“Hey, look who’s here,” a voice calls out.
Tink Watson stands on the bank. He is the last person in the world Sam wants to see right now, with the possible exception of his father, Rocky. Tink is in Sam’s class at school and they were friends, briefly, the year before. Tink is white and rich and full of himself because his father runs the casino. He dyes his brown hair blonde and girls at school are crazy about him. Sam is surprised to see him in the forest, at a swimming hole instead of the country club pool.
Jack Raven, a Cherokee a grade behind Tink and Sam, stands with Tink on the bank. Jack must have brought him to the swimming hole, though Sam can’t imagine why Jack would put up with Tink. But even Sam put up with him for about a month—until he figured out Tink was a total fake.
“Should have known you’d be here,” Tink says. “Just when I wanted to take a swim.”
“It’s a big stream,” Sam says. “Plenty of room for all of us.”
Sam’s jeans lie on the ground behind Tink on the opposite shore, the stone he found in the pocket. On a nearby branch hangs his ball cap with the hawk feather. Sam’s body tenses when Tink reaches for his cap and puts it on.
“How c-cute,” Tink says, with a slight stutter. “The little boy’s playing In-jun.” Tink dances and hollers like the war-painted savages in old Westerns. Jack Raven laughs and joins Tink in his dance. Sam expects crap from Tink, but wants Jack to not dishonor their people.
“Put that down,” Sam yells, swimming toward the shore. Angry, he stands in the knee deep water. The two boys point at him.
“What a fruit,” Tink laughs, doubled over. “A f-fruit of the loom, that is.”
His face hot, Sam drops back into the water while Tink and Jack laugh. Little Bear barks at the boys. In response, Tink picks up a rock and throws it. Little Bear yelps when it hits his flank.
“Hey, leave my dog alone!” Sam shouts.
“Oops,” Tink says, smiling over at Jack. “Sure didn’t mean to hit your dog.”
Little Bear growls and Sam calls for him to come. Little Bear obeys and waits near the edge of the stream.
Now out of the water, Sam walks past Tink and Jack to retrieve his clothes and hat. He dries himself off with his shirt, careful of his cuts. If Tink and Jack notice his wounds, they don’t say anything.
“Did I see holes in your underwear, S-Sammy boy?” Tink stutters. “Maybe if your daddy didn’t spend all his time at the c-casino, he could afford to buy you some new underwear.”
“Give it a rest,” Sam says. He leads Little Bear by the collar and walks by Tink.
“Give it a rest,” Tink imitates in a high-pitched voice. He slides off his khaki shorts, revealing a black Speedo. Next, he takes off his watch and lays it on his shorts and shirt. “Now don’t steal any of my stuff,” Tink says, as Sam walks away. “I wouldn’t want my daddy to have to throw your daddy out of the casino on his a-ass.”
Sam’s face flames hotter. He wants to knock Tink Watson on his ass. But his grandmother made him promise no more fights, not even if somebody acts like a total jerk.
“Wish you could stay,” Jack Raven calls to Sam and then laughs.
Sam looks at Jack eye-to-eye. “I expect betrayal from someone like Tink, but you, Jack?”
Jack’s smile fades. His family isn’t as poor as Sam’s, but they are nowhere near Tink’s level. Sam knows from personal experience that being around Tink is seductive. He has nice clothes and new bikes every year and all the latest electronics. It is hard not to be impressed—until you get to know the guy. But for now Jack is under Tink’s spell.
Sam approaches Tink, who is still wearing Sam’s hat, and jerks it away. The hat remains dirty from his fall down the mountain, the feather ruffled. He adjusts the feather and calls for Little Bear who follows.
Sam walks in the direction of home, glad to be rid of Tink. He imagines his grandmother will be happy to see him. He has so much to tell her, as well as questions about how she could be at home and still talk to him in the forest. Did Great Spirit let things like that happen? Did she learn how to do that in one of her silences? As he approaches a clearing in the trees, Sam notices the hawk flying in wide circles overhead. It certainly looks like the same hawk that swooped down at him twice that day.
Sam taps the stone in his pocket. He wants to believe the rock is a good omen like his grandmother said. And maybe the hawk is a good omen, too. His face lightens when he reaches a sunny section of the path covered with blackberries. Sam runs for the ripe berries, pulling them carefully from the sticky stems and cramming them into his mouth. He throws several to Little Bear, who catches them in mid-air and swallows them whole. A memory chases the smile from his face.
As a young boy, he rode on his mother’s hip through this same patch while she picked blackberries and put them in a metal pail. She dangled him low so he could pick them, and he held tightly onto her neck. He remembers the sound of the blackberries as they hit the sides of the pail and the smell of her sun-heated skin. Afterwards, she always made his favorite dessert: blackberry cobbler right out of the oven, topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Sam pushes the memory away. He misses her, but he doubts he can forgive her for leaving them. It didn’t matter how bad things were with Rocky. Didn’t she know Sam would protect her? But that is old news. Things are about to get better. He is nearly home.
CHAPTER 11: THE CURSE
When Sam reaches the dirt road to Grandmother’s house, something looks different. People are gathered in the yard and Grandmother is nowhere to be seen. Sam’s best friend, Buddy, rides his bicycle full speed to meet him as Allie runs behind. Sam is thankful Allie didn’t come with him earlier. Being lost in the forest with Allie would be a bigger adventure than anyone might want.
Buddy brakes his bike, shooting up dirt from the road. Sam and Buddy have been friends since third grade.
“We’ve looked all over for you,” he says, gasping and bending over to catch his breath. “It’s your grandmother.”
“Where is she?” Sam asks, not liking the look on Buddy’s face.
“At the hospital,” Buddy says, taking another deep breath.
Sam’s heart takes a fast elevator ride down to the pit of his stomach. Meanwhile Allie arrives in tears and buries her head into his shirt. He winces from his cuts.
“Where were you?” she asks.
“It’s a long story,” he says, which is true.
“What happened to Grandmother?” Sam asks Buddy.
“They’re not sure,” Buddy says. “But it looks bad.”
Sam brushes past him and runs to the house. Old John, one of Grandmother’s oldest friends, waits on the porch and offers to drive him to the hospital. Sam thanks him.
“Has anybody told Rocky?” Sam asks. “He’s probably at the casino.”
“We already sent somebody to get him,” Old John says.
“Are you the one who found her?” Sam asks.
Old John nods. “I came to pick her up to deliver her baskets. I found her in her workshop unconscious. We weren’t sure where you were.”
“I was lost on the mountain,” Sam says. “It took me until now to find my way home.”
Old John puts a warm hand on Sam’s shoulder. He is a quiet man who spends most of his time playing poker with his friends at Raven’s store or tinkering with his truck. Sam, Buddy, and Allie climb into the back of Old John’s truck, a vehicle older than all their ages combined. Sam sits on the spare tire facing Allie whose face is splotched with tears.
The old truck rattles to life. Sam holds on tight, but soon discovers that at the truck’s top speed he could easily outrun it. The hospital is at least ten or fifteen miles away. While his heart races, the minutes drag on in slow motion.
Sam remembers the stone in his pocket. Its solidness calms him. When he was a young boy, Grandmother used a flatter stone that fit into the palm of her hand to grind corn into meal, an ancient Native American practice. The wind blows his hair as past and pre
sent merge.
In his memory, Sam hears the stone crush the kernels against the bowl, beating out a slow, steady rhythm––Ka bish, ka bish, ka bish––an Indian lullaby. In his imagination, Grandmother sways with the grinding of the corn as her shoulders rise and fall with each motion. From a distance, it appears she rocks a baby. But she rocks the corn in the bowl instead, making it into cornmeal with hands brown from the sun and already wrinkled with age.
“If you listen, you can hear the corn talk to you,” Grandmother says.
Does she really believe the corn can talk? Sam listens, hearing nothing. “The corn is dead, Grandmother. How can it possibly talk?”
“The corn isn't dead,” she counsels him. “It has merely changed form so it can teach you new things. . . .”
At long last the brakes squeak to a stop outside the hospital. Not waiting on the others, Sam jumps from the truck and runs inside. He limps from his fall down the mountain, but the pain is insignificant compared to what may await him. For most of the day he looked forward to returning to Grandmother and took it for granted she was at home, waiting for him.
At the front desk Sam asks where to find her and follows the signs to the Intensive Care Unit. He pushes the button to the elevator and nearly knocks over a woman when the doors finally open. He apologizes and rushes inside, pushing the button to the third floor. The door opens into the Intensive Care lobby, and the first thing he sees is Rocky sitting alone in the waiting room.
“How is she?” Sam asks.
Rocky looks up, his eyes empty of expression. “She’s sleeping,” he says.
“Can I see her?” Sam asks.
“They only let one family member in at a time,” Rocky says, his head bowed, his hands shaking. “You go in next. She’s been asking for you.”
Rocky somehow looks older. Dark circles shroud his eyes and his hair is uncombed and pulled back loosely in a rubber band. Faint shadows of the theatrical makeup he uses as war paint remains on his face. Sometimes it’s hard to believe his grandmother and father are related. At least right now, they are as different as any two people can be.
The others arrive in the waiting room. Becca, Old John’s wife, carries an arrangement of flowers she must have picked up in the hospital gift shop and Buddy sits in the chair next to Sam. Buddy takes off his ball cap and holds it in his hands like he is in church. The sour smell of his sneakers makes Sam cough. But he doesn’t complain because Buddy is a good friend.
Buddy hasn’t grown tall like Sam has in the last year, but is short and stocky. Every day since 5th grade, he has worn black, high-top sneakers, without socks. Because of the overpowering smell of his unwashed sneakers, Buddy is the focus of many jokes at school. However, Sam’s friend has created an enterprise as a result. Classmates forfeit a quarter a day in exchange for Buddy not taking his shoes off in the lunchroom and ruining their meal. Lunch is always right after gym, when Buddy’s feet reach their smelliest.
“What happened to your face?” Buddy whispers to Sam, as if just now noticing the cuts and scratches.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Sam says. Now isn’t the time to talk about what happened. He needs to make sure Grandmother is okay first.
Buddy pulls a handful of quarters from his pocket. “You want something from the vending machines?” he asks Sam.
“Do I ever,” Sam says. “One of everything.”
Buddy laughs and goes around the corner and returns with a package of crackers and a chocolate bar each. Sam thanks him and rips them open. Junk food has never tasted so good.
A long silence follows while they wait for news. Maybe if he had stayed home this morning, this wouldn’t have happened. Yet Grandmother had encouraged him to go.
In the corner of the waiting room, a television is perched like a bird on its nest. Sam touches the hawk feather and remembers his fall down the mountain. Game shows drone in the background, making Sam feel sleepy. In his dreamlike memory, Grandmother sits on the porch breaking long strands of green beans into a bowl. A younger version of Sam sits beside her, while Little Bear, a puppy, sleeps in a box on the porch. Allie, still a baby, takes an afternoon nap inside the house, while Sam and Grandmother talk.
The ritual of snapping beans from the garden lives fresh in his mind. Grandmother reaches into his basket of beans and picks one. She snaps both ends and pulls the strings frayed along the edges. Then she breaks the bean into evenly matched pieces. In his imagination, he hears the crisp snap of the beans. Sam’s job is to hold the bowl until all are snapped and then carry them into the kitchen to be cooked for supper.
I’d give anything to sit on the porch with her again, Sam thinks.
He has spent as much time with his grandmother as with his parents, maybe more, especially during those times when both his parents worked. During the summers, Sam and Allie often slept at her house, the season dictating their activities. After harvesting the garden they went for hikes and swims. In the fall they came by every day after school and prepared for winter, raking leaves and gathering wood. In the winter they focused on indoor projects, his grandmother sewing quilts, and Sam reading long stories to Allie from library books. By spring they were outside again, hiking the trails, clearing away fallen winter branches and preparing for planting.
Thanks to Grandmother, Sam was exposed to the natural world and its cycles. Things live, die and then return in another form. Over and over again this repeats. It never occurred to Sam his grandmother would one day do the same. This thought terrifies him. If anything happens to her, what will happen to him and Allie?
Sam remembers the dream from the night before. In the dream, his grandmother was with the ancestors. She went into a deep silence when he told her the dream, as though receiving a message herself. Did the dream foreshadow her collapse? Sam’s head hurts and fear tightens his chest at the thought of something bad happening to her. In his entire family and tribe, she is the one person he feels understands him. Without her, he is alone.
“You can go in now,” a nurse tells him.
He follows her down the hallway and enters Grandmother’s hospital room. Machines surround her, making her body look small. Lights blink and monitors beep reminding Sam of the casino.
This is the last place she would want to be, he thinks.
Sam walks over to the bed and touches her hand. Her eyes flicker, as though she’s traveling a great distance to see him. But when they finally open, she smiles.
“I knew you’d make it back,” she says, her voice just above a whisper.
“You knew I’d get lost?” Sam asks. He doesn’t mention the other things that happened, not wanting to overwhelm her.
“I knew the ancestors had called you, and I trusted they knew what they were doing. Are you okay?” she asks, looking at the cuts and scrapes on his arms and face.
“I am,” he says, “but I have a lot of questions.”
“It wouldn’t be like you if you didn’t,” Grandmother says with a slight laugh, followed by a cough that sounds serious. She closes her eyes. Her skin is paler than he’s ever seen it. His questions about his day will have to wait.
“Grandmother, are you okay?” he asks.
“Doctors make such a big deal out of a simple thing,” she says.
Sam sits next to her on the bed. She reaches over and brushes his hair out of his eyes. Then she looks at him for what feels like a long time. At first this attention feels uncomfortable but he forces himself to look at her. Her eyes tell him things he doesn’t want to know. His life is about to change in a monumental way.
“I have something important to tell you, Grandson.”
Anticipating what she might say, Sam has to resist running out of the room. “Can’t this wait, Grandmother?”
“No, Grandson. The ancestors tell me it’s my time to return to the Spirit World,” she says. Her eyes soften; she knows what this means to Sam.
But what will I do without you?” Sam asks. His voice comes out as a whisper, though it isn�
�t his intention. “You can’t go now. You have so much more to teach me. I won’t let you go.”
She rests her hand on his. “It isn’t left up to me,” she says. “Or you. Besides, you’ll know what to do,” she adds.
Tears blur Sam’s vision. He lowers his head. His thoughts are scrambled, like the eggs he had for breakfast that morning.
“Are you afraid?” he asks finally. Several times that day Sam was afraid and he didn’t like the feeling. He would hate it if Grandmother feels that way now.
She pauses, as if giving his question careful thought. Her voice is stronger when she finally speaks. “No, Grandson. Death is nothing to be afraid of. The Great Spirit calls us home to make room for the new. Remember, I am not going away. I am simply changing forms.”
Sam wipes his tears on his sleeve. He can’t imagine life without her. A nurse enters the room and tells Sam visiting hours are over. He nods, embarrassed the white stranger saw him crying. Before leaving the room, the nurse tells Sam he can have five more minutes.
Grandmother grips Sam’s hand, as if to burn a great truth into his palm.
“I will help you find your way,” she whispers. Her eyes leave his for a moment as she glances at his hat and the red hawk feather. A weak smile crosses her lips.
Sam remembers the red hawk and Grandmother’s voice in the forest showing him the way when he was lost. Mysteries are everywhere. He needs her help understanding what happened today. But before he has time to ask her, a song rises on Grandmother’s breath. It is low but strong—a lilting melody in the rhythm of his people. It is a song of gratitude to the Great Spirit. Sam recognizes the Cherokee word for thankfulness: ga li `e li `ga. After several seconds, the melody fades away and his grandmother closes her eyes.
“E-li-si?” Sam asks—Cherokee for Grandmother.
She answers, “Do-na-da-`go-v-i,”—until we see each other again.
Circle of the Ancestors Page 4
