The Urn Carrier (20 page)

“That has nothing to do with it.”

“I know, right? But people can’t wrap their heads around it. I
wish, for just ten minutes, they would try being me, and all the shit I’ve gone
through, to finally be comfortable in my own skin. Who would willingly put
themselves through this much pain and crap? I hate taking drugs. Lots of First
Nation people can relate, we call it Two Spirit. But it can mean more than us.
It can mean women who are comfortable in their skin but want to do male things,
or vice versa. It encompasses hermaphrodites. All sorts of differences.”

“Well, that’s interesting.What a cool way to deal with
things as they are. I’m Sicilian, so traditionally, macho expectations.” Prince
shook his head. “I avoid those sort of stereotypes as much as possible. My male
friends want me to be a macho dick; truthfully, when I first took the hormones?
I was really quick to anger, but I don’t like that behavior. I had a really
excellent counselor guiding me through. Now I mentor newbies.”

“That’s really cool. What a great idea.”

“I am so glad I met you. Can we stay in touch, as friends?”

“I’d like that,” she said.

She returns to the letter in her hand.

Do you think this
happens in animals, only they can’t change? When you said you learned that
there’s at least fourteen different variations from true male to true female, I
was blown away. I think it’s kind of ironic, that what is genetically
considered true male and true female are sterile. Don’t you find that odd?
Don’t you think the Universe really does want us to be somewhere in between, so
we can be as strong as possible?

As strong as possible. Tessa isn’t strong
now, but the love in the letter from Prince heartens her and Aunt Maddie
saying, sometimes you meet the people you are supposed to meet.

Tessa decides to FaceTime her mom.

Chapter 26

“AUNT MADDIE!”

Madeline turns from stowing the second arm of the awning and
smiles. A warm glow starts up from her belly and fires into her heart every
time Tessa calls her Aunt.

“Yes?”

Tessa stops in her tracks. “Are you leaving?”

“Oh, I never go very far. Just a little way down the road.”

“But I wanted you and Mom to meet.”

“I’m very glad you called her.”

“You won’t stay for a night and have campfire with us?”

“I thought, if it’s okay with you, that once you are back in
Michigan, I’ll come then. Would that be all right?”

“Of course, I just thought it would be nice
for all of us here.”

“It’s very special for you and your mom to have some one-on-one
time. Another couple of weeks, I’ll see you in Michigan.” She pets Murphy as
they sit one more time at the picnic table.

“Well, I wanted to ask you about this.” Tessa proffers the
teaspoon handle roach clip and small baggie.

“Oh my God. Where did you find that?”

Tessa tells her.

“That Sadie, I tell you, what an imp.”

“Do you think it’s any good?”

Madeline opens it. “Oh my, yes.”

“Do you want it?”

“Oh good Lord, no. Neither Dan or I smoke. That was the hippy
dippy Percy and Sadie routine.”

Tessa laughs. “I don’t really smoke either.”

“Does your mother?”

“I don’t know.”

“Ask her. If she doesn’t, you can always leave it somewhere for
someone else, before you cross the border. Dan never would have allowed that if
he’d known. Oh my God, he’s going to shit when he finds out.”

They both laugh.

“I love Dan, but he’s too anal. Sadie was so opposite of him. My
gosh, we certainly had some adventures. You keep that. And ask your mom and if
not, someone on the road will appreciate the treasure you leave.”

“I wanted to ask about something else.”

Tessa relates the argument she had with Dina and the ashes being
scattered.

“I don’t have enough for the Bay of Fundy, or any of the eastern drops.
I have enough for Idaho and Lake Superior.”

“No worries.” Madeline smiles. “I made those drops, myself, when
you had to change course. You haven’t failed the task, Tessa, if that’s what
you’re worried about. You fulfilled it splendidly.”

“I didn’t want to fail Aunt Sadie, or Mr. Forsythe, even if that
sounds weird.”

“You succeeded beautifully, in every way. Take a deep breath and
appreciate yourself for this achievement.”

They each take a moment to look at the mountains encircling the
site.

“Stay in my life? Please?” Tessa asks.

“I am delighted to be in your life, always.”

IN HANA, WHEN it’s time to bring the fish in, all the tribal
villagers go down to the water to help. Elders sit up on the rocks above the
water and direct the younger fishermen where the fish are.

It’s a carnival atmosphere, smokes from food being cooked, some
concessions sold, people look at each car to see who’s arriving. An occasional
tourist gets lost and finds themselves in the crowd. People aren’t unkind, but
they are not overly friendly either.

The nets come in and everyone helps sort. For their work, everyone
is given part of the bounty and the rest goes to market.

Up on a hill, above Hana, is a large cross. Josh stands here, out
of place, but not lost, overlooking the pastures, before he walks down to the
water front. His long, youthful legs carry him effortlessly. He makes the
transition from pasture to paved street as easily as he’s made the transition
from Northern Michigan to Hawaii. As easily as he did from Navajo country to
Northern Michigan, as effortlessly as he breathes.

He strides down the tilting streets to the waterfront and walks
into the fish coming in chaos. He understands tribal, community, stealing a car
to harvest the parts for the good of the whole.

The dichotomy of the very rich and the very
poor in Hawaii does not escape him. It’s why he chooses to not live on an
island, but he has a more immediate concern. He watches the men coming in.
Their practiced legs stepping thigh deep in the cove’s water, leading the boats
in. Some men are big and round like Samoans, others are leaner, most are young,
but some of the older ones who can still move well, heads down, nets in hand,
lines from the vessels, walk the waters. One in particular.

Josh waits with the younger boys, and the women and children and
some older men. The crowd is jovial and jostling and if they’ve noticed the
taller younger man, they make no mention, except for a glance, and some of the
teenage girls elbow each other as they sip from straws and plastic cups. Josh
pretends not to see, but he smiles inside.

“Nadleh,” he calls when the one he is looking
for comes close.

The man’s head snaps up, as if he’s heard a sound from his past,
from another life, a sound he’s been waiting to hear again. His curly-topped
black hair does not quite fit in here, and only once he’s close do his features
belie the dark tones of his skin. He could be native, or a dark European, a
Mediterranean man. He hands off his nets and lines to someone on shore. And
walks toward Josh.

“It’s time.”

The man nods and walks to another man his age in the water. The
man in the water looks up at Josh and their eyes meet. They nod. The man in the
water claps the other man’s shoulder. The man closer to shore turns to leave
with Josh, but not before a young boy comes up and hugs him around the thigh.

Gabe looks down and smiles. He tussles the boy’s hair and, in a
brief moment of affection, kisses him on the head.

As they leave Hana, Josh drives toward the barren side. Before
they depart the green of the expensive cliffside homes, the public airport used
for the ultra-rich people’s private jets, Josh turns down a lane between two
pasture fences and locates a small chapel.

He stops and goes inside. Gabe follows him. They let their palms
run over the wood of the pews and inhale the air of many generations. For a
moment, everything is still. For a moment, generations seep into their pores.
They walk back out and behind to the cemetery. Josh walks to the edge of the
cliff overlooking the water and watches the surf pound a rock out there. He
watches the big curling waves loping in from an endless ocean, crashing and
wending their foam and spit around this large plummeting rock. Then he moves
back toward the grave he seeks and finds a large heart-shaped, dark grey it’s
almost black, rock right in the center of the other many large and black and
grey island rocks rimming the square of this man’s grave.

He bends down on one knee and removes the ash he carries in a
small pouch. He lifts the rock and disperses the ash into the crevices below,
marrying the soil of Hawaii with the soul of a woman he never knew with the ash
of a doe he has slain. Rocks and crevices piled on so many others, and then he
replaces the rock and reads the inscription.

If I take the wings
of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the Sea, even then Thine
hand would lead me and Thy right hand envelope me.

“It’s time,” Josh says, standing and turning to Gabe. “It’s time,”
he says again, with tears in his eyes.

Chapter 27

SHE WAITS FOR her mom at the Jasper Hotel, at the same place she’d
dropped off Dina, not that long ago.

Tessa rushes to her and holds her fiercely. “It’s so good to see
you.”

As her mother holds her, Tessa hears her whisper, “You’ve cut your
hair.”

“Yes.”

Her mother runs hers fingers through the shortened thick hair.
“It’s almost curly.” She looks at Tessa intently for a moment. “It’s good being
here.”

They stand apart.

“And Murphy?”

“He’s in the truck.”

Her mom walks in a complete circle, looking at the sky and the
mountains.

“What is it?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much beauty
in my whole life.”

“Wait till you see Mt. Edith Cavell.”

Tessa walks with her mom to the parking lot.

“You’re limping!” her mom says as she looks at Tessa’s taped
ankle.

“It’s getting better, really. Don’t worry so much. C’mon.” Tessa
tugs her impatiently.

As they cross the street, Madeline’s motorhome drives by and she
honks.

Tessa waves.

“Who’s that?” her mom asks.

“One of my new friends, Mom.”

HER MOM IS driving, oohing and ahhing as she drives the rig south
on 93a. Murphy’s lying between them. Tessa looks at her mom.

“What is it?”

“Why did you divorce Dad?”

Her mom coughs. It’s the kind of cough she does before she avoids
a question. Not quite a lie and not quite the truth.

“We grew apart.”

“No, Mom. Really.”

Her mom’s nervous tic comes out. The quick head shake. She lets
out a sigh.

There you go.

“Honey, do you remember when you were young, I mean really young?
When you told me about the seven sisters in the sky? When you said that your
other people told you that the earth started out as a turtle?”

“Yes.”

“You were about three then, and I wondered where did all these
stories come from? You surprised us so much. Do you remember anything else?”

“I remember Eli and I thought we saw a face in the garage window
pane, but I went to look and no one was there. We found a skeleton key when we
tried to dig up Oreo.”

Her mom nods. “Anything else?”

Tessa shakes her head.

“You told me, as soon as you could talk, ‘You know I’m a girl inside,
right?’ ”

“I don’t remember that. I just remember always being a girl.”

They ride in silence.

“Dad didn’t like it.”

“No.”

“He more than didn’t like it.”

“That’s why we traveled to your grandma and grandpa’s. Not just to
take them food.”

“To bring them . . . me?”

“To receive their blessings and strength about
you. Not only First Nation, but Athabascan. That’s why we know Josh. Navajo
comes from Athabascan, and he was sent to be near you.”

“And we have both? Anishinaabe and Athabascan?”

“Yes. You, Eli, and me. We have both.”

“What about Aunt Sadie and Uncle Percy?”

“Oh, honey, that’s where it gets a bit different. Percy yes.
Sadie, the rumor is, yes. She comes from the Crescent Side of North Manitou.
She was adopted. And Percy is related to us by marriage.”

They drive a little further. “Did you love Dad?”

“Yes. I loved him. I loved the Gabe I knew in college.”

“What was he like, before you had us?”

“He was the most fun-loving man I had ever met. Always up for an
adventure, smart, brilliant. Could build anything. He was the best father until
. . .”

“I said I was a girl.”

“It troubled him, at first. But he didn’t focus on it. He thought
it was a phase. He let it go until after his accident. Then, he became hateful
about it, consumed by it. Perseverated about how we could cure you. He couldn’t
seem to distract himself. It was the accident that changed him. Not you.”

“Mom,” Tessa’s voice catches, “I think I . . .”

“Don’t say any more.”

Her mom’s jaw tightens as she continues driving. “I saw your
blackened eyes, your stomach split wide open. He took closed fists to you,
Tessa. He tried to kill you. You protected Eli, like you’ve always done. That’s
all that matters.”

“Except Eli had to go to prison, while I was in the hospital. And
you. I’ve cost you so much.”

“You haven’t cost me anything. This is life. This is what we do.
We love each other and we go through things together.”

“And Uncle Mark?”

“And Uncle Mark loves you as his own.”

“Is he? Is he Eli’s and my real Dad?”

“No, baby. He just wants to be, that’s all.”

IT’S IN HER dreams that her dad returns to her.

This time, mostly everything is all right. It’s their weekend to
be up north with him. Eli is sleeping in, but her dad rousts her and she
eagerly goes with him. She’s his pet.

Another adventure. They’re in their farm clothes and the dad she
loves says, “We are on a special mission. Only you and I can do this.”

He seems so happy. It’s fall time, the earth, their earth has
started its tilt away from the sun. Orion is up early in the sky. The hunter.
She can barely make out the edges of daylight.

“That sun will come fast. We have to hurry.”

They get to the big farm where her dad sometimes works. They stop
at the second silo.

“Slide over,” her dad says. “You’re going to
follow me down.”

She obeys him. She’s driven his truck before, but not very often.
Not for a mission.

He walks into the shed attached to the silo and the next thing she
sees is him wheeling out a tractor with a big bucket on the front. A loader. He
waves to her with a big smile and she follows. They return down the road they
came from. They turn into a place where a small mobile home is parked.

He drives into a pasture with a pond behind it and shuts the
tractor off. He motions for her to come. She shuts off the truck and slides out
of the seat carefully. Her father’s truck is big. It’s hard for a ten year old
to climb in and out. He comes to the door and holds it open. She doesn’t see
him pick something up from behind the seat.

They walk through the tall dying meadow grass.

“The sun is coming quickly,” her dad says, again.

He opens a small dog gate and steps over an electric fence, about
a foot off the ground.

“Careful,” he says as she steps over the electric fence.

The shed they are at has a door jammed open by kicked up soft
black dirt and to the right there’s a spigot with gooey damp mud below it. It’s
a small pen.

“Where are you, Albert?” her dad calls. “Wake up. Breakfast. Stay
back behind the door,” he says to her as he goes in.

She hears a snorting and a rustling.

“C’mon, Albert,” her Dad says in a friendly, conversational tone.

Then a big sleepy-eyed pig rambles out.

“Pet him on the head for a moment,” her dad says, and she does.

He’s a big pig, but friendly, and his little pig tail wags. Her
dad gets some feed in a black well-worn rubber pan, and Albert happily follows
him over to snuff and eat in it. Suddenly her dad moves her behind him, and he
draws the small 410 to his cheek and takes aim at Albert’s head.

Blam!

Albert falls and three-hundred pounds of pig trying to fight for
his life levitates up and off the ground resoundingly three or four times. Like
a whale breaching, slamming into the ground and the sound of him dying thumping
up through the earth to her feet.

“Now the fun begins,” Gabe says, and out of nowhere he draws a
sharp knife and steps expertly to Albert’s head, avoiding the pig’s thrashing
hooves and body. He slices Albert’s jugular. The blood sprays and hits the wire
fence, droplets in the rising sun. A blood rain.

Horrified and sickened, Tessa presses her back against the door
that doesn’t move because of the jammed up earth. She isn’t breathing. She
squeezes her eyes shut and her hands sink into the soft black dirt. She hears
birds calling from the pond as they lift off. Later, she will learn these are
the calls of the sandhill cranes, about ready to migrate for fall.

Even though her eyes are closed, she can still hear Albert’s
breathing choking on his own blood as his massive fluttering body slows its
huge drum thumping on the ground. The drum beats go down into the earth and the
drum thumping comes up through her feet and into the space between her heart
and her spine, all the way into her soul. Albert’s waving whapping motion on
the earth, like a fish out of water flapping at the landing, catches up to the
last of his life leaving his body. Ceasing entirely in a matter of moments.

Tessa grapples at fistfuls of black dirt.

“What are you doing?” Gabe asks, mystified. “Where do you think
the bacon we ate last night came from? C’mon now, T. Get up,” he says, not
unkindly, and pulls her to her feet.

“I have to have you run the loader so I can hook the chain to the
bucket. Clean your hands off. Farmer White won’t like dirt on the steering
wheel.”

Her mom holds her from this nightmare dream memory. She’s
trembling and shivering but can’t feel the temperature. She can’t feel
anything. Her heart is frozen and she realizes she is still not breathing. One,
two, three, four.

And why, at the end she sees Dina’s face instead of her dad’s is a
mystery to her.

BETH WATCHES TESSA cry and is helpless. She strokes her head, as
if petting Murphy. “It will pass, baby. I promise.”

Beth puts a blanket over Tessa and tucks her in. Then she makes
hot cocoa the old-fashioned way, with heavy cream, a touch of homemade maple
syrup, and some cinnamon. Just enough maple syrup, so the organic ground cacao
beans aren’t bitter.

And after a time, Tessa sleeps. And when her daughter sleeps, all
the wrinkled lines and puffy eyes relax, and Beth recognizes her baby girl once
more, and is proud of the woman she’s becoming.

THEY STOP FOR the night at the same campground where Dina saw the
bear. They’re still in British Columbia, making their way toward Idaho.

Tessa approaches her mom who is sitting at the picnic table on the
edge of their campsite. They have a beautiful view of the mountain.

“Mom?”

“Yes?”

Tessa puts the joint in front of her mom.

“Oh, my!” Beth’s eyes light up. Then she frowns. “Wait. Are you
into drugs?”

Tessa cocks her head like Murphy does when he hears a strange
sound. “Seriously, Mom? I like my lungs clear. I run. I found that.”

Her mom looks at her doubtfully.

“Yep. In the garbage, back there.” Tessa indicates one of the
bear-proof bins. “Someone left it on a paper plate.” It did happen, once.

“Well, how odd.” Her mom picks it up and does a quick look around.
They’re secluded enough. “Maybe we should put it back?”

“Maybe we should smoke it.”

“Tessa!”

“C’mon, you and Dad did it in college.”

“Have you ever done it?”

Tessa rolls her eyes.

“Oh, that’s right. I promised not to ask those kind of questions.
This trip.”

“We could just do a little bit and then I
could put it back.”

The campfire flickers. Beth picks up a thin stick and catches a
flame on it.

“Well, I guess a little bit won’t hurt.”

“It’s kind of a good sleep aid . . . right?”

“Sometimes.” Beth inhales the first puff and
passes Aunt Sadie’s stash to Tessa. “Depends if this is Sativa or Indica.”

Tessa inhales just a small amount and passes the joint back.

Beth takes a hefty inhale and then exhales.
“In-dah-Coma.”

They giggle.

“Ohhhhh. You know more than I thought.”

Tessa inhales again and does a French curl, a technique where her
exhale curls into her nose on a smooth inhale.

“Ooooooh, and I see you know a little more about inhaling then I
thought.” Beth starts coughing after her third hit. “Oh. That’s enough for me.”
She hands it off to Tessa, who takes one more.

“That’s enough for me too.”

She stubs it out and looks at her mom questioningly. “Garbage?”

“Well. Let’s wait and see if this works, okay?”

“Sure.”

Tessa stashes it under a rock on the outside of the campfire.

“Oh. I haven’t done that in a very long time. I’ve always loved
the smell of it outdoors.”

“Me too.”