A Quality of Light (46 page)

“Don’t be afraid,” he said and laid an arm across my shoulders.

We stood there for a moment or two watching the motionless line across the plaza. He gazed around him, exhaling long and slow, then looked at me.

“It’s time,” he said simply, unslinging the rifle and handing it to me. I felt a tremor of release inside my chest.

He handed me the pistol and the holster he wore around his waist. He reached behind his back and removed an army .45 from his waistband and handed it to me with an almost comical shrug. From inside his shirt he pulled a pair of grenades. They bore a threatening heft.

“Cement,” he said. “I filled them with cement so they’d feel real.”

He handed over a nine-inch stiletto from his waistband, two Chinese throwing stars form inside his vest and a thick, heavy knife from a pocket at the middle of his back. He handed each of them to me with a sly little grin. By the time he’d disarmed himself of additional magazines for each of the guns I was amazed at both the scope of his arsenal and the fact that he could have moved around with so much weight on his body. It was far too cumbersome for me and I settled on the rifle and the grenades for my first trip out.

I heard the click of shutters as I walked out. I heard the gasp of several people in the cordoned area and a vague rustle as people edged nervously away from the front of the crowd. David Nettles stood beside a van that had been moved into place since I last looked out and he nodded slow, solemn encouragement to me, indicating the presence of the riflemen with an upward swing of his eyes. I nodded. Television cameramen crouched, aiming their lenses at me as I swung around and headed back to the building.

I bent to pick up the remaining weaponry and Johnny sniffled slightly. When I looked up I saw a tear run down the unpainted side of his face.

“It’s just another maze,” he said, quietly. “Even after all I’ve learned, all I’ve been through, I’m still afraid that when I break out of the maze all I’m gonna find is another one.”

“Faith is like that,” I said.

“Yeah? Even for you?” he asked, wiping his eye with a knuckle.

“Even for me,” I said. “Living with faith isn’t about the absence of fear. It’s about the presence of it. It’s about always being poised on the diving board. Fear sends you back down, faith makes you soar.”

He grinned. “You kept the letters?”

“Every one.”

“Cool.”

I clapped him on the shoulder and turned to load my arms for the last trip. I felt his eyes on me across the lobby and I knew that trust was the element of our friendship I’d needed to bring back. The feeling of sneakered feet above us in our maze. I could, if I chose, leave him in that building and secure my own safety now. Could abandon him to the forces of justice and perhaps even convince myself through the coming years that I had done the right thing. Those thoughts danced through my head as I walked out the door, and I thought too how easily the seeds of our own moral destruction can germinate within us, sprouted by the instinct for survival and watered by self-indulgent fears. I walked out and laid the weapons down beside the rifle and the grenades, looked briefly at Nettles, the implied safety of the right, the might and the law, and turned back to the building where my brother waited.

He stood just inside the doors, looking out at the scenario he’d created like an artist at a mural that only reveals itself fully on its completion. He handed me the bow and parfleche. There was weight inside the quiver, and when I looked I saw a beaded rawhide pouch.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“My pipe,” he said. “It’s a good pipe. You have it. You’re worthy.”

“Johnny …”

“No, Josh. You earned this. You told me a long time ago you’d come back to the People and bring them what you learned. Well,
you learned the way of the pipe. Maybe not in the traditional manner, but you learned. You carry it inside you. You live it. So you take this pipe with you when you go back to them. Tell them about my search. Tell them about yours. And smoke it with them. Smoke it with the ones who need to learn how to make that mole’s journey, Josh. The ones who need to find the gift of knowledge and of truth. You won’t have to look for them. They’ll find you.”

“Johnny, I haven’t gone back yet,” I said.

“I know. But you will. You will.”

“You’re sure?”

“Never more. Just do me one favor.”

“Anything.”

“Every now and then, go sit and smoke it, alone or with someone special, behind that old equipment shed, up on the cliff in the Hockley and anywhere you feel I’d like. Someday we’ll go there together and have a smoke, but for now, take the pipe. I’ll be with you in spirit,” he said, smiling sadly.

“No problem,” I replied and reached out to touch his sleeve.

He hugged me then. Reached out and pulled me into a deep and encompassing hug that lasted forever, it seemed. We stood and we rocked back and forth in each other’s arms. I closed my eyes and in the warmth of that embrace I saw us again as I would always see us, a reed-thin boy who could punch holes in the sky with a baseball seated beside a brown-skinned boy with shining eyes in the swishing arms of a willow tree, hands together, blood on blood, eternity ritualized in innocence, wonder and possibility. We released each other back into the adult world and he punched me lightly on the shoulder.

“Disarmed and cowardly, let’s get on with it!” he said, reaching out to push the door open for me.

I stepped into the sunlight. The air on my face was invigorating. I closed my eyes briefly and pulled deep dollops of it into my lungs. Security a few steps away. The cameramen were scrambling to get the best shot and I looked at Nettles, who stood by the van, squinting our way. Johnny was just stepping though the door.

“Ah, shit, Josh!” he was saying with a laugh.

I turned. His face was animated through the war paint and as he cleared the doorway he bent suddenly.

“I forgot the derringers. Here,” he said, reaching out towards me clutching the tiny pistols by their handles.

“
No
!” I screamed.

His eyes flashed in surprise and then even wider as his chest was blown open by a sudden rain of metal. He stumbled backwards against the door, slid slowly to the ground, leaving a wide red smear on the glass. He looked at me with a stunned expression, then slowly, as he slumped to the pavement, it was replaced by recognition, a half smile at the corners of his mouth.

The bow and parfleche clattered to the pavement and I dropped beside him. A pool of blood widened around him, slowly and deliberately. Behind me I heard footsteps hurrying our way and the yelling of officers controlling the crowd. There was a thick hum in the air and in my chest. I cradled my friend’s head in one hand, the blood warm and sticky on the other that pulled the sides of his vest tighter around him as though to stanch the flow from his chest. He breathed raspily, a gurgle of blood seeping from his mouth. I looked up and saw Nettles and the other officers approaching with a gaggle of cameramen and photographers.

“Get away from him!” I yelled, hot tears suddenly streaming down my face. I pointed at Nettles. “You get them out of here!”

“Joshua —”

“No!
Get … them … away!”
I screamed.

I looked up and saw four snipers at the ready, weapons pointed at Johnny.

I looked at Nettles stonily. “You tell them to stand down,” I shouted.
“Now!”

He waved to the rooftops and the riflemen eased their weapons off their shoulders. He stood there looking blankly at me and I felt Johnny’s hand tugging at my lapel.

“Josh,” he whispered. “It’s okay, Josh. It’s okay.”

His head slumped deeper against my chest and I pulled him
closer. Somehow I worked my way behind him and I pulled him as close to me as I could, his head now resting on my shoulder, my legs straddled wide alongside his and my arms supporting his head. I brushed his hair to the sides of his temples and watched as he struggled to breathe.

“Hang on, Johnny,” I said quietly. “Hang on.”

“No,” he croaked. “I hung on long enough, Josh.”

“The ambulance is right here, Johnny,” I said, crying. “Don’t worry. I won’t leave you.”

“I know,” he said. “I know.”

Hearing him groan, I hitched closer to him, pressing my body tighter to him so he could feel my warmth. At that moment all I could think of was that I didn’t want him to be cold.

“Josh,” he said, turning his head so he could see my face out of the corner of his eye.

“Yes, Johnny,”

“It’s the bottom of the ninth.”

“Yeah.”

“You know what?”

“What, Johnny?”

“You know when they … open the flap on the lodge … and the light … the light pours in?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s what it’s like.”

“Johnny …”

“Josh?”

“Yeah?”

“You gotta go home now. You gotta go home.”

“I know.”

“Go home, Josh. Tell them.”

“Tell them what, Johnny?”

“Tell them it’s all about light.”

“Light? What do you mean, Johnny?”

But Laughing Dog had made it home.

I
I don’t know how long I lay there with the body of my friend clutched to me. I only know that it was long enough for me to realize how easily death displaces us. How departures leave us stranded here on a vain and uncompromising earth, alone in a territory without maps, without poems, featureless and foreign. How easily faith is numbed. How quickly you become exiled from yourself. I lay with my cheek pressed against his head, the warrior braid tattooing my face with its weave. I was vaguely aware of David Nettles coming into my view and of him kneeling beside me, gently pressing Johnny’s eyes closed.

“Joshua,” I heard, finally. “Joshua, we have to go now.”

“What?” I asked thickly.

“We have to go, Joshua. It’s over.”

“Over?”

“Over. Come on,” he said, taking my arm.

Over. I sat there running those two syllables through my mind. When I realized what he meant I looked up at him sharply. “It’s not over,” I said.

“Yes, it is, Joshua. He’s gone. He’s dead,” Nettles said softly.

“I’m not,” I said. “And as long as I’m not, he’s not. You made a deal with me.”

“A deal?”

“A deal,” I said. “We get to make our statements. No statement, no deal.”

“But, Joshua, we’re past that now.”

I said unashamedly though the tears that were coursing down my face, “If you think we’re past it, you’re not the man I thought you were.”

He looked at me levelly, studying me.

“He wrote it down. I’m going to read it,” I said. “I’m going to walk right over there and I’m going to flag down those reporters and either tell them I’m making the statement now or tell them you
won’t keep your end of the deal. They’ll still get their story, David. I can tell it now, or I can tell it later.”

“You’re serious.”

“Completely.”

“Then I guess we’d better get over there. Can you make it okay?”

“I’ll be fine. Get someone to cover him, okay?”

“Yeah,” he said and waved towards the police line.

I reached into Johnny’s vest and removed his folded statement, rose and walked with Nettles to the van that was supposed to have carried Johnny into custody. I didn’t think about the blood on my shirt. I though only about Johnny and how this had to end the way he’d wanted it to end. I owed him that kind of loyalty. I’d pledged it.

Ed O’Fallon was clutching a handful of arrows. He handed them silently to me when we arrived at the van. A circle of reporters immediately surrounded Nettles and he explained that the perpetrator had capitulated on his promise to release everyone safely, that he had pulled a pair of concealed weapons from his boot tops, aiming them at Reverend Kane. He had been fatally shot by police snipers. He told them that I had requested the fulfillment of the terms of surrender, and then he stepped back and waved me over. A Canadian flag fluttered over the scene, and I thought how the fabric and texture of the country had been rent with the locking and loading of weapons in Oka and in the silent flow of blood from the body of Johnny Gebhardt. I stepped up, front and center to those cameras, and slowly unfolded the blood-smeared paper. I took a long, slow breath and disappeared into the words.