Eagle, Kathleen (16 page)

"Roy,
Carter, and now, finally, we have Reese Blue Sky back," Preston was
saying. "You'll be amazed at what you can do for your people in just a few
short months. When you see how we're organized now, the kind of support we're
getting from Ten Star in bringing our Indian people on board—"

"Like
you and your brother," Darnell put in. "Right up there in first
class, where the decisions are being made."

Is
that some favor you're doing us? Whose ship is this, anyway?

Reese
smiled. He was glad he was wearing boots.

***

"Carter
says you and Reese used to go together." Sarah had given Helen the usual
guest's task. She had the olive section of the platter filled, and she was
working on carrots and celery when the opening came. "For a short time,
just before he went to Minnesota," Helen said. "One summer. Part of
one summer."

"They
didn't grow up together," Sarah said, and she nodded toward the kitchen
door and beyond. "They're not close, the way brothers should be."

Helen
welcomed the opening. She was wary of the territory it was bound to lead to,
but recently she had thought of little else, and Sarah's husband could have
been the poster child for the Indian Child Protection Act.

"It
must have been difficult for Carter, growing up with one family and then having
his father take him back."

"Carter
generally prevails," Sarah said. And that was it. The opening disappeared.
Sarah wanted to go elsewhere. "What kind of a boss is he?" she
wondered as she turned from the refrigerator with two plastic bowls in hand.
"Hard to work for?"

"No.
He's a good manager."

"He's
spoken of you often lately. I wondered." She glanced away quickly, and
Helen realized her own eyes had widened at the suggestion. "I was glad to
hear that you were with Reese. I thought you might have been someone my husband
wanted for himself, the way he talks about you."

Sarah
set the bowls on the counter, started to peel back a lid, replaced it, finally
permitted Helen a glimpse of the embarrassment in her eyes, her brief, tight
smile. "But that's just him," she said. Table utensils jangled in the
drawer she yanked open. "Not you. Nothing to do with you, probably."

"I
don't know what to say. I'm not..."

"I'm
sorry. I'm not accusing you." Sarah gave a quick laugh and shook her head,
her profusion of soft black hair gleaming under the white fluorescent light.
"I'm not very good at this. We don't have a lot of company."

"You
have a lovely home. Beautiful children. And I'm not..."

They
exchanged looks. Not what? Not willing to exchange such telling details? Sarah
was uneasy with her, but she was ready to give her a chance.

"I
have a son about Derek's age," Helen heard herself say while she noticed
children through the window above the sink. Sidney was a little older, of
course, but the resemblance was unmistakable.
He must favor his father,
people
would say, angling for entertaining details. "He's in summer camp."

Sarah's
interest perked up. "Derek's taking swimming lessons and playing Little
League baseball. Summer camp, where?"

"In
Colorado." And since Sarah hadn't asked, Helen said, "His father and
I aren't together."

"I
know how that is. We were split up for a while, too. Even got divorced and
remarried again, to each other. He was married to someone else for a little
while in between. We can go through tribal court, so it's not like..." She
waved a serving spoon. "But it's not easy. It's sure hard on the
kids."

"And
their mother."

"I'm
pretty tough. Carter's such a smart man, maybe too smart. Sometimes he
outsmarts himself." She covered her smile with a quick hand, but her eyes
were dancing. "I shouldn't talk. He's your boss."

Helen
smiled, too. She'd seen Carter outsmart himself a time or two when he'd
supplied answers no one had asked for or instructions nobody needed. "How
did you two meet?"

"In
college, back East. I felt pretty far away from home. I'm from Yakima.
Washington State. Carter more or less had two homes, and one was back East, so
he did great there. I was only starting out when we met, and he was almost
done. I never finished. I got pregnant."

"That
does change things, doesn't it?"

"You,
too?"

Helen
turned back to her carrot peeling. "My son is the best thing that ever
happened to me."

"Same
here." Sarah thought about that for a moment. "No, Carter's the best.
And the worst. Without him there wouldn't be any kids. I tried it without him,
and I missed him. He missed us, I know he did, but it's like he's got this
empty place inside him that he can't fill. I don't know what he wants."
She jammed two spoons into the salads in her plastic bowls. "All I know
is, he's really smart about some things, but when he wants something to be a
certain way, there's no telling him any different. He trusts nobody for a
while, and then he trusts the wrong people."

"You
mean business people, or personal people?"

"All
I know is, he owes too much money." She said it as though everyone knew,
and then she got her hands into the act to help her elaborate. "I kick his
ass out, and then I see him again and I want him back, even with all his moods
and his secrets."

"You
kick him out, and he just leaves?"

"It's
a good excuse for him to stay at the casino hotel. He lives for that casino. As
long as he knows we're sitting here in his pumpkin shell, just waiting for
him..." She shrugged. "I could take the kids and go home, you know?
Just pack up and go. I've done it before." She lowered her voice, as though
this were the extraordinary part. "He came looking for us, came right to
the house and told me he couldn't stand to be without us, said it right in
front of my mother. He said we were all he had." She was studying the
coleslaw now. "I know that's true. That's the thing. But we can't make him
happy."

"You
don't have to. He has to stop trying to outsmart himself and realize that his
happiness is here for the..."
For the taking.
"Are the kids
enrolled with your tribe or with his?"

"They're
Bad River Lakota."

Tread
lightly,
Helen
told herself. "Could he use that to take the kids away?"

"He's
never tried." But Sarah thought about it, which stirred up some spit and
vinegar. "He'd never dare. He knows he'd have a fight on his hands."

Helen
nodded, wondering whether it would be Sarah's tribe against Carter's. Maybe the
tribes would neutralize each other. Then it would be little Sarah against big
Carter. Carter would surely outsmart himself, but not Sarah. Helen could see
the fight in the woman's eyes, the kind of fight a man had no answer for, the
kind that was fueled by high-octane estrogen. Helen herself had a full tank.

Still,
she wished she had a tribe of her own for backup.

"I
think Reese feels kind of bad about Roy leaving the place to him instead of
Carter," Helen volunteered. Sarah had her head in the refrigerator again.
"Because of the children."

"Roy
had his reasons, you can be sure of that." Sarah joined her at the sink
with a load of broccoli and cauliflower. "It'll be good if they can become
true brothers now. Carter's all happy about Reese sticking around to finish out
the term on the council. I haven't seen him this excited about anything in a
long time."

"When
did he decide to ask these other guys over?"

"I
didn't know they were coming. We'll need a few more of those carrots, but
that's enough celery. This green stuffs probably a waste of time."

Helen
emptied the bag of carrots into the white enamel sink. "Roy and Chairman
Sweeney were sort of at odds lately, weren't they?"

Sarah
turned the cold water on with one hand, waved the rivalry away with the other.
"I don't pay attention to the politics around here. Carter says Reese and
Preston were in school together. As for Bill Darnell, he's like this wallpaper,
that one. He's just always around."

"He
trained Carter, didn't he?"

"I
guess he did." As she spoke she went to work on the broccoli with a
carving knife. "Part of the deal with Ten Star was that they had to hire
Bad River enrollees, but for a long time it was just entry-level jobs. People
started complaining. Then they hired Carter, and the complaining died down,
even though some people still grumbled."

"Because
his father was on the council?"

"That
wasn't it so much. Some people don't really accept Carter. For one thing, he
never changed his name back to Blue Sky. Plus he never really stayed here much
after his father got him back, so he doesn't have those friends from school
days the way Reese has. People are all the time telling him they're his
cousins. He doesn't know." Sarah shrugged. "Besides, his father had
to get off the gaming committee on the council when Carter went to work for the
casino."

"So
Roy didn't have anything to do with getting him that job?"

"Carter's
well qualified for the job. He didn't need any help."

"But
there's the appearance," Helen suggested carefully as she split the last
of the carrots.

"I
don't care what it looks like. Carter got the job on his own."

"I'm
sure he did," Helen said, and truly, she thought, Carter had all the right
credentials. "Have you heard him say anything about the hit-and-run? About
anybody who might have had it in for his father?"

"No."
Sarah shut the water off. They could hear the men's voices, deep and distant,
punctuated by the occasional laugh. "He took it hard. You can't always
tell from what Carter says. It's what he doesn't say. When he doesn't say
anything, that's when you know he's taking it hard." She looked up at
Helen. "It's good for him to be with his brother now."

"Reese
burned Roy's personal things, his clothes."

"That's
good. That's the way it should be done. Carter doesn't understand traditional
ways. Maybe Reese can help him with that while he's here."

They
finished mounding the vegetables on the platter. Sarah brought out a carton of
store-bought vegetable dip, saying she didn't know how to make it from scratch,
but she always put it in a bowl and hid the carton, and nobody ever complained.
Helen suggested adding a few ingredients, including a dash of hot-pepper sauce.
Sarah tasted the result and declared the hot sauce to be the magic ingredient.

"How
long are you staying?" Sarah asked.

"I
don't know. Right now, all I have here is a summer job."

"Your
son might not like it here. It's hard to move kids when they get a little
older."

Helen
nodded.

"But
I don't think a summer job is all you have here."

***

Bill
Darnell said he appreciated the invitation to stay for dinner, but he had to be
somewhere else. Preston Sweeney knew better than to refuse food in an Indian
home. He shared in the meal but excused himself soon after it was over, when
Reese asked him to join Carter and himself under the hoop in the backyard.
Preston had been one of the few boys in Reese's class who had not played
basketball, not in the school yard, not in the gym, not even during physical
education class. Not ever. Preston was totally uncoordinated. Clumsiness with a
football or a baseball was generally tolerated on the reservation, but not with
a basketball. Either you played a decent game or you got out of the way.
Preston enjoyed a certain level of respect—he had twice been class president,
served two terms as a councilman, and now was chairman—which was why, when it
came to basketball, he got out of the way.

Not
so with Carter, who suddenly seemed almost as eager to play as the children
were. It was hard to believe that he was Reese Blue Sky's brother. Carter was
shorter, slighter, finer featured, finer boned, yet he moved like the heavier
man. His feet were heavier than the new cement slab court he'd had built for
his son. He was a player, but he was not an athlete.

Reese
was still the man. With a basketball in play he became a big cat, his every
move fluid and effortless, but he did nothing for show. It was all for joy, the
pure delight of making his body and the ball do what pleased him. He pleased
the children, too. Derek had three young friends to impress, and they were
intimidated at first. All they wanted to do was watch. But Reese was ready to
play. Where there was a ball and a hoop, he was home. He was the benevolent
master. He owned the game, and it was his to give. On the court he was more
than a player. He was host, entertainer, and teacher. It pleased him to feed
the ball to small hands and help them find joy in their own moves, delight in
seeing the ball drop through the net at their direction.

Helen
and Sarah sat at the round glass table on the multilevel deck—"the owners'
seats," Reese said—and cheered for everybody.

There
wasn't much trash talk on the backyard court, but the boys were soon convinced
that Derek's uncle was, indeed, the hero their friend had bragged about. Like
most nine-year-olds, they were full of questions and fully capable of
playing—or playing
at
—a game of pickup ball and conducting a running
interview at the same time.