Why the Star Stands Still (Gives Light Series) (13 page)

Mickey prodded the atlas moth with her cold, sticky fingers, like she might tempt it into beating its wings.  She followed the freckles down my arms and prodded those, too.

"You've got freckles," she said.  "Just like me."

I can't begin to explain how ridiculously happy I felt.

"That's right," I said.  "Just like you."

7

A Woodsorrel in Winter

The end of the monsoon brought out a new wave of high spirits on the Nettlebush Reserve.  Sunny yellow Indian Mallows poked cheerfully out of the puddles on the ground.  The clouds parted in the blue sky, the sun stronger and brighter than before.  Neighbors rushed out of their homes to greet the friends they hadn't seen in weeks.  I thought with longing of my grandmother, a stern, irascible woman who used to despise the yearly monsoons.  Actually, I think it was rain in general she disliked.  All it took was one raindrop to render her gloomy and withdrawn.

Nobody was gloomy and withdrawn now.  On the contrary, the whole of the reservation was practically imbibed with mirth.  A large part of that probably had something to do with the birth of Annie's baby girls.

Dozens of well-wishers flocked out to the farmland to greet the two newest additions to the reservation.  Annie carried them in double cradleboards on her back.  It was amazing how quickly she had regained her vitality.  The babies sat on her back, shaded by the sun, peering astoundedly at their surroundings while she hilled the crops and milked the cows.  And they didn't cry.

"How come they aren't crying?" Mickey asked.

Annie sat with them beneath an apple tree on Mrs. Siomme's ranch.  They rested on the lush grass in their safe, tight swaddling.

"Shoshone babies don't cry," Annie dismissed placidly.  "Only when they're hungry or soiled."

"But why?  How do you get 'em to stop crying?"

"I'll tell you when you're older," I said.

Annie's stream of visitors was endless.  Charity showed up to croon over the twins and Daisy At Dawn told everyone who would listen that she had delivered them herself.  "They copied us," said Daisy's dismal twin, Holly.  "What are their names?" asked a very excited Autumn Rose In Winter.

"Celia and Elizabeth," Annie said.  "For our mothers."

Even at dinnertime, all anybody wanted to do was fawn over the babies.  It reached the point where Nicholas, usually a menace and a brat, imposed himself protectively between the admirers and his new baby sisters and wouldn't let anyone come closer.

"Aren't they cute, Uncle Paul?" Jessica asked.

Dad looked up from the picnic table, distracted.  "I'm sorry?"

"I think you've been living on the moon lately," Jessica said.  "The babies.  Aren't they cute?"

"Oh.  Yes, of course," Dad said.  "Excuse me..."

He wandered away from the table.  Jessica and I frowned at each other.

"Maybe he needs to see a therapist," Jessica suggested.

"I don't think he'd ever go willingly," I said.  "And even if we convinced him, I'm sure he'd keep his feelings to himself and sit in silence for the whole session."

"Therapy's overrated, anyway," Jessica decided.

"Is that your professional opinion?"

"You never went to therapy, did you?  I mean, how could you have?  You didn't talk for most of your life.  And look at you!  You turned out just fine."

I pretended I was watching Henry Siomme hand out sourdough bread to the old folks.  He looked so much like his mother, his face personable and strong, his eyes dark green.

"I did go to a therapist," I finally said.  "When I was very little."

"Really?" Jessica said.  "But you couldn't talk.  You didn't even know sign language back then, did you?  What did you do together?"

"Have you seen DeShawn anywhere?" I asked.

"Huh?  Oh, yeah.  DeShawn!" Jessica yelled, rising from her seat.  "Get your butt over here!"

Dad's distraction lasted well into the next day, when he met with Mickey and me in the windmill field.  He handed the both of us shinny sticks and showed us the tapikolo--a buckskin sack stuffed with pine nuts.

"You're supposed to have ten players," Dad said, "but we'll make do with three."

We spent an hour batting the tapikolo back and forth, each of us trying to knock it past the other.  Mickey proved to be a lot stronger than her twig-thin arms had led me to believe; at one point she knocked the tapikolo so far away, it hit the base of a windmill and rolled downhill toward Luke Owns Forty's house.

"This is just like hockey," Mickey said with approval.

Dad's smile was diluted and wan.  In so many ways, he was only a shadow of himself.  Ways that made me want to hug him and never let go.

"Mickey," he said, "do you like baseball?"

"Baseball's awesome," Mickey said.  "Hockey's the best, but baseball's the second best."

I found myself smiling.  "The two of you should go to a game sometime."

Dad's face looked pained with anxiety.  "I can't..."

"You can, Dad," I said, and smiled sadly.  "You're a free man.  The police can't chase you off the reservation anymore."

His face crumpled.  He looked away.  He was a free man.  He was a haunted one.

Mickey jostled Dad's arm.

"Yes?" he said, starting.

"If we go to a game, could we buy peanuts, like the song?"

Slowly, Dad started to smile.  "Of course."

I checked my wristwatch.  Much as I didn't like it, I had to get a letter in to Pima County Consolidated before the weekend.  "Sorry, guys," I said.

"It's okay," Mickey said.  "Just as long as we play again tomorrow."

Dad walked Mickey and me home.  Rafael was stuck in the hospital until late afternoon.  I couldn't imagine what for.  How many kids in Nettlebush actually swallow their pencils?  Maybe he'd landed a pro bono case from off the reserve.

"Can I have ice cream tonight?" Mickey asked me.

"You know something?  I think that's a great idea.  Dad?" I said.  "Why don't we try Grandpa's recipe again?"

Dad almost smiled.  "It was a complete fiasco the last time we tried it..."

The door to the house was unlocked.  Small wonder.  We stepped inside and found Zeke Owns Forty sitting in the front room and snacking on a honey biscuit.

"Hi!" he exclaimed, spraying crumbs all over the place.

"Ugh," Mickey said, pinching her forehead.  "Is this one of those surprise checkups?"

"Yeah, but it's just a technicality.  I'm not gonna drill you.  Just pretend I asked a bunch of questions and you answered them.  This bread is awesome!  Skylar, man, do you remember that time I wore my shirt inside out and I didn't know it?  Hahaha, that was crazy!  Why do they stick the tag on the inside where it itches?"

"I'm so sorry, Zeke," I said.  "I really don't understand the way your brain works."

"That's okay," Zeke said, and trailed into the sitting room.

"Skylar," Dad said.  "Could I talk to you for a second?"

I braced myself.  Dad never called me "Skylar" unless something serious was on his mind.

Dad and I left Mickey and Zeke in the sitting room while we went into the kitchen.  I started looking through the cabinets for cocoa powder.  Cocoa powder and sour cream.  Weird combination for ice cream, but it works.

"I still can't get used to it," Dad admitted to me.

I looked up.  "Used to being free?"

He looked caught off guard.  "No, not that," he said.  "Used to you talking.  For years, I've wanted to talk with you."

I could feel myself smiling.  "I know, Dad.  I've wanted to talk with you, too."

Dad paused.  I could feel a shift in the atmosphere, and not a pleasant one.  Uh-oh, I thought.

"So..." he started.  "Is there anything you've wanted to tell me, but couldn't?"

That's the thing about Dad.  He's known me for so long that he knows what I'm feeling, even when I don't voice it.  I've never needed a voice to tell him the important things.

But this one thing I hadn't told him--maybe it was kind of important after all.

Not as important as his peace of mind.  I thought about his little brother falling from the boughs of the willow tree.

I cleared my throat.  "No, Dad."

"Ah...you're sure...?"

"I just rearranged an old guy's larynx," came an unexpected proclamation.  "It was awesome."

I looked up suddenly.  I bit back a smile.  Rafael was home.

"Don't drag your germs into the sitting room," I called out.  Rafael never bothers changing out of his scrubs after work.  It's kind of gross.

"I'd better go," Dad murmured.

"What?"  I tried to read his facial expression.  As usual, I couldn't.  "Why?"

"It's nothing.  I'm just a little tired."

"Oh," I said.  But I had the feeling that was just an excuse.  "Okay.  I'll see you at the pauwau, right?"

Dad nodded, suddenly forty years older in countenance.  He said a brief goodbye and walked out the front door.

I felt oddly cold when I went into the sitting room.  Mickey, Rafael, and Zeke sat around the standing radio and listened to the Nettlebush station.  Rafael had exchanged his scrubs for flannel.

"Hey," Rafael said.  He looked up at me; and then he looked again.  It's one of the few things he has in common with my father.  The both of them always know what's going through my mind.

"Zeke," Rafael said, "get out."

"Aw, come
on
!"

The overgrown child clamored and complained for a few solid seconds before ultimately darting out the door.  Mickey didn't so much as lift her head.  I guess the radio had her transfixed.

"You okay?" Rafael mouthed to me.

Dad's acting weird
, I signed.

Dad didn't show up at dinner that night.  Autumn Rose In Winter handed out plates of smoked catfish--his favorite meal--and I didn't see him anywhere.  I was starting to feel anxious.

"He didn't want to be around the crowds," Racine told me.

But that didn't match up with Dad's personality at all.  He was one of the most somber, awkward guys I knew--but he was also very personable.  Take him away from human companionship and he wilts like a woodsorrel in winter.

"Skylar," Mickey said.  "What's a pauwau?"

I was sitting by the bonfire with Lila and Joseph Little Hawk when Mickey walked over to me and tugged on my hair--a very effective means of grabbing my attention.

"Ow," I said.  "It's like a party," I explained.  "Why?"

Mickey shrugged.  "Nicholas said there's going to be a pauwau soon, and then he made fun of me because I didn't know what it was."

"He gets that from me," Lila said matter-of-factly.  She signed briefly to Joseph.

Are you proud of that?
Joseph signed back.

I put my hand on Mickey's head.  "A bunch of different tribes get together," I said.  "And we celebrate the things that make us alike and the things that make us different.  We dress up and dance, we play music and games, we tell stories..."

"We pig out," Lila said.  "It's the only time of year I'm not watching my beautiful figure."

"Right, that."

Mickey tilted her head.  "Dress up?  Dress up how?  In costumes?"

"In regalia," I said.  "Our traditional clothes.  The clothes we would have worn hundreds of years ago."

"Oh," Mickey said.  And she fell silent, biting the head off a wild onion.

Later, when we went home for the night, I pulled Rafael aside.

"Mickey doesn't have regalia," I said.

"What are you talking about?" Rafael said.  "Everybody has...oh.  Yeah," he said, "I forgot she didn't grow up here."

"What should we do?" I asked.

I knew what I would have liked to done.  My grandmother used to be the best seamstress on the whole reservation.  If she were still with us, I would have asked for her help.

It's weird how the longing doesn't lessen with age.

"What about Aunt Rosa?" Rafael asked.  "She's pretty good with a needle.  Bet you she'd help."

So I paid a visit to Rosa and Gabriel's house the very next day.  Rosa and Charity were butchering mutton in the kitchen.  I tried not to throw up.

"She needs regalia?" Charity asked, her face lighting up.  "She's such a cute little girl.  I'd love to help.  Wouldn't you, Mom?"

"I have a nice summer elkskin," Rosa said slowly.  That's usually the way she talks; slow, enunciating, like she's uncertain of herself.  "We can cut it and sew it."

Rosa sent me out to the woods to collect dyes.  I followed the lake's trickling tributaries and plucked the little white lilies hiding between the weeds.  We call those lilies bloodroot because--as you've probably already surmised--the roots and the stems are a rich, deep red.  From there I followed the route where the forest looped back to the badlands.  Here were where the skinks lived, curious little lizards with bright blue tails.  I didn't have it in me to grab any live lizards.  Luckily for me the drier parts of the forest floor are littered with their skeletons.  I collected and pocketed a few of the skulls.  Skinks bones make a pretty good match for opals, and they're nowhere near as expensive.  If you've ever seen a portrait of an old Plains man covered in bone jewelry, well, that's where it comes from.