He wished me luck.
I said, "Look, Mr. Sajeed. It occurs to me that you might call Amanda Austin to tell her to expect a visitor—and that's fine with me if you do. But I'd like you not to mention my name—at least yet. I ask this of you."
He looked at me with his smiling black eyes. "You wish to trick Miss Amanda Austin?"
"Harmlessly, I promise. And—it's a trick in the name of honesty and justice. I'm not even sure it'll—"
"I will not call her. I do not believe she can be tricked, so it does not matter."
"What is she, a mind reader?"
"Some think so, but I myself do not believe in such things."
I went down to the natural grocery and bought a bag of oranges and a package of dates and carried them up to Mr. Sajeed's loft. "Please accept my thanks," I said.
He took the fruit with a broad white smile. "I accept your thanks."
Chapter 23
Miss Amanda Austin lived in an apartment downtown in one of those cool old buildings with stone lintels and bronze lobby doors. I rang her buzzer and after a minute a sweet voice came over the intercom. "Yes?"
"My name is Stacy Wounded Deer." I paused. "I search for Miss Amanda Austin. I am sent by friends."
"Uh, well, what about?"
"I am sent by friends."
"Friends—who?"
"Friends of Miss Beverly Austin."
"Oh? Well, come on up."
"If it is convenient. Thank you very much."
"Oh, it's always convenient with me!" Amanda Austin's voice was upbeat, the words delivered with crisp enthusiasm.
The apartment door stood ajar as I alighted from the elevator. I tapped on it and pushed it two inches open. A brief whirring sound came to my ears, then, "Come in!"
I stepped into a bright living room where a rush of information presented itself to me. A woman, a near-replica of my fugitive—Audrey Knox, now identified as Beverly Austin—sat in a motorized wheelchair. Sajeed had said Amanda was older, and I saw this, but she didn't look that much older—maybe three or five years.
Amanda Austin's hair twined about her ears and neck in the same silky-curly way Beverly's had. She had the same plump pixie mouth and chin. Even the eyes were similar, though Amanda lacked the hard-life stress lines I'd noticed in her sister.
I closed the door behind me, crossed the room, and took Amanda's extended hand. "How do you do, Miss Austin? As I said, I'm Stacy Wounded Deer."
"Very well today, thank you." She smiled and looked at me with curiosity and friendliness. Her basic build was about the same as Beverly's, but her body was heavier. Her round tummy challenged the fabric of the pale pink sweatsuit she was wearing, but she didn't have that weighed-down, sad-frog look that you see in other fat wheelchair-bound people. On her feet were white fringed moccasins, and I half expected them to fidget.
Because I guess if she hadn't been in a wheelchair I'd have called her hyperkinetic. Actually, it was her affect that seemed hyper—she had this active gladness about everything, no matter what. She wore feather earrings that tossed and swung with the movements of her head.
The hand I took felt slightly stiff in mine but not cold. I clasped it gently with both of mine. "Thank you for seeing me."
She flexed her hand, and I sensed the gesture required strain. "Technically," she explained, "I'm a quad, but I function closer to a para."
"You sustained a spinal cord injury, then."
"Yes."
"I am sorry to know it."
Her wheelchair was one of those mountain-bike ones, with knobby tires and a sturdy frame. Mud had been wiped from the frame, and the tires showed wear. She touched the toggle on the armrest, the motor whirred, and she went to a position of comfort in the room, her back to a bookcase, her view oblique to the door. The apartment was warm but only slightly stuffy. There was a smell of heated-up food; I noticed a plate with a clump of casserole on a small eating table. There were wheelchair-height counters in the open kitchen and a short hallway to the bedroom. It appeared that Amanda lived alone. She gestured toward a short couch with a questioning look and hiked herself up with one elbow, adjusting her butt more satisfactorily in her chair.
"Have you finished your meal?" I asked.
"Oh, yes, yes. I'll clear that off later."
Still standing, I opened my pea coat and carefully withdrew two brilliant red maple leaves I'd found still clinging to a branch in a park I'd cut through along the way. I also took out a black pebble and a short forked stick whose ends I'd whittled round.
"I offer these tokens of our world to you." I held them out to her.
She opened her hands gravely and bowed her head. I placed the things in her hands, and she lowered them to her lap, touching them all with reverence. She looked up at me. "Thank you."
"You are welcome, but my thanks go to you."
I played the nature gambit because my guess about Amanda, based on what Sajeed had said, was right.
There was a shopping-channel feel to the apartment, exactly as I'd hoped. It's not that the place was crowded with plasticky junk—it wasn't. But Amanda Austin was obviously a devotee of Native American souvenirs. I call them souvenirs because I'm not qualified to know whether they were genuine tribal items or what, you know? Scattered around the room I noticed a rough blanket with zigzag motifs, a cowrie-shell rattle, a pueblo drum, and about half a dozen wooden flutes that had been stuck together to make a lamp base, topped by a thong-laced paper shade.
A painting of a half-woman, half-she-bobcat defending three terrified kits from an ugly white man in a lumberjack coat dominated the wall between the large windows that overlooked the street. Other pictures showed bare-chested braves dandling cute papooses on their knees in front of the campfire, dream catchers protecting sleeping families from miasmatic evil spirits, and mustangs running free.
Well, that explained the shopping-channel feel: The pictures were so stunningly inauthentic.
To be blunt, Amanda was what I'd been hoping for: a Native American wannabe. You know, a non-Native American person who finds something attractive and deep about Native Americans, and attempts to adopt their spiritual practices and customs—the appealing ones, anyway. Someone who thinks Dances With Wolves was a good movie and has never eaten government-commodity cheese, nor used it to weigh down a drying pelt. Needless to say, real Indians can't stand such people.
And it would seem she had been a wannabe for some time, if she'd gotten her thunderbird shoes before her spinal injury. I didn't know when that was, but it was evident that she'd become accustomed to her disability. The apartment had been modified for her, and the work didn't look brand-new.
Clearly this interview would take some work, but I'd prepared myself on the walk over, and was willing to give it everything I had.
"I have need to talk about Beverly," I said, taking a seat and continuing to talk in the fake-formal way that New Age types go mad for.
Amanda flipped her eyes sideways, then into mine, with a look that was both sly and excited. She searched my eyes for a clue.
I smiled conspiratorially. "The people in town speak very highly of you. Not so highly of Beverly, I fear, though such is not surprising. People warned me that you are very protective of your sister." A corner of her mouth turned up; she was fighting smiling back at me. "Well," I went on, "I mean her no harm. If I did, I would not reveal myself to you, like a blundering coyote. I would keep away from you the way a snake avoids prey more powerful than itself."
Her lips parted as she listened, and an expression of awe and still greater excitement came over her face. "Who spoke of me to you?"
I gave her a coy look that conveyed, Don't bother about that; we're in on the same secret. "It matters not," I said. "You are a distinctive personage around town, moving about in your chariot. People feel warmly toward you. They feel you have a special power: extraordinarily positive, good energy, like a she-bear when the new sprigs of berry canes peek up from the snow in springtime."
She a
lmost laughed with pleasure at my bullshit.
I went on, "And you try to help people on their unique paths. This is plain." She liked that too.
I paused. "I knew Beverly in Detroit, but a twelvemonth has passed since my eyes last looked upon hers."
Amanda said, "I am protective of her, yes, and I'll tell you right now she's not in Idaho."
Shit. "Ah, yes, I see."
"Did you come from Detroit?"
"Yes."
"Are you from Detroit originally?"
In a haunted, hollow voice, I said, "My origins are unknown."
"You have a wonderful name: Stacy Wounded Deer. Are you of Original Peoples descent?" Amanda Austin asked compassionately.
"Of course your mind wonders. In a way, I am definitely descended from the great native tribal people of this land. The fact is, I was adopted. I was born to a wealthy white couple who abused me as an infant, then the government took me away. A medicine woman of the Chippewa adopted me and treated me kindly. I grew up largely among the rocks and trees of the forest. She taught me the old ways."
"Wow!"
The gist of Amanda was—how can I put it? There was a determined beneficence about her, something almost forced. Well, my God, how does a person cope with such a dreadful calamity as paralysis? You do the best you fucking can, and if that includes pretending to be a Sioux fortune teller, so be it.
She suggested, "Perhaps we can talk about the old ways."
"Perhaps," I answered, "but first—"
"Most of the people who've come asking about Beverly want something from her."
"I have heard such. But I am not one of them. In fact, I wish to give something to her. My surprise is great that you would permit I, a stranger, into your home."
"I'm not afraid!" she exclaimed. "I love people—all people. Since my accident I've become totally fearless. Because I've put myself in the palm of … in the palm of the Great Spirit." Plainly, her trust was broad, but I wondered whether it was very deep.
I nodded.
She added, "Everybody knows the Great Spirit in their own way."
"You said it."
"I find that more love comes to me when I say yes to everything. What's the worst that could happen, really? Somebody tries to rape me? Honesty. Somebody steals my possessions? Come on."
"You are a most impressive lady, Amanda Austin." She loved hearing that, looking down modestly and grinning like crazy. I said, "The fact is that Beverly owes me no money—it is I who owe her money, a large amount of money. I wish to pay her back on behalf of myself and two other individuals from Detroit. Together we did some … work. You understand?"
She nodded, lips parted, but of course she didn't know what the hell I was talking about, since I didn't myself.
"An argument occurred," I continued, "and we went our separate ways—to the four winds—but three of us were unfair to Beverly."
"Well, that's the first time I've heard anybody say they were unfair to Bev, instead of the other way around."
"Yes. There is a great deal more goodness in Beverly Austin than for which ordinary people give her credit."
She caught that 'ordinary' and nodded again. "That is so true."
"If you do not wish to help me return the money that belongs properly to Beverly, it is all right. I will find her sooner or later."
"Well—I—I'm not saying I—" She stopped and looked at the gifts in her lap. "I love my sister, you know?"
"Clear that is to me."
"It hasn't been easy." She glanced away regretfully.
"Clear that too is. The light from Sister Moon falls, and we must catch it in whatever vessel we have." I made a sweeping, horizon-to-horizon gesture.
"You are so right, Stacy, you are so right."
"My real first name is Cloudrunner, but only do I reveal it when in the company of a special individual. You may call me Cloudrunner. I sense that you have studied shamanism?"
"I have, Cloudrunner, for months and months."
"You have much more to learn."
"Oh, for sure! Maybe you could—" She clasped her hands awkwardly, the stiffness in them evident.
"You have felt pain from the actions of Beverly, have you not?"
"You can say that again. Can I tell you what happened?"
"Please."
"A lot of people have been mad at Beverly. OK, she used drugs, she stole, and she lied, OK? But since my accident I've made a super-big leap in understanding." She smiled gently and gazed out the window at the buildings across the street. "It's all about forgiveness."
"Ah, forgiveness—the badger and the anthill, you know."
She shifted her gaze back to me. "I'm not sure I—"
"No matter. Please go on."
"Well, if you know Bev, you know she's wild."
"Undisciplined."
"Yes! That's a better word. We grew up with the usual sibling rivalry, but when it came down to it, we loved each other. We both loved the outdoors—this state is so beautiful! We'd run along the river, go kayaking and rafting on them all—the Boise, the Snake, the lower Salmon. We'd ski, we'd go off-roading with older kids with Jeeps. It was great!"
As Amanda talked, she looked at me steadily with an anxious expression, and I saw that she was hoping to please me, to pass the test of my judgment as a more genuine Native American than she was, which was pathetic, but that's what I wanted. Further, I saw her struggling with a growing desire to cooperate with me.
"Well, our parents split up when Bev was twelve and I was sixteen. She took it hard. The fact was, our dad was a jerk and our mom finally got up the guts to throw him out, but I think Bev used that as an excuse to behave badly. Mom had to go to work, so we were alone a lot. I used the time to do more homework for extra credit, but Bev hooked up with the wrong crowd, the hoodlum crowd."
"Understandable choice—such a group seems so much smarter than teachers and parents."
"Yes, yes, exactly."
"And yet hoodlum life is all empty, like a milkweed pod after an autumn gust."
"Yes," Amanda breathed. "You have the most beautiful way of—"
"Go on, please."
"Well, Bev developed quite a drug habit—pot, cocaine, crack. Then she started using heroin, and I got scared. She was stealing. She stole from me, from our mom, from anybody. She'd borrow and never pay back. After high school I got a job guiding raft trips on the Snake. I was in better shape then." She looked down at her useless legs, then brightly up at me. "I used to be quite the athlete!"
My stomach clenched with pity, but I only nodded.
"I got Bev jobs too, sometimes," she went on, "but she'd work a little bit, then spend what money she made on partying. I'd get mad. I tried like heck to get her away from drugs. With our mom gone so much, I felt responsible for her, you know. I got involved in a pen-pal program for incarcerated people, and it was neat writing letters to convicts and getting some back. So I showed some of the letters to Bev, and she got interested. We were both writing to convicts for a while—young girls in Idaho writing to hardened criminals in penitentiaries!"
"Beverly corresponded with convicts?"
"Yes. In retrospect I realize it probably wasn't such a good idea, but you know, they censor those letters and you can't talk about drugs and sex and things."
"Right," I agreed.
"Well, all I know is that later she went to Michigan to see one of those guys."
A housefly zoomed into the room and headed for Amanda's face. She batted it away, then it buzzed toward me. I cuffed it in midair and it fell to the floor.
I asked, "Was he in the federal facility at Milan?"
"No. Somehow I think he was in one of the state prisons there. I don't remember which one."
"I see."
"I'm getting ahead of myself." She looked at the fly writhing on the floor. I put it out of its misery with a tap of my sneaker.
She looked at me.
I said, "I am on good terms with the spirits of vermin. Please resume."
"Yes." I was thirsty but didn't want to interrupt by asking for water. I think Amanda was waiting for me to come up with a nature allegory, but I couldn't think of one, so she went on.
"But she could never stay clean. Like I said, she went to Michigan to meet this guy, then she came back and it started all over again—the degradation of drug addiction. Finally, I launched an all-out attack against her drug use. I began threatening to turn her in to the police when I knew she had drugs on her. She didn't like that! But of course I didn't really want to see her go to jail; I wanted her to get help."
A clock under a glass dome with one of those swirly mechanisms let out a little gong. I glanced at it on the table next to me and saw that the glass dome was decorated with squiggles and dots meant to look primitive or something—those "natives" and their painted-clock collections. I noticed shadows creeping across the floor, shadows from the branches outside Amanda's window, as the sun dropped slowly to the west.
She twitched the control on her chair and moved a bit. "The sun was in my eyes," she told me. "I want to see you." I nodded solemnly, acceptingly. "I learned about interventions, you know," she went on, "where friends and family get together and confront the person about their addiction, and they make them go into treatment. I organized an intervention for Beverly. I had such a good feeling about it—I got our mom involved—and that was a hard one, let me tell you—and our old school chums, and I even told some of her hoodlum friends about it and they promised to keep it quiet and help us! We had a date set and everything, and Bev had no idea."
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