Something to Hold (2 page)

There is a pause. Bill points back up the road. "We were going swimming."

"Your folks know?"

Jimmy nods quickly and so does Bill.

Then she peers down at Jimmy's ankle. "Looks like trouble."

Jimmy and Bill nod again.

"Back there," the lady tilts her head, "is the swinging bridge. That's the Indian kids' swimming hole. Yours is about a half mile farther on."

"Yeah," says Bill. "We found out."

She kind of chuckles, then says, "Long walk on a hot day. I'll give you kids a ride home."

I don't want to walk anymore. Mom will have a fit if we take a ride with a stranger, but this lady is nice.

"No, thank you," Bill says. "We're fine."

I'm disappointed. We're never allowed to ride in the back of Dad's truck, since it's for official use only. And way too dangerous, Mom says. I notice Jimmy's ankle. It's purple and huge, and blood is dribbling down into his tennis shoe. We need to do something.

"A ride would be great," I say quickly. "Thank you."

Bill shakes his head at me, but I ignore him. "We live on the upper campus, right by the office," I tell the lady.

She nods. "Your dad's the new forest manager."

How does she know?
I wonder as we scramble up into the bed of the truck, and she takes off down the long road.

***

When we pull into the driveway, Mom is out in the yard watering the zinnias. She frowns when she sees us in the back of the pickup. We spill out of the truck bed as fast as we can.

As the lady comes around the front of the pickup, Mom sets down the hose and walks over. "Oh, hello," she says, smiling and extending her hand. "I'm Mary Schlick."

The lady takes it and smiles up at her. "My name is Bessie," she says. "I found your children out on Shitike Road."

She's wearing a cotton dress that goes down to the tops of the moccasins on her feet. The dress is navy blue and tied at her waist with a woven belt. An underdress in pink calico, tight at her wrists, shows under the wide sleeves draping over her shoulders. Mom told me it's called a wing dress. When we first got here, I noticed that most of the older Indian women who go into the tribal offices next to our house wear them.

Jimmy hustles around the side of the house, forcing himself not to limp. I know better than to catch Mom's eye, but Joe looks up.

"Honey?" she asks. "How was the swim?"

"Great, Mom, good time, gotta go to the bathroom." And he jumps for the steps and slams the back door.

Bill and I hang back. I wonder if the lady is going to tell Mom the whole story about how we met.

"Would you like to come in for a cup of coffee?" Mom asks.

The lady smiles and shakes her head. "Gotta get to McKenzie's for the mail." She climbs back into the pickup.

"Thank you for the ride," I say, relieved that she didn't tell Mom anything else.

I hurry through the house to my bedroom, sniffing for the hint of smoke that clings to Dad's clothes after a fire. There's nothing in the air. He hasn't come home yet.

My bedroom window is open, shaded by the big locust tree. As I change back into shorts and a T-shirt, I hear Mom talking in the yard.

"You
promised
me." She does not sound happy.

"We stuck together," Bill says, his voice calm.

"How come you didn't swim?" she asks.

"What?"

The toilet flushes, and Joe opens the bathroom door. I wave him into my room. "Listen to this."

Mom says, "...and nobody's hair was wet."

"It was a long walk. Before she picked us up."

"And what happened to Jimmy's ankle?" she asks.

Bill stalls. "We didn't want to tell you this, Mom..." he begins.

Gee—don't just give it to her!

"...but Joe was throwing rocks."

Joe sucks in a big breath. I clamp my hand onto his arm and glare at him.
Keep quiet.
He looks like he is about to pop.

I can hear Mom's sigh all the way in here. "Did he apologize?"

"Oh, sure. Jimmy wasn't sore ... well, he
was
sore, but it's not going to hurt his catching or anything."

Joe gets the whole
What were you thinking?
lecture. I'm surprised that he takes it. But he scowls at Bill:
You

owe me.

M
OM
shoos Joe out of the house. "Go find a friend and stay out of trouble," she says. Then she points to Bill. "You come with me."

Bill rolls his eyes but follows her out to the porch. I grab a book and join them, for the company.

Mom's working on a new shirt for his first day of junior high. Now she makes him stand while she fits the sleeve, pins sticking out of her mouth. I sprawl on the padded bench under the porch windows and ignore his insulted groans.

After a while, the back door slams and steps pound up to the kitchen. "Mom?" Joe yells from the other side of the house. Then he appears on the porch, dusty and sweaty. "Guess what?"

Bill twists around, and Mom grabs for his arm before he can wrench the sleeve away. "Hold still!"

"Howie Granger and me have Miss Tutwiler," Joe says. "We went up to the school and saw the class lists."

"Howie and I," Mom says automatically. She pulls the pinned-up shirt off Bill's arm.

Who's Howie?
I wonder as Joe leans against the doorway.
And how come he can find friends when I can't?

"You've got some guy named Nute," Joe tells me.

"Newt?" I ask. "You mean, like a lizard?"

"No, like N-u-t-e. What kind of name is that?"

Mom lines up the seam and stitches the shirt together as Bill disappears off the porch, pulling Joe with him.

Class lists tacked up on the school door. My stomach hurts at the thought of starting all over.

Mom meets my eye. "Remember how it was in Virginia when we moved from the apartment into the house? You had to go to a new school in the middle of third grade, and you fit right in."

"That was different."

"How so?"

I'm not sure how to explain how I feel. Finally, I say, "I've never gone to school with Indian kids."

"Kitty, you knew lots of Indian kids when we lived on the Colville Reservation," Mom says.

"I was a baby. That was a million years ago. Way before we moved to Virginia."

She smiles. "You just have to get to know these kids."

"They won't know why we're living here and going to their school."

Mom puts her hand on my shoulder. "Honey,
everybody
on the reservation knows why we're here. Because your dad works for the government. Just like the other non-Indian families."

I think about Jewel and Raymond and the rock out on Shitike Road.

"Why can't we go to school in town?" I ask.
Where most of the kids are white.

Mom clips the thread and holds up Bill's shirt. It looks like something right out of the Sears catalogue. She folds it, sets it on her lap, and looks at me. "Because your school is here," she says, like that answers everything.

We would have blended in up there in Madras.
But I don't say this out loud. Mom takes the shirt into the living room, giving my head a gentle pat as she goes by.

***

Before supper, I sit in the shade on the back step and watch for Dad's pickup. Mom calls from the kitchen, "Honey, go find the boys. We've got to eat so they can get down to the game."

"Will Dad be home in time?" Bill asks when he comes up the steps into the kitchen.

Mom plops mayonnaise into a bowl of potato salad. "Hope so," she says. "Now that school's about to start, fire season should be winding down."

I wish she wouldn't talk about school. Those mean kids will not be happy to see us there.

"What does
Báshtan
mean?" I ask.

Mom sets down the spoon. I should have kept my mouth shut.

"Where'd you hear that?" she asks.

"Somebody said it."

"Who?"

"A girl." I know that won't be enough, so I take a breath and give up the rest. "Out on Shitike Road, by the swimming hole."

Mom frowns at Bill. "There
is
more to the ankle story, isn't there?"

He nods slowly.

"Why don't you tell me what really happened," she says.

And he does.

I wait for the storm. But Mom says only, "How come you didn't say that in the first place?"

He opens his mouth and the truth pops out. "'Cause we thought you'd never let us go there by ourselves again."

"So you decided to
lie
to me?" Mom shakes her head and gets up to clear the table.

Bill is grounded. His pitching season is over before it even starts. I feel kind of sorry for him, but Joe has "paid in full" smeared all over his face like butter from popcorn.

I finish up the dishes while Mom helps Joe look for his glove. I don't know why he needs it; he just sits on the bench. She comes back into the kitchen as I swipe the sponge across the table, scooping crumbs into my hand.

"I didn't answer your question," she says.

"Yeah.
Báshtan
"

"It means 'white person.' Not in a nice way."

The room is now shadowed by evening. "Why did she yell at us?" I ask. "We just wanted to cool off in the water."

Mom holds up the wastebasket so I can shake off the crumbs. "I know, honey." She is quiet for a moment. "So that's why you want to go to school in Madras," she says. "You'd feel comfortable there, with more white kids?"

I nod, relieved that she said it, not me.

Mom doesn't look mad, just thoughtful. "You know your dad's work is very important," she says, "to him and to the tribes. That's why we've chosen to live here. I know it's hard being new, but people are kind and generous here. If you give that girl a chance to know you, you'll see."

I work hard to keep the tears out of my voice. "I don't want to be here," I say. "I want to go home."

Mom puts her warm hand on my shoulder. "Kiddo," she says gently, "we
are
home. And someday soon it's going to feel like it."

Maybe she does understand a little bit.

She gives me a hug. "You know how to make friends," she says to the top of my head.

Joe clomps back up the stairs, his glove in hand. "We gotta go."

Mom looks at his sneakers. "Tie those things before you break something," she says. "Then Kitty will take you to the game."

"
What?
" I stare at her. "I can't go by myself."

"I have to stay here in case Dad calls in," Mom says. "And Joe will be with you. It will be fine."

That's what you think.

***

The game is all the way down at the ball fields on the other side of Shitike Creek. We hurry down the alley past the jail, where a tribal policeman is pulling something out of the trunk of his patrol car. He slams the lid and calls out to Joe, "Hey there, squirt."

"Hi, Mr. Wewa!"

"You boys play hard tonight. That team from Crooked River is tough."

Joe waves his glove, and Mr. Wewa takes his gear into the building.

"How do you know
him?
" I ask. Joe's quick to make friends, I know, but this guy is a grownup—and a policeman.

Joe shrugs his shoulders like it's obvious. "This is the way we go to baseball. He always asks me how I'm doing. He's nice."

Joe leads me to the trail that winds down the hill to the baseball field. When we get close to the backstop, he sprints ahead, and I'm on my own.

I don't know anybody in the stands. And it seems like everybody is staring at me. I climb to a spot at the edge of the bleachers, close to home plate. From here, I can look around without feeling quite so awkward.

Our side of the bleachers, along the third-base line, is filling up. So is the visitors' side, between home and first. The team we're playing is from a little town off the reservation. Over there, it's a sea of white faces.

Jimmy is crouching behind home plate, taking warm-up pitches from one of the players. His ankle is bandaged, but he's putting weight on it.

The coach, Sherf, walks up to Joe at the end of the bench. "Where's your brother? We need him on the mound."

Joe shrugs. "At home. Grounded."

Sherf shakes his head. No pitcher, no game. He goes over to talk to the umpire.

A car pulls up behind home plate and stops with the bumper almost touching the backstop. The driver has his cap pulled down low. He says something over his shoulder to two kids in the back. Then Raymond slides out of the passenger side, followed by that girl, Jewel.

Oh boy.
I wish I'd picked a spot in the middle of the fans. I slouch down, hoping they won't notice me.

Raymond stands beside the car, checking out the field. Then his face settles into that scowl I saw out on Shitike Road, and he walks right up to Sherf. "I'm here to play," he says.

The coach thinks about this for a moment before handing Raymond a glove. "Get in there, then."

Everybody stands for the flag salute. Our coach holds his VFW cap across his chest and the players do the same. With the last words, "With liberty and justice for all," something makes me glance down from the bleachers. Jewel stands beside the car, staring hard at me.

***

When we walk up the alley after the game, the kitchen light is on. The green government pickup is parked in the driveway. Fire boots on the back step. Dad's home.

He is standing at the kitchen sink when we come in. "Hey, I'm sorry I missed your game," he says, lifting Joe's baseball cap off his head. He has changed out of his fire clothes, but I can still smell them. He looks tired.

Dad scoops me into a hug. "We whipped that fire into shape in no time flat. You knew we would," he says.

I'm happy to see him. For this moment in his warm arms, I'm not worried about making friends. But it won't last long.

S
UMMER
turns the last corner and runs head-on into the long school year. Suddenly I'm sitting at the kitchen table in a new school dress, picking at pancakes.

Joe is on his third helping. All the dirt from the last few weeks has been scrubbed off his face, and his summer crew cut has grown out a bit. He splashes half a bottle of syrup onto his plate. If Bill doesn't hurry up, there won't be anything left. Mom leans into the back hall and calls down to the basement.