Two Medicine (13 page)

“Canoeing?” she asked,
wrinkling up her little nose. “You say it funny –
“
Cannewing
…” She
tried to say it in a southern accent, which was almost
nonexistent.

I laughed. “So is that a
‘yes’?”

“
Sure, that sounds nice,”
she said, smiling back at me. I liked her slight smile, but it
looked held back, cautious.

We arranged to
meet a little ways down the lake shore past the
store, which was my way of hopefully avoiding Larry, and even
Ronnie, who would be all over this girl if he met her I feared. He
already had shown his proclivity for showing up with random girls
and bedding them down in his king-sized lair. As Alia left with our
plans to meet up, I looked back into the kitchen, and I saw Ronnie
peering down into the fat fryer in a kind of bored daze, not paying
attention to the rest of the store, idly poking some floating dough
around in the boiling oil with a spatula.

At 7 p.m., I was already
down by the shore. The shore of the lake was made up of smooth
stones and pebbles and a little sand underneath to keep it soft.
The lake stretched out a couple of miles to the other side of the
valley, and was oval shaped, from where I stood. The lake was also
encircled by huge peaks that were still lit up by the distant sun,
even this late in the evening, a rosy-red light brightly painted
the tops of the highest peaks in the darkening sky.

I tried the key on the
chain lock at the canoe and made sure it unlocked. Then I walked
back down to a fallen tree spot on the lake I had pointed out to
Alia before. A half-fallen tree stretched into the water, it had
lain there a long time I could see. The water of the lake was very
clear so I could look down into it and make out the stones and sand
at the bottom, and the fallen tree limbs many feet down in the cold
water.

As I looked out over the
lake, I wondered if I was doing the right thing, now remembering my
sacred vow. I was only here a week and a half, and had come here
partly because of a painful and jarring breakup, and I had had some
kind of revelation that that relationship had somehow compromised
me and turned me into some office-dwelling automaton, yet here I
was – waiting to meet a girl that thrilled me all over again. What
would the Bandit do? The Bandit would be here, waiting to take her
out in a canoe, I reasoned. It was very Bandit-like, what I was
doing; so I muttered “what the hell” and resolutely sat down on the
shore to wait.

After a while I started to
think she may not even come. The evening light was fading and even
the tallest peaks were not just dark spires against indigo blue.
But then I heard crunching steps and saw Alia walking towards me on
the shore. She had on her little pink sneakers, and a different
rock band shirt, with the sleeves cut off, and cut-off jean shorts,
cut very short, exposing the white pockets underneath, the corners
peeking out over on her tanned, shapely thighs. She was wearing
little earrings which dangled below her lobes; I looked closer and
saw that they were little, metal arrowheads, pointing down to the
earth as the swung.

A little shock of
nervousness hit me again as I saw her, but it was faint, and I
scanned her face to see how she was feeling. She seemed amused
again, but still a little hint of shyness in her smile.

We dragged the canoe into
the water part way, I held it steady as she got in, then I shoved
it out and hopped into the back in the last second without getting
wet. I only found one wooden paddle in the shed in the back yard
behind the store, and I began paddling out on the smooth water. A
small ripple of wind kissed the surface, but otherwise it was a
very still evening, thankfully. The wind would often suddenly come
down from the mountains many in the evening, ripping through the
trees and shaking the windows, as if having waited all day for the
sun to hide, it came down with a vengeance, intent on making itself
known again. It was usually strongest in the in-between time, when
the day turned to evening and the temperature would drop as the
coldness from the mountains seeped down to us in the
valley.

But this evening was
relatively warm and peaceful. Even in June the evenings were cold
very often, but not tonight. As I paddled the craft over the water,
I could smell a sugary perfume that floated over from her, as she
was sitting only about three feet in front of me in the middle
bench seat. She was facing forward and rested her head in her
hands, hunched over. I gazed at her curving spine and noticed how
smooth her neck was under dark, straight hair – which she had put
up again. I wanted to bury my face in her neck, smell her hair and
kiss the delicate space under her ear.

I breathed deeply and
smiled to myself at how perfect this scene was.
This
is what I had hoped for when I
left Georgia, I thought to myself as I paddled. I gazed at the
mountains in the distance.
I had sworn off
women, and I wanted to start a new life alone, but with her…
something is different!

The act of gliding
silently in the water in a canoe was mesmerizing us both into
silence. A “V” ripple spread out behind us as we glided, I saw as I
looked back that the store was a good distance away.

Here was this beautiful,
young, mysterious Native American girl I had just met days ago,
almost a total stranger, in Montana, in the middle of the
mountains, in a canoe.

“What’s your last name,
Alia?”

“
Reynolds. Like the wrap,”
she said without looking back.

“
That’s not a very Native
American sounding name.”

“
No shit.” She looked back
and offered me a smile to show she was teasing me.

There was a pause in our
conversation as we glided over the water, and before it got too
long, I asked, “So what do you think of Browning?”

“
What do
I
think
of
it?” She turned around carefully on her little bench and smiled at
me. “You’ve not been there then?”

“
Not yet.”

“
Don’t go – it’s a real
shit hole.” She looked past me back across the water. “I grew up on
the reservation in Browning. Browning is on reservation land but
it’s a separate town. I’m not full-blooded Blackfoot, though. My
mom was…. I mean she is half-Japanese, and some white too. My dad’s
full blood though.”

I could see the Japanese
in her; her small frame and petite figure, the olive shade to her
skin competing with the Native American tanned, reddish tone. Most
of the Blackfoot girls I’d seen off the reservation were chubby,
more Hispanic-looking actually, not the small and exotic figure
that Alia had, nor the paler skin and darker hair that drew me. And
her eyes were not the ubiquitous brown the Indians had, but much
darker, larger.

We glided on and she told
me about how she was taken from her mother and the guy her mom was
living with at the time when she only seven years old.

“
I never met my father,”
she said, “and my mom never told me much about him, except that he
was full blood, and had been in the army and then was a truck
driver. When I asked how he died my mom told me he had fallen
through the ice on some iced-over lake up in Canada somewhere;
but…” She trailed off for a minute, watching the water trail behind
her fingers she dragged in the water as we moved.

“
But I like to think he’s
out there still driving a big rig, maybe up north in the Arctic, or
at least that he died a more interesting death… some violent,
terrible death – something more meaningful.” She looked back at me.
“Is that weird do you think?”

“
No,” I said. “I think I
know what you mean.”

She looked back down at
the water, her fingers of one hand trailing on the surface of the
water. It was actually a very poetic image – a solitary, lonely
girl riding on the mirror-smooth water and staring sadly into the
dark mirror of the surface.

Evenings were
strange
in this part of the country. The
sun would fade fast and hide behind the peaks early, the sky would
darken and the wind kick up and you’d get ready for night, but then
the expanse of sky overhead would hold onto its light until late,
maybe 10 or 11 p.m., in the peak of summer, as night was pushed
further and further back each day. It was one of those glowing,
endless-dusk blue skies that we glided under. I shifted the paddle
to the other side.

“
Do you want to hear
something really interesting?” Alia asked in a quieter voice. But
before I could answer, she continued, “I was put in foster care
after my dad was gone. My first foster family was ok, but they had
to give me up after two years because they moved.

“
My second family,” she
paused, staring down into the water. “I don’t know if you care
about any of this…”

“
I do
actually.”

“
My second family… wasn’t
‘ok.’ My foster dad, Gary, was a high school teacher in Browning,
but he drank a lot and was angry at his wife all the time – she was
my high school cafeteria lady, actually. She was nice. Her name was
Susan. She was a big fat lady and always baked cookies for me on
Sundays – that was her thing, baking all the time. The house always
smelled so good. After Gary got done teaching and would come home
and pass out.

“
Gary snuck into the
bathroom one night when I was taking a bath and took his clothes
off.” She was silent for a second, and I didn’t say a word. I
noticed I had stopped paddling.

“
He got in the tub with
me, water spilled out over the edge all over the floor. He… did
stuff I don’t need to say. I was so scared that I couldn’t even
move. I was frozen. Like in some nightmare. Susan came in when the
water began dripping through the downstairs ceiling. I remember her
screaming; I can still hear it – her screaming. I remember her
grabbing my wrist and yanked me out of the tub. Gary just laughed,
and he stayed in the tub.”

She chuckled and glanced
back at me, she tried to mask her embarrassment with a smirk. “I
don’t know why the hell I told you all that. I don’t even know you.
Now you think I’m some kinda psycho I guess.”

“
No, I don’t, Alia,” I
shook my head. “I can’t imagine what that was like… for you to go
through that. What happened to that guy?”

She frowned and looked
down at the water, creating her own little wake with her fingers
again. “I was eleven when he did that. Damaged goods
now.”

“
Get in line.” I
said.

“
I was taken to a third
family after that,” she said after a moment. “They were actually
good people, but by then I had had enough of foster homes. In my
junior year in high school, when I was seventeen, I was granted
emancipation, from the court, because I already had a job and a
place to live on my own, from money I got from the federal
government because of being in the tribe, and I got in my own
place.”

“
How much money did you
get?” I asked.

“
About six thousand,” she
said, with a laugh.

The oar knocked sometimes against the side
of the boat as we moved; otherwise the only sound was the distant
ducks and loons sounding off, and a small plane going overhead that
sounded like a bumble bee slowly crossing the sky.

“
Ugh, enough of that
shit,” she said, smirking at me as she flung a little water into my
face. “So, tell me you’re story, Mr. Georgia.” She wiped her
fingers on her shorts.

I paddled some more for a
second. “I grew up in Atlanta, kind of a typical suburban kid,
except I never seemed to fit completely. When I got to high school
I was already playing guitar good enough to be in some bands, and I
started liking art and literature, so I was a little different in
my school, and even in my family. I’m an only child and my dad’s
this lawyer in Atlanta, and set me up with the best high school in
town. He set me up in college too, and then he set me up with a job
afterwards to finish me off.”

I switched sides to paddle
us closer to the shore. “He didn’t pay for college or give me money
to live on, though, so don’t think I was some rich
prick.”

She snorted with a laugh.
“I didn’t think that.”

“
He was good to have
helped as he did, though”

“Were you happy growing up
there?” she asked.

I thought about the
question for a moment. “No,” I finally said, “except when I was by
myself. I remember building a stick forts in the woods, fishing,
hiking, reading, trying to write little guitar songs. I was lonely
a lot, but I was happy.”

I looked out past her
ahead of us, towards the other end of the lake. “Probably should be
heading back,”

“Sing me something on the
way back,” she said, splashing me again. “We gotta lighten this
mood.”

“Do that again and I’ll
flip this boat,” I said, “that’ll lighten the mood. I never said I
sing.”

“You sing,” she said with
assuredness. “I can always tell – you sing.”

I thought about it for a
minute. “What the hell.”

I sang her a song from Led
Zepplin, but I didn’t tell her it was them. She was too young to
know, I figured.