Why the Star Stands Still (Gives Light Series) (15 page)

"Alright, Mother, alright," Gabriel said.  I should have known. 

"Hey, Grandma Gives Light," Mary said.  "Why do you pretend you don't speak English?  Is it your righteous fury toward the white man?"

"Taipo'o nian tama kappayummuh innuntukkahppuh!  Nia punni!"

"Bet your grandma would've liked mine," Rafael told me gruffly.

"I'm not sure about that," I said.  "Granny never appreciated public displays."

"Gather around the fire, guys," said Meredith Siomme, a member of the tribal council.  Her smile was calming and warm, as warm as the flames.

Everyone formed a circle around the bonfire.  We linked our arms together and Mickey looked up at me with confusion.  I felt DeShawn wriggle his way in at my left side.  "Hello, Skylar," he said pleasantly.  "We're putting up ten Kiowa at my place, can you believe it?"  I spotted Dad on the other side of the fire, his head bowed, his eyes distracted.  I wanted to talk to him.  Now wasn't the time.

"Thank you, kindest of planets," Allen Calling Owl called out.  "For the generosity by which we live.  For the opportunity to know our neighbors as brothers and sisters.  For..."

Immaculata sneaked up behind him and clapped her hands.

"
Damn you!
"

"That was the best prayer ever," Jessica said solemnly, when the circle broke for the evening.

The rest of the tribes began slowly piling onto the reservation.  Among them were the Hopi--in blanket-like regalia and alien hairstyles--and the Timbisha Shoshone--Shoshone who settled down in the desert while the majority of us left for the Plains.  The desert Shoshone didn't wear deerhide and elkskin like the rest of us did.  Instead they were clad in yucca and red ochre face paint.  That's where the term "redskin" comes from, as a matter of fact.  Tribes like the Beothuk and the desert Shoshone always wore red paint on their cheeks--because body paint is a sign of peace--and the clueless white settlers mistook it for their natural pigment.

The opening ceremony started with a shawl dance.  Serafine and Charity and Autumn Rose In Winter led the young girls out to the windmills and they danced, whirling and fierce, their shawls flying about their arms in a colorful blur.  To look at them, they were the very picture of power, of natural destruction.  Even now the shawl dance makes me think of a devastating tornado: tragic, unmatched in prowess, and you can't take your eyes away.

"That looks so cool..." Mickey whispered.

"It's the shawl dance," I whispered back.  Daisy At Dawn struck the double-skin drum with the flats of her hands.  "You know about the north star's father.  Do you know about his mother?"

Mickey shook her head.

"When she realized her child had gone missing, she went out to find him, just as his father had done.  She carried a warm blanket on her arm--a shawl--which she intended to wrap around him as soon as they were reunited.  But the more she walked, the more despondent she grew.  She walked for years with that blanket on her arm.  When she saw the north star high in the sky, and she realized what had become of her child, she danced a mourning dance.  She danced, and she danced, the shawl spinning around her shoulders.  She wrapped herself up in that shawl just like a cocoon.  She cried herself to sleep.  And she slept in there for ten days, until finally, she emerged as the world's first butterfly."

We clapped when the dance had reached its conclusion.  Autumn Rose scurried over to DeShawn and kissed his cheek.  The pauwau had officially begun.

"If I turned into a butterfly," Mickey said, "would you come looking for me?"

"First I'd get a net," I told her seriously.  "A very big one.  And then I'd have to chase you."

Each tribe began dancing simultaneously, a harmless, competitive comparison of their styles.  The Hopi imitated the flight of the majestic eagle and the Navajo leapt and lunged like warriors on the prowl.  The austerely dressed Pawnee sat like old-timers on the ground and shared a calumet.  Mary stole rolls of piki bread and threw them at unsuspecting bystanders' heads and Reuben Takes Flight looked on with stoic disapproval.  Mickey helped me spread the sunflower cakes on the lawn and a pair of Chumash toddlers raced over to try them.

Rafael was chasing after an unrepentant Mary when Dad came and sat down with Mickey and me.

"Still so hard to believe that Caias is a father now..."

I followed Dad's gaze.  Boys from our tribe were performing a grass dance by the bonfire, their arms held aloft, their steps cautious and deliberate.  It made me think of a spirit walking on water.  Henry Siomme was among them, a carefree smile on his face.

I gave Dad a smile of my own, a smile meant to mask my thoughts.  Dad had missed out on most of his friends' and family's lives.  In a way, it was as though the rest of us lived in the future, while Dad could only ever observe us from the past.

I really hated that.

"Mr. Looks Over," said Mickey.  Oh, what a sweetheart.  I could have clapped.  "Do you dance?"

Dad considered.  "Badly," he stipulated.  "And you can call me Paul."

I picked up my flute and smiled, eyebrows dancing.  "Why don't you show her your straight dance?"

"Is there a gay dance, too?" Mickey asked.

Dad's face colored as bright as a beet.  Poor Dad.  In some ways you'd be hard pressed to find a shyer man.

"It's," he started.  "That's not, um.  That's not what he means..."

"It's a war dance," I explained.  "But not like what those crazy Navajo are doing over there."  Mickey followed my eyes when I pointed out the combatant Navajo in bright silks and feathered mantles.  "When Shoshone went to 'war' with another tribe, no killing was involved."

"Then how the heck did they fight?"

"Show her, Dad," I said.

Dad pressed his lips together grimly.  I grinned.  He rose from the ground in his burnt orange regalia.  He looked around.

"Does anybody have an eagle fan?" I called out.  I struggled to raise my voice.  One of the few things my new vocal folds don't know how to do is shout.  "Or an eagle stick?"

"Here you go, honey!" said Robert Has Two Enemies.  He tossed a beaded stick my way and I barely just caught it.  Reuben Takes Flight nodded with approval.

"Dad?" I prompted.

Dad took the stick from me and inspected it.  It was long and hollow, carved from smooth elm, decorated with clay beads and--toward the very end--an eagle feather.

By now the drummers had stopped striking their drums.  The dancers dwindled one by one to a stop.

I brought my flute to my lips.  I began to play the Song of the Fallen Warrior.

I don't think anybody really knows why it's called a "straight dance."  When our ancestors still roamed the Plains, when they hunted the buffalo and settled disputes without bloodshed, they always performed this dance just before approaching the battlefield. 

Dad crouched low to the ground, his eyes downcast.  We have a story about how the Plains People were one with the earth, happy and content, before the Coyote tricked us into living on the surface.  If you were to see Dad dance, I'm sure you would feel the way I felt: like he was trying desperately to find his way back home beneath the soil.  He danced low to the ground, two steps at a time, the dance of a man reconsidering the path he walks in life.  Every now and again he straightened up and looked around, a Plains warrior scouting enemy terrain.

On occasion I abruptly interrupted the song.  Whenever the music stopped, the other Plains tribes knew exactly what to do.  Together they filled the silence with war whoops, warbling cries both joyful and sad; sad because war is inevitable, joyful because Plains People found a way to achieve it without hurting one another.

A few Kiowa men joined the dance in their yellow deerhide and tanned otter pelts.  So did a Shawnee woman, a feather jutting out of her beaded headband, and a Pawnee pair with shaved heads. 

Now came the best part.

I've said that war for the Shoshone was never about spilling blood.  How we fought our battles was by counting coup--tapping an enemy warrior and running back to your tribe without getting caught.

The dancers began to count coup.  Plains Shoshone chased after Pawnee and Plains Apache chased after Cheyenne.  The men and the women reached for one another with their hands, or their eagle sticks, or their eagle fans, or whatever item they had on their person.  Whenever a dancer was successfully tagged he held his hand up--a show of respect--and bowed out of the performance, conceding defeat.  The number of dancers slowly decreased.

"One can never accuse a Native of not knowing how to party," said Kaya, when she came and sat next to me.  The Kiowa banged on their gourd drum, and the Hopi shook their rattles and their bells, and somebody lost their kid in the fray, but that's alright--he was among his people.

The final few dancers were Dad, Mr. Red Clay, and a Pawnee man with a bright red mohawk.  Dad and the Pawnee man were too polite to try and supplant each other--so Mr. Red Clay supplanted them both.  The spectators whooped and cheered.  Mr. Red Clay raised his hand.  Kaya walked off to chat with the Kiowa drummers.

"How do you play the flute?" Mickey asked me.  Rafael sat down with us and a group of children began to play a hoop game.

I handed her the flute.  "Cover the second and third hole and blow into it," I instructed.

She did.  The flute whistled, low and reedy.  She drew back as though bitten.

"Cool," she said.  "Teach me more!"

"Cubby," Dad said.  "Could I have a quick word?"

"Try some ashbread," Rafael said to Mickey.  "It's good."

I got up and followed Dad past the windmills.  We walked the downhill slope past Mr. Owns Forty's house.  The pauwau lights and celebratory sounds muffled behind us.

Dad had said he'd wanted a word--but now he wasn't talking.  It kind of made me antsy, because for a moment, I forgot that I could do the talking instead.

"I'm sorry," he eventually said.

"What for?" I asked.

"I missed out on most of your life.  Going to college...getting your voice back...  Even when you--got married," he said awkwardly.  As accepting as he was, I think he still found it jarring that I loved another man.

"That wasn't your fault, Dad," I said.  "You don't really think I blamed you for that, do you?"

He bowed his head.  It drives me nuts when he does that.  It's the quintessential Shoshone gesture of noncommittal ambiguity.  I'm serious.  If you're ever locked in a room with a Shoshone, and he starts bowing his head, you know he's hiding something.  In which case I suggest breaking down the door and running for it.

I reached for Dad's hand.  He pulled away, probably by instinct.  I didn't want to make him uncomfortable.

"I'm sure we all wish we could change the past," I said.  "But we can't.  Why don't we focus on the future instead?"

"The future...yes..."  For a moment I was afraid I'd lost him; his eyes were out of focus.  "Do you think you'll adopt Michaela?" he eventually asked.

My heart jumped.  "I hope so," I said.  To actually have a daughter--a daughter with Rafael...

"I just hope she doesn't go running for the bears again," Dad murmured.

"I think we've put that behind us...I hope."

"Are you sure she's been to a psychiatrist already?"

"Positive."  A cold weight settled in the center of my stomach.  "Dad?"

"Yes?"

I didn't know whether I really ought to tell this to him.  At the same time, I didn't know what would happen if I kept it to myself.

"Remember when you had me seeing a child therapist?" I asked.

We walked underneath a patch of bull pines.  Suddenly I couldn't see Dad's face anymore.  I couldn't see his eyes.  I couldn't see the moon.

I didn't like it.

"Yes," Dad said.

Now what?  I didn't know what to say.  I mean, I knew
what
to say--I just didn't know how.

"I already know," Dad said.

I wasn't immediately sure I had heard him correctly.

"I said I know, Skylar.  I know something happened between the two of you."

That weight in my stomach felt like it was rising through my chest, through my throat.  I was afraid I was going to throw up.  I sat down on fallen pine brush.  I really wished I could see the moon.

"Do you think I didn't know?" Dad asked.  His voice--it didn't sound like his voice.  It didn't sound right.  "When you came out of that office shaking--when you threw up at night?  Do you think I didn't know?  Why do you think I stopped taking you there?"

He knew.  It never occurred to me.  He knew.

A part of me wanted to ask:  If you knew, then why didn't you tell me?

"Because you couldn't talk back," Dad said.  "If I talked to you--you couldn't talk back.  And I didn't want you to.  I didn't want to hear it out loud.  I didn't...that made it..."

He didn't want to know.  I didn't want him to know.

We're Shoshone men, he and I.  If we close our eyes and cover our ears, the unpleasant truth isn't there.

I could hear it when Dad sat next to me, fallen oak leaves and pine needles shifting under his weight.  I could see his shadow next to mine.  He used to be a bear of a man.  He never used to be so frail.