Peter hadn’t fished since. His dad was gone. Being here changed nothing. He was in Neah Bay to get a job done, so to speak. Get his mom on her feet. He wouldn’t stay long. The gathering storm calmed his thoughts. His next gig was lined up. A jetty down south, beginning in spring. He’d been let go from his last contract and the one before that and the one before that. He didn’t like making allies. Got the best pussy in Portland, all the same. City ladies were desperate for a decent lay.
There was a city lady close by. He didn’t want to face his mom just yet.
Claudia paled when he asked her if she wanted to do a sweat with Dave. Didn’t seem like such a big deal, and he was pretty sure his neighbor would help him out, seeing as it was for the best cause on earth. Getting laid was almost a vocation for Peter, and had been for Dave, in his day.
“It’s not Makah. I mean, it is now, I guess. Didn’t used to be. You’ll like it.”
“Are you close to him?”
“Me and Dave? Oh yeah, we go way back.”
“Do you have a cigarette? I’m in the mood.”
He didn’t want to smoke, not right then, with his body swept clean, but he did it to be with her. He gave himself the pleasure of lighting both cigarettes with the same flame, their foreheads close enough to touch, the heat on her cheeks and his own, and relished her wry smile as she rocked back, satisfied, to lean on the wall of her covered patio. Smoke took root in his lungs, sending its tendrils from his tip to his toes. The Pacific churned and roared.
“Dave’s been helping your mom out over the years.”
“Yeah, you could say that.”
“Are they together?”
“What? No. He keeps an eye out for her, that’s all.”
When all was smoked, and some whiskey too, the sweat seemed like it happened to another man. Him, but not him, a shadow he, a parallel man best left to the past. He kissed her. The smoke and drink had varnished their tongues, but he kissed past the taste, kissed through the taste, until he couldn’t sense where his ended and hers arose, their mouths made one soft and soiled place.
She pulled away. “Why did you leave like that?”
On the morning his mom stunk up the house with frybread, around three o’clock, so real early that morning—what used to be night when he had a life—his mom was agitated, kept saying, “It’s coming!” Wouldn’t say what “it” was. He thought a nice big breakfast would calm her down, but she insisted on coffee, too. The last thing he wanted before dawn was a cracked out old lady, but he brewed a fresh pot. Dignity meant choosing her own destiny sometimes.
But not all the time. The coffee kept her hopped up, raving, “It’s coming! It’s coming!” He couldn’t reason with her harsh eyes, that stiff mouth. She bumped into the piles, raking her arms against the unseen weapons of frayed baskets and fistfuls of pens. He bandaged her twice before he offered a sedative.
Scratching and pacing. Scratching and pacing. At five thirty, he flat out ordered her to take a pill. He insinuated that his command came with doctor’s orders. “She gave them to you for times like this.” He wanted to summon the “Because I said so” but couldn’t make their inversion of roles irreversible, irrevocable. He wasn’t ready to come full circle. He thought she would balk, but she didn’t. Seemed relieved when he brought her a glass of water and the vial. Hell, she’d eaten, he told himself. He saw to that, first thing.
He hadn’t meant to drug his mother so he could fuck Claudia in the next room, but that’s what happened. And then Claudia had to go and plant ideas in his mom’s head, to justify her sickness, as if her hoarding had a purpose. He wasn’t to blame for what she became. He wasn’t about to reveal his mother’s trickery, how she’d never been interested in Indian things when he was growing up, except for bone game and the basketry, she always did that, and she knew how to make the old school stuff—buckskin bread, halibut chowder, salmon every which way—and she’d harvested clams on the regular. But she also went to church, and made him go. If she and Claudia wanted to come up with some kind of conspiracy theory, fine, that was on them. He would get his.
“I gave my mom a pill to help her sleep. That’s why she was passed out when you came. Groggy. I wouldn’t put much stock in whatever she told you.”
She gasped.
“She’s been having bad dreams. Wakes up crying. You should have seen her at four in the morning. She was all over the place.” He squeezed her arm. “Hey. I didn’t have a good option.”
“Do you think she knows about us?”
“I’m guessing you didn’t share that in your little heart-to-heart.” She was all up in his family’s business, but she had yet to learn that tit for tat was the key to this place. What would she call that? Reciprocation. He’d mention it later. After. “I haven’t told her.” The nasty side of him, the side he had a hard time controlling around women, the side that was good at keeping power when others wanted to make him feel disposable, added, “Yet.”
A long while passed. “Are you going to?”
“Hadn’t planned on it.”
He knew better than to ask about her husband, and whether he knew about what she was doing out here on the edge of nowhere, as far as most people were concerned. The last thing he ever brought up before banging another man’s wife was her marriage, though it was the damnedest thing—they usually did afterward, when he sure didn’t want to talk about who got first dibs. Stay single long enough, and you see the full spectrum of humanity. But Claudia wasn’t talkative, except when she was on the job. He liked that about her.
Her bed looked like a dog turned circles on it, an oval at its center and thin blankets heaped at the edges. With a knee on the edge, he leaned her into the center, pulling off her coat, leaving himself enough room to crawl in. He felt her watching him unlace his boots, the knots fighting him, his jerking movements shaking the bed.
“I know about your dad.”
He flinched. “Do you now.”
“I do.”
He lit a cigarette, tried to drop the match into the empty glass on her bedside table, missed. The ember burrowed into the laminate. “Does that change how you feel about me?” She propped herself up on one elbow. “Why would it?” “I don’t know. What I did.” “Doesn’t seem like you had much choice.” He studied her face, memorizing the set of her mouth, the calm shine of her eyes, claiming this moment within the enormity of eternity. “I been carrying that a long time.”
“So has she.”
“I don’t want to talk about her right now.” He ashed in the direction of the table. Gray specks fluttered to the floor.
“She needs you to do this thing. For him.”
“Why do you care?” He mashed the cigarette into the glass.
“I just do.”
He didn’t know what to say, so he spooned her, resting his chin on the crown of her head, his ear on his arm, which bent up and away, sure to fall asleep. She twined her toes around his calves and wiggled her hips into him. They lay listening to glass rattle with rain, to patters on the roof, to gutters gurgling. They were breathing easy, chests rising and falling as one. Finally, the solace he’d long needed and never given himself—to be seen, for who he was and what he’d done, and accepted.
But of course it had to come with a price. Nothing was free for the taking, not with women around. If he and Claudia kept on like this, he was going to fall asleep, his right arm already on its way, the deep tingle working from bicep to forearm despite slow clenches of his fist, and that’s not what he had in mind when he got himself worked up to come over.
He started out like he wasn’t in a hurry, kissing the closest bare stretch of skin, her neck, and eased his arm from beneath his head, the burn shooting through it like a vise clamped him from wrist to shoulder. Stroking the clenched cords of her throat with closed lips, he retraced that trail with his tongue, body looming, trying not to crush her, though it was inevitable in this position. He gave up on spooning and slung a leg over her, working himself up so his weight was
on his knee. He had her where he wanted. His arm was almost back to normal, his hand feeling like it belonged to him. He touched her face. Most women like that. It makes them think you’re paying such close attention that you might fall in love with them while the smarter part of you, the part that knows better, is off duty.
Claudia shook him off like he was a fly. “Fuck me like you mean it.”
He caught hold of her shirt below her collarbone and tugged downward, ripping the fabric, popping buttons like bottle caps. She watched him, steady and still as though he might hurt her, which he liked, and the liking of it made him go into a quiet place he reserved for being alone. That’s how he felt on top of her, taking off her pants so she was naked, and him still in his shirt and jeans. Alone.
Her hips were bruised. Had he done that? Maybe she had another man here. Maybe someone else fucked her in this bed. He took off his shirt, deciding not to care. Her gaze told him nothing. She was otherwise pale, with brown nipples that hardened as he brushed them with his teeth. He didn’t remember their color from before. He worked his way down her ribcage and stomach, tracing her shadows with fingers and tongue, checked her smell—no one had been here—and dipped in, tasting nectarines at low tide.
Her breath caught. He cupped her hipbones with his palms, held her flat. Her back was arching. It was time. He cradled her quaking shoulders, clasping her face between his hands, and kissed her, keeping a knee wedged between hers as he rose up and unbuckled his belt.
She opened her mouth, her eyes focusing, narrowing like she was about to say something. He covered her lips, the thick side of his palm against her nose, and she didn’t shake her head, or scream, and so he went inside with his other hand, three fingers curling back toward him, the base of that palm against her clit, grinding back and forth, and her mewling and worming around on the bed until he couldn’t take it anymore, his ache contracting into pain he pushed inside her, over and over, oh my god, oh my god, the sight of her sharpening in his vision, raindrops on her breasts. Was there a leak? He checked the ceiling. Nothing. That’s when he knew he was crying. He almost turned and ran but there were her hands on his back, her legs locked behind him, releasing him and bringing him in, and now he felt her let go, felt her convulse around him, and she was conning him into falling for her, goddammit, he was careening down into her, and that’s when he took both her legs on his shoulders and drove his dick straight into her ass, and now she was screaming, now she was crying for real, and he was inside her as far as he could go. There was no stopping this, she could not stop him, but there was her hand sliding on his chest, her locked arm propping him back and her other hand on herself, caught between them, fingers moving frantic in tiny little circles he crushed against her, and she was still screaming but it was different it was building and that was his voice he was roaring she was begging oh please oh please they were shuddering, echoes of aftershocks, and he was gone, legs and arms collapsed, sweating, spent.
She pressed the heels of her hands to her lids, once, twice, and wiped his face, palms wet against his cheeks, pushing his shoulders back and working a foot between them until her sole flattened against his chest. She shoved him off, wincing as he withdrew.
From opposite sides of the bed, they stared at each other. He tasted salt that might not be his own.
Chapter Seventeen
“CLAUDIA!” DAVE LUMBERED over for a hug. “Where you been hiding?”
“In plain sight, I guess.” Laughing, she maneuvered out of his embrace to give two boxes of chocolates to Maggie. “These are for you.” She didn’t say Merry Christmas Eve, unsure whether tonight’s dinner recognized the holiday’s Christian origins, or if they used having tomorrow off as an excuse to get together and stuff themselves, disregarding the church’s gilded history of expunging Native cultures, like most people.
She wanted to say ¡Feliz Nochebuena! but somehow her Spanish had become mixed up with the pain and confusion of missing her mother, or at least that is what she told Maria when her sister asked to speak in their mother tongue. Claudia declined. She needed to stay far away from who she’d been. And now the ache of Maria meant she might avoid Spanish for the rest of her life.
Maggie handed a box of chocolates to Dave. “Enough for everybody.”
“Hi, Beans.” Claudia waved in case he still wasn’t into shaking hands, like last summer.
“Hey.” He was taller, with a wispy mustache and a sleepy look to him. Maybe he’d been out partying with the crew reunited by winter break. Older kids drove in from community colleges and state universities in Oregon and Washington—she alternated between hope and fear that a Makah student would take her class—and this year, a coup all the way from an Ivy.
Peter came out of the kitchen, drying his hands on a towel. “You made it!”
He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek, his breath hot on her ear as he drew back, her slight sway toward him imperceptible, she hoped. His presence pulled at her like sand tugged in surf. She clenched her toes and planted her feet, trying to stop the erosion. Here was not the place. “Thanks for having me.”
Everyone was quiet. This was not going to work, not even a little bit. What had she been thinking. She smiled. “Happy holidays!”
“Let’s eat!” Maggie motioned them into the kitchen. A small mercy. They had pulled out the leaves on the breakfast table and brought more chairs and even turned off the scanner for the occasion. The kitchen sparkled. He must have scrubbed it down. In fact, the walls gleamed around vanilla scented candles that covered the bag-filled corners in shadows.
The table was set with glasses of ice water, a plate of buckskin bread, a butter dish and a jar of jam. Maggie ladled chowder into bowls she passed to Peter, who placed them in front of each guest. Claudia kept quiet, listening. Makahs tried on multisyllabic words like a tight sweater, emphasis poking through first vowels with the force of an errant elbow, followed by a shimmy through the rest. The one exception was hello.
Dave filled Peter in on his daily rounds. “I wasupatthe FISHhouse YESterday andsawyour COUSin. Hetoldmetotellya helLO and tocomebytheboatsinceyou’rein NEah Bay.”
The run-together syllables didn’t imply that Dave spoke quickly. Like most Indians she met—didn’t matter from what tribe—he didn’t. Time and time again, Claudia restrained herself from trampling on the ends of their sentences, holding her silence with her tongue pressed against her upper teeth just like when she was young, ignoring her mother’s warnings that it would make her bucktoothed, by which she meant ugly, unwanted. Maybe the Makah way of speaking related to their original tongue, a lower Wakashan dialect full of words that went on like rivers that had dried despite the tribe’s diligent efforts, despite the schooling and the certification of new language teachers, despite the habit of saying Kleko, Kleko to thank each other for each and every little thing. She wished more towns spent as much time on conservation of resources as this village, which was overseen for too long by Indian Agents who arrived with the federal edict that the native language was to be exterminated along with the values it conveyed. When Makah kids returned from the boarding schools they’d been forced to attend, their mouths were still bitter with soap their teachers used on students caught speaking anything other than English. Most couldn’t understand the elders, and many didn’t care. That generation was gone now—not up in trees, laid out in canoes with holes poked in the bottom, like in the old days—but buried in the ground.
Claudia’s spoon dove around soft yellow globes of butter and cream to surface with a single kernel of corn, a cube of potato, a flake of fish.
“This chowder sure is tasty.” Dave dipped a square of buckskin bread in his chowder. “Who brought the halibut?”
“Son’s cousins.” Maggie looked dour. “Trying to buy me off.” She folded her arms, clasping her elbows, and settled back in her chair.
“Now, Maggie.” Dave lifted the dense, dripping biscuit to his mouth.
“Don’t ‘Maggie’ me. You know what they been doing. Parad
ing our song around.”
“They kept it going.” Dave slurped some soup. “Isn’t that something?”
“They stole it. Had the nerve to claim the song was on loan to Sam. Lies. As if getting his boat on the cheap wasn’t enough.”
Peter reached for another square of bread. “Let it go.”
“Do you know, they asked your dad to sing at your granddad’s deathbed.”
“That seems appropriate.”
“You don’t know anything! You can’t bring the song out after that. They wanted to use his father’s death against him! Just so they could come up.”
“We’re having a nice dinner.”
“Don’t you change the subject. I know what I’m saying. Tell him, Dave.” Maggie shook her finger at him.
Dave put up his hands. “Don’t shoot!”
“Now’s no time for jokes.”
Claudia’s head pinged back and forth between them. Next to her, Beans hung his head over his third bowl of chowder, scooping one bite after another.
“Mom, that was a long time ago.”
“Your future depends on it. You’re a big man here.”
“I’m not staying.”
Rain rapped the windows. No one spoke. Beans finished eating. Claudia couldn’t put her spoon down without a clatter. She held it aloft, awkward, and glanced around the counters. There, in the flickering shadows, was the pan, its black lip lustrous. She closed her eyes, saw Sam come at Maggie, Dave gathering a wild swing with one hand, the pan sliding off the oven, spilling hot oil and frybread, dipping and going aloft like a bird in an arc that stretched from his shoulder to the sick crunch of Sam’s temple.
Saw Peter, so young, come upon his parents, or what was left of them.
I shouldn’t be here, she thought. But where? Even now, Thomas and Andrew and Maria would have switched to cognac, its honeyed amber rusted to russet by the fire, woods deep in snow around them, discarded skis spreading puddles in the mud room.
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