Vanishing Act (10 page)

She started to feel the proximity of the Niagara River long before she came close enough to make out lights along the shore. There was something different in the air, and in the water. Suddenly, the motor’s pitch skipped up to a whine again and the boat glided to a stop. She cut the throttle and said, "Broken again. This time we’d better row to shore."

"Okay," said Felker.

"I’ll help," she said. "We’d better get in quick." She tipped up the motor, moved forward to sit beside him, and took an oar.

"Why?" he said as they took their first stroke shoulder to shoulder.

"Why what?"

"Why quick?"

"The river is an international boundary. Over there is Canada. They’re not especially hard-nosed about it, but both sides probably have somebody watching. If you saw a man and a woman rowing a fourteen-foot boat in off Lake Ontario on a cold night with the motor out of the water, what would you do?"

He looked up to his right above the water. "Is that them up there? It looks like a fort."

"It is," she said. "Fort Niagara. It’s old. Ignore it."

They rowed hard. He provided most of the forward movement, and Jane concentrated on keeping the boat straight against his size and strength. Felker had a good eye for strategic places. This was the narrowest part of the river. The name for it was O-ne-ah, the Neck, and at one time it had been one of the prizes of the earth, the strangle point in the North American fur trade. The portage around the Falls, the Carrying Place of Niagara, was the one big obstacle in the route from the center of the continent to the sea. The French, the British, the Americans, and all of the Indian tribes allied with each of them had fought for control of that fort from the 1680s to the 1780s. Now it was empty, a museum. It was one of the quiet places where all the old human blood had made the grass grow green.

They rowed on, and crossed the border a mile or two out from shore. When they had rowed in silence for a long time, Felker said, "Somehow I can’t picture Harry doing this."

"No." She chuckled. "Not Harry. Harry got to ride in a car."

Jane let Felker’s stronger strokes push them toward shore just before dawn. They could already begin to make out shapes in the little Canadian town. There were beautiful old houses and perversely neat lawns and tightly planted beds of flowers everywhere. It looked more like England than the American towns a half mile across the river.

Jane guided the boat up to a concrete jetty and tied it between two cabin cruisers so that it was hard to see. Then they took their bags and walked up the dock into Canada.

"What is this place?" asked Felker.

"Niagara-on-the-Lake," she said.

"It must save them a lot of time giving directions," he said. "Where to now?"

"To find a phone."

The police car seemed to come from nowhere. It appeared on the street ahead and two cops got out. "Let me handle this," she whispered. She watched the two men come toward them. They looked like policemen from another time, tall and Irish or Scottish, one of them with bristly blond eyebrows and a pink face and opaque blue eyes. "Good morning," he said.

"Good morning," said Jane, but Felker had spoken too, in a little chorus. She hoped he wasn’t going to get overconfident because he thought he knew more than she did about policemen.

"The two of you look a bit ... lost. We wondered if there was some sort of assistance we could offer."

"No," said Jane, and forced a smile. "We’re on vacation. We arrived in town a little early, so we’re waiting for a decent hour for breakfast at the Oban Inn."

This seemed to please the cop. "Really." He glanced at his partner. "I believe they’ll be serving at six or so." His partner nodded smartly.

"Good," said Jane. "Thank you very much." She started to walk past the two policemen, and Felker drifted along with her.

"Ah, one moment, please," said the cop.

Jane stopped.

"I believe you’re Americans?"

"Yes."

"I’m sorry to trouble you, but it’s rather unusual to see two Americans arrive with rucksacks at this hour. If I could see your identification ..."

Jane took her wallet out of her leather bag and opened it. She did the sort of searching people did when policemen asked. It wasn’t an accident. It allowed her to flash a thick sheaf of American money. Policemen were fairly predictable: seeing the money would reassure them that Jane and Felker weren’t burglars.

Jane ended her search and handed the policeman a lot of little plastic windows. Felker could see credit cards and a driver’s license. Then, to Felker’s surprise, she reached into the bag again and pulled out a man’s wallet.

"Ah," said the cop. "Mr. and Mrs. Whitefield. And where did you cross the border?"

"Niagara Falls," she said. Then she turned to Felker. "Da-gwa-ya-dan-nake ne-wa-ate-keh."

Felker nodded thoughtfully, but the policeman said, "I’m sorry, but I didn’t catch that."

"I beg your pardon," said Jane. "It’s a habit. We use the old language at home."

"I see." He handed the two sets of documents back to her. "Well, thank you very much. I hope you enjoy your holiday."

"Thank you."

The two cops got back into their car and smiled at them, then drove off. "I seem to be using my last resorts first," she said. "I couldn’t let them ask to take a look inside the bags and find your money."

"How did you do it? What was that gibberish?"

"It wasn’t gibberish," she said. "It’s an Indian language. One of the old treaties gave Indians the right to go back and forth across the border. Anything that sounds like police harassment would be a lot of trouble."

"Where in the world did you learn that? Do you know some Indians?"

"Yeah. My family."

He looked at her closely. "What kind of Indian?"

"The usual kind," she said. "Feathers and beads."

He looked at her skeptically. "What tribe?"

"Seneca. Wolf Clan."

"You have blue eyes."

"Yes."

"Are they contact lenses?"

"No."

"Okay, then ..." He seemed to expect her to supply his conclusion, but she only waited. "What did you say?"

"Just now?"

"In Seneca."

"Part of the Lord’s Prayer: ’Deliver us from evil,’ " Jane said.

"Do you pray?"

"No, I run," said Jane. "But things my mother taught me come out of my memory sometimes while I’m doing it. Let’s go find a phone before we get into more trouble."

11

It was already eight o’clock. Jane and Felker were sitting on the edge of the dock, swinging their feet above the water. Felker had been silent for a long time. Jane watched him out of the corner of her eye. It was times like these, when he was stuck waiting and had time to think, that would wear him down. She knew she should do something to keep him from spiraling downward. "Tell me what you’re thinking."

He smiled, but he kept his eyes on the water out beyond the harbor. "I was thinking about you."

She looked away from him. She had made another mistake. He was at the point now where he realized that he didn’t know anybody anymore. Except the nearest woman.

"I was thinking I should apologize," he said. "I mean, it doesn’t matter to me whether you’re a full-blooded Indian or one ninetieth, does it? I guess I should say Native American."

It wasn’t what she had been dreading, and she was relieved. "Not to me," she said. "I’m as Indian as I can be."

"Then where did the blue eyes come from?"

"My father looked pretty much the way you would have wanted him to. He had a face like a tomahawk and skin the color of a penny. He was a Heron."

"A what?"

"A Heron. The bird, you know? Big long legs? That was his clan."

"Oh," he said. "So why are you a Wolf—a blue-eyed Wolf?"

"Blue-eyed because my mother didn’t start out as a Seneca. She looked like a negative of one. Very blond and white and Irish." She smiled as she remembered. "When I was really little they started making Barbie dolls, and the first time I saw one I thought it was supposed to be my mother. I called them Mama dolls. There weren’t a lot of people in Deganawida who looked like that."

"Or anywhere else. If your mother was a Barbie and your father was a Heron, why aren’t you a Heron?"

"It wouldn’t make sense to you."

"We don’t have much to talk about except my troubles, and those make me nervous."

"Okay," she said. "The first thing you have to know is that all family relationships go only through the mother. Your father is still your father, but he’s not a relative. The kids live at the mother’s house and belong to her clan—her family."

"That’s simple enough."

"It is, really. Only it carries through to all relatives. Your father’s brothers, sisters, sister’s kids are in his clan, so they’re not related to you. You with me?"

"I think so. If I could work it out on paper."

"Okay. Then there’s marriage. The nation is divided into two halves."

’’That much I know. Men and women."

"Not those two. Half the clans are on one side, and half on the other. Anthropologists call them moieties. You can only marry somebody who is in the other half. My father was a Heron, so he couldn’t marry a Deer, Snipe, Hawk, or another Heron. She had to be a Turtle, Wolf, Bear, or Beaver."

"Hey, I just realized where you’re going," he said. "If your mother was a Barbie and you can’t be related to your father, it kind of leaves you out in the cold, right? You aren’t related to anybody."

"Very good," she said. "Except that in the old days they ran into this problem early on. See, all of the Iroquois tribes were always at war."

"Always?"

She shrugged. "As far as we know. The first ones to see them who could write were the French, in the 1530s. There was a war with the Algonquins that had been going on for as long as anybody alive remembered. The next time there was peace was 1783, when the Revolutionary War ended."

"Two hundred and fifty years ..." He seemed to be thinking about it, but then he frowned. "But how did that get you to be a blue-eyed Wolf?"

"If you fight all the time, two things happen. You lose a lot of people, and you take a lot of prisoners. They used the prisoners to make up for the casualties. There had to be a provision for that—adoption."

She watched him for a moment to see whether he understood. Incredible acts of savagery made necessary equal acts of mercy. Hawenneyu the Creator and Hanegoategeh the Evil-Minded were twin brothers.

"So you were adopted."

"No. My mother was. My father took her to visit his reservation on Tonawanda Creek—probably to show her what she was getting into. She hit it off with a couple of the ladies in the Wolf clan, and they got together before the wedding and did some lobbying with the old women, who made it official in open council." Saying this brought her mother back. Mentioning her like that, casually to a stranger, was like lying, because it didn’t say who she had been.

Jane could see her now—not dying of cancer, but the way she was when Jane was a child. Probably, the picture came from the sixties. She was so tall and thin, with all that blond hair, breezing into every unfamiliar situation as though she had arranged it herself, not brash, exactly, but determined. And not fearless, but showing no fear, or even any awareness that anyone could be less than delighted at that moment: Who could imagine anything more fascinating than taking her only night off to go to Jane’s school and meet all of Jane’s teachers? If someone spoke, she would turn it into a conversation; if someone smiled, she would hug; if someone hugged, she would kiss. The Wolf women would have been overwhelmed and hypnotized at the same time. It was only after Jane was older that she realized her mother had invented herself. "If your mother is a Wolf, you’re a Wolf. Remember?"

"So you’re fifty percent Seneca, and fifty percent adopted Seneca."

"No. I’m just Seneca., There’s no such thing as half." She turned to stare past him along the dock toward the shore. Felker looked, too, and saw a battered pickup truck towing a trailer pull into the parking lot. Two men got out. They had dark skin, black hair, and Oriental eyes. The older one was dressed like a farmer, in overalls and a John Deere hat, but the younger one had an earring and a T-shirt that said OTTAWA ROUGHRIDERS.

"There’s our ride," said Jane.

"More Seneca?"

"Mohawk." She stood up and walked down the dock, threw her arms around the younger man and hugged him, then planted a respectful kiss on the cheek of the older man. His eyes seemed to glitter with affection, but he pretended not to see Felker, who was just behind her.

Jane turned and pulled Felker a little closer and said, "This is John Felker." Felker stiffened a little at the mention of his name, but she went on. "This is Wendell Hill, and this is his son, Carlton." The men dutifully shook hands. Jane said, "Uncle Wendell, the boat’s over here."

"Let’s take a look," said the older man. He walked out along the dock and glanced at it, then announced, "We can do it."

Carlton jumped into the truck and backed the trailer into the water, while Wendell lowered himself into the boat and rowed it onto the first rollers of the trailer. Carlton handed him a rope and he snapped it onto the bow ring. Then he kept walking onto the narrow tongue of the trailer and up to the bed of the truck and cranked the boat up with a winch. No words were spoken. Wendell stepped up into the cab with Carlton, and Jane and Felker climbed into the flatbed.

"So you’re part Mohawk, too?"

"Just Seneca," she said. "I told you before, you can’t be two things."

"But you called him your uncle. He’s your father’s brother, right?"

"No," she said. "My mother."

"But your mother—"

"—was a member of the Wolf clan. Wendell is a member of the Wolf clan. Everybody in the same clan is a relative. It doesn’t matter if you’re Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, or Tuscarora."

"So your father would be related to a Mohawk in the Heron clan."

"Theoretically, except there is no Mohawk Heron clan. They just have Turtle, Wolf, and Bear."

"And Carlton is your cousin."

"Please don’t make me go through all this again," she said. "I’m tired."

"Come on."

"Carlton’s mother is a Turtle, so he’s a Turtle, and I’m not related to him at all. We’re just friends. Give up. You’re never going to get it."

Felker shook his head and laughed. "I don’t give up. Let me try again. If you married me, I’d have to be one of the other half of the clans. The ones that are birds and things."

It was a jolt like a small electric shock. Her voice went flat. "Yes," she said, then added, "If you’re good at sleeping in trucks, this is a great time." She laid her head on her leather bag, turned away, and closed her eyes. After ten minutes, she gave up the pretense and sat up. Even after the past twenty-four hours, she still couldn’t lie motionless in the metal bed of the truck. Every bump seemed to be transferred in an amplified form to her left hip. They were heading west, so the morning sun was in her eyes.

"You can’t sleep either?" he asked.

"I catnap," she lied.

The truck crossed the bridge over the Welland Canal, where two big freighters on their way to the St. Lawrence and the sea looked as though they were stuck. She stared at them and wondered what they were carrying. Half the time the flags had nothing to do with where they were from.

"Where are we going?"

’’This is Saint Catharines. They’ll probably get on the Queen Elizabeth Way in a minute. It’s a freeway, so we’ll get blown around for a while. Then around Hamilton they’ll get off and take 53 the rest of the way."

He sighed. "All right. No more personal questions, and no asking where we are or where we’re going. What else is there? Harry. We both know Harry. A mutual friend. Is this the way you took Harry out?"

Jane looked at him closely for a moment. He was beginning to feel the loneliness of it, and she wasn’t helping. He was never going to have that kind of intimate, open talk again. Even if the other person spilled his guts over a dozen martinis, Felker was going to have to keep quiet. She was just being secretive because it was a habit. Or maybe she was using it to keep him disoriented and off balance so she could be in charge. "I’m sorry," she said. "We’re going to the Six Nations Reserve on the Grand River."

"So his new life is on a Canadian Indian reservation?"

"Who?"

"Harry."

"I wasn’t talking about Harry. I was talking about us." She didn’t like the sound of this, either. "We’re going this way because it was the safest place I could think of when I saw they were that close behind us." She shrugged. "Wherever they think we went, it’s not here."

"Six Nations Reserve. So it’s all of the Iroquois."

"Sort of," she said. "Remember the old fort we passed?"

"Sure."

"That was where the tribes ran to during the Revolutionary War. They had fought on the side of the British for a hundred years, but when the Americans won, the British forgot to put anything in the treaty to protect them. A British general named Haldimand felt guilty and got them this place."

"Is this your reservation?"

"I’m not sure how to answer that," she said. "I’m sort of a citizen because everybody is, but most of the Seneca are still in New York. My family. When the others left, they couldn’t bear to do it. This isn’t exactly a reservation. It’s a sort of refuge. These people have been holding out since 1784."