Steal the North: A Novel

by Heather B Bergstrom

  “That’s too much, Teresa. Don’t tell me shit like that.”

  “Sorry, kid. You want to help me get my litter up and into the van?”

  I’m still sitting on the couch at nine, with the TV off, when Emmy comes to the screen door. I already showered and got dressed, thankful to have those clothes from Teresa so I don’t look like a chump in front of Kate and Spencer. Someday I’m going to quit wearing other people’s clothes. It’s still chilly and overcast, and my arm aches more than it has in months. I wear a sweatshirt with the hood up. I heard Spencer’s SUV pull in an hour ago. Emmy looks through the ripped screen. I tell her to come in, but I don’t get up. She’s all smiles. What the hell? Did her mom agree to let her stay for the school year? If not, why does she smile? And didn’t her aunt just die? “Hey, Reuben.” She comes to me on the couch. She wears a dainty sweater I haven’t seen on her before. I hope the sweater is a gift from her mom and not from her soon-to-be stepdad. I can’t help being a jealous asshole when it comes to Emmy’s affection for Spencer, no matter how innocent. She also wears jeans for the first time all summer. Usually she wears shorts, skirts, or dresses. She looks hot in jeans. I want to see her from the back. “I have good news,” she says. I pull her onto my lap. She smells like shampoo and fruit. Her sweater’s so soft. I kiss her neck. “Don’t you want to hear my news?”

  I keep kissing her neck, then her ear. I whisper how much I missed her body last night. I’m afraid to hear her news. I’m afraid I won’t ever be able to touch her body again.

  “Nice sweater,” I say.

  “This old thing? Cashmere from Paris.”

  “Your sweater’s from fucking Paris?”

  She answers me in French.

  I grin, despite my grouchy mood. “My girl speaks French in a trailer park.”

  “My guy to me will not hark.” She pushes my hood back. “Listen,” she says. “This is going to sound crazy, but Uncle Matt asked Mom if I could go to the Whitman Mission today in Walla Walla—with just you.”

  I don’t say anything. That is crazy. Why would I want to go there?

  “Matt told Mom how Aunt Beth—” The name trips her up. “How Aunt Beth had planned to take me there. They’ll be busy all day with funeral arrangements.” Again she has to pause. “The mission is only two hours away.”

  Who am I kidding? I’d go anywhere to spend time with Emmy. “Your mom agreed?”

  “Not at first. Spencer convinced her.” She puts my hood back up. “You look a little gangster,” she teases.

  “Since when is Spencer your boss?” That came out wrong.

  She studies me for a second. “Since I’m not really talking to Mom. Who cares? I get to hang out with you.” She hugs me. “Mom’s not thrilled. She wants to talk to you first.”

  “What?” I throw off my hood.

  “We don’t have to go. I didn’t even ask if you wanted to. Sorry.” She looks at me coyly. “If you do take me, I’ll make up for last night.” She reaches under my sweatshirt and T-shirt.

  I grab her arm. “Don’t, Emmy.” I’m not sure why it pisses me off. She’s my girlfriend. I’ve reached up her shirt when it’s just the two of us. I guess I don’t want her thinking she has to ever bribe me in that way.

  “Sorry, Reuben.”

  I hate how much she apologizes. It’s my least favorite thing about her.

  Her smile is gone. I feel bad. She’s trying to make the best of things. I think she’s going to cry, but then she says, “I slept in your flannel shirt last night. Nothing else.” She had a separate but adjacent hotel room from her mom and Spencer’s room. She whispers something in my ear. Jesus Christ. She can be so fucking sexy, and usually when I least expect it. The way she took off her underwear that day in my truck after we’d been to the library.

  After she gives me a few minutes to stop thinking of her alone in that hotel bed in just my shirt, I follow her next door. I’m unable to take my eyes off her ass in those jeans. I wish we could get a room in Walla Walla instead of go to the mission. With what—all my money?

  “Hey, Reuben,” Matt says. I shake his hand twice as long as I do Spencer’s. The professor gets right to business, asking me if I know the way to Walla Walla and if I think it’s going to storm and if my truck will make it.

  “You two better get on the road,” Spencer says, getting out some cash from his wallet that he better not fucking hand to me.

  “Put that away, Spencer,” Kate says. “I gave Emmy money this morning.”

  “She doesn’t need money,” I say. “I have cash.” I have like a whole fourteen bucks of my own, and we still have money from hocking Emmy’s necklace.

  “And Reuben’s got cash,” Kate says. Is she mocking me? Or defending me?

  “Well, then, in case of an emergency.” He hands a wad to Emmy.

  “I don’t need it,” she says, looking timidly at me as if I’ll get pissed right here in front of her family. Kate notices this. I can tell, she notices everything.

  “Just take it, honey,” Kate says. “Spencer’s right. In case.” She turns to me. “Have her home by dark—please.”

  Matt puts his hand on my shoulder like an elder. “Thanks, Reuben. Beth would appreciate it.”

  Emmy gives hugs around, the shortest by far to her mom, who looks offended and goes into the bedroom where Emmy and I made love the second time.

  “Hey, Emmy,” Spencer says quietly. “You want to go say good-bye to your mom again?”

  “No. I’m good.”

  Her lack of timidity at times is refreshing. Even, in retrospect, how she got mad at me for following her in Spokane. But mostly I worry for her.

  Once we’re on the road, well out of Moses Lake, I ask her, “Are you pretty pissed off at your mom for not being here when Beth died?” She nods. It may rain after all, the sky’s darkening. I tell her to scoot closer, and she does.

  “And for only letting me know Aunt Beth for two months,” she says. “For telling me my dad was dead.” She takes off the sweater and wads it. “For the way she looks at you. For everything. I can’t imagine why Spencer wants to marry her.”

  “She’s pretty intense. Some guys dig that.”

  “Are you crushing on my mom?”

  “No.” I laugh. “No way.”

  “I don’t want to talk about my mom.”

  Does she realize we’re going to the site of a massacre? Or at least that’s what whites call it. I’ve actually never been to the Whitman Mission. Why the fuck would I? I studied the Whitmans in school, of course. They’re hailed as heroes, even martyrs, for being the first white missionary couple—the first white family period—to settle west of the Rockies. Emmy says her aunt talked to her a lot about Narcissa Whitman. I know that after the Whitmans were killed by the Cayuse, who had lost three fourths of their tribe to disease even though Mr. Whitman was a doctor, all the Indians in eastern Washington were rounded up and put on reservations, including, of course, the twelve Colville tribes. I don’t like the feel of the place from the get-go.

  We go into the museum before walking the grounds. The rather psycho-looking park ranger stares at me a minute too long as he collects our fees. I almost tell him I’m Punjabi, not Cayuse, just to fuck with him. It takes Emmy only about half a minute to realize the place is the site of a bloody conflict between, essentially, her people and mine. She looks at me with wide eyes. “Shit,” she whispers. “Let’s leave.”

  “We’re here. But thanks.” I know she’d leave for real if I wanted to. She apologizes. “Chill out. It was a long time ago.” Though not really. Not in Indian time. I definitely sense some lingering spirits.

  In the center of the museum are life-size mannequins of the Whitmans and five Cayuse. Narcissa is on her knees, extending her stiff arms out to a small native girl, which makes me want to puke. “Those are just creepy,” Emmy says, taking my hand briefly. I totally
agree.

  She spends a long time reading the plaques and studying the displays. It reminds me of how she paid careful attention in church for her aunt. She pulls a little tablet from her purse and copies down quotes. The displays tell the story of the Whitmans’ eleven years (1836–1847) as missionaries. They didn’t have a single Christian convert, which is my favorite fact.

  “Aunt Beth said my mom wanted to be a missionary when she was a little girl. Mom never told me this, of course. She never told me crap.”

  “I wanted to be Smokey the Bear.”

  She laughs, hard.

  “Not like the real bear,” I explain.

  “The real bear?”

  “Stop laughing. I mean I wanted to be the dude who dressed up and went around to schools. I was like seven.”

  “Teen.”

  There’s a section devoted to the story of the Cayuse. Emmy stares at the arrowheads and feathered headpiece as long as she did Dr. Whitman’s compass and Bible and Narcissa’s dishes. There’s a large sign with the following quote, which Emmy copies into her tablet: “The Cayuse sprang from the beaver’s heart, and for this reason they are more energetic, daring, and successful than their neighbors.”

  “Bring it on,” I say about the sign. She laughs. I look behind me.

  We go out the back door of the museum, which leads to the large mission grounds. The unsettledness I felt at first intensifies outside. The wind has picked up, and I hear more noises than I care to. No wonder the ranger looks deranged (a de-ranger). We see the actual wagon grooves in the earth from the Oregon Trail. Emmy kneels down and touches them with both her palms and even closes her eyes. What does she hear? The “pioneer spirit” that led her people west? She doesn’t say and I don’t ask. There’s a paved trail around the old mission homestead. Emmy’s pretty quiet and trying to hurry for my sake. I think she actually likes it here. “Slow down,” I tell her. But really, I hope she doesn’t.

  We find ourselves by the gravestone of the Whitmans’ only child, a girl who was born here, but then drowned at two years old. Emmy asks me if I read inside about how the toddler’s body was found. I shake my head. “Marcus and the other white men,” she says, “searched the river for Alice’s body after they saw her tin cup floating on the surface.” She pauses to catch her breath. “They couldn’t find her. Then a Cayuse man jumped into the river and immediately located the girl. Her hair had snagged in the reeds. How did he know where she was?”

  “I don’t know.” I try not to sound irritated. How would I know? She seems spooked and waits for an answer. “I suppose he knew the river.”

  “Is your arm okay, Reuben? You keep rubbing it. Is that the arm you broke?”

  “It’s fine.” She offers me an Advil from her purse. I shake my head. She offers to rub my arm for me, but the ache is too deep for that. I’d like to leave. I hate it here. But I know Emmy wants to visit the large slab grave that holds the bones of all fourteen pioneers killed.

  “Narcissa was the only woman killed,” Emmy says, reading the faded names. I walk away for a few, unable to feel the slightest sympathy. For the drowned girl, yes, but not the missionary woman. When I return to Emmy, she stands on the edge of a small unmarked pioneer graveyard—from years later, the sign says. There’s no signs saying how many Indians were buried around here, dead from white man’s diseases and the Indian wars that accompanied the reservation roundup. “It’s so peaceful,” Emmy says. Not really. Not at all. “I wish Aunt Beth could be buried here.”

  Right before Beth died, Emmy asked me if I loved her aunt. I couldn’t lie and say that I did, but now I understand the connection I’ve always felt, and tried to deny, with Teresa’s strange neighbor lady: she and I would one day love the same girl. I hug Emmy tightly. She’s been brave all day. She loves only a handful of people in this world, one of whom is now gone. She’s cold, even shivering a little. Why didn’t she say? Her dainty sweater offers no protection. I help her put on my sweatshirt. Though, regrettably, it covers her ass. Pulling up the hood, I say, “Who’s the wannabe gangsta now?”

  A family passes us, and the kid points at me. “Look, Daddy, a Cayuse Indian.”

  Emmy and I laugh, a little awkwardly, as we walk back to the lawn area where the Whitmans’ second house was built. Emmy wants to have one more look. I want to break camp. The footsteps I hear—only Indians know how to walk that softly, and maybe the Whitman baby. A sign explains that the Whitmans’ first house kept getting flooded by the Walla Walla River, so they had to rebuild. “The river was trying to get the baby from the get-go,” Emmy says. I disagree and shake my head. Emmy pulls me onto the grass, where there are cement outlines showing the exact locations of the different houses and sheds. We walk, one foot in front of the other, like grade schoolers, on the cement outline of the second house, but I keep glancing over my shoulder. Emmy falls, purposely, or because of her damn flip-flops. When I reach to help her stand up, she yanks me down onto the grass beside her. My first reaction is to jump the fuck up. The Whitmans were killed right here at this spot. I’ve been taught that the dead, whether Indian or white, are to be respected—out of fear, if nothing else. But I remain beside Emmy for a minute, both of us flat on our backs in the grass, holding hands and looking at the overcast sky.

  * * *

  I go to Beth’s funeral service, but alone in my own truck. It’s held at a funeral home, not the church. The preacher from the healing leads it, which surprises me. The dude fucked up, pretending he could heal. The Cayuse killed Dr. Whitman as they often killed their own shamans back then for not healing the sick. It’s not a power to take lightly. I sure as hell wouldn’t want it. All of the women and girls at the funeral, other than Matt’s relatives, wear long prairie dresses. Emmy says Matt chose not to hold Beth’s service at the church in deference to Kate, who was condemned from the pulpit there when it was first discovered she was pregnant with Emmy. Christian love. I don’t think her uncle will keep attending that church or any other, at least for a while. After the minister finishes speaking with his southern accent—he broke down a lot, so it took forever—Kate reads a poem called “Dover Beach.” It doesn’t seem like a funeral poem, except maybe the first line: “The sea is calm tonight.” The poem is typed into the funeral flyer, so as Professor Kate said before beginning, we can read along. Her voice is powerful. The poem seems to be about the loss of faith—“Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar”—rather than the loss of a loved one. Beth had a lot of faith. Emmy sobs harder than at any other time. I sit right beside her in the front row reserved for family. Her sobs knock the wind out of me. Kate falters only on the final stanza:

  Ah, love, let us be true

  To one another! for the world, which seems

  To lie before us like a land of dreams,

  So various, so beautiful, so new,

  Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

  Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

  And we are here as on a darkling plain

  Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

  Where ignorant armies clash by night.

  The poem gets to me. I didn’t want it to. But for an hour in the hospital I was the only one in the room with Beth. Nor help for pain. There should be drumming. Darkling plain. Matt and Emmy, who had both prepared little speeches on paper, are too upset to speak at the podium. Struggle and flight. I too feel heavy in my seat. Clash by night. A small reception follows, during which Emmy stays glued to Matt’s side—for her protection or his, I can’t tell. Seems. Dreams. It’s touching. Pain. Plain. I cut out early. Emmy says she understands. At tribal funerals, even the Christian ones, we have drumming. Light. Flight. Night. There should’ve been drumming for Beth.

  Ray and a few lowlifes, but not Benji, are at Teresa’s place when I get there. Fuck. I’m usually happy to see Ray, but if he’s hanging with Sergio, it can only mean trouble. Sergio is almost Teresa�
��s age and just got paroled. I’ll have to tell them all to clear out.

  “Cuz,” Ray says. They stand around Ray’s truck and Sergio’s slammed Honda. Sergio is half Yakama and half Mexican. One of the other guys is full Yakama. I met him once. And then there’s a white boy in a backward cap. There’s been tension lately between the Yakama and Colville over fishing rights on the Wenatchee. All of them but Ray, who’s too fat, wear wife beaters. If Teresa were home, she would’ve already told them to scram, except Ray. I’ll smoke one cigarette with them before I tell them to leave. They offer more than tobacco, but I pass.

  “Ray says you got a sweet piece of ass next door, bro,” Sergio says.

  I look at Ray, who stutters, “I didn’t say ‘piece of ass,’ cousin. I just—”

  “Shut the hell up, Ray,” I say. I’d tell Sergio off also, but he packs.

  “He said you’re real touchy about her,” Sergio says. “I think he meant touchy with her.” He makes some gesture with his hands. “I’d like a turn tapping her sweet ass. Maybe you can introduce us, cuz. What do you say?”

  Confirming he’s Sergio’s bitch, the white guy laughs the loudest.

  “Do I know you?” I ask him. He shuts up.

  I stare hard at Sergio. I’m not his “bro” or his “cuz.” And I sure as hell ain’t his bitch. One more word about Emmy.

  “You look like you could use a cold one,” Ray says. I’ve only had three beers in my whole life. But I remember all three. I’m more tempted than usual.

  I ask Ray if I can talk to him a second. I tell him about the funeral and how Emmy’s mom is in town. I ask him to leave and come back next week. “No prob, cousin,” he says. I hang back while he goes to his friends. They all three get into the Honda and leave. I meant Ray too.

  I light another cigarette. “Great group of friends, Ray.”

  “You haven’t exactly been around.” That’s true. “You missed the fucking Pow Wow. They called your dad’s name, and Mom’s.”