A String of Beads (8 page)

They walked for another couple of blocks, and when they came to a trash basket, Jane
looked into it, then reached down and pulled up a newspaper. “The
Syracuse Post-Standard
.”

“What’s the date?”

“Today’s. I guess we’re in Syracuse.”

“Okay,” Jimmy said. “Let’s see about that food.”

They walked toward the streets with bright lights, and passed a small pizzeria. They
looked in the window and saw a few people at tables wearing jeans and casual shirts.
“What do you think?” she asked.

“Just the smell makes me want to break down the door.”

“Give me a few seconds.” Jane stepped into the doorway, then stood still for a two
count while Jimmy was still outside, partially shielded from view behind her. She
scanned the people inside, saw nobody she knew, or whose face held an expression of
recognition, and nobody who looked hostile. She saw a few women, which was good, because
the presence of women usually discouraged the more extreme forms of male misbehavior.
She saw a hallway at the back of the restaurant that led to restrooms, and another
on the left leading to the kitchen. If they had to they could slip out through the
exit that was sure to be at the rear of the kitchen. Jane stepped in, and Jimmy followed.

A sign said they should seat themselves, so Jane went to a table by the wall and they
sat down. Jane sat so she could face the front window and door, and Jimmy could face
the back. The side location of the table meant that no matter how rough things got
in the place, they couldn’t be surrounded, and nobody could approach unseen.

They set their backpacks on empty seats by the wall and looked at the printed menus
that had been left at every table. In a few minutes a middle-aged waitress emerged
from the kitchen with a tray in each hand—the plates on the left and the drinks, which
were heavier, on the right. Jane studied her. She had a weary but alert look as she
maneuvered between tables. She showed relief when she set down her heavy trays on
an empty table and served two couples at the table beside it. Over the years Jane
had learned to check the faces of the waiters and waitresses. If there were some kind
of trouble, they would see it first, and show it.

The waitress stopped at their table and took their order, then went off to the kitchen
with her trays. She returned immediately with their pitcher of cola and glasses.

They poured some and drank, and Jimmy spoke to her quietly in Seneca. “I haven’t bothered
to thank you for coming to help me. I know you were asked, but we both know you could
have found a way out of it if you tried.”

“I suppose I could have,” she said in Seneca. “They knew I wouldn’t.”

He raised his glass of cola and clinked it against hers. “You’re more old-fashioned
than my grandmother, and it’s a good thing for me.”

“They said you were innocent,” Jane said. “But I didn’t have to take anything they
said on faith. I knew what kind of man you were the same way they did—by knowing you
as a boy. I climbed trees with you. And in case you’ve forgotten it, you once saved
me from getting raped. I didn’t forget. Now let’s talk English.” She moved her eyes
to be sure nobody nearby had overheard them speaking another language.

“Certainly,” he said. “Everybody else’s food looks so good. I can hardly wait for
ours.”

“Neither can I,” said Jane. “I guess we’ve both been living on protein bars and candy
for too long.”

While she sat in the restaurant, Jane couldn’t help thinking about what Jimmy had
said about her—that she was old-fashioned. What he meant was her attachment to old
customs. She hardly ever thought about herself that way, but at times something reminded
her that the Seneca ways of looking at the world were part of the structure of her
mind. And she knew that one reason she had clung to Seneca traditions was to maintain
the connection with her parents and grandparents—especially her father since he’d
died.

She was eleven that summer, and she and her mother had been staying at the reservation
because he had been away working on a bridge in the state of Washington. One day he
had been standing on a steel beam as a crane lowered it into place. The cable snapped,
and Henry Whitefield and the beam fell to the bottom of the gorge below. She sometimes
dreamed about his fall.

In the dream, her father was wearing his bright red flannel shirt and blue jeans,
his yellow hard hat and his leather tool belt. As he fell, the beam stayed beside
him. He turned as he fell, doing a slow somersault, so his tools spilled from his
belt pouch. His hard hat left his head and his black hair fluttered in the wind as
he came right again. He spread his arms and legs and faced downward, his shirt flapping
violently. In the dream the disembodied Jane was beside him. He and Jane could both
see the bottom of the canyon, the thin ribbon of water winding down the gorge like
a silvery snake—the water not wide enough to catch him or deep enough to do anything
for him but wash his body after he hit. The white buttons of his red shirt gave way,
and it opened and flew off him. But as he fell, his fluttering black hair grew longer,
and seemed to spread down his back and arms, first like fringe, and then widening
and flattening like feathers. And soon his arms were revealed to be wings.

His head and shoulders dipped forward and he swooped downward. As he did, he changed
more, and when his swoop arced upward again she could see her father was a crow. He
circled once and looked back at Jane with his black, shiny crow eyes—so much like
his own bright obsidian eyes—and she felt the deep, painful love he was sending to
her, all of it now because there would never be another time. When the circle was
complete he began to fly straight across the open canyon to the other side.

Waking from that dream each time was like learning that he had died again. Years later,
after Jane’s mother died, she became part of the feeling Jane had that her parents
and her childhood were inextricable from the old ways. It was
mainly the celebrations that brought her mother back—the women all bringing big bowls
of soup and hot casserole dishes and setting them out on the long tables for everyone
to share. They were like Jane’s mother—like the woman she had chosen to become out
of love. And later, there were the dances. There were the drums and the rising voices
of the singers, sometimes making her imagine she heard her fa
ther’s voice among them. Jane’s mother had been a graceful, effortless dancer. She
had worn her hair long, and for these occasions she put on a traditional outfit, a
long black dress with embroidered flowers, an untucked blouse, and an embroidered
shawl. When she danced with the other women, she didn’t look different in any important
way. There were women old enough to have white hair, which was a shade lighter than
her blond hair. She was tall and thin, but there were others taller, and some just
as thin. They were all beautiful together.

Their food arrived and Jimmy and Jane ate happily. Jane could feel the way the food
renewed their energy and restored their spirits. When the waitress returned with the
check, Jane paid with cash. Before the waitress left, Jane asked, “Do you know where
the bus station is?”

“Erie. It’s on Erie, which is right down that way, south from here. I forget the number,
but it must be in the eight hundreds or so.”

When they were alone outside, Jimmy said, “Bus station, huh? I hope I can get on a
bus without being spotted.”

“I’ll check the place out before you go in, and make sure there aren’t police watching
for you.” She paused. “Or you could turn yourself in right here in Syracuse. We’re
in New York State again. I’m pretty sure they would give you a ride to Buffalo.”

Jimmy thought for a moment. “If I turn myself in to the cops where I’m wanted, won’t
it seem better for me?”

“I think it might,” she said. “But if we get caught on the way, you’ll look like you’re
still running away.”

“Let’s head for Buffalo.” He began to walk.

Jane hurried to keep up. “That’s fine. But if we get into a situation where it makes
more sense not to try to go on, I hope you won’t be stubborn. As long as you go in
voluntarily, it will help.”

“Fine,” he said.

As they walked, they moved out of the area where there were lights and restaurants
and businesses into a stretch that was darker and consisted of larger buildings that
were all shut down during the hours of darkness—office buildings, parking lots, and
other structures that seemed to be deserted. Between them there were dark alleys and
driveways for deliveries.

Jane caught a quick motion in the corner of her right eye, but as she turned her head
she was already hearing the sound of the two-by-four against the back of Jimmy’s skull.
As Jimmy fell forward, Jane could see the man completing his swing, holding the two-by-four
in both hands like a bat. The two-by-four was about five feet long and heavy, so its
momentum brought his arms all the way around, leaving his face unguarded.

Jane jabbed, hitting his nose with the heel of her right hand. The man staggered backward,
his nose gushing blood, and brought his hands to his nose while the two-by-four fell
to the pavement. As the second man bent over to pick it up, Jane took a step and pushed
his head downward while she brought her knee up to meet his face.

The third man retained some vague conviction that the only real threat must be Jimmy,
the big, muscular man who lay on the pavement. The man stepped to Jimmy’s side and
kicked him in the ribs, then brought his right leg backward to prepare to deliver
a kick to Jimmy’s head. Jane saw he had shifted all his weight to his left leg, so
she ran at him and delivered a hard stomp kick to the side of his left knee. She felt
his knee give and heard the pop as she dislocated it. He went down as though he’d
been shot and clutched at his knee and rocked back and forth, yelling.

Jane had always been aware that it was stupid to try to fight a man for the space
between them, and even worse to let him grapple with her. Men were much bigger and
stronger than she was, and most of them had been fighting since they were toddlers.
If she was cornered, her strategy was to take advantage of the man’s assumption that
she was helpless, use any means to hurt him as badly as she could, and run. This time
she had to stand her ground to keep the men from killing Jimmy while he was unconscious.

She danced back and forth over him for a moment, and used an instant to glance down
at him. It crossed her mind that he could already be dead, but she had no time to
think because the first two attackers were recovering. Jane snatched up the two-by-four
and held it like a staff. As the first man lunged toward her, she left the lower end
of the two-by-four planted on the pavement and pushed the upper end forward so it
hit his sternum hard, rocking him back, then lifted the two-by-four straight up so
the upper end of it came up to hit his chin, and brought it down hard in the middle
of his left instep. As he lifted his injured foot in pain, she brought the end of
the two-by-four down on his other instep.

The man’s howls were not as loud as those of the man with the dislocated knee, but
they were loud enough to confirm her hope that she had broken some of the small, narrow
bones in his feet. He staggered stiffly on his heels, as though his legs were made
of wood.

Jane raised the two-by-four with both hands, clutching it like a harpoon, but instead
of jabbing the man again, she pivoted and aimed her stab at the chest of his partner.
The man’s attempt to duck her attack by crouching brought the butt of the two-by-four
to the level of his collarbone. It hit the bone hard and slipped upward into his trachea.
He grasped his throat with both hands and bent over, trying to protect it and breathe
at the same time. Jane swung the two-by-four down hard on his head and he collapsed
forward onto the pavement, dazed but conscious.

The three men were badly hurt, and as she swept her eyes to survey them, they began
to edge away from her. She took out her lock-blade knife and flicked open the blade
with her right thumb. She said, “In ten seconds I start cutting.”

The two men who could walk began to hobble away down the alley they had come from.
The man with the broken leg shouted, “Wait! Help me. Please!”

The man bent over holding his trachea kept going, but the one with the injured feet
and the broken, bloody nose relented. He stopped and limped back, pulled his friend
up so he could stand on his one good leg, and took his arm over his shoulder to help
him hop off along the alley.

Jane was left with Jimmy’s prone and unmoving body. She set the two-by-four beside
him and knelt to feel his pulse. It was strong and steady. She patted his cheek, and
then patted it harder. “Wake up, Jimmy,” she whispered. “We’ve got to get out of here
before their friends show up.” She looked closely at the wound where the two-by-four
had hit his head. The blood was already beginning to glue his hair in hard tufts,
but his skull was not misshapen. The wound had bled a lot at first, but appeared to
have nearly stopped. Jane kept raising her eyes to look farther into the alley, then
to see if anyone was coming on the street. “Come on, Jimmy,” she whispered. “You’re
going to be okay. You’ve got to be.” She saw her pack lying on the ground, pulled
it to her, and searched for the half bottle of water she’d saved. She took a kerchief,
made it wet, and dabbed at his wound. She poured some of the water on it, and he began
to stir.

“It’s me, Jimmy,” she said. “Wake up.”

After another try, he opened his eyes. His hand went to his head.

“It’s probably better not to touch it,” she said.

“Wha—wow,” he moaned. “I know somebody hit me.”

“That’s right,” she said. “You could have a concussion. Just lie there for a minute
and get your bearings, if you can.”

“What happened?”

“You got knocked on the head.” It sounded worse to her, because that was the way the
old Senecas used to refer to death in battle—getting knocked on the head. “Don’t worry,
though. They were trying to rob us, but they didn’t.”