Gives Light(Gives Light Series) (21 page)

I dug my elbow into Rafael's side and pointed.  He nodded and released me.  I knelt next to Lila and squeezed her shoulders.  She glanced up, shielding her eyes from the sunlight, and gave me a wistful smile that looked like it belonged on the face of someone twenty years older.

"Hello, Mr. St. Clair," said Lila's friend.  "Hello, Mr. Gives Light.  How are you?  We're getting ready for a book report."

I smiled at him and looked back at Rafael.  "Yeah," Rafael said, drawing near, "we've got one, too.  Don't worry," he told me.  "I'll just put your name on mine."

"Oh," said Lila's friend, "that's really nice of you."

"Morgan," Lila said, "is such a little boy."

Morgan blushed.

We said goodbye to the kids, and Rafael and I resumed walking along the eastern side of the lake; Rafael wanted to swim in the more secluded side of the water.

"You know," Rafael said, after a lapse of silence, "there's supposed to be five people on the tribal council.  Dad was the fifth, but they never replaced him."

I looked sideways at him.  He had one of those gray dove feathers twisted in his hair again; I told myself that one of these days, I was going to ask him what that was about.  I wondered once more what had happened to his father, what prison the tribal council had sent him to.  Rafael met my gaze and knew, at once, what I was thinking.

"Nobody will talk about it," he said.  "Shoshone are a tight-lipped people.  But I'm sure the council killed him.  Slapping a murderer on the wrist and sending him off to jail, that's a white idea.  Whites try to tell us how they think we should live, but we're still going to handle ourselves the best way we know how.  Dad was a serial killer.  I don't think he deserved to be clothed and fed for that."

I didn't know what to think.  Murder was against the law, for one, even as an act of retribution.  Except for the death penalty, I guess, but hardly anyone in Arizona gets dealt the death penalty, even the guys who've been sitting on death row for years.  It seemed strange to me that murder was against the law unless the people upholding the law decided it was applicable.  As far as the law actually went, I knew that Indian reservations each operated under their own government, but that hadn't stopped the FBI from butting in when they saw fit.

"We try to be peaceful," Rafael said.  "But sometimes it doesn't work.  The Shoshone were always the least confrontational tribe, especially the Plains Shoshone.  Even when we went to war, we didn't fight.  You know what counting coup is?"

I shook my head.

"Warfare wasn't built around killing.  The goal was to cross over to the enemy's side, touch him, and run back to your own side without getting caught.  The more warriors you had who could do that, the more prestige you had.  The side with the most prestige was the winner.  That's how Plains People counted their victories.  Killing is never something to celebrate.  Never was.  Still, sometimes it's necessary.  Sometimes there's no other way to stop someone who's out of control."

Rafael looked at me suddenly.  "You know about the Pony Express War?"

Again, I shook my head.

"This happened before Bear River, so we were still out on the Plains.  Well, not 'we,' I'm not that old.  Our ancestors.  The Pony Express mail route cut right through the Plains, so it was really screwing up our hunting grounds.  We kept quiet about it, though, found ways to get on with the white men as peacefully as we knew how, even when they kept pushing us onto smaller and smaller patches of land.  Until one day when the expressmen kidnapped two of our girls.  I don't know whether the girls were Shoshone, or Paiute, but our tribes were practically intermarried at that point, so it doesn't make much of a difference.  The girls were sent back to us, beaten and raped.  We declared war the same afternoon.  That was one of those times when killing was necessary.  But you can bet it wasn't celebrated."

I felt ill.

We were on the far northeast side of the lake.  The teenagers on the other end were indecipherable from one another.  Rafael sat down on the grass.  The bright sun had left my neck slicked with perspiration.  Rafael started tugging off his hiking boots.

"You okay?"

I can sit through a slasher flick marathon without wincing, but the bloodier aspects of human history have always bothered me.  I think it's because history is real.  It's real people who get hurt in those stories.  I didn't want Rafael worrying about something as trivial as my weak stomach.  I smiled vaguely.

"You smile too much."

I stuck out my tongue.  Rafael grinned back, abashed, half a laugh escaping his lips.

He tugged his shirt over his head and tossed it aside.

I hadn't expected that.  I felt blood rushing to my face and turned around, quickly, to give him some privacy.  I thought I had caught a glimpse of his chest.  Somehow that was frightening.

"Are you gonna take your clothes off, or not?" Rafael asked shortly.  "You can't wear them in the lake.  They'll contaminate the water."

Of course they will, I thought grimly.

I kept my back to Rafael.  I couldn't explain why, but suddenly I was incredibly self-conscious.  It wasn't like I'd never undressed in front of other guys before--but then I'd hated that too, the school locker room my worst nightmare made material.

The loud splash behind me told me that Rafael was already in the water.  I started to calm down.  I stripped down to my boxer shorts, folded my clothes, and set them aside.  I removed the bird flute from my neck, afraid I'd lose it in the water.

I turned around and stepped into the lake.

Rafael's head broke through the surface of the water.  His hair was plastered to his neck and shoulders.  The dove feather, resilient, hadn't been dislodged. 

"Stupid heat wave," Rafael said, and ducked back underwater.

We spent much of the afternoon scaling the lake for watercress and trying to catch slippery minnows with our bare hands.  Rafael swore he had had a grandmother who could catch fish just like a bear could--"With her claws," he said unironically.  Gradually, I relaxed.  Rafael made fun of the way my curls looked when wet.  I tried to dunk him underwater in retaliation, but he was stronger by a wide margin.

I got out of the lake when my skin started to wrinkle; Rafael shortly followed suit.  The water had been cool and soothing, but the sun was unrepentant and bright.  We were dry within minutes.

"When I have my own house," Rafael said, "I'm gonna build myself a cellar and stay in it all day."

I laughed, endeared.

"It's not funny," Rafael said sourly.  "I can't stand it when it's hot like this.  I thought it was bad when last August went up to 106.  We go up to Idaho every January, for the Bear River memorial.  Sometimes it snows there.  You ever seen snow?  The real stuff, not the stuff in your cellar."

I propped my chin up on my fist, fascinated--because Rafael could talk about the most mundane things on earth and I'd still find them fascinating--but shook my head.

"Really?  Damn.  You don't know what you're missing.  There are a lot of Shoshone up there, but they're Northern Shoshone, like Lost Woman."

A cloud suddenly covered the sun in a moment of respite, but I shivered, deprived of its heat.  I figured it was time to head back to the Little Hawk house and help Annie warm up dinner.  I gathered up my clothes, pulled on my pants and my shoes.

I stopped, self-conscious again.  Because Rafael was watching me.

I know it's ridiculous.  But Rafael had never seen this much of me at once, and I was afraid he'd find me revolting.  I know I did.  I took advantage of his diverted attention and regarded him similarly.  The physical differences between the two of us were incredibly pronounced.  His chest was hard and planed, his belly flat.  His shoulders were broad and strong.  I raked my eyes over his legs--and almost flinched:  There was another chain tattoo running up the entire length of his right leg.  I'd never seen it before because Rafael never wore anything shorter than jeans.  The chain wrapped around his calf; it twisted and wound around his thigh; it disappeared beneath the waistband of his underwear; maybe it even reached his hip.  Rafael had told me he tattooed himself--hurt himself--whenever he felt like hurting someone else.  It was one thing when I thought the ink was confined to his arm.  Now it was starting to look less like body art and more like body mutilation.  And yet it was so intricate, so beautiful...  But so was the rest of him.  It struck me powerfully:  He was beautiful.  I thought another boy was beautiful.  I was staring at another boy.

"You've got them on your stomach, too."

I stirred out of my reverie.  Rafael's eyes, dark blue, were just south of my belly button.  My face flushed with tantalizing warmth.  Oh, I thought, he means the freckles.  I've got them all over my arms and my stomach, but nowhere else.

Rafael met my eyes.  He pursed his lips, like he was going to say something; but then he seemed to realize that he had been caught staring.  Or maybe he realized that I'd been staring.  Either way, he looked sheepish.  And it's funny, but whenever Rafael feels insecure, I suddenly feel confident.  It's like one of us has to.

I touched the wet dove feather tangled in his hair, inquisitively.

Rafael relaxed.  "There's this dove that visits my house," he said.  "She molts all the time, especially in late summer.  I pick up the feathers on the ground and keep them.  It's--"  He stopped, considering himself, but went on.  "Doves are among the only birds that produce milk for their young.  So they're...they represent mothers."

I smiled slowly, encouragingly.  It was okay to miss his mother.  It was admirable to keep her close however he knew how.

We got dressed and started back on the walk around the lake.  The rest of the kids had already gone home.

Home, I thought.  This was home.  When had that happened?

Home
...  Even in my head, the word sounded delicious. 
Home.
  I practiced signing the word, a simple touch to the chin and cheek.

Rafael saw what I was doing and watched me with piercing blue eyes.  The corner of his mouth tilted in one of his unique smiles.

Home.

That was home.

21

Asymmetry

"Christine St. Clair," the gravestone read.  "1962 - 1989.  Mother and Friend."

I hadn't fully expected to find Mom's grave in the graveyard behind the church.  A part of me had always assumed that her parents--grandparents I'd never met--would have requested her remains.  I guess not.

And it's funny--or not funny, but sad:  Mrs. Gives Light's grave was two rows behind Mom's.

I didn't know whether there had been a funeral service for any of the people buried on the reserve.  Probably not, I thought.  Probably just the burial.  Plains People don't see death as the end of life, no matter how sad it is for the still-living.  That's one of the things Dad had taught me from the time I was little. 

I sat on the ground and ran my fingers over the smooth headstone.  I wanted to hear Mom's voice.  I wanted to know the things she liked, the things she found funny.  I wanted to know whether she would have liked me.  I'm sure I would have liked her.

I could have sat there all afternoon and thought about the things we'd missed out on, but the thing is, it's not like wallowing would have changed anything.  Mom couldn't talk to me.  I couldn't talk to her.  I couldn't talk to anyone.  I could still have friends and make music.  I could still learn to love the way Mom had loved.  And Mom--she had loved.  And that makes even the shortest life a full one.

I climbed off of the ground, dusted off my pants, and started toward the other end of the graveyard.  There were two gates, but the graveyard, small, was already very dense; within the next decade or so, the burial plots would probably run right into the woods.  It struck me as poignant to think that everyone who had ever called Nettlebush home was buried in the same soil.  Home in life, home in death.

I was leaving through the forest-facing gate when something possessed me to turn and look back.  I'm glad I did.  My breath caught in my throat.

Seven of the headstones had drawings stuck to the back of them, some of them colored, many of them charcoal.

Rafael had told me that he left drawings at the graves of his father's victims.  I don't know how I'd forgotten.

I started doubling back to the graves.  I stopped.  No, I told myself.  Those drawings were private, intended as solace for the families of the departed.  I didn't have the right to interpolate myself.

I stalled.  Maybe it was okay to just look at the drawings on the back of Mom's headstone.  She was my mother, after all.  Had I lived in Nettlebush all my life, I'm sure I would have seen the drawings before.

I felt like I was breaking some kind of unspoken rule.  Still, I crept back to Mom's grave.  I knelt on the soil once more, this time on the opposite side.

There were at least twelve drawings stuck to the back of the stone with spirit gum.  I touched the flimsy papers with my fingertips and realized there were countless more underneath.  I wanted to examine each of them, one by one, and follow Rafael backwards in time.  That would have meant prying them off of the headstone, though, and I was afraid they would tear.