Gives Light(Gives Light Series) (31 page)

I raked my fingers through his hair.  He turned toward me and buried his face against my leg, his arm hooked around my waist.

I felt badly for him.  Music always helps me when I'm in a really bad mood, but I'd already given my Dhafer tapes to Annie.  I picked up the plains flute hanging around my neck and tried to play Sleeping Sun for him.  I didn't like most of the bands Rafael listened to, but Nightwish was starting to grow on me.

It worked.  He sat up, slowly, the gloom and anger withdrawing from his eyes.  He was as calm as a charmed snake. 

"That was good," he said when I had finished.  "Now play Ring of Fire."

I blew air in his face.

Rafael looked at me.  I saw, in that split second, the welcome shadow of his radiant grin.

And I knew that war was inevitable.

We jumped up at the same time.  I ran for it.  To my surprise, I turned out to be a lot speedier than Rafael, maybe because I was lightweight while he was bulky.  I heard him sputter and curse when he got tangled up in the tendrils of the willow tree.  I laughed soundlessly at him over my shoulder; he swore at me and tore free.

I ran to the creek, Rafael crashing after me.  "Oh, my," Annie said.  Aubrey yelped and ducked out of our way.  I bent down and scooped a handful of icy water out of the creek; and just when Rafael thought he'd caught me, I tossed it in his face and dashed away.

The grotto shrank behind me as I lumbered into the woods.  My chest was starting to burn--both from laughter and from exertion--and I stopped to catch my breath, my hand against the trunk of a beech tree.

That was where I came up short.  I was faster than Rafael, but Rafael had much more stamina than me.  He caught up with me in seconds.  He caught me around the waist with a vengeance.

He pulled me against him and kissed me, his wet hair dripping on my shoulders.

It was another of our mock battles.  It was a battle neither of us wanted to lose, but neither of us could win, not when the opponent was the other.  His mouth was hot, raging against mine; his hand at the small of my back was wonderfully, heartbreakingly gentle, belying the pretense of war.  I toyed with the hem of his shirt.  Our chests were pressed together, his heart pressed against mine.  My tumultuous thoughts stilled reverently; the rhythm of his heartbeat took their place; I memorized it, delirious, dizzy, until my heart took it up as its own.

I slid my hand beneath his shirt and felt his belly beneath my palm, rising and falling with ragged breath, validity of vitality, proof of existence.

He broke away from my mouth and trailed his lips down the front of my throat.  I felt his lips close around my scars.  He kissed away their ugliness.  His lips parted in tingling butterfly kisses that drained the strength from my knees.  I realized he was mouthing words against my skin.

Not words.  Just one word.

Mine.

This was one of those rare occasions when I was glad to be mute, glad that I couldn't say anything stupid, like
Yes, yours, I'll be yours, I want to be yours
.  But it was Rafael; he always knew my thoughts.  He knew what it meant when I shuddered beneath him.

We sat together on the forest floor, mutually spent.  I felt the trunk of the beech tree behind my back and Rafael's head on my lap, his cheek pressed against my thigh.  I stroked his hair, wet and wiry, with feather-light fingertips.

He turned his head and gazed at me, eyes dancing and blue, remnants of a smile dancing on his face.

How beautiful he looked.  Unsullied by the world's darker secrets; privy to its innocent ones.  I could almost believe he was inhuman and had never known anything beyond the profound simplicity of nature, tameless and wild, and the animal hearts that beat within each and every one of us.  He was Pan and I was Daphnis.  I never stood a chance.

We were both sluggish to move, but we agreed that Annie and Aubrey might find it odd if we stayed out in the woods all day and never went back to the grotto.  Only hesitantly did we climb off of the ground.  Rafael was the first to rise, and he offered me his hand.  I smiled, amused, when I took it; I was more than capable of standing without his help and suspected he was looking for an excuse to touch me.  I knew it so well because I would have taken any excuse to touch him, too.

We were walking back to the grotto, his arm wrapped low around my hips, when Rafael pointed out a little animal rummaging in the bushes for food.

"It's a coywolf pup," he said.  "They get along with humans, like coyotes do, but they live and hunt in packs, like wolves.  The young aren't supposed to hunt on their own.  His mom must not be far."

He was a remarkable little creature, probably no bigger than the width of our hands put together.  He was built like a wolf--I could see it in the length of his torso, still growing, and the shape of his muzzle--but his legs were slender and nimble and his ears were big, just like a coyote's.  His coat, too, was a blend of both animals, a sandy brown pelt flecked with gray.

Everything in the world is dual-natured
, Rafael had told me.  And I guess he was right.

We were our fathers' sons, he and I.

30

A Glass Heart

It was exactly as Mrs. Red Clay predicted.  In late August, Ms. Myra Hayes and her short, balding partner paid another visit to the reserve.

They didn't even bother to be discreet.  In the mornings, when I went to Annie's house, I sometimes saw them lingering by water wells and butter churns, trying and failing to get a good signal on their cell phones.  In the early evenings, when I came back from the grotto in the woods, I saw them hiking east to the lake in their obstructive black coats and--in Ms. Hayes' case--high heels.  But I never saw them knock on Granny's door.

I took Dad's arm one night before he could retire to bed.  I gave him an apologetic but intent look.  What exactly was he going to do when the FBI
did
knock on Granny's door?

Dad palmed the back of my head like I was a six-year-old.  "Don't worry, Cubby," he said.  "I'm fine."

I was much too exasperated to feel genuine anger at his secrecy.  He might have noticed that, because he finally conceded a small piece of information to me.  "The FBI can't force their way into anybody's home without a warrant," he said mildly.  "They'd lose their badges if they even tried."

But what if they went and got a warrant?  It was only a matter of time.  What then?

His silent nature aside, Dad was not a solitary creature.  Confining him to house arrest was like taking a fish out of water and timing it to see how long it lived. 

That's probably why the last days of August saw an increase of visitors to Granny's house, people I had never seen before in my life.  They were old friends of Dad's, I realized, just like Aubrey had said, making house calls to keep Dad company while he couldn't go out on his own.  Among Dad's recurring visitors were Mr. At Dawn, the huge, bushy-haired man who belonged on the tribal council, and another man around Dad's age with a long ponytail.  I never got to see the latter from the front; he was usually coming down the lane just as I was about to walk inside Annie's house.  But the former turned out to be much friendlier than I ever would have guessed.  He was enormous, make no mistake about it, and he had a booming, raspy voice like gravel, but he always had the kindest things to say.

"You played wonderfully at the ghost dance!" he boomed at me in the kitchen one afternoon, while I grinned at him and made sandwiches of cut sagebread and watercress.  It was lunchtime.

"I'm genuinely sorry I missed that," Dad remarked.  "Thank you," he said, when I handed him a sandwich.

I left the house after lunch to head to the grotto.  Just as I was closing the door behind me, Ms. Hayes stepped out from behind a pinyon pine.

"How's your father?" she asked coolly.

Her tone chilled me.  I thought it would be impolite to walk past her, but I knew I couldn't do anything to confirm or deny her suspicions.  I couldn't do anything except stare at her and hope my face didn't betray my feelings.

"I might pay him a visit soon, myself," she said, scratching her wrists.  It looked like she had a sun rash.

I don't know whether Ms. Hayes realized I was mute.  Either way, it didn't make much of a difference; she spun on her heel and stalked off smoothly.

I left a bottle of lavender oil behind the pinyon tree that afternoon.  I thought it might help with the rash.

Later, when I found Annie building kindling fires at the grotto, the first thing I did was tell her about the encounter.

"There's nothing you can do except trust the council," Annie told me wisely.  She leaned over and blew on a piece of cooling glass.

I watched Annie covertly.  I didn't know whether she was aware of what my father had done while he was away.  Was that the sort of thing families discussed at the breakfast table?  It wasn't the sort of thing my family discussed at the breakfast table.

Reticence was the Shoshone ideal, and Annie was the master practitioner.  I gave up trying to glean information from her face and sat down to make glass ornaments with her. 

Actually, glass making was a really good sedative.  I had trouble getting to sleep that night, worrying, as was inevitable, about Dad's safety.  I stole my way down the staircase and into the kitchen, lighting a candle on my way to the stove.  I had meant to make a cup of passionflower tea, but I realized my supply was running low.  I didn't want to waste it.  That was when I spotted one of Annie's baskets standing on the floor by the icebox.  Annie had given me a basket full of sand and ash to take home.  I'd almost forgotten that. 

I spent hours making glass with Granny's skillets on the wood-coal stove.  I didn't mean to be, but I was sort of messy about it.  I've always been a slob.

There was plant ash on the floor and on my hands when a pair of oil lamps flicked on.  I turned around and saw Dad standing in the doorway in shorts and a black t-shirt.

"What are you...?"

By way of answering him, I held up one of the finished glass hearts.  At the center was a hatchwork of blue-green beads.  When Annie wanted to make a blue-green dye, she usually mixed mint with wild mustard, but I thought crushed puya looked just as good.

Dad came into the kitchen and took the heart from me, examining it at different angles.

"I hardly recognize you," Dad said, mystified.

Did he mean because I'd skipped my last haircut?  I pointed at my curls.

"I don't mean the way you look.  I mean the things you do.  I never would have believed that I'd find you making glassware.  Or friends, for that matter.  Or learning to cook and play the flute and getting your arm tattooed.  And your jacket..."

He looked plaintively at me in the lamplight.  "Maybe I was wrong to raise you outside the reservation."

I smiled ruefully.  What did it matter?  It wasn't like anyone could change the past.  Besides, I thought, hadn't we gotten on just fine together?  My favorite memories were still the memories I'd made with my dad.

Dad turned his head away.  I guess the moment was getting too emotional for him.  Understandingly, I pat his arm.

"I just wish the feds would finish their business already," Dad said.  He pulled out a chair and sat at the table.  "They're making it so hard for me to..."

To what?  I sat opposite him and gestured for him to continue.

Dad looked alarmed.  Probably he hadn't meant to say anything out loud.  I shot him a slightly impatient look.  Now wasn't the right time to play Rocks With Respiratory Systems.

Dad drew a deep, rattling breath.

"I have to go around to all the houses...  The families of the victims.  It falls on my shoulders to speak with them and tell them that their lost ones can rest now."

I could feel myself blinking rapidly, involuntarily, like a cold gust of wind had filled the room.  Of course it hadn't.  Dad had this uncomfortable look on his face, like he'd bitten a lemon.

I reached across the table and grabbed his arm.

I want to go with you.

"No, Cubby.  That's not--"

Please.

Dad shook his head.  But I could already see his conviction slipping. 

"Well," he said slowly, "I suppose I owe it to you, after everything I've done..."

I shook my head hastily.  I didn't want him to think he owed me anything.

"As soon as the feds are gone," he promised.

I hate to say it, but that didn't leave me feeling at all confident.  Who knew how long the FBI would stick around?  Probably however long it took for them to get a warrant against Dad.

Worried, I sighed--one of the few sounds you can make with a pair of busted vocal cords.  Dad chuckled quietly.  I got up from the table and put another skillet on the stove.  It was shaping up to be a pretty long night.

"Actually," Dad said suddenly.

I looked up from the stove.

"I'm confined to this house for who knows how long.  But you're not."

Of course not.  But--

Oh, I thought.

And then I thought:  No, wait.  How can I deliver the message without him?  I can't even talk.