Lending Light (Gives Light Series Book 5) (14 page)

"I shall eat pork rolls," Sarah said.

"That's disgusting," I said.

She waved at me, skipping up Selena's front steps.  I waved back.  I stopped myself when I saw the electric blue polish shining off my nails.

Now that, I thought, looked freaking hardcore.

8

Dial-a-Ghost

The summer pauwau was scheduled for July 6th, 5:30 PM.  The morning of the 6th everyone ran around Nettlebush and visited their neighbors: coordinating music and dishes, gathering pieces of misplaced regalia, maybe delivering tobacco to their elders, if they were in a charitable mood.  Rosa Gray Rain came over to my house to drop off a boning knife she'd borrowed from Uncle Gabe.  I felt awkward when I greeted her at the door.

"Hi," I mumbled.

She had a pink aura, shy, but dotted in despondent black.  Those same black dots skittered around her like crazy.  Her hair hung down her back in a thin, ink-colored braid.  She chewed on her lip.

"Uncle Gabriel!" I shouted.

Uncle Gabriel came out of the kitchen, drying his hands on a faded towel.  He saw Rosa and smiled slowly, light spreading to his eyes.  I bolted out the front door; because the last time I'd been in the same room as Rosa, she'd cried.

I was feeling pretty crummy when I made my way through the reservation.  Those feelings evaporated entirely when I stopped outside the Little Hawk house, the wooden porch raised, the roof flat.  The sun stood at half-mast in the sky, which meant Sky would be finished cooking soon.  Sure enough, the Little Hawk door clapped open and Sky slipped through it, wiping his hands on his shirt.  He saw me and beamed.  My stomach performed somersaults.

"I wanna draw ledger art," I said.

I grabbed Sky's hand and took off like a freighter.  He stumbled after me, but didn't protest.  We went around the side of the lake and stopped outside the tribal council building.  Stone steps ran up to a tall wooden facade with double doors.  Next to one of the doors was a relief carving of Chief Pocatello, from the Northern Shoshone band.  We didn't go in the building.  We went around its east side, where tipis made from tanned deerskin decorated the brittle, discolored grass.  Sky stood a while looking at the tipis, six of them total.

"There," I said.

I pointed at a basket next to the nearest tipi.  "Take One!" read the cheery, handwritten sign on the wall.  Inside the basket were wildflowers, budding white madder and wiry bits of silvery sagebrush.  I knelt down in front of the tipi and picked up the long, wooden stylus hanging from the door flaps.  I said, "Can you give me the white flower?"

The outer walls of the tipi were pale and brown and covered in drawings: flowers, clouds, handprints, each one contributed by a different member of the tribe.  My sister's anatomically improbable buffalo stood toward the very bottom of the canvas, the creature's mouth and eyes wide.  Sky gave me a handful of madder and examined the tipi, curious.  I ground the madder between the stylus and the grass and it gushed red.

"That one's mine," I said.

I pointed at a drawing of a woman on horseback.  Her gown was old-fashioned Plains style, bright blue, dotted with real white beads.  She held a yellow parasol above her head, sunglasses on her eyes.

"Started her in spring," I said gruffly, and added detail to the horse's tail.

Sky sat comfortably at my side, his arms around his knees.  I told him about how ledger art was a really old pastime for Plains People, something that used to designate community, and belonging.  I told him he should add a drawing of his own.

"You're only supposed to use primary colors, though," I said.  I squinted at the lady and her parasol.  The red horse hairs were already starting to dry.

I can't draw
, Sky said, scratching his elbow.

"Doesn't matter," I said.  "You seen the mountain lion Aubrey drew?  Shit looks possessed."

Sky laughed, warming me from the inside out.  I smiled at him.  I put the stylus in his hand.

"Just draw something," I suggested.

He leaned toward the tipi on his knees, his tongue poking out of his mouth in an uncomfortably distracting way.  He touched the stylus to the canvas and the ink blotted.  He mouthed a cuss word.  I told him it was fine, biting back a laugh.  He drew a circle.  It was the least circular circle I'd ever seen.

"Okay, you can stop," I said.  "You suck at this."

He dropped his face in his hands.  I worried for a moment that I'd upset him, but he was faking.  He shoved my shoulder.

"We told our stories with our hands," I said.  "Through our drawings.  But sign language, too.  Two Plains guys from completely different cultures could get along just fine if they had ledger art and sign language."

Sky's hand twitched.  To cover it up, he scratched behind his ear.  I wondered how hard it was to learn sign language.  For me, probably hard.  Sky raised his head suddenly, nodding at the tribal council building, which I didn't understand at first; I thought he wanted to go inside.

The relief carving
, Sky specified.  He did this by tugging on the dove's feather in my hair, not dissimilar to the stone feathers adorning the relief's head.

"That guy?" I asked.  "That's Pocatello.  He was Daigwani in the 1840s.  Or something like that--I'm bad with numbers."

Sky settled back on his hands in the grass.  I said, "You ever notice we have a tribal council these days, not a chief?  That's because Daigwani's outlawed.  Proved too much of a threat to the US, I think."

Sky grinned suddenly.  I checked him over, reproachful.

Smile!
Sky said, tossing the wet madder at my shoulder.  Splat.  My shirt stained red.

"You son of a bitch," I said, uncontrollable laughter spreading across my face.

Sky made like he was going to get up and saunter off.  I grabbed him by the wrist and yanked him close.  He banged back against my chest, but I didn't mind; he was practically weightless, anyway.  He squirmed playfully, writhing, but I trapped him between the tipi and my arms.  I wiped my shirt on his back.  I wanted to grab a handful of madder, smear it on his face, but madder's kind of poisonous if you swallow it; I wouldn't take the risk.

"Draw," I said, and stuck the ink needle in Sky's hand again.

Sky put the stylus to the canvas and turned his crooked circle into a smiley face.  Weirdo.  I took his hand in my hand, feigning exasperation.  Our hands joined, I transformed his smiley face into a pomegranate.  Bizarrely, I felt like I wanted to sing Shoshone songs to him.  I'd never wanted to sing before.  I realized that maybe these feelings were Sky's feelings.  We were still touching, after all.  Did he want to sing?  Or did he want me to sing to him?  My face went hot, my head light.  Flurries of confusion, and fear, and excitement pulsed through me, and this time I really didn't know if they were mine or his.  I knew I was exhilarated.  It was a stupid sensation, like I might jump off the top of the tribal council building and float right into the sky.  Sky.  His jacket was zipped up, but his collar didn't cover the back of his neck.  His curls there were downy and light, softer-looking than the rest of his hair.  I couldn't stop staring at them.  I wanted to touch them.  I reached for the back of Sky's neck, but stopped myself.  My fingers were covered in gooey red madder.  I wiped them on the ground, but the dye didn't completely come off.  How could I touch Sky's curls without mucking them up?  My other arm was wrapped around Sky's, our hands around the drawing stylus.  I didn't want to let go of him.  I still had my mouth.  Maybe I could--

I dropped Sky's hand.  The confusion I'd felt earlier only doubled.

Nice!
Sky said.  He inspected the messy pomegranate and gave me a thumbs up.  So the confusion was mine alone.

We parted ways around afternoon, when Sky remembered he had an errand to run for his grandmother and I figured Rosa had probably left my house by then.  She had.  The rest of the day passed uneventfully, until evening came, and Uncle Gabriel and I put on our
deer hide Plains regalia, his tan-colored, mine gray.  I sat at the island in the kitchen, picking at the knots in my coarse hair.  Uncle Gabriel glanced at my colored fingernails, but he never said anything.

"Wish Mary was here," I said moodily.

"Why don't you tell her that?" Uncle Gabriel asked.  He attached prairie chicken feathers to his waist.

" 'Cause she'd make fun of me," I said.  "Are you gonna be with Rosa for most of the pauwau?"

"I don't know," Uncle Gabriel said slowly, suspicious.  "Why?"

Because I wanted to hang out with Sky, but I didn't want Uncle Gabriel knowing it.

"We'd better hit the badlands early tomorrow morning," Uncle Gabriel said.  "We won't be seeing the antelope again until autumn."

"I don't see why we can't just hunt deer," I said.  "It tastes about the same."

"Never put all your eggs in one basket," Uncle Gabriel said.

"I don't even like eggs," I said.  Sky did, though.  Just not herring eggs.

Around that time Andrew Nabako and Cyrus At Dawn came to our house with Tail Dance sticks, one for each of them and one for Uncle Gabriel.  It felt weird seeing Andrew out of his hobo clothes; for one, he actually had a face, harsh and wooden with a long, aristocratic nose.  I slithered back into the dark confines of my bedroom, Helloween blasting out of the stereo beneath my desk.  Helloween is boss.  I dug through my closet, looking for a clean notebook I could sketch in.

"Rafael!" Cyrus boomed merrily.  "Come be with the rest of the men!"

I pretended I was busy until it came time to leave for the pauwau.  I skulked out of my room and through the front door just as Uncle Gabriel was locking up the house.  Don't know why he bothered.  In Nettlebush people always came and went without knocking.  I'd never once heard of anyone stealing anything, either.  The only way you can steal something is if you don't already have it; and Nahii'wi means everyone has everything.

The tribal council had thrown together a giant bonfire in the windmill field.  Families stood around the stone basin and tossed kindling and tallow inside, the flames shooting higher and higher.  Now and again I caught glimpses of red zircon fireglass sparkling between the black embers.  I looked around the field, searching for Sky, but didn't see him.  I saw our tribal council planting the Shoshone flag in the ground, an eagle and red roses stamped across a sunny yellow backdrop.  They started to sing our Flag Song, a soft, sweet melody:

Tammi maappa'iahantu:

Red, white, and blue.

Ooppih tupippuh, yuwih nuu.

Kee numi tammen napitenka.

Yu'ipat natsiwenne, yuna.

Which means:

Look at what we have made with our own hands:

It predates red, white, and blue.

Though injured, our Native land is strong.

We are yet alive.

Our beautiful, waving flag.

The other tribes came into the field one at a time and planted their flags wherever they liked: the Navajo with their rainbow, the Kiowa with their Red Wolf, the Hopi with their corncobs and Four Corners.  This year the Ohlone had come, too, from California no less.  I thought they were the weirdest dressed, faces and arms splashed in stark white paint, shoulders and feet covered in fuzzy white furs.  I mean, I get it, tradition and all, but this was Arizona, where trees regularly caught on fire just because it was hot outside.  No need to dress for Alaska.  Sky was crazy, I thought.  Sky kept saying Alaska was in the south.

"Ah, Rafael, there you are!"

Aubrey Takes Flight beelined over to me.  His
deer hide overcoat was orange, blinding, his breechclout a noxious neon green.  I noticed he'd taped his glasses to his ears.  Smart.  He had a tiny little girl in his arms, her jet black hair decorated with frilly pink ribbons.

"Who's this?" I asked, feeling shy.  Stop it, I told myself.

"This is my niece, Serafine," Aubrey said kindly.

Serafine stuck her fingers in her mouth.  I guessed she was about three years old.  She stared at me with the candor we lose as we age, the candor I sorely missed.

"Hi," I said to Serafine.  I felt awkward.

"She's learning Jingle Dancing with Lila Little Hawk," Aubrey gushed.

Aubrey started blabbing about his farm's latest yield, and how his family had contributed acorn squash to the pauwau, and how he'd spent all yesterday digging new canals for the monsoon.  That guy could talk.  Serafine grabbed my hand, not warmly, but like she was assessing me.  Her confidence, her security funneled through me, stripping me bare.  When children are raised knowing their place in the Great Spirit, there's nothing on earth that can shake them.  Their feelings, too, are unadulterated.  Grown up feelings aren't the poor man's version, a pathetic half-shadow of what we've already lost.

"Erm," Aubrey said, sounding very uncomfortable.  "Rafael, are you wearing nail polish?"

"It's badass," I insisted.

Aubrey backed away from me.  I realized my face was probably doing the scary look thing.  I remembered Siobhan Stout's advice and tried to smile.  I must have smiled all wrong, because Aubrey sputtered and went pale and suddenly had somewhere else to be.  Least he promised he'd see me again later.  I looked around again for Sky and spotted him standing beneath one of the windmills, watching our tribal council shake hands with the others.  I made my way over to Sky, relieved.