Why the Star Stands Still (Gives Light Series) (4 page)

I stood slowly.

"Cubby," Dad said, and reached for me.

I felt like a child again.  I put my arms around him; I hugged him as tightly as I knew how.  His arms wrapped around me, arms that used to make me feel small, and safe.  I could feel tremors in his arms.

My father used to be a strong man.

I stepped back and cleared my throat.  I smiled.  "Hi, Dad."

"Listen to you," Dad said.  His face was melancholy--but his face was always melancholy.  Even in my childhood, I'd seldom seen him change expressions.  Much of Dad's life has been sad.  "Your voice.  It's so good to hear your voice..."

Rafael cleared his throat.  "Hi, sir," he said.

"You don't have to call me that," Dad said.  "You're my son-in-law."

I stepped back so Racine could hug Dad.  The way he put his head on her shoulder warmed me; and at the same time, it made me feel like I could cry.  She kissed him on the cheek, tremulous.  She looked like she might cry, too.

"Uncle Paul, congratulations!" DeShawn said.

Jessica reached for a hug, hopping on her soles.  Jessica never stands still for long; too much energy bursting through her steams.  Dad smothered what would have been a chuckle were he any other man.  He gave Jessica a quick hug.  "Thank you," he said to DeShawn.  He looked so tired.  He looked so old.  I noticed the small plastic bag wrapped around his hand--all that was left of his belongings.  "I'd be very happy to leave here now."

I smiled again, muted, subdued.  I felt happy; I felt sad.  "Say no more," I said.

"I'm driving," Jessica announced.

"Amazing," Dad said.  "You're driving now.  I remember when you didn't even reach my knees..."

"She still doesn't," Racine joked.

"Hey," Jessica protested, but without a frown.

The six of us readily left the drab building.  I waved to the receptionist in passing.  We piled out onto the white pavement, Rafael leading the way to the SUV.

"Dad," I said, "how about we go out for lunch?"

Dad stiffened.  Was it nerves?  "If it's not the reservation..."

I knew what he was thinking.  He had been released on a technicality--the technicality that the federal government had no authority to arrest him on reservation soil.

"They're not going to arrest you again," I said, my hand on his shoulder.  "That's double jeopardy.  They can't convict you twice for the same crime."

But for all that I tried to encourage him, his shoulder was tense beneath my hand; his eyes were difficult to read.

We got into the car, the six of us, and rode the interstate to Tucson, a relatively short drive.  Racine picked out a diner with checkered tablecloths and a soft serve fountain.  We squashed ourselves into the booths and ordered eggs and toast and tomatoes, Rafael and Jessica prodding each other over arm space.

I looked discreetly across the tabletop at Dad.  I thought he must have been happy to be out in the open--after all these years--but he didn't look happy to me.  He looked shrunken.  Defeated.  His hands, once pawlike, were fragile on his fork.  His fingers were brittle and thin.  It was the worst thing I'd ever seen.

When he set down his coffee mug, I reached for his hand and grasped it.  He smiled fleetingly at me and looked away.

In the Shoshone world, reticence is placed on a kind of bizarre pedestal.  Most Shoshone are raised with the idea that it's annoying if you talk to other people about your feelings.  Dad embodied that ideal.  Fifteen years in hell, and he acted like he'd only just gone to the grocery store.

"So, Uncle Paul," DeShawn attempted, bless his heart.  "You ought to join the tribal council."

Dad looked surprised.  "Why do you say that?"

"With Stuart out in Idaho all the time--and Mrs. Red Clay's retired--well, I think you know the interests of the reservation pretty well, don't you...?"

"Fairly well," Dad said mildly.

"DeShawn's on the reservation police," Jessica said, rolling her eyes.

"Want to see my pager?" DeShawn said.

"Nobody wants to see
that
," Jessica said.

Racine's hand dropped underneath the table.  I think she was reaching for Dad's.  I hope he gave it to her.

"Still a speech therapist, Rafael?" Dad asked.

"Huh?  Oh, yeah," he said.  "Sometimes.  Not like we've got a bunch of mute kids running around the reserve or anything."

"I ought to thank you for what you did with Cubby's voice.  Regrowing vocal cords; who knew..."

"I didn't really do much.  It's just that there's a lot of lamina inside the umbilical cord.  It's really Charity who did everything."

Charity was Rafael's little cousin.  It was her umbilical cord that had restored my voice.  Rafael had figured out years ago that human vocal folds are made of lamina--and so is the umbilical vein.

"Speaking of talking," Racine said.  "Skylar, you've got that guest lecture in August?  ASU?"

I pulled a silly face.  "I don't remember school starting so early when I was that age."

"But that was a very, very, very, very long time ago," Jessica said sweetly.

I reached across Rafael's shoulders and swatted at her.

DeShawn peeped at me curiously from Racine's other side.  "How is that going to work?" he asked.  "If you're taking care of a foster kid full time--"

Dad lifted his head.  "Foster kid?"

I kind of felt like this was too much information for one afternoon.  He'd only just got out of prison, after all.

"Um, yeah," Rafael said.  "You know Zeke Owns Forty?"

"Luke's kid?" Dad asked.

"Yeah, him.  He's a social worker nowadays.  Anyway, he signed Sky and me up as foster parents a while ago."

"I didn't know," Dad said.  I couldn't read his face.  I thought he might have been surprised.  "Congratulations."

"Yeah.  I mean, thanks."

Dad looked at me, and for a moment, I thought there was light in his eyes.  "Are you going to make grandparents out of us?" he asked.  "I feel like I aged twenty years in the past few minutes."

"Speak for yourself," Racine said.

"Not you, of course," Dad said fondly.  "You're as beautiful as when I first met you."

"Black doesn't crack, Uncle Paul," Jessica said.

We stayed for a little while, chatting, and I felt like the atmosphere returned slowly to normal.  Dad didn't want any dessert, so we left money on the table and headed back outside.

The ride back to Nettlebush was--I thought--comparatively pleasant.  Dad and DeShawn talked back and forth about the upcoming pauwau in July.  Pauwaus are great; tribes from all over America get together to celebrate their music, their dancing, their similarities and their differences.  I was happy Dad would finally get to join in on the festivities.

Jessica parked the car outside the reservation hospital.  We piled out of the car, one after another, the afternoon air crisp and warm.

Dad looked around at the pine trees; at the log cabin standing opposite the dirt road; at the old wooden sign whose message read, "No Cars Beyond This Point."  His face was frozen, his gray eyes as still as winter water.  For a moment, I was afraid he would cry.

I should have known better.  Dad never cries.  Not in front of other people.

I put my hand on Dad's shoulder.  "Why don't we go out on the lake?"

He smiled at me wearily.  "Maybe later," he said.  "I think I'd like to lie down."

Racine put her arm around Dad.  "We'll see you at dinner, right?"

"Yes ma'am," Rafael said.

Racine rolled her eyes.  "Stop making me feel like I'm sixty."

"Seven years, Mom," Jessica said.  "Only seven years to go...  Muahahaha..."

The six of us parted ways for the afternoon.  Immediately I felt cold, and sort of odd.  I watched Dad's receding back, hunched, his arm around Racine's waist.  I couldn't help thinking that prison had eaten away a part of his soul.  Dad used to have endless stamina.  Twelve trips a day across the Sonoran Desert, back when he worked as a coyote, and he never needed a nap then.

"You alright?" Rafael asked me.

I smiled noncommittally.

"He'll be okay," Rafael said.  "He's strong.  And he's got you.  Not like he needs much more than that."

I gave him a warm look.  "You really know how to inflate my head, Rafael."

Rafael grinned unrepentantly.  "Keep saying my name.  I still like it."

Rafael said he had to help his uncle hand out the morning game.  He waved a quick goodbye and started north toward the badlands.  I didn't know what else to do with myself--and I hate restlessness--so I took a trip out west to see if Annie needed any help.

I found her at the stove in the farm manor, her brother and sister at her sides.

"Oh,
now
you show your face," Annie said to me.

I grinned roguishly.  "I don't know what you're talking about."

Joseph turned around at the stove.  Slender and slight--and Jessica's age--his hair was the same shade of burnt brown as Annie's.  A pair of hearing aids rested in his ears.

Catfish come out yet?
I signed.

Joseph shook his head. 
After the monsoon.

Lila sighed and moved a pot off the stove.  Save for a few years' difference, she could have been Annie's twin.  She was tall, though, where Annie was short.  And definitely not pregnant.

"Don't bother me, peon," she said to me--signing while she spoke.  None of us likes to leave Joseph out of the loop.  "You haven't bothered visiting me in two days.  I don't need your pity visits now."

I still love you
, I signed.  I don't have the presence of mind to sign and talk at the same time.  Signing's easier, anyway.

Your dad came home, right?
Joseph signed, his index fingers pointed in opposite directions. 
Morgan Stout's been saying so.

Morgan's an idiot
, Lila signed.

"We don't need your help here," Annie told me.

I frowned, feigning offense.

"Oh, please," Annie said.  "Go outside, the men could use you out back."

I kissed her cheek--then Lila's, Lila's eyes big and simpering.  Joseph clapped me on the shoulder while I went back through the foyer--and from there, around the back of the house.

The plotted farm was rolling and vast beneath blue skies.  Scarecrows stood between the hilled soil.  I bit back a smile.   In the old days, Plains People didn't use scarecrows, of course--they pitched tents right in the middle of the crops and chased the crows away by foot, sometimes squawking and screaming while they ran.  It must have been a funny sight.

"Skylar!  Over here!"

I climbed across the rows of hilled earth, cucumbers and okra poking out of the fresh brown dirt.  Aubrey and his brothers were standing on the other side.

Aubrey was one weedy beansprout of a guy.  His Coke bottle glasses were taped to his ears; because, of course, they tended to fly off his face while he was busy working.  Next to him were his older brothers--Reuben tall and stoic, Isaac dark-eyed and mean-faced.

"Is Zeke with you?" Aubrey asked.

"Why would Zeke be with me?" I asked, puzzled.

"Oh?  He said he was getting another spade.  I guess he took off..."

"I'll get it," I said with a wave of my hand.

"Get me one, too!" said Serafine, Reuben's daughter.

I took a quick trip to the tool shed on the eastern side of the farm manor.  I came back to the sight of Nicholas and Leon, Aubrey's sons, patting the crop hills with their stubby hands.

"A rake would be faster, I think," Aubrey counseled them kindly.

"I don't want to use that stupid thing," Nicholas said.  It still strikes me as odd that a little boy who looks so much like his father could have such a different countenance.

"Well, here," Aubrey said.  He showed me which plots we were going to till, the seed crates sitting by the canal gates.  "And the spinach and the sugarcane can go there," he said, and gestured with a sweep of his hand.

"Let's just get it over with already," Isaac said.

We dragged spades through the hard, caked earth, freeing the fresh soil underneath.  I'm not at all built for farm work; my arms were aching by the time I started on the second plot.  Serafine pouted and huffed.  Her father wouldn't let her use the heavy tools and had her planting the seeds instead.

"Hey!  You!"

And here came Zeke, stumbling and staggering through the field, a manila envelope in his hand, the bottoms of his work pants muddy.

I stifled a laugh.  "Did you get lost on your way to the tool shed?"

"Huh?"  It went right over his head.  "Where's Rafael?"

"At Gabriel's," I said.

Reuben sat on the ground and wiped his brow with the back of his hand.  Isaac trudged over to the canal gates and opened them.  I tossed the rakes aside, grabbed the kids by their hands, and pulled them away from the trickling water.