Set Me Free (36 page)

“Who?”

She swallowed. “Caliban.”

Which was an interesting point. And an interesting challenge. Because I know exactly how Caliban feels. I wake up every day
and make a choice: to sink under the weight of what he feels or to rise above it. I know I’m not alone, I know all across
this country there are brown and black and even white people who wake up every day with that same feeling. But sitting in
front of me was one of the lucky few who had only ever known love.

“Ah,” I said.

She nodded. I went to that window where she was looking and put my hands in my pockets and gazed up at the whitened mountains.
The sky was blue. There were no clouds, and a light dusting of snow lay on the grounds of the school. This was the moment:
was I going to do my duty as English-teacher Cal, or do something bold, serious, and—some would venture—inappropriate? “Honey,”
I said. “I’m talking here as your godfather. Not as your father’s second in command. Not as your English teacher. I want you
to understand that before I go on.”

She nodded slowly, her face full of curiosity. “When I was at Harvard,” I began, “there was a girl. She was a poet, and she
was married to a mathematician. Really, we were all friends, but I knew from the second I saw her that I loved her. Even though
she was married, it didn’t matter. Well, it did matter, but I
thought
it didn’t. I was sure it didn’t. All I thought was:’How do I make her love me?’

“So I tried everything. I pulled out my most romantic Indian tricks: Coyote tales, stories about my grandmother—women love
stories about your grandmother. She wanted to know me, but she
didn’t seem to want to love me. She seemed to want to love her husband.

“And then one day she touched me right here, on my leg, and I knew she loved me. And it was like… it was as if the world spun
backward and time didn’t exist anymore and I was suddenly in
love
with someone. Which was what I had wanted my whole entire waking life, to have someone just for me, and me just for them.

“Well, now, things were complicated by the fact that she was married. But I wasn’t going to let that stop me. I was so determined
to keep her, because I had wanted her for so long. I had possessed the idea of her even before I knew her. Naturally, I was
sure that meant she was my true love. I believed we had been destined for this for eternity. I wanted only her.

“She and I began to meet. Not in hotels or anything like that, but in Boston Common. We’d spend hours watching the swan boats.
Or we’d walk down Newbury Street and pretend we were rich people getting ready for a trip to Europe. We did not kiss. And
we did not have sex. We convinced ourselves that by not doing those things, even if we were more than friends, at least we
were honorable. At least we were not cheating on her husband. The agony of wanting her and not having her was a thrill in
itself, because I fancied myself something
of
the romantic poet, pining, needing, unsated. Some days, when we were daring, we held hands, lightly. Even that was risky
because we knew someday that someone who knew her husband would see us and we would be found out. She never mentioned leaving
her husband. I never asked her to. Things seemed so perfect, and I thought, ‘Why ruin it?’ I enjoyed that she glimmered like
a fish I could not hold in my hands.

“So one day we’re sitting together on a bench in Boston Common, and I see a woman all the way down the path. She’s homeless.
She’s pushing a grocery cart. She looks crazy. But she also looks exactly like my mother. Now, my mother left here, the reservation,
when I was, oh, seven months old, and I hadn’t seen her since. So you’re right to be suspicious. But I just knew: ‘That’s
my
mother and she’s walking toward me. I wonder why on earth she’s in Boston and what on earth I’ll say to her,’ but more than
that, I think, ‘This is amazing. This is beautiful. Two women I love, together in the same place.’ My mother gets closer.
I stand up. She’s dirty and old and her hair is matted but I’m sure it’s her. I’m smiling. And then the woman I love, sitting
beside me, grabs my arm. I look back at her. And she gives me this look. Like, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ My mother is
getting closer and closer and I step forward and greet her, my arms are open, I say, ‘Ma, do you know me?,’ and the woman
I love looks at me with horror, absolute horror. She holds her handbag closer. She lets go of my hand. And then I see: my
mother isn’t my mother. She’s just an old Indian. I also see: I do not love the woman I am sitting next to. In that single
gesture of repulsion, she becomes a bad person. She is a person I have trusted. But in that second, I see the truth: this
old homeless woman, who smells of piss and shit and vomit and blood. I would rather sleep with her at night, and kiss her,
and love her, and even put my thing inside her, than love the woman sitting next to me. Because the woman sitting next to
me thinks I am nothing. Or rather, she thinks I am something only because I have overcome the nothing that I really am.”

Even in my role of godfather, I couldn’t believe I’d told Amelia all that. But I knew there was a reason she’d come to me:
I was the only person in her life who was willing to tell her how the world really was. The light had fallen a little in the
time I’d been watching the mountains, and when I looked back at her, her face was cast in orange. Golden sun glinted off the
fuzz of her hair, making a halo about her head.

“That’s what it feels like,” I said.

W
ILLA

Day Five
Boulder, Colorado, to Salt Lake City, Utah
Sunday, May 11, 1997

S
o that’s why, isn’t it?” Willa’s father was driving again, and she’d been letting her mind drift in the passenger seat. Ariel
was tucked against her as the Volvo groaned up the mountain passes and sun streamed into the car. Willa didn’t realize she’d
said anything until Nat responded.

“Why what?”

“The reason we moved all the time. Because of what Caroline did. Isn’t it, Dad?”

They had spent the afternoon and night in Boulder. Nat had declared it an official break from all grim talk. So they’d grabbed
burgers at a corner pub, sipped tea in a really cool Russian pavilion, seen the kind of dumb-girl movie Nat usually complained
about, and eaten roasted chicken at the nicest restaurant in town. Willa pretended they were on the kind of vacation they
had never taken when she was a child. The kind of vacation she’d dreamed about. The problem was that even though she didn’t
want to think or talk about the new facts that had come to define her life, they were unavoidable. Her father paid cash for
everything. That got her to wondering: if Caroline really had died so soon after seeing Nat,
why was he still hiding? What had he done to help Caroline that was all that bad? He wasn’t telling Willa something crucial.

It was a relief to be back in the car. To be finally climbing the Rockies. The air in those mountains was crisp and clean.
Piles of snow, peaked by soot and dirt, had been pushed back off the highway. The car sped past mountains and evergreens and
kept climbing. Willa’s camera was on her lap. She wondered why she was calling her mother Caroline instead of Mom.

“Isn’t
it?” Willa looked over at her father and willed him to answer.

“Your mother was a fugitive.”

“But she died, Dad. Which means she wasn’t a fugitive anymore. Which means we didn’t have to—”

“We
did
have to, Willa.” Nat’s voice was honed to a point. It was like an arrow meant to end the conversation. But Willa pressed
on.

“Why? She was dead. It’s not like you—”

“I helped your mom. I loved her. I helped her out when she asked me.”

“How?”

Nat was keeping his eyes on the road. “Not yet,” he was thinking. “Not yet.”

“How,
Dad?”

“She asked me to hide something for her.”

“I don’t understand.”

“To keep something safe. Until it was time to deliver it.”

“What kind of thing?”

“Something that kept us moving. We had to move so no one would discover it.”

“Something dangerous?”

Nat tilted his head to the side, considering. “Depends on who you ask, I guess.”

“Don’t joke, Dad. I’m serious. What did you have to deliver? And who gets it?”

“I promised her I would take it to Elliot Barrow.”

“You mean whatever it is is in the car right now? Something dangerous is in the car with us?”

Nat put his shifting hand out to pat Willa’s leg, but she recoiled. Fear tightened between them for one of the first times.
“I promise you,” he said as they headed into a tunnel, “it’s not going to hurt either of us.”

“So it’s some kind of information, right? Some kind of message? Or is it money? But why would the police, after all this time…
why would they care? It’s not like it’s some issue of national security. Anymore, at least. That was seventeen years ago.”
Bars of light scuttled across Willa’s face as they made their way through the darkness. She closed her eyes and tried to gather
the facts. She decided to take a different tack. “Dad. You have to tell me. You have to tell me what it is. So I can help
you. What if something, you know, happens? It’s better if we both know.”

Nat shook his head, but it was so dark on his side of the car that Willa couldn’t see. The white iris of day at the other
end of the tunnel made an appearance. Willa snapped a picture of this lighted keyhole. “I’ve kept it safe all this time,”
Nat said finally.

“But why didn’t you deliver it sooner? If that was why we had to move? If the police were really following us because of it?”
Nat could hear doubt in her voice. Good. There was a part of her that still thought he was a little off. Paranoid. “Good girl,”
he thought. She went on. “Because if you’d just gotten rid of it, then we wouldn’t have had to move all those times, Dad.
If the police were really following us. They would have stopped, right? They could have gotten that thing, whatever it was.
And it would be over. We could have settled down so much sooner. Things would have been so different.”

“You’re right, Wills. They surely would have.” He spoke deliberately. “But I didn’t just make a promise to your mom about
Elliot Barrow. I promised her that I’d guard you with my life. And if the police caught me, well…” He paused. “I knew if I
went to jail, I’d lose you. Then I couldn’t guard you the way I promised.”

“I don’t understand,” she said, and her voice was sinking. In the darkness, he could imagine the daughter sitting beside him
was only six years old. It was that daughter he had to speak to, the one who could trust him to make everything okay. “I understand
why you’d take care of me. But I don’t understand the stuff about Elliot Barrow.”

“I made a promise to your mother,” he said, and he was going to go on, but Willa understood that he was telling her something
different, and that was where he got his out.

“You promised her you wouldn’t tell a soul, right? That this was a secret you would keep until you handed it over to Elliot
Barrow?”

Nat let his silence speak. He was glad for the darkness. The daytime was so close now. He was beginning to make out the edges
of the other side.

“I understand,” said Willa. “Not all of it. But I understand. You made a promise. But I don’t get why you didn’t break it.
She was dead, Dad. And she was a bad person. I can see that now. She used people. She used you to get something dangerous
to her…” Willa swallowed. “To Elliot Barrow. I don’t understand why you helped her. After she used you like that. Why would
you help someone who was so awful?”

“Because I loved her,” Nat replied. Day was upon them.

A
MELIA

Stolen, Oregon
Monday, March 31, 1997

Amelia was Caliban and Victor was Prospero, and they couldn’t even speak to each other. They couldn’t speak because except
for those moments when they were working side by side, elbow to elbow, Victor was doing everything in his power to pretend
Amelia did not exist. Amelia didn’t like this one bit. The scene at the Littlefoot trailer may have taken place months earlier,
but she still felt its dreamlike potency tugging at her conscious mind.