“Put this out of your head,” Mary told me.
I surveyed her through sad gray light. “How’m I supposed to do that?”
“By trusting me,” Mary said. “I’ve got this under control.”
That was the thing about Mary. She was positively crazy, but when she told you you could trust her, you trusted her, against all odds. It must’ve been a secret superpower. Probably she could’ve talked a cobra out of biting her.
“You’re gonna get Sky back?” I asked, my voice catching in my throat.
“For you,” Mary said. “So you can stop looking like a wounded gazelle. I hate that look. Makes me wanna throw up.”
She led me home again by the hand. Sometimes I thought that God gave us sisters just to hold our hands when we felt small.
I didn’t sleep that night; and when I think about it, I don’t remember eating, either. All I remember is the darkness settling around me when I lay down in my room, the fear tightening in my chest. I grabbed a blanket and a flashlight and went outside the house to sleep against the trunk of the southern oak. Even that didn’t work. I stared at the gray stars on the gray sky; I listened to the gray crickets singing gray songs. Sky wasn’t sleeping in his own house tonight. It felt so fake. It felt kind of evil. Who takes a kid away from his home and his friends just because they’re mad at his dad? The more I thought about it, the thinner my breath got. My eyes stung with dryness. I didn’t know where Sky was. I couldn’t climb the side of his house and tap on his window when I wanted a late night talk. I couldn’t hold his hand under the table at school while we worked on our assignments, because he was right-handed, and I was left-handed, and it felt like we’d been made that way on purpose. If anybody gave him shit for being mute I couldn’t punch them. Not that I would have. I’d promised him I’d stop doing that. It was important that I keep my promise. Even if I didn’t want to.
I stayed outside the house until the sun rose. I dragged myself indoors long enough to wash my face and change my clothes. When I went to school that morning the seat at my side was empty. I slouched miserably, Autumn Rose In Winter turning around to stare at me.
“Rafael,” Annie whispered noisily, taking the empty seat. “Do you have any idea where—”
“No,” I mumbled.
“How could they do this?” Annie asked.
“I don’t know.”
Zeke sat on Annie’s other side, a large gray bruise swallowing half of his face. He bent his head over his notebook and yawned.
“What are we going to do?” Annie said.
“I don’t know,” I said wildly. Mary knew everything. “I don’t know.”
Mr. Red Clay came into the schoolhouse, commanding everyone’s attention. He etched all twelve grades’ assignments on the chalkboard from memory. Aubrey opened his math book to the right of me, but I couldn’t concentrate. The room dimmed around me, my head tight with pain. For the next few hours I stared blankly at my notebook, my eyes watering. Mr. Red Clay noticed, too: When school let out at noon he grabbed my shoulder just as I was heading out the door.
“Next time,” Mr. Red Clay said, “don’t come to school if you’re too tired to pay attention.”
I burned with humiliation. But I could feel the concern in his hand. It was a thoughtful kind of concern. It told me he’d noticed Sky’s absence just as much as his students had.
“Rafael,” Mr. Red Clay said. “You got a D on your winter exam.”
My heart sank. This wasn’t what I wanted to talk about right now.
“I’m aware you’ve been tested for learning disabilities,” Mr. Red Clay said. “I was wondering whether you’ve seen a psychiatrist? Sometimes poor performance in school is linked to—”
“I’m not going to a psychiatrist,” I said, bewildered. I wasn’t. I couldn’t. I couldn’t be ill like my dad.
“I know what’s happened to Skylar,” Mr. Red Clay said. “So I’m not going to push this on you. Not right now. I’ll offer you an extra credit essay. ‘What It Means to be Native American.’ Can you do that?”
How could I do anything when I didn’t know where Sky was, or whether he was safe? I felt like I was wading through a trance.
“Mr. Red Clay,” I said. “What do you think we should do when we have criminals on the rez?”
“I’m sorry?” Mr. Red Clay said.
In Indian Country you find that even the full-blooded families have a non-Indian ancestor if you go back far enough. Record keeping and blood quantum weren’t very strict in the 19th century. But Mr. Red Clay looked all Indian, his features so sharp, so statuesque you wanted to ask him how many buffalo he’d killed today. I glanced at him and felt like hiding.
“Blood law,” I said. “Do you think it works?”
“I don’t believe we practice blood law anymore,” Mr. Red Clay said seamlessly.
Liar.
“Why?” Mr. Red Clay asked.
“Because it doesn’t work,” I said. My forehead tightened; my eyes itched. “An eye for an eye. Just leaves more pain.”
Mr. Red Clay surveyed me. We were the last two left in the schoolhouse, the smaller kids laughing out back as they played on the swings. I wished I were one of those kids just then.
“How would you propose ending it?” Mr. Red Clay asked. “Assuming we still practiced it.”
“I dunno,” I said. The grayness of his face felt like an assault.
“A society must constantly better itself,” Mr. Red Clay said. “To evolve at all times should be the goal of any community. ‘In a dream I saw a city invincible.’ “
He really seemed to believe what he was saying.
“I dunno,” I said again. “I don’t know anything right now.”
Mr. Red Clay touched my shoulder. I couldn’t remember what color his aura was. “Go to bed, Rafael.”
When I went out onto the dirt road I saw that Annie, Aubrey, and Zeke were all waiting for me. I was so touched that they’d stayed behind, the air caught in my throat. Annie took my arm in hers when we walked back to my house. I didn’t know what I would have done just then if I couldn’t have leaned against her.
“Perhaps if we used the radio station?” Annie asked. “If we made broadcasts to Skylar.”
“Do we know that he would hear it?” Aubrey asked, anxious. “Most of Arizona does, but—could they have taken him out of state?”
“Or deprived him of a radio,” Zeke said. That bruise of his was starting to scare me; it covered his eyebrow and the corner of his mouth. “Like—uh—like prisoner tactics.”
“He’s not a prisoner,” I yelped, panicked.
“Yeah, but—I’m just saying!”
I didn’t wanna go to sleep; but the gray reservation around me was starting to prickle with black spots. Annie and Aubrey and Zeke wrestled me into the house, into my bedroom. Annie pulled the covers down on my bed. If I were less lethargic I could’a taken all three of them at once. Maybe not Aubrey; the guy was a beast on the shinny field.
“Sleep,” Annie hissed. “I’ll make you something to eat when you’ve woken up.”
“I think I love you,” I mumbled. I passed out soon as I hit my pillow.
When I woke up again it was dark in my bedroom. The whale lamp on the writing table glowed with half strength, washing over Zeke and Aubrey’s faces. The pair of ‘em had fallen asleep sitting against the wall, Zeke drooling on Aubrey’s shoulder. Annie had taken a kitchen chair and propped it beside my bed. She sat wide awake, knitting a sweater with a pair of fine, pearly gray needles.
“What time is it?” I said groggily.
“About ten, I should think,” Annie said, without looking up. Her voice was low and soft.
“Crap,” I groaned. I sat up. I was gonna be just as tired tomorrow as I was today. “What’re you still doing here?”
“Granddad said it was alright. You didn’t really think we’d leave you alone, did you?”
I wanted to cry. ‘Course, I didn’t.
“Let’s go outside,” Annie
said. “You should eat something.”
She got up. I stood with her. She took my arm and we snaked down the dark hallway, into the sitting room. The hearth was lit, Caleb working the electrical wires back into the walls. Dumbass should’t’ve ripped ‘em out to begin with. I didn’t see Uncle Gabriel or Rosa or Mary.
Annie took me into the kitchen and warmed wild rice flatbread with chives. She brewed me a glass of cold rose tea. She sat across from me with her skinny elbows on the island, her eyes distracted. Her hair had grown so long.
“Eat something,” I mumbled.
Anne smiled fleetingly. “No, thank you.”
I tore into the flatbread with angry fingers. I hoped she knew I wasn’t angry with her.
“If I called Social Services,” Annie said, eyebrows furrowing. “If I told them I wanted to write Skylar a letter—”
“Mary said something similar,” I said.
Annie flushed briefly. “Did she?”
I stuffed the flatbread in my mouth so I wouldn’t have to talk. Only Annie didn’t say anything, either. I swallowed. I gulped down half the tea.
“For heavens’ sakes,” Annie said. “You’re like a polar bear.” I knew she didn’t mean it unkindly.
“Annie,” I said. “I really love him.”
Annie’s face softened; although in a way, she looked uncomfortable. This wasn’t stuff you talked about if you were Shoshone. “I know.”
“I feel so stupid,” I said. “Like—I don’t wanna be one of those useless guys who can’t do nothing if he isn’t with me—”
“You’re not useless, Rafael,” Annie said, a touch angry.
“But I can’t stop thinking about if people are treating him nice. He’s kind, you know? Kind people get taken advantage of. And then he’s mute on top of it. And he loves his family so much, and now he doesn’t even get to see them—”
“Mary told me she’s contacted a city cop. Racine Something?”
How the hell did Mary know any cops? I mean, I’d always figured she’d be on the opposite side of that dealing.
“Eat, Rafael,” Annie said.
“What’re you, my mom?” I growled.
“If I have to be.”
I sucked down the rest of the flatbread. I didn’t tell Annie, but it tasted good.
“So you talk to Mary now,” I said when I’d finished.
Annie poured herself a glass of rose tea. I knew a distraction when I saw one. “That’s not so unusual, is it?”
“Annie,” I said.
Annie put her glass down without drinking it.
“Annie,” I said. “Are you gay?”
“I—no! Absolutely not!” Annie said, flustered.
“Shh,” I said.
Annie’s gray blush bloomed all the way up to her ears.
“It’s okay if you are,” I said. “You know that, right?”
“Of course I know that,” Annie said testily. “But I’m not, so…”
I dropped it.
“I mean,” Annie went on. “I’ve liked plenty of boys, so surely—”
“Some people like both,” I said. “Maybe you like both.”
“Some would say that makes me indecisive,” Annie muttered through her teeth.
“Who the hell would say that?” I wanted to know. “That’s stupid. That’s like saying a straight guy’s indecisive ‘cause he’s dated more than one girl.”
“Do we even have a word for it?” Annie asked. “In our language?”
“What,” I said, “a word for bi?”
Annie wouldn’t look at me.
“Guess not,” I said. If you loved someone the same gender as you, you were Napaka. Our culture liked to look at the effect, not the cause.
“Of course,” Annie said hastily. “I’m not—so this is all quite irrelevant, but—”
“Yeah,” I said, “but it’s keeping my mind off of Sky.”
“And I should just suffer that for you, then?”
“Uh-huh.”
The funny thing is: She did.
“Please don’t tell anyone,” Annie said. She sounded humiliated. “I don’t…I don’t understand all of this myself.”
“Just do what feels right,” I said. “I won’t tell anyone. Anything you tell me, I’m not gonna tell anyone.”
I could actually watch the relief spreading across Annie’s face.
“But you gotta tell Aubrey,” I said. “If you decide you don’t wanna be with him. You can’t lie to him.”
And now she looked miserable. “Oh, I love him, Rafael, I love him so much. I love all of you so much.”
“I know you do,” I said. “You’re a good girl.”
We went into my room and shook Aubrey and Zeke awake. Zeke smacked Aubrey in the face by accident when he stretched his arms. I walked my friends home; but their homes were so spread out across the rez, it took almost a full hour. By the time I returned to my own I was wide awake, anxious. The lights were on in the sitting room, brighter than I remembered them ever being.
“Finally fixed yer damn electric,” Caleb announced.
I looked at him weirdly. “I didn’t know it was broken.”
Just as I’d figured, I couldn’t sleep that night. I holed myself up in my room and drew sketches instead, but with regular pencils; no point using colored ones if everything was gray. I drew a sea of caltrops, a kind of flower Sky liked, and a staircase of ansomnia, which my mother had loved. I drew wolves and coyotes racing under a macrocosmic snowflake. My pilot whale sketchbook had run out of pages; I ripped out the pages from other notebooks and stuffed them between the thick covers. I put down my pencil and inspected my drawings. Just then I understood why everyone and everything existed. It was the same reason I drew. It was the same reason Sky made music. Imagine reading a book without a cover. Imagine walking into a museum and finding empty walls.
Doing alright, kid?
I put my pencil down. I looked at the gray ceiling.
I’m on it. Don’t worry.
“Do you know where he is?” I asked.
Soon.
I didn’t sleep that night, but napped before school the next morning. After school I went out to the badlands, past the tent rocks, and helped set up the grounds for the Sun Dance. A couple of men picked out a guajillo tree and hung buffalo skulls from the branches. They stripped it clean of toxic leaves and burned them in offering to the planet. The purification rites would take until sunrise. I only hoped I didn’t fall asleep before then.
I fell asleep twice. The shaman shook me awake both times, his eyes screwed up in crabby anger. When the sun rose the supplicants slashed their backs and chests with a knife. I’d already known the Sun Dance included some measure of blood, but I’d agreed to it anyway. I braced myself, teeth gritted, when the knife touched my back. The cut wasn’t as deep as I’d expected it to be; I barely felt the sting. It made me feel good, somehow, to think that I was connected to my ancestors all the more for it.
Shoshone Sun Dancing involves dancing nonstop for a whole week. Only thing you’re allowed to do in between is drink and sleep. There was this one guy in the old days, Dragon Canoe, who used to dance without sleeping, and in the end he wound up dying of exhaustion. I guess that was a lesson to the rest of us. I should’ve learned the lesson a little better, because at one point, when I was shuffling around the buffalo offering, sweating, I passed out. I woke up to the shaman shaking my shoulders and yelling at me.
“Go home!” he insisted. “You’re tired. You’re only going to endanger yourself and everybody else. Shoo!”
Uncle Gabriel gave me an apologetic look over by the barrel cactus. I didn’t have it in me to feel embarrassed. Sky wasn’t dancing the Sun Dance right now. Sky wasn’t talking over his winter grades with his family. Sky wasn’t holding my hand when I stumbled home in my moccasins, so tired I was already dreaming. I dreamt of pilot whales and sirens: the aquatic kind and the police kind. I dreamt of colors whose names I couldn’t remember, and Corn Maidens, and my mother’s
piano.
I cleaned up at the water pump outside my house, pulling on a spare shirt from the clothesline. I sat down on the hot, caked soil. A juvenile coywolf inched over to me, curious, his nose twitching. Coywolves were a shy creature, so I thought the behavior strange. I knew this coywolf, I realized. The pelt on his back was streaked gray, his legs skinny, clumsy. I’d seen him following Sky before, no doubt happy for the endless handouts.
“You his spirit guide?” I asked.
The coywolf lifted his head when a hawk screeched above us.
“You miss Sky, too,” I said, tired.
The coywolf curled up on the ground beside me. I might’ve stroked his head if I wasn’t so leery of his feelings. I tucked my hands between my raised knees, warm wind smoothing the sweat off my cheeks. I closed my eyes. Sleep washed over me in slow, disorienting waves.
It was a few days later that the cop Mary had talked to came to the reservation. Her name was Racine Hargrove, and sure enough, she was a taipo’o. I was delivering venison to Reverend Silver Wolf’s house when I saw her talking with Mrs. Looks Over on Sky’s front lawn. Mrs. Looks Over reached up and hugged her. My heart leapt with hope; I left the meat on the reverend’s porch. I ran over to hear what the women were talking about.
“He should be back with you guys in no time,” Racine was saying.
“I feel so much better knowing he’s staying with you,” Mrs. Looks Over replied. “Thank you. Thank you so much—”
“You don’t need to thank me! The kid and I go way back.”
“Can I see him?” I asked, bounding closer. “Is he okay?”
Racine started. Mrs. Looks Over pursed her lips, amused.
“He’s fine,” Racine said. “But I have to get back to work right now. I’ll come back when I’m free and drive you to my place, okay?”
“Okay,” I said. “Do you know when that is?”
Racine laughed, like she didn’t know what else to do. My cheeks felt warm. I hadn’t meant to come off so pushy.
“Let me give you a glass of water before you leave,” Mrs. Looks Over said.
I walked back to my house. I wanted to talk to Mary, which was how I knew that I was in a good mood. But when I went inside the house, she wasn’t there. The only person home was Rosa, sweeping up dust on the sitting room floor.
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