St. Clair (Gives Light Series) (18 page)

I never did figure out how to hide my thoughts from

him.

Rafael gazed again at the sky. His fingers worked

underneath the pilot whale trinket wrapped around

his wrist.

"I think I wanna get married someday," he said.

I wondered whether I had heard him correctly. My

stomach felt like it was boiling.

"Yeah," he said, still without looking at me. "I

wanna get married. The reverend doesn't

recognize two-spirit marriage, but the shaman

does. I wanna get married someday, and I wanna

have a daughter. And she'll be awesome and

kickass, like Nai Nukkwi, or Charlotte Doyle."

Nai and Charlotte. That's a respectable name

pool.

"Because I think if you work hard enough, you'll be

with the same person for the rest of your life.

Because I think once you love someone, you'll

always love them."

I knew what he was getting at now. I turned on my

side. It's funny; I could scarcely stand to look at

him, but at the same time, there was nothing I

wanted to do more.

"If we had a kid, would she be a Gives Light, or a

St. Clair?"

Gives Light
, I signed.
She needs a Plains name.

"Yeah, but St. Clair is a Plains name, too. Or it

was adopted by the Plains People, anyway.

Remember that peyotist guy, the one who brought

peyote songs to the Plains Shoshone? White St.

Clair."

I showed him a smile, amused.
Nai Nukkwi St.

Clair is a weird name
, I joked. Boy, did that take

a long time to fingerspell.

"She's not gonna be called Nai Nukkwi, dumbass,"

Rafael said. "If we adopt a kid, she'll probably

already have a name. You don't think?"

I showed him a bemused smile.

"I read about this online. Most people in America

who want to adopt children will only adopt a kid

between the ages of one and five. Once an orphan

is older than five, her odds of getting adopted drop

to 17%. And her odds drop with every year.

She's going to be stuck in foster care for the rest of

her life. It's like older kids stop being cute, or

something stupid like that, so white folks stop

wanting them."

I thought about Danny Patreya.

"But I want them. I don't care how old or how cute

they are. I don't care if they've got three legs and

four eyes. They still need a home. Taking care of

a kid shouldn't be about what the parent wants. It's

got to be about the kid."

I'd never even thought about any of this before. It

kind of disgusted me that children who really

needed homes got overlooked while people who

wanted to adopt so often resorted to stealing

Native American kids who already had families.

It made adoption sound like a frivolous whim.

Like window shopping for a puppy. It made me

think that Native Americans were less than human

in the government's eyes, so whatever injustices

happened to them were just par for the course.

Did I even want to have children? I think I'd

always considered it an impossibility given that I

was mute. A mute parent can teach his kids sign

language, but he can't march up to school and talk

to the principal when his kid's being bullied. He

can't cheer for his kid's soccer matches. He's

worthless.

Worthless if he's a single parent. Years ago I

never would have thought someone could love me.

Someone who wasn't obligated to love me.

I never counted on meeting Rafael.

"St. Clair, though," Rafael said. "That's a good

name for a kid."

I couldn't help but smile. I smiled until my face

hurt. I knew it was kind of crazy that we were

sitting here, discussing a hypothetical kid who

wouldn't exist for a good ten years. But even the

idea that I was going to be with Rafael in ten years'

time--that he would still want me by then--

I'd better cut it out before I get too sappy.

St. Clair, I thought. Maybe the kid would like

peyote songs, too.

"I just hope she doesn't like Cem Adrian," Rafael

said harshly.

I picked up my plains flute and hit him with it.

The Bureau of Land Management came back to the

reservation at the end of November.

"Skylar, man," Zeke said during school, kicking me

under the table, "the contractors are here! I saw

their trucks in the parking lot off the turnpike!

What do we do?"

It was early in the morning still, and Mr. Red Clay

had yet to show up for class. I looked up, alarmed,

at Zeke's warning.

Immaculata shoved her face between Zeke's and

mine, her crazy eyes bulging, her livewire hair

standing on end. "Hakani naattaimma?"

The men who want the lake came back
, I signed.

Immaculata smiled dissonantly.
Let us make

carnage.

"What are you guys saying?! I don't speak deaf

language!"

I waved away Zeke's shouts as Annie, Lila, and

Joseph walked through the doors. I reached over

and tapped Stuart's shoulder.

"Yes?"

I jostled Zeke.

"Hey! Oh. Stu! They're here for the lake! What

do we do?"

"They're here?" Annie asked.

"Who's here?" Daisy At Dawn asked.

"My entourage is here," Lila said loftily.

Stuart stood up. "Let's go down to the lake so we

can watch what happens."

"But Mr. Red Clay!" said Autumn Rose, two tables

in front of ours.

Siobhan Stout chuckled, flashing her colored

braces. "Imagine his surprise when he walks in on

an empty classroom. Maybe we can make him

think it's a Saturday."

Holly, Daisy, and the In Winter kids hurried out the

doors. Rafael walked in. He paused. He looked

over his shoulder, baffled.

"What the hell?"

"I'm bustin' outta here!" Jack Nabako yelled, and

ran out the door after his big brother, Andrew.

Zeke started laughing madly, a nervous hyena. I

grabbed Rafael by his elbow and tugged him out

the door.

The whole group of us--about fifty or sixty kids--

ran down the country lane and into the main

neighborhood. I saw Mr. Little Hawk carrying a

boat over his shoulders; he gazed openly at us,

puzzled. We dashed past the firepit and the butter

churns and down the forest path.

"Off the path!" Stuart commanded. "Follow the

beeches to the pines. We don't want to be seen."

All at once, we split up; we veered off the dirt

road and darted through the trees.

I wound up hunched behind a bull pine with

Immaculata and Holly. I pressed a hand against

the rough bark and the three of us peeked through

the boughs. I grimaced, pine needles in my mouth.

At least it wasn't one of the dead pine trees.

"Ma punni," Immaculata whispered.

"Shut it," Holly whispered back.

There were six men standing by the lake, a long,

black hose lying on the ground. One of the men

bent down and pressed his eye against the

theodolite perched on top of the tripod. He stood

up straight. He turned around to say something to

his coworkers--but what, I didn't know.

I glanced around the pine grove, skittish. I saw

Stuart crouch forward, like a tiger, and dart from

one tree to the next in order to get a closer look.

One of the men took a cell phone out of his pocket.

I hid a grin. He wasn't going to get a signal out

here. Nettlebush wasn't close enough to a cell

phone tower. He seemed to come to the same

conclusion. He snapped his phone shut,

frustrated. He stuffed it into his pants.

The men reached down and started fitting a white

plastic sleeve over the hose.

I jolted. Holly turned sharply at the same time.

"What's going on?" she said.

Zeke and Aubrey and Allen Calling Owl ran out of

their hiding places and over to the men, yelling.

Stuart joined them shortly. Annie crashed through

the trees and grabbed my arm.

"I don't know what to do!" she shouted. She had

to; that clearing was so loud, both the men and our

classmates screaming at one another, I couldn't

hear myself think.

"Let's follow the hose," Holly suggested.

Come with us
, I signed to Immaculata.

We ran together, retracing our steps through the

reserve.

The thick black hose ran along the eastern half of

the reservation and out to the hospital parking lot.

The sight of it was sickening. I held Annie's hand

so she wouldn't fall behind.

I didn't really know what Holly's intention was. I

just knew it was better to do something rather than

nothing. We skidded to a halt in the parking lot,

my throat burning with exertion. I followed the

hose with my eyes. It was attached to a clunky,

rust-colored motor--which, in turn, connected to a

bulky white siphon. The siphon fed into the side of

a huge, sleek truck.

The motor whirred noisily.

We rushed forward, none faster than Annie. No

doubt she thought she could destroy the motor

before it was too late. But the motor was

monstrously heavy. Only in working together did

we manage to pick the thing up, but even when we

tossed it to the ground, it kept humming, unfazed,

the metal warm to the touch. We tried pulling and

tearing at the hose itself, but it was tough and

rubbery and wouldn't come apart.

"Come on!" Holly yelled at the thing, like it might

be persuaded to our cause.

I crouched down to get a closer look at the motor.

In a groove along the motor's underside was a

sturdy glass valve--borosilicate, the kind they use

in laboratories because it's less likely to break.

Even the toughest glass is weaker than ceramic,

though. I think it's because ceramic's a 9 on the

Mohs Scale. Glass is only a 6.5. That's why

punks on the street like to steal the spark plugs first

whenever they junk a car. A hammer won't even

put a dent in a car window; but a ceramic spark

plug will decimate it. If you ever want to break

into a storefront or somebody's home without

tripping the acoustic/shock sensors, all you have to

do is tap the window with a spark plug and watch

it crumble quietly, like powder. I'm not

recommending it, so don't look at me if you test it

out and get caught.

I jumped up, my head pounding. I had a spark plug

at home. I'd stolen one half a year ago when

Danny and I were on the run from foster care.

"Where are you going?" Holly called after me.

I waved apologetically and sprinted down the dirt

road.

It was frustrating, because it felt like my legs and

my lungs were conspiring against me. I ran as fast

as I could; even that didn't seem fast enough. I

breezed past Ms. Siomme and Mrs. In Winter and I

think I heard Mr. Red Clay calling after me, but I

didn't stop to check. I dashed up the porch steps,

threw open the front door, and raced into my home.

"What on earth?" I heard Granny say. She and

Reverend Silver Wolf were together in the sitting

room.

I climbed the staircase to my bedroom two steps at

a time. I burst through my bedroom door and

opened every drawer within reach, tossing the

contents to the musty wood floor. Where the heck

was that spark plug?

I found it at last beneath a bag of arnica leaves in

my bottom bedside drawer.

My pulse leapt with victory. I closed my hand

around the spark plug, so small that it disappeared

inside my fist. I thundered back down the

staircase, stumbling, and out the door. I'm sure I

forgot to close it behind me.

My lungs were bursting by the time I made it back

to the parking lot. I dropped to my knees by the

motor--too quickly; they skinned--and tapped the

spark plug against the valve. The valve shattered.

The motor hummed slowly, then stilled.

"Are we safe?" Annie asked incredulously.

"No idea," Holly said morosely.

"Tsao!" Immaculata yelled. She jumped to her feet

and pumped her fists in the air. It looked like fun,

so I joined her.

Definite confirmation came several minutes later