Set Me Free (29 page)

I
wasn’t in the best of moods when I left that board meeting. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that. Rarely was my father
mentioned to my face. Usually, people bit their tongues when his name was brought up in my company. I never knew if it was
out of respect or fear, but I was pretty positive that whichever it was, it was out of respect or fear of
him,
not me, even when he was just a memory. It was close to never that I was called to task about my anger at him, because most
people knew that was risky territory. But most people weren’t Robert Terrebonne, Most Highly Respected Neige Courante Elder
of All Time. Even I was cowed when he issued forth.

My car was alone when I got to it. Everyone else had gone. I got in and turned on tribal radio. There was Joe again: “Good
evening, indigenous dudes and dudettes!” I turned the radio off. I listened. There was nothing to listen to. Not even wind.
So I cranked on the engine and sat for a few minutes, idling. I could see lights on in Elliot’s apartment. Frankly, I was
too exhausted for the fight anymore. I’m admitting this to you in confidence, but I began to think, sitting in the car, that
Robert Terrebonne was kind of right. I wasn’t sure what I was so upset about anymore. Maybe I didn’t care about the Neige
Courante kids as much as I thought I did. Maybe I
had
made it all about me.

There is a road that winds up around the school and then points due east, toward a great expanse of unnamed, unowned wilderness.
It is not entirely unusual that I found myself driving on this road. It’s a track I’ve driven since my teenage summers. I
knew of it long before Elliot Barrow came to town, because it heads toward nothingness and gives a person room to breathe.
I suppose the fact that it also comes within a hundred yards of Helen’s house is, in retrospect, another reason I might have
headed that way. The sound of an engine that far out is unusual, so some part of me must have known she’d come to the door
and peer out, then smile, wave, and beckon me in.

R
UDY
‘
S, ON THE
road down to Bend, is the kind of place you think will be full of racist, dirty men. I discovered it when I was sixteen and
carrying a fake ID and a will to smart-aleck myself into and out of as many sticky situations as possible. Rudy’s looks, from
the outside, like a great place to be beaten senseless. But Rudy is just about the nicest guy you’ve ever met, and the bikers
who frequent his establishment on a nightly basis are good men who savor the vegetarian wood-oven pizza he slaves over every
night. The parking lot is thick with bikes and dudes smoking weed who, when we pulled into the lot, waved at us like suburban
moms waiting for the end of their children’s soccer game. It was only nine, and Rudy’s was already thumping with the delta
blues.

I’m a big fan of Muddy Waters. I’ll take early Dylan any day. Give me Desmond Dekker, give me Springsteen’s
Nebraska,
give me Ray Charles. I’ll sing along with all of them until my voice rasps, until my knees are weak, until my ears bleed.
And then I’ll sing some more.

It’s possible not to advertise this trait, because in these parts, one spends a lot of time alone in one’s car. I’ve got a
secret stash of these guys under my driver’s seat. I’ve always felt something shameful about my love of music, as though it
risks weakening me in the eyes of those who believe they know me well; even as a boy, when I discovered that records could
uncork you, I kept them locked
away, to protect me from the magic they could effect. They made me want more than I had. They made me courageous. Let me tell
you, there have been some lonely moments in my life when the lyrics to Dylan’s
In the Summertime
or Jimmy Cliff’s
Sitting Here in Limbo
have been the only things that have gotten me through.

So it was to my own great surprise that I took Helen to Rudy’s. I guess I knew the second I pulled up the road winding past
her shack that Rudy’s was where we’d end up. I guess I hoped by the end of the night, we’d be drunk and happy, grooving to
the deep dirty bass line of Billy Lick’s four-piece band, that Billy’s gravel voice would wash over us and set our conversation
down in a dancing place. We ended up with our arms around each other, moving slow and leaning in. I had never seen Helen look
the way she did that night. It was the first time I truly understood what Elliot had seen in her. She was flushed and bright,
cackling at jokes, swaying up against the chords Billy let loose. She looked twenty years younger.

I told her we didn’t have to stay long, but we stayed all night. We stayed long enough to get drunk and sober and drunk again,
and then just sober enough to drive home. As we neared our destination, the question began to press at both of us. As I turned
in to the school, and as she glanced nervously at Elliot’s dark apartment when we passed it, and as she leaned her head against
the passenger seat and gave me an apologetic smile, I knew what the answer was. I didn’t need her to say what she said, which
began with the word “listen” and ended with the word “uncomfortable.” I fought my desire to tell her I hadn’t had any ideas
about where this was going, that all I had wanted was to give her a taste of this world outside of Elliot’s vision of it.
But I wasn’t sober enough to say those things, so I watched her get out of my car and head down toward her cold shack in the
light of the moon. And then, for the second time in my life, I sped away from her, fast and angry and afraid.

A
MELIA

Neige Courante Reservation
Saturday, October 26, 1996

If you’ve researched the last one hundred years of aboriginal life in central Oregon, chances are you’ve thought about the
Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs and the beautiful Warm Springs Reservation. Their story combines tremendous strength of
character with a canny sense of negotiation. For what seemed like forever, the Wasco bands from the East had met yearly with
the more nomadic Warm Springs bands at the fishing camp at Celilo Falls on the Columbia River. There, dip-net fishermen built
scaffolding and harvested salmon and recognized themselves and one another as people with a common goal. Different languages—Kiksht,
Ichishkiin—different customs, sure, but a common goal. To get to live the way they always had. By 1855 these two tribes had
had the fight beaten from them. They decided that the best way to continue was together. Under what one can politely call
“pressure,” they were forced to relinquish ten million acres of land throughout Oregon in exchange for exclusive rights to
the Warm Springs Reservation. In 1879 a group of thirty-eight former roaming high-plains Paiutes from eastern Oregon joined
the other tribes at Warm Springs.

These days, most people try to find some way to speak tactfully about the dimensions of this staggeringly unjust loss—this
spiritual heist—by pointing to the impressive fortitude and good-hearted cooperation of many current reservation residents.
This is just another way to avoid talking about the larger problems of poverty and racism and lousy educational funding in
much of America.

The Neige Courante dipped their nets in the Columbia too, but as a people, they flowed like water away from any negotiations.
Years later, at threat of death, inevitably forced off their mountain land, they discovered that the parcel still “available”
for reservation life was dry and tufted, cracked and gorged, earth that fell off from the mountains and looked out across
desert.

What I’m trying to say is that the Neige Courante learned to live on their little reservation by watching how the cannier
Warm Springs people coped. When the Neige Courante listen to the radio, they tune in to KWSO, the Warm Springs station; when
they want to play golf, they drive over to Kah-Nee-Tah. They gaze up at Mount Jefferson and dip their toes in the icy Metolius
and visit the Museum at Warm Springs and read about the way things were.

Even though Amelia knew something about Indians and the differences between the Neige Courante and Warm Springs bands and
the Wascoes and the Paiutes, she didn’t know much. What she knew best was this: ever since she’d been a little girl, going
to Lydia Cinqchevaux’s house had felt like going to heaven. The house was a standard Neige Courante Monopoly ranch with some
pleasant additions. Lydia’s dad was the kind of man who built garages with his bare hands. Lydia’s mom was the kind of woman
who liked stuff in her yard: gazebos, flamingos, wishing wells, smiling gnomes. Something was always being hammered, sawed,
or spray-painted in the driveway, and an endless round of meat loaf, mashed potatoes, or fry bread or macaroni casserole was
ready to be dished out to innumerable batches of noisy relatives bursting through the front door at unexpected moments. Brothers
farted. Aunties arranged bowling tournaments. There was always a group of two or three women beading at a corner of the kitchen
table; little boys practiced the Duck and Dive for the coming powwow even though the uncles claimed the dance was traditionally
Nez Perce. What Lydia always wanted was some peace and quiet, so she preferred sleeping over at Amelia’s, and because Lydia
was bossier, she usually prevailed. On most Saturday nights, both girls curled up on Amelia’s couch, shared a bowl of popcorn,
and watched videos while Elliot typed away in the other room.

Lydia’s house provided a home when Amelia needed some coddling, so it wasn’t unusual for both girls to head there when Elliot’s
typing got annoying or Amelia craved distraction. On this particular evening, Lydia’s older brothers were dribbling the basketball
in the driveway when the girls arrived. Lydia had to lean on the horn to
get them out of the way, and then Gordie and Howie mooned the car. This was pretty standard behavior at the Cinqchevaux house.

“Do you want to make our guest sick? You are fucking disgusting. Seriously, I just threw up in my mouth and then I swallowed
it again.” Lydia was half laughing as she emerged from the car and tried to kick one older brother while the other began pounding
on her back. “Ow! Ow!”

Gordie repeated every word Lydia had said in a singsongy mocking voice that only made her angrier and only made them torment
her more: “Ow! Ow!” “Ow! Ow!” “Bastards!” “Bastards!” Lydia begged for Amelia’s help. Amelia grabbed her backpack and slid
past the three siblings into the house as Lydia’s whoops and screams floated up and over the yard.

“Stay away from those boys. Being nasty. Lydia too.” Suzanne, Lydia’s mom, was big and breasty. When Amelia was younger and
shorter, she’d been oddly thrilled by the idea that Suzanne might smother her in a hug, drown her in too much eager love.
But now Amelia stood a head taller than this woman who loved all children unspecifically and unconditionally. Suzanne pinched
Amelia’s hip and frowned. “Your father is starving you as usual, I see. We’ll fix you up. Help me peel apples. Making a tart
tonight.”

Suzanne’s home was crammed with wonderful stuff. Every single surface, each shelf, each corner, held a treasure. A collection
of cowboy-and-Indian salt-and-pepper shakers perched on every available ledge in the kitchen; snow globes from twenty-seven
states graced the mantelpiece; defunct exercise equipment hovered behind the easy chairs; and stacks of catalogs cascaded
from the end tables. Amelia loved nothing more than snuggling up on Lydia’s couch with a glass of ice-cold Pepsi and ten catalogs
while the rest of the family watched a sporting event. She loved being invisible and at the heart of things at the very same
time.

Amelia followed Suzanne into the brightly lit kitchen, sat and chatted as Suzanne spun out a feast from commodity foods, called
“commods”: open cans and boxes, cartons and bushel baskets. Bread
steamed, corn boiled, pot roast burbled in its thick gravy, potatoes sizzled in deep hot oil. Amelia marveled at the bounty,
the generosity, of Lydia’s family. Suzanne’s meals overflowed with welcome.

The older woman made sure that Amelia wielded the sharp knife. She took the dull one herself and got to work. “Lydia tells
me about you and Victor Littlefoot.”

Amelia kept peeling her apples. She didn’t know what to say.

“You like him. There, in that smile you’re trying to hide. Nice kid.”

“We’re just hanging out,” Amelia said. She could tell Suzanne was heading somewhere specific.

“You call on his grandmother yet? Old Adele Littlefoot? You take her some salmon? Tobacco?” Suzanne paused and peered at Amelia,
a smile playing in her eyes. She knew the answer, but she asked one more question. “You doing things right for that old lady?”

Amelia felt herself blushing even before she had a chance to open her mouth, before she had a chance to lift her eyes from
her task. She was glad to glimpse Lydia entering the kitchen.

“Ma, lighten up. We’ll take care of it. If that’ll shut you up.”

“You’ve got the supplies?”

Lydia grinned. “Not exactly.”

“I knew it.”

“So you’re a mind reader. Happy?”

Suzanne scolded them both: “Shame on you.” She opened a high cabinet and pulled a long plastic bag of dried salmon from behind
the cereal, shoving it into Lydia’s hands. “People are going to think I didn’t raise you right.” She went into the living
room and returned with a Ziploc of tobacco, then left again. They heard her in the bedroom, rustling through drawers. She
came back with two folds of blue cotton cloth. “Lydia, I tell you every time. Always keep these things in special places.”
She wagged her finger in Amelia’s direction. “Even you know better by now.” She perched her hand on one hip and looked at
the girls. “Well? What do you say?”