Lending Light (Gives Light Series Book 5) (37 page)

Uncle Gabriel released a bitter sigh.  "Maybe now Susan can..."

He'd told me months ago not to disturb my mother's ghost.  He was nothing if not a loyal brother.

"You really gave Sky's dad the order?" I asked, intimidated.

"Yes," Uncle Gabriel said.

I still wasn't sure that I believed him.  If you want to know why, you have to understand the kind of a man my uncle was.  He believed in taking the fall for other people.  When my sister first chucked Stu Stout's cat down the water well, Uncle Gabe fished the cat out and said it was his fault, because he hadn't been keeping a close enough watch.  When I was small, and I destroyed a library book in a fit of rage, Uncle Gabe didn't just repay the library; he apologized to them.  He grounded me later, yeah; but I'll never forget that he apologized in my place.

"Why did my dad have to be a serial killer?" I muttered.

Uncle Gabe sat next to me on the staircase.  "C'mere," he said.

He pulled me into a hug.  He hadn't hugged me since I was ten.  I felt like I was ten again, his arms around me, the urge to cry overpowering.  I didn't cry.  I buried my face against his big shoulder.  It must feel weird to hold a grown child in your arms, when all you see when you look at them is a small one.

"Are you
really Daigwani?" I asked, voice muffled.

Uncle Gabriel brushed my hair, consoling me.  "Your ancestors didn't fight back," he said, "because they realized this country would destroy itself if left to its own devices.  You can't found a country the way you would a business and expect smooth sailing."

I'd always thought of myself as the son of a serial killer.  I'd never thought of myself as the descendant of a chieftainess.

"I have Sacajawea's Jefferson Medal," Uncle Gabriel said, releasing me.  "If you'd like to see it."

I stood up.  When it came to distractions, Uncle Gabriel was the king.  "Okay."

17

The Coyote Ceremony

Annie opened her front door and squinted at me in the morning light.

"I need to ask you a favor," I said, uncomfortable.

"I'm not making you samosas, Rafael."

"Not that."

She let me inside her house.  Her little brother entertained himself spinning around in circles.  Her little sister took one look at me, snorted haughtily, and excused herself from the front room.

"Yes?" Annie prompted.

"Do you think the FBI's gonna come back to the rez?" I asked.  "Now that Paul's here?"

"You mean Mr. Looks Over?" Annie asked.

"Yeah, him."

"Well, why shouldn't they?" Annie asked.  "That is, they've been dogging Skylar all summer long, and that was before his father's fortuitous return."

Great.  My stomach sank.

"What's the favor?" Annie asked.

"I need you to help me blockade the Looks Over house if the FBI try to take Sky's dad."

Annie stared at me without reaction.  I felt like the dumbest animal on the planet.

"Never mind," I murmured.

"You think resisting arrest is a good idea?" Annie asked.

"They can't arrest him," I said.  "I don't think."

"Why?"

" 'Cause that stupid Major Crimes law says you can't arrest anyone on an Indian reservation unless the crime happened on the reservation."

"I wasn't aware of that.  That's useful to keep in mind."

I didn't know if Annie knew what crime we were talking about.  Annie and Sky were close; no doubt he must have broached the subject with her at some point.  But getting information out of Annie was like getting a grenade out of a foxhole.  With that in mind, I thought she'd make for a good soldier someday.

I left Annie's house feeling stupid, which wasn't much different from the way I normally felt.  I visited Aubrey next and posited the same scenario to him.  He answered me with a whole lot of gulping and flailing, but I got the gist that he was on my side.  I left his house with my hands in my pockets, following the dirt road.  I walked slowly, devoured by thoughts.

The only reason I wanted to help Paul was Sky.  I knew what it felt like not to have a father.  I didn't want Sky to learn that loss for his own.  I've said it before, but maybe it bears repeating.  When I love somebody, I love them unconditionally.  My own feelings can't change it.  Whether or not Sky had come to the reservation to distract us all from my father's sentence was not going to change that I loved him.

After Aubrey's place I visited the Stout household out by the hospital.  Stuart came outside with Morgan, his eleven-year-old brother, a big-eyed, solemn-faced little boy.  I asked them if they'd be willing to help with the blockade.  Stuart gave me a suspicious look.

"What's all this about?" he asked.

I grunted.  "I wanna help Sky."

"You mean Skylar.  If he requires help for some reason, why am I hearing about it from you?"

"Because he doesn't have his own voice," I said, irritated.

Sky didn't have a voice.  I couldn't imagine what that was like.  When I was angry, and I wanted you to know it, you knew it.  Sky didn't have the luxury of announcing his emotions.  What did it feel like to need people's help, to be unable to ask for it?  Did he feel like a child sometimes?  Did he ever wish he could curl up and scream?

After visiting the Stouts I backtracked to the windmill field.  I kept thinking about different Shoshone medicines, like how you were supposed to take licorice fern for a sore throat, or bloodroot if you couldn't breathe.  None of our medicines had the ability to regrow vocal cords.  Even western medicine didn't have the ability.  Maybe if western medicine and Shoshone medicine worked together, we could have found a common cure.

I stopped walking.  Dawning hit me like a sack of bricks.  Shaman Quick had told me during my vision quest that I'd understand what it felt like not to have a voice.  If I'd taken him literally, I could have figured out ages ago what I was supposed to do with my life.  I was going to give Sky back his voice.  I was going to become a speech therapist.  It was so obvious, I wanted to laugh with relief.  I had a purpose after all.  I wasn't hopeless after all.

I must have been laughing when Zeke opened his front door at my knocking.  He stared at me like I'd grown a second head.

"I need your help," I began.

"No way!  Sayonara, weirdo!"

"It's for Sky!" I said, frustrated.

"Don'cha mean Sky-lark?" Zeke said.  "Geddit?"

I was starting to regret having promised Sky not to use my fists.

"His dad might be in trouble," I began, growling.

"I can touch my elbow with my tongue!"

"If we could get everyone to--what?"

"Aaaaah--ike dis--"

"Do you even have an attention span?"

"Okay, I'll help.  That means you owe me!"

"The hell I do!"

Luke Owns Forty watched us from inside the house; I spotted him over Zeke's shoulder and flinched.  His brows were heavy and stern, his haggard face laced with hatred.  I didn't think that guy would ever like me, no matter what I did to change his opinion.  To Luke I wasn't a person, but a living reminder, an effigy he could despise in my father's place.

I tried to push Luke out of my head.  Later that night I went to another Full Moon party at Selena's house.  This time Holly, Daisy, and Immaculata were there, too.  Daisy pushed me onto the couch and took turns with Prairie Rose penciling my eyes in eyeliner.  It itched and tickled at the same time.

"Do you think there'll be a standoff?" Immaculata asked, her frizzy hair standing on end.  She smiled with wicked cunning, eyes bulging excitedly.  Nothing pleased her better than conflict.

"Aw, leave it," Daisy said breezily.  "Feds never helped us, anyway."

"You really think they won't hurt us?" Autumn Rose piped up.  "If we stand in their way?"

"Be illegal if they did," I said.

"But do they care about that?"

"They wanna keep their jobs, don't they?"

"The only way they'd lose their jobs is bad press," Selena said, tossing her legs across Prairie Rose's lap.  Prairie Rose squawked angrily, shoving them off.  "You think the press cares about Indians?"

"They don't?" Autumn Rose asked, wilting.

"You ever seen an Indian on your television?" Selena asked.

"I don't own a television," Autumn Rose said.

"I do," Selena said, digging under couch cushions until she pulled out some kind of controller.  "Go put it on and tell me when you find an Indian."

Autumn Rose scooped up the controller and went to the other side of the sitting room.  She sat in front of the blocky black television set; only when she pressed the buttons on the controller, helpless, the screen went pepper-colored and hissed with static.  So much for that.

"I'll help you, Rafael," Sarah said loyally.

I messed her hair up with my hand, a sentimental knot in my throat.  "Knew I could count on you."

"I found an Indian!" Autumn Rose gasped.

Selena glanced over at the TV and snickered.  "That's your reflection, you dolt."

Siobhan held a hand mirror up to my face.  I squinted at my own reflection, the kohl around my eyes.

"This looks stupid," I decided.  "I think I'm gonna stick to nail polish."

I was walking home from the Long Way house when I started thinking about the sinkhole again, and Dad, and why Dad had never thought to hide his evidence down there.  I thought about the star charts on one wall, the writing on the other.  I guessed I'd always thought it weird that none of Sacajawea's descendants showed up in Nettlebush.  Uncle Gabriel had shown me her heirlooms the other night: a Jefferson medal, a cradleboard, a copy of the map Lewis and Clark had drafted.  I'd touched the cradleboard and felt like a child myself.  Sometimes I think nobody ever really grows up.  People just tell you that you do.

When I got to my house Andrew Nabako was waiting outside in a grubby winter coat.  I stared, because it was ninety-three degrees out; if he wanted to sweat that badly, all he had to do was take a walk.

"Are you wearing makeup?" Andrew asked.

"No," I lied quickly.  "Uncle Gabe's not home."

"Am aware."

Uh.  "You want iced tea?"

"No.  Gabriel told me you asked about the Coyote Ceremony."

"Yeah.  But--"

"Come on."

Andrew walked away.  I scurried after him, losing my balance.  He was headed into the badlands, I realized.

"Are we going to the shaman?" I asked.

"In a sense."

Andrew was one of those grownups who made me want to pick a hiding place and stick to it.  It's always the quiet types, I guess.  Sky didn't count as a quiet type.  He wasn't quiet; he was silenced.  I peeked sideways at Andrew, but he paid me no mind.  We followed the clay slopes not to the shaman's canyon, but to the southern oak grove outside the promontory.

"A sweat lodge?" I asked, taken aback.

A manmade mound of dirt and stone stood under the biggest, mossiest oak.  The only opening was the entrance, so low you had to duck down and crawl through it.  If I'd known the Coyote Ceremony meant going to the sweat, I wouldn't have asked to participate.  I hated sweat lodges.  I hated stewing in my own heat.

Andrew's eyebrows arched without sympathy.  I cringed.  I dropped to the clay ground, crawling inside the earthen prison.

It was dark inside, as you might expect, and stifling, although the coals weren't lit yet.  Andrew came into the lodge after me, shucking off his extra clothing along the way.  Now that I thought of it, he lived in a kind of perpetual sweat lodge, his scarf and his gloves and his sweatshirts a portable purifier.  The thing about sweat lodges, though, is that you only go into one to cleanse your spirit.  It scared me to try and imagine what Andrew had done that warranted constant cleansing.

I heard a rustling outside the lodge; and then a shadowy shape stooped in the sunny entrance.  I thought it was the shaman.  The shadowy shape came and sat next to us.  My eyes adjusted.

"Paul," Andrew said.

I stiffened.  There wasn't any steam yet, and I already felt like I couldn't breathe.

"Hello," Sky's dad said awkwardly.  He folded his bear legs.  He looked me in the eye.

" 'Lo," I mumbled miserably.  I looked away.

"Hello," Paul said again.  "Rafael."

I looked at Andrew.  "Can I leave?"

I couldn't have, because the shaman joined us at last.  He gazed among the three of us with his buggy little eyes, sulky and distrusting.  He knelt on the other side of the coal pit between a water drum and hollow rattle.  He reached into a basket, pulling out handfuls of powdery white clay.

"You will go first," the shaman said to me.

I knelt beside him, apprehensive.  He smeared the white stuff on my face.  He added a second layer, and a third, until my skin was so caked in it I couldn't feel my own cheeks when I touched them with my fingertips.  He dismissed me summarily and repeated the process on Andrew.  Andrew held as still as a statue, barely even blinking.  When it was Paul's turn Paul somehow got the stuff lodged in his mouth.  He spent several long minutes coughing.  Andrew patted him on the back while the shaman yelled at him.