Why the Star Stands Still (Gives Light Series) (31 page)

"I admire your resolve," I said, "but getting yourself into legal trouble's not going to solve the issue.  And really, who do you think gets the last say in what the media airs?  Try not to forget that they only show you what they want you to see."

"So what?" said the rude boy.  "Are you saying we're just going to be screwed over for the rest of our lives?  And there's nothing we can do about it?"

"Legally?" I said.  I felt tired all of a sudden.  "No.  There's nothing you can do about it.  This country is not your friend.  The law is built to oppose you in every way you can think of."

"But--"

"But," I said.  "Now you know it's going to happen.  Take a look around this lecture hall for a second.  I can guarantee that this is going to happen to each and every one of you.  Maybe your children won't be the ones ripped out of their homes.  But your friends' children--your siblings' children?  It's going to happen to someone you know.  It's been happening for years."

The Lakota girl put her head down.

"What you can do," I said, "is this.  You can prepare your children.  Teach them all the routes back to their reservation.  Teach them how to board a train, a bus.  Make sure they're always carrying pocket cash so they can buy themselves food and water.  Because your children are going to be taken from you, and you're not going to be told where they are or who they're with.  It's going to be up to your children to run away."

I gripped the edges of the lectern and smiled weakly.  "Teach your children how to run away."

The Makah girl slowly raised her hand.

"Yes?"

"What happened to Danny?" she asked.  "Did he run away?"

I let go of the lectern.  I tugged on my necktie.

"He did," I said.  "Several times.  The first couple of times, I helped him myself.  But each and every time he ran back to his father, the police found him and brought him back to the Buthrops."

I thought about Danny with his olive green eyes, Danny with his big imagination and his love for crab fishing and Wovoka.

"Danny ran away thirteen times," I said.  "And all thirteen times, the Buthrops found him and took him away again.  Even when he and his father went into hiding.  His father was arrested at one point."  I can't tell you how angry I was just thinking about it.  "After the thirteenth failed escape," I said, "the Buthrops decided to send Danny to a juvenile correctional facility."

I'm not kidding; I really thought I was going to throw up.

"They found him hanging in his closet instead."

I actually saw a girl cover her mouth with both hands.  Maybe she was going to throw up, too.

"So please," I said.  And my voice was so quiet, I wasn't at all certain the microphone was working.  "Train your children.  Train them until they know every route home.  Train them so they know how to disguise themselves.  Peroxide's good for that--bleaching hair, I mean.  Fingerprints.  Did you know you can rub your fingerprints away with a little bit of sandpaper?  Or even polyurethane glue.  Get rid of your child's fingerprints.  Find hiding places with them.  Find friends to help you hide them."

I cleared my throat.  "I'm awfully sorry I have to ask this of you."

17

Willow

I was exhausted when I walked through the front door.  I wanted nothing more than to run upstairs and sleep for a thousand years.

Mickey had other plans.

"You're back!" she said.  She placed Mini on the floor and shook me by the shoulders.  Or tried to.  She was too little; she couldn't reach.  "Hurry, hurry!  Let's go!"

"Where are we going?" I asked, dumbfounded, while she raced around the front room and tried to find her discarded sneakers.

Mickey tossed me an impatient, impetuous look.  "November is the marriage month, dummy," she said.  What is it with kids these days and their sassy mouths?  "And Zeke's getting married.  Rafael said!"

"Where is Rafael?" I wondered, and looked around.

"Here," I heard his gruff voice call out, and then he stomped down the stairs after us like a lazy elephant.  Mickey giggled.

"What?" he demanded.

"You're worse than Nicholas after he found out Tesla's been dead since 1943.  Can we
go
already?"

"Yeah, yeah," Rafael said, and threw a shrewd look my way, as though to say, "When did she take charge of the house?"

I tied Mickey's shoes and we left the house, the four of us, Mini darting furtive, blue-eyed glances my way.  Little did she know I was too tired to commence the battle this afternoon.

"Rafael gave me a hunting knife," Mickey said.  "Want to see it?"

"Maybe later," I said, mortified.

We headed north to the badlands.  Mickey took Mini into her arms; Rafael and I took Mickey by her shoulders.  I don't trust the slippery clay out there for anything.

On the trek down the blue-gray terrain we met up with Lila and Joseph Little Hawk.  Lila looked insanely bored.

What's the matter?
I signed.

She says marriage is an outdated institution
, Joseph signed back.

I'm leading the way to a revolution
, Lila signed.

We hiked out to the promontory, the tallest point in the badlands.  A few families had already gathered atop the cliffside.  With them was Immaculata Quick, in plain white elk pelt, looking very loopy, and only a little authoritative.  Zeke and Holly showed up some seconds later.  The ceremony began.

"What's she saying?" Mickey whispered to me.

"She's speaking Shoshone," I whispered back.  "She's telling them to be good and kind to one another."

"Don't think those words are in Holly's vocabulary," Rafael murmured.

Daisy At Dawn jeered and threw lilacs at her sister's head--a naughty joke, because lilacs in Shoshone society have always represented virginity.  "When was I ever a virgin?" Holly wanted to know.  Luke Owns Forty cut strips of hair from his son and daughter-in-laws' heads and tied them together, a very emotional smile on his face.  Later on he would hide them in a safe place.  The couple could only divorce by finding the locks and untying them again.

"Allen must be pissed," Rafael said, and tried and failed to smother his grin.

"Why's that?" Mickey asked.

"He wants to do the wedding ceremonies.  He thinks everyone should get married Christian."

"That's dumb."

Zeke came toward us just then, swinging his arms.  He looked happy in a way I'd seldom seen him look before: content.  He smiles a lot, Zeke, don't get me wrong, but usually it's a frantic smile.

"Wanna sign your adoption papers now?" he asked.

I felt Mickey stiffen at my side with anticipation.  I smiled.  "Later on," I said.  "First we have to mourn the end of your free days."

"Free days?  I haven't had a free day since I started dating her!  I--oh," he said, because here she came now.

"Rumor has it there's a grotto in the woods," Holly said.  As long as I've known her, she's been a very dour, dramatic girl.  In her youth, she bickered with Zeke all the time; and I'm half-convinced they only married so they could go on bickering in closer, easier proximity.  Today, on the other hand...today, she almost looked friendly.  "Is there a reason I'm not allowed to see it?"

"The grotto," Rafael said.  "Damn.  I haven't been there in years.  Don't know whether I even remember the way."

"I do," Annie sang.  And she was by our side in seconds; Aubrey behind her, the babies on his back.  "I suppose we can share it with outsiders, just this once.  After all," and she winked, "it's a special occasion."

We climbed down the promontory together, careful, attentive to the unstable terrain.  Mickey scratched Mini behind her ears.  I could feel Mickey's curious gaze traveling between my face and Rafael's.  I reached sideways and ruffled her hair.

Annie led the way into the woods.  Aubrey followed her, and Leon tagged after him while singing Rabbit Guts, a delightful little round dance ditty.  Occasionally Leon lunged and swung his fists at the weeds standing on either side of the dirt road.  Nicholas dragged his feet across the ground, his head bent, and mopped at the back of his neck.  His hair's darker than his parents'; dark attracts sunlight.  Poor kid must have been heating up.  That's okay, I thought.  He'll be nice and cool once we reach the grotto.

I looked around, and I realized more people had followed us than I'd initially accounted for.  Dad and Racine, Dad's face unreadable, Racine's arm around his waist.  Zeke and Holly walking side-by-side, Holly trying very hard not to smile.  Reuben with his daughter Serafine, Serafine gabbing with Charity, Charity followed by Rosa, Rosa's shoulders wrapped safely in Gabriel's embrace.  Peripherally I saw Lila and Joseph signing to one another a mile a minute, and Daisy and Isaac with their grumpy son Ryan and their bashful son Gideon; and I glanced over my shoulder and saw DeShawn struggling to catch up with Autumn Rose, and Jessica and Prairie Rose holding hands like innocent schoolgirls.  They're still little girls in my eyes.  But don't tell them I said that.

What is this, I wondered with a smile, the reception committee?

"Wow..." Mickey breathed.

The forest opened unto a clear, cascading creek, a creek that wrapped around the base of a sweeping, majestic willow tree.  Here the beeches were clustered so closely together that the whole ground was painted in cool, filtered sunlight.  Many of the beeches had shed their preliminary autumn foliage; flaming orange and blood-red leaves swam down the creek like children's rafts, leisurely and safe.  And on the other side of the creek was the natural rock cave, its mouth painted welcomingly in faded pastel stars.

I tilted my head back.  I could hear the windchimes clapping musically from the highest boughs of the drooping willow tree.  I could hear the robins and the goldfinches calling to one another from the kaleidoscopic beech trees.  The goldfinches had to wander far to get to this place; their home was in the badlands, in the southern oak groves.

The sky skimming the tops of the trees was flushed pink with the dawn of evening.  Above the pink aura was a blanket of soft gray.

"This is so
cool
..." Mickey said.

"I wonder," Annie said, "whether my beads are still in that cave?"

"Really," Aubrey said, "I can't believe it's so long since we've come out here.  It doesn't look changed at all."

Aubrey sat by the mouth of the cave with the babies on his lap, their curious little eyes roaming safely from the confines of their cradleboards.  Annie drifted into the cave and Nicholas went after her:  "Is this cave a limestone deposit?  You can get good drinking water that way..."  Leon prowled and leapt and hopped on his heels and Serafine caught him in her arms, clucking her tongue.  "Swing me around, please!" he begged; and she did.  Gabriel and Rosa and Charity laughed over a waddling quail in the distance.

Mickey knelt by the creek and lowered her wrist to the surface.  The pilot whale dangling from her wrist lapped in and out of the flowing water.

Kids, I thought, and shook my head, innately warmed.

"Hey," Rafael said, and nudged me.  "Look who's back."

A coywolf came edging around the creosote bushes.  I recognized him at once, his legs slender and long, his torso stout, his sandy coat flecked with silver.  He shook his floppy ears and stalked closer, curious.

"What is that?" Mickey asked when she looked up.  She tucked her hair behind her ear.

"He's a coywolf," I said.  "Half wolf, half coyote."

"Like the two halves of God," Mickey said.

I was impressed that she had remembered the story.  "This one's name is Tello," I told her.

Tello crept closer, inspecting Mickey with soft yellow eyes.  Mickey laid her hands on the ground.  She looked toward me nervously.  "Is he safe?"

"Very safe," I said.  "Coywolves never attack humans."

Tello stuck his head out.  He batted his nose against Mickey's.

"Cold!" Mickey exclaimed, laughing.

"That's how he knows he can trust you," Rafael told her.  "When they bump noses, they're figuring out whether you're okay."

"Well," Mickey said, "I'm okay."

"Unless there's a bear around," I remarked.  Rafael gave me a quick look.

"Why's he called Tello?" Mickey asked.  She extended her hand slowly.

"It's short for Pocatello," I told her.  Tello calmly sniffed the palm of her hand.  "I was very good friends with his dad," I said.  "And his dad was kind enough to let me name the both of them."

Mini started hissing.  Tello turned his golden head and gazed at her.  He could smell Mickey's scent on her.  He wouldn't pounce on a common house cat.

"Mini," Mickey scolded.

I touched my hand against the base of Tello's head.  He tilted his head, just so, and peered at me.  When you look into a coywolf's eyes...  I don't know how to explain it.  You feel as though you're looking into a human's eyes.

"Check out that willow," Nicholas said suddenly.  He emerged from the cave and pointed at the stately tree.

My heart caught in my throat.  The trunk of the tree was smooth with weather and age, an indescribably silver-brown.  The tendrils hanging from the bent, spread branches were the softest green on earth.  They swayed and danced in the wind; they paused in the still air like falling rain.