Steal the North: A Novel (29 page)

“Bring it on,” I say about the sign. She laughs. I look behind me.

We go out the back door of the museum, which leads to the large mission grounds. The unsettledness I felt at first intensifies outside. The wind has picked up, and I hear more noises than I care to. No wonder the ranger looks deranged (a de-ranger). We see the actual wagon grooves in the earth from the Oregon Trail. Emmy kneels down and touches them with both her palms and even closes her eyes. What does she hear? The “pioneer spirit” that led her people west? She doesn’t say and I don’t ask. There’s a paved trail around the old mission homestead. Emmy’s pretty quiet and trying to hurry for my sake. I think she actually likes it here. “Slow down,” I tell her. But really, I hope she doesn’t.

We find ourselves by the gravestone of the Whitmans’ only child, a girl who was born here, but then drowned at two years old. Emmy asks me if I read inside about how the toddler’s body was found. I shake my head. “Marcus and the other white men,” she says, “searched the river for Alice’s body after they saw her tin cup floating on the surface.” She pauses to catch her breath. “They couldn’t find her. Then a Cayuse man jumped into the river and immediately located the girl. Her hair had snagged in the reeds. How did he know where she was?”

“I don’t know.” I try not to sound irritated. How would I know? She seems spooked and waits for an answer. “I suppose he knew the river.”

“Is your arm okay, Reuben? You keep rubbing it. Is that the arm you broke?”

“It’s fine.” She offers me an Advil from her purse. I shake my head. She offers to rub my arm for me, but the ache is too deep for that. I’d like to leave. I hate it here. But I know Emmy wants to visit the large slab grave that holds the bones of all fourteen pioneers killed.

“Narcissa was the only woman killed,” Emmy says, reading the faded names. I walk away for a few, unable to feel the slightest sympathy. For the drowned girl, yes, but not the missionary woman. When I return to Emmy, she stands on the edge of a small unmarked pioneer graveyard—from years later, the sign says. There’s no signs saying how many Indians were buried around here, dead from white man’s diseases and the Indian wars that accompanied the reservation roundup. “It’s so peaceful,” Emmy says. Not really. Not at all. “I wish Aunt Beth could be buried here.”

Right before Beth died, Emmy asked me if I loved her aunt. I couldn’t lie and say that I did, but now I understand the connection I’ve always felt, and tried to deny, with Teresa’s strange neighbor lady: she and I would one day love the same girl. I hug Emmy tightly. She’s been brave all day. She loves only a handful of people in this world, one of whom is now gone. She’s cold, even shivering a little. Why didn’t she say? Her dainty sweater offers no protection. I help her put on my sweatshirt. Though, regrettably, it covers her ass. Pulling up the hood, I say, “Who’s the wannabe gangsta now?”

A family passes us, and the kid points at me. “Look, Daddy, a Cayuse Indian.”

Emmy and I laugh, a little awkwardly, as we walk back to the lawn area where the Whitmans’ second house was built. Emmy wants to have one more look. I want to break camp. The footsteps I hear—only Indians know how to walk that softly, and maybe the Whitman baby. A sign explains that the Whitmans’ first house kept getting flooded by the Walla Walla River, so they had to rebuild. “The river was trying to get the baby from the get-go,” Emmy says. I disagree and shake my head. Emmy pulls me onto the grass, where there are cement outlines showing the exact locations of the different houses and sheds. We walk, one foot in front of the other, like grade schoolers, on the cement outline of the second house, but I keep glancing over my shoulder. Emmy falls, purposely, or because of her damn flip-flops. When I reach to help her stand up, she yanks me down onto the grass beside her. My first reaction is to jump the fuck up. The Whitmans were killed right here at this spot. I’ve been taught that the dead, whether Indian or white, are to be respected—out of fear, if nothing else. But I remain beside Emmy for a minute, both of us flat on our backs in the grass, holding hands and looking at the overcast sky.

I go to Beth’s funeral service, but alone in my own truck. It’s held at a funeral home, not the church. The preacher from the healing leads it, which surprises me. The dude fucked up, pretending he could heal. The Cayuse killed Dr. Whitman as they often killed their own shamans back then for not healing the sick. It’s not a power to take lightly. I sure as hell wouldn’t want it. All of the women and girls at the funeral, other than Matt’s relatives, wear long prairie dresses. Emmy says Matt chose not to hold Beth’s service at the church in deference to Kate, who was condemned from the pulpit there when it was first discovered she was pregnant with Emmy. Christian love. I don’t think her uncle will keep attending that church or any other, at least for a while. After the minister finishes speaking with his southern accent—he broke down a lot, so it took forever—Kate reads a poem called “Dover Beach.” It doesn’t seem like a funeral poem, except maybe the first line: “The sea is calm tonight.” The poem is typed into the funeral flyer, so as Professor Kate said before beginning, we can read along. Her voice is powerful. The poem seems to be about the loss of faith—“Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar”—rather than the loss of a loved one. Beth had a lot of faith. Emmy sobs harder than at any other time. I sit right beside her in the front row reserved for family. Her sobs knock the wind out of me. Kate falters only on the final stanza:

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

The poem gets to me. I didn’t want it to. But for an hour in the hospital I was the only one in the room with Beth.
Nor help for pain
. There should be drumming.
Darkling plain
. Matt and Emmy, who had both prepared little speeches on paper, are too upset to speak at the podium.
Struggle and flight
. I too feel heavy in my seat.
Clash by night
. A small reception follows, during which Emmy stays glued to Matt’s side—for her protection or his, I can’t tell.
Seems. Dreams.
It’s touching.
Pain. Plain.
I cut out early. Emmy says she understands. At tribal funerals, even the Christian ones, we have drumming.
Light. Flight. Night.
There should’ve been drumming for Beth.

Ray and a few lowlifes, but not Benji, are at Teresa’s place when I get there. Fuck. I’m usually happy to see Ray, but if he’s hanging with Sergio, it can only mean trouble. Sergio is almost Teresa’s age and just got paroled. I’ll have to tell them all to clear out.

“Cuz,” Ray says. They stand around Ray’s truck and Sergio’s slammed Honda. Sergio is half Yakama and half Mexican. One of the other guys is full Yakama. I met him once. And then there’s a white boy in a backward cap. There’s been tension lately between the Yakama and Colville over fishing rights on the Wenatchee. All of them but Ray, who’s too fat, wear wife beaters. If Teresa were home, she would’ve already told them to scram, except Ray. I’ll smoke one cigarette with them before I tell them to leave. They offer more than tobacco, but I pass.

“Ray says you got a
sweet
piece of ass next door, bro,” Sergio says.

I look at Ray, who stutters, “I didn’t say ‘piece of ass,’ cousin. I just—”

“Shut the hell up, Ray,” I say. I’d tell Sergio off also, but he packs.

“He said you’re real touchy
about
her,” Sergio says. “I think he meant touchy
with
her.” He makes some gesture with his hands. “I’d like a turn tapping her sweet ass. Maybe you can introduce us, cuz. What do you say?”

Confirming he’s Sergio’s bitch, the white guy laughs the loudest.

“Do I know you?” I ask him. He shuts up.

I stare hard at Sergio. I’m not his “bro” or his “cuz.” And I sure as hell ain’t his bitch. One more word about Emmy.

“You look like you could use a cold one,” Ray says. I’ve only had three beers in my whole life. But I remember all three. I’m more tempted than usual.

I ask Ray if I can talk to him a second. I tell him about the funeral and how Emmy’s mom is in town. I ask him to leave and come back next week. “No prob, cousin,” he says. I hang back while he goes to his friends. They all three get into the Honda and leave. I meant Ray too.

I light another cigarette. “Great group of friends, Ray.”

“You haven’t exactly been around.” That’s true. “You missed the fucking Pow Wow. They called your dad’s name, and Mom’s.”

His mom died of diabetes—an infection in her foot. White man’s diseases are still killing off the natives: not smallpox and measles, but diabetes and alcoholism. “Ray. Sorry, man.”

He shrugs. “I didn’t really feel nothing this year when I heard her name.”

Ray not feeling anything at all is worse than his wailing with the women, which he did the first year after his mom passed, but I don’t say so. “Where’s Benji?”

“Took off.” I ask him where to. “Canada.” I ask him for what. “Ecstasy.”

“To sell on the rez?” Ray doesn’t respond. “That’s completely fucked,” I say.

“Dad hooked him up.”

My uncle. Dad’s brother. The army vet who flies an enormous American flag outside his rez house to piss off the real traditionals. He used to travel around helping other vets on different reservations. “You want to stay here tonight, Ray?” I feel bad having asked him to leave.

“I’m meeting Sergio in an hour.”

“Just stay here, bro. Teresa will be home.” I try to entice him. “In her scrubs.”

“Next week, cuz. Like you said.” I’ve never asked Ray to leave before, no matter who I’m hanging with. I offended him. Shit.

“Come on, Ray, brother. Please.” I speak to him in our native tongue. He answers in English, then leaves.

I leave too, before Emmy and her family return. I drive to the Columbia. Chief Moses lost both his heirs—nephews, because he had no sons of his own—in the Columbia. They both drowned, drunk. Both times Moses remained by the shore, waiting for the river to release their bodies, and both times it did.

Teresa loved to tease Dad, when she got older, that he married
into
the Moses band, not rescued her and Mom
from
it. Dad claimed to have stolen Mom and Teresa in a horse raid. They were hiding under a blanket and he just scooped them right up.

My dad’s favorite leader wasn’t Tonasket, the Okanogan leader and respected rancher. Nor was it Skolaskin, whom Moses got jailed, though Moses was also shackled twice in Yakima. It was another Sanpoil leader, Chief Jim James. He was the chief who witnessed firsthand the inundation of Kettle Falls in 1939. But not before he oversaw (“with sad dignity,” whites claim—fuck them) the removal of generations of Indian bones in the wooden boxes the government so generously provided. Losing the falls ruined my people. We deeply offended the Great Spirit. The Sky Chief. We still dance and pray for forgiveness, for healing.

I wait by the silent river. I’m hungry. I had cereal for breakfast, but no lunch or dinner. I could use a burger. I wait. The sun starts to set. Moses was called Half Sun. I smoke my last cigarette. My hunger deepens and brings with it fear, instead of clarity.
Dad?
He never shows up when I need him most. What am I waiting for the river to release? Dad’s waywardness? His drunkenness? Moses’s drunkenness? Half Sun’s people? My people? Our pain? My life before Emmy? My life after she leaves? My hunger? My thirst?

I drum. I keep my hand drum in my truck. I have yet to show it to Emmy.

Coyote’s thirst was so great that he created the Columbia, but then he tried to drink so much of the river water that he lost consciousness. He woke up in the swift river and was afraid. Moses’s beloved nephews never woke up. My dad—
come on, I need you
—regained full consciousness in the hospital many times before he died, which baffled the doctors. It was like Fox was there, stepping over him three times, which is the only way Coyote survived to finish his job of readying earth for the coming humans. I’m still baffled to this day as to why the fuck my dad was riding around with a drunk white woodcutter. Hell, Dad probably got the guy drunk. My dad needed cash, no doubt. My old man, who sometimes worked cutting trees for the tribal mill and for the tribal fire department, was as good with a chain saw as he was with a fishing pole, a dip net, a bow, a rifle, a horse. I miss him so much. He had this way of making me feel things were going to be all right, even when I knew they weren’t—like now—even when I knew he was leaving again or about to get busted. He never got arrested by the feds, just the tribal cops, who didn’t like locking him up. One tribal court advocate told Mom, who rolled her eyes, that Dad’s spirit was just too big to lock up. They tried to “make him whole” through other means. He was even sent to pick berries one time like a chick and another time to build a sweat lodge. Maybe he’s made his peace, though not with me, and crossed over at last.

I miss you, Dad. I’ve missed you my whole life.

Spencer’s SUV isn’t in front of the Millers’ trailer when I return, but Matt’s truck is there. I go over. “Emmy left already,” Matt says. “She didn’t want to.”

“I’m really sorry about your wife.” It’s way too soon to speak the name of the dead.

He nods. I turn to go. “Reuben?” I turn back. “Emmy says you kids want to have a talk with me and Kate in the morning. She won’t let Emmy stay.”

“I have to try.”

“I respect that.”

“I love your niece, very much.”

“I know.” He looks like he wants to say more, maybe give me some advice. I’d take it. But he doesn’t. He buried the love of his life today.

Emmy calls me around midnight from the hotel. She sounds young and so far away, already. If she does leave, I’ll never be able to talk on the phone with her. She asks me to sing to her like I did that night at my great-aunt’s house when Ray drummed. But I can’t. She asks me to tell her a story in my native language. It comes out mostly in English. I tell her how Coyote traveled up the rivers with the salmon, a new food source. Whenever he proposed to a beautiful maiden and was refused by the maiden’s parents or by the maiden’s tribe, he created natural dams or barricades in the river to keep the salmon from going up any farther. Coyote would swear that tribe would tip many canoes and wear out their moccasins to get enough salmon to survive.