Shoot the Moon
Page 25
Amax Dawson and his family were all present, as was Olene Turner and her gentleman friend, but he went largely ignored once Amax arrived.
Rowena Whitekiller had flown in from Chicago with her teenage daughter, Gaylene. Rowena had brought a camera and a bag of film, and she shot every roll.
Of course, not everyone who’d been involved in the Nick Harjo saga was present, and not all of the news of what had happened to them was pleasant.
On the day Carrie had admitted killing Gaylene, she had joined Kippy at the house, then put him in the car with her inside the closed garage. After she started the engine, she held him in her arms as she read The Cat in the Hat. They were both dead of carbon monoxide poisoning before they were found, proof that she meant what she said at the pond: I couldn’t never let them take Kippy away from me. I’d never let that happen.
O Boy was serving his time on death row at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, for his part in covering up Carrie’s crime with the murder of Joe Dawson.
Kyle Leander was in the Oklahoma Eastern State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, but according to those who heard from him, he seemed to be at peace and had become quite fond of the place, as they were “not stingy with Lortab, Demerol and Thorazine.”
But neither Carrie nor Kippy, O Boy nor Kyle, was on the mind of Lige Haney, who began the christening service that had taken days to prepare, as it included several verses from the Bible, the Koran and the Tipitaka, the holy book of Buddha; poetry by Maya Angelou and Maxine Hong Kingston; and quotes from essays by Thoreau, Louise Erdrich and the comic strip Peanuts, all of which Clara had typed in braille. And today, standing at Lige’s side, her silver hair grown long enough to curl softly around her face, she was radiant.
Teeve had made Lorraine’s christening clothes, a lovely long gown edged by Swedish lace and embroidered with tiny leaves of ivy along the hem. And she held the baby while Lige sprinkled Lorraine’s head with holy water that came from a natural spring and had been blessed in Cherokee by Johnny and Jackson Standingdeer.
When Lorraine felt the drops of water on her face, she looked surprised, then pleased, and, finally, she laughed.
As Lige concluded the service, he said, “Lorraine Leann Harjo, honor thy father, Nick Harjo, and thy mother, Ivy Harjo, which is the First Commandment with promise; that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.”
And everyone drawn together by love on that day and at that moment chorused, “Amen,” as Nick and Ivy held tightly to one another and their baby.
A NOTE ABOUT THE TYPE
This book was set in Garamond 3, a typeface based on the Garamond font family created by type designer Claude Garamond (1490-1561), one of the master type founders and cutters of the sixteenth century. The Garamond fonts remained vastly used and very popular through the centuries because of their classic design and effortless legibility they offer to the eye. At the onset of the twentieth century the major foundries in the world modified most of the old typefaces to adapt to the changing technology of the times. The modern-day Garamond 3 was designed by Morris Fuller Benton (1872-1948) and Thomas Maitland Cleland (1880-1964), who based their work on seventeenth-century copies of Claude Garamond’s fonts by Jean Jannon (1580-1658). It was first re-leased in the 1930s and has been popular ever since as an all- purpose text face, working superbly for books and for display uses as well.