Steal the North: A Novel (24 page)

The photo Matt gave me of little Emmy unhinged me. I am so ashamed to admit that I hadn’t heard our daughter’s name, had purposely
not
found it out, until that day.
Emmy
. You named her after Emmylou Harris, whom you heard sing for the first time in my truck, in my damn arms. I confessed to my wife. She was shocked. A little too much edge. And she’d desperately wanted a daughter, having had only brothers growing up. She gathered “her sons” and left the house, went back to her family’s farm in southern Idaho. I didn’t care. My apathy must have terrified her. She’d given up her dream of being a businesswoman to marry me. And she’d been a good wife. She’d loved me as much as possible. Not with all of herself, as you had, Katie, but she tried. Maybe she held back simply because she sensed a portion of me was already gone. The week she was away, I drove to Moses Lake and ate in the truck stop café where you had once worked. I drove past your dad’s house. It looked more run-down than ever, and another family was living in it. I’d forgotten over the years how poor your family was. Maybe that’s why your dad was such a mean son of a bitch. I’d promised you at camp, and afterward, that I’d get you away from him. That you wouldn’t have to have his last name any longer. Now my daughter has it.

“Is it you, Emmy?” I asked when she called.

“Yes, it’s me,” she said. “Emmy Nolan.”

Her name should’ve been “Emmy Kagen.”

If I’d known my little girl wouldn’t make it to my front door the next day, as she and I had arranged, I would’ve kept her on the phone longer. I would’ve asked her questions. I would’ve told her things.

“I’m pregnant,” you told me over the phone. “I can leave here.” In other words, “Come and get me.” The snow kept us apart, but my truck could’ve made it. I knew that even then.

“Don’t tell anyone just yet.” That was my initial response, and it got worse from there. “How do I know it’s even
my
baby?”

Katie, I’m sorry.

Our daughter showed up here in the quiet before harvest. My mechanic, two of my brothers-in-law, an uncle, a few WSU and UI students, my dad, his hired crew, and I had been working on the combines and equipment for weeks. My back was bracing for the long hours of labor ahead, the danger of plowing on steep hills with hulking machines. My adrenaline was pumping. The wheat in the fields was bountiful, the stalks heavy with grain. I’m glad Emmy saw my fields before they were plowed.

They are her fields too. My older boy will inherit my dad’s place. Emmy has equal rights to my fields with her younger brother. I told myself this during harvest, told myself I was harvesting for her. My wife told me to put Emmy out of my mind until after harvest. She said for now I had my boys to consider. For the first time I lost control of a combine. I’ve been driving large farm equipment since I was twelve years old. I came out less scathed than the combine, but harvest was slowed on my land and my dad’s. He just shook his head. As did my wife’s brothers. From the beginning they’ve thought I was a cocky bastard, that all dryland farmers are because we don’t have to constantly move irrigation pipe. And maybe I am cocky. I try not to be when I go to southern Idaho every year for two weeks to help my in-laws with their harvest. I’ve never felt more humbled than when Emmy drove away in that truck.

She told me you’re in Europe. I hope you get to see the world, Katie. I hope the man you are with loves you. I hope he takes better care of you than I did.

I found you by a lake, stuffing rocks into your pockets, like a girl of seven, rather than seventeen. Over the years I have put many a rock in my pocket. My wife finds it endearing and then irritating when she finds them in her washing machine. She has no idea.

I was never afraid for you. I should’ve been. I’m afraid for our baby. Why was she so far from you? Does that boy love her? I keep watching the road for that truck to return.

If I could go back, I’d start by rubbing your back the time you threw up in front of me, sick from pregnancy, instead of looking away in disgust and in fear. That was the last time I ever saw you, Katie. I was terrified that day of far more than losing my birthright. I was afraid of your love. I was afraid of the life inside you, which was there even before I got you pregnant. My greatest fear now is never seeing our daughter again. “She’ll come back when she’s ready, James,” my wife says. She’s trying hard to be understanding, but she’s terrified again and wants to try once more for a girl. She wants a daughter to quilt and can and ride her horses with. Our boys prefer to ride dirt bikes and quads, fish with my dad, shoot their rifles. I tell my wife no more children for me. I don’t think Emmy is in Washington anymore. It’s been months, and I feel her absence heavily in the plowed fields. I don’t even want to replant them.

I start attending church with my wife and boys. She begs me to make peace with God. But this has nothing to do with the old man upstairs. It never did. Nor does it have anything to do with my old man down the road.

I stand now looking down at Palouse Falls. Remember I took you here, Katie, but for the wrong reasons? I wanted you to understand why I was about to choose the land over you. You looked so stunned, your hair and dress blowing in the wind. For the briefest moment I thought you’d jump. Many nights I’ve reached out my arm to stop you.

The Palouse River starts in the Rockies, flows across the Idaho state line into Washington, through my hometown and into the scablands, where it plunges hundreds of feet off the edge of a basalt canyon before it reaches the Snake River. The Snake carries my wheat to the Columbia and then to the sea and to Asia. The falls are still muddy with rich topsoil. Soil from my land. Soil that has settled, after thirty-five years, into the crevasses of my skin. I’m sorry, Katie. Send Emmy back to me. I will make it up to her. I will make good. I will find a way to deserve our daughter.

I speak to the wind. The sound of my voice is muted by the roar of the falls.

Emmy

Uncle Matt insisted I leave Spokane the morning after I almost met my dad. I tried to argue. I pleaded. But I was a mess and only adding to his worry. I couldn’t quit thinking about Jamie on his knees, my two brothers, the lack of wrinkles in Aunt Beth’s hospital bed, and if I’d have to leave Reuben soon and for good. The doctor said that in addition to Aunt Beth’s miscarriages, her heart had been weakened over the years by severe anemia, and she’d suffered other undiagnosed health issues since childhood. Uncle Matt said I could return to Spokane in a few days. He assured me Beth would hold out for Mom, with whom we still hadn’t made contact. Saying good-bye to my aunt in that hospital room was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. I made my confession and begged her to squeeze my hand if she could hear me, if she forgave me. I told her that I used to look for her during the night when I was younger. “I’ll look for you always,” I whispered into her ear.

Matt gave me permission to go back to the reservation with Reuben for one more day. Reuben drove me all around, crisscrossing the reservation. There was an urgency, as if he too were fearing it would be his only chance to show me his world. In a clearing in the pines, we saw elk. He showed me a particular mountain where clouds hovered—in response, Reuben told me, to whites’ wanting to mine its minerals. For miles, we were the only people on the reservation roads. We unrolled the truck windows. I didn’t ask him to slow down.

He showed me the various towns on the reservation, which were depressing and far apart. The poverty was severe. The east side of Omak seemed the worst, given that the west side (the white side) wasn’t. Nearly every house in east Omak was run-down with broken vehicles parked haphazardly around it. The only businesses in east Omak, besides the closed-down rail yard and mill, were a few dilapidated firework stands and cigarette shops. Reuben told me about gangs and drugs on the rez, about high unemployment, suicide, diabetes, teen pregnancy. He said drugs used to come just from Canada by floatplanes landing on secluded lakes or cars sneaking across the international border. Now drugs also came from Mexico. In fact, Mexicans snuck onto the Colville to grow pot in the woods, big operations, and there weren’t enough tribal cops to monitor. He told me he’d got his arm broken a few years back when he and Benji stumbled across some mean Mexican dealers in the woods. His arm still ached sometimes, he said, and during football he had to wrap it with rolls of athletic tape. Benji knew the dealers were there, no matter what he claimed. This alarmed me. I wanted to tell Reuben to be more careful, but he was one of the most careful people I knew. He drove me past all four longhouses, the tribal jail, a couple of shabby health clinics, and, I swear, forty different relatives’ houses. He pulled over so I could read the graffiti on a wall in Nespelem:
WHY CHOOSE A GANG? YOU ARE A TRIBAL NATION. WHY SPEAK STREET LANGUAGE? YOU HAVE A NATIVE TONGUE.

He took me to Chief Joseph Dam, where like at Grand Coulee, there were no fish ladders. He explained about hatchery fish versus native stock and how the hatchery stock was further destroying the native salmon runs by interbreeding. Prone to disease and pumped with chemicals, hatchery salmon left native fish unable to find their birth streams. But without hatcheries, no one, Indian or white, could fish.

Reuben wanted to save the best place for last. We went slightly off the reservation, north to a place called Kettle Falls, where Reuben’s people used to fish for thousands of years before Grand Coulee Dam drowned the falls in backwater. Every Memorial Day, Reuben told me, there’s a Ceremony of Tears. I’d already told him I’d seen the marker for Celilo Falls on the lower Columbia with my aunt. So much loss. We took another ferry across the Columbia. It looked more like a narrow lake than a river, and it was even called Lake Roosevelt. But the river was still in the lake, Reuben insisted. He pulled off the road, and we climbed through a few scattered pines and down an embankment to a sandy strip of beach. There he tried to teach me how to see the river in the lake, how to use the memory of those who had already crossed into the spirit world, but I couldn’t. We walked up and down the beach, studying the currents, and I tried to see the ancient shorelines far below the surface as Reuben could. Finally he held my hand in the water—the first time I’d touched the Columbia. He told me to close my eyes so I could feel the river’s pulse. It was faint under all that backwater, but it was definitely there. It was the most spiritual experience I’d ever had.

Once we were back in his truck, Reuben didn’t start the ignition. He just sat there. He didn’t talk. He didn’t look at the river or at me. He was waiting to be sure I’d absorbed all he’d shown me that day so deeply inside that it could never seep out.

We returned to Omak for dinner. Reuben said Dairy Queen was the local hangout, but hardly anyone was there. There weren’t a lot of people anywhere in eastern Washington. I was glad the restaurant wasn’t busy. We sat on the same side of a window booth. I let myself feel happy, despite everything. Reuben fed me fries dipped in tartar sauce (a northern thing). An SUV pulled into the parking lot. “Shit,” Reuben said. “Here comes trouble.” I thought maybe Benji, except Reuben was smiling. Three white boys hopped out of the SUV. They ran over to Reuben’s truck. One boy jumped in the bed and howled out Reuben’s last name like a wolf.

“TO-NA-SKET!”

“Do you know those guys?” I asked.

“I’m on the football team with them.” I hid behind his shoulder as they approached the restaurant doors. “Don’t be scared, Emmy.”

“I’m not.” But I was. Jocks intimidated me. I never really thought of Reuben as a jock, although I knew he played football and liked to shoot hoops or do pull-ups on the monkey bars at the park.

“Rube,” the biggest boy yelled after strutting in the door. “How’s it hanging?”

They all three came over to our booth. They had a lot of energy and a lot of muscle among them.

“What the fuck, Tonasket?” asked the boy in the Seattle Seahawks T-shirt. “
Where
do you always disappear to in the summer?” Before Reuben could reply, the boy said, “And
who
is this?”

“This is Emmy,” Reuben said. He’d taken my hand under the table, and now he squeezed it. “Emmy, this is Kimble, Anderson, and C.J.”

“Dude, you get the lookers,” the same boy said, sitting down across from us in the booth. “Last summer it was Danielle Lawton.
Dude
.”

“Rube and Rodeo Queen Danielle.”

Benji had brought up a rodeo queen also. I’d thought he was joking. Why would Reuben date a cowgirl? I let go of his hand. I’d rather date a boy with a pierced tongue, any day of the week, than a cowboy.

“So, where you from?” the third boy, C.J., asked me. He and the biggest boy remained standing. “I haven’t seen you around.”

“And we’d remember.”

I couldn’t respond. My face was burning.

“I met Emmy in Moses Lake,” Reuben said.

“No fucking way,” the big boy said. “Moses Hole. Home of the Chiefs.”

“Dude, if I’d known girls were looking that fine in Moses Lake—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Reuben said. But he kept it cool. “What are you d-bags up to?”

“Looking for Danielle.” They laughed. “Or your cousin Yvonne.”

“Keep away from her, Anderson, you asshole,” Reuben said to the boy in the Seahawks T-shirt. “Her dad will scalp you.”

“He’d have to sober up and get off his couch first.”

They all three laughed, but not Reuben.

“Practice starts in two weeks,” C.J. reminded Reuben. “You keeping yourself in shape?”

“Always.”

Suddenly they all started flexing. Even Reuben. Maybe I
wouldn’t
do so well in public school.

“Does she speak?” Anderson asked, pretending to do sign language.

I felt Reuben’s body tense.

“Look at her,” the big guy said. “Does it matter?”

“Back the fuck off,” Reuben said. “Seriously.”

I had to say something. I was being a freak. What was wrong with me?

“Hello,” I managed.

“What grade are you in?” the calmest boy, C.J., asked me. “I know a guy who goes to high school in Moses Lake.”

“I bet you
know
a guy,” the big boy said. “The way your eyes wander in the locker room.”

“Fuck you, Kimble. You fat ass.”

“You wish. Keep your eyes on your own shit.”

Even Reuben laughed at that.

“What grade?”

“Actually,” Reuben said, answering for me, “Emmy goes—went to high school in California.”

“Fucking A,” Kimble said. “A California girl.” He tried to high-five Reuben, who ignored him, so he high-fived Anderson instead. “I
knew
she wasn’t from here.”

“How long are you staying?” C.J. asked me.

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Reuben treating you okay?” he asked.

I smiled and nodded.

“I bet he’s treating you
real
nice,” the big boy said, thrusting his groin repulsively. “
Real
nice and—”

C.J. shoved him. “Will you shut the fuck up?” he said.

“He doesn’t know how to shut his mouth,” Reuben said. “That’s why he’s so fat. Maybe I should shut it for him.”

“Go tribal on his white ass, Tonasket,” Anderson said, grabbing Rueben’s pop and finishing it in one gulp. When he reached for mine next, Reuben stopped him.

“Where do you live in California?” C.J. asked me. When I didn’t respond, Reuben nudged me under the table. “Do you know any movie stars?” Another nudge. I definitely liked C.J. the best, and if it had been just he and Reuben, I would’ve been able to hold a conversation. Giving up on me and addressing Reuben, C.J. said, “Hey, man, she all right?”

I almost spilled my drink trying to get out of the booth. I stayed in the ladies’ restroom a long time, though it didn’t smell so good. I was humiliated, and I’d definitely embarrassed Reuben in front of his friends
again
.

When I came back out, Reuben and his friends were gone and our table was cleared off. I looked through the windows. He was out in the parking lot with the boys, who were showing off football moves. Reuben fitted in with those jocks. Or he was trying to. No, they liked him. The boys got back into their SUV and left, hanging out the windows and shouting back at Reuben. He walked over to his truck and leaned his elbows on the side, and for a brief moment he put his head in his hands.

I moved closer to the window. When he looked up, he waved for me to come on.

I started to cry as soon as I got into his truck. I hadn’t cried in the stinky restroom. For the first time all summer, I wanted my mom more than anyone else. My shyness and awkwardness irritated Mom—her dream daughter, I knew, would be a go-getter—but she could also be incredibly understanding. She was always assuring me I’d outgrow my bashfulness. Aunt Beth was oblivious to it. I wanted to sit between them on the couch. No males around. I wanted to smell Mom’s musky perfume mixed with Aunt Beth’s lavender lotion.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “You see why I don’t have friends in Sacramento?”

He looked at me. “Jesus, Emmy, just be yourself. It’s not that hard.”

“Is that what you were doing? Just being yourself out here in the parking lot practicing football moves with white boys? Dating a cowgirl?”

“Would you rather have me join a gang on the rez?” He was pissed.

I shook my head. “I’m sorry.”

“Quit fucking apologizing. You’re too polite and too damn scared.” He grabbed one of my hands, but not to hold it. He looked at the nail polish I’d peeled and scraped partway off in the restroom. “Fuck, Emmy.” He let go. “How are you ever
going to make it?”

Hadn’t he just called me brave the day before yesterday for calling my dad?

“I’m going for a walk.” I grabbed the door handle. I’d seen a park. “Don’t follow me.”

“No problem.”

I got out of his truck and slammed the door, but not very impressively. The sun was starting to set. I made it to the edge of the parking lot before hearing the driver’s door open. I wasn’t athletic like Reuben, but Mom and I were brisk city walkers. I hurried my pace. He grabbed my arm.

“Slow down, girl,” he said. “You break my heart.”

I tried to lighten things up. “Breaking hearts in Omak.”

He smiled apologetically. “With a killer smile and not a bad rack.”

“Not a rodeo queen,” I said, “just a fucked-up teen.”

“Not an Indian guide, but I’ll stay by your side.”

He took me into his arms.

“I wish I made you happy, Reuben.”

“You do. Those boneheads don’t mean anything to me.” But I also made him sad. I wasn’t making his life any easier. He had enough to deal with. I certainly saw that today on the reservation. His obstacle course included drug dealers, extreme poverty, high school jocks, and the mammoth Coulee Dam.

“Let’s go to the movies,” I said, smiling wide for him. “We can pretend everything is okay and we’re just bored kids in a small town.”

When we returned to Moses Lake the next day, Aunt Beth’s garden was partly dried up. Teresa had watered it once, and Uncle Matt’s sister had swung by. But the potted plants hadn’t been rotated. Also, someone had shut off the night-light in my bedroom. I freaked out when I saw the ceramic hands not glowing as they had been since I first arrived in Washington. “Why would Matt’s family do that?” I asked Reuben. “Don’t they love Beth?”