Steal the North: A Novel (18 page)

“Don’t go there.” It’s not a tourist attraction. “I mean without me. I’ll take you.”

“I don’t want to leave you. Will you wait for me?”

“Do you really have to ask that? Hold on, what do you even mean?”

“I mean,” she says, taking off her hat, “will you see other girls while I’m gone?”

“Fuck, Emmy. Really?” I stand up. After the way we touched the other day on the couch? Did she not feel anything? “You don’t trust me very much.”

“I wish you
were taking me instead of—”

I don’t let her finish. I bend down and kiss her to silence her. She may regret what she was about to say. Her aunt doesn’t look well. Having never been around her before, Emmy wouldn’t know this. I know the look because I see it on the rez with Indians who refuse to go to the doctor, like Emmy’s aunt, or who refuse meds for their diabetes, or who can’t get to the doctor or pay the co-pays when Indian Health can’t fix them. “Please go with your aunt,” I say. “Have fun.” I sit back down on the bench. I tell her I plan on going to Omak and the rez for a few days or a week to chop some more wood and to check on my mom. I also plan to hunt as often as I can, but I don’t tell her that. Buck season on the rez has already begun. I assure her I’ll be back and I’ll be faithful. “I’ve been wanting to tell you something,” I say. “I’ve never said this to a girl before.” I’m nervous as hell. “After I say it, you have to trust me.”

Because it is just for her to hear, I whisper it into her ear.

“I love you more,” she says, but out loud, into the wind. I shake my head.

She stands up, dropping her hat, and starts pacing.

“Hey,” I say. “What’s the matter?”

“What if my aunt and uncle had never found Mom’s number? What if I’d spent this summer alone in mine and Mom’s apartment? Or in Connor’s bedroom, where he likes me to do weird things to him and he makes fun of me for not wearing thongs?”

I stand up at that one. What weird things? But I can’t get mad. I’ve had sex with other girls—not kinky sex, but sex. And why would he give a fuck what type of underwear she wears? I loved Emmy’s underwear the other day. In fact, I haven’t stopped thinking about them.

“What if I’d never met Aunt Beth, like I’ve never met my dad?” Snot starts to pour from her nose. She wipes it. “What if you hadn’t come over to say hi to me? I would’ve never been brave enough to go over and talk to you. Do you know that?” She’s freaking out. “Do you ever think about that? What if you would’ve stayed in Omak this summer? It’s practically in Canada. Do you think about that? Do you, Reuben?”

I grab her. “I would’ve found you.”

“You would have? How? How do you know? You don’t know.”

“I would have found you.”

Was I lost before Emmy? I don’t think so. I avoid drugs and alcohol and stay on the path. What path? The peace path? The war path? The in-between path, like Chief Moses? He wore out many ponies traveling between cavalry camps and tribal councils. The I’m-forced-to-give-all-my-land-away-despite-riding-the-iron-horse-all-the-way-to-D.C.-twice-to-beg-for-my-people path? The any-path-but-my-dad’s path? The I-want-to-leave-the-reservation-and-go-to-college path? The I-learn-just-enough-from-the-elders path? The I-play-football-like-a-white-boy path? The-I-won’t-put-on-a-feathered-headpiece-and-dance- in-the-cafeteria-one-period-a-day path? The paved path? The fucking BIA’s bullshit fill-out-another-form-and-then-wait-in-another-line path? The path between the white man’s ways and the native way. The Okanogan River divides the Indian side of Omak from the nonrez side. On one side of this river, white boys wrestle bulls. On the other, Indian boys ride horses down a cliff. I safely watch from my stadium seat. As kids Ray and I used to run down Suicide Hill barefoot, but that doesn’t count. On the phone this morning Mom said we need to talk. She wants me to come back for the rest of the summer. I didn’t tell Emmy. It can mean only one thing: she’s drinking heavily because her latest man is threatening to dump her. The some-fucking-loser-fucks-over-my-mom-again-and-I-have-to-fucking-clean-up-the-mess- because-my-dad-is-a-sorry-example-of-Coyote path?

I didn’t just find Emmy. She also found me. I’d been hunting for days in the woods, feeling strong and agile, despite the jumble of paths, and trying to ignore the way my legs and shoulders had begun to ache a little in the cold and my belly had begun to feel empty. I was trying to fill the freezers of the old people, not realizing my own hunger until Emmy stepped into the clearing.

Bethany

I defer to Matt’s judgment about Emmy and the neighbor boy. I trust Matt completely. I trust Emmy also. I feel such a calm when I am with her, and I marvel at her every move as if she were still an infant. But I worry because she
is
so young, and both Kate and I fell hard for our first boyfriends. Before Emmy arrived, I feared she’d be all grown up, but she’s not, and she’s not hardened or edgy like a city kid. Kate has kept her close under her wing, as I made my sister promise to do when she left here. A few nights before the healing, Emmy asked me to sing to her when I tucked her into bed. She seemed sad. I usually go to sleep hours before she does, but I like to get her settled first with a book and a cup of chamomile tea. Singing to Emmy erased years of sorrow from my heart.

I trust Reuben also, or I am trying to. Matt swears he’s a good kid. And he’s right that we’ve seen the boy grow up over the last five years or so that Teresa has lived next door. It used to endear me to Reuben—not that he and I ever talked—to think how he was the same age as Emmy. And it shouldn’t matter at all that he’s Indian. Matt’s adamant about that. As far as Reuben’s not being a Christian, Matt says he himself didn’t convert until he was the boy’s age. Matt reminds me that I’ve never been on the Colville Reservation. He claims the poverty is indescribable, and half the tribe walks around in an alcoholic stupor. But that has to be an exaggeration.

I remember a few summers back Reuben appeared at his sister’s place with his arm in a cast, eye black and blue, and lip cracked and swollen. I took over herbs for his cuts and bruises. Unlike the ladies at church, Teresa took them without smirking. She wasn’t as willing the year before when I brought her a Bible and tracts. Matt said then that Reuben probably just fell or maybe he got into a fight with another boy. Matt and his brother and cousins used to brawl and get busted up on dirt bikes. He said it was good if the boy had a little fight in him. Regardless, I added Reuben’s name to the church prayer chain that week and the following.

Watching Emmy run to Reuben the other day in the rain was tender but left me restless that night. Should I call Kate? Matt told me to wait, to let Emmy have a summertime friend. He said it might be just a crush and no point in provoking Kate. It was the first time I’d seen Emmy and Reuben together. Matt didn’t seem surprised. Nor should I have been. I’ve seen their waves and smiles go from awkward to familiar to playful. When Reuben and Emmy hugged, I knew it was already far more than a crush. In fact, I got the strange feeling Emmy had just run into the arms of her future husband. I’ve felt more intuitive than ever since the healing. Emmy must also because my garden has thrived lately in her hands. Only how can it ever work for Emmy and the boy? Kate and Jamie lived only two hours away from each other, not two states away, and the distance tore them apart and eventually left my sister selling her body to truckers. All these years I’ve labored to keep Kate’s secret from Matt. I’ve longed, desperately at times, to deliver myself of the burdensome memories from Kate’s last months here: her bruises, ripped blouses, bladder infections, the sound of her throwing up or sobbing in the shower.

There’s another secret I’ve had to keep from Matt all these years—so intertwined it is with the first.
I told Kate to leave town
. I begged her to leave, in fact, and
I insisted she take Emmy. Kate had threatened to leave town once, and maybe that planted the seed.
I sent my sister and her baby away on a bus.

Shortly after a trucker cut off Kate’s hair, I went to our father behind her back and pleaded with him for any money he could spare. My faith in God had begun to wane for the first time in my life. Where was God’s mercy? Why wouldn’t Jesus help my sister as he had Mary Magdalene? I began to doubt the Lord’s benevolence outside the pages of the Bible. Then, shamefully, I even began to doubt the Bible. It turned out, unbeknownst to Kate or me, that our mother’s family had left us some money in a Seattle bank. Praise be. I promised the Lord my faith in him would never again waver, and it hasn’t.

When I secured the money, I brought it to Kate and said, “You can stop now.”

She shook her head. Emmy was asleep.

“If you don’t stop, there will be nothing left of you.”

She stared out the window. It was an ugly, overcast day. “I don’t want the money,” she said flatly. “You and Matt keep it. Keep Emmy too. She’s better off—”

I didn’t let her finish. “You don’t mean that. Look at me.” I barely recognized her with her choppy hair, smeared eye makeup, distant gaze. “
Your
little girl needs you,” I said. “She needs you more than she needs me.”

I
had
to make that true:
Emmy had to need Kate more than she did me
. It was the key to my sister’s survival.

My voice trembled as I continued. “She needs you more than I need you.” Kate had no idea where I was headed with my reasoning, and maybe I really didn’t either until that exact moment. “Leave town, Kate,” I said, taking a couple of deep breaths. “Take the money and leave town with Emmy.” I told her to go make a new start somewhere far away from all the bad memories of Mother’s death, Father, the church, Jamie, and especially the truckers, who I hoped with all my heart burned in hell. I’d never had such thoughts.

“I can’t leave you,” she protested. And she never would have—I firmly believe this—if I hadn’t begged her to. I told her I’d rather lose her on a Greyhound bus, lose Emmy also, both of them for a while, than have her climb into one more trucker’s cab.

I was fighting for her soul, and maybe for mine as well.

I miss Kate more with Emmy here, if possible. I had no idea the day I told my sister to leave that she’d never return or ever be in touch. Sometimes I fear, had I known, I would’ve given up eternity to keep her and Emmy by me on earth. Kate looks better than I expected in the photos, certainly better than when she left here: too thin, slouchy shoulders, globs of lipstick. Perhaps Kate holds her shoulders back a little too stiffly now. Since the healing I’ve felt healthier than I have in years, but I still don’t think Kate would say I look better than she expected. Maybe I’ve missed her too much. Because I don’t remember Mother, Kate fills all my memories of childhood. The warmth of her hair, her daring, and her love. It didn’t spill out of her. But it was there, like an ember, and if she let you move in close—and she let me—the heat was intense.

How Jamie could turn away, it still astounds me.

For years after Mother died, I wouldn’t leave Kate’s side in town, at school, or even at home. If I did, a coldness crept over me as if I’d stepped into water. I’d get the same feeling when she’d talk about leaving America to be a missionary overseas. My clinginess never irritated Kate. It irritated her classmates at school, so Kate quit hanging around them, even after the girls apologized. My sister doesn’t do things halfway. Why didn’t I take Kate’s determined nature into consideration when I told her to leave? Kate hasn’t called again since my birthday, when she nearly broke down on the phone. I’m afraid to bother her. Emmy says her mom puts in twice the teaching hours over the summer to make ends meet the rest of the year. I want to tell Kate about the mobile Emmy recently finished and hung above the baby’s crib. I’ve never seen anything quite like it: a flock of delicate paper birds suspended by threads.

Matt loves the idea of my taking Emmy on a trip. He hasn’t seemed this proud of me in years. I was hoping he’d come with us. I’ve never driven far without him. I married Matt when I was sixteen. He taught me to drive, as he’s been trying to teach Emmy. Kate was fond of looking at maps, but they make me dizzy. Studying one with Matt, I decide on three short excursions rather than one long trek. The idea of coming home between destinations—to rest up, water my garden, and see Matt—sets my mind more at ease. First, Emmy and I will go to Leavenworth, a Bavarian village in the Cascades foothills. Next, to the Columbia Gorge, which divides Washington from Oregon. Third, we’ll go to Walla Walla and the Whitman Mission. I want to take Emmy there most of all.

I treasure the pioneer story of Narcissa and Marcus Whitman. Narcissa, in 1836, was one of the first two white women to cross the Rocky Mountains. Her daughter was the first pioneer child born in the West, although she drowned tragically at age two. Narcissa’s letters were published in a book, a copy of which is in our church’s small lending library. Missionaries to the Cayuse Indians for eleven years, the Whitmans were eventually killed in a massacre. But their spirit lives on. Emmy had no idea her mom ever wanted to be a missionary. I tell her that not only does Kate’s bravery remind me of Narcissa’s but that Narcissa was separated from a sister she deeply loved and never saw again. “You’ll see Mom again,” Emmy says, and I want to believe her. Narcissa used to ride out to meet the wagon trains when they started coming over the mountains, looking for her sister, whom she never found.

The night before Emmy and I leave, Matt holds me particularly close. He’s never slept alone in our bed. I do occasionally when he goes on extended hunting and fishing trips with his brother. Lately it seems he’s been trying to hunt closer to home. I’ve never complained or hinted at how alone I feel when he’s gone.

“Sorry, I’ve been so nervous,” I say to Emmy once we’re on the road. I hesitated to leave behind any of my oils and teas. I had Matt go over the directions with me so many times that he almost came with us. “This is nice, Emmy.”

“We’re adventurers now.”

We chat in a more relaxed manner than we ever did in the trailer. It’s the open road, I suppose. I don’t get sleepy. I feel wide awake.

“Oh, Aunt Beth, look!” It’s the Columbia River. We have to cross it at Vantage. It sits far down in a canyon, and there are no shores. It looks magnificent and deep. I forgot what a mighty river it is. The wind gusts as we cross the bridge, and I have to grip the steering wheel. “I could look at it all day,” she says. I just want to get across.

In Leavenworth, we walk around the village, listen to yodelers, watch men in shorts, suspenders, and knee socks play the accordion. We visit a nutcracker museum. I buy Emmy a music box. We eat German food, then sit on a bench surrounded by pots of geraniums and watch the other tourists. The mountains surround us, but not too closely. I’m almost giddy. Emmy too seems exuberant.

“I love you,” she says to me once we’re back in the hotel room and nibbling on chocolates. “I can’t wait to have a cousin.” We are sitting in huge German chairs that we pushed right up to our third-story hotel room window, to watch the sun set on the mountains and the pines and the fairy tale–looking buildings of the village. “Do you want a boy or a girl?”

“Either would be a blessing.” Emmy and I haven’t talked much at all about the baby. I think she feels awkward with my history of miscarriages. She doesn’t know the extent, and I hope never will. Kate either. Only Matt knows. And now Brother Mathias. Should I have been so open? “Well, maybe a boy for Matt. After all, I have you.”

She smiles. Where did my niece get that smile? It’s not Kate’s. Or Jamie’s, from what I remember. Or even a combination. It’s entirely her own.

“You can have more babies,” she says. “You can have both.”

“No, Emmy. This is it.” Narcissa Whitman had no more children after her firstborn drowned. “I’m getting older.”

“No, you’re not.” She sounds worried. “You and Mom are still young.”

She looks tiny in the big chair, like Goldilocks. Does Emmy think if I miscarry this time, it will be her fault? I hadn’t thought about it until now. How foolish of me.

“If this healing doesn’t work,” I say, “it won’t be your fault in
any
way.”

She gazes out the window a long time. I shouldn’t have said anything. “God wouldn’t do that to you,” she says. “Would he?”

The way Emmy struggles day to day with faith reminds me of her mom, except that Emmy, bless her heart, tries to pretend otherwise, at least around me.

“Oh, honey.” I don’t want her sad.

“I would never forgive him.”

I’ve never blamed God for my miscarriages. “The Lord is nigh unto me,” I tell her. “Unto us.”

I suggest we eat the whole box of chocolates instead of saving any for tomorrow.

“I’m going to be the best cousin. Just wait.”

I sleep beside her for two nights. I keep having to tell myself I’m not dreaming.

For our second trip, we head south to the Columbia Gorge, which is the only sea level route through the Cascades. We follow the river on the Oregon side because the highway is lower. As we travel west, I can see pines beginning on the cliffs farther down the highway, and snow-covered Mount Hood looms. The wind in the gorge nearly rips off the car doors when we stop at The Dalles Dam. We spend an hour in the attached museum. Emmy loves all the old photographs of Indians fishing on wooden piers built out precariously into the raging Columbia before it was dammed. I’d had no idea the river
ever
looked like that. The place used to be called Celilo Falls, and it was a major native fishery. Now the falls are silent and below water. A tiny dilapidated Indian village still remains, but the interstate separates it from the river. We cross back over the Columbia to the more rugged Washington side to find the heritage marker for Celilo. I’ve lived in Washington my whole life and never heard the story of Celilo Falls or felt wind as fierce as the wind by that marker. Actually I feel more than wind. The sense of loss is enormous and foreboding, especially in an already barren landscape.