Steal the North: A Novel (13 page)

“When no one’s watching, I do pretty well.” She smiles.

“Come here,” I say. I’d like to finish unbraiding her hair.

“I’m here already.” She’s seeming a little coy today. She doesn’t move any closer.

I have to get up and sit on her bed to put some space between us. After I catch my equilibrium, I tell her, “I’ve started that book you lent me.” I grab the prairie dress. “I was thinking how Sister Carrie Meeber is ashamed of her clothes when she’s first in Chicago.”

“Do you like the novel?” She’s carefully putting the little bowls and chopsticks into a gift bag she pulled from her suitcase. She rearranges them three times. She did the same thing when frosting the cakes—kept trying to make them look better, as if her aunt or the kids would judge.

“I keep seeing you as Carrie,” I say. She sits down on the bed. “I mean, as I’m reading the book, Carrie has your face and hair and—figure.”

“You know what they say about white people? We all look the same.”

“Yeah, maybe—well, but not quite.” I can’t take it in her room any longer, especially not sitting on the bed with her. “You want to go for a run?”

“Actually”—she touches her necklace—“I have to make a call before they get home.”

I stand up. “Phoning your mom?” She’s not, of course, and it’s none of my business. But I want to see if she’ll tell me the truth.

“No. I haven’t been able to get ahold of Connor lately.”

“Did he give you that necklace?” I’ve wanted to ask. She nods. I’m not usually an angry guy, or the jealous type, necessarily. “Did you promise to wear it for him all summer?”

She nods again. “But—he didn’t ask me to.”

“Then he’s an idiot.” A fucking idiot.

When we go for a run Wednesday evening, Emmy isn’t wearing the necklace. I didn’t mean to make her self-conscious about it. Or did I mean to? I think girls usually remove jewelry before exercising. Her bare neck is torment. I want to trace her collarbone. We run only as far as the hay bales, which Emmy wants to climb up again. Once on top, sitting close, I ask, “Did you get ahold of him?” I’m not about to say his name, ever.

“I don’t want to talk about Connor. Or the healing. Let’s just sit here. Do you have a cigarette?”

“Why? You don’t smoke. And I certainly don’t light up on haystacks, weirdo.”

“I wish we could stay up here longer.” She leans her head on my shoulder and then says rather contemplatively, “The sky’s turning pink.”

“Which makes Emmy think.”

“The whole world could shrink.” She doesn’t miss a beat. “And slip down the sink.”

“In less than a wink.”

“We’re on the brink, my friend, and I need a goddamn drink.”

I laugh and put my arm around her shoulder. “You’re my best friend, Emmy,” I say. Emmy and Reuben.

“I’ve never had a best friend.”

“I know.” Ten minutes pass. Then ten more. I break the silence. “Up north,” I tell her, “it doesn’t get dark this time of year until almost eleven.”

“Would you ever take me there?”

“To the rez? Sure. Why wouldn’t I?” I can think of a dozen reasons. Two dozen.

“There’s so much to see around here,” she says, and I grin. “Where did you used to go, Reuben, late at night in your truck? I’d hear your tires in the gravel. You don’t have to tell me.”

“On drives. Mostly to the river.” Sometimes to drum, but I’ll keep that part to myself for now.

“Why don’t you go anymore?”

“I like being near you,” I own up. “Even if we aren’t hanging out.” She snuggles into my chest. I fix her scrunchie, which is slipping off. Then I hug her tightly. This damn girl.

Friday I offer to take her for a short drive while the two youngest kids nap. Last summer I found a place along Crab Creek that probably looks the same as it did when Chief Moses was a pup, before he became a warrior, carrying his rifle in front, then a diplomat, carrying it in back. Crab Creek alone used to drain into Moses Lake. Now every canal in the county dumps its runoff into the lake. No wonder it looks like algae soup. Before Moses was forced north onto the Colville, he won a separate rez for his people, but then he lost it. He’s the chief I feel the most alliance with, which used to irritate the fuck out of my dad, given that our last name is Tonasket. And Chief Tonasket rocked, no doubt about it. For a while Tonasket, who became a rancher, thought Moses nothing but a drunk, gambling renegade. But they eventually became bros. They even took sides together against the famous and highly spiritual Sanpoil chief Skolaskin, whom Moses was partially responsible for getting jailed at Alcatraz. Not cool. My dad never forgave Moses for this act, but he still married one of his descendants.

Emmy says she’s too nervous to take a drive. She’s afraid her aunt or uncle might come home or that we might pass them on the road. I try to assure her not to worry and that Indians use back roads. Moses certainly couldn’t have been a diplomat without them.

“After the healing,” she promises, “we can start going places.”

I’m not sure I’ve ever known a teenage girl, white and Christian or Indian and traditional, who obeys her relatives as much as Emmy does. She may not be hiding in a shell, but sometimes it feels like she’s on a leash.

We’re sitting on the back steps of Teresa’s trailer. Emmy’s been quieter than usual, if possible. She wears a silky kimono top that’s pretty—Emilio kept rubbing it—but it covers her collarbone, and I can’t tell if she’s wearing the necklace. “You get ahold of that guy?” I ask.

“I talked to his mom.” I grab her hand so she’ll stop picking her nail polish. She lets me hold it. “She said I’m wasting my time. Her son is just like his father.”

I keep quiet so she’ll continue talking.

“She informed me that Connor’s had lots of girls in his room already this summer, but none as well mannered as me. What does that even mean?” She lets go of my hand. “I barely ever talked to the lady. And what I did with her son—it wasn’t mannered.”

Fuck if that isn’t the last thing I want to hear about.

“Who cares, right?” she says, standing up. She doesn’t cry. I almost wish she would. She says she knew this would happen if she left Sacramento. “Connor’s the type you have to constantly throw biscuits to.”

I bust up. Then I stand and put both my hands on her waist. “I care if he hurt you, Emmy.” But I couldn’t be happier it’s over between them. I pull her close, and not only to hug her. She smells like warm berries. How does she taste? I should show some restraint, but I don’t want to. The summer is short, and already I can’t bear the thought of her returning south, ever. I reach just my thumb under the hem of her silky shirt to touch her bare skin. I kiss her cheek, then her ear. I whisper something intended for only her to hear. God, I want to taste her mouth. Her breath catches right before my lips find hers, and the sound unhinges me. Scared, I pull back, and a bit too abruptly because Emmy almost loses her footing. The next thing I know I’m climbing into my truck and hauling ass for Virgil’s sweat lodge in Omak.

Matt

I ran into Jamie Kagen once in a diner in Colfax. I never told Beth. Emmy would have been about ten years old then. Although she and Kate could’ve been dead for all Beth and I knew or for all Kagen cared. He was sitting at a booth with a woman who looked nothing like Kate. Her hair was blond, for starters, and styled in such a way that I knew she came from money. Jamie and this woman had not one but two small boys eating with them.
How fair is that?
I thought at the time. But that was back when I still hoped against all odds for a son of my own. Everyone in the diner seemed to know Jamie and his family. I was in the area with a sales rep who invited me to have lunch with him and a vendor. There’s not a lot of irrigation business in the hilly Palouse region because most of the farmers are dryland wheat farmers. They own some of the richest soil in the West, and they know it. Jamie knew it.

He knew me too, when he glanced in my direction. I’d wanted to hunt him down after his daughter was born, exchange a few words and punches. But after a decade, I had nothing left to say to the man. Neither was I about to eat in the same diner as the bastard. I made excuses and headed out the door. I was almost to my work truck when I heard my name being called. I could’ve just kept walking, but I owed it to Emmy.

“Kagen,” he said, offering me his hand, which I didn’t shake. He’d lost a little of his confidence. But not enough. “Jamie Kagen.”

“I know who you are.”

He put on the cowboy hat he was holding. “How is she?”

Did he mean Kate or Emmy?

“How is Katie?” he asked.

Should I tell him how Kate used to come home late from her waitressing shifts drunk and stinking? Either she was chasing some rough men back then, trying to get over Jamie, or they were chasing her. Both times I tried to act like a brother and talk with Kate about her dating life, she got pissed, and I didn’t blame her. Beth would bring Emmy into our bed.

“I wish I knew,” I said.

“Listen, Matt.” He tried to reason with me. “I’d like to know how they are.”

“No one’s heard a word from Kate in over nine years.” Damn, how Beth used to sob in my arms for her sister and niece. “Thanks to you.”

“I heard she took the baby and left town.”

“The baby’s name—your daughter’s name is Emmy.”

The name seemed to jolt him, as if he’d never heard it. Surely he’d made inquiries.

The diner door opened, and the older of his small boys came running toward us in cowboy boots. “Daddy.” He skidded to a stop and yelled, “Mommy said finish your lunch or no ice cream.”

“Back inside, son,” Jamie said firmly. The boy listened. We waited. “You don’t happen to have a picture of the baby, do you?” he asked

I shook my head.

“You don’t have to give it to me. I just want to see her face.”

I pulled out my wallet. The snapshot looked twenty years old. “Keep it,” I said, and turned to leave.

“Wait.” He fumbled trying to hand me his business card. “In case the girl ever comes looking for me.”

A business card for his kid?

“Or if she and Katie ever need my help.”

I took it, saying, “It’s a little late.” If I knew Kate, she’d just as soon starve.

“How many children do you and Bethany have by now?” he asked, but he didn’t lift his eyes from Emmy’s photo.

To this day I don’t know why I told him the truth. Maybe because he remembered Bethany’s name. “None. We can’t have any.”

He looked at me. “I’m real sorry to hear that.” I think he was. He offered me his hand, but I just couldn’t.

I love the Lord, but I love my wife tenfold more. If only there was a way to drug her and drag her to the doctor. I’ve been wanting out of our fundamentalist church for years—maybe clear back to when the old minister condemned Kate from the pulpit and her dad did nothing. He may have even said, “Amen.” I told my future father-in-law that I would look after his two girls at camp. I failed with Kate. But not as much as he failed as a father by shunning his pregnant daughter and then his grandbaby.

Sure, I was taken with the church at first, but only because of a soft-spoken girl named Bethany, so unlike the girls at the high school. There was a quietness in her that tamed me. I was more rowdy than wild. My older brother and I had a lot of freedom growing up: fishing, hunting, dirt biking, snowmobiling, having girls in our basement bedrooms, blasting our Zeppelin and AC/DC records, even drinking beer practically under our parents’ noses. Something was obviously missing because my brother started snorting coke in motel rooms with naked girls and then older women and then total skanks he’d pick up at parks. I know, cast the first stone. I began attending church with my cousin. For a time I even considered becoming a minister, which pleased my dad about as much as putting his oldest son in rehab. He wasn’t all that pleased, either, about my getting hitched at seventeen, but over the years he’s let me know how proud he is of me for taking care of Beth. Once when I was over at his place smoking fish, he started to hint that life with Beth couldn’t be easy. I stopped him. He backtracked, saying he couldn’t fathom our loss.

Emmy is a lot like her aunt: quiet, easily satisfied, timid almost to a fault, wholesome. But she’s also smart and, when she relaxes, funny like her mom. She’s even occasionally sharp-tongued
about
her mom. And she’s a bit strong-willed like both sisters. I have yet to get Emmy to switch lanes when we go out for a driving lesson. We’ve only been out three times because it makes Beth nervous. Emmy won’t do anything to displease her aunt. The love between those two blows me away. It did sixteen years ago, and it does now. They’ve spent hours upon hours gardening together these last weeks and making oils. Beth’s happier than she’s been in a decade. She needs female companionship. She seems alone even when among the other women at church, uncovering dishes at potlucks and whatnot. It makes me uncomfortable when Beth starts talking heavily to Emmy about God’s love and divine will. I get so nervous Beth will repel the girl she has longed for the better part of our marriage that I have to walk away.

Which is what I’d like to do with the church, if only I were certain Beth would follow me. I tried to switch churches after my father-in-law died, an event that I admit didn’t sadden me. For years I attempted to understand that man for Beth’s sake, figuring if she loved him so much, there must be something I was overlooking. I used to invite him fishing and hunting, but he always declined. I told the old coot more than once that I’d love to hear about his days as a logger. You don’t meet many loggers on this side of the mountains. Most old-timers around here built the dams. My father-in-law always replied that there was nothing to tell other than he’d breathed smoke and eaten sawdust from ages seventeen to twenty-five. I gave up trying. Beth took his death harder than I expected. At the same time, she saved very little from her parents’ house. Not that there was a lot. “In my father’s house are no mansions,” Kate used to say. Still, I thought Beth would try to keep every scrap. She narrowed her inheritance down quickly to half a dozen boxes, all but one of which are stored at my parents’ place until we move out of Quail Run Mobile Home Park into a larger house with acreage.

The kid next door has taken quite a liking to Emmy. She doesn’t think I know. She’d be embarrassed if I dared to tease her. And she’d be mortified if she thought Beth knew anything about it, which she doesn’t. I’ve always liked the boy. He seems to have his head on straighter than a lot of white kids, even though he hangs with a rather sorry-looking bunch from the reservation.

I have nothing against Indians, unlike my boss and coworkers, who think Indians are nothing more than drunks on welfare. The other field technicians, shop welders, dispatchers, and sales reps all gripe how “no-good Indians,” but not “hardworking Americans” like them, are allowed—by the federal government, not the state—to hunt and fish anywhere and everywhere without a license and with all kinds of nets. It’s not quite that black and white. The Colville Tribe writes its own fish and game regulations. I’ve read them. And only certain tribes can fish in certain areas off the reservation without licenses. Not every tribe on every waterway in the state. That’s a gross exaggeration.

Besides, who really gives a crap? There’s plenty of places to land trout, bass, walleye, and kokanee with the largest reservoirs in the state located just north of here. An hour south is the free-flowing Hanford Reach of the Columbia, where chinook spawn in the fall, steelhead run, and sturgeon bite. What more, seriously, could an angler ask for? As far as nets, don’t commercial fishermen use them on the lower Columbia, Puget Sound, the East Coast, and around the world? I’ve been fishing on the lakes and rivers that border the Colville Reservation my whole life. You can’t beat the trout fishing between the dams. But the poverty on the reservation is unbelievable. Third world, in fact.

Then again, so is the way Bethany bleeds out our babies onto the sheets and carpet.

It really is unfathomable. If I told people the gory details, they wouldn’t believe me, and why the hell would I? I wouldn’t humiliate or hurt Beth for all the world.

I miss the days Beth used to fish with me. We were still kids really. When I worked swing shift or graveyard at the factory, she and I would go fishing almost every day after Kate left and before Beth suffered her second miscarriage. Sure, I had to fish from shore, no boat. My wife’s terrified of water. But I didn’t mind so much. I still go fishing a lot, only without her. Beth never asks me
not
to. And because of that, I don’t argue about attending church with her. Fishing, however, is my real church.

I’d like to adopt a baby, but Beth’s too afraid the birth mom would change her mind and take the baby away, as Kate did with Emmy. I’d like to move my wife onto a small farm, maybe even in another county. I’ve picked some perfect spots over the years. I think migrating south to the Walla Walla Valley would suit Beth best of all, although it would distance me a bit from my favorite fishing spots and most of my family. The landscape in Walla Walla isn’t quite as rugged as here. Less snow, more trees. Beth could plant a large garden. I could install irrigation and build her a greenhouse. We could get her mother’s piano back from the church. Beth wants to wait to move until we have a baby. Her first couple of miscarriages I attributed to the sadness of her losing Kate and Emmy. At times now my wife’s frailness scares me. Her hands twitch too often while she sleeps, and her pulse is unsteady. Another miscarriage may kill her. If only she’d let me get a vasectomy. A better man would’ve stopped having sex with her altogether, and I try, but then she massages my sore neck and back with her oils. Or she slides in naked under the sheets beside me, and the paleness of her skin, which in the daytime might look unhealthy, glows in the moonlight like the inside of a shell.

We leave for the healing ceremony in half an hour. Beth is in the kitchen “anointing” Emmy’s hands with oil. We’ll meet Bro Mathias and a busful of church members at a lake by Dry Falls at seven. He chose a weekday in hopes there’ll be fewer crowds, and he selected evening time for the backdrop the setting sun provides. He’s from the South, which some of the deacons hold against him. They think he’s trying to put on a show this evening at the O.K. Corral to prove he’s been westernized, and maybe he is. But there’s more to it than that. Mathias was over yesterday for dinner. He wanted to meet Emmy and say a prayer to start the twenty-four-hour fast that he and I planned to begin after the meal. He asked Emmy to fast also, which wasn’t part of the deal, and even Beth, who can’t fast in her condition, looked troubled by his request. Emmy quickly agreed. I have to admit, Mathias was good with Emmy. But I still don’t like the guy. It’s not his accent. It’s the way he looks at my wife. I get that they connect on a spiritual level. The whole church can see that. And I know she cleaned and typed for our old pastor, but sometimes now, when I think about her alone with Brother Mathias and all those empty pews, I can barely get through the workday without messing something up. Beth told me she plays hymns for Brother Mathias on her mother’s old piano. If that doesn’t beat all.

I’ll put up with it and more, I’ve conceded, if he can help heal my wife. I can’t convince her to see a doctor, but somehow he has her convinced the Lord has finally heard her prayers. Or maybe she has him convinced: Beth has a certain hushed power.

I step onto the front porch for some fresh air. The smell of herbs has been overwhelming the last few days—years—with all the teas brewing and oils distilling. I nudge my dirty work boots farther into the corner of the porch, where I also store my hunting boots and coveralls. I keep a few poles in the extra bedroom closet in case on a whim Beth ever wants to go fishing. Everything else I store at my parents’: not just big stuff like my boat, but my tackle box and power tools. Even my old record collection, which Beth thinks I threw away. I want to move out of this trailer park. A man needs a garage.

Reuben’s truck has been gone since Friday. I wonder where the kid took off to. He told me he was here for the entire summer this year to help his sister. Emmy doesn’t seem to know where Reuben is, either, or when he’ll get back. She’s been eyeing the trailer next door more than ever, and Sunday evening Beth and I returned from church to find Emmy sitting on the garden bench, looking almost as bewildered as she did her first couple of days here.