Set Me Free (37 page)

More than that, she realized that earlier in the fall, when she had been Victor’s friend, and everyone had known it, kids
at Ponderosa Academy who had never noticed her had begun to nod and wave when they passed her in the halls. She hadn’t necessarily
loved the attention, but she could have grown to like it. By November, all that formerly unwanted attention had stopped. And
by Thanksgiving break, Victor had told as many people as possible that Amelia had never been his girlfriend—what made them
think something crazy like that?—so there was nothing further to mention. No, Victor and Amelia hadn’t broken up, because
breaking up means being together, and they had never technically been together. That didn’t mean his rejection, his denial,
didn’t hurt.

Interest in the state of affairs between Victor Littlefoot and Amelia Barrow had dwindled by the first week of December. But
it had been refueled once that cast list had gone up. As it became increasingly obvious that Victor was not going to speak
or look at Amelia unless he was forced to by what was written in a four-hundred-year-old script, she knew it was best to bite
the bullet and get the job done.

They’d been working on that angry scene again from Act One. Lydia had to run off to her brother’s birthday dinner, and Helen
was going right into a costume meeting. So Amelia knew it was the right day. She went up to Victor as he was putting his script
into his backpack. “Hey.”

He looked at her as if she were a stranger. “Hey.”

“Can we talk?”

Victor carefully zipped up his backpack and put on his polar fleece before saying evenly, “You can walk me to my truck.”

They burst out of the gym doors together as if they were friends, except neither of them was smiling. The air was cold and
it was dark and Amelia pulled her scarf tighter. Her heart was pounding. From his pace, she knew he wasn’t going to give her
any more time than he’d agreed to. She was going to have to make it snappy. She started right in with what still mattered
most.

“Look,” she began. “About going to your grandmother’s that day? I know I shouldn’t have gone without telling you. I’m sorry.”

Victor shrugged. “Whatever.”

“No,” said Amelia. “Not whatever. I’m sorry.”

“Okay.”

“She said some things to me that day. You heard her. Don’t act like I didn’t too. I want to know what they mean.” This last
came out in a passionate rush, and Amelia held back the tears burning her eyes.

Victor was silent as he stalled in his tracks. They were already at his truck. She knew he might just drive away when he said
gruffly into the air, “Leave my grandmother out of this.”

“But, Victor, she’s already
in
it, don’t you see? She’s in it and through it and all over it! What do you think I’ve been thinking about all these months?
What the hell do you
think?”
Now she was crying, a little fierce, a little proud, a little stupid, but she didn’t care if he saw.

“My grandmother isn’t crazy. If anyone says she’s crazy”—Victor’s voice clenched, and he looked around like a cornered animal
seeking escape, then relaxed as he saw his way out—“I’ll just quit this damn play. I’ll walk out. I don’t need this shit,
Amelia.”

For a moment Amelia was speechless. Then she was mad, and at that moment
The Tempest
was the furthest thing from her mind. “Victor Littlefoot, you’re an ass. Crazy? I don’t think your grandmother’s crazy! I
think she’s one of the most sensible people I’ve heard in my whole life!” She stopped. “Maybe you’re the one who thinks she’s
crazy.” Her anger lifted as she watched Victor let his body go slack against the side of his truck.

Silence.

Then Victor’s words came out quietly, with a white puff of breath against the cold night. “You don’t think she’s crazy?”

Amelia found herself answering, “All that stuff about the baby and how the baby changed everything? Victor, that’s what I’m
trying to tell you. I don’t know what I believe about much of anything,
but I think your grandmother’s at least a little bit right. That day
did
change everything. Maybe not in the way she says it did, but it did. You know it. That’s why you wanted to find out who the
baby was, right? Because it changed everything. We weren’t allowed to play together anymore. You and your mom moved to Chicago.
My dad and I…” More silence. Then she spoke again. “You know, when your grandmother started talking, I felt like I’d been
waiting my whole life for her to say those things, and I don’t even know what they mean.”

Victor smiled. “Well, she can definitely have that effect.” He opened the truck door, tossed in his backpack. “You want to
get warm?”

Amelia nodded, went to the far door, opened it, climbed inside. The truck smelled right in the cool air. It smelled liked
Victor— sweat and metal and something unnamed that made her knees weak. The cracked vinyl seat received her weight.

Victor got in too, sat behind the wheel, turned the ignition. “You have no idea the grief she gives me. But you know, she’s
the reason I’m getting my education. She’s the reason I’m bringing home good grades. She’s the reason I’m not using anymore.”

Amelia nodded solemnly.

Victor went on. “I don’t know what the baby means, Amelia. That stupid baby. What my grandma calls ‘our broke lives.’ When
I first moved back, I thought if I found out once and for all, she’d shut up about how that was the reason for my troubles.
I never should have told her about that baby, but I was only eight then, so I guess I didn’t know that you shouldn’t tell
certain people like your grandma every single thing that happens to you. When my mom sent me back here, my grandma told me
I should ask for your help. She said if we found out about that baby, maybe things could be right again. But I don’t care
anymore. I don’t even think the baby matters. What matters is my grandma believes this Neige Courante stuff, and when she
says it to people, it sounds true.” He shrugged. “I don’t know if she’s right, but all it takes is someone
else acting like she’s crazy or wrong and— Well, she’s my great-grandmother.”

Amelia relaxed into his warmth. “I get it,” she said, and the atmosphere cooled.

“No, I don’t think you do get it, Amelia.”

“Yes, I do.”

“No, man,” Victor said, shaking his head. “You don’t know what it feels like to be poor or Indian or living in a city where
the drugs on the street corner have your name on them. To live in a place where no one can tell where you’re from.” He turned
and faced Amelia. His voice was earnest. “If someone asked you, ‘Do you know who you are?,’ what would you say?” He didn’t
wait for her to answer. “You’re Amelia Barrow. Daughter of Elliot Barrow, head of the Ponderosa Academy. You get to live one
life, and maybe it feels lonely, maybe you screw up and lose friends, but you always know who you are.”

Amelia let him continue.

“Things are different for me, for
us.
We don’t get that one life. Hell, there is no such thing as one kind of Indian when you’re an Indian, but when you’re out
there in America, you can’t tell anyone about who you really are. All they see is brown skin and black hair and they think
they know. And being Neige Courante is even stranger. My great-grandmother, the expert on these things, doesn’t even think
the Neige Courante are a tribe! Can you believe that? She thinks the first ones were a band of renegade Wascos and Paiutes
and others who hid in the mountains and then got rounded up by whites, so that last reservation could be established and the
mountains taken for the government. She thinks the Neige Courante were made up by some white guy so there could be a story
that sounded good and pure and true. And the white folks gave the old Indians horses and cigarettes and all that jazz, so
the Indians said, ‘Sure, we’ll be your Neige Courante tribe.’ My grandma says whites took everything else from the Indians,
so why not take over their beliefs too? When she gets going, she’ll tell you
Neige Courante is just a white dream.” He laughed and said almost to himself, “If that doesn’t make her sound crazy, I don’t
know what does.”

Amelia was astounded. “But what does that mean?”

“Nothing much, because according to her, time makes everything real. That and the stories people tell about things. It doesn’t
matter, Amelia. I’m Victor Littlefoot. I’m Neige Courante, and I’m just as real as you.”

They were silent for a few minutes. Then Victor said,“You must be getting pretty excited about the Benson thing. Lydia told
me some of your friends are coming. That guy Wes, right? Who was what? Your boyfriend? And his sister?”

Suddenly, Amelia was mad. Up until this moment, Victor had seemed like Victor, the old Victor, even better, in fact. In control,
maybe, but open, vulnerable. He had welcomed her into his truck, and she couldn’t help that she’d imagined they would be friends
again. But just as that was happening, just as warm air was beginning to blast out of the heater, he’d drawn the line, and
he’d drawn it by bringing up the Benson people as if they were hers. “Wes is not my boyfriend.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t know why you have to put it like that.”

Victor rolled his eyes. “What’s the big deal?”

“What did Lydia
say?”

“She just said…” Victor shifted uncomfortably. He knew it was best not to tread into girl territory. “She just said you made
some really good friends there. I don’t know why you’re so pissed. I don’t care if you have a boyfriend, you know. It’s not
a big deal. I’m not into you.”

Amelia was embarrassed, and that embarrassment spun quickly into more anger. She knew it wasn’t fair to be angry at Lydia.
Lydia could have mentioned Wes’s name offhand, and Victor could have taken that the wrong way. As words began to fly out of
Amelia’s mouth, she knew it wasn’t fair to be mad at Victor either. But he
was there to be mad at. “You don’t know anything about me.” She shoved open the door and let the cold air blast in. “Or Wes.
Or the terrible thing he did to me. How he made me feel like nothing. Like less than nothing. It isn’t any of your business,
Victor, and I wouldn’t have dared to inconvenience you or Lydia with why I really came back from Benson.” She jumped down
to the ground. She could barely make out Victor’s features in the darkness. “But I’ll tell you this much: [ would have told
you.” The night was cold. “All you needed to do was ask.”

H
ELEN

Newport, Oregon
Saturday, April 5, 1997

S
he pulled up in front of my house at eight
A.M.
on Saturday and honked twice. First I thought it was Elliot, because she came in his car. “Oh, shit,” I thought. “Here we
go.” I didn’t even have my pants on, and I let the kitchen curtain fall before I thought he’d be able to see me. What I didn’t
consider was his car was the only car she could borrow. Eunice said from the couch, “She’s here.”

“Who’s here?”

“Your ride. Your day.”

I had no idea what she was talking about. All she said was “Oh, just get your pants on. Get outside already. I finally have
the TV to myself.”

Outside was Helen, leaning against Elliot’s car with a big smile on her face.

“How did you find me?”

“I have an in.” She knew she’d gotten me. “Get in.”

“I don’t make it my habit—”

She got in the car. I stood for a minute in the morning light and looked over my shoulder. The wind was coming up behind me,
moving like a comb over the grasses. It was chilly. So I got in.

We drove off the reservation and back out onto the highway.
The whole time Helen was making that kind of small talk women excel at: weather, books, movies. Nothing controversial or risque.
I was utterly at her mercy.

“Where’s the dog?” I asked.

“It’s just you and me today.”

We passed the school and kept driving.

“Elliot doesn’t lend out his car to just anyone, you know.”

“He owed me one,” she said. “Actually, he owes me more than one. So I cashed in.”

“Where are we going?”

To which I got the smile.

We headed south down 97 toward Bend. I thought: “Restaurant.” But it was too early for lunch, and she had to assume I’d already
eaten breakfast.

“How long have you been planning this?”

To which I got another smile.

We turned west after Terrebonne onto a road that starts out flat in the desert air and then begins to climb and climb. If
we’d turned the other direction, we would have come face-to-face with Smith Rock, the climbers’ mecca, all dry air and brown
walls, a hot yellow place where lizards and rattlers nestle in baking crevices. But that was east. We were heading west. The
mountains’ sentinels, the foothills, produced our first real challenge, and what we had next was a groaning, wheezing car
on our hands (given that we were in Elliot’s Camry from the mid-1980s; my truck does just fine in the mountains, thank you
very much). We began carving our way through the ponderosas and western larches and Engelmann spruces and Douglas firs, the
blue-green branches spreading over us like a vast umbrella, creating darkness in a morning where it was only bright. Herds
of elk glimpsed at us through the tree trunks. The bucks stopped still in the hibernating underbrush and watched us blast
by. The air our car set in motion pestered their pelts. I watched them turn tail and head back into the green.