Living with the hawk (16 page)

I should have been asleep when they returned from the police station, but I was still fully dressed, lying on my bed, watching the way the shadows on my ceiling moved, slowly at first, then picking up speed, darting across the room whenever a car on the street outside passed in front of our house. Once, when the shadow stopped halfway across the room, I knew they were home. Without turning on the light, I rose from my bed, pulled off my clothes, and got into my pyjamas. Let them think they woke me up.

There was conversation below, nothing I could detect as words, but a low murmur of sounds running together. I didn't even pause at the head of the stairs. I needed to know. The stairs creaked and clattered beneath my bare feet, the hum of conversation ceasing. They were in the living room, the two of them standing there, the coffee table between them. I remember noticing the globe on the coffee table, slowly spinning as if the whole world was out of control. Someone must've swiped it with a hand.

“What happened?” I asked. “What's going on?”

“You should be in bed,” my mother said. She slumped down on the couch, staring not a me, but at the globe, watching it come slowly to a halt. Her eyes were red.

“Barb, he needs to know the situation.” My father sat down beside her, patted her once on the knee.

“He already knows.” She was staring at the globe, talking about me as if I wasn't standing just across the room.

My father patted her knee again and raised his eyes to me. “Four boys are being held in the death of Anna Big Sky. For questioning.” He paused, his lips opening and closing before he continued. As if he was having trouble finding words. “Your brother's one of them.” His eyes swung from me to my mother and back again. “The police think . . . Lord, help us, they think the boys murdered her.” He reached for my mother's hand and took it in his own. “Blake swears he didn't touch her — he wasn't even there.”

“You believe him?”

“Of course, I believe him. Why would he lie to us?”

I thought the answer was obvious, but I kept my mouth shut, kept staring at him. My father must have noticed some subtle change in my expression. “Blake went down to the station after school,” he added. “Wanted to tell them what he knew. Those aren't the actions of a guilty person.”

Unless he's trying to make himself look good. But I didn't say it.

My mother pulled her hand free, began to rub her upper arms as if she were cold. “It doesn't matter,” she said. “They're going to charge him — just like the others.”

“That's a mistake. He went to see them of his own accord. Told them everything.”

“Yeah,” I said, “but only after Crime Stoppers heard and — ”

“Exactly,” she said, and now her tone was harsh. “They already knew.”

“Yes, I guess they did.” My father again.

“You know they did.” For the first time since I had come down the stairs my mother looked at me. “You just had to call the hot line, didn't you? Before Blake could get there. You,” she paused, still staring at me, scowling now, “turned them in, named them all.”

“Not Blake. I never said his name.”

She rose from the couch, her eyes on me all the time, took a step toward me.

I wondered if she was going to strike me. Her eyes were wide, unfocused. She took another step. Hesitated.

“I can't deal with this,” she said. “I'm going up to bed.” She turned abruptly and started for the stairs.

“You go ahead,” my father said. “I'm going to sit here awhile and think.” He watched her go, but she gave no indication that she'd heard him speak. When she disappeared into the hall, he glanced at me. “It's late. You ought to be in bed.”

“Yeah, sure. I'm gonna get a glass of milk.” I walked to the fridge, pulled out the milk, opened the dish washer and retrieved a clean glass. When I finished pouring the milk, I glanced back into the living room. My father was still seated on the couch, leaning slightly forward, his head bent, hands flopped awkwardly beside him. When I set the milk back in the fridge and closed the door, his body gave a little jerk, almost as if he were suddenly aware of someone watching him. He stood up then, reached for the newspaper which was folded on the coffee table, picked it up, and sat back down on the easy chair, shifting as if trying to find a comfortable spot. I took a long swallow of milk while he opened the paper. He held it in front of him, both pages open, but as long as I stood, drinking my milk in the kitchen, he never turned a page, never moved his head. I think his mind was focused somewhere far beyond the paper.

“No, I can't leave it this way.”

That's what I think she said. My mother's words came from the direction of the stairs, were barely audible, but now I heard her footsteps approaching from the hall.

She hurried into the living room where my father was seated in the easy chair, reading the paper, or pretending to read it. He gave no sign that he heard her coming. The floor lamp above him made his bald spot shine over the front page headlines. He didn't lower his paper until my mother stopped immediately in front of him. When he looked up and saw her there, he must have been troubled by what he saw, for he rose at once, took her firmly by the shoulders, “Barbara,” he said, but her hands flew up, and she was reaching over his arms, one hand after the other, slapping him in the face.

“Sure, Blair made the call,” she said, “but it was your fault. Advice for a friend, you said, but you knew. The whole time, didn't you? You told him what to do. He had to do what was right.” That was what she said, her words angry at first, then sarcastic, and almost indistinguishable from the sobs that separated them.

My father kept his hands on her shoulders, his head swinging slightly from side to side as each blow ricocheted off his cheekbones, but he never tried to stop her. Though she was weeping now, and gasping for breath, she kept slapping his face. I wondered if I should grab her and pull her away from him, but when I took a step toward her my father shook his head. As he did, my mother struck again and, with his head twisted to one side, she caught him in the nose.

“And now — your son — your own son — he's innocent — and he's in jail — ” her weeping as loud as her words “ — for some girl we don't even know — an Indian.” She stopped hitting him, her eyes suddenly wide with alarm. “Lord,” she said, “oh, Lord!” Then she fell against him, collapsed into his arms, her wails partially smothered against his chest, but continuing, rising and falling, cries like those of an animal trying to tear its leg from a trap. My father rested his head on top of hers and held her a long time with his eyes shut. Held her until her cries were silent shudders, until her body quit shaking. I don't know how long that took. It might have been five minutes, might have been even more. At first there was a slight trickle of blood from his left nostril, but it stopped running and eventually it looked as if somehow he had spilled chocolate sauce on his upper lip. When my mother was finally quiet, he half-carried, half-walked her to the couch, where he laid her down, pulled the afghan from the back of the couch and tucked it around her. He noticed me then, still standing at the kitchen door.

“Go to bed,” he said. “We need some sleep — all of us.”

When I got upstairs, I stood at the window, staring down at the dark yard, the lilac bushes lost in shadow, one weak patch of light falling from our front window. I wondered what the hell my mother thought. That I was out to get my brother? Was that it? Did she really think I'd put them through all this suffering just to nail him? To frame my own brother? She didn't know a thing — neither one of them did. They figured he was innocent.

Later, quite some time after I had slid into bed, I heard my door open. Footsteps cautiously approached the bed.

“Blair, you awake?” My father whispering in case by some chance I was asleep already.

I rolled toward the sound. “Uh-huh.”

“I'm sorry you had to be downstairs for that.” His voice was still only a whisper. “You have to understand, your mother was very wrought up. She's not herself tonight. If she were, you know as well as I do, she would never have said what she said — there at the end.”

“I know that.”

He did something then he hadn't done in years, leaned over the bed and kissed me lightly on the forehead, his lips like dry parchment on my skin. “Good night, son,” he said, and left the room.

Neither then, nor afterwards did it strike me as odd that what had worried him so much it brought him to my room, what he didn't want me to misinterpret in any way was her dismissal of Anna as an Indian, and not the blows she'd rained upon his cheeks.

When we circled the coaches after warming up for Saturday's big game against Diefenbaker High, we all shoved toward the centre of the circle, slapped our right hands together, shouted in unison, “We can win, yes we can, we're together, every man,” but I don't think any of us believed it. We all knew that four of our first stringers were sitting downtown in jail. Three of them were irreplaceable. Yeah, and this game was for the league championship; with the southern final next week and the provincial final the week after that, they wouldn't even consider postponing this one.

I hadn't felt much like dressing for the game — football didn't seem important anymore — but then I thought that, since my brother had screwed up, and let his teammates down too, there should be at least one Russell on the team. But it wasn't letting his teammates down that got to me. I was furious because of what he'd done to Anna — helped to do. Still, I knew he'd never have been involved if it weren't for that damned Jordan Phelps. That, at least, was what I needed to believe.

Besides, I was going to play. Morris Ackerman had been moved from defence to offence, given the impossible task of replacing Phelps at wide receiver, and I was going to take Morris's spot in the defensive backfield. For the whole game. That shouldn't have mattered, of course — playing football was nothing compared to a dead girl — but to tell the truth I was kind of excited to be starting on defence instead of standing on the sidelines like some jerk-off who couldn't play.

Diefenbaker won the toss and chose to receive. For the first time ever, I was on the field for the kickoff, my legs shaking so hard I was surprised they held me up. Then the ball was in the air and I was running downfield, keeping in my lane, a blocker hitting me, his shoulder hard in my chest, and it was okay — I wasn't nervous anymore. Except he hit me again, and again. When someone finally brought the runner down at mid-field, I was still trying to shake off the blocker and nowhere near the play.

Diefenbaker had a running game, but they threw the ball often enough that you knew you couldn't count on a run. My problem was that I had to cover the slotback until I was sure they weren't going to pass to him, then come up fast and try to stop the runner who was going full speed by then with at least one blocker out in front. I was dodging blockers, slapping at them, shoving them, grabbing their arms, fighting to get through them and lay my hands on the runner. Once I faked to the left, lunged right, and made a blocker miss me, but I was off balance, almost staggering as I went for the runner, and he put his head down and drove me backwards, carrying me half a dozen yards before I got him stopped. I remember Ivan Buchko slapped me on the butt and said, “Way to go, Blair. You're getting it.”

We finally stopped them on our fourteen yard line, one of our linemen recovering a fumble. Now it was our turn.

Our first play was a run, off-tackle, for a mere three yards. Then Mac Kelsey, our second string quarterback threw a pass, but he hurried it, throwing before the receiver turned around, bouncing if off his shoulder, and we had to kick.

It seemed as if I was back on the field before I caught my breath. Yeah, Blake, I thought, if you weren't so stupid, you'd be here yourself, and we'd have a quarterback who knew how to complete a pass. And then for some reason I felt crummy, as if I was crazy to be out here playing football in the snow, but no matter how I felt I wasn't going to quit.

For a while, it almost seemed as if the Diefenbaker team had made a deal with the ref that allowed them extra players on the field. Every time I tried to stop a run, another blocker hammered me. I swear, there were blockers everywhere. In fact, I made two tackles on the far side of the field, but only one on my own side, because when the play went to the far side the blockers were hitting someone else. Of course, by the time I tackled the runner over there he'd gained at least a dozen yards. Football was too much like the rest of life, things not working out the way you want them to.

It was a long afternoon.

And a lopsided score. In the end, a team that in normal circumstances we might have beaten, outscored us 20 to 7. When the final whistle blew, I was battered and breathless — and the happiest I'd been in days. There was something satisfying about being out there all the time, being a part of it all, those seconds of tension before the ball was snapped, then the sudden release, breaking into action, running, shifting direction, muscles straining, hurling my body at someone else. Once, in the fourth quarter, they threw a short pass to the slotback I was covering. He ran right at me, faked to the outside, then cut inside, running parallel to the line of scrimmage, looking for the ball that he knew would be coming at him. But I was right behind him, already seeing it happen. When the ball touched his fingertips, I nailed him from behind, low, my shoulder beneath his butt, my legs driving hard, and he was going over backwards, his shoulders slamming into the ground, bouncing, the ball coming loose, dribbling away. Incomplete.