Inside of one of the spirals gold clouds danced nervously, yellow trains trailing them. The clouds crashed together, so hot and so bright it hurt to look at. The sun emerged from the resultant soup. The earth emerged from the sun. It wasn’t a solid earth. I don’t know how I knew. I hurtled onto it. I was standing in Grandma’s kitchen in Idaho, and somehow it didn’t feel real. The walls were blue. The ceiling was gray.
“People like you an’ me,” Caleb said. “We see too much.”
I saw myself reflected in blue-and-gray eyes. Caleb saw me as the chemicals that banged together inside my cells, the lights in my skull and the DNA chains that said that I was Rafael Gives Light, the son of Susan Gives Light, the daughter of Pearl Gives Light, the granddaughter of Rumilly Gives Light, the great-granddaughter of Sacajawea.
“You see so much,” I said, “that you wind up missing stuff. You can’t connect to people anymore. You’re not sure you could to begin with.”
It was lonely. I knew that.
“You’re doing better these days,” Caleb said. He didn’t make a show of it, but I thought he looked sad.
” ‘Cause of Sky,” I answered. When you’re too busy seeing everything to see individual people, and then you meet an individual who happens to be everything, you finally pick up on all the little things you overlooked. Ice cream on a hot summer evening. An elbow digging into your side.
“You’re damn lucky, kid,” Caleb said.
“You should come back to Nettlebush with us,” I said unthinkingly.
Caleb stuffed his hands in his pockets. Caleb stared at me like I was an idiot.
“Uh,” I said, feeling small. “Because maybe you and me ain’t meant to have families,” I said. “But we’ve got one. And they’re really great. And—”
And I was a dumbass.
“—and they love us, even when we don’t deserve to be loved. So come. And…just…just don’t feel alone anymore.”
Loving people was my only talent, but I didn’t really mind.
“I’ll think about it, kid,” Caleb said.
I didn’t know that he would; but I knew I felt better hearing him say it.
Later that night I went into Uncle Gabriel’s room, took my shirt off, and changed into an older pair of jeans. I’d decided I was going to sleep on Sky’s floor again; but he didn’t give me the chance to. He knocked on the door and I said, “Come in,” and he walked inside with a pillow and three blankets. He threw them on the floor and he lay on them.
I stared at him. “Don’t do that.”
He pretended he didn’t hear me. It drove me crazy when he did that. I knelt down and shook his shoulder. He peeked at me over his mound of quilts.
“You don’t belong on the floor,” I said.
He gave me a pointed look. Neither do you.
“Come on, Sky,” I said, impatient. “Lay on the bed.”
Only if you do.
I felt certain he didn’t mean anything by it; but I couldn’t help thinking about Tommo and the Corn Maiden. My skin went hot with embarrassment. The only ways I knew to touch Sky were arms around his waist; lips on his forehead; fingers on his heart, where I sometimes felt my own name echoing in his chest. When I didn’t get to touch Sky it drove me insane. It was like those torture techniques where they feed you just enough to keep you alive, but not enough to put vigor in your bones. I touched Sky with my hands and my chin and my knees and my mouth because I wasn’t eloquent enough to touch him another way. I knew there was another way. I had the feeling that I really existed as a part of Sky, and I was trying to find my way back into him. Sometimes it made me want to rip the skin off my bones, the body off my soul.
I yanked a blanket off Uncle Gabriel’s old bed. I lay down on the floor, but kept the lamp on; these days I was afraid of the dark. Sky watched me from a few inches to my left, his fox eyes tiny and scrutinizing and brown. I wanted to pull him into my arms and tuck him under my chin. I didn’t dare. Sometimes when I was alone I thought about what it would feel like to touch Sky so deeply he unraveled underneath me. It was a blurry sort of daydream, because nobody had taught me how it was done. When I was eleven the shaman came looking for me and—to my mortification—talked to me about how babies were made. It had been a clinical conversation. It had nothing to do with how to love somebody. It had nothing to do with me.
Sky’s gaze fell heavier on me. He’d been looking at me strangely lately, long and intense and a little confused. It started before we ever talked about blue corn, so I didn’t think it was related to my own misgivings. I didn’t know what it was. I might have asked him about it; but before I knew it my eyes were closing, my body sinking like deadweight into the floorboards. I must have been more tired than I’d thought. I fell asleep.
I knew that I’d fallen asleep because when I opened my eyes, I was in the middle of a dream. It was rare that I woke up in a Weird Dream without preparing first. Of all places, I was standing outside the Nettlebush hospital. A blobby blue pilot whale trinket hung around my hairy wrist. The sky was filled with scraps of swirling paper, pages torn out of what must have been a never-ending book.
“Mary?” I said.
A gray dove came and rested on the “Welcome!” sign beside the wheelchair ramp. The last place I wanted to be welcomed was a hospital. I drew closer anyway. I stroked the dove’s downy head with the tip of my finger.
“Mom,” I said.
Her wings fluttered. She rose off the signpost and sailed to the hospital entrance. I worried she’d crash right into the doors; but then I noticed that the doors were missing. Smoke and shadows billowed where they were supposed to be.
“Yeah, creepy,” I muttered.
I followed Mom inside the hospital, coughing. Wherever she flew the shadows dispersed, fleeing from her elegant wings. She glided past the pediatric wing, down to the adult inpatient corridor. She flitted inside one of the open doors. I crept after her, wary.
Mary was inside the bedroom, Grandma Gives Light’s tomahawk in hand. The blinds pulled free from the window, touched her shoulder, and disappeared. The EKG machine rolled off the floor, the shadows of Mary swallowing it whole. Even the colors on the walls tore violently away, vaulted at Mary, and faded, the room black and white without them. I worried about the patient in the hospital bed. I stumbled over. It was Paul Looks Over, his eyes closed; and that was about when I remembered this was a dream, albeit a disturbing one.
“Even asleep?” I murmured.
Dream Mary lowered the tomahawk, whirling around. “What are you doing here?”
“Nothin’,” I said. “Where’d Mom go?”
“Didn’t see her,” Mary said.
“You probably scared her away,” I said, annoyed.
“Do you mind?” Mary said.
She raised the tomahawk. I know taipo’o think tomahawks are a throwing weapon, but that’s actually not true. She swung the blade against Paul’s neck and it crunched bluntly before his throat split open. Paul didn’t move, and Paul didn’t bleed. This was a dream. Dreams didn’t have to make sense.
“Mary,” I said, frightened. “You can’t cut his fucking throat.”
“Why not?” Mary said.
Because our father had cut Sky’s throat. Because she was perpetuating that, but she pretended she was rectifying it, and this was so messed up, even in my dreams I wanted to cry.
“Okay,” Mary said. “Maybe I did cross a line.”
“You think?” I said fiercely.
“Too late now, though,” Mary said.
“What do you mean?”
I heard yelling. At first I thought it was a part of the dream, but then it got louder, and the next thing I knew I was jerking awake. A faint winter sun poured in through the window, lighting up Uncle Gabriel’s ancient maps.
“Blondie!” Caleb was yelling. “Get down here!”
Sky was a heavy sleeper. I shook him twice before he climbed to his knees, rubbing his eyes. We went downstairs without washing or changing our clothes. I fe
lt like smacking Caleb over the head.
My feelings changed considerably when Caleb covered his handheld phone with his palm. He narrowed his eyes at Sky. “Your old man’s had something of an episode,” he said. “Your gran asked me to take you home.”
“What?” I croaked out.
Sky’s face had gone the shade of milk, his eyes silently mad. He reached for the phone, then remembered himself, then dropped his hand at his side. What episode? he wanted to ask. What are you talking about? Why won’t you explain anything?
“I’m going with you,” I announced.
Mary leaned in the entrance to the alcove, her arms folded, her face expressionless. My hands shook. I couldn’t bring myself to look at her for long. I told myself I was being stupid. I told myself dreams didn’t really kill people.
I told myself as much; but I didn’t believe it.
7
Just Mary
After four days of frost and snow it felt weird to be back in Nettlebush, where the sun scalded the back of my neck and I couldn’t wear a sweater without sweating. I didn’t have much time to think about it, because the first thing I did was follow Sky to the reservation’s hospital. Paul lay in a bed in the far back wing, unconscious, his eyelids sore and red.
“We think it was a tick bite,” said Robert Has Two Enemies, scribbling illegibly on Paul’s chart.
I must’ve had eight different tick bites since I was a kid, and none of them had ever put me in the hospital. I looked at Sky. He grabbed Paul’s hand and shook it, pale face tinged sickly green with worry.
“Honey, don’t worry,” Robert said. He sounded nonchalant, but I wondered if they taught you to talk like that in nursing school. “If this is what I think it is, it’s very rarely lethal. He had a bad reaction is all.”
Nothing Robert said reassured Sky. Sky planted himself on the edge of Paul’s bed. He stared at his dad so intently I swear he didn’t blink. His knuckles went white and his lips went thin and I couldn’t see the breath passing through his chest.
“You have to get out of the room now,” Robert said. “I’m changing his IV. Sorry, kids. Hospital policy.”
Sky wouldn’t leave the room until I put my hand on his back. He drifted after me into the hallway, a confused specter. I held his hands, my thumbs running across his knuckles. There were times when Sky calmed me down just by touching me. I wished I could do the same for him.
“I just heard about your dad,” Aubrey said, racing into the hallway.
Annie and Zeke were fast on Aubrey’s heels. Zeke had a comb stuck in his hair. Annie pulled Sky out of my grasp and into her arms, possessive, maternal. I don’t think I’d ever realized that about Annie before. She knew Sky didn’t have a mother; she was trying to fill the void.
“Don’t worry!” Zeke said. “Nobody dies from tick bites! I mean, maybe babies—and old people—and deer—”
I shot him a warning look. He shut up.
“Let’s go into the waiting room,” Annie said.
We picked the waiting room at the back of the hospital, the one with the giant water cooler. Aubrey filled a plastic cup with water for Sky, but Sky wasn’t interested in drinking. We sat down, and I swallowed up Sky’s hand in mine; I pressed my arm against his, my leg against his, because maybe the closer we were, the better everything would turn out.
“I promise,” Aubrey said. “People very rarely die from winter ticks. You’re more likely to die from a freak accident. A bomb, or—”
“That’s not helping,” Annie said.
“Sorry,” Aubrey said, sheepish.
Because I was holding Sky’s hand I felt what he felt. I should have been here, and I shouldn’t have left Nettlebush, and What if I could have helped him?
“It’s not your fault,” I growled.
Sky gave me a bleary look.
“Really, though,” Aubrey said, hushed. “What do you think did that? I mean, I suppose the tick was on a deer, but deer usually yard up around this time, don’t they?”
“Man,” said Zeke, annoyed. “We rescued that pregnant deer on the road, and deer don’t give birth until spring! Something weird’s happening around Nettlebush these days!”
Something Weird had a name, I thought. Aubrey finally got Sky to drink a cup of water and I excused myself, my legs numb. I rose from my seat and trailed down the short corridor to the waiting room at the front of the hospital. Thomas Little Hawk, Cyrus At Dawn, and Mr. Red Clay were inside. More people loved Paul than I had realized.
“He’ll be fine,” Mr. Red Clay was saying. “He’s simply allergic to ticks. Remember when we were boys—”
“Yes, all those boils!” Cyrus boomed merrily. “Very sad—funny, but sad—”
“Mary,” I said.
Mary was leaning against the wall, arms folded. The hairspray in her hair made it look like a wispy black cloud. She raised her head and glanced at me; and I don’t know what she saw on my face. All I could think was that there used to be a time when we spoke without words.
Maybe we spoke without words now. She followed me out of the waiting room and into the front lobby. I gazed out the double glass doors at the black pavement outside, the dead trees, the warm sun glinting off of car mirrors.
“What did you do?” I asked the parking lot.
“How could I have done anything?” Mary asked. “I was two states away.”
“Mary,” I said.
“I’d better head back to the house,” Mary said. “Caleb’s gonna need to borrow one of our bedrooms.”
I grabbed her arm before she could leave. I wished I hadn’t. Mary felt like a storm. I heard the rain hissing in my skull. I saw the lightning flash behind my eyelids. She was the monsoon that tore down trees and tent rocks, the same monsoon that sent me scurrying to the basement year after year.
“Hey, Mary?”
Robert poked his head around the corner. I let go of Mary, but my clothes, my hair were soaked with rainwater. I asked my imagination to cool it.
“Paul’s awake,” Robert said to Mary. “He wants to see you.”
My head shot up on my shoulders. “What?”
“You coming?” Robert quipped, gesturing with his chin.
Mary strode past me, big black boots clomping on the shiny floor. She didn’t look remotely surprised; and I knew something was very wrong with that. I saw my opportunity when Robert went into the waiting room. I stalked after Mary, and she slipped inside Paul’s room; I hung back, straining my ears, careful not to hover too close to the door.
“Up and at ‘em, Sleepyhead,” Mary said cheerfully.
“Terrible,” came Paul’s voice, groggy and undead. “I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck.”
“Hit by a truck, there’s an idea. Ice chips?”
“Please.”
I heard the crinkling of ice cubes. I frowned. My heart went heavy and dull in my chest, head swarming with confusion.
“I could try the blowgun again, I guess,” Mary said.
“I don’t think so,” Paul said apologetically. “I’d know it was coming.”
“Alright.”
My head was pounding. My stomach convulsed.
“Want I should get your kid?” Mary asked.
“Only if he feels like it,” Paul said, which was how I knew he was delusional.
Mary strode briskly out of his room. When she saw me she stuck her tongue out at me, something she usually did when she was startled, but trying to hide it. She plodded away. I blundered into Paul’s room without announcing myself. He jolted.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I burst out.
His eyes were so red I almost couldn’t see the whites. His skin was so wan he finally looked like he was related to Sky. “I’m,” he said, but didn’t seem to know how to finish.
“You’re insane,” I told him. I felt like I was shaking, but I wasn’t. “Letting her do this—you’re insane—”
“I think you should leave now, Rafael,” Paul said quietly. It wasn’t the first time
he’d said that to me.
“Are you even thinking about Sky?” I begged. “Do you know how he would feel if something happened to you? You went to the hospital for a tick bite and he hasn’t slept in days. Don’t you care about your kid?”
Paul looked at me. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that I wished he wouldn’t. He wasn’t afraid to look at me, but he should have been afraid to look at me, because he was willing to leave his motherless son without a father and there was nothing as unforgivable as that. I knew too well what it felt like to lose both your parents, to find yourself nobody’s son.
Before I could summon my next argument Rosa stepped into the room. She picked up Paul’s wrist and touched it with two fingers. She listened to his chest. She met my eyes long enough to tell me I had to leave. I dragged myself out into the hallway, feeling like shit.
In the waiting room with the water cooler Sky listened attentively while Robert told him about Paul’s condition. The minute Robert finished speaking Sky bolted from the room to see his father, relief written all over his face. Robert scratched his head, shrugged, and slinked away. Annie and Aubrey and Zeke sat huddled together like old crones, whispering.
“Do you think Mr. Red Clay’ll hold out on returning our exams?” Zeke said, hopeful.
Annie glanced at him, nonplussed. “I don’t see how the two are related.”
“I failed mine!” Zeke explained.
“I still don’t see the relation.”
I collapsed like water in Sky’s empty chair. Aubrey threw me a deeply remorseful look. I scowled before I could stop myself.
“Rafael,” Annie said, remembering something. “Your sister asked to borrow my sewing awls. Do you have any idea what that’s about?”
I bolted upright. I cursed.
“There are children in this hospital,” Aubrey reminded me, sounding hurt.
“I gotta go,” I said. “Can you tell Sky I’ll see him tonight?”
“I thought you were grounded!” Zeke said. “Wow, your uncle’s a softie!”
Overlooked (Gives Light Series Book 6) Page 19