Subduction

by Kristen Millares Young

  “My daughters have better coping skills than you.” Her body became womanish beneath his palms, warm and soft and solid. He let go.

  “I’ve looked after myself my whole life.”

  The deal she proposed was simple. After the potlatch, Peter could leave knowing his mom would be cared for—if he let them sing his song, bring it into their family, which after all was a blood connection, not too far back. He didn’t know what to say. He knew his mother wouldn’t approve. So did they. He didn’t have a better idea. “I’ll think on it” was all he said to send her home.

  “We’d keep it going.” Roberta tried to meet his eyes. “It’s still yours.”

  The sour part of Peter wanted to believe this was why they’d been looking after her. Wanted to believe that inside, they were sad and selfish, too. The rest of him knew they had him figured. They didn’t want to see good wisdom go to waste when he died alone in some apartment. And they were right. He would leave. Tooling through town in his truck, he could smell it on himself. Restlessness. He needed to make a beer run, but strangely, he didn’t want to. Or he wanted to, but the wanting was separate from who he was. He could see it from afar, the wanting. He held it at arm’s length for the first time in a long time. It was weird. This ability worked on him like guilt. Another thing to add to the list.

  Of course, Dave kept nagging him about staying sober. Said it was part of the journey. Thing is, some people can drink, and others can’t. It’s not fair who gets to be what, but there you have it. Dave couldn’t drink because he did fucked up things when drunk, to hear him tell it. But me, I’m different, Peter thought. I don’t have to drink. I drink when I want to.

  Ray’s was right there. Better yet, he could go to P.A. and stock up on some 24 packs. He was tired of running out. Maybe he should pick up Claudia, take her with him. She was probably holed up in her cabin. What did she do in there? What could she learn from a laptop? A road trip would do her good. They could crack the first beers on their way back. He pulled a U-turn in a driveway as soon as the thought hit him. He cruised past the beaches along Front Street, past the senior center full of elders eating lunch.

  Inside the breakwater, the bay was calm. On the far side, the sea heaved skyward. Waves tossed foam to the wind. Clouds hurried from Vancouver Island to cluster over Neah Bay, backing up over the strait, where they darkened, gathering force. Just before the bend in the road, a culvert emptied onto the beach, seagulls standing in sentinel formation around an overturned trike, one handle’s silver streamers flowing with the current toward Waadah Island, the others dangling limp in the rain.

  At the fort’s semicircle of flags, Peter pulled off and ran into the shelter, breathing hard. Between pillars of smoothed trunks, historical explanations went on and on in Spanish and English next to plastic reproductions of line drawings. Chiefs and old maps and ships. Peter shied away. He drifted towards the memorial for veterans. Rain shined the black rock, names chiseled there for anyone to see.

  His father’s name dropped into him like an anchor. He never got the chance to ask his dad about being in the service, never got the chance to compare notes on the shitty food and the stupidity of sergeants. Never got to say thanks for serving the good old US of A, those bastards. Never got to hear it, either. His name wasn’t up there, among them, his brothers, the warriors who all came home alive, if not well. Who came home.

  That’s what happens when you go MIA on your family. No one celebrates what you’ve done. All they can do is mourn your memory. Right here is where he belonged, and he damned well knew it. It burned him that his dad’s boat—his boat, by right—belonged to his cousins. Maybe he should pay them a visit, like Dave said. Maybe he could get on their crew. He couldn’t imagine pacing her deck, taking orders from someone his own age. But it got him thinking on the good times, that last fishing trip his folks took as a family, a memory he saved for special occasions, so he didn’t wear it out, him with his dad on deck, shouting, “Get up here, it’s nice!”

  “I got something going on the stove!” Mom was always busy.

  “That can wait!”

  “I seen it before!”

  “Not like this, you haven’t!”

  She trudged out, wiping flour onto her apron, her face glossy red, and stepped into light that glowed blue. His dad pulled her to him, and Peter, too, that arm’s weight so welcome on his shoulders, the smell of meat and butter drifting from her, his stomach, his whole self come alive in the cold cobalt sky. Seawater swallowed the last shine of day. Wheel well glowing golden, the boat slapped and pitched through an ocean of sapphires. From far above, they must have looked like a star.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  DAVE’S CANVAS DRUM bag slid off his legs and bumped into the coffee table. “I’d watch it around the drummers. You done this before?”

  “I’ll make you look good.” Claudia zoomed out until the pores disappeared into the brown shine of his nose. “Don’t worry.”

  Randall guffawed. “She’s got your number.”

  “Don’t get too many ideas. They’ll ruin that pretty face.” Dave grunted and picked up the strap with a hand on one knee.

  Beans checked his phone. “Can we get started?”

  After Maggie was settled with a pillow behind her back, Peter pulled the coffee table to one side and sat on it. “Roberta! Out of the kitchen! It’s time.”

  “Oh, sure.” Roberta dried her hands. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  “He didn’t mean it like that.” Maggie patted the cushion next to her.

  Claudia hit the record button just as Roberta snuggled in to kiss Maggie’s cheek. And so their video began with sweetness and shifting around in seats.

  Peter addressed the camera. “That thing on?”

  She gave him the thumbs up.

  “If you’re watching, you better be Indian.”

  Beans laughed. “What about her?”

  Peter’s eyes found hers through the lens, somehow. “She’s different.”

  Dave banged his drum. “For posterity. We are honored to be with Maggie and her son Peter as we prepare him to receive his song. On the couch next to her auntie, we have Roberta, and this here is my grandson Winston . . .”

  “Call me Beans.”

  “. . . and Roberta’s husband Randall, helping out on drums. I’m Dave. Alright, fellas, let’s start.”

  Maggie clapped her hands. “We’re singing, too.”

  “That’s right.” Roberta smiled. “Get with the program, Uncle.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Dave saluted. “Never cross a woman. She’ll make you pay.”

  “Any more advice, Grampa?”

  “Stick with family. They’re all you’ve got.”

  “Okay, now.” Peter cleared his throat. “Let’s begin.”

  Drumbeats rolled, big and low, rumbling through her body, which held still, a miracle, her lens poised on the music makers.

  “Tumanos wo hey a hey hey, tumanos wo hey ahey o ahey o.” Peter’s voice swelled above the others, passing through her. “Wo hey ahey o ahey o.”

  Claudia moved close, slow and sure, pausing on one knee to pan over his mother and neighbors. These people were family. Their song filled the room, surely uncontained by its walls, surging onto the street to meet the rain and wind, carried through cedars swaying above the sea, ceaseless from here to where the west meets its end.

  The room thundered. She put her hand on her stomach to smooth her breath, felt a flutter inside, the quickening like a fish grazed in a dark lake—Can you hear this, baby? Are you taking a sound bath?—the love coming on like longing, her heart open, flayed and flooded. When the tears rose, she refused to sniffle. She let them run, wetting the viewfinder along with her cheeks. Steady, now. Steady.

  Dave’s eyes were kind as he ushered her out, hours later, after many rounds of stories and coffee she had a hard time refusing. “We’ve got to get to the good stuff.” He winked at her. “Go over a few things that can’t be overheard.”

  “E
specially not by a white lady writing a book.”

  Beans was direct. Claudia appreciated that about him. He made things clear. No one spoke. Roberta showed Maggie pictures of her girls on her phone, not looking up. Claudia forced a laugh and reached for her purse while slinging the camera around her neck. “I suppose I’ll accept the ‘lady’ part but, just so you know, I am Latina. Or Latinx, I guess. The names keep changing.”

  “First I’ve heard of it.” Smiling, Peter punched Beans in the arm.

  Dave held the door for her. “Sounds complicated.”

  “That it is.” Claudia stepped into the cold. “Bye for now.”

  Claudia paused, fingerpads light on the keyboard, trying to shake the feeling of being escorted to the door, of standing outside that trailer searching for her keys in her purse, only to realize she’d left her coat hanging inside the door with the keys in its pocket, and had to knock again with apologies and a quick dart of the hand to lift lapel from hook and be gone.

  Do your work, she commanded herself. Get it right. It was hard to remember Dave’s telling perfectly, but she had it down, at least.

  Kwa-Ti takes many forms. Usually don’t know it’s him until he’s gone. You can kill him, but he comes back. Like a craving, like I was saying.

  My grampa used to tell it to me this way. Day’s owner—you know, Moon’s dad, the way your mom likes to tell it?—well, he did catch up to Kwa-Ti, who was a slave, you know, in that go-round, and he took back the light. Only in my family, it’s in a box, not a shell, and Kwa-Ti got away by pretending he was asleep in the canoe. Rocked and drifted right out of there.

  Day’s owner, he killed Kwa-Ti, killed him dead. But before he got killed, Kwa-Ti asked not to be buried. He told them to season his body on the beach for four days. After that, he said to stick his head on a pole until it rotted.

  That’s what we used to do after a war party. All the women got on top of the houses, pounding the roofs with sticks when our warriors came home with heads in their canoes. Other tribes got real mad about it, their dead with the tongues sticking out for anyone to see. But that’s how it was, eh.

  She hoped people understood that hers was a memory of what happened, not its transcription. Still, Dave’s version was remarkably similar to stories told in the 1920s by Young Doctor, the legendary carver, to Frances Densmore, the great documentarian of Native songs from the Atlantic to the Pacific, a real anthropological pioneer who traveled with a box camera, a cylinder phonograph and sometimes her sister. Called prim and opinionated by those who keep her in memory at all, Densmore saved thousands of songs from being extinguished by time, death and settlement policy, though she could be considered a plunderer by those who believe songs hold true power.

  Claudia had wanted to ask Dave whether he could decode what she’d seen—that laughing mink, the whispering trees. But she would have to tell him about her despair, the betrayal and her unborn, who was his blood. The things she would have to admit stacked up around her, higher and higher. No way out but to eviscerate everything she built with strategy and self-denial.

  Now, if she could just get it down—how Dave was correcting Maggie without telling her son she was wrong. Many coastal tribes shared this story, their versions naming Raven as bringer of light. The trickster’s method for getting into the house changed, too. In one account, Raven becomes a pine needle swallowed by the daughter of day’s keeper, born and raised within the house as its child, ever seeking to make off with the goods. Whatever Peter was taught was particular to the teller. Dave was highlighting the trapdoor of perspective, something all too familiar to anyone with a family.

  Claudia had marshaled the evidence she could muster from Maria’s point of view. While Claudia felt abandoned by their family—no one had claimed her when their mother was sick—Maria watched her sister vault into opportunities beyond her reach. Maybe it was too much for Maria to hear Claudia complain about her prospects, no end to her ingratitude. While she may not have built much of a career, Claudia was paid to learn and write, as long as she never stopped teaching. More than that, she had a calling. She cared about seeing the world anew through the beliefs of others. Claudia had thought Maria would follow in her footsteps. She meant for her sister to become a professional artist, and not a wife, but perhaps watching Claudia devalue the love she received was the final affront. She had no idea how Maria justified knifing her in the back, though Claudia had often, in her studies, plumbed that complex ecosystem of rationalizations that allow entire peoples to do horrendous things to others while convinced of their own goodness. But Claudia rarely asked her sister about her life or offered the curiosity, tolerance and patience that convinced people like Maggie to share their stories. Even in those interactions, she never truly showed up. The work it required dug too deep. Claudia once wished Andrew would treat her as well as he treated his clients. In her eagerness to take her rightful place at the table, she had repeated his mistakes and indeed those of too many men. Even so, Claudia was afraid to raise a child alone. She needed help.

  Claudia would write a new ending, one in which her career was not engulfed by scandal, in which her intentions would be judged pure, an attempt at empathy through understanding others. She would model forgiveness of Andrew and Maria as a kind of cathartic transcendence. She would let Peter into their child’s life. She would bring the baby to Maggie between academic quarters. She would, somehow, convince Thomas to accept his grandchild. She would tell her department chair the truth and rely on his kindness. Maybe they would see her as part of this place in a way that could benefit future research. If not, she would situate her work in a different community, perhaps urban immigrants, somewhere near where she taught, what she’d known. All she had to do was start sending emails.

  Her cursor hovered in white space.

  That harmony was a fantasy built for other people. This was real life. She had enough on her plate being one of the few of her kind on the rungs of academia. She would tell no one until she’d been to a doctor. Not someone local. She had to go back to Seattle. The question was when. Certain decisions would become more difficult, even impossible, as her pregnancy advanced. She’d been drinking at the most vulnerable time for a fetus. Smoking too. I didn’t know, she thought. I didn’t mean to. She closed her laptop and went to the fridge, yet again.

  The sky faded from pink to gray, the waves dusky beneath dark clouds. To both sides of the beach, low headlands jutted, jet black, into the sea. At her feet was an old mussel, hinge intact, shells curved like wings. She held it up. Light spilled through wormholes woven in the barnacled crust.

  The sea was wild in her ears. Behind her, someone crunched and squeaked through the dunes. It could only be him. She buried her find for later.

  Peter sat, smelling showered, his thigh hot against hers. “The door to your place was wide open.” He lit a cigarette. “The lights were on.”

  “I don’t need you to know where I am.”

  “Why are you being such a hardass? It’s wet out.”

  “I can look after myself, thank you.”

  “Randall and Roberta think you’re an opportunist.” He puffed out his cheeks. “But they’re beginning to make me wonder.”

  “What exactly am I supposed to be getting out of this situation? I mean, really. I come here, I help out, and yeah, I take notes, and I reflect on them later in a book, which, while it may not affect your daily lives, could benefit future generations. It’s a fair trade. I may not have been born into this community, but I’ve contributed. I earned my keep. Think about how things were when I got here.” She waved her arms around. “And now?”

  “We’re making it happen.”

  “Yeah, you can say that now. But I helped you.” She stood, doing her best not to place her hands over her stomach, a move that had become instinctive. “You’ve made me feel terrible. Just go.”

  “Roberta made me an offer. To share the song. They’ll take care of Mom.”

  “Does she know?”

  “We c
ould have a life, Claudia.”

  She flinched and turned toward the bellow of the Pacific. What would he do with a baby? Hand it off, most likely. He barely wanted the best thing he had.

  “Yeah, you’re married. Whatever that means.”

  “You don’t know anything about it. You’re all about your pain, your problems. My sister is fucking my husband, Peter. My sister.”

  The cramp felt like a kick to her gut. “Oh my God.” Not like this, out here, in the open. She started for the cabin, Peter scrambling to his feet.

  “Claudia, why haven’t you said something?”

  She tried to shut the sliding glass, but he held the door. There was no way to win without hurting herself and maybe the baby, oh, the baby. Stress was bad in utero, she’d read that somewhere. Her baby felt what she felt. She lay down on the couch, rolled to her side and tucked her knees into the cushions, breathing slow, waiting for blood that did not come. He knelt beside her.

  “I need this job, Peter.”

  His hand warmed her back. “People already know.”

  She spun to face him, furious. “How’d they find out?”

  “Come on, my truck is parked here round the clock. I never confirmed.”

  She tried to hold back the tears, but soon her shoulders shook with hiccups and shudders that grew louder the longer she listened to herself. She hated being known for being small and afraid, so compromised.

  “They’ve seen it before.” He rubbed her arm. “Let go. You’ll feel better.”

  “Don’t tell me how to handle myself.” She flung his hand away.

  “Seriously?” He started pacing. “Know what your problem is? You don’t want to hear that you have to change to be happy.”

  “Way to punish me for sharing. Thanks.”

  “You think you’re the only one who’s been forced to forgive?”

  “Things didn’t happen the way you think they did.”