Gives Light(Gives Light Series) (13 page)

And then I thought, how stupid was it that I was willing to distance myself from Rafael over a couple of odd thoughts I'd had about him?  Maybe Annie was my best friend; but I was pretty sure that I was Rafael's.  I couldn't avoid him forever; it wasn't fair to him.  More than that, I didn't like being without him.  There were enough people missing from my life without me adding more.

I took the photo from the attic and set it up on my nighttable that evening.  I made sure to place it next to the picture Rafael had drawn of my mother.  I was sure Granny wouldn't mind.

The days passed, and the monsoon wouldn't relent.  Granny became increasingly irritated with the rain.  Desperate for a distraction, no doubt induced by cabin fever, she had me play her a couple of pieces on the flute.  Even the Song of the Fallen Warrior didn't dispel her unease, so she changed her mind and started telling me stories.

"Your grandfather built me this house," she said.  She preened with happiness at the memory.  I sat up with interest; she'd never spoken about my grandfather before.  "I was just about your age when I married him.  He came from the White Mountain Apache tribe.  I'd never met anyone like him, my Tim..."  Her eyes misted over and she sighed.  "He passed away before you were born.  He was a man to be respected."

On another day, she told me about the Wounded Knee Massacre.  "Pay attention, Skylar," she said sternly.  "A Plains boy knows his history."  And then she told me something horrible, how more than a century ago, hundreds and hundreds of Plains People were massacred by the whites for doing nothing more than dancing.  "We never forget," Granny said.  "Never forget your past."

Granny was relieved when the monsoon finally reached its end.  So, too, were the rest of Nettlebush's inhabitants, most of whom hadn't seen each other at all during those days of heavy rain.  Men and women handed out fresh loaves of bread and the children danced in the puddles on the sodden ground.  The rainfall brought out new flowers in the soil, little yellow Indian Mallows and whorling Hill Turmeric in violet and pink.  Annie clipped a bunch of them for a bouquet.  The sun returned, stronger and brighter than ever, more brutal than before; the fishermen rushed out to the lake with their boats and their nets for the elusive catfish; and still I didn't see Rafael.

It was weird, I thought, and worrisome.  He didn't come over to Granny's house anymore despite what used to be his afternoon routine.  I didn't see him by the bonfire at dinnertime--nor the windmill field, nor the lake.  Maybe, I thought, Rafael was aware that I'd been avoiding him.  Maybe he was angry with me.  I could hardly blame him for that...but the thought made me anxious.

At dinner one night I spotted Gabriel and tried to ask him whether Rafael was ill.  Gabriel didn't understand what I was trying to say.  By the time I'd run off and returned with a pad of paper and a pen, Gabriel was gone.

The less I saw of Rafael, the more I worried.  When I'm stressed out, I can't really sleep that well--and it's funny, but whenever I can't sleep, I always wind up with a fever.  That's exactly what had happened when I first realized my dad was missing, as a matter of fact: stress, sleeplessness, fever, rinse and repeat.  Well, worrying about Rafael as I did, I inevitably had trouble sleeping, and one morning I took my temperature and found out I had a fever of 100 degrees.  Annie must've noticed something off about me--maybe I was looking more wan than usual--because she gave me some valerian root and told me to drink it with tea.  I got a little more sleep after that.

"Really," Annie said placatingly at dinner one night, "Rafael's a big boy.  A big, moody boy.  You don't need to worry so much about him, Skylar.  He'll turn up when he's done brooding."

But someone else had a differing opinion.  The following night, a pair of twin girls approached me, one looking dour, the other bubbly and bright.

"Hi," said the bright one.  "You're friends with Rafael, right?"

I started to nod, but the dour one interrupted me.  "Just get to the point, really," she said.  Except for their expressions, they were identical down to the most minute details: wavy black ringlets of hair, curved noses like falcon beaks.

The bright one sat next to me.  "Well...Raf's been downright unbearable on the hunt lately, no offense to him, eek--maybe you could talk to him?"

"Doesn't look like he can do much talking," said the dour one.

"You know what I mean."

"No, I don't."

While the twins argued, I crouched down to write in the dirt with my fingers.

Where?

The dour twin read my message.  She combed her hair over her shoulder and looked at me, distracted.  "The badlands' promontory, probably," she said.  "That's where we left him."

I headed out to the badlands that night, determined to figure out what was wrong with Rafael.

From the very start, I could see that I'd been stupid not to bring a flashlight, but I didn't feel like turning back.  The badlands were dark and ominous under the shade of a starry sky.  I climbed slowly across waist-high grass and chalky gulches, clay crumbling beneath my shoes.  I was pretty far into a gully run dry when it occurred to me that I could have just waited underneath the southern oak and caught Rafael on his way back home.  He had to leave the badlands sooner or later. 

But there it was--the promontory.  It was the tallest cliff in the badlands, one side sloping, the other steep.  Under the moonlight I saw a solitary figure sitting on its peak.  I knew it was Rafael.

I picked my way carefully up the side of the promontory.  Rafael heard me before I'd reached the level surface.  He looked over his shoulder and stood up.

I saw a portion of his face in the moonlight.  I had expected him to be angry with me.  Instead, he looked bewildered.

"The hell are you doing out here?"

I made sure he saw the distinct lack of amusement on my face before I reached him at the top of the promontory.  The sentiment didn't last long before my worry kicked in.  Rafael seemed to pick up on both emotions.  The bewilderment smoothed away from his features.  "I'm fine," he said.  "Just not in the mood for people lately."

I gestured over my shoulder--I could leave if he wanted me to--but he shook his head.  "Nah, don't.  I'd rather have you here."

That swooping, soaring sensation rushed up from my belly and into my chest.  Feebly, I gave Rafael a smile.  I didn't want to push him into conversation, but clearly something heavy was on his mind.

For a while, Rafael was unwilling to talk.  We sat aside one another on the promontory, legs dangling over the steep end.  Without words, he elbowed me and pointed out a small grove of southern oaks in a valley far below.  I took a moment to appreciate how the flora thrived despite the badlands' adverse conditions.

"Nine years ago today," Rafael muttered.

I looked at him.

Rafael apparently didn't feel the need to elaborate.  I had almost given up on gleaning any more from him when he opened his notebook--stuffed with sketches, I wondered when he'd need a new one--and showed me one of the pages, vibrant and vivid with color.

I squinted in the moonlight.  The woman in the drawing was exquisite, her dark hair plaited, her cheeks dimpled.  Her eyes were closed in serenity; her arms were open and inviting.  Her simple Plains dress was long and orange, the kind of orange I thought I'd only seen in nature before, on persimmon trees and autumn leaves.  And there was so much longing etched into every drop of color, every soft and cautious line, that I knew, without asking, that I was looking at Rafael's mom.  Rafael's mom had died nine years ago today.

My heart seized with remorse.  No wonder he had been distant and moody these past few days.

"Her name was Susan," Rafael said.  "When she sang, it wasn't human.  It was like a bird's song.  When she got sick, all those years ago, she wouldn't stay in bed.  She took me to all her favorite places--the glades and the promontory.  I asked her why she'd shown me those places.  She said, 'I just don't want you to feel like you're alone.'  It's like she knew she was going to die."

Here, on this peak, Rafael had sat with his mother; he a small boy, she ready to return to the soil.

I felt such a powerful blend of sorrow and of timelessness--momentarily transported to that day--that I didn't know whether I pitied Rafael or envied him, that he had real memories of his mother, however scant.

We were our mothers' sons, he and I.

"I want to be my mother's son," he said.  "But I think I'm more of my father's son.  That scares me."

He closed his notebook and set it on his lap.  I reached for his hand, scarcely knowing what I was doing, and grasped it.  I wanted him to know that I thought he was his mother's son.  I wanted him to know that it was a conscious decision.  His fate wasn't written in his blood.

I felt Rafael squeeze my hand--his fingers sliding against mine, impossibly warm in the cold night--the rough surface of his palm.  My heart jumped.  He tangled our fingers together, dark on light.  Now my heartbeat was unbearably slow, pulse echoing tangibly in my temples.  Vaguely, but with surprise, I realized my fingers were longer than his.  I dared to look up at him.  The corner of his lips was raised in a light smile, his eyes on mine.  I thought:  Maybe I got through to him after all.  But I couldn't be sure.  I didn't have his crazy mind-reading powers.  All I knew was how beautiful he looked to me, one side of his hair shining in moonlight, his dimples warm and deep.  All I knew was that I wanted to touch his hair and untangle his knots and have him bat his hand at me in annoyance--and laugh, deep in my stomach, a laugh I could feel in every pore and every nerve.

Stop, I thought piteously, helplessly.  Because there was a word for boys who liked to touch other boys.  I'd heard Dad sling it about as though it were a curse word, mostly out of context, like when a team he hated was winning at baseball.  I didn't want to be one of those boys.  I didn't want to be the ugly word my dad tossed around like something evil, something foul.  Stop, I told myself.

We walked back to the reserve together, Rafael's notebook under his arm.  I felt sort of like a man marching to the gallows, dreadful, but resigned.  Even the cricket songs trailing down from the tops of bull pines sounded like jeering to me.  Rafael walked me back to Granny's house and waved good night to me.  I stood in the doorway and waved after him, lost in thought, in resignation and defeat.

I watched his shadow disappear against the night.

I realized he had held my hand the entire way back.

13

Landslide

Sometimes, after church on Sundays, a group of younger kids went and played on the rope swings behind the schoolhouse.  Annie's brother Joseph never went with them; he was much too shy.  Still, I could tell that he wanted to play with the boys and girls his age.  I took him out to the rope swings one Sunday, hoping I could ease him into it.  No luck.  He yelped at me and ran home.

I was about to follow him, actually, when I noticed something--someone--standing amid the pine trees just across the lane.  I took a closer look.  It was a man, short and round with a big forehead, sunglasses resting over his eyes.  He looked familiar, I thought, oddly familiar.  Then it hit me: FBI.  He was one of the two agents who had barged onto the reservation and gone and talked with Mrs. Red Clay.

I couldn't think of a reason for the FBI to make a return trip to Nettlebush.  Puzzled, I started toward the man.  He noticed; but he wasn't eager to talk.  He waved in my direction and slithered away before I had reached him.

I was still puzzling over the encounter on the walk back to Annie's house.  I found Joseph sitting on the front porch.  He stuck his tongue out at me and darted inside.  I figured I was at the bottom of his favorite persons list right then.  At least he was home, I thought, and not out in the woods getting eaten by a bear.

I went back to Granny's house for lunch and found surprise number two waiting for me on her porch: the female FBI agent, smartly dressed in black and gray.  She turned around just as I was coming up the steps.

"Is your grandmother home?" she asked.

I shook my head.  Granny had gone to play cards at her friend's house out west.

The woman looked me up and down, then nodded coolly.  "I'll wait with you," she decided.

I hadn't intended to wait for Granny.  I knew she wasn't coming back until early evening.  I was trying to figure out a way to articulate that to the FBI agent when she sat down on one of the porch chairs and dug around in her purse.  I didn't know what she was looking for.  I wanted to ask her whether she'd like a drink--it was pretty hot outside--but I doubted she knew sign language.  Not that I would have had the occasion to attempt it:  She never even glanced my way.

"Skylar?  Is everything alright?"

I held my hand above my eyes, a shield against the bright sun, and glanced across the porch.  A woman was standing at the bottom of the steps, a basket full of cherries and peaches sitting at her feet.  She was pretty, with a long nose and a strong chin.  She looked a little familiar; and after some thought, I realized she belonged to the tribal council.  I couldn't figure out how she knew my name.

"Quite alright," said the FBI agent.

The woman with the basket smiled.  "I'm glad to hear that," she said.  "I know the FBI's allowed to investigate the reservation if there's been a brutality.  I hope nobody's been hurt."