about it, and that was good enough for me.

Maybe I didn't like to read; but I sure liked to watch Rafael read.  I liked the way his eyebrows furrowed when he went over a line he didn't understand.  I liked the way his upper lip disappeared when he was mad at the protagonist.  I liked the way his whole face relaxed and he mouthed the words in the text when some part of the plot resonated with him.  Best of all, I had a front row seat for the Many Faces of Rafael:  He liked to lie with his head on my knees while he read, his own knees raised to support whichever book was in his hands.

I'll never understand how Rafael was comfortable down there on my bony knees, but if he wasn't, he didn't say.  Occasionally he shifted his head so he was lying across my thighs.  Those were pretty bony, too.  I liked the feel of him on my lap, warm and solid and comforting.  I liked having access to his every thought, his face as clear and readable as the surface of a mirror.  I liked carding my fingers through his hair, and the way he shivered, just slightly, when I grazed his skin.  He didn't bat my hand away anymore when I tried to untangle his many knots:  He took my hand, swallowing it up in his own, warm and dark and calloused, and brought it to his chest and held it there definitively.  I could feel his steady heartbeat through the thin fabric of his soft gray shirt, strong and calm against the smaller pulse in my hand.  I liked that the most.  I felt it was only just to reward such an appreciated gesture with a kiss.  I kissed his forehead and felt him still beneath me.  I wanted to kiss all the rest of him, too, because it wasn't fair to neglect one part in favor of the other.  I kissed him on the nose.  I kissed his cheek--twice--swarthy, unbelievably soft beneath my lips.  I wrapped his hair around my fingers in coarse coils, brushed my thumbs across his temples.

He tossed his book aside, pulled me down to the grass, and kissed me on the mouth, so thoroughly that I forgot to think.  I forgot I was supposed to be practicing the flute.

Sometimes we abandoned the pretense of music and books altogether.  Sometimes, when I left Annie's house at noon, when I went west to the flourmill, I found Rafael standing there, arms behind his back, scuffing at the rich soil with a barely-contained impatience.  He'd look up just as I came around the bend; and we didn't even bother greeting one another before Rafael pushed me up against the wall and kissed me, hard and wanting and fierce, filled to the brim with emotions spilling over, and I held him close and anchored him to me, anchoring him to earth.  Those were the kisses that left me shaken.  Those were my favorite kisses.