Hush Little Baby (21 page)

“Do you know the story of Goat?” he asks.

I shake my head and set down my paper. Over the past month, I’ve learned that Goat and her family take the long way around to get to a point.

“Goat is the last Chelan who still speaks Salish fluently, and although she’s not our chief, because we do not have women chiefs, she’s the most significant elder in our tribe.”

Through the battered screen door, I glance at the tribe’s proclaimed potentate as she stoops over a bucket, peeling potatoes for tomorrow’s breakfast. This is the other thing about Boris I do not like. Unlike Goat and Paul, Boris feels obligated to display his Chelan heritage like a badge of honor, a purple heart. He boasts ad nauseam about it, as though it’s an open wound we all need to apologize for.

His long, black braid, which looks ridiculous on his middle-aged face, and his clothes—cheap suede and leather jackets with orange and cream beads stitched at the cuffs and collar—scream, “Look at me, I’m Native American and proud of it.” Today he wears an imitation suede shirt bedazzled with zigzags on the cuffs and collar.

His eyes roam over my legs, and I pull them closer.

“When Goat was a young girl,” he begins, “a cattleman driving his herd north found a nugget of gold in the river. It was the time of the Great Depression, and when rumor spread of his discovery, thousands of desperate people came here to find their fortune.” His laugh is deep and mean. “What most of them found was what the Chelan have found for two hundred years, barren land and bitter disappointment.

“What they brought with them were diseases and mouths to feed. Many Chelan, fearing starvation and sickness, left. And those that stayed did whatever it took to survive. Goat was thirteen when the rush first happened. Her two older brothers joined the railroad, and a few months later, typhoid took her parents, leaving Goat and her two younger sisters alone and starving. So Goat did what she had to to protect her sisters; she went to live among the men.”

My eyes grow wide, and I swallow hard. I can’t imagine the hunched woman peeling potatoes as a desperate girl of thirteen prostituting herself in a camp of miners.

A small light flickers in Boris’s eyes as he enjoys my astonishment. “Goat moved from site to site and came to be appreciated, not only for her body, but for her knowledge of the river and her ability to cook.

“The rush never amounted to much gold, and after a few years, the wagons and the men and the campsites moved on, and the only things they left behind were a couple dozen half-breeds, this house, and the small town of Elmer City.”

He almost spits the word “half-breed,” and my hair prickles in defense of Paul.

“Goat was living in this house with a man and his wife when it ended. The woman was the one who taught her to cook white man food. Nobody knows what happened to them, except one day they were gone and Goat wasn’t.”

“She killed them?”

Boris shrugs. “No one’s ever asked, and Goat’s never said. She just kept on doing what she’d been doing, cooking and cleaning. Only now, she sold the food and used the money to raise her sisters and to help anyone else in the tribe who fell on hard times.”

“So the house isn’t hers?”

Boris shrugs again. “It’s hers as far as anyone around here’s concerned.”

“But who owns it?”

“Not registered far as I know. No record anywhere about the house, the restaurant, or Goat. No taxes, no health inspector, nobody asking questions about where the people who built it went. Been that way for seventy years.” His eyebrows rise, and my hair prickles. “Can you imagine what would happen if that changed, Jillian?”

At the mention of my birth name, ice fills my stomach and my mouth opens to speak, but I can’t figure out what to say.

He removes a folded sheet of paper from his breast pocket and extends it toward me.

I open it and stare.

I no longer look like the woman in the picture on the page. It isn’t just the hair. The woman in the photo looks like a mannequin modeling for the professional woman’s department at Nordstrom or Bloomingdale’s—glossy hair draped to her shoulders, airbrushed skin with a thick layer of well-applied makeup, and a fixed smile. The collared silk shirt she wears was bought from Anne Fontaine on Rodeo Drive. The sleeves hide bruises, the frozen expression hides everything else.

The woman sitting on the porch staring at the picture of herself is a barefoot waitress, a hardworking single mom wearing a cotton tank that flaunts tan, unbruised arms, and shorts she bought at the thrift store for two dollars.

No one would recognize me. I don’t even recognize myself. If I pass a mirror or a storefront, my reflection still jolts me with a split-second reaction of
Who the heck is that?

And the photo of Drew could be any boy of eight with light brown hair. He’s still wearing his hair buzzed, and there’s nothing else in the photo that defines him.

The problem is that Addie looks exactly like Addie, her carrot top curls swirling around her smiling freckled face. And she’s one of a kind.

The title reads, “
KIDNAPPING
, Information Wanted.”

My hand shakes as I read our descriptions and last known location. It describes us driving in a white Chevy Corsica and the license plate number. It knows we were in Biggs Junction a month ago and that we traveled east. The date on the header is from a day ago.

“You’re turning us in?” I ask.

His mouth gets thin, and he looks past his knees to the worn floorboards and the busy ants scurrying between the cracks.

“I’m not the only one who’s going to figure this out,” he says. “This bulletin went to every jurisdiction in Washington. And what I don’t want is the attention that’s going to come when you’re discovered, outsiders asking questions. That’s not good for the restaurant, Goat, or Paul.”

“Paul?”

“Let’s just say it’s best if Paul and the authorities avoid each other for a while.”

I swallow hard and shake my head.

Boris puts his hand on my knee. It’s fleshy and damp. I want to remove it, but I don’t dare.

“I know that’s not what you want, either,” he says.

Through the screen door, Goat rinses the peeled potatoes in an ice bath.

“I’m sorry,” I say, the words strangled with emotion.

Boris pats my thigh and stands. “I’m not looking for an apology,” he says. “I’m looking for you to leave.”

46

A
summer sunset in Washington is a remarkable sight, a spectacular light show that fills the world and reduces everything beneath it. It’s the kind of sunset that stills the soul, makes the wind pause, and causes time to slow. The prismatic, neon display is as brilliant as Fourth of July fireworks and is accompanied by the song of geese and fowl settling down for the day, and river frogs and crickets waking for the night.

Paul sits on the steps, one leg propped on the porch, his Coors resting on his knee. Isi sways on the porch swing, her body filling both seats and her weight creating a rhythmic creak. Goat snoozes on the rattan bench, her snores keeping time with the swing.

The stack of Uno cards are centered between Paul, me, Addie, and Drew, each of us holding our hand close. This has become our routine, a few moments to wind down before we head off to our beds. Each night, we play cards or Yahtzee, talk about the day, the customers, the fishing, plot out what bait or fishing hole the boys are going to try next.

Tonight I’m unusually quiet, my conversation with Boris making the night heavy.

“Everything all right?” Paul asks when the kids have gone into the house to get ready for bed.

I turn so my feet are on the step below me, resting my elbows on my knees and my forehead on my steepled fingers. “I need a favor,” I say.

“Shoot.”

“Tomorrow we need to leave, and I’m hoping you can help us.”

Paul stills to such quietness even his breath seems to stop.

I continue, “We need to drive across the border, and we can’t drive my car. Sissy gave me a passport that might pass for me and one for Jon Jon that looks enough like Drew. If you drive, and we hide Addie, we might make it.”

I thought all this out in the hours between Boris leaving and our nightly games beginning. They’re looking for a woman in a white car with two kids. I’m hoping since Paul’s the real thing, they won’t look too closely at who else is in the car.

My heart pounds with the thought of everything that can go wrong—Paul in trouble, the kids returned to Gordon, me arrested at the border—but I can’t fathom another solution no matter how many times I turn it in my head.

We can’t stay one more day. If something happens to Goat or Paul or Sissy or Isi because of me, I couldn’t forgive myself. I want to do it without Paul, but I can’t see how.

I’ve saved almost every penny I’ve made in the last month. It’s amazing how frugal I’ve become. Me, a woman who used to spend a hundred dollars to trim her hair when it had barely grown an inch, now clips coupons to buy toilet paper and only shops on double coupon days.

The kids have become fellow Spartans. Drew catches his own worms for bait so he doesn’t have to spend the meager dollar allowance I give him each week, and Addie’s saving her money to buy a bike. She’s had three lemonade stands outside Fred’s store. The sign hung on the table reads, “Little Fish Lemonaid, 50¢.” Fred helped her make the poster, and I didn’t have the heart to point out the misspelling; seems most of the customers don’t notice anyway.

The money I’ve saved combined with the money from my parents and the sale of my ring is enough for a fresh start. And with Sissy’s passport, I can get a new identity, a job, and eventually apply for citizenship. The kids can go to school.

Paul looks at me hard, and not for the first time, I wonder about the crude tattoos and the limp. A dozen years ago, I worked on a prison expansion, and as part of the research for the project, we toured the grounds. The tattoos of the inmates were similar to Paul’s and so was the hardness in the faces of the men.

“Where’s this coming from? This morning you were fine.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Boris?”

“What difference does it make?”

“It makes a difference because we decided you and the kids should stay.”

My head snaps up. “We?”

He nods.

“You know?” I feel so betrayed and humiliated and angry and stupid all at the same time that I’m not sure how to react. These people are brilliant liars. I consider myself an expert in the art of deceit, and I’ve been fooled by them completely. “And Goat? And Isi? And Sissy? They all know?”

He says nothing.

“And you discussed it and discussed me and discussed my future and you didn’t think to include me in the conversation?” Indignation has trumped all the other emotions.

“We needed to decide what to do.”

“About my life?”

“About our lives.”

Like a slap, the reminder of the jeopardy I’ve put everyone in deflates my anger, reducing it to guilt, gratitude, and regret. I lay my head on my knees to try to process the fact that for a month I’ve endangered everyone around me and that they’ve known it, but I didn’t.

“Ntamqe…” he says softly.

I raise my head. “My name’s not Ntamqe. What the hell does Ntamqe mean anyway?”

He turns so he’s beside me, our shoulders touching. “Ntamqe is bear.”

I slide my eyes toward him. “As in the big, dumb, hairy mammal?”

He shakes his head. “You’re so white. You take everything so literally.”

“And you’re so damn red. Why don’t you just say what you mean?”

“Because most things aren’t that simple.”

So you make them more complicated by saying everything in circles and riddles?
I think, but I keep the thought to myself. Like a duck trying to be a swan, I’ll never understand the complexities of the Chalen.

“Ntamqe isn’t about the animal, but about the spirit. The bear is a powerful guardian who is peaceful unless provoked. Threaten her children and she unleashes a fury of courage and strength. Ntamqe means spirit of the mother.”

And I’m struck speechless. This man who’s known me only a month—this strange man, half Indian, half white, who stumbled into our lives—this wonderful man sees me as the mother I’ve always wanted to be.

“Thank you.”

“For the name?”

I shake my head, but answer, “Yes, for the name.”

“So I can still use it?”

I nudge my shoulder into his in a friendly gesture. “Yes. You can still use it until tomorrow when we leave.”

He shakes his head, and my mouth opens to explain, but a hand on my head stops my words.

I crane my neck to see Goat standing over me. Her leather fingers rest on my hair. I’d forgotten she was still on the porch, asleep on the rattan bench. “Tomorrow’s not the time,” she says. “You’ll leave after you have the baby.”

Paul rears back at the same time I do, putting a two-foot gap between us. We both wear identical expressions of shock and bewilderment, his at the news, mine at the fact that Goat was able to tell. For the past week, my jeans have been too tight, but I refused to acknowledge what I knew, blamed it instead on Goat’s cooking. I want to ask how she could possibly know when I wasn’t even certain myself, but she’s already shuffling away from me, heading into the house for the night. She mumbles something in Salish just before she gets there, and Paul answers back.

“What did she say?”

“She says Boris is an idiot.”

I raise my eyebrows.

“Actually what she said was worse than that, but that’s the general gist.”

“He’s just worried.”

“If he’d stop worrying and running around like a
likok
, everything will be fine.”

I wish I could share Paul’s optimism, but Paul doesn’t know Gordon. If it were only the law after me, I might agree that the Flying Goat is safe, but Gordon’s smarter and more tenacious than any policeman or detective or agency, and he will do anything within the law or outside of it to find us.

“You’re pregnant?” Paul asks, interrupting my fear.

“I think I might be,” I say more to my hands wringing in my lap than to him.

“Wow, and I thought my life was complicated.”