Looks Over(Gives Light Series) (18 page)

Well, I thought, that's one more player we can stop searching for.

Granny went to bed before me.  I brought our bowls into the kitchen and washed up.  I could hear the owls outside the window, the coywolves in the trees.  I wondered if Balto longed for the family he'd never known, the mother that had rejected his litter and the brothers and sisters who hadn't survived the wild.  When I thought about it, I felt terribly sad for him.  Maybe I was too sensitive; I don't know.  But I couldn't imagine growing up without my father.

A pile of yellow papers on the kitchen table caught my eye.  None of my business, I told myself.  I started to turn off the oil lamp; but Dad walked in at that moment, looking weary.

Was something the matter?  I tilted my head.

"Your boyfriend's uncle," Dad said, "is overcompensating."

He sat down at the kitchen table.  I dug the ice cream bowl out of the icebox and passed it to him.  I got him a spoon out of the drawer next to the stove.

"Thank you."  He gripped the spoon with his pawlike hand.  "He'll come around," Dad said.  "I imagine he's in a difficult position.  He was very young when he started looking out for Rafael.  He must feel as though he's got something to prove."

I sat down, elbows on the table, chin in my hands, and smiled gratefully.

Dad dropped his spoon in the bowl and pulled the stack of papers toward him.  "I forgot about these.  Good thing I didn't just go upstairs..."

I raised my head.  Dad took one of the papers from the pile and folded it over neatly, like a booklet.  He set it aside.  The Shoshone tribal insignia in red ink gleamed off of the back of the yellow paper.

Oh, no.  I dropped my head into my hands, exasperated.

"I'm not going to stop helping people into this country just because I can't leave the reservation."

Dad was a "coyote"--a smuggler who specializes in sneaking people into the US.  In the old days, when I went to school in Angel Falls, Dad used to trek out to the desert and guide immigrants across the wilderness.  He knew all the gaps and weak spots in the border fence by heart.  He charged his clients an unusually low fee because, as he always said, "These people don't have much to begin with."  But because he took dozens of families across the desert at a time, he made anywhere between $2,000 and $8,000 in a day.

I didn't care about the money.  I used to sit in class and stare at the clock on the wall, counting down the hours until the end of the day, sick with worry that Dad might have been shot to death by border patrol.

I looked at Dad beneath my eyebrows. 

"I know what you're thinking, Cubby."  I didn't doubt that.  "But forgery isn't one of the Seven Major Crimes.  The FBI can't punish me for mailing fake tribal passports to immigrants.  Only the tribal council can do that, and honestly, I'm sure Meredith shares my stance on this."

So he was just going to take his chances?  Because the FBI had swarmed in here once before without regard to the law.

"Cubby," Dad said, in his "I'm tired, damn it, don't argue with me" voice.  "I don't think you understand what these people go through.  The US has a quota, you see.  Very few people are allowed to immigrate legally, and when they are, the process takes years.  Some families can't afford to wait years when their children are hungry.  The government takes 20% of applicants and turns the rest away.  What happens to the remaining 80%?  Do they just sit at home and watch their children die because they can't find work in their own country?"

Of course I didn't want children to die.  When he put it that way, I felt guilty for even questioning him.

"Besides," Dad murmured.  "This was my country first.  I have the right to decide who lives in it."

Dad, Granny, and I went down to the lake the next day and met up with the At Dawn twins for shinny practice.  Rafael and Annie joined us a short while later.  Annie had brought Lila with her.  Lila gave me a patronizing look.

"We still need two more people," Holly said dully.

"Say no more, 'cause here I am!"

I recognized that voice even before I saw its owner's face.  I guess Rafael did, too, because I heard him groan.

Zeke Owns Forty came walking through the trees, a spring to his step.  His long hair, combed to one side, hid half of his frantic and giddy smile.

"Zeke volunteered," Daisy said, grinning.

"I'm not playing on the same team as him," Rafael said.

"Never mind that," said Annie, "I'm not playing on the same team as William."  She lifted a delicate eyebrow at Zeke.  "You
didn't
bring William, did you?"

"Nah," said Zeke, "William can't play shinny without falling asleep."  He bounced on his heels and clapped his hands.  "When do we start?!"

We practiced batting around the tapikolo for a while, some of us very visibly unenthusiastic about the arrangement.  Granny surprised me by showing off how fast she could run: faster than me, for sure, and about twice as fast as Dad.  Daisy came up with the strategy of using the speedier players--Granny, Zeke, and me--to steal the tapikolo from the opposing team and pass it along to the heavy hitters--Dad, Holly, and Rafael.  Annie's official job was to "guard the white line," which really just meant that Daisy wanted her out of the way.  Lila was more interested in whacking Zeke's posterior with her stick. 

"Aubrey's on Shy Lorna's team," Holly reported.  "We're going to lose."

"Would you stop being so doom and gloom?" Daisy said.  "Brains over brawns!"  Then, puzzlingly, she made a muscle with her arm.

"You have no brains," Holly said.  "All the brains went to me when we were stuck in the womb together.  It was a consolation prize."

"Oh,
that's
why your head's so humongous."

Once the At Dawn twins started bickering, there wasn't any stopping them.  Practice was over for the day.

Rafael and I walked down the forest path together.  Zeke was at our side, swinging his arms.  Dad and Granny had gone to Mr. Marsh's house; Annie and Lila were off in the woods looking for the veined white woodsorrels where the butterflies laid their eggs.  I was eager to get home to Balto, especially because he'd developed the habit of leaving dead ferrets on our porch.

I was about to invite Rafael over when Zeke tucked his hair behind his ear, and then I saw it--a huge, purple-black bruise covering the left half of Zeke's face.

"What?" Rafael said.  I'd stopped walking.

I think Zeke realized that I had seen something he didn't want me to see.  He untucked his hair and muttered quickly that he had to study.  He ran down the rest of the path without us.

Zeke studying anything was about as likely as me becoming a butcher.

"The hell was that about?" Rafael asked.

It might have been nothing.  Zeke's best friend was a guy who preferred punching to talking.  Zeke himself wasn't very different.  Maybe they were rough with one another.  Maybe it was nothing.

Maybe it was Zeke's father, drunk and angry and wrought with misaimed grief.

The Shoshone ideal is to mind your own business.  You don't pry into other people's affairs, and you don't start conflict when it's avoidable.

I watched Zeke's receding back.  I wondered how on earth I was supposed to broach the subject with him when it wasn't the lack of vocal cords standing in my way.

12

Lightning and Thunder

My favorite social worker came back for a visit in February.

I heard Balto barking and peeked out the front window.  I saw Ms. Whitler standing on the porch, three handbags hanging off of her shoulder.  I turned around and waved quickly at Dad.  He bolted out of his chair, scooped Balto into his arms, and ran up the stairs to hide.

Granny rose from her rocking chair as I opened the door.

"So nice to see you again!"  Ms. Whitler invited herself in.  "Brr, isn't it cold outside?  It was fifty degrees when I woke up this morning."

Granny said something to me in Shoshone, which I recognized as:  "Stall her."  She slipped past us and out the door.

I closed the door and gestured Ms. Whitler into the kitchen.

"Ooh, thank you," Ms. Whitler said when I handed her a cup of rose tea.

How was your holiday?
I signed.

"Good, good!"  Ms. Whitler set her mug down.  "We had a big ol' office party on Christmas Eve.  What did you do for the holidays?"

I went to a pauwau
, I signed.  "Pauwau" is one of those words you have to spell out; I don't think anyone invented a sign for it. 
And Bear River.

"Bear River?  That's not around here, is it?"

It's in Idaho.

"That must have been fun!"

It was sad, actually.  But I saw snow for the first time, and that was pretty cool.

"Honey, listen, I grew up in West Virginia.  I could tell you a thing or two about snow."

Granny walked into the kitchen, closely followed by Mrs. Red Clay.

Mrs. Red Clay was a member of the tribal council--more like the chairwoman, if we're going to be honest--and, as her name might indicate, Mr. Red Clay's mom.  She must have given birth to Mr. Red Clay at a pretty young age, though; despite her heavy jowls and her gray-white hair, she was only in her fifties.  She had no sense of humor to speak of, but she was the second coolest person on the reservation.  Granny was the first.

Ms. Whitler's eyes hardened.  "Who's this?"

"Miss Whitler," said Mrs. Red Clay, "I regret to inform you that you are no longer the boy's case worker.  I'm afraid you'll have to leave the reservation."

Ms. Whitler took a sip of her tea.  "Who says?"

"I say.  I am the boy's attorney."

I sat back in my chair, stunned.  Well, I thought, that's kind of neat.  I've never had an attorney before.

Silence stretched among the four of us.  Ms. Whitler let out a plastic, bubbling laugh.

"Oh, alright," she said.  She rose from her chair and collected her handbags.  "I know when I'm not wanted.  No, really!  It's fine!"

Bewildered, I watched her storm out of the kitchen.  I listened to the front door slamming behind her on her way out of the house.

Balto tumbled down the stairs and into the kitchen.  He rose on his hind legs and braced me with his paws.  I tousled his floppy ears between my hands.  I looked to Mrs. Red Clay with a confused frown.

Mrs. Red Clay's face betrayed nothing.  "We had better hope the new social worker signs the adoption papers," she said, "or this will have been a waste."

That wasn't very inspiring.

Mrs. Red Clay chatted for a while with Granny.  She didn't stay very long.  Granny saw her to the font door and sighed when she had gone. 

"If I didn't love you so much, I'd let that little hussy take you wherever she wants.  She's infuriating!"

I was incredibly flattered.

Granny sat down at her loom.  Dad sure was taking long upstairs.  I considered running up and retrieving him, but then I remembered that I'd wanted to ask Granny something.  I reached over and tapped her wrist.

"Yes?"

I made fists in the air--like gripping a steering wheel--and mimed driving.

Granny raised her eyebrows at me.  "You?  Learn to drive?  Is that such a sensible idea?"

I couldn't see how it wasn't.  I wasn't mentally handicapped.  Just mute.

A really unsettling thought occurred to me just then.  A lot of people--generally people outside of the reserve--treated me like I was a small child when they found out I couldn't talk.  I didn't blame them; even now I think it's a natural reaction, if not a very nice one.  "Infant," after all, literally means "unable to speak."  But what about Granny?  She was my grandmother; we'd lived together for almost a year.  She didn't really think I had the mental facilities of a small child, did she?

"Fool boy.  You're terrible with directions!  I don't trust you to navigate a parkway."

I breathed with relief. 

The shinny tournament took place on a Sunday.  About twenty teams had signed up, and the result was that the whole of Nettlebush came down to the lake to watch the matches.  I hadn't realized shinny was so community-centric.  Families laid checkered picnic blankets on the ground and ate their lunch in the wide open clearing.  Mary jumped up and down and clapped and shouted obscene cheers.

Daisy pulled our team to the side, wincing apologetically.  "So, uh, the only other person willing to join the team was Immaculata..."

I looked over at Immaculata.  She had a fierce look of competition on her face, her shinny stick resting over her shoulder like a rifle.

I waved at her.  She perked up and waved back.

We sat on the grass and watched the first few matches.  Rosa's team--mostly made up of nurses and orderlies from the hospital--got knocked out in the first round.  Likewise, Joseph, Jack Nabako, and Morgan Stout lost to a group of fifty-year-old farmers.

"This is prejudice!" Jack screamed.

"Told you he's annoying," Rafael said to me, a smile fighting its way onto his face.