Why the Star Stands Still (Gives Light Series) (18 page)

"Hi, Dad," I said, and sat at his side.

"Don't worry," he muttered.  "I'll let them go once I've caught them."

His fishing line didn't move.

"Ghost dance is coming up," I said, grasping for a conversation starter.

"I'm aware of that."

"Marilu might be coming to Nettlebush for it.  It'll be nice to see her again, won't it?"

"You'll have to let me know."

I watched his face carefully.  I've always thought he looks statuesque.  If you've ever gone to a museum--against your will--you'll know what I mean.  You can look at those sculptures as long as you like, but they can't look back.  They can't interact with you.  I guess it would be creepy if they did.  But how do you grow up with a father like that?  A father you can mull over, but never interact with?  This is the same father who waited until I was seventeen to tell me we weren't related.  I'm pretty sure he only confessed because I figured it out first.  How do you help a man who won't let you help him?

"I'm very old, Cubby," Dad said.

"You're not old," I said, surprised.  "You're fifty-six."

"I know."  He paused.  "I've never felt so old."

In many ways, I suppose Dad really had lived a long life.  He'd had enough heartache and hardship to fill four different men's shoes.  And the things he'd done...  Most of the people never do half of the things he's done.

Have you ever noticed the way air refracts when it's really hot out?  How wavy it gets?  It's weird, isn't it?

The air above the lake looked like settling mist, hazy and heated beneath an unforgiving sun.  It had the effect of making the water look like a mirror, glimmering and gray and polished like the surface of a diamond.  I felt like I was sitting inside a children's storybook.  Any moment now the sun would come crawling down to the earth; the trees would start whispering in the wind.  Why were the clouds so gray if it wasn't going to rain?  Why was the air so dry?

"Tell me about prison," I said.

Dad raised his head as though hearing me for the first time.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because I want to know."  Because you never talk to me, I thought.  Not if you can help it.  Because you need to talk to me, or you're going to spiral into madness.  "So tell me."

If I thought he was going to respond right away--I was wrong.  He took a moment, probably to gather his thoughts.

He started to talk.

"It was miserable," Dad said, in a horrifically detached way that made me think he was talking about somebody else entirely.  "Grown men regressing to children...to animals..."

I wanted to put my hand on his back, but I was afraid he wouldn't appreciate that.

"You stop existing as an individual.  You either belong to the pack of animals or the helpless children.  The days blend together.  Blending, and blurring...  You can't remember what happened yesterday.  The day before that.  You're always on the lookout."

"The lookout?" I asked.

"For the ones who behave like animals.  They'll kill you.  They don't need a reason.  They don't care about the consequences.  They're already in prison.  They've got nothing to lose."

"Dad," I said, my head spinning, my heart sick.  "I'm so sorry..."

"I didn't tell you because I wanted you to be sorry.  I told you because you asked me."

I couldn't imagine living that way--like an animal on the run.  Nobody ought to live that way, I thought.  No matter what they'd done.

And then Dad said the most shocking thing of all.

"Now I know how Eli felt."

Eli was Rafael's father.

"What do you...?" I started, but couldn't finish.

"I chased him for over a decade," Dad said.  "He was looking over his shoulder all that time.  He couldn't stop running.  The moment he stopped, he died.  That's no way to live."

I realized, astonished, that Dad felt sorry for Rafael's father.  He still thought of him as his best friend.

"When I caught up with Eli," Dad said--and I wished he would stop.  I wished I hadn't forced him into this.  I didn't want to hear what he was about to say.  At the same time, I wanted to help him.  "He wasn't remotely surprised.  I broke into his apartment...tied him to a chair...  Old  trick your grandfather showed me, the slipknot.  The harder you pull on it, the tighter it binds you..."

Oh, God, I didn't want to hear this.

"We talked.  ...It was like time hadn't even elapsed.  He asked about Susan, about Rafael and Mary.  Didn't seem to care when he found out Susan had died...  But then he asked about you, and--and I snapped."

Appreciated or not, I found his shoulder and gripped it--hard.

"Do you know how long it takes to die of asphyxiation?" Dad asked mildly.

I shook my head without meeting his eyes.

"Ten minutes," he said.  "It takes ten minutes to choke to death.  I wrapped that cord around his throat--nylon, I picked it up from the hardware store along the way--and I pulled.  And he choked.  Ten minutes.  For ten minutes I held that cord taut, and he stared at me, and I stared back--and I couldn't look away.  Do you know he started to bleed?  That's how tight I was pulling the cord...  It seemed appropriate to me, somehow.  To cut his throat.  So appropriate.  Ten minutes.  Ten minutes, and he never once looked away.  And I couldn't take my eyes off of him.  I knew what he was thinking.  I've always known.  'How could you do this to me?  Weren't we friends?'  ...But my son..."

I realized then that killing Eli had been a double-edged sword.  Dad had gotten the revenge the Shoshone people needed--and he'd saved probably countless women in the process--but he'd also lost a friend.  This man who had suffered loss for all of his life.

When is loss too much?  When you're tallying the losses--when you're adding them up, nice and neat, just another for the books--at what point do you start to break?  How much loss is too much loss?

I can't answer for everyone.  It would be pretty miraculous if I could.  I only know what I think.  What I think is this:

Even one loss is too much loss.

"Dad," I said.  "It's over now.  You don't have to lose anyone else."

He bowed his head--that gesture so universal among all Shoshone--but then he raised it.  He looked up at me, and I realized, mortified, that his eyes were shining with tears.

He had never shown me his tears before.

"How do you know?" Dad asked, his voice faltering and weak.  "How do you know something else won't happen?  It only takes one instant.  One accident.  Any one of you could die between today and tomorrow.  A madman runs onto the reserve with a gun.  What then?"

"DeShawn stops him," I supplied, thinking about the reservation police.

"Or DeShawn is shot to death.  What about health complications?  Jessica's heart suddenly stops beating.  There doesn't have to be a reason.  The human body's funny, in that regard.  Or you.  What about you?  You've had cancer twice now.  What if it comes back?"

Instinctually, I rubbed my upper arm.  "I've been in remission for eleven years, Dad," I said.  "Once it's past five years..."

"That's a guideline.  Medicine doesn't always follow guidelines."  He paused.  "What about Racine?  She used to be a police officer.  She's made a lot of arrests.  A lot of enemies.  It only takes one belligerent girlfriend with a grudge.  And we're getting old, she and I.  What if she dies in her sleep?  What if--"

I knew what he was about to say before he even said it.

"What if she leaves me?"

"She's not going to leave you," I said.  My hand was on his forearm; my gaze was intent.  Not that he was even looking at me.  "She loves you.  She married you when you were serving a life sentence, Dad.  If that's not love, what is?"

"You just said it," Dad replied.  "We thought I was going to be in prison for years.  Marrying her was a very bright spot on an otherwise dark canvas.  She--"

I couldn't believe this.  He thought she married him for pity.

"Dad," I said.  My heart was breaking.  "Dad, why didn't you tell me?  That this is who you really are?  I never knew you hated yourself this much.  All these years..."

It felt like I was meeting him for the very first time.

We sat in silence, the two of us.  The sun didn't come crawling down from the sky.  The trees didn't start whispering in the wind.  This wasn't a child's storybook. 

"I'm so tired," Dad finally said.  He laughed.  It was the laugh of a man faced with the most absurd of quandaries. 
What do I do now?
  That kind of laugh.

"Do you know something?" I said quietly.

He looked at me.

"You're right," I said.  "I can't guarantee that any of us will still be here from one day to the next.  A rattlesnake could bite Rafael while he's out hunting in the badlands.  Michaela could be playing with Charity one day when she falls into the brook and breaks her neck on the rocks.  Or," I said, my knees raised, my hands resting on my knees.  The lake was a mirror, gray and bright.  "My cancer could come back.  Maybe it spreads to my stomach this time.  Maybe they can't operate."

I didn't think Dad wanted to hear any of this.  I didn't blame him.

"If we can die at any minute," I said, "why are you wasting your life dreading it?  Why don't you just live while you have the chance?"

When I looked at him, his eyes were on the distant radio tower.  I couldn't tell what was going through his mind.

And maybe that's okay.  Maybe it didn't matter whether I knew what was going through his mind.  Maybe all that mattered was that I kept trying to understand him.

"Dad?" I said.

"Yes?"

"I love you.  Do you know that?"

He didn't respond.  Not immediately.

"Yes," he said.  "I've always known that."

I think, in some ways, it was all he really needed to know.

10

Sleepwalker

The line outside the ballpark was long and dense.  DeShawn tapped on my shoulder and I spun around.

"Where'd you get the tickets?" he asked, a baseball cap on his head.  Whether he was showing his support or just aggravated with the sun, I couldn't tell.  "Aren't they expensive?"

"It's minor league," I said.  "They're never expensive."

He wasn't to be deterred.  There's nothing my punctilious brother loves more than numbers.  "Well, if you'll give me the full cost," he said, "I'll add it to the books, and we can recover the funds during crafts month--"

"You hear that, Shawny?" Jessica said behind him.

"Hear what?"

"The sound of my brain melting?  It sounds a little like...  'Shut up...  Shut up...' "

"Noted," DeShawn said with a frown.

Just ahead of me, Mickey tugged on Rafael's arm.  He bent his head to listen to her.

"What's a dugout?" Mickey asked.

"How the hell should I know?" Rafael retorted.

For the tenth time this afternoon, I rolled my eyes.  Rafael had a notebook and two novels tucked under his arm.  I'd argued with him all during the car ride into the city.

"How can you bring a book to a baseball game?" I said again.

"S'easy, if you've got hands," he returned sourly.

"A dugout is where the players sit," Dad said to Mickey.  "And the coaches.  I'll show it to you when we're inside."

At long last, the line started to move.  A good thing, too.  The sun was giving me a vicious headache.

"What do you
mean
, my damn purse is too big?" Racine burst out at the front of the line.

"Ma'am," I heard the security guard say.

"If you think you're looking through my personal stuff, you've got another thing coming.  Do you know who you're talking to?"  Either I was blushing or I was sunburnt; I couldn't tell which.  "A retired police officer, that's who.  Move aside."

"Ma'am--" said the security guard.

"Sweetheart--" said Dad.

"You go, Mom!" Jessica said cheerfully.

The crowd was chaos.  Men and women kept stepping in and out of line, intermittently blocking my view.  I couldn't really tell what was going on.  All I knew was that I couldn't hear Racine anymore, and suddenly the line was moving again, and I figured maybe Racine had flashed her badge at the security personnel.  She does that, sometimes, when she wants to cut corners.  Or lines.  Or avoid parking tickets.  I'm not entirely sure it's legal.

"
Cool!
" Mickey breathed, once we had stepped into the stadium.

It was reminiscence of the most welcome kind.  I gazed around at the fresh-cut grass, at the blinking scoreboard and the climbing grandstand.  Dad and I used to spend countless summers in this baseball stadium.  Those summers felt like an eternity ago.  Dad wasn't a killer back then; and I didn't even know my own grandmother.

I stole a look at Dad.  For the most part I was trying to discern whether he'd be alright with this crowd.  The noise was deafening, the throng bordering on unnavigable.