Steal the North: A Novel (37 page)

I begin my third semester. We have a fire in my apartment building one day while I’m away all afternoon in classes. When I return, the outside doors are propped open, and all the tenants, including my roommate, have left. The building looks so abandoned—like one in Bosnia, only it’s not gutted. I freak out. Stupidly, I climb the inside stairs. I meet a boy on the second-floor landing. He tells me the firefighters already left. He says the fire was on the fourth floor. My floor. He walks up with me. He says he lives on the third floor. All the doors on my floor have been propped open except my neighbor’s and my doors, both of which were kicked open and the frames splintered. It was the apartment right next to mine that caught fire, a kitchen fire. The boy gives me his number and tells me to call him if the landlord won’t fix my door before dark. He says nobody, especially girls, should sleep in a city apartment with a busted door. He says he’s seen me around the building and on campus. I’ve seen him too, always carrying a tuxedo over his shoulder. A lady down the hall tells me the next day that she saw me talking to the boy. He’s a noted violinist, she says, from Pakistan. I’ve been asked out by a few boys in Berkeley, including one from the swim team. I’ve told them all but this one that I already have a boyfriend in Washington, where I’m from.

I send my last journal to Reuben in January. It’s filled entirely with passages from my favorite novels—none of my own words—and sketches of hands painted with henna, bums’ dirty hands, my baby brother’s hands, hands being held, hands holding books, empty hands, reaching hands, closed hands. Uncle Matt told me Reuben has returned to Teresa’s twice to pick up my journals. So I give him a few months, during which time I send no more journals. The first of April I send Reuben my last letter, in which I enclose his feather.

Since I began Berkeley, I have begged Reuben to come get me. I have told him I wait for him every Tuesday and Thursday morning from nine to eleven on a bench by Sather Gate, which I have sketched for him numerous times. I ask him to meet me there. I tell him Sather Gate is the gateway to California. Prospective students from around the country and the world have pictures of themselves taken in front of Sather Gate. Berkeley was the first U.C., hence the name CAL. It’s multicultural, progressive, scientific, intellectual. Mom sobbed when I got my acceptance letter to Berkeley. Her journey, with me on her hip, from an eastern Washington bus station to California was complete.

My life’s journey began when I met you, Reuben. When our paths crossed, they became one. You have kept silent all these years. You thought by your doing so, I would learn to live without you. I haven’t. I have kept you as my dearest friend. You still know more about me than anyone. I have made sure of that. I have been standing on my own two feet, Reuben. I can pry open the abalone. I live in an apartment in the Bay Area. I attend college. I study all the time. I can speak French fluently now. Berkeley has to be the greatest people-watching city in America. But I’m lonely, Reuben, and I want to go home—to you and to Washington. I belong in the north with you. I don’t belong here. I have let no boy or man touch my body. I am saving it for you. But I need to be touched. I can’t go on this way. I won’t. I need love. I’m a woman now, Reuben, not a girl. I long for a man to gently spread my legs. I need to be touched and tasted. I feel hollow. I am starting to forget what you look like, how you smell. I can still hear your voice, singing while Ray drums. But it’s fading, as the light that evening eventually did.

There is a boy, Reuben. He lives on the floor below me. He’s handsome and soft-spoken. He noticed me when no one else really has. He’s pursuing me. He is kind and worries that I have no friends. I remind him of his favorite cousin. He’s a violinist from Pakistan, and he helped me during a fire. I have agreed to get food with him—sometime. I agree to hear him play—sometime. He asks why I wait by Sather Gate twice a week, as if for an unfaithful lover. He wants in, Reuben. He wants into my life. He is caring. He brings me tea and greets me in Punjabi because it makes me smile. We go for walks, mostly around campus, but also farther into the Berkeley hills. I want to hear him play his violin. But I know when I do, I will fall in love with him. He knows it too. Come get me, Reuben. He is passionate and he has seen poverty and he has gone hungry and he has known displacement. Don’t let him touch me. My heart belongs to you. My body belongs to you. I don’t want to hurt you. But your silence has hurt me deeply. A sea of silence, and I am nearly drowned. Meet me at Sather Gate. I will give you until the end of this month. I am waiting for you. If you do not show, I will still love you. Forever I will love you, my coyote. But I will love another. With him I will walk this earth unless you come for me.

Reuben

I see Emmy Nolan before she sees me. She sits on a bench, staring at the university gate where she’s asked me in her journals to meet her. She has no idea I’ve finally come. I watch her, and my body aches for the months we had together and the years we spent apart. Her hair hangs to her waist now and is tousled. She wears a dress and crosses her legs, which are no longer skinny but shapely. I have missed her every day, every minute. I try not to fucking pass out. Breathe. Guys look at her when they pass by—I scan the crowd for the Pakistani fiddler—but she’s oblivious. No one stops to talk to her, but she’s surrounded by hundreds of students walking in groups or in pairs or alone, as she has been. There’s also lots of street people and hippies. A woman in a tie-dyed skirt hopscotches over to Emmy and hands her a flyer. I whisper her name to the four winds. A mumbling Indian draws no attention here. The breeze smells of the bay, spicy foods, and pot. Emmy pulls a book from her bag—probably one of those British novels she loves or an assigned book on gender theory or global policy—and starts to read. I move in. I sit down beside her on the bench. She doesn’t look over.

It’s the best five minutes of my life.

“Hey, girl,” I finally say, even though I can see that she’s no longer a girl. “Do you know where to get a decent burger around here?”

She looks at me with wide eyes. “Reuben?” She’s in shock and trying to register. Her book falls to the ground. I bend down and grab it for her, but she’s too startled to take it. I stuff it in her bag.

“I had a hard time parking my truck between all the bumper sticker–covered Subarus.”

She says my name again. “Reuben?” Only this time I hear a dozen sad questions and pleas in her tone.

Her tears start, as do mine.

But instead of throwing her arms around my neck, she puts both her hands on my chest and tries to push me away from her—hard, almost violently. It doesn’t budge me physically. I’ve been fighting the relentless sea for eighteen months. But her shove jolts my being.

Sobs shake her frame. I put my arms around her, pulling her to me. She tries to resist, but I don’t let her. “I’m sorry, Emmy.” Her sobs intensify. I keep hold. A few people gawk, but most are busy talking or watching other activities. The coiled tension in Emmy’s body has been there for a long time. “I’m so sorry,” I repeat. She makes another stubborn effort to get away before her body suddenly goes slack. She rests her head briefly on my chest but only to catch her breath. “It’s okay,” I say into her hair. “I’m going to make everything okay.” She shakes her head to let me know I can’t. I want her to look at me before I make any promises to the contrary. I scan around again for the Pakistani fiddler. When her sobs slow, I release my grip.

She instantly pulls away. “Why didn’t you come for me?” It’s been so long since I heard her voice. “Didn’t you love me?”

“Every day, Emmy.” I try to take her hands, but no way. “You’re all I thought about.”

“But you never wrote me. I couldn’t go a single day without checking my mailbox. Most days more than once. I’d try not to.” She pauses to keep composure. “Sometimes I’d make it until right before bed.”

My long silence had hurt her far worse than I ever allowed myself to fathom.

“This moment is all I’ve dreamed of,” she says. “But now that it’s here.” She stops to pull her long hair to one side, giving me a clear view of her face. “Now that
you’re
here, I don’t feel relief. I’m pissed, Reuben. I’m so pissed.” She’s more than pissed—she’s afraid.

Fuck. I waited too fucking long. I’ve had moments of panic before at the thought—plenty of them, whole nights of panic, miles of panic on my drive here—but nothing as tangible as this. I can’t speak.

“I take pills,” she confesses. “Vicodin. For the loneliness. Don’t be shocked.” I’m not. “I tried to be strong. Don’t be ashamed of me.”

“I’m not ashamed of you.” I could never be ashamed of her. And I did things too that I wish I hadn’t—to fight the cold, fill the emptiness. “I’m so sorry for the pain I caused. Please, don’t be afraid.” But I’m also afraid: to try to touch this girl again, to sound the depth of her sadness.

I don’t blame her if she can’t forgive me. But I have to at least explain myself. “Listen, Emmy. I left you alone, at your mom’s orders, so you could finish high school and go to Berkeley. I honored that. She and Spencer were capable of giving you a better life than anything I could offer.” She shakes her head but doesn’t interrupt. “Not answering your letters was hell. It tore me up.” It became easier the further I sank into despair, but she doesn’t need to know that. “Then it became a matter of pride, Emmy. I had to know I could take care of you. I had to make money—for us, and I have. You’ll see.”

“Oh, Reuben.” She shakes her head again.

Meaning—what? Oh, God.

“My pride.” I break down. “My fucking pride.” It’s destroyed everything.

She touches my hand. I remember her touch—the warmth of it, the sincerity. I remember her pulse and the flow beneath her skin. I remember her taste. I have forgotten nothing about this girl.

“You found me just in time, Reuben. That’s all that really matters. Right?”

I can’t answer that for her, and she knows it, even as she searches my eyes. I can’t answer, but I can pray. And fuck, do I ever. I pray so hard I don’t realize when she starts smiling. A wide smile. I’ve been waiting two and a half years to see that fucking smile, those teeth. She’s so beautiful.

“You found me again,” she says.

“Of course.” I’ve been tracking her since the day I was born.

She puts her arms around my neck. “I love you, my coyote.”

I whisper into her ear, first in English. Then, with only a few words of my father’s language, I release my time at sea and on faraway shores in cold and ice and rubber boots and rain gear. I return fully to dry land and to her.

She finds my lips. I find the part of my soul that’s been missing since I last saw this girl. This woman. I want to make love to her every day for the rest of my days. I long to touch her between her legs—oh, how I’ve longed—and to be inside her. My silence was brutal. No wonder she was ready to let that Pakistani fill it with his violin and tea. Fill it for good, because I know how Emmy loves. I’ll make up for my silence: I’ll sing to her and drum and tell her Coyote stories.

“I’m ready,” she says, not even giving herself time to catch her breath after our kiss. I’m still reeling. “Let’s go.”

“Let’s smoke first.” I pull a pack of cigarettes from my pocket. She gets as excited to have someone to smoke with as she did the day I made that birthday cake with her and she offered me frosting on her finger, good Lord. “Let’s wield our exhaustion first,” I say with a grin, mocking that asshole philosophy student who watched Emmy smoke, among other things. That part of her journal really got to me. Hell, it all did. Still, I’d like to bust that punk’s face. I feel anything but exhausted.

I play with her hair while we smoke, as if no time has passed and we‘re still kids sitting on top of those hay bales and I‘m not glancing around for a Pakistani fiddler.

She reaches behind my neck and tugs my ponytail. “I like it. Though it’s going to take me longer to wash in the shower.”

I can’t even respond to that. I just grin as she blushes.

“Are you sure you want to walk away from all this?” I ask. I point to the gate and the massive nineteenth-century marble buildings I see on the other side. Libraries, no doubt, of knowledge and multicultural awareness and artifacts and maybe even some Indian bones. The buildings, to me, are as solemn as Coulee Dam, which was probably fucking engineered right here in Berkeley’s halls.

She drops her cigarette butt, gets up, and starts walking away, not even taking her backpack, which I grab.

A year later we’ll walk together on another college campus, but one that gets snow, as study partners and as husband and wife.

“A boy from the rez,” I’ll say, “and a girl who left Cal.”

“All she really ever wanted was a best pal.”

We’ll live in an apartment—with Emmy’s sketches on the walls—in Pullman by the university. I’ll pay the rent. Emmy’s dad, the Palouse farmer, will offer to buy us a house. No, thanks. “My wife weaves hemp into her hair,” I’ll tease, “which makes the farm boys stop and stare.” Their stares will actually piss me the fuck off. Emmy won’t respond, so I’ll continue. “She paints henna on her hands and dreams no more of other lands.” Pakistan, for instance.

“Don’t say that, Reuben.” We’ll lie naked in our bed, where some nights I’ll tell her Coyote tales and other nights she’ll read me French poetry or chapters from British novels, in which all the female characters wandering alone on the moors will have Emmy’s face. “I didn’t give up anything to be with you.”

I’ll tease, “Okay, Emmy Nolan-Tonasket. My little feminist.”

For the most part we’ll be happy, yet sometimes sad in ways too deep for words.

“You miss the reservation,” she’ll say. “You talk about it in your sleep.”

“I’m still close to it,” I’ll argue, sitting up.

“No, Reuben, you left. It’s a million miles away.”

I won’t be able to speak.

“I don’t miss California,” she’ll continue. “I’ll travel to other countries one day, or not. I don’t care, as long as I’m with you.” She’ll pull me close. “I fell for a boy who finds the river in the lake.”

“My girl, my love, I’ll never forsake.”

By then I’ll know my years of silence will always be a part of my wife, and her lonely childhood a part of me. She’ll be kept awake by my dreams of Kettle Falls before Coulee Dam, when Coyote brought salmon and the people never went hungry.

But for now it’s enough that I catch up with Emmy and take her hand as she walks away from Sather Gate. Together we make our way through the lively crowd of hoboes, intellectuals, politicians, and crazy fucks. We climb into my truck, and I drive her back to where we both were born, back to our river, back to the north.