Forests of the Heart (22 page)

Like most of the men who knew Angel, Tommy was half in love with her from the first time they met. She’d organized an all-ages teen dance at the Crowsea Community Center which Tommy and a few of his street pals crashed, six of them, high as kites and drunk, floundering about on the dance floor, pushing kids around and having themselves a grand old time until suddenly Angel was standing there, staring them down. She didn’t have to do anything. Just the look in her eyes shamed them into leaving.

But Tommy came back and helped clean up after the dance. He wouldn’t talk to anyone—especially not Angel—but he wanted to be near her. There was something in her presence that soothed the constant anger that sometimes the drugs and alcohol dulled, sometimes they fed. To this day, he couldn’t explain what it was. In those days he didn’t even try.

He didn’t turn over a new leaf after that night. A month later a brawl landed him in juvie where Angel bailed him out. She wasn’t there to help him, but when she saw him slouched on a bench, she came over and sat down beside him.

“I remember you,” she said. “You were at the dance last month.”

Tommy stared at the floor, unwilling, unable to look at her.

“What are you in for?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Fighting.”

“Did you start it?”

Tommy hesitated, then finally looked up at her, saw himself reflected in those warm, kind eyes of hers. He nodded.

She smiled. “Well, at least you’re honest. You think it’ll happen again?”

“Probably.” That wasn’t what he’d meant to say, but he couldn’t seem to lie to her. “But I’ll try not to.”

She didn’t say anything for a long moment, just studied him. It was weird, the way she looked at him. It wasn’t judgmental, but it was definitely taking his measure. She made him think of his mother, he realized. His mother and the Aunts. They had that same way of looking at you that made you stop and think about what exactly it was you were trying to prove.

“I… I just get angry,” he found himself saying. “I guess I’m always angry.”

“What about?”

“Don’t know.”

She nodded. “Let me talk to the sergeant,” she said. “I’ll see if I can get the charges dropped.”

Tommy had tried to do good after that. Angel got him into AA, found him a room in a boardinghouse, a job bagging groceries at a store on Grasso Street, just a couple of blocks away from her street-front office. He’d come into her office from time to time and help out, sweeping the floor, cleaning the windows. Mostly he’d listen to her talk, his own tongue stuck fast to the roof of his mouth so that he could only reply in monosyllables. Things were going well, but after a while he drifted back into the street life, why, he didn’t know. But he started calling in sick at work, stopped going to AA meetings. He’d hang with the guys, drinking, fighting, boosting car stereos and the like. He didn’t see Angel again for about a year, not until he was picked up and dumped off in a holding cell at the Crowsea Precinct.

He was lucky. The only charges they had against him were vagrancy, and being drunk and disorderly in a public place. He didn’t know how she found out, but when he looked up from the bunk in his cell the next morning, she was standing there on the other side of the bars.

“Hello, Tommy,” she said. “How’re you doing?”

He thought he’d die of shame. There was no recrimination in her voice, or in her eyes, no sense that she was disappointed in him. But seeing her there made him disappointed in himself.

“Not so good,” he told her.

She stood up for him again. It was back to AA, another boardinghouse, another job—this time on the janitorial staff at a high school, cleaning up at nights when the place was empty. It was good to have something to do at night—it kept him from seeing the guys, falling back on his old ways. He could sleep through the day, work at night. Sometimes, when he finished up early, he’d go to the school library and read for a couple of hours.

The routine held until the day he found out that his father had died— drunk as usual. Frank had managed to choke to death on his own puke. One more loser brave, dead in an alleyway. Tommy didn’t even think about what he was doing. He just walked into a bar and had himself a celebratory drink. Then he had some more. When the barman stopped serving him, he went to a liquor store and bought three mickeys of cheap whiskey.

When he came to a day-and-a-half later, he was lying in a nest of trash at the back of some alley. For all he knew it was the same one in which his father had died. He lay there for a long time, then finally stumbled to his feet. Hung over, sick to his stomach, reeling. He knew what he should do. Call his sponsor. Head for the nearest AA meeting. But what was the point? Like father, like son. It was in the genes, ran in the blood, and it was never going to go away. But at least when you were drunk, you couldn’t think. Everything bad just blurred, was bearable.

So he went and bought himself another couple of bottles of oblivion.

When Angel found him in the drunk tank this time she had them open his cell so that she could sit beside him on his cot.

“I heard about your father,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

She still shamed him, but today he had a voice. This was territory he knew too well.

“I’m not.” he said.

“Every death diminishes us.”

He still couldn’t look at her. “You sound like one of my aunts.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

That drew his gaze to her. “You know them?”

“I’ve met a few of them. Zulema helps me with some of the Native kids.”

He nodded slowly. “So that’s why I’m one of your pet projects.”

He’d often wondered why none of his family had interfered with the mess he’d made of his life. In the first few months that he’d been on his own—and knowing his mother and her sisters—he’d constantly expected them to come drag him back to the rez. Now he knew why they hadn’t had to bother. They’d just deputized Angel to stand in for them.

“Do you really believe that?” Angel asked.

He shrugged and returned to studying the floor.

“I didn’t even know you two were related until a couple of weeks ago.”

“I’m sure.”

“Have I ever lied to you before?” Angel asked.

The unfamiliar edge in her voice pulled his gaze back to her.

“No,” he said.

Angel smiled. “Okay. So long as we have that straight. I’ve talked to the judge and he says they’ll drop charges if you’ll voluntarily check into detox and then, once you’re clean and back at work, you pay off the damages.”

Tommy blinked. “Damages?”

“You don’t remember?”

He shook his head.

As Angel started ticking off the items—plate glass window of a photography shop, glass and frames of photos on display—it began to come back to Tommy. One of the photos had been part of an advertisement for a photographic gallery show featuring the rez. He’d been stumbling by when the image of some fancy dancers at a powwow caught his eye. He’d picked up a garbage can and put it through the window, then to the soundtrack of the store’s alarm, had systematically begun breaking each of the framed photos in the display.

“Why do you keep helping me?” he asked Angel.

She gave him a long serious look that made him want to flinch and look away, but he couldn’t move his head.

“I believe in you,” she said.

He thought of Angel saying those words to him in the drunk tank, how they’d actually pulled him out of the inexplicable anger and despair and set him on the road he walked today. It had been a long, hard struggle, but this time he’d stuck it out. He still had dreams about those days, but he savored the mornings when he woke up, knowing that was all they were. Dreams. The past.

He looked at his Aunt Sunday now, and made a sweeping motion with his hand.

“You’re proud of this?” he asked.

She shook her head. Lifting her hand, she laid her palm against his chest.

“We’re proud of this,” she said. “The heart that beats in this man’s chest. His generosity of spirit and strength of purpose. You have grown into a good man, Thomas Raven.”

Tommy smiled. “Then why are you all so worried?”

“Ah…”

She took the pot from the hot plate and turned the heat off. Dropping the tea bags into the boiling water, she leaned against the kitchen counter and sighed.

This didn’t bode well, Tommy thought. He couldn’t think of a time when one of his aunts had been at a loss for words. They were never hesitant in offering an opinion, passing along a piece of advice, telling a learning story.

“It has to do with
manitou”
she said finally.

That was the last thing Tommy had expected to hear.

“Manitou,”
he repeated.

Sunday nodded. “Ours and theirs.”

“Theirs?”

“The Europeans.”

Now Tommy was really confused. “The Europeans have
manitou?”

“Of course. What would you call the spirits that followed them here?”

“I never really thought about it.”

He’d never thought that they might have even brought spirits with them, never mind what they might be called.

“They want our land,” Sunday said.

“People always want our land.”

“No, I mean the spirits. They mean to take the sacred places from our
manitou.”

Tommy’s head filled with questions. Was such a thing even possible? All he knew about the spirits he’d learned through stories—stories that took place in some long ago, before the People had been forced to share their world with the Europeans. The stories had always been entertaining, but he’d never considered them to have much relevance to the present world.

“What does any of this have to do with me?” he asked.

Sunday gave him a reluctant shrug. “It’s been
seen.
The details are less than clear, but you are involved.”

“But
manitou .
.. you’re talking campfire stories.”

“Not true, nephew. The
manitou
are real. And they are dangerous.”

Of course. In the stories, they were always dangerous. But true?

Tommy sighed. He loved his aunts, and trusted their instincts, heeded their advice. But this … it would have been funny if Sunday didn’t seem to be taking it so seriously. And he still felt like laughing all the same. But then he made the fateful mistake of asking, “Who’s seeing me in these stories?”

“Jack Whiteduck.”

A great stillness entered Tommy and he felt like he needed to sit down.

There was a certain hierarchy on the rez. The chief and council were elected, but only with the approval of the Aunts—not his aunts, but the elders. On the rez there was no need to differentiate between the two. Everyone knew who you were talking about without the need to explain that you were referring to the elders, or the Creek sisters. In time, his aunts would be counted as elders, too, but that day was still in the future. For now, the Creek sisters answered to the elders, as did everyone on the rez. Everyone, that is, except for one man. Jack Whiteduck. The shaman. He answered to no one except the
manitou
and the Grandfather Thunders.

“This is … serious,” Tommy said.

Sunday nodded. “I know. I’m sorry. I wish there was something more we could do besides pass on his warning.”

“What am I supposed to do?” he asked. “Should I talk to him?”

Which was the last thing in the world he wanted to do. Like most of the people on the rez, Tommy had grown up in fearful awe of the old man. No one wanted to come to his attention because when you did, your life changed. For good or bad—it didn’t really matter. Afterwards, you were a different person. The spirits knew your name. They could take you away, anytime.

A few moments ago, Tommy had been laughing about
manitou.
But now that he knew that Whiteduck was involved …

Sunday shook her head in response to his question. “Wait,” she said. “If he wants to talk to you, he’ll let you know. Just be careful, nephew.”

She turned away, covering up her discomfort with the message she’d brought by fussing with the tea bags steeping in the pot, pouring their tea. She handed Tommy a mug, took the other for herself. Tommy cupped his hands around the china mug, feeling the tea heat the porcelain, but the warmth brought him no ease.

“I already feel changed,” he said.

Sunday nodded sympathetically. “That’s the way it starts.”

And how does it end? he wanted to know, but he didn’t ask the question aloud. He knew his aunt felt bad enough as it was, having had to tell him about Jack Whiteduck’s vision. He took a steadying breath, sipped at the tea.

“So,” he said after a moment. “How’s my mother? Your sisters?”

Sunday gave him a grateful look. When they retreated to the other room to sit on the bed, she brought him up to date on all the gossip since he’d last been back home. It had only been a couple of weeks, but something was always happening on the rez. Events could run the gamut, from silly to tragic, but at least they were mundane, rooted in the real world rather than that of the spirits. Listening helped keep Tommy’s panic at bay, but a supernatural dread had settled deep inside him now, along with the knowledge that his life was no longer his own.

Why did Jack Whiteduck have to see
him
in a vision?

S
UNDAY NIGHT
, J
ANUARY I
8

Miki let herself into her apartment a little after eleven. Closing the door behind her, she shed her boots and hung her jacket on the doorknob of the closet. The apartment was quiet—Donal’s absence reminding her of how angry she was with him all over again. She’d been able to forget for a while, comfortable in Hunter’s company, enjoying the tasty, if somewhat basic fare at the Dear Mouse Diner.

He was quite the man, Hunter was. He’d always treated her well, right from the start, standing up for her when she was a bratty fifteen-year-old and trying to sneak into The Harp for the sessions, never talked down to her or tried to make her feel out of place or stupid. He’d stop and chat when he came upon her busking somewhere, take her out for a meal if he decided she was looking too skinny.

She’d played a battered-up old Hohner two-row in those days that was pure shite—not because of the brand, it was just such a sad old beast of a box. But she’d kept the reeds tuned, patched the tears in the bellows whenever a new one appeared, and it had treated her right, or as well as it could, all things considered. A bit like Hunter, really. Steady. No airs with either of them. She still had the Hohner sitting in a case at the back of her clothes cupboard— didn’t have the heart to toss the poor old bugger out—and she still had Hunter as a friend.