Something to Hold (11 page)

When Raymond doesn't move, Miss Anthony takes a step to the side. The look on her face says she's in no mood for his disrespect.
Do what she says,
I urge him inside my head,
before she reaches for the Bible.

When Raymond pulls the glasses from his face, Miss Anthony breathes in sharply. "Oh, gracious God," she whispers.

His left eye is battered and raw, a vicious bruise sweeping across his cheek. I'm close enough to see that the short thread of black stitches under his eyebrow oozes a little bit of blood.

I'm thinking that for once Miss Anthony will be sympathetic, until her face hardens. She shakes her head, disgusted. "Another fight?" The noon bell rings in the hall. "Looks like you got the worst of it this time," she says. "Dismissed."

Jewel is outside, sitting alone on one of the logs that separate the parking lot from the playfield. She is hunched over, pulling her sweater tight around her even in the warm sun. She doesn't look up when I sit down, but she moves over a little bit to make room.

"That guy yesterday," I say.

She nods slowly. "He wants us back."

"Your
dad
did that to Raymond?"

"Our dad passed away three years ago," she says, so low I can barely hear her.

My throat catches. "Is that what Pinky meant—'like last time'?"

Jewel nods. "Yeah. Raymond acted the same way then, and he got put back in third grade with me."

And he's never gotten over it.

Jewel picks at the gravel under her feet. "Walter married mom. And he wants our checks," she says.

The envelope that Jewel handed to her grandmother.
People think that Indians get money from the government, but they're wrong. Dad says that the government writes the checks but that it's the tribal members' own money from the sale of timber cut from the forests on the reservation.

"What happened yesterday?"

Jewel shakes her head like it's too hard to explain. Then she says, "
Káthla
wouldn't give him money. They'll just drink it. He started throwing things, shoved her down. And Raymond..." Her voice trails off, but I can picture the rest.

Jewel looks straight at me for the first time. Her eyes are full of tears. "You've got a mom and a dad," she says. She shakes her head again and sighs.

The powerful and angry girl I was afraid of is gone. All I see is a friend with a hurting heart.

"I don't
know
what it's like for you," I tell her. "But I do
care.
"

I
T
is quiet in the hallway by the time Raymond and Jewel get to school on Friday. Raymond slips into the room ahead of his sister, his battered eye still swollen and raw. He slides into his chair in the next row, two seats ahead of me, and puts his head down on his desk. Miss Anthony gives him a look but doesn't stop writing the last of the states on the board.

The side door at the end of the hall bangs shut. Footsteps slap down the hall, growing louder as the chalk taps and glides across the board. Jewel pauses at the doorway, looking us over. Then she comes in and sits in her desk, to my right.

"You're late," Miss Anthony says to the blackboard. "Take out paper and a pencil."

Jewel glances at my desk. I've already numbered to fifty for the test. She didn't bring anything with her this morning.

I sneak a pencil out of the tray of my desk and pass it off to her down low, then a piece of paper, quickly, before Miss Anthony finishes writing
Wyoming
and turns back around.

"Write the capital of each state," she says.

Then Miss Anthony stares at Raymond's desk. "Not everyone is ready," she observes.

Truman leans forward and pokes Raymond in the back. "
Hey!
She's
lookin'.
"

At that, Raymond raises his head from his arms. He scowls back at Truman, and some of the boys start to giggle.

Miss Anthony silences them when she starts to cross the room. All the mice freeze when the coyote stalks. Except for Raymond, who just watches her as she comes.

The kids at the front look straight ahead when she sweeps past. Then they turn to see what will happen this time.

Miss Anthony halts at Raymond's desk, fists on her broad hips. "Where are your work materials?" she asks. "You're so prepared for this test, you don't need paper and pencil?"

Raymond doesn't look at her. He doesn't answer or shake his head or move in any way.

Miss Anthony shifts her weight, crosses her arms. "What is the capital of Vermont?"

Raymond stares straight ahead. His hands lie still on the desk, but the heel of his sneaker jiggles against the floor.

"So. You don't know that one," she says. "How about Washington?"

In any other place, she would sound perfectly reasonable.

"Idaho?"

She has all the time in the world.

"Montana? Oregon?"

He could give her even one and she'd quit. Move on. But he looks like he doesn't even care that she's standing there. Except for his jiggling foot and the sweat that blooms on his neck.

"What
do
you know?" she asks. "Anything?"

A desk leg scrapes beside me, and a form rises up. "Salem," says Jewel quietly. Her voice shakes.

Miss Anthony doesn't even turn. "Not you," she says. "Him."

This is when Raymond moves. He turns to Jewel and shakes his head once. And then he stands too. Miss Anthony has to step back. She looms over him, but now she's not quite so tall.

Raymond still doesn't look at her. He stares out over our heads.

"You sit down now." Miss Anthony nods to Jewel. "You're not helping him."

Jewel takes a deep breath. "Helena. Boise. Olympia," she says.

In slow motion, Miss Anthony's eyes come up and settle on Jewel. They stay there, hard and cold. I am between her and Jewel now. I hold myself as still as I can.

Miss Anthony points to the door. "Out."

But it's Raymond who goes. While she's fixed on Jewel, he turns away from her and strides up the aisle.

"Get back here!"

Raymond pauses at the doorway, looking down the hall. "Montpelier is the capital of Vermont," he says, and walks through the door.

***

After school, I walk home with Pinky. I feel better being with her. Raymond has plunged himself into big trouble, and I'm sad for him. It's not fair that Miss Anthony just sees the outside part of Raymond, the mean and angry part. She doesn't know that he's hurting inside. Or maybe she doesn't care.

I stop at the top of the trail to her house. "Remember that time we talked about drunks?"

Pinky nods.

"Well, I know about somebody who drinks too much," I say.

It feels good to bring this out in the open. I can't talk to my parents about it—there's nothing they can do. But I need to tell somebody.

She waits.

"Jewel's stepfather."

"Oh yeah," Pinky says. "Mean as a snake, too."

I'm surprised that she's so matter-of-fact. "You know about him?"

"Sure, everybody does."

My heart drops. If people know what Walter's doing but nobody stops him, it's
really
hopeless for Raymond and Jewel.

Pinky shifts her books from one arm to the other. "You know he's not Indian, don't you?"

"
What?
"

"No," she says, "he's a white guy." She makes a face. "He's always hard on those kids. But I think that's the first time he's hit Raymond."

I shake my head. "No wonder he walked out on Miss Anthony."

"What do you mean?"

In the bright afternoon light, I begin to see the dark shadows in Raymond and Jewel's life.

"Maybe he just had enough," I say.

"Enough of what?"

"People beating on him."

***

Spring stretches out toward summer. Every morning when I leave the house, the seam of sunrise that brushes the hills is longer than it was the day before. Birds sing in the poplars all the way to school. But the warmth does not reach inside our classroom.

Jewel serves out her time in Mr. Shanahan's office and then comes back to class. Raymond does not return, and Miss Anthony says nothing about him.

Somehow we get through it. We rip off that last page of the school calendar, with its June rituals of assemblies, projects, cleaning out our desks. The long school year finally comes to an end.

T
HE
temperature is creeping up on eighty degrees in the kitchen when Mom calls the boys to breakfast. I'm at the table already, my bottom scooched forward in the chair to keep the seat from sticking to my sweaty legs.

"Where's Dad?" Bill asks, tipping back his juice.

Mom sets the cereal boxes in the middle of the table. "Down at the Forestry garage getting ready for the parade."

Bill swoops up the Rice Krispies box. "He'll come back for us, right?"

"Of course. The parade won't start for an hour at least."

Independence Day here fires up with a parade, like all the other places we've lived. But I know from Pinky that the Fourth of July parade at Warm Springs has its own special flavor—flags, drums, beadwork, feathers, bells, horses, pickups, pumper trucks, and heavy machinery. And it's short—one quick swipe around the campus.

We moved here late last summer, so we missed the whole thing. I can't wait to see it. I wish Pinky could be with me, but she is back up at Sidwalter Lookout with her mother. I had almost forgotten how much I hated being all by myself last summer.

"Howie and I dibs the pumper," says Joe. He splashes milk into a bowl overflowing with cereal.

It was a rude surprise that only boys ride in the parade. Because Dad works in Forestry, Bill and Joe get to wear hard hats and wave from the back of a pumper truck or the cab of a bulldozer chained to the long bed of a lowboy. Benson, that lucky duck, gets to whoop the siren of his uncle's patrol car.

I frown over at Mom, but she just smiles.

The spring on the back-door screen boings, and Dad comes in. His short-sleeved shirt is wet and splotchy, and his forehead is damp.

"Everything set?" asks Mom.

Dad nods. "Getting there."

His face is tense. And though he is in a weekend shirt, Dad has on his work pants and boots. The stuff he wears out in the woods or to fires.

"You think it'll go OK?"

Dad sets his glass down and scoops up the cereal bits Joe left strewn over the table. "At least the weather looks good," he says, popping cereal into his mouth.

The weather is one of Dad's big worries in the summer. This morning, the sky above Warm Springs is a clear, uncluttered blue. No sign of clouds that might gather themselves together in the afternoon to become a storm. So it isn't the threat of lightning that wrinkles the skin around his eyes.

Just then, a distant and rapid
pop-pop-pop
from outside. Fireworks. Dad cocks his head toward the window. "
That's
what I'm worried about," he says. "It's so dry out on these hills right now. Wouldn't take much to get a fire going."

Bill and Joe well up out of the basement, all set for parade action in their new Forestry T-shirts. I don't even get one of those—just a towel to dry the rest of the dishes Mom is washing. They sweep out of the door after Dad, piling into the station wagon. Next time I see them, they'll be sitting up on the machinery, waving like goofy homecoming royalty.

By the time the kitchen is clean, I can hear noises in the distance. The parade must be forming up in the parking lot at McKenzie's store. Mom takes pity on me and waves me outside. I grab a spot at the curb and watch the parade come up the street.

A VFW color guard marches with the flags—the Stars and Stripes and the deep blue and gold of the Confederated Tribes. We all stand up, hands on hearts, as they pass. Then we sit back down for the dignitaries. The chiefs of the three tribes—Warm Springs, Wasco, and Paiute—ride on horseback wearing their regalia. The tribal council chairman waves from the back seat of a convertible.

Then comes a rolling line of cars and pickups covered in brightly colored blankets, people riding on the hoods and the truck beds. Whole families have brought out their best beadwork and baskets to display. I see Geraldine and Dora from my class wearing wing dresses, their hair braided and tied with otter fur.

"Hey, Kitty!" They wave hard at me. Dora holds a little girl close to her side on the hood of the car, her arm tight around her waist. Makes me think of Tela for a sad moment. I'll bet she would have loved this parade.

Finally, the big rigs pass by. I see Joe on the back of the pumper with Howie, both in hard hats that keep slipping down over their eyes. Behind them, Bill smirks at me from high on the seat of a bulldozer. The boys toss out handfuls of bubblegum to the crowd lining the street.

"Kitty!" Howie shouts. "For you!" He swings his arm way back and sprays several pieces right at my feet. I give him back a big smile.

When the parade ends, there will be a picnic down at the ball fields, and an afternoon of games. That means bottles of pop glistening in tubs of ice. Mom usually forbids pop, but she's making an exception for this special occasion. Pinky promised me that it's all free. I sure do miss her.

I follow the crowd down the hill, walking on the shoulder of the road. The ball fields have been transformed into one giant festival. It seems like everybody on the reservation must have come. It doesn't feel strange anymore that most of the people are Indian, and I realize how many faces I know. Kids from school and grown-ups, too, from the boys' baseball games and Friday night movies up at the school. Mr. Walsey from the dining hall stands at a giant barbecue grill, calling out greetings and offering hot dogs and hamburgers.

I make a beeline for the icy tubs of pop, working my way through the thirsty mob. I bend down to fish out a bottle, but somebody hands me one already opened. It's Jewel, popping off the cap of another bottle with an opener tied onto the tub handle.

"Hi," she says. But something isn't right. She looks anxious.

We move into the shade of the home bleachers. "How are you?" I ask. "I haven't seen you since school got out."