Looks Over(Gives Light Series) (13 page)

"He acts like I lied to him about you.  I told him to shut up.  I told him he's not my dad.  He said, 'I raised you.  If I'm not your father, what am I?'  He's not my father.  I hate him.  I hate him so much."

Rafael wasn't talking about his uncle after all.

I touched his arm.  He nodded.  We rose from our seats and went for a walk.

We walked past the windmills and between the pines.  The ground sloped downward.  I'd only been in this part of the reservation once before; over the summer, when I visited Luke Owns Forty.

Rafael took my hand when the festivities were far behind us.  I slid my palm against his and threaded our fingers together, the warmth of his tough skin familiar and nonpareil.

"What should I do?"

I squeezed Rafael's hand.

"It's easy for you," he said acerbically.  "You just look at someone and they see the kindness in your eyes.  No one could stay mad at you.  I'm the type of guy you stay mad at."

I shook my head.  I thought he was getting carried away.  He must have had arguments with his uncle in the past.

"You're the only one who never gets mad at me," he mumbled.  "You know exactly what kind of a person I am.  But it's like you don't care.  You know, you...  I don't know.  I don't know what I'm saying.  You're so...  I feel like I'm always thinking about you.  I can't stop.  I don't want to.  What the hell am I even talking about?"

I couldn't say a word.  I wanted to--so many things I wanted to say--but couldn't.  My words were a deluge; my mouth was the dam.  I let go of his hand.  He watched me curiously while I carded my fingers through my hair.  I pulled my curls taut. 

He took my hand a second time, curling it around his.

"I know," he said.  "It's okay."

8

Danny

New Year's Day was a Monday.  Dad and Granny and I went around the reservation leaving gifts on our friends' doorsteps.  We came home to a sizable pile of presents, woven baskets and homemade confectionaries and a really creepy cat poncho I knew was meant for Dad.

"I feel so old," Dad said dejectedly.  He was forty.

"Better old than dead," Granny tossed back at him.

Dad pulled me aside later on and put his hands on my shoulders.

"When you go to the farmland to pick up our winter grain," he said, "take a little extra.  You're going to bring it with you to the winter pauwau."

I shook my head in protest.  I didn't want to leave Dad by his lonesome again.

"You have to," Dad said.  "Our Paiute friends are in a bad way.  We have to help them when we can.  Besides, I want you to see the Bear River memorial.  It's important, Cubby.  It's part of who you are."

Granny and I woke up at four in the morning on the day of the pauwau.  Groggy and disoriented, I dressed in my regalia and packed a fleece jacket and a change of clothes.  I looped my plains flute around my neck and tucked a pen and post-it pad in my jacket pocket.  "It's a thirteen hour drive!" Granny shouted up the stairs.  I felt immensely sorry for Gabriel and Rosa.

I stumbled down the stairs and into the kitchen, my duffel bag over my shoulder.  I climbed into the cellar and stacked wicker baskets full of wheat, sugarcane, barley, and rye.  I hit my head on the cellar door on the way out.

"Fool boy," Granny dismissed.

We ate a quick breakfast of eggs.  Granny packed a fifth basket with sagebread and cornbread for the road. 

We walked arm-in-arm to the reservation parking lot, and Balto followed us.

Poor Balto.  I would have loved to take him to Nevada, but I didn't think it was a good idea to keep a wild animal in the car for half a day.  I knelt between the cars and rubbed my hands along Balto's muzzle.  His small, black eyes were honest, simple, and full of love.  I know they say you can't domesticate a wild animal; no amount of training will turn a wolf into a dog.  But I don't think a wild animal is any less capable of love than a dog is.  Or a human, for that matter.

Stay home
, I signed. 
With Dad.

Coywolves understand visual cues a lot better than auditory ones.  It was almost prophetic that he and I had become friends.  

Balto slipped his head out of my hands.  He poked around the asphalt and pretended to have misunderstood me.

I nudged him and signed again. 
Stay home with Dad.

Balto huffed and ran back to the reserve.  I watched him sprint down the dirt road until his tail dipped around the bend and he disappeared from view.

"So weird," I heard Mary say.

I stood up with my baskets and smiled, bemused.

Mary grinned at me.  She swung an arm around my neck.  At least she didn't choke me this time.

"You're a kooky kid," she said.  "I like that.  I like ya."

Flattered, I tousled my hand through the back of her teased hair.

Granny and I put our baskets in the trunk of the SUV and climbed on board.  Mary climbed in after me and I found myself squished between her and Rafael.  Rosa was in the passenger seat, sound asleep against the window.  Gabriel smiled at me through the rear-view mirror.  There wasn't any malice in his eyes, but his mouth was sort of tight.

"Everybody comfortable back there?" he asked.  I noticed he'd remembered his overcoat this time.  "Catherine?  Hilde?  How about you, Beth?"

"Boy, this car is huge," I heard Ms. Bright say in the back row.  She was a friend of Rosa's, a receptionist at the reservation hospital.  "How's my makeup?"

The roads and the sky above them were pitch dark, the highway lights still lit.  I couldn't make out much of the desert.  I looked sideways at Rafael.  He blinked drowsily.  He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes with his fist.

"Screw it," Rafael said.  He unbuckled his seatbelt, lay across my lap, and went to sleep.

There might be something in that, I thought.  My hand sank into his hair and rested against his scalp.  I sat back in my seat and closed my eyes.

I woke some hours later when the car passed over a bump in the road.  I squinted at the clock on the dashboard.  It was 8:33 in the morning.  I leaned past Mary and gazed out the window.  I nearly jumped out of my seatbelt.  The highway was built clean across a huge canyon.  Who the heck would build a highway across a canyon?  The great russet walls plunged downward for miles.  I didn't want to imagine what might happen if a driver lost control of his car and smashed through the flimsy railing.

The radio hummed with the reedy, airy tunes of a plains flute. 

"That's my boy," Granny said proudly.

I grinned.  It was cool to think that anyone in Arizona could turn on the radio and listen to our station.

Mary rolled down her window.  A blast of cold air gushed into the car.  I saw her fish a marble lighter out of her purse.  She leaned out the window and tried to ignite a cigarette.

"Mary!" Gabriel burst out. 

Rosa snorted and jerked awake.  She hit her head on the window.

"My lungs are already rotten, Uncle Gay," Mary said, but relented.  She tossed her cigarette down the canyon, pulled her head inside the car, and closed the window.

Rafael hadn't even stirred.  My thighs were numb, but I couldn't bring myself to move him.  I smiled, resigned.  I unhooked his glasses from his eyes; I tucked his braids behind his ears.  I really was hopeless.  I wanted a name for this feeling, the one that made my heart swell and skip and rendered my head stupid.  I didn't have one.

Mary and Rosa passed the time playing Fuzz and I Spy.  I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw Granny knitting a wool cap.

I took another short nap and woke around noon.  "Welcome to Nevada: The Silver State," read a white-and-blue sign.  At least the canyons were gone.

"Where the hell are my glasses?" Rafael grunted, slowly shifting upright.

I slid them slyly over my eyes.

"Dumbass," Rafael said, fighting a grin, and stole them back.

We pulled off the road at a truck stop.  I was grateful for the chance to stretch my stiff legs.  But I was starting to miss Dad.  I missed him even more when we stopped in a cramped, dingy diner for lunch.  It was exactly the sort of place Dad and I used to visit for Sunday dinners when we lived in Angel Falls.

We met up with the In Winter family and pushed two big tables together.  Autumn Rose In Winter wouldn't stop giggling.  She was a very excitable girl.

A middle-aged waitress came over to us with a pen in her mouth and a pad in hand.

"Where all you Indians headed?" she asked.

"Las Vegas," said Gabriel, without missing a beat.  "We're showgirls."

Rosa drove the car around to the gas station after lunch, Gabriel curled up in the passenger seat for some much-needed sleep.  Rafael and I got out to fill the tank while Mary went into the convenience store to buy snacks.  Rafael fumbled with the gas nozzle.

"Could you help me with this damn thing?" he said, aggravated.

I snickered at him and didn't bother to hide it.  He retaliated with a very rude hand gesture.  I took the hose from him, feigning offense, and squeezed the handle.

"Showoff," he grumbled.

A car pulled up at the filling station next to ours.  Zeke Owns Forty threw open the passenger-side door and jumped out.  William Sleeping Fox was next out of the car--and then Zeke's father, Luke.

Luke Owns Forty had a lean body, a haggard face, and long, curly hair.  I wasn't sure what he did around the reservation.  Zeke had let slip once that he was an alcoholic.

Mr. Owns Forty took one look at Rafael and twisted his face in disgust.  "Great."

Zeke looked nervous.

I hooked the gas nozzle back at the pump.  I wrapped my hand around Rafael's elbow and nodded toward the SUV.  He made to move forward, like a shadow.

"Where you going?" Mr. Owns Forty called after him.  "Can't stand to look at me?"

Rafael hovered uncertainly.  My hand tightened around his elbow.  I looked back at Mr. Owns Forty and shook my head. 

"Your bastard of a father killed my little girl," Mr. Owns Forty said.  "Slit her throat from ear to ear.  I'm never allowed to forget it.  Don't think I'm going to let you forget it."

"Dad, uh," said Zeke, "maybe not now, maybe..."

"Quiet!"

"What's the matter?"

Rosa had joined us.

Mr. Owns Forty squinted at Rosa, like he'd never seen her before.  "Nothing," he said.  "Doesn't concern you."

"Please don't yell in front of the children," Rosa said.  She stood by the driver-side door with her hands folded in front of her.  Her braids, knotted with falcon feathers, tossed in the breeze.  "Please don't yell at Rafael.  He hasn't done anything."

"Yet," Mr. Owns Forty qualified, and got back into his car, leaving Zeke--who looked terrified--to fill up their tank.

Rafael pulled open the SUV's door with enough force to dislocate his shoulder.  He tossed himself inside without a word.

"Has he been drinking?" Rosa asked Zeke.

"Huh?  Uh, yeah..."

"Go find Mr. Red Clay and ask him to drive you," Rosa said to William.

William shrugged and shuffled off.

Rosa and I got into the SUV.  Gabriel was still sleeping.  And Rafael--hatred poured out of him so thickly, it was tangible.  I was pretty sure most of it was intended for himself.

I jostled Rafael's arm lightly. 
It wasn't you
, I wanted to tell him. 
You didn't hurt those women.  You didn't kill them.  You're not responsible for anything your father did.  None of us can help who our parents are.

He clenched his jaw.  He clenched and unclenched his fist.

I took hold of his fist and uncurled his fingers.  I lined his fingers up with mine.  When he finally looked at me, it was guarded.

"Maybe I should just get plastic surgery or something."

I think he was being serious, but it was such an outlandish solution, I couldn't keep a small laugh from my lips.  He smiled back, and I realized that he had wanted that; he had wanted somebody to laugh with him.  It wasn't like the past, when he would seclude himself from human contact and stew in his own misery for days. 

Mary climbed into the car and threw candy bars on our laps.  I hastily let go of Rafael's hand.

We faced another six hours in the car.  Granny, Mrs. Threefold, and Ms. Bright attempted to play bridge with only three participants.  Rosa tried to start up another game of Fuzz, but Mary was less interested this time around.  She told me instead about how she'd played bass guitar for a little-known band called Crunchy Blood out in Los Portales.  I don't think Rafael liked her rock 'n' roll stories; he sat fuming, his arms folded, and gnawed in silence on his chocolate.

"Yeah, that was a bad time for me," Mary said.  "Needed me some heavy detox shit.  Got hooked on practically everything out there. Coke, meth, X, PCP...  It's great at first, but then the highs are shorter and shorter.  Soon you're taking a hit just to get through the day.  Just to forget."

But forget what?