Why the Star Stands Still (Gives Light Series) (28 page)

I drew closer, tentative.  I reached for the object--the picture frame.  My uncle Julius stared back at me from the weathered snapshot, his eyes big and brown, his five-year-old smile big and toothy.

I have brown eyes, too.

And then I noticed something else about the photograph--

No filmy dust sitting on the glass frame.

Somebody had been here before me.

I started out the front door with haste.  Suddenly I knew where Dad had gone for the night.

The graveyard behind the little white church stood gray and desolate unto a howling autumn night.  The loose black gates creaked and slapped in the wind.  Rafael used to be afraid of this place when we were kids.  He'll deny it with all his heart, but take him out here sometime when it's dark out.  Watch how fast he wants to leave.

I walked between the rows of uniform headstones.  Everyone who's ever lived in Nettlebush is buried in this graveyard.  Over the years we've had to extend the territory out into the western woods.  It was a very small plot of land to begin with.

I found Dad sitting on the ground, cross-legged.  I crouched down and sat with him.  I read the gravestone before his water-gray eyes.

"Julius Looks Over.  1966 - 1971.  Our children have a wisdom all their own."

Dad drew a deep, rattling breath.  "Everything that ever went wrong in my life...it started with him."

I placed my hand on Dad's knee.

Do you know what blood law is?  For the longest time, it was the only real "law" the Plains People had to their name.

When one man kills another without reason, the family of his victim is entitled to take his life in return.  It's not really about retribution.  It's about the souls of the departed.  The departed will wander the earth as ghosts, scared and confused, unless the man who took their life is laid to rest.  That way he can't take any other lives.  That way men who might follow in his example will think twice.

"He can't rest..." Dad said.

I jolted.  "He's beneath the soil," I said.  "He's home."

"No, Skylar.  Everything that's gone wrong..."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing.  "You think Uncle Julius laid a curse on you?" I asked.

"Not intentionally.  He was too good of a child.  He would never...  These things come about.  There's a balance to the world, to every life on the planet.  When that balance is disrupted..."

"Dad," I said wildly.  "Don't.  Don't you dare start talking like this..."

"I ought to have died," Dad said.  "When I took his life, I ought to have died, too."

He looked me in the eye.  His eyes were unnaturally pale in the moonlight.  For a moment I thought:  He's the specter.  He's the one who's been wandering the earth, scared and confused.

"Okay, Dad," I said.  Was my voice wavering?  I couldn't help it.  "Okay.  So you should have died when you were ten?  Then what?"  I could see he was about to interrupt me, so I kept talking.  "Then I never would have known you."

"You would have grown up with your mother," Dad said.  "Because she never would have met me.  She never would have moved to the reservation.  You never would have lost your voice.  Your mother would still be alive today."

"I wouldn't have my father," I said.  "My
real
father," I said.  I didn't care to know who my biological father was.  "I never would have known my grandmother.  Or Marilu, or Aunt Cora and Aunt Melissa..."

"You would have your mother," he said.  In his voice was conviction.  He wouldn't hear otherwise.  "Your mother would still be alive--"

"I don't want my mother!" I snapped.

It's not like me.  It's really not like me.  Even before I had a voice I never used to express myself when I was angry.  On principle, I don't like anger.  It's too much of a waste of energy.

I was angry now.

"I don't want my mother," I went on.  My voice was shaking; I could hear it.  But I wasn't quite yelling.  There are still some things my vocal cords just don't know how to do.  "I want my father.  If you hadn't raised me, how do I know I would even be myself?  Why would you take that away from me?  You know something else, Dad?"  He didn't interrupt me.  "If you had died when you were ten years old, I never would have come to live on the reservation.  I never would have met Annie and Aubrey, and Zeke--"

"You never would have lost your voice," he said.  "I never would have taken you to therapy.  That woman never would have touched you--"

"I never would have met Rafael."

"You'd have a different family--"

"
I want this family.
"

Dad looked up at me; and in that moment, I was sure, I was positive, that he had never considered how happy I was just being his son.

"Nobody gets a perfect life, Dad," I said.  "If my mother had raised me instead of you...  What?  You don't know that I would have been happy with her.  And even if I was, does that mean I never would have been sad at some point?  You're not really that naive, are you?  Dad?"

"Your voice..."

"I like my voice just fine, but if growing up with you has taught me anything, it's that I don't need one.  I don't need a voice to be happy.  I just need you.  You," I said, "and Rafael, and Michaela.  And my brother and my sister, while we're at it.  And my stepmother, because she may be a terrible cook, but damn it, she can shoot a gun."

To my amazement, Dad began to laugh.

"I must have done something right," he said.  He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand.  I didn't believe for a second that I had swayed him, but maybe--maybe this was a start.  "Raising you, I mean.  You're a very funny kid."

I smiled at him.  "Not a kid anymore, Dad."

He hesitated.  "I know," he said.

I reached for his hand and found it.  I grasped it tightly.

"If you had died when you were ten," I said, "just think.  Eli might never have been caught.  I don't know about you, but I'm positive he would have taken more than seven lives.  Maybe not my mother's...  But Rebecca Takes Flight?  Naomi Owns Forty?  Mercy In Winter?"

Dad's eyes were difficult to read.  He's always been like that.  He's always existed on a different plane from me.

"And if you were to die today..."  My throat felt dry.  I swallowed.  It didn't help.  "You'd miss out on a lot of ball games and shinny tournaments.  Christmas parties and New Year's gifts.  And your granddaughter..."

His eyes widened, just slightly.

"How do you know she won't want to get married someday?  Maybe she'll want her grandfather there to see it."

"My granddaughter," Dad said.  "I had no idea..."

"She's decided to stay with us," I said.

"Ah," Dad said.  A faint smile glimmered on his face.  "Very gracious of her..."

"Of course.  She's our little princess."

"I heard about her health scare..."

"It's fine now.  We've been feeding her a lot of sugar, if you can believe it."

"That's very smart."

For a while, neither of us said a word, the night wind speaking in our place.  Dad reached out and touched Julius' name on the headstone.  His eyes sealed closed.

"I've always wondered what kind of a person he would have grown up to be...  Maybe we would have been friends, he and I.  Maybe he could have taken care of you while I was looking for Eli.  Would he have married?  Had children?  I don't know...  I knew a small and smiling baby.  I never knew the real Julius.  He never got to..."

"I think," I said, "he would have been a terrific man.  A very good judge of character."

Dad looked up at me.  His lips tilted into a wry half-smile.  That's how he is, my Dad.  He never lets himself smile completely.

"How do you know?" he asked.

"Because he loved you," I said.  "That's a pretty good judgment call, if you ask me."

14

Why the Star Stands Still

"Whose car is this?" Rafael asked gruffly.

The SUV parked outside the hospital was streaked in gold paint and stamped with bright, floral stencils.  It was probably the most hideous thing I'd ever seen.

"Mine," said Serafine Takes Flight, and she wandered past us, keys in hand.  "Get in."

Rafael and I exchanged questionable looks.

"
Cool
," Mickey said.  She pushed past us and climbed into the passenger seat.

"Uh,
no
," Rafael said harshly.  "Get in the back with Charity and Nick."

"But...!"

"And put your seatbelt on.  What, you think I was born yesterday?"

"Something like that," Mickey mumbled, and unwillingly changed seats.

There were eight of us in one car on the ride to the Black Mountain Reservation.  "It's a few hours away," I told Mickey," so sit tight."  She straightened out her regalia and stuck her tongue out at me.  Serafine and Jessica sat chatting in the front seats over the country radio station--I don't know what women talk about among themselves; bras, probably.  DeShawn sat with Rafael and me in the middle row and nattered about some military initiative he was starting up with Annie.  "We've got to have jobs lined up for them when they get out of the service.  Now, Stuart and Siobhan set up that clinic at Bear River, so I was thinking--"  And in the very back of the SUV, Nicholas was at his most disagreeable yet.  "Why am I stuck with girls?" he asked.  "Girls
don't
know how to hold a stimulating conversation."  I gave him credit for knowing the word "stimulating," but it probably wasn't the best declaration to make in a car full of women.  "Ow!  Mickey pinched me!"  Case in point.

"Mickey," I said crossly.

"What?" she returned.  "You said I couldn't bite, you didn't say I couldn't pinch..."

It was around dusk when we arrived at the Black Mountain Reservation.  The sky was a rich blue, the clouds scorched black.  Serafine parked us on a caked and muddy stretch of land just outside the reservation gates.  We climbed out, the eight of us; Mickey looked around with awe, her arms around a boxed pumpkin pie.  I wasn't sure whether the pie had come out right.  It looked kind of goopy to me when we took it out of the oven.

"It's cold here," Mickey said.

"That's why you're wearing a jacket," I returned.

We walked between the smoking little houses, past a library--Rafael's eyes glued to its door in longing--and past the town center's water well.  How picturesque looked the ground, strewn haphazardly with burnt brown and dawn-yellow leaves.  How proud were the tall maples, the aspens and the hickories.

Rafael nudged Mickey.  "You know something," he said.  "The colors you see on trees in the autumn--those are their natural colors.  Leaves are brown and yellow and red by default.  They only turn green when they've taken in a lot of sunlight.  So really, a tree turns color in spring, not autumn."

"They should always look this way," Mickey said.

"But then you wouldn't enjoy it as much," I said.  "Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing."

We walked through the town and out to the pauwau grounds.  A wide open area at the bottom of the black mountain, farms visible in the misty distance.

"There you are," Dad said, when he and Racine met up with us.  He looked ten years younger, fresh-faced and alive.  He hadn't been to Black Mountain in a very many years.  Maybe now that he was back here, he finally understood he had his life back.

He whispered:  "The Hopi are about to start their butterfly dance."

Mickey looked up at me.  "Butterfly dance?  Is it like our shawl dance?"

"Sort of," I told her.  I tweaked her nose.  "It's their version of the story.  The butterfly's first flight."

The Hopi women danced like light spring blossoms fluttering in the wind.  I still don't know how they manage to look so weightless in the heavy layers of their regalia.  Have you ever seen a Hopi woman's traditional hairstyle?  The way she takes her long, flowing hair and twists and winds it into two whorls on either side of her head?  They call it squash blossoms.  It's one of the most impressive things I've ever seen--but certainly topheavy.

The solemn dance reached its end.  Everybody applauded politely.  Mickey's eyes were fixed to the peak of the black mountain.

"I want to climb it," Mickey said.

I looked to Rafael.  He looked back at me, at a loss.

"I think shepherds live up there, hon," I said.

"Can't I climb it?" Mickey asked.  "Please?  I just want to see what it looks like from up there.  If the shepherds yell at me to go away, I will.  Please?"

I took the pie from her while I thought about it.  Grandma Gives Light hobbled along and snatched the box from my arms in turn.  "Mary!" she yelled, and kept walking.

"We'll climb it together," I said.  I didn't want her out of my sight.

"What're we climbing?" Racine asked.

"The Black Mountain," Rafael said.  "You wanna?"

There's a reason the Hopi call it the Black Mountain.  The mountainside sheened with a faint black undertone, mysterious and foreboding.  On my own, I probably wouldn't have braved it.  But then, I'm not a very brave person.