Gives Light(Gives Light Series) (32 page)

"Get me a pen," Dad said.  "A pad of paper."  He took one of the oil lamps off of the wall and lowered it to the kitchen table, awakened with purpose.

Yeah, I thought.  Definitely going to be a long night.

The following morning was a Sunday, and the first Sunday that I didn't go to church with Granny.  She gave me a darkly disapproving look while she clomped off to church arm-in-arm with Reverend Silver Wolf instead of me. 

I read Dad's instructions off the paper in my hands, a basket full of letters hanging off my arm.

The first house I needed to visit was on the other side of the lake.  The letter was for a woman named Summer Rose In Winter.  I trekked out to the woods and then straight east.  Supposing Mrs. In Winter was the religious type, I wasn't at all certain she would be home at this time of day.  I figured I'd leave the letter beneath her door.

I hiked around the vacant lake at a brisk pace and found a tiny cluster of cozy houses on the other side.  Yards away  was a tall, two-story building I took to be the council headquarters, its door standing open unto the summer air.  I wondered whether Ms. Hayes and her partner were inside.

Mrs. In Winter's house was wide and low, with a bird bath out front and a child's bicycle lying on its side. As soon as I drew near the front door, I heard children's voices, loud and gurgling, through the windows. 

I debated.  Should I just leave the letter and run, or should I knock?

I didn't have time to make a decision.  The door swung open, the smell of roasting apples wafting outside, and Mrs. In Winter took its place, squinting at me in confusion.

"What the heck?"

She was about forty years old, with thick, frizzy hair and small, square glasses.  She was wrapped up in a fuzzy blue bathrobe.  Poor thing probably hadn't had her coffee yet.

I smiled weakly, suppressing my nerves, and handed her the letter.

Mrs. In Winter was reluctant to take it at first; I could see that.  But when she finally did, when she slid the envelope open and read its contents, her whole face changed.  Her eyes watered; her mouth trembled, like snow sliding off a glacier.  She turned her head quickly and lifted her eyeglasses with a shaking hand.  She wiped the tears from her eyes before they could fall.

"She was my oldest," she said.  "I don't know how to tell them they had a sister they never met."

I felt a black shroud of heaviness falling over me.  I wanted to do something--anything--to comfort her.  I reached out to touch her arm.  I don't think she noticed, because she dropped her arm to her side.

"Do you want to come inside?" she asked.  "Would you like something to drink?"

I smiled half-heartedly, gratefully, but shook my head.  I lifted one of the letters left in the basket by way of explanation.

Mrs. In Winter nodded silently.  She mumbled, "Have a nice day," and closed the door.

I didn't leave just yet.  I dug underneath the stack of envelopes and pulled out a pair of glass hearts.  In my frenzy last night, my inability to sleep, I'd made about a dozen of them, some painted, some beaded.  I don't pretend to be an expert craftsman, or anything like that; but I thought they looked sort of nice, hanging on the ends of their sturdy willow strings. 

I tied the hearts around an empty flag post outside of Mrs. In Winter's door.  A faint morning breeze picked them up and tossed them gently.  When they clinked together, they made a quiet song, a long-forgotten melody sung by a still-remembered voice.

When I left the In Winter house behind, I felt drained already; and when I made my way back around the lake, I realized there were still five houses to go.

The next house belonged to George Black Day.  He lived fairly close to the badlands, though not as close as Rafael did. 

The first thing I noticed about Mr. Black Day's house was the faint air of neglect clinging to the graying wood and the peeling nameplate.  The next thing I noticed was that there was no lumber in the storage box outside.  I guess it was possible that he kept all his firewood indoors, but around Nettlebush, most people keep an extra supply outside in case of an emergency, or in case a neighbor needs some.  I started to wonder whether Mr. Black Day still lived here.  If Dolores Black Day had died inside this house, then no; Mr. Black Day would have to have left.  But wouldn't Dad have known if that were the case?

My imagination ran away with me.  Maybe Mr. Black Day was elderly and couldn't cut his own wood.  I had a handsaw back home, one of Rafael's old ones; I could get some lumber for him off of the beech trees in the woods.

Resolutely, I knocked on the door.

The man who answered the door definitely wasn't elderly.  He was a few years younger than my dad, in fact, with light brown hair and square shoulders.  I noticed that the room behind him was dark; the curtains were closed, the lights unlit.

"You're Paul's boy," he said.  "I know you."

That surprised me, because I didn't know him.

"C'min," he mumbled, and led me inside.

His sitting room was so dark, I almost couldn't make out where the floor ended and the furniture began.  Cut timber sat in a bin next to the hearth.  I couldn't see much of the walls, but they smelled musty, like they hadn't been cleaned in a long while.  Mr. Black Day lit a lamp; I saw the dust sitting on the walls like carpets.

"It's done, isn't it?"

I nodded.  I gave him his letter.  He didn't seem interested in opening it.  He tossed it on the side table without a second look.

Should I leave?  I gestured over my shoulder to the door.

"What's wrong with you?  Say something."

Apologetic, I pointed at my throat.

"Oh.  Sorry."

He had nothing to be sorry about.  I wanted to let him know that.  But before I could so much as smile, he slumped over at the table and started crying.

Alarmed, I did the only thing I could think of doing:  I set my basket on the floor and squeezed Mr. Black Day's shoulders.

"My wife," he said.  His voice was so quiet, I could barely hear him; I had to hold my breath and strain my ears.  "My wife..."

What if this was a bad idea?  Would it really bring the victims' families any peace of mind to know that their loved ones' murderer was deceased?  In some way, I could see how it would:  Because if he was dead, he couldn't hurt anyone else.  Nor could he gloat anymore, as I'm sure he must have at some point, about how he'd gotten away with seven murders unpunished.  All the same, his death hadn't brought his victims back to life.  All seven of those women were still dead.  Mom was still dead.  The holes in our hearts were still big, sucking wounds.

I tied a pair of hearts around Mr. Black Day's nameplate when I left the house.

Next up, according to my Dad's notes, was Shaman Quick, who lived out in the badlands.  I wasn't overly eager to head into the badlands on my own, but Dad had drawn me a map; at least I wouldn't get lost.

I had never met the tribe's shaman before.  From what I gathered, he was fairly reclusive; he never showed up at dinnertime, and he disdained the idea of church.  Dad's notes warned me that he didn't speak English, just Shoshone and sign language. 

I passed the southern oak tree on my way to the badlands.  Before I could take a single step onto the crumbling clay, I felt a strong hand, calloused and warm, close around my arm.  I knew, even before I turned around, that it was Rafael.

"Where are you going?  I thought you go to church on Sundays."

The visits with Mrs. In Winter and Mr. Black Day had sapped the spirit out of me, but just the sound of Rafael's voice filled me with a budding brightness and a renewal of strength.  I had to be careful not to smile too much; I didn't think that was appropriate right now.  I showed him the front of the letter and let him read the name on the envelope.

"You're delivering a letter to the shaman?  Why, what'd you do?"

I gave him a dull look.

"I know, I know, I'm kidding.  Can I go with you?  I don't want you to get hurt."

My heart flipped at his unconsciously protective tone.  But did he know that the letter carried news of his father's death?  I wasn't sure that he should come along.  Rafael didn't give me time to protest, though.  He laced our fingers together, his hand clasped firmly around mine.  My heart flipped again.  Stupid heart.

"I mean, you're skinny.  You'll fall down a crevice and we'll never see you again."

It was a struggle to keep a straight face; I could have burst out laughing.  I slid my hand out of his and took a playful swing at him.  He snatched my hand out of the air, successfully reclaiming it, and we set out for the badlands. 

Shaman Quick's house was built into the side of a canyon wall, and the clay ground all around it was dug up to expose the sand underneath.  The house was extremely rustic.  Most of the houses in Nettlebush were full wood; this one was a bare wood skeleton with animal hide walls.  I wondered how the house fared during the monsoon season.  "The skins are water resistant," Rafael said, reading my mind.  "The canyon makes a kind of enclave.  Wind and lightning pass right over it.  And the house is floorless.  That way the sand on the outside soaks up all the rain before it can get in."

Out front were twin gardens, vegetable crops and medicinal herbs planted side-by-side in peat moss and sand.  A buffalo skull rested on the ground next to capped, glazed jars of water.  And the most outrageous looking girl I had ever seen was hanging laundry out to dry on a clothesline.

If you've ever seen those pictures of Einstein where his hair looks like it's been zapped by a livewire, and his eyes are huge and bulging with mad ingenuity, you've already got a pretty good picture of what this girl looked like.  She was swimming in her clothes, a t-shirt two sizes too big and a pair of jeans sagging around her waist.  She shot up straight and stared at us with her mad, cunning eyes.  Rafael scowled.

"That's Immaculata," he muttered to me.  "She's weird."

I smiled and waved at her.  She jumped, like someone had tapped her on the shoulder, but went on staring at me.  Her head tilted slowly to one side.  Weird seemed to be an understatement.

"She doesn't speak English," Rafael said.  And then he started talking to her in what must have been Shoshone.  Her voice, when she replied, was unexpectedly deep.  Of course, I understood none of what they were saying.

Immaculata went abruptly inside the house.  "She's getting her grandfather," Rafael told me.

A few seconds later, an old man parted the heavy hide doorway and stepped outside.

I felt like I had stepped two centuries back in time.  Shaman Quick was a very old, very tiny man, his bare chest wrinkled with sagging skin.  He wore nothing but a colorful breechclout and beaded moccasins.  He greatly resembled his granddaughter--or I guess I should say his granddaughter greatly resembled him--his gray hair untamed, his eyes big and luminous.

I was in awe of him.  He looked at us like he knew things no one else would ever know, let alone the two of us, and I had the feeling that he did.

Tentative, I stepped forward.  I offered him Dad's letter just as Immaculata came back outside.  The shaman took the letter graciously, his owl eyes never leaving mine.

It's from my father
, I signed. 
It's about
--

He held up a hand, halting me.  He handed the letter to Immaculata.  Immaculata's eyes bulged a little wider; she slit the envelope open with her fingernails, pulled out the paper inside, and began reading out loud.

I can't tell you what the letter said, because Dad had written it in Shoshone.  But I saw Rafael's face darken, slowly, and knew he had realized why we were here.

Immaculata's voice trilled to a stop at the end of the letter.  The air was so silent in the canyon, so dry.  My heart felt dry.  And then--because I couldn't think what else to do--I took a pair of glass hearts out of the basket on my arm and handed them to the shaman.

"Aikwehibite," he said, inspecting them.  He raised his hand and gave me a couple of bony pats on the head.  "Aishen."

Rafael and I left the badlands together some time after that.  Rafael stopped me when we had reached the southern oak.

"I don't feel good," he said.  "I'm gonna lay down."

I looked at him with steeply rising concern.  He didn't look sick; he was the picture of good health. 

He's sad, I realized, winded.  He's sad because his father died.

"I'm fine," he insisted, an edge to his voice.  But that contracted what he'd said only seconds ago.  "I just wanna lay down, okay?"

I nodded.  Of course that was okay.  I brushed my fingers through his hair.  I tucked a braid behind his ear.

He caught my hand and kissed my open palm, sending shivers down my spine.

I watched him stalk inside his house, the door snapping shut behind his back.

The next closest house was on the other side of the windmill field and belonged to a man named Luke Owns Forty.  When I knocked on his door, I found him mostly unwilling to talk.  He was a very lean man with a haggard look about his face, and his hair tumbled down his back in natural, loose curls.  He accepted Dad's letter shortly and shut the door before I could wave goodbye.  I left a pair of hearts tied around one of the empty planters sitting outside his window.