Steal the North: A Novel (33 page)

“
She
does.”

He laughs again. “Did you know Emmy speaks French? She’s never even been to France, but she speaks it better than I speak my native language—the language of this land.” He gestures around us. “The elders are always begging us kids to learn it before it dies with them.” He says something in his native language, maybe to the elders. Maybe an apology.

I wait.

“Emmy wants to travel to France,” he says. “Did you know?”

“I know she needs you.”

“Sit down, Matt, if you want to have a council.” I sit down in one of the other camp chairs. “You want a smoke?” He pulls a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his baggy jeans. He doesn’t normally wear his jeans so baggy. Not that it matters. Maybe they’re not his.

“Sure, son,” I say, “why not?” Did I just call him son? That’s not going to go over well.

“
Son
. Let me think about that.” He hands me a cigarette and then the lighter. He’s acting as strange as Emmy. He adds a log to the fire, stirring the embers. He takes a few minutes. “Okay, Matt.” He keeps his back to me. “You are the only fucking white man I will ever let call me that. But I still want to punch your fucking jaw.”

“I love you, Reuben.”

He turns. “Now why would you say that?” He looks at me. “Here, you know, at my
fire? Can’t you white people stay off our rez?”

“I’m not here as a white man.” I take a deep puff of the cigarette. God, it’s good.

“Well, you sure as hell ain’t no Indian.”

“Reuben, cut this shit out.”

“I love you too, dude.” He flops back into the chair. He takes a couple of deep breaths. “Why are you here, seriously?”

“I need your help with Emmy.”

“I can’t be anywhere near Kate.”

“I sent her and Spencer away. Emmy is staying with me for one more week.”

He shakes his head. “I still feel Kate close by.”

“She and Spencer are in Spokane this evening, and then they fly out in the morning.”

“Emmy’s staying?”

“For one week only.”

“I can’t see her.”

“She won’t get off the floor. Or button her dress.” He stands up, starts pacing. He kicks another beer can. “She hasn’t eaten,” I continue. “And she drank only a few swallows of water yesterday. None today. Only you can make her drink.”

“I can’t. Shit. I mean—” He rolls his shoulders as if they were stiff. “Shit.” I noticed a stack of freshly cut firewood by the house. “I can’t see her again.”

“Either you come with me, Reuben, or I have to take Emmy to the hospital when I get back. I don’t want to go to another hospital. She just needs you to tell her it was a lie—all you told her yesterday. What Kate
made
you tell her. She needs a proper good-bye.”

“
Proper?
Civilized
?
If you white people know a civilized way to dump the girl you love—to rip her fucking heart out—please inform me, missionary man.” He takes a deep breath. “Sorry, Matt. I’m done.”

I wait a minute. “Listen, kid. My hands are tied. If it was up to me, I’d let Emmy live with me and go to high school with you. But Kate is determined.”

“I can’t even breathe as long as that woman is in this state.”

“If you come back with me, you get Emmy for one more week. I’ll leave you kids alone. You guys don’t have to be apart—even at night.”

“And how is that going to make it any easier when she leaves?”

“I don’t know.” I sigh. “I know what I’m asking isn’t fair to you.”

“Fuck.”

“
Fuck
is right.” I look around. It seems we are in the middle of nowhere and it’s a hundred years ago. Two hundred. I’m a white man asking this Indian kid for more than I should.

I hear a voice, older than Reuben’s, but similar. I look behind Reuben, then behind me at a man standing in the shadows.

Reuben grins. “That’s my dad,” he says with obvious pride. “He wants me to tell you he’s okay with you calling me son
.”

I should be freaked out, but I’m not.

“And he’s sorry about your loss.”

I nod at the man, and he steps back into the pines.

The pride on Reuben’s face turns to sadness. He wants to follow his dad—into the pines, farther.

I would’ve followed Beth.

Reuben looks at me as if confused again by my presence here. Then he says, “I’m sorry too about your wife.”

We both stare at the fire a long time, too long because I think I hear drumming, or maybe it’s just the river. It’s flowing strong toward the Columbia. My grief flows as strong in me. I’ve been trying to keep it back. I begin to cry, hard. Reuben says not a word, but his breathing is heavy and broken.

When I finally get control, I take a deep breath. “Will you come back, Reuben?”

He starts searching for his shirt. “We should hurry,” he says.

“I can’t take you unless you eat first.” I point at the plates of food I left on the log. “Your aunt insisted.”

“Aunt Shirley.” He smiles.

“I’ll eat with you.” We eat quickly. The meat is venison.

I follow Reuben’s truck off the reservation and back to Moses Lake. I’ve been gone almost seven hours. I’m afraid to go into the trailer. Reuben smells like campfire when he meets me on the porch. We enter together. Emmy sits on the couch, leaning her head on the arm. All around her are those damn paper birds. She looks like a bag lady with paper pigeons. She still wears the dress Beth made for her, and it’s still unbuttoned. Her hair is matted. She’s pale, and her lips are dry. I hear Reuben take in breath. Her eyes are open, but she doesn’t see us. The loss of Beth and then Reuben clearly sent her into shock.

“Hey, Emmy,” Reuben says.

She hears that. She sees him. She jumps up too quickly and looks faint. He goes to her. She wraps her arms tightly around his neck. “It’s going to be okay,” he tells her. Then he whispers something in her ear. She nods. He keeps whispering, and she nuzzles her face against him. She doesn’t loosen her hold around his neck. He helps her back onto the couch and buttons her dress. “Drink,” he says, and she does. I pick up the paper birds. More than a few are completely crushed. Then I fix Emmy a new peanut butter sandwich. I’d left one for her, but she didn’t touch it. She eats both halves for Reuben. As easy as that.

I am absolutely beat. “I’m going to bed, kids.”

“Can he spend the night, Uncle Matt?” Her voice is weak.

“On the couch,” Reuben quickly adds.

“You guys figure it out. Good night.” I head for my empty bedroom.

My brother pulled up the carpeting and got rid of the mattress. He bought me a new one. And his wife bought new sheets and bedding. I have yet to sleep in the bed without Beth. I’ve lain in it.
It doesn’t smell like you
. But I have yet to sleep. I take a hot shower. I fall into bed on my stomach. Kids are damn exhausting. I can’t be sure if those two out there make me feel younger or older. They just make me feel, I guess. When I wake up hours later, my head aches and I’m thirstier than I ever remember being. I put on pants and go into the kitchen. I look into the living room. Emmy sleeps on the couch. Reuben is on the floor with a pillow. They hold hands. I have plenty of alone nights coming. I feel them gathering. For now, though, I turn on the kitchen faucet. I drink and drink.

Teresa

Emmy is gone. Reuben is back in Omak attending high school. I miss them both.

During their last week together, before they took off to the reservation for four days and no one heard from them—except for the quick appearance they made in Omak for the final night of the Suicide Race—they threw together a barbecue dinner between the two trailers. They actually bought a plastic lawn table and chairs. Reuben barbecued and Emmy made samosas, an Indian food, from India, pretty good for her first attempt, even though she didn’t think so. There were candles, which kept blowing out in the wind, and a vase full of lavender cuttings. Beth’s. Matt stared at them a lot. There were gifts. Grace and Audrey each received a deck of tarot cards from Emmy. Kevin and Emilio got feathers from Reuben. Emmy gave me a set of colorful Tibetan prayer flags, which I hung across the inside of my bare kitchen window. Reuben gave Matt his dad’s Zippo lighter with the engraved eagle design. It’s been out of fluid for years. Reuben and Emmy said the dinner was to show their appreciation for all Matt and I had done for them. I didn’t want the evening to end. A newly widowed man, a single mom with four kids from three different dads, a young couple in love who had only days left together—and yet we were happy for a few hours. I’m almost thirty. Some days, after a long or double shift at the hospital, or when one of my kids is sick, I feel forty. I’ll take any hours of happiness I can.

Reuben doesn’t play football this fall. He says he just doesn’t have it in him. He gets an afternoon job instead. He’s losing weight, but his grades have never been better. He’s always tried hard in school—something Mom doesn’t appreciate. My brother’s even got Ray studying and back on track for graduation. And as far as I know, Reuben’s not drinking or drugging. He’s not in jail like his bud Benji. Emmy faithfully mails letters here to Reuben. Sometimes, when he comes to pick up her letters, he and Matt go fishing. Other weekends Matt meets Reuben on the rez to give him letters and to fish and even to take sweats in Virgil’s garage. Reuben says he’s teaching Matt to fish like an Indian, but he admits Matt already knew how to read the water like a native. Reuben used to get so excited as a little boy when Dad would take him fishing, which wasn’t often enough. Dad was like Coyote fishing. All he had to do was wink and the fish would practically leap out of the water for him. Mostly, growing up, Reuben fished and hunted with the elders. Kevin will be old enough soon. In November, Reuben tries out for the school basketball team and makes it. I really encouraged him. But then he wrecks his pickup, way out on the rez, which scares the crap out of all of us, and he abruptly quits the team. He actually lets Matt lend him the money to get his truck fixed. Matthew Miller has more than kept his promise to do what he can for Reuben.

But my brother just isn’t the same kid. His step is slower and a bit off, and he’s far quieter, even with me. The kids notice it when he visits, which isn’t often now that the snows have started and the days are short. Last time he came to pick up Emmy’s letters, he stared out the kitchen window for a good twenty minutes, touching the prayer flags. Then he took a walk alone down the road, past the long-harvested and snowy fields, past the dwindling haystack where he and Emmy used to hang out.

I persuade Reuben to bring Lena and stay for a few days over Christmas break. Grace and Lena spend the entire first day making beaded holiday ornaments for our aunts and for a few of my favorite patients at the hospital. The second afternoon, when I send Reuben and Kevin to the store for groceries, Lena reports to me, “Our brother is sad. Emmy took his heart.”

“I don’t like Emmy,” Grace says. “Or any white girls.”

Grace has been having problems at Chief Mo Middle School with white girls and with Mexican girls after they find out she’s not one of them and has native pride. She never had problems in elementary school, but she’s also become more vocal. I need to call the counselor. Grace doesn’t understand why I won’t move back onto the rez. She sees only the positive sides: a web of relatives, lots of ceremonies, youth classes at the longhouse, dogs, and horses. Not all the drugging, political bickering, people in your business, my old classmates drinking their health away. I volunteer when I can at the once-a-month women’s health clinic in Nespelem.

“If Reuben heard you say that you didn’t like his girlfriend,” Lena warns Grace, “he wouldn’t like
you
. And I’m half white.”

“You’re family,” Grace says. They sit together in my new recliner. My other three kids aren’t allowed to sit in it until I pay it off.

“So is Emmy,” Lena retorts.

“No, she isn’t. She isn’t even Reuben’s girlfriend anymore.”

“Oh, yes, she is.” Lena gets up swiftly without putting down the footrest. I cringe, forgetting she’s as agile as her big brother always was, until recently.

“Where Auntie Em?” Emilio says, running to the window to look for Emmy. Audrey and I were about to make fry bread before Lena brought up Reuben’s missing heart.

“You don’t have an auntie Em,” Grace says to Emilio. “You never did.”

“You’re mean,” Lena says.

Grace replies in Salish—she’s been listening to the language tapes the elders made—but Lena doesn’t understand. “Need an interpreter?” Grace asks.

“Stop it, girls,” I say. “Both of you.” I tell them to take Emilio outside and build a snowman with him. If Emilio went to preschool on the rez, he’d already know how to look for animal tracks in the snow.

Grace likes Emmy or she wouldn’t still treasure that set of little Asian bowls Emmy gave to her. At first, much to my annoyance, Grace tried to eat all her meals out of them. Even spaghetti. Now she keeps sacred beads in the bowls. When I performed that ceremony on Emmy after Beth died, my oldest aunt, who is also my oldest living relative, insisted Emmy was Reuben’s wife. When I tried to explain otherwise, she scolded me for shortsightedness.

Reuben doesn’t write Emmy back. Not a single letter. He simply says, “I can’t,” when I ask him why not. He keeps the letters in a canvas bag in his truck. The kids got into them once. There was also a book in the bag called
Sister Carrie
, which Emmy obviously left here, and a bunch of tiny origami frogs and foxes and other animals that Emmy must tuck into her letters. I wanted to snoop but didn’t.

Reuben and I have a heart-to-heart at the end of January. I’m up north with my kids for the winter dances. My brother and I are alone for a few hours—my arrangement—at Mom’s Omak apartment. We sit at the kitchen table, drinking coffee.

“Mom tells me you’ve been hanging out with Jenny Larsen,” I say. Jenny’s dad is the worst kind of drunken rodeo asshole. And yes, there is more than one kind. I went to school with other Larsen kids: brothers, cousins, whatever. Basically all trash. Except Jenny. She’s one of those rare, genuinely sweet church girls who don’t give blow jobs to football players behind the bleachers. She sings on Omak street corners with her youth group.

“Yeah, so what?” Reuben says. He wears his senior sweatshirt with
OMAK PIONEERS
on the front and the names of all his classmates on the back. “Jenny and I have a lot of classes together this year. We’re just friends.”

“And she knows that?”

“She knows we’re friends.”

“
Just
friends?”

There’s a stack of bills on the kitchen table, as always. Reuben starts looking through them. “I’ve done nothing for her to think otherwise.”

“You spend time with her.”

“I spend time with all my friends.”

“Not according to Mom.”

“Since when do you take Mom’s word over mine?” Good point. “Look,” he says, trying to change the subject, “Mom hasn’t paid the cable bill in two months. I gave her money.”

“Does Jenny know about Emmy?”

The name hits him like a punch in the gut. I shouldn’t have said it. I know better, as an Indian. He can’t speak. He pushes the bills away, then he pulls up the hood of his sweatshirt as if to shield himself.

I get up and freshen our coffee.

“Jenny saw Emmy and me together this summer,” he says when I sit back down. “Outside Mom’s work. Emmy liked Jenny’s voice.”

I look hard at him. “Are you trying to save Jenny like you saved—”

“Stop right there, Teresa. Fuck.” He’s wound tight. “Jenny is my friend. Do I want to help her get away from her bastard of a dad? Hell, yes. I don’t love her, though.” He laughs. “Not even close.”

“Does she know that?”

“I helped her fill out her college applications—for fucking Christian colleges in western Washington. We’ve never made out. I’ve never taken her on the rez.”

“She reminds you of Emmy, though.”

“No.” He laughs sarcastically again. I haven’t heard Reuben laugh for real since last summer.

“Not even a little?”

“Emmy Nolan is more alive than Jenny Larsen will ever be. If Jenny is like anyone, it’s Beth Miller.” Now he’s the one not being a good Indian, blurting the name of the dead like that. “So maybe, sis, I should be asking you about her.”

“What the heck does that mean?” I wish I had a sweatshirt hood to pull up. “Matt Miller is
your
buddy.”

“So, you do know what I mean.”

“He shovels snow for me, fixed my van. Being a kind neighbor.”

“Mr. Miller mowed your lawn so many times this past fall that there’s no line anymore between yours and his.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ, Reuben. Only
you
would notice that.” I reach over and pull down his sweatshirt hood so I can see his whole face.

He’s smiling. I am jolted by how much I miss his smile.

“I feel calm when I’m with Jenny,” he admits. “A little calm. Especially after I read a batch of letters from Emmy.”

“Do you wish she wouldn’t write?”

“At first, I did. I told her not to write, that I wouldn’t write back. I thought it would be easier, you know. But I live for those letters, Teresa. I get what she’s doing. It’s been almost six months since I’ve seen her.”

“
What
is she doing?”

He can’t answer for a moment. Shit. I didn’t mean to make him cry. “She’s not letting me go.” He stands up. “But she will.” He grabs his truck keys off the hook on the kitchen wall. “She’ll get sick of my silence.”

When snow leaves the mountains, the elders say, it’s time to start anew. I pray for my brother. For his renewal. I dance. I even talk to the chaplain at the hospital in Moses Lake where I work. I’ve talked to him before when my guilt for not living on the rez overwhelms me. We’ve prayed together for my people. We pray now for Reuben. We pray for Emmy, and for Matt.

Matt comes to Reuben’s high school graduation. Class of 1999. My little brother won a full scholarship to Washington State University in Pullman. Matt beams almost more than I do. It’s been a bloody four years at American high schools. Reuben’s lucky to be alive. There’s a party the next day for Reuben and Ray at a park in Omak. There’s salmon and elk, cake, fry bread, macaroni salad, egg rolls, and rice. There’s drumming. Jenny stops by for a short time. She also won a scholarship to a Christian college in Tacoma. Reuben took her to the prom. She and Reuben don’t touch at the picnic, and probably not at the prom either, other than to dance. But I can tell Jenny wishes more than anything that Reuben would touch her. She steps closer whenever he inches away. But so do a couple of pretty Nez Perce girls visiting here from Lapwai, which is probably why Jenny leaves early. All my aunts keep eyeballing Matt and me, though I’ve never said a word, and maybe that’s why. Mom mentions how well Matt seems to know my kids. Except Grace, I think, who keeps her distance. As far as I know, Matt has never talked to Reuben about Emmy since she left. I assumed it was an unspoken rule between them. Matt occasionally asks me about Reuben and Emmy—if Reuben writes her back and that sort of thing. But I don’t think he puts any pressure on Reuben. So I’m surprised at the graduation party when I hear Matt mention to Reuben that he’s flying to California the following week for Emmy’s graduation and that he’d like to buy Reuben a ticket. My brother disappears. For the rest of the party. For weeks.

When Matt gets back from California, he and I start sitting outside together, between our trailers, careful to keep our backs to Beth’s empty garden beds. He got rid of Beth’s car awhile ago and brought his boat from his parents’ house to park in its place. He takes up smoking, and we share “cigarette breaks” together. He takes breaks from the loneliness of his trailer, which is still silent despite his buying a TV and a stereo and getting his old record collection from the basement of his parents’ house. And I take breaks from my kids. We talk about our jobs mostly and my kids, but also our childhoods. Two weekends in a row Matt barbecues hamburgers and hot dogs for the kids and I make mac and cheese and Jell-O, and we eat outside at the table Reuben and Emmy bought. He tells me he quit attending church for good, any church, although he’s quick to add that he still believes in God and, for Beth’s sake, probably always will. I respect that. The only plants of Beth’s still alive are the lavender bushes she planted in the strip between our driveways. They continue to thrive with my pruning and watering.