A Certain Kind of Hero (10 page)

But the kiss was right. That was all he knew. No matter what the source of confusion in her eyes, no matter how much fear and hurt glittered in them like glass splinters, there was a glimmer of something within her tears that told him the kiss was right.

We can't let this happen?

Didn't she realize it was more than fifteen years too late for that?

R
aina returned to Pine Lake after spending two days tying up loose ends at home. Her neighbor couldn't be expected to take care of the place indefinitely, which was exactly the kind of time frame Raina was looking at now. “
Indian time.”
It was the leisurely pace Jared had been determined to put behind him when he'd left the reservation. He'd often complained that the stereotypes hounded him—the notion that “Indians” never got anything done on time. That if they showed up at all they were always late. Good workers once they got started, but undependable. Unpredictable. Inconsistent.

She'd heard all the modifiers and qualifiers, too, and she'd watched her husband try to ignore them whenever speaking up might cause a rift with someone with whom he did business. She'd watched him try to change minds that didn't want to be changed, to try—without offending anybody—to kick holes in cherished images and long-held assumptions. All he'd gotten in return for his efforts, besides a lot of stress, was the
occasional, presumably complimentary observation, that he certainly had come a long way from those roots of his.

Roots like
Indian time.
There had been many times when she'd wished Jared could slow down and smell the roses, maybe rediscover the meaning of Indian time. But he'd set his course for changing times, and he'd followed it religiously to the end.

He'd left her with more house than she and Peter could manage easily. She'd been inclined to sell it, but friends had advised her not to make any major changes immediately after her husband's death. Now she hired a lawn-care service and a home-security agency to tend it while she was gone. She couldn't say how long it would be. All she knew was that she had to stay close to her son. She had to accede to someone else's terms, to someone else's schedule—or lack of one. All things in good time. On the reservation, good time meant Indian time. And the reality was that, no matter what her husband had endeavored to be, her son was physically, legally, undeniably, Chippewa.

But he was also a twelve-year-old boy, and he was hell-bent on acting like one. When Raina returned to Pine Lake, she learned that Peter was “on restriction” for the weekend.

And, for the first time in over two years, she hadn't been the one to make the decree.

“Whose restriction?” she demanded. “The court's?”

“Mine,” Gideon said simply as he passed Peter the potatoes he'd helped prepare for supper. “Since my experience with kids is pretty limited, I'm not used to sleeping with one eye open.” He arched an eyebrow over that one eye, and Peter quickly lowered his. “But I'm learning fast.”

Raina sighed. She'd thought her son had learned his lesson the last time he'd tried using the basement window instead of the door for an exit. “Did you sneak out again, Peter?”

“Me and Oscar did.” He served himself a generous helping of potatoes. “We went to check out the casino, but they carded us, so we just hung out. This place is really quiet at three in the morning.”

She gave Gideon a look of apology. “I forgot to warn you that Peter is a night owl.”

“I've been known to do some hootin' with the owls myself.” Gideon sawed on his well-done beef with a table knife. “I know all the haunts around here and probably a few tricks you haven't thought of yet, Peter. So I'm way ahead of you.”

“Did you get grounded, too?” Peter asked.

“Didn't get caught too often.” Gideon glanced at Raina. “Didn't have anyone out looking for me. My dad wasn't around, and my mom wasn't up to it.” He turned a hard look Peter's way, tapping a forefinger on the table to make what he hoped would be a memorable point. “So when I
did
get caught, I got searched, handcuffed and hauled off to jail.”

“For what?”

“Petty stuff. Kid mischief.” He nodded confidently. “Mistakes you're too smart to make, Peter. Myself, I was a slow learner.”

“Seems like you turned out okay.”

Gideon leaned back in his chair and put his hand to his mouth. His eyes shifted from Peter's face to Raina's and back again as he wiggled his front tooth until it came loose with a click. He withdrew it and showed them the empty space.

Raina's eyes widened. Peter laughed, as thoroughly delighted as he had been when he was six years old and Gideon had magically produced a quarter from his ear.

“My goodness, Gideon, I'd never have known,” Raina marveled.

“You would have if you'd seen me about ten years back, when I couldn't afford a false one.” He popped the tooth back
in place and smiled, as splendidly as ever. “Indian Health Service doesn't cover the cosmetic stuff.”

“How'd it happen?” Peter wanted to know.

“Lost it in a fight. It could have been worse. It could have been an ear or an eye.” Gideon pointed the blunt-tipped knife Peter's way in passing, then set it back to work on his meat. “There's a lot of bad stuff going on after dark. A lot of ways to get hurt.”

“Around here?” the twelve-year-old voice of experience scoffed. “This place is like the outback at night. You oughta try the Cities.”

“I have.” Gideon noticed the question in Raina's eyes. He shrugged. “If a guy's looking for trouble, he'll find it wherever he goes,” he said before he took a bite of meat. But the question hung in the air until he dismissed it without looking up from his plate. “I lived in St. Paul for a while. Didn't like it much.”

“We didn't know you were living so close by.”

An old wound melted away when he looked into Raina's eyes and saw honest bewilderment. He smiled wistfully. The
we
part wasn't exactly true, but it was good to know that she didn't realize that. And that
she
hadn't known.

He'd said he didn't want her to know, but he'd often wondered whether Jared had mentioned it to her after all. Gideon had needed his brother then, but he'd never been able to say it in so many words. He'd also thought a lot about his brother's wife. He'd thought about the baby they'd adopted, the home they'd made for themselves, the family he wanted to be part of in some small way. Staying away had never been harder than it was then.

She read it in his eyes—at least, some of it. “Jared didn't tell me. Were you there for…?”

“I was only there for a short time. It didn't work out.”
Nothing had been working for him then. With an abrupt gesture he dismissed the recollection and turned to Peter. “So you see, big city or backwoods, you're probably not gonna come up with too many tricks I haven't tried. You might as well save yourself the trouble.”

“Like you're just about to tell me you wish you had,” Peter supposed, challenging Gideon to a stare-down. “You did your own growing up, and you did it your way. Why don't you leave me alone and let me do mine?”

“Why don't I?” Out of a hundred reasons, he was supposed to pick the best one right there on the spot. “Because your dad was my brother, and your mom…” He'd taken the first easy choice, then skidded when he hit the hard part.

With a wave of his fork he backpedaled, settling on what was indisputable, figuring he was entitled to all the prerogatives of the man in charge. “Because I signed some papers saying I wouldn't. At least, not for the time being.”

“Yeah, well, I don't see why they let you just—” Peter slid his mother a help-me-out-here glance “—take over on me all of a sudden.”

“I should've seen this coming, I guess.” Gideon pushed peas and carrots across his plate with an ineffectual fork. “This legal hassle. I should have realized that, with Jared gone, something like this might come up.”

“Yeah, well…” With perceptiveness honed by years of parent-handling, Peter recognized Gideon's self-doubt as the chink in the fortress. “This is supposed to be temporary, and you act like you think you can be my dad. Like you can just tell me what to do.” Seizing the moment, he fired his zinger. “But you can't. My dad
would've seen
this coming, and he wouldn't be letting any of it happen.”

Gideon took the blow with a level stare. “What would he
have done if he'd caught you sneaking out at night? Anything different from what I'm doing?”

“That's not exactly the point.”

“It
is
exactly the point.” It really wasn't, but Gideon decided to make it the point by virtue of the authority Judge Half had unwittingly vested in him. “I'll stand in for him the best I can as long as…”

Raina and Peter were both staring at him now, wondering if he knew something they didn't.
As long as
what?

He went for the open-ended option, hoping it covered the bases innocuously. “As long as need be.”

Now drop it,
he warned Peter with a paternal look that seemed to come naturally, without a lick of practice.

“We talked about paying your grandfather a visit,” Gideon said, easing smoothly into a different subject. No less sticky, just different. “You still wanna do that, Peter?”

“I guess so.”

Gideon turned the offer over to Raina. “We were just waiting for you to get back so you could go along if you'd like to.”

The suggestion clearly surprised her. “Do you think I'd be welcome?”

“I think we need to try to get along.” Gideon spared Peter a patently inclusive glance. “With each other and with the old man. I'm betting that a genuine, friendly overture will earn you some points with the judge.”

“Earn
me
some points?” Raina's look challenged him, and her follow-up smacked him hard. “You're maneuvering on my behalf, Gideon? When I'm not even part of your constituency?”

Surprised less by the remark itself than by the way it stung, he sighed. “Just trying to pour a little oil on the water, that's all.”

 

Arlen Skinner lived in a three-room house tucked deep in the woods at the end of a gravel road that turned into a dirt track about three-quarters of a mile before it became part of his side yard. Visitors couldn't call ahead, since Arlen had no phone, but Gideon assured Peter that his grandfather was usually home. And that there were people checking on him regularly.

One of the programs Gideon had started since he'd taken office involved adding a home-visiting assignment, not only to the duties of the tribal health workers, but also for the tribal employees whose jobs had them traveling the reservation byways. People like game warden Carl Earlie paid routine visits to the tribal elders.

At a time when increasing numbers of the younger generation of Chippewa were looking for off-reservation opportunities, elders like Arlen Skinner were not to be ignored by Gideon's administration. Even though profits from the casino had made it possible to provide housing for many of the elderly within the small town of Pine Lake itself, Arlen preferred to stay in his own house, isolated as it was. Gideon was a strong advocate for respecting the elders' reluctance to change the way they'd always lived. He paid as many personal calls as he could, mostly for his own benefit, he was quick to say, for there was much to be learned.

But he had always seen that Arlen was on someone else's route rather than his own.

The old man was sitting on his porch, his chair tipped back against the weathered siding on the front of the house. He was surrounded by wood shavings, plastic pails and bundles of willow and birch, and he was working with strips of birch bark. He looked up as the three expectant visitors approached.
Lowering the front legs of his folding chair to the plank porch, he nodded a solemn acknowledgment of their presence.

Clearly neither side knew what to expect of this meeting.

Gideon reached past the steps and wordlessly offered a handshake. Raina knew well enough to follow suit, but Peter, suddenly reluctant to take center stage, hung back.

“Shake hands with your grandfather, Peter,” Gideon instructed.

Peter promptly complied, stubbing the rubber toe of his tennis shoe on his way up the wooden steps.

“Do you speak Ojibwa?”

“No—” Awkwardly stuck for a way to address this newfound relative, Peter tried, “Sir.”

“Call me
nimishoomis,
” the old man said, then translated, “‘Grandfather.' I'm not a ‘sir.'”

“Nimishoomis,”
Peter repeated carefully.

“Can you make coffee,
ninaoshishan?
”

Peter didn't need a translation. He knew that he was being addressed grandfather to grandson. “You mean like in a coffeemaker?”

“I mean like on a stove. Show him,” the old man ordered Gideon. “You won't have any trouble finding the kitchen. Everything you need is there. When you come out, bring yourselves some chairs.” He waved a strip of bark toward a folded chair leaning against the house and offered Raina an invitation by way of a nod. “I have one here for Mrs. Defender.”

She opened the paint-splattered chair and set it next to the small, green Formica-topped kitchen table that was spread with Arlen's work-in-progress. Gideon ushered Peter into the house. The door closed softly behind them as Raina took her seat across from their host.

“Raina,” she said quietly, perching like a shy forest creature on the edge of the folding chair.

Arlen spared her a questioning look.

“My name…” She cleared her throat nervously as she folded her hands in her lap, feeling a bit like the girl with the impeccable school record who'd been called to the principal's office. She took a deep breath and offered a tentative smile. There was no call, she told herself, to feel nervous. “Please call me Raina.”

“Raina,” Arlen said, testing the name out much the way Peter had done with the Ojibwa word he'd been given.

“Rain, with an
a
on the end.”

“That could almost be an Indian name.” It might have been a compliment, but there was no smile on his slash of a mouth. Only a hint of one, maybe, in the dark depths of his eyes. “Rain, with an
a
on the end,” he echoed. “I know some people by the name of
Reyna,
but they're not ‘rain with an
a
on the end.' They're Indian, though. Part Indian, anyway.”