by D. M. Pulley
“We’ll have to make do. I’ll slaughter a pig in the mornin’.” Aunt Velma must’ve made a face because he added, “It’s a harvest, Mother. Not the end of the world.”
“I sure wish I could take off work,” Wendell muttered.
Uncle Leo cut him off. “Now, Wen, we’ll take what help we can, but this ain’t your farm. You handle your own business.”
“This is too my business. As long as Jasper’s here, it’s my business. I’ll be here Saturday at six a.m. You better leave some work for me.” A fist hit the table, and the silverware jumped.
“You got it, old man.”
Jasper lay in his bed, listening as the conversation wound down. A chair stuttered away from the table. A moment later, his father pulled back the curtain. His unsteady shadow loomed in the doorway, blocking the light from the kitchen. “You alright, Son?”
“I’m okay.”
His father hobbled over to him and sat himself on the edge of the bed. “No more barnyard adventures for you. Agreed?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.” He patted Jasper’s hand and got up to leave.
“Dad?”
“Yes, Son.”
Jasper sat up, not sure what he wanted to ask first. “Where do you think Mom went?”
His father sat back down and let out a long breath. “I wish I knew, Son. I really do.”
“I really . . . I miss her.” Jasper’s voice broke, and he hid his face.
“We all do, Son. We all do.” His father squeezed his shoulder and went quiet for a moment. Then he let out one breath of a laugh. “Remember how she used to sing when she was cookin’? Like she thought no one could hear. Man, she had the voice of an angel. It’s why we got married, you know. Did I ever tell you that story?”
Jasper looked up.
“She was singing at this club downtown. Sylvie’s I think it was called. This beautiful girl gets up on stage. Thea. You should’ve seen her. It nearly broke my heart that voice of hers. I didn’t care what anyone said. I just knew . . .” His father shook off the memory, then patted Jasper’s knee. “We were married a week later. And then you came along. She made me the happiest man on earth. She really did . . .”
Jasper could see his mother’s black-and-white face smiling from its frame down the dark hallway of the diner back in Detroit. He waited for more. It was the most the man had ever said about her, but it wasn’t enough. He finally blurted, “I think someone is looking for her.”
“Of course someone is. Lots of people are.”
“No, I mean someone bad.” Jasper wiped a stray tear and bit the inside of his cheek hard for courage. “Someone who might . . . hurt her.”
His father didn’t say anything for a moment. “What in the world gave you that idea?”
“I heard some things. Over at the reservation . . .” Jasper struggled for words that wouldn’t get him or Pati in trouble and couldn’t find them.
“What sort of things?” Jasper could feel his father’s eyes boring through his head even though he couldn’t see them in the dim light filtering through the curtain.
“Big Bill is looking for her . . . he said she’s only got two days to call him before they do something terrible!”
Wendell just sat there. Jasper could tell by the hitch in his breathing that he was furious.
“It’s Galatas, isn’t it? This isn’t just about her missing work, is it? Why is he looking for Mom?”
“Don’t you worry about that, Son. Mommy’s business isn’t for you to worry about. You have got to stop listening to other people’s conversations. Understand?”
His father squeezed his hand so hard Jasper worried it might break. He shrank against the pillow. “Yes, sir.”
Wendell let go and rubbed his eyes for a minute, seeming lost in thought. “You get some sleep.” With that, he got up and left the room.
On the other side of the curtain, he heard him say, “Leo, can we talk a minute?” Then the door to the cabin opened and shut.
Jasper sat up and held his breath, but all he could hear were the dishes clinking together in the washbasin. He pulled himself out of bed and pressed his ear to the cool window glass. The faint tones of men sounded in the distance, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. A moment later, an engine roared to life. The headlights of his father’s truck lit up Jasper’s face in the window and then pulled away.
An hour later, after Aunt Velma had changed his bandages and wished him good night, Wayne’s shadow slipped into the room. Jasper pretended to be asleep as his cousin stripped down and threw on pajamas. He didn’t want to talk about Indians or witch doctors.
Wayne crawled into bed and let out a low whistle. “You really done it this time.”
Jasper sat up in bed. “What do you mean?”
“I heard ’em. After dinner, when Pop and Uncle Wen stepped outside, I headed out to the barn. If you know what I mean.”
“What’d they say?” Jasper whispered, keeping his eye on the curtain. His aunt and uncle’s bedroom door was only ten feet away. Their muffled voices were recapping the day.
“Your dad was hoppin’ mad about somethin’ you said. He wanted to know who had visited you at the clinic and if that Detroit detective had been back. He even asked about Big Bill from over at the roller rink.”
Jasper stared out the window. “What’d your dad say?”
“He said your pop needed to calm down. I thought they were gonna have a scuffle right there.”
Jasper felt a knot tying itself up in his stomach. “Did he say anything else?”
“Yeah.” Wayne didn’t seem to want to say anything more. An uneasy silence fell over the house. Uncle Leo and Aunt Velma had gone quiet. Out in the kitchen, a piece of burning wood cracked in the stove.
“Well, what was it?” Jasper nearly yelled.
“Hey!” Uncle Leo’s voice boomed from the other side of the cabin. Both boys hit the deck. “Pipe down! Get some sleep, you two!”
“Yes, sir!” they both answered.
Jasper let a full minute pass before propping himself back up on his elbow. He nudged Wayne under the blanket and whispered, “What’d he say?”
Wayne sat up and cupped his hand over Jasper’s ear. “He said that your mom is in some sort of trouble with gangsters.”
“What?” Jasper gasped too loudly. Wayne swatted him on the head to shut him up.
“If anyone comes here lookin’ for you, we’re supposed to tell him you’re not here.”
“But . . . what am I supposed to do if they see me?”
“I dunno. Hide?”
CHAPTER 39
What was the worst thing you ever did?
Jasper spent half the night staring up at the dark ceiling of his uncle’s cabin. Hide.
It’s what his mother wanted. She’d left him on the farm so he could hide up in his tree. Somewhere out there, she was running from Big Bill and Galatas. But why?
Jasper pulled the beaded pendant out from inside his shirt and held it up in the moonlight.
Wayne began to snore in his low, steady saw. Across the cabin, he could hear the same noise coming from Uncle Leo’s bedroom, only louder. Jasper rolled over, but his eyes wouldn’t stay closed.
Her tearful voice from his dream haunted him. Her warm lips on his forehead. No matter what happens. I’ll always love you. It sounded like a good-bye but for good.
Jasper sat up. What if it wasn’t a dream? She might be sleeping in one of the trailers at Black River right now, not five miles away. He should have looked harder when he was there. It was all he could do not to get up and climb out the window to go find her. Five miles wasn’t so far. He could walk it.
Out the bedroom window, a full moon hung overhead. A harvest moon. It would be enough light to walk by, he decided, but forced his head back down to his pillow. She would be furious with him if he went out in the night when he was supposed to be hiding. He stared up at the ceiling.
But in the story, the mother dies. He sat up aga
in.
He grabbed the book about Indians from the bureau next to him and pulled out the feather. Its black and white stripes were a mournful blue and gray in the moonlight. He couldn’t just let her die.
The strangled rage he’d heard in his father’s voice reminded him again to stay in bed. He was just a boy. My dad’s the one that knows what to do, he told himself. He tucked the feather back into the book. Have faith. He should have faith.
An hour later, he was still lying awake, listening to the logs dying in the woodstove. Men from Black River would be coming to the farm that morning. Motega was coming. Jasper might have a chance to talk to him. He remembered the way the huge Indian had growled at Big Bill before he’d knocked the gun out of his hand. All sorts of people go missing out here in these woods.
Jasper curled himself into a ball. Her car had been found buried in those woods. The white men bury their dead here when they don’t want them found.
Dr. Whitebird must know where she was hiding, he decided. The kind doctor wouldn’t let anything happen to her. Maybe he could get her a message. Jasper invented elaborate secret codes in his head, warning her about Big Bill, reassuring her he was okay, begging her to come get him, until he dropped off into a fitful dream.
Crawling along the forest floor, he picked his way silently over the damp fallen leaves. He was an Indian warrior stalking his prey. A set of tracks pressed into the mud before him, leading down a dark and winding path. They were the paw prints of a large dog. A wolf. He stopped. There were drops of blood on the leaves. Up ahead he heard a low growl. He rushed toward it. The drops of blood grew into puddles. His hands and knees splattered in red. Then he saw it. Gray fur standing up on end, crusted with blood, hovering over something soft and pink with the wet sounds of Lucifer chewing.
Jasper jerked himself awake. It took a full minute for him to stop seeing blood as his eyes adjusted to the moonlight streaming in through the window. Wayne snorted and rolled over. The house was cold and quiet. Outside, the sky was slate gray. The shadowy form of a woodchuck rustled in the grass across the field. A stiff autumn wind whistled softly through the gaps in the window, but Jasper could still hear the wolf in his head, tearing through the carcass at its feet. Nimaamaa!
He buried his face in his hands and shook with a silent sob. The cold beads of her necklace pressed against his stomach. He had to find her. There had to be a way. Something he’d missed in her diary, something he’d heard Pati say, there had to be something. He sat up.
Everyone would be up soon anyway. He would just say he’d decided to get an early jump on his chores. Mind made up, Jasper climbed out of bed and stripped off his pajamas, hardly caring that they were wet. He kept his eyes on Wayne as he pulled on his pants and shoes, but his cousin didn’t move.
Jasper crept across the creaky floorboards through the kitchen to the front door. Even though he had a good excuse to be leaving, his heart still halted at every sound. He glanced back through the dark of the cabin to his uncle’s closed door. He was still snoring. The cock would crow any minute, and he’d be caught. Jasper grabbed his jacket from the hook. The front door opened without a sound, and he slipped out before the hinges could think to squeak.
The brisk air snapped Jasper fully awake as he darted across the driveway to the barn. He made his way past the stink of ten dirty cow stalls to the back corner where his uncle stored the feed bins.
You rat bastard, Hoyt! he cursed as he rummaged through the feed, the buckets, the straw. She was just a girl, and you made her do your dirty work. You sent her to the reservation. Pati’s words raged in his head. Careless girls get dragged away. White men do what they please.
Her diary was gone. He checked again and again, frantically throwing straw and dirt, but it wasn’t there.
Jasper sank down onto the ground. A girl he’d seen before somewhere had been killed a month ago. A police officer had been shot between the eyes, and his mother could be next. If she was still alive at all. He didn’t notice the tears running down his face as he scanned the floor one last time.
He lurched to his feet, ignoring the burn in his legs and the sag of his bandages. His aunt or uncle must’ve found it when he was at the clinic. Did they even read it? Do they know? His uncle probably took one look at her foul humor about growing up on the farm and tossed it into the woodstove. No.
Jasper took off running out of the barn and down the driveway to the back fields. There had to be more. More pieces of her somewhere in that house.
He should have told Wayne where he was going, he realized as he sped past the tractor shed and then the chicken coop. All the birds were nestled in their roosts as his feet kicked up the gravel outside. The unmistakable flap of a rooster’s wings made him run faster.
The fields were still shrouded in the gray before dawn. Cold dew clung to the tufts of cut hay. Five strides into the field, his shoes and pant legs were drenched. His bandages were getting wet. Aunt Velma would skin him, but he didn’t care.
He stopped at the tall stand of wheat in front of him and glanced over his shoulder before barreling in. The dark sky disappeared into the sweet-smelling boughs. He couldn’t see a foot in front or behind him as he fought his way through. For a terrible minute, he panicked that he’d forgotten where he was going and gotten himself lost. Then he glimpsed the tip of a chimney among the branches of a distant stand of trees in between the stalks.
Jasper memorized his bearing and plunged deeper into the field. The ground was soft and unsteady as he followed the furrows toward the chimney. Somewhere behind him, the rooster began to crow. His aunt and uncle would be waking up now. He scrambled faster toward his grandmother’s house.
The wheat finally gave way to overgrown grass, and what was left of his mother’s childhood home emerged. The edges of the sky had turned a golden pink, but the house looked like night had never left. Black and gloomy, everything inside it was dead. Jasper felt his spirits go dark. He wouldn’t find anything but a pile of old clothes and an abandoned dollhouse inside.
For no good reason at all, he surveyed the tall crops that surrounded the house on all sides, searching for a sign of her. There was no road to the house. No cars parked nearby. It was a deserted island. He would have to swim back through the wet fields alone. He gazed down at his mud-soaked legs, defeated. His aunt and uncle would be furious with him. Again.
There had to be something inside that would help him find her, he argued with himself. Jasper glanced back into the fields and listened. He didn’t hear anyone calling his name. If he gave up, there would be nothing left to do but go home and wait. Determined not to just sit in his tree, he climbed the creaking steps up onto the porch and slipped through the front door.
Inside, the house was perfectly dark. The torn drapes and soot clouding the windows blocked the rising light. He picked his way through the living room, past the broken chairs, and into the shadow of the kitchen.
He bumped his arm into the corner of the cupboard. “Ouch!”
Squinting through the dark, he could just make out the outline of the back door in the pink glow filtering down the stairs. He felt his way to the doorknob and gave it a hard tug.
The room flooded with the pale morning light. It looked just like it had the first time he’d seen it. He scanned the cupboard and drawers for photographs or letters or any trace of her. There was nothing but broken dishes and animal droppings.
“Damn it,” he hissed.
He turned to the stairwell that led up to the room where his mother had once lived. The piece of sky overhead lit his way through the broken roof as he climbed the creaking steps one by one.
A faint noise from above stopped him cold.
“Who’s there?” a voice whispered.
CHAPTER 40
What happened?
“Jasper?”
The faraway voice was calling to him from a tiny opening high above. But he couldn’t answer. He was trapped at the bottom of a well. There was water in his lungs.
“Jasper.” A gentle hand shook his shoulder.
He could smell fire. The barn was burning down. He could hear screaming. The crack of a gun exploded in his head.
“No!” His eyes flew open. White light poured into his bruised skull. He squeezed them shut again and shook his head. No.
A warm palm fell over his eyes. “Easy, Ogichidaa. It is all right.”
Jasper’s eyelids fluttered against the shadow of the hand. “Dr. Whitebird?”
“Ah! You are alive.” He could hear the smile in the doctor’s voice. “This is good.”
The large hand slowly lifted as Jasper’s eyes adjusted to the room. He was back at the reservation clinic. He grunted as he tried to lift himself up onto his elbows. “Am I still here?”
The doctor lowered him back down to the pillow. “Easy. We are not there yet.”
“Have I been here the whole time?” Jasper’s words muddled together against his swollen lips. He lifted his arm to see the IV line. The needle was stuck in a different vein an inch away from a round bruise. His fingernails were blackened at the edges. There were cuts on his hands. Sandpaper burned in the back of his throat.
He closed his eyes, and he was standing in his grandmother’s half-burnt kitchen again. He’d been looking for something. He’d heard a voice.
Jasper shot up, screaming, “Mom!”
The doctor forced him back down to the cot with firm hands. “Shh . . . You must rest, Ogichidaa.”
Jasper flailed against the doctor. “No! I can’t leave her.”
“Your mother would want you to rest.”
“But . . .” Was it her? He couldn’t remember. Jasper turned his head into his pillow and sobbed.
The doctor pressed a warm compress to his head. “You have been through quite a lot. There is no shame in crying. Only tears can wash away blood.”
Blood. Broken images assaulted the back of his eyes—blood splattered on the floorboards, yellow teeth grinning, giant hands gripping his wrists, hair catching fire, a gun crashing down. Jasper shook his head violently, his fingers clawing at his face.