9
Ten Minutes
August in Nettlebush is a month of remembrance. August is when we celebrate the ghost dance.
If you've never heard of the ghost dance, it's a ritual that started with the Paiute tribe, but spread all throughout the Plains in the 1800s. A lot of different intentions went into the creation of the ghost dance. To begin with, the Paiute still believe that Jesus is going to be reincarnated as a Native American. Ghost dancing is their way of saying: "We're waiting, pal." But for the rest of us, the ghost dance is how the souls of the living reconnect with the souls of the dead.
I headed out to the radio station early Monday morning. And I thought about my mother.
Sometimes she creeps up on me when I least expect it, and then I have to stop whatever I'm doing, paralyzed with loss, with disbelief, and take in the fact that she's been dead for twenty-eight years. It still feels like it was only yesterday when I walked into her room, lured by muffled cries, and found her lying still on her bed, her throat torn open. And the hulking shadow next to her bed... The shadow that rushed at me, knife glinting in its hand...
I was halfway around the lake when I came to a sudden stop. I'd grown skilled over the years at removing my mother from my memory. I'd also grown skilled at removing her killer. But I could see him now, clear as day, as though he were standing right in front of me. I could see his long black hair and his acrid black eyes. I could see the square shape of his jaw, the short bridge of his nose. His face was burned into the backs of my eyes. His face was Rafael's face.
Just like that, I couldn't breathe. I hate that about memories. You can work your hardest to cull them and toss them away, but they'll always come back. One day you're doing something as simple as taking a walk around the lake and the past grips your shoulders in cold, clammy hands. And it doesn't let go.
Rafael is not his father, I thought. I hated that I still needed to remind myself. Rafael is not his father, and you are not your mother, and nobody is going to cut your throat again.
I thought about Rafael's eyes, deep blue, expressive. I thought about how much kindness I'd seen in those eyes over the years. I thought about his father's eyes like infected blood, like gaping, infected wounds. Different eyes. Different men. I started to relax.
"Hello, Skylar."
Morgan Stout came shuffling over to my side. He was Stuart's younger brother--meaning I was morally obligated to hate him--but I couldn't find it in my heart to give him the cold shoulder. Really, with his soft demeanor and his soulful, solemn eyes, the guy's like an overgrown kid. I wish Jessica were dating him instead.
We walked together into the little studio beneath the latticed iron tower. Musicians in Nettlebush always contribute to the airwaves. More music means more revenue. Sarah Two Eagles waved distractedly at us, then pointed at the soundproof glass. I looked grimly through the window. Mary and a few of her weird hard rock stoner friends were already using the recording room.
"Oh," Morgan said glumly. "They'll be there for hours."
"Are you going to play for the ghost dance, Morgan?" I asked.
I thought about my mother again, her freckled arms and her rabbit-like underbite.
"I think so," he said. "We could both play. Siobhan's coming home, that should be nice..."
"You must miss her."
"Yeah. It's lonely."
We sat on the grass together and waved at DeShawn and Joseph, their fishing boat out on the lake. Fortunately we didn't have long to wait. Mary and her odd friends tromped out of the recording studio. The air suddenly smelled like pot.
"Oh..." Morgan said.
We hurried into the sound studio, the air thick and unpleasant. Morgan kept coughing--not a good sign for a flautist--and we hastened through our repertoire of Plains music. I cheated and played a few Arapaho songs. It's not like non-Natives know the difference, anyway. We shook hands a few hours later and Morgan headed out to the badlands to meet up with Lila on the hunt.
I was still thinking about Mom on my walk home. What would it have been like if she were still alive? I'm sure she and Dad still would have divorced--but would she live on the reservation with us? What would she think of Rafael? Of Mickey?
The truth is that I don't know my mother. I was five when she died. I don't know whether she would have liked Rafael, or even whether she would have liked me. Shoshone don't even bat an eye at same-sex couples; they see it as nature, as harmless. It's been a recognized part of their culture for thousands of years. Mom wasn't Shoshone. She was Finnish. I don't know what her beliefs looked like. I don't even know what her favorite color was.
I stepped inside the house. The first thing I noticed was the scent of burnt popcorn. I followed it into the kitchen where my fears were confirmed.
"It didn't come out right," Mickey said, and held up a messy bowl of scorched blue kernels.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Rafael said. "It tastes fine to me."
I made them hotbread and wojapi for lunch, wondering, as I'd always wondered, about the garbage disposal Rafael called a stomach. Mickey sat scribbling on a sheet of paper at the pine table, a crayon clutched in her hand. She showed me her work when I handed her a plate.
"Rafael's teaching me how to draw," she said.
It was a face. Or I thought it was a face. The features were kind of squashed and disproportionate, but for a kid's first chickenscratch, it looked pretty good.
"You recognize that face?" Rafael asked boorishly.
I took a second look at the drawing. A long brown ponytail and dark green eyes. A strong chin. I'd seen a face like that before. I just didn't know where.
"It's nobody!" Mickey insisted, balling up the paper with agitated haste.
I locked eyes with Rafael. I raised my eyebrows. A nobody who looked an awful lot like Henry Siomme.
After lunch I composed a quick e-mail to Carole Svensen; and then I headed east to the lake again. With Mom so fresh on my mind lately, the last thing I wanted was to lose contact with the parent I still had left.
I found Dad sitting on the lakeshore, unkempt grass rising to his knees. His fishing rod was cast into the shallow water--but whether or not he'd had any bites, I don't think he noticed. His eyes looked like frozen winter water. I thought of Bear River in winter with a shudder.
"Hi, Dad," I said, and sat at his side.
"Don't worry," he muttered. "I'll let them go once I've caught them."
His fishing line didn't move.
"Ghost dance is coming up," I said, grasping for a conversation starter.
"I'm aware of that."
"Marilu might be coming to Nettlebush for it. It'll be nice to see her again, won't it?"
"You'll have to let me know."
I watched his face carefully. I've always thought he looks statuesque. If you've ever gone to a museum--against your will--you'll know what I mean. You can look at those sculptures as long as you like, but they can't look back. They can't interact with you. I guess it would be creepy if they did. But how do you grow up with a father like that? A father you can mull over, but never interact with? This is the same father who waited until I was seventeen to tell me we weren't related. I'm pretty sure he only confessed because I figured it out first. How do you help a man who won't let you help him?
"I'm very old, Cubby," Dad said.
"You're not old," I said, surprised. "You're fifty-six."
"I know." He paused. "I've never felt so old."
In many ways, I suppose Dad really had lived a long life. He'd had enough heartache and hardship to fill four different men's shoes. And the things he'd done... Most of the people never do half of the things he's done.
Have you ever noticed the way air refracts when it's really hot out? How wavy it gets? It's weird, isn't it?
The air above the lake looked like settling mist, hazy and heated beneath an unforgiving sun. It had the effect of making the water look like a mirror,
glimmering and gray and polished like the surface of a diamond. I felt like I was sitting inside a children's storybook. Any moment now the sun would come crawling down to the earth; the trees would start whispering in the wind. Why were the clouds so gray if it wasn't going to rain? Why was the air so dry?
"Tell me about prison," I said.
Dad raised his head as though hearing me for the first time.
"Why?" he asked.
"Because I want to know." Because you never talk to me, I thought. Not if you can help it. Because you need to talk to me, or you're going to spiral into madness. "So tell me."
If I thought he was going to respond right away--I was wrong. He took a moment, probably to gather his thoughts.
He started to talk.
"It was miserable," Dad said, in a horrifically detached way that made me think he was talking about somebody else entirely. "Grown men regressing to children...to animals..."
I wanted to put my hand on his back, but I was afraid he wouldn't appreciate that.
"You stop existing as an individual. You either belong to the pack of animals or the helpless children. The days blend together. Blending, and blurring... You can't remember what happened yesterday. The day before that. You're always on the lookout."
"The lookout?" I asked.
"For the ones who behave like animals. They'll kill you. They don't need a reason. They don't care about the consequences. They're already in prison. They've got nothing to lose."
"Dad," I said, my head spinning, my heart sick. "I'm so sorry..."
"I didn't tell you because I wanted you to be sorry. I told you because you asked me."
I couldn't imagine living that way--like an animal on the run. Nobody ought to live that way, I thought. No matter what they'd done.
And then Dad said the most shocking thing of all.
"Now I know how Eli felt."
Eli was Rafael's father.
"What do you...?" I started, but couldn't finish.
"I chased him for over a decade," Dad said. "He was looking over his shoulder all that time. He couldn't stop running. The moment he stopped, he died. That's no way to live."
I realized, astonished, that Dad felt sorry for Rafael's father. He still thought of him as his best friend.
"When I caught up with Eli," Dad said--and I wished he would stop. I wished I hadn't forced him into this. I didn't want to hear what he was about to say. At the same time, I wanted to help him. "He wasn't remotely surprised. I broke into his apartment...tied him to a chair... Old trick your grandfather showed me, the slipknot. The harder you pull on it, the tighter it binds you..."
Oh, God, I didn't want to hear this.
"We talked. ...It was like time hadn't even elapsed. He asked about Susan, about Rafael and Mary. Didn't seem to care when he found out Susan had died... But then he asked about you, and--and I snapped."
Appreciated or not, I found his shoulder and gripped it--hard.
"Do you know how long it takes to die of asphyxiation?" Dad asked mildly.
I shook my head without meeting his eyes.
"Ten minutes," he said. "It takes ten minutes to choke to death. I wrapped that cord around his throat--nylon, I picked it up from the hardware store along the way--and I pulled. And he choked. Ten minutes. For ten minutes I held that cord taut, and he stared at me, and I stared back--and I couldn't look away. Do you know he started to bleed? That's how tight I was pulling the cord... It seemed appropriate to me, somehow. To cut his throat. So appropriate. Ten minutes. Ten minutes, and he never once looked away. And I couldn't take my eyes off of him. I knew what he was thinking. I've always known. 'How could you do this to me? Weren't we friends?' ...But my son..."
I realized then that killing Eli had been a double-edged sword. Dad had gotten the revenge the Shoshone people needed--and he'd saved probably countless women in the process--but he'd also lost a friend. This man who had suffered loss for all of his life.
When is loss too much? When you're tallying the losses--when you're adding them up, nice and neat, just another for the books--at what point do you start to break? How much loss is too much loss?
I can't answer for everyone. It would be pretty miraculous if I could. I only know what I think. What I think is this:
Even one loss is too much loss.
"Dad," I said. "It's over now. You don't have to lose anyone else."
He bowed his head--that gesture so universal among all Shoshone--but then he raised it. He looked up at me, and I realized, mortified, that his eyes were shining with tears.
He had never shown me his tears before.
"How do you know?" Dad asked, his voice faltering and weak. "How do you know something else won't happen? It only takes one instant. One accident. Any one of you could die between today and tomorrow. A madman runs onto the reserve with a gun. What then?"
"DeShawn stops him," I supplied, thinking about the reservation police.
"Or DeShawn is shot to death. What about health complications? Jessica's heart suddenly stops beating. There doesn't have to be a reason. The human body's funny, in that regard. Or you. What about you? You've had cancer twice now. What if it comes back?"
Instinctually, I rubbed my upper arm. "I've been in remission for eleven years, Dad," I said. "Once it's past five years..."
"That's a guideline. Medicine doesn't always follow guidelines." He paused. "What about Racine? She used to be a police officer. She's made a lot of arrests. A lot of enemies. It only takes one belligerent girlfriend with a grudge. And we're getting old, she and I. What if she dies in her sleep? What if--"
I knew what he was about to say before he even said it.
"What if she leaves me?"
"She's not going to leave you," I said. My hand was on his forearm; my gaze was intent. Not that he was even looking at me. "She loves you. She married you when you were serving a life sentence, Dad. If that's not love, what is?"
"You just said it," Dad replied. "We thought I was going to be in prison for years. Marrying her was a very bright spot on an otherwise dark canvas. She--"
I couldn't believe this. He thought she married him for pity.
"Dad," I said. My heart was breaking. "Dad, why didn't you tell me? That this is who you really are? I never knew you hated yourself this much. All these years..."
It felt like I was meeting him for the very first time.
We sat in silence, the two of us. The sun didn't come crawling down from the sky. The trees didn't start whispering in the wind. This wasn't a child's storybook.
"I'm so tired," Dad finally said. He laughed. It was the laugh of a man faced with the most absurd of quandaries. What do I do now? That kind of laugh.
"Do you know something?" I said quietly.
He looked at me.
"You're right," I said. "I can't guarantee that any of us will still be here from one day to the next. A rattlesnake could bite Rafael while he's out hunting in the badlands. Michaela could be playing with Charity one day when she falls into the brook and breaks her neck on the rocks. Or," I said, my knees raised, my hands resting on my knees. The lake was a mirror, gray and bright. "My cancer could come back. Maybe it spreads to my stomach this time. Maybe they can't operate."
I didn't think Dad wanted to hear any of this. I didn't blame him.
"If we can die at any minute," I said, "why are you wasting your life dreading it? Why don't you just live while you have the chance?"
When I looked at him, his eyes were on the distant radio tower. I couldn't tell what was going through his mind.
And maybe that's okay. Maybe it didn't matter whether I knew what was going through his mind. Maybe all that mattered was that I kept trying to understand him.
"Dad?" I said.
"Yes?"
"I love you. Do you know that?"
He didn't respond. Not immediately.
"Yes," he
said. "I've always known that."
I think, in some ways, it was all he really needed to know.