“That’s a nice boy,” said Albert.
“Now empty your pockets.”
“All of them.”
Lewis turned his pockets inside out. A few small coins and a key fell near the fire. He shook the cloth and seemed bewildered, surprised by his own poverty.
“Shit, he ain’t got nothin’,” said Luke.
“Unzip your pants.”
“Now.”
“You wanna die?” Albert said, waving the knife under Lewis’s nose.
“Unzip them.”
“Good boy.”
Any second now, I said to myself, any second this will all end.
Albert yanked the Indian’s pants down and Luke knocked him to the ground. Lewis scrambled in the dirt, his pants bunched around his ankles. I saw his bare ass, his smooth dark skin. The boys pulled him to his feet.
“Now scat,” Luke said.
He was shackled by his own pants.
“You heard the man.”
They knocked him down again. I thought this could go on all night, so I shouted and charged. Surely the noise would bring someone from the woods. But no one came. Luke Stallard grabbed my arm and flung me backward. I stumbled over my own feet and fell on my butt. “Mind your business,” he said. “Only thing worse than an Indian is an Indian lover.” Lewis rolled toward the trees. When he finally got free of his pants, he tried to grab them, but Albert heaved them out of reach. “Get the hell out of here,” he said.
It was too late for me to help Lewis. I stayed on the ground, minding my business, just as Luke said. The boys turned to face the fire, bored by their own game. They rubbed their hands up and down their thighs. Their faces glowed.
Lewis Champeaux stood in front of me, staring down at my head for just an instant. He was the only one to really look at me that night. He knew I’d seen everything. He knew I hadn’t done a damn thing to help him, not really. My cheeks burned, like the sticks that burst into flame under his gaze. I looked away and still felt his heat all around me. He darted into the trees. The half-naked boy disappeared and left me alone, not to burn but to shiver.
I inched backward to the edge of the woods, waiting a half hour or more for Drew and his friends to forget about the pants and leave them crumpled in the dirt. I gathered them up, a limp bundle, tucked them under my arm and ran, intent on finding Lewis Champeaux. He would see I was better than the rest. I could still redeem myself.
Stumbling in the dark, I climbed out of the gully and headed toward the edge of town, beyond the shambles of the west side, and then another mile to the foot of the hills where the Indians lived. The streets meandered aimlessly; billows of dust rose up with each footstep. There were no streetlights, only the stark glow of bulbs inside unpainted shacks and old trailers.
I’d have to knock on every door until I found Lewis. I was afraid. Anyone could see I didn’t belong here. These two-room huts were crowded with people: old women and babies, men without shirts standing at the windows, and girls taking baths, six or seven in a room.
They were the stragglers who passed through Willis, looking for work at the mill. Indians were lucky to get hired at all. Most times they got jobs sweeping up piles of woodchips at the end of the day, earning half a white man’s wages. In a month or two the constant hunger of too many children drove most families back to the reservation.
Once in a while an Indian was lucky enough to be hired to load the trucks. That pay was decent, but there were accidents: a winch left unsecured, a slipped knot, another man who didn’t pull his weight. Those Indians left too, crippled in one foot or not quite right in the head.
I’d never thought too much about it until tonight. These people left town before I knew their names or recognized their faces. So I never troubled myself with the circumstances of their rushed departures. Daddy said that as soon as a shack was empty, a new family moved into it. Squatters’ rights. “One Indian’s the same as another.” The only one who mattered was Red Elk. Everybody noticed him because he was fool enough to take up with a white woman, because he was bold enough to demand a real job at the mill. I thought about Red Elk all the time, wondering about his son and my sister, knowing how much my father hated him.
I walked the streets, snooping in windows, a ghost no one could see. I clutched Lewis Champeaux’s pants, my one chance to prove myself. He would be grateful. He’d take me in his house. His grandmother would put a fat, dark baby in my lap and I’d hold her close. His mother would kiss me.
Someone hissed from the bushes and I jumped, ready to flee. “Give me those,” he said, stepping out of the brush. I held out the pants and the boy snatched them. He put them on right in front of me. What did it matter what I saw now? “Where’s my belt?”
“I couldn’t find it.” I had forgotten the belt. I was too anxious to get on with my good deed to mind with details.
“Shit,” he said, “cost me three bucks.”
“I’ll go back.”
“Forget it.” He wasn’t grateful. He wasn’t going to ask me inside. “Get outa here,” he said.
Nothing was forgiven. I was a coward, but he knew that already, so I didn’t bother to confess.
It was a long walk home. I had plenty of time to think. My prayers were useless. Lewis Champeaux’s knees were scraped and his butt was bruised. I hadn’t helped him. I had waited too long, expecting God to intervene. I knew people who were brave but not good. Zack Holler had the courage to steal and the strength to fight. That kind of courage was worthless. But what did I have? I believed in the idea of virtue, yet I’d done nothing for Lewis Champeaux. I stood by while Luke Stallard knocked him in the dirt. Without bravery, all my acts would be like this one: puny and meaningless. Such kindness was just another kind of cruelty. My knife was as sharp as Albert Cornett’s and did more damage in the end. I reminded Lewis of his humiliation. I reminded him that his kind was not welcome here. I’d shown Lewis Champeaux what he must have always known: a white girl couldn’t be trusted.
17
I STARTED thinking about Red Elk more and more after that night with Lewis Champeaux. I was determined to see him for myself. He had the courage I lacked, and I wondered if he looked different from other men. When Lanfear Deets was bleeding on the floor, Red Elk didn’t stop to think about the blood. He didn’t ask himself if any white man would do the same for him. He simply did what had to be done: he tied a tourniquet and saved a life.
Every afternoon for a week I rode my bike to the mill and waited for the shifts to change. I saw men with thick chests and bulging biceps, men with dark hairy forearms. But I didn’t see the man who wore his hair in a single braid down his back.
By Friday I got the idea that a man like Red Elk might leave by the back door to avoid any trouble. I climbed high in a willow near the building and waited, hidden by a thousand tiny leaves. I could see most of the town from my perch. I hadn’t been there more than five minutes when a small woman appeared on the road. She walked quickly, looking over her shoulder like a girl who was afraid of being followed in the dark. As she moved closer I recognized Miriam Deets. She looked tired and thin, but no longer childlike.
She was waiting for someone too. This was strange, since Lanfear worked at the truck stop now—Lanfear, the one-handed gas man. So did she. Poor Miriam. I thought of her waking before dawn to drive out to Ike’s. I wondered about those hungry children of hers—who watched them in the early hours of the morning?
The sky was dark, yellow with the threat of rain. Miriam glanced at her watch minute by minute. She turned to go, but someone called to her from the doorway and she spun to face him.
The sound of that voice nearly pulled me out of the tree. My father. The wind ruffled his scraggly blond hair. A deep crease cut his forehead down the middle. He pulled something from his pocket and pressed it into her hand. A fat roll of money, I thought, but couldn’t be sure. He tried to pull her close, stooping to kiss her cheek, but Miriam, demure or frightened, turned away. He stared at the ground; he couldn’t look at her until she took hi
s hand in hers and kissed his palm. She must have knocked the breath out of him with that touch.
For minutes after she was gone, my father slumped against the wall. At last the thunder rumbled and the first drops fell. Father raised his face to the cool fingers of the rain. When he walked toward the road, he was not heading home.
I watched till he was out of sight, then shimmied down to a low limb and dropped to the ground. I rode my bike through puddles and mud, pedaling as fast as I could.
I found my mother in Grandmother’s bedroom. She sat by the window, staring down at Arlen’s empty chicken coop as the rain pounded its roof. She knew I was in the doorway, but she didn’t turn to look at me. My wet clothes clung to my skin; my hair was plastered to my forehead.
“Can you imagine,” she said, “leaving your wife and child to take care of a sick woman?”
How did she know? Was he leaving us? “Is she sick?” I said.
“She’s dead now.”
No, I thought. I looked around the room for the knife, for the stained handkerchief, for splatters of blood on Mother’s dress.
“Mama promised he was coming back. Told me that till I was thirteen and knew better.” She held up one of the blue letters my grandfather had written. “Listen,” she said. The paper was so dry I thought it might crumble in Mother’s hands. “My dearest Rose, he wrote, this after fifteen years, Albertine is dead. I’ll be home soon, two weeks, a month at the most. Your grandmother never told me about this letter. She knew what I would have said. ‘Tell the bastard he doesn’t have a home.’ But what does it matter? He didn’t come. He died instead. Coward. He let her hope to the very end.
“That’s why she told me to marry your father—‘He’ll always come home,’ she said. ‘He may be drunk, his nose may be bloody and his fingers broken, but he’ll always come home.’ She was right about that. And I know he may chase that silly little woman all over town, but he’ll sleep in his own bed.”
I wondered how long she’d known. I wondered why she didn’t try to stop him.
“He’ll always come home, but one time I thought about driving north as far as I could go and never turning back. I went looking for your sister back in ’67. I never told you I did that. I had to hitchhike down to the reservation. I couldn’t ask your father for the car without answering his questions.
“It was summer, two years after she left. Maybe it was the misery of the day that made me go. It was hot, I swear, not a dog on the street. They all were lying up under the porches, playing dead. I walked two miles before I got a lift.
“An Indian woman with three children finally stopped for me. She was drinking whiskey from a pint bottle. ‘Take some,’ she said, ‘it eases the heat.’ I told her liquor made me hot. ‘That’s what I mean,’ she said. ‘You get a fire going inside, you don’t mind the air so much.’ I didn’t believe in her logic, but I drank. She kept weaving over the center line. I clutched the door. Her two boys poked at the girl baby between them in the backseat, making her squall. I drank some more and she was right. A fever inside makes you stop minding the heat.
“She dropped me at the edge of Arco, the only town on the reservation. I started knocking on doors, but nobody knew a thing about any blond girl. Some folks thought they might have seen her back in ’65, but I started to wonder if they really had or if they were just saying what they thought I wanted to hear. I asked about Billy Elk. They said no boy by that name had a white woman in this town. I carried my shoes in my hands. People gave me water if I asked.
“Children ran in the streets. They didn’t mind the heat. If you were just driving through, you would’ve thought no grown-ups lived here, just kids living in shacks they built themselves. A gang of them had circled a skinny dog. They threw stones at its head. I yelled; but when they turned and saw I wasn’t one of their mamas, they just laughed.
“I had to find some shade, so I walked down to a little dried-up bit of a creek. I lay down in the rushes and fell asleep so fast I couldn’t remember closing my eyes. When I woke, the wind was cool. My teeth felt fuzzy and something was banging behind my eyes.
“I staggered toward the road. I don’t know if I was drunk or if I had some kind of sickness from the heat. The dog lay in the ditch. I suppose its eyes were open but I couldn’t be sure: they were covered with black flies.
“I knew I didn’t have much time. Not many cars pass through the reservation after dark. I imagined calling your father, explaining where I was. I saw myself sitting on the side of the road, waiting for him to pick me up, knowing I’d have to pay him for his trouble.
“But I got lucky. A trucker geared down when he saw me on the side of the road. ‘Hop in, pretty woman,’ he said, and I knew it was going to be a long drive. I rolled my window down and let the wind beat my face. The trucker had hair growing in his ears and the thickest neck I ever saw. ‘What’s a lady like you doing on the road alone?’ He had to shout to make me hear.
“What was I supposed to say? ‘My girl ran off with an Indian boy and I came looking for her’?
“‘Not safe for a woman to be hitching,’ he said.
“‘I expect not,’ I said.
“‘You’re quite a talker,’ he said. ‘But you sure are pretty.’ I suppose I looked all right to a weary trucker who’d been keeping company with Patsy Cline for two days straight, crooning in the dark, drinking coffee and popping speed to stay awake. I told him about the dog and he looked like it mattered. He patted my knee, too hard, but it didn’t feel bad. I told him about Nina. I don’t know why. He put his arm around me. I cried on his shoulder. I cried for thirty miles, all the way up the edge of the lake. Your father never let me cry for her. He swore when I said her name. When I was alone the tears never came. Maybe I knew I needed somebody’s arm around me. Maybe I knew I’d cry till I fell apart if I let myself cry alone. My face would crack. My arms would drop off.
“When I saw the lights of Willis, I wanted to tell him to keep driving. I don’t know if he would have taken me. I suppose he would have gotten tired of my sobbing soon enough. But for a whole hour, we were the only two people in the world, and the cab of the truck was my whole life.
“He let me out at Ike’s so he could gas up. ‘I’d like to buy you a cup of coffee,’ he said, just like that, so polite.
“‘Folks know me here,’ I told him. For some reason those words made me feel even worse. Yeah, they knew me. They’d recognize my face. They’d tell my husband I had a cup of coffee with another man. They’d understand if Dean gave me a black eye, but there wasn’t anyone in this town who would let me cry as long as I wanted.
“I put my head on his chest. He kissed my hair.
“I dreamed of the dog that night. And I was the one to heave the stone that split its skull. The children scattered. They hated me. They returned with sticks. They beat my legs. I woke screaming but I couldn’t cry because my eyes were full of flies. Your father snored beside me. Even my yelling didn’t wake him. So I had to wonder. Did I make any sound?”
Mother pointed at the window. “Look, there’s your daddy now,” she said, “just like Mama told me. He’ll always come home.” She crushed the letter her own father had written so many years ago. It came apart in her fist, crumbled like blue dust. “Well, that’s that,” she said.
I had seen too much today. I didn’t want to know Daddy gave away money we needed. I didn’t want to hear that Mother dreamed of abandoning us—not only my father, but her entire past, her memories of Nina, and of me. I was afraid none of that was ever going to change.
Three days later I took a ride on my bike after school. I headed for Ike’s Truckstop though I wasn’t sure what I’d do when I got there.
All I ordered was a Coke. I sat at the counter; two truckers sat at a window table. We were the only customers. Lanfear Deets was outside, resting against a pump, waiting for a cloud of dust to appear on the road.
Miriam set the bottle of Coke in front of me. “Need a glass?” she said.
I shook my
head. Her skin wasn’t so pretty anymore; she had a grimy look from working in this place, and I could see why Daddy felt bad about the misery he’d caused her and Lanfear.
Sympathy was getting the best of me, and I almost left without saying anything, but then I got to thinking about my mother and the money Daddy gave to Miriam Deets. She was wiping the counter a few places down. I cleared my throat to get her attention.
When she was close enough for me to talk without the men at the window catching my words, I said, “Miriam, I got something to tell you.” Ike called to her from the back and she glanced over her shoulder. I grabbed her wrist. “Don’t worry,” I said. “This won’t take long.” She tried to tug free of my grip, but I was much stronger than Miriam Deets.
I said, “My mother hasn’t bought herself a new dress in five years. We eat pork fat and beans for three days at the end of every month. There’s been a hole in our couch ever since I can remember. I got a box of colored pencils for my birthday last year. That’s all.” Ike called again. I said, “You hear what I’m telling you?”
Miriam nodded and I let her go. She ran into the kitchen. I wanted to run too, but I didn’t. I sauntered past the men at the window, acting casual though my legs were going soft so fast I could barely walk.
I had a hunch that my father paid Miriam once a week. I waited. On Friday I rode out to the mill and climbed the willow. Daddy appeared at the back door several times; he shaded his eyes and scanned the road. But there was no sign of Miriam Deets. I beat Father home by a good hour. When he finally turned into our drive, he sat in the truck for a long time with the windows up. He wasn’t smoking; he wasn’t doing anything. Mother watched him from the living room. “What’s with your father?” she said. I didn’t answer. For once, I was smart enough to keep my mouth shut.
18
BY THE middle of June, Montana rivers ran swift and cold, swelled by snow melting off the mountains. One evening, just at twilight, Freda Graves marched us down to a bend in Bear Creek, a place where water caught in the shallows, tripping itself over pebbles and stones, whirling to a white froth. I’d been sneaking off to these meetings for six weeks. For the most part, I’d stayed out of trouble; my worst transgression was that I had to lie to Mother every Tuesday, embellishing my imaginary friendship with Rita Ditella. My thoughts were pure enough, I suppose, but I’d done nothing virtuous, and I was still looking for someone to show me how to be good in ways that mattered.
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