St. Clair (Gives Light Series) (20 page)

"Alright," Dr. Stout said, her voice sounding kind

of strained. "Look, here's the deal. I'm almost

positive the cancer metastasized."

"What does that mean?"

"It means it spread. I don't know how far. I know

it's in his lymph nodes."

I wondered what a lymph node was.

Dad put his face in his hands. His neck was bent,

his shoulders hunched. He looked like a statue to

me, so still, so silent. Worried, I reached out and

touched his back. His head shot up on his

shoulders.

"Normally," Dr. Stout said, "the oncologist would

try to preserve as much of the vocal folds as

possible, so the patient retains the ability to speak.

But Skylar's vocal folds are already paralyzed.

And given the extent of the lesions--"

I knew what she was getting at. The surgeon was

going to rip my vocal cords out.

I thought: I guess Rafael won't be fixing my voice

after all.

"But is he going to be alright?" Dad pressed on.

I'd never heard him sound so weak before. "He's

going to live, isn't he? Aisling?"

"Oh, he'll be fine, Paul." Dr. Stout ran a hand

through her hair, looking distracted. I noticed she

wasn't meeting our eyes. "I'm going to make sure

the X-ray technician's still around," she said.

"Robert will come along in a few seconds to take

you for a CT scan. Okay, Skylar?"

I smiled.

Dr. Stout walked out the door, leaving Dad and me

alone in the pearly white lab.

Dad covered his face with his arm. I saw his

shoulders begin to shake. I realized he was crying.

I don't know whether I can explain just how

terrifying that was. Dad was not a man who cried.

He didn't cry when his wife died. He didn't cry

when he found out it was his best friend who had

killed her.

I climbed down from the lab table and approached

him carefully. I put my hands on his shoulders. He

didn't relent. I wrapped an arm around his

shoulders; he didn't react. Don't cry, Dad, I

thought, heartbroken. I hugged him, my arms

around him, but he wouldn't show me his face. He

kept turning his head away. I didn't mind. I just

didn't want him to cry.

A quick rap sounded on the door. The nurse

walked in, but drew short. Dad broke away from

me and rubbed his face with his hands. When he

looked up, his eyes were wet, a winter water gray.

The nurse--Robert--did a good job of pretending

he hadn't noticed. He smiled sunnily. "Okay, you

guys," he said. "I'm just going to take Skylar to the

CT room. If I can remember the way, that is. It

hasn't seen use in years. You can come along if

you'd like, Mr. St. Clair."

Dad's last name was Looks Over, not St. Clair, but

Dad didn't bother correcting him.

Robert wasn't kidding when he'd said this part of

the building didn't see a lot of use. He led us to the

far back of the hospital, the tiny nurses' station

vacant and covered in shadows. He flipped the

lights on with difficulty, like the switches were

swollen with neglect. He showed us through a

side doorway and into the CT room.

The CT machine was a giant tunnel in the middle

of a huge white box. It sort of reminded me of a

torture device. I glanced warily around the room.

I saw the X-ray operator behind the windowed

partition, who waved at us and gave me a thumbs

up. I saw a calendar on one wall. According to

the calendar, it was still 1999.

"Here," Robert said, and handed me a hospital

gown.

I'd forgotten I'd need to take my clothes off. I

guess parts of my mind were skilled at blocking

out unpleasant memories. I think Robert expected

me to get changed right in that CT room, too. We

were all guys.

Guys or not, I felt like I could throw up. I wished

my body were somebody else's. I hated that body.

There was only one person I wanted looking at it.

I slid the hospital gown on right over my clothes

and tied it in the back. I shucked off my pants and

my undergarments; they pooled to the floor. I

tugged off my shirt through the neck of the gown.

Ha, I told my body. I win. You lose.

"Park it here," Robert said, and gave the CT bed a

couple of pats.

The bed was stiff and chilly, more like a slab of

metal than a mattress. I lay back and felt cold.

The bed started sliding through the narrow ring of

the tunnel. I felt like I couldn't breathe. Cancer, I

thought. That doesn't make sense. You have to be

sick to have cancer. I wasn't sick. Just hungry.

I closed my eyes to block out the sight of the

confining tunnel around me. I could hear Robert as

he tried to make conversation--with me or with

Dad, I wasn't sure--but I couldn't distinguish one

word from the next. The scanner buzzed and

banged; my ears went numb. It sounded like

death. I'd never thought of death as something

audible before.

It felt like the CT scan took hours. In reality, it

only took minutes. Robert and the X-ray

technician left the room to look at the images and

Dad followed them without reluctance. Later on,

he would tell me that he was hoping Dr. Stout was

wrong.

She wasn't. I had metastatic laryngeal cancer.

That's a fancy way of saying the scars in my throat

spawned a bunch of evil cells that ran off to do

battle with the rest of my body.

It's funny. I still don't know what a lymph node is.

"Those contractors haven't been back ever since

the lake incident! Isn't it wonderful?"

Annie and I decorated her house with pine needles

and poinsettias. I'm sure you can figure out whose

idea that was.

(Not mine.)

Maybe they're admitting defeat
, I signed. I don't

know whether you've ever seen the sign for

"defeat," but it's really kooky, like the snapping

jaws of an alligator. Makes sense, I guess. You

come across an alligator in the wild, it's probably

going to defeat you.
Maybe they think we placed

an Indian curse on them.

"Don't joke. The shaman really will place a curse

on someone if you ask him."

Lila and Joseph sat frosting anise cookies in the

alcove off the kitchen. Occasionally Lila dipped

the frosting in her mouth when she thought we

weren't looking.

"Isn't Christmas exciting?" Annie remarked. "You

really start to think anything can happen. Our

ancestors celebrated the solstice around this time

of year. Winter was so important for Shoshone.

The wise women said magic was at its most

powerful during the winter solstice."

What, they really believed in magic?

"Naturally. And people like Shaman Quick still

do. Didn't you ever hear about Man from the

Sky?"

I shook my head.

"Oh, he was the greatest shaman our people ever

knew. A long, long time ago, a sleeping sickness

fell on our tribe. It was a real epidemic; we were

on the verge of dying out. And we might have

done it, too, if not for Man from the Sky. He struck

a rock in the Lemhi Valley, and a cascading stream

poured out of it. Everyone who drank from the

stream was healed. That stream is still there to

this day. It's so sacred to Shoshone that for many

years afterward, we vowed never to drink from it

unless we were in mortal danger. It became a holy

site."

Healing water, I thought. I touched my throat

before I could stop myself.

Where's Lemhi Valley?
I asked. I spelled it

phonetically.

"In Idaho," Annie replied. She pointed to a spot

over the wood-coal stove where she wanted me to

hang garlands. I climbed up on the stepping-stool

and reached for a nail. "It's really not that far from

Bear River."

We stopped conversing while I hammered the

garland into the wall. Once the loud clanging had

subsided, and I'd climbed back down from the

stool, I asked,
How come we don't visit it in

J a n u a r y ?
January was when we visited Bear

River.

"Because we're forbidden, of course."

I showed her my confusion.

"Honestly, Skylar, don't you pay attention during

history lessons? The Trail of Tears! The

Cherokee weren't the only tribe forced to march

for miles from their ancestral grounds. It happened

t o
o u r
ancestors! Shoshone have lived in the

Lemhi Valley since the dawn of time. Pocatello

and Sacajawea called it their birthplace. Lemhi

Valley is where the name 'Shoshone' comes from,

in fact--'Valley People.' Well, the Northern

Shoshone managed to hold onto Lemhi Valley until

1905, when the whites decided Bear River wasn't

enough for them, they wanted Lemhi Valley, too.

They were nicer about it this time, though. Instead

of slaughtering the Shoshone, they ordered them to

leave--'or face consequences.' So, the Northern

Shoshone left. And our holy stream? I'm told a

hunting lodge sits on top of it nowadays. Really,

I'm surprised the white men haven't driven the elk

into extinction by now; they're so wasteful, hunting

for sport..."

We went out to Annie's sitting room, where Zeke

and Aubrey were decorating the medicine shelves

with sagebrush and juniper bark, traditional winter

tipi ornaments. The both of them sang Christmas

carols, or tried to, but Aubrey was horribly off

key, and Zeke kept bursting into laughter over the

line: "Deck the halls with boughs of Holly..."

"Skylar," Annie said. "Why don't you stick

around? We're going to play Aikupi, Joseph loves

it."

I checked my wristwatch.
Some other time
, I

signed.

Grandpa Little Hawk had joined in on the

caroling. He goggled at me, none too subtle, over

the words "Don we now our gay apparel."

"Your grandmother must want you home to help

with winter errands," Annie said with a knowing

smile.

I smiled back, glad that Annie wasn't a mind

reader like Rafael.

I went home around noon and found Granny in the

kitchen, boiling ricegrass porridge over the stove.

I touched her arm and smiled. When she looked up

at me, blinking her water-gray eyes, she looked so

misplaced, like she'd fallen straight out of a

reverie and into someone else's log cabin.

"I'm making you lunch," Granny said.

She really didn't have to do that.

"Hush," she said, though I hadn't made a sound. I

couldn't make a sound. "Ricegrass porridge is

good for you. It swallows easily."

I got a couple of acorns out of the cabinet. If

Granny was making me lunch, the least I could do

was make her tea.

It wasn't long later that Dad arrived, looking more

tired than I'd ever seen him. "Hey, Cubby," he

said. His face did this weird twitching thing; I

think he was trying to smile. "Hello, Mother."

We sat at the table together for lunch. Granny and

Dad tried to make small talk. I'm surprised I didn't

have a heart attack on the spot. Granny and Dad

making small talk was about as rare as an eagle

befriending the fox it's trying to eat. I don't mean

to imply that Granny and Dad were usually at each

other's throats. Quite the opposite: They were so

reticent, one ornery, the other melancholy, that as a

result they barely ever spoke to each other unless it

was unavoidable. Sometimes I wondered how

people who loved each other could be so distant,

especially when they were living under the same

roof.

The oncologist showed up half an hour later.

Her name was Patricia Demain. She wasn't

Shoshone; Dr. Stout had called her onto the

reserve from Tucson because we didn't have an

oncologist living in Nettlebush. She was about

fifty, and her hair was flyaway and gray.

Granny invited Dr. Demain into the sitting room

and offered her a cup of roasted acorn tea. Dr.

Demain accepted.