She hands me the paper. I almost hug her to show my appreciation, but her breasts are too large. Not that I’ve ever noticed, or I’ve always tried not to.
“He’s never loved anyone like he loves that girl,” she says. “It could ruin him.”
She’s absolutely right. It could. I’m overwhelmed for a minute. “I’ll do what I can to help Reuben too,” I say. She looks doubtful and puts her cap back on. “I promise you, Teresa.”
“Try those two places first.” She pulls a pair of plastic gloves from her pocket and puts them on. “There’s no guarantee.”
I head north, passing the lakes where Beth and I used to fish together when we were young. I pass Steamboat Rock. If I could go back to that last picnic there with Beth, I wouldn’t leave her alone on that blanket. Goddamn it. I pass the park where the healing ceremony took place. Screw Brother Mathias. That bastard was so in love with my wife from the very beginning. He showed up at the hospital in Spokane. I didn’t let him see Beth. What was it he said about her in the small waiting room when I thought I smelled alcohol on his breath? That she was “as the apple tree among the trees of wood.” I more or less told him to fuck off. He said that had I come to him even once and asked him to counsel Beth to see a doctor, he would have. He said he left the South to get away from rituals like faith healings. He found them—what was the word? Carnivalesque. Would Beth have listened to him if he’d told her to see a doctor? My jealous pride. I let him perform the funeral service—out of guilt but also because he risked his ministry, which he’s losing, for Beth. I don’t blame Mathias for Beth’s death. She was my responsibility. I take full blame. I couldn’t save my wife, but I can help Emmy. And Reuben. I make it to Coulee Dam, and then I’m on the reservation.
I pass the tribal headquarters, with its BIA sign. The tiny town of Nespelem makes Quail Run Mobile Home Park look middle class. It’s a long stretch to Omak, and I have to fight to keep my grief in check. I think about fishing—the sturgeon I fought once for two hours and over two miles of river. Suddenly the snow-covered Cascades are directly in front of me. For the first time their immensity humbles me. Christianity teaches there’s a larger peace waiting for us above, and for Beth’s sake, I hope so. But here on earth there are also things profound. Reuben’s not at the old man’s house where I check for him first. I decline the old man’s invitation to “take a sweat” with him in his lodge, although I’m tempted. He says Reuben was there yesterday but was too upset. I return to Nespelem, then take a road over to highway 21, which follows the Sanpoil River. The valley here is pretty, but not necessarily the individual lots. I pull up to a trailer set back in pines and practically on the river. No other trailers are around for half a mile. There are a couple of rusted trucks, and Reuben’s truck is parked off to the side, almost hidden.
An old lady answers the door. She looks frightened. I quickly ask for Reuben. She shakes her head and starts to shut the door. Does she speak English? I tell her Teresa sent me and that it’s important. She studies me. “Out back,” she finally says, and points for me to go around. “Wait.” She calls me back to the doorstep. She disappears into the trailer, where I see the flickering light of her TV, but hear no sound. She returns with a plate of food covered with tinfoil. “He’s been out there all night and day. You make him eat.” She studies me again. “Wait.” She comes back with another plate of food. “For you.” I tell her thanks. “He’s the best of all my boys. You make him eat.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She says something to me in her native language, then slams the door.
I walk around the trailer and into the backyard and then through pines. I can hear the river. There’s something haunting about this place. My brother and I have been fly-fishing on the upper Yakima a few times. We had to hire a guide. I got the same feeling in that canyon, but I attributed it to the Indian stories the guide told us about Sasquatch and little “stick people.” My brother attributed the rumored noises at dusk and dawn to meth labs. I see a fire in a clearing. Reuben sits in a camp chair staring at the fire. He’s not wearing a shirt. Empty beer cans litter the ground. He stands up when I get close. He saw me way back. “Those aren’t mine,” he says, and starts kicking the beer cans. He kicks them hard.
“It’s okay, Reuben.”
“No, see, it’s not. See, I’m drinking water.” There’s a large water bottle by his camp chair. He grabs it. “See.”
“I see it.”
“For all the fucking good it’s done me.” He throws the water bottle into the trees. It thuds. Then he starts kicking the beer cans again. “These cans are my cousin’s. These cans are my uncle’s. These cans are my dad’s. My grandfather’s. My mom’s. Her fucking white boyfriend’s fucking beer cans. What the fuck was he doing here? What are you doing here?”
I put down the two plates of food on a log that looks like it seconds as a bench.
“You okay, kid?” He has his back to me. I didn’t realize how much I care for the boy until seeing him like this.
“I need to clean this place up,” he says, kicking more cans. “This whole fucking rez.”
“Emmy’s not okay either.” He wants to keep his back to me. But he turns at her name. “She needs you, Reuben.”
He starts laughing. “No fucking white girl on her way to Berkeley needs me.”
“She does.”
He laughs again. “Did you know Emmy speaks French? She’s never even been to France, but she speaks it better than I speak my native language—the language of this land.” He gestures around us. “The elders are always begging us kids to learn it before it dies with them.” He says something in his native language, maybe to the elders. Maybe an apology.
I wait.
“Emmy wants to travel to France,” he says. “Did you know?”
“I know she needs you.”
“Sit down, Matt, if you want to have a council.” I sit down in one of the other camp chairs. “You want a smoke?” He pulls a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his baggy jeans. He doesn’t normally wear his jeans so baggy. Not that it matters. Maybe they’re not his.
“Sure, son,” I say, “why not?” Did I just call him son? That’s not going to go over well.
“Son. Let me think about that.” He hands me a cigarette and then the lighter. He’s acting as strange as Emmy. He adds a log to the fire, stirring the embers. He takes a few minutes. “Okay, Matt.” He keeps his back to me. “You are the only fucking white man I will ever let call me that. But I still want to punch your fucking jaw.”
“I love you, Reuben.”
He turns. “Now why would you say that?” He looks at me. “Here, you know, at my fire? Can’t you white people stay off our rez?”
“I’m not here as a white man.” I take a deep puff of the cigarette. God, it’s good.
“Well, you sure as hell ain’t no Indian.”
“Reuben, cut this shit out.”
“I love you too, dude.” He flops back into the chair. He takes a couple of deep breaths. “Why are you here, seriously?”
“I need your help with Emmy.”
“I can’t be anywhere near Kate.”
“I sent her and Spencer away. Emmy is staying with me for one more week.”
He shakes his head. “I still feel Kate close by.”
“She and Spencer are in Spokane this evening, and then they fly out in the morning.”
“Emmy’s staying?”
“For one week only.”
“I can’t see her.”
“She won’t get off the floor. Or button her dress.” He stands up, starts pacing. He kicks another beer can. “She hasn’t eaten,” I continue. “And she drank only a few swallows of water yesterday. None today. Only you can make her drink.”
“I can’t. Shit. I mean—” He rolls his shoulders as if they were stiff. “Shit.” I noticed a stack of freshly cut firewood
by the house. “I can’t see her again.”
“Either you come with me, Reuben, or I have to take Emmy to the hospital when I get back. I don’t want to go to another hospital. She just needs you to tell her it was a lie—all you told her yesterday. What Kate made you tell her. She needs a proper good-bye.”
“Proper? Civilized? If you white people know a civilized way to dump the girl you love—to rip her fucking heart out—please inform me, missionary man.” He takes a deep breath. “Sorry, Matt. I’m done.”
I wait a minute. “Listen, kid. My hands are tied. If it was up to me, I’d let Emmy live with me and go to high school with you. But Kate is determined.”
“I can’t even breathe as long as that woman is in this state.”
“If you come back with me, you get Emmy for one more week. I’ll leave you kids alone. You guys don’t have to be apart—even at night.”
“And how is that going to make it any easier when she leaves?”
“I don’t know.” I sigh. “I know what I’m asking isn’t fair to you.”
“Fuck.”
“Fuck is right.” I look around. It seems we are in the middle of nowhere and it’s a hundred years ago. Two hundred. I’m a white man asking this Indian kid for more than I should.
I hear a voice, older than Reuben’s, but similar. I look behind Reuben, then behind me at a man standing in the shadows.
Reuben grins. “That’s my dad,” he says with obvious pride. “He wants me to tell you he’s okay with you calling me son.”
I should be freaked out, but I’m not.
“And he’s sorry about your loss.”
I nod at the man, and he steps back into the pines.
The pride on Reuben’s face turns to sadness. He wants to follow his dad—into the pines, farther.
I would’ve followed Beth.
Reuben looks at me as if confused again by my presence here. Then he says, “I’m sorry too about your wife.”
We both stare at the fire a long time, too long because I think I hear drumming, or maybe it’s just the river. It’s flowing strong toward the Columbia. My grief flows as strong in me. I’ve been trying to keep it back. I begin to cry, hard. Reuben says not a word, but his breathing is heavy and broken.
When I finally get control, I take a deep breath. “Will you come back, Reuben?”
He starts searching for his shirt. “We should hurry,” he says.
“I can’t take you unless you eat first.” I point at the plates of food I left on the log. “Your aunt insisted.”
“Aunt Shirley.” He smiles.
“I’ll eat with you.” We eat quickly. The meat is venison.
I follow Reuben’s truck off the reservation and back to Moses Lake. I’ve been gone almost seven hours. I’m afraid to go into the trailer. Reuben smells like campfire when he meets me on the porch. We enter together. Emmy sits on the couch, leaning her head on the arm. All around her are those damn paper birds. She looks like a bag lady with paper pigeons. She still wears the dress Beth made for her, and it’s still unbuttoned. Her hair is matted. She’s pale, and her lips are dry. I hear Reuben take in breath. Her eyes are open, but she doesn’t see us. The loss of Beth and then Reuben clearly sent her into shock.
“Hey, Emmy,” Reuben says.
She hears that. She sees him. She jumps up too quickly and looks faint. He goes to her. She wraps her arms tightly around his neck. “It’s going to be okay,” he tells her. Then he whispers something in her ear. She nods. He keeps whispering, and she nuzzles her face against him. She doesn’t loosen her hold around his neck. He helps her back onto the couch and buttons her dress. “Drink,” he says, and she does. I pick up the paper birds. More than a few are completely crushed. Then I fix Emmy a new peanut butter sandwich. I’d left one for her, but she didn’t touch it. She eats both halves for Reuben. As easy as that.
I am absolutely beat. “I’m going to bed, kids.”
“Can he spend the night, Uncle Matt?” Her voice is weak.
“On the couch,” Reuben quickly adds.
“You guys figure it out. Good night.” I head for my empty bedroom.
My brother pulled up the carpeting and got rid of the mattress. He bought me a new one. And his wife bought new sheets and bedding. I have yet to sleep in the bed without Beth. I’ve lain in it. It doesn’t smell like you. But I have yet to sleep. I take a hot shower. I fall into bed on my stomach. Kids are damn exhausting. I can’t be sure if those two out there make me feel younger or older. They just make me feel, I guess. When I wake up hours later, my head aches and I’m thirstier than I ever remember being. I put on pants and go into the kitchen. I look into the living room. Emmy sleeps on the couch. Reuben is on the floor with a pillow. They hold hands. I have plenty of alone nights coming. I feel them gathering. For now, though, I turn on the kitchen faucet. I drink and drink.
19
Teresa
Emmy is gone. Reuben is back in Omak attending high school. I miss them both.
During their last week together, before they took off to the reservation for four days and no one heard from them—except for the quick appearance they made in Omak for the final night of the Suicide Race—they threw together a barbecue dinner between the two trailers. They actually bought a plastic lawn table and chairs. Reuben barbecued and Emmy made samosas, an Indian food, from India, pretty good for her first attempt, even though she didn’t think so. There were candles, which kept blowing out in the wind, and a vase full of lavender cuttings. Beth’s. Matt stared at them a lot. There were gifts. Grace and Audrey each received a deck of tarot cards from Emmy. Kevin and Emilio got feathers from Reuben. Emmy gave me a set of colorful Tibetan prayer flags, which I hung across the inside of my bare kitchen window. Reuben gave Matt his dad’s Zippo lighter with the engraved eagle design. It’s been out of fluid for years. Reuben and Emmy said the dinner was to show their appreciation for all Matt and I had done for them. I didn’t want the evening to end. A newly widowed man, a single mom with four kids from three different dads, a young couple in love who had only days left together—and yet we were happy for a few hours. I’m almost thirty. Some days, after a long or double shift at the hospital, or when one of my kids is sick, I feel forty. I’ll take any hours of happiness I can.
Reuben doesn’t play football this fall. He says he just doesn’t have it in him. He gets an afternoon job instead. He’s losing weight, but his grades have never been better. He’s always tried hard in school—something Mom doesn’t appreciate. My brother’s even got Ray studying and back on track for graduation. And as far as I know, Reuben’s not drinking or drugging. He’s not in jail like his bud Benji. Emmy faithfully mails letters here to Reuben. Sometimes, when he comes to pick up her letters, he and Matt go fishing. Other weekends Matt meets Reuben on the rez to give him letters and to fish and even to take sweats in Virgil’s garage. Reuben says he’s teaching Matt to fish like an Indian, but he admits Matt already knew how to read the water like a native. Reuben used to get so excited as a little boy when Dad would take him fishing, which wasn’t often enough. Dad was like Coyote fishing. All he had to do was wink and the fish would practically leap out of the water for him. Mostly, growing up, Reuben fished and hunted with the elders. Kevin will be old enough soon. In November, Reuben tries out for the school basketball team and makes it. I really encouraged him. But then he wrecks his pickup, way out on the rez, which scares the crap out of all of us, and he abruptly quits the team. He actually lets Matt lend him the money to get his truck fixed. Matthew Miller has more than kept his promise to do what he can for Reuben.
But my brother just isn’t the same kid. His step is slower and a bit off, and he’s far quieter, even with me. The kids notice it when he visits, which isn’t often now that the snows have started and the days are short. Last time he came to pick up Emmy’s letters, he stared out the kitchen window for a good twenty minutes, touc
hing the prayer flags. Then he took a walk alone down the road, past the long-harvested and snowy fields, past the dwindling haystack where he and Emmy used to hang out.
I persuade Reuben to bring Lena and stay for a few days over Christmas break. Grace and Lena spend the entire first day making beaded holiday ornaments for our aunts and for a few of my favorite patients at the hospital. The second afternoon, when I send Reuben and Kevin to the store for groceries, Lena reports to me, “Our brother is sad. Emmy took his heart.”
“I don’t like Emmy,” Grace says. “Or any white girls.”
Grace has been having problems at Chief Mo Middle School with white girls and with Mexican girls after they find out she’s not one of them and has native pride. She never had problems in elementary school, but she’s also become more vocal. I need to call the counselor. Grace doesn’t understand why I won’t move back onto the rez. She sees only the positive sides: a web of relatives, lots of ceremonies, youth classes at the longhouse, dogs, and horses. Not all the drugging, political bickering, people in your business, my old classmates drinking their health away. I volunteer when I can at the once-a-month women’s health clinic in Nespelem.
“If Reuben heard you say that you didn’t like his girlfriend,” Lena warns Grace, “he wouldn’t like you. And I’m half white.”
“You’re family,” Grace says. They sit together in my new recliner. My other three kids aren’t allowed to sit in it until I pay it off.
“So is Emmy,” Lena retorts.
“No, she isn’t. She isn’t even Reuben’s girlfriend anymore.”
“Oh, yes, she is.” Lena gets up swiftly without putting down the footrest. I cringe, forgetting she’s as agile as her big brother always was, until recently.
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