Steal the North: A Novel (16 page)

“You still here?” I asked.

“Stop. I’m not going to leave you.”

He did leave the bedroom, though. He had to before Aunt Beth got home. He thought I was finally asleep when he left, but I got up and watched him through the blinds. He said not a word to his friends, who were still hanging by their vehicles. Ray tried to get into Reuben’s truck with him, but Reuben wouldn’t let him. Ray gave Reuben the finger, and then so did Benji. He would be back. When he passed by the window—he didn’t know I was awake and watching—the look on his face was a grave one. What had I done to him? Just weeks before he’d jumped boldly off the back steps of his sister’s trailer to say hi. I didn’t mean to freak him out. But I
did
want my hands to be the warmest hands that had ever touched him.

Reuben

Emmy. Emmy. Emmy. Emmy.

I say her name to the four directions. I say her name for each week she’s been here.

I knew nothing of love before holding Emmy yesterday, as she fell in and out of sleep, so afraid I would leave her again. I knew nothing of the pain Mom and Teresa have been dealt. Now I understand better why Mom wants me to be like my “no-good son of a bitch” dad. Why, despite everything, she misses him. I now understand, at least a little, why she gives her Indian money to a white man, a bona fide son of a bitch. Why Teresa doesn’t hate the three men who fathered her four children and then left her. Why so many Indian girls let themselves get pregnant and drop out of high school.

I love Emmy.

I cannot drum her out of me. I cannot sweat her out.

Her warm hands are my council fire.

My dad saw this coming.

Love is complicated, but it doesn’t have to be disastrous.
I can handle this, Dad.
Thanks for the warning. I’ll do
better than you did.
Dad with Mom was like Coyote when Buffalo Bull gave him his daughter, telling Coyote he could cut some fat off her every day to feed himself and he would have meat forever, but not to kill her. Hungry for her marrow Coyote of course killed her anyway, and his people were ashamed and left him.

This morning there are rain clouds, and then there is rain. I walk outside. Emmy stands on the small front porch with her aunt and uncle. They look at the sky, watching the rain. They all three see me. I wave. Then I gesture for Emmy to come get wet in the rain with me. She turns to her family for permission, as if she were ten, as if she’d known them her whole life, and probably she has in some far corner of her mind or heart. It moves me. She walks down the steps, then runs toward me as the rain starts to soak her. I take her into my arms, just for a moment, like a best friend would, and we are best friends.

“Ask them if I can drive you to the lake real quick to see the rain,” I say. “It’s only five minutes from here. I’ll have you back in half an hour.”

She does, and they agree.

“Be careful,” the aunt yells. I’ve never heard her raise her voice.

At the lake, we don’t stay in the truck. I chase Emmy through the park. I could catch up with her in half a minute, but I don’t want to. We sit on a picnic table and watch the rain on the surface of the lake. I look past the algae clumped along the shore to the deep middle of the lake named after my people’s chief. Emmy leans her head on my shoulder. It’s time to go back. She’s cold and shivers. I call her a wimpy Californian. We stand up. The shape of her breasts and her nipples show through her wet shirt. She notices me staring.

She crosses her arms in front. “Oh, my God.” She blushes. “How embarrassing.”

“No.” I pull her arms loose. “How beautiful.”

She smiles, then dashes for the truck.

I hand her the plaid flannel shirt I keep behind my seat. She puts it on, and I button it up.

“You’re always dressing me. Is that an Indian thing?”

“Smart-ass. Kiss me.” I wasn’t going to try.

She moves close. “You won’t wipe it off?” I shake my head. Her kiss is more breathy than I expect. It leaves me hardly able to drive back to the trailer park.

“See you tomorrow then,” I say before she opens the truck door. The rain has stopped. Her uncle still stands on the porch. His wife probably made him stay there.

“Oh, Reuben, I forgot.” She turns back toward me. “I’m going to church in the morning. I told Beth I would while you were—away.” Damn it. “Only not to their church.”

“I’ll go with you. I can drive us.”

“Really?” she asks. “My uncle was going to take me. But are you sure?”

“I’ve been to church before, Emmy.”

“To a Christian church?
Really?
”

“
Really
.”

“I haven’t,” she says.

“What?” I’ve never met a white girl who hasn’t been dragged to church at one time or another, or an Indian girl for that matter. “For real?”

“Never. I’ve been to a Sikh parade.” I raise my eyebrows. “Indians from India,” she explains. “Punjabis.”

“I’ll take you tomorrow. We can go to pizza or something afterward.” I have money left from chopping wood.

“Are you asking me out on a date?”

“You better get your butt out of this truck, young lady,” I say with a hick accent. My dad could imitate the voices of John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, the warden in
Cool
Hand Luke
, Marlon Brando in
The Godfather.
His imitation of Pa Ingalls crying on
Little House on the Prairie
would get Mom to laughing so hard. “Your uncle’s standing on the porch,” I tell Emmy. “He’s probably got his rifle.”

Her eyes get big. “Do you really think he owns one?”

I nod. “More than one, I’m sure.”

“Like a militia member?”

Her uncle goes inside, as if he’d heard her question. No, he’s just giving us space. I drop the accent. “No,” I say, “like a hunter. A rifle for deer and elk and a shotgun for pheasant.”

In reality there’s no shortage of Timothy McVeigh types lurking in the woods and small towns around the rez and in lone trailers here in the basin and in Spokane basements and probably even mansions on the sound. Not as many as in Idaho and Montana. But plenty. They’re as anti-Indian—even though we’ve been here thousands of years longer than their white asses—as they are antifeds. It’s the federal government, after all, that upholds the treaty rights of Indians: rights that include, among other things, the “privilege” to fish and hunt in areas off the rez where our ancestors did without a state license. These rights, and the audacity of the Colville Nation or the Yakama Nation to consider ourselves a sovereign nation, piss off those camouflaged fucks so badly they shave their heads and carve swastikas into their arms in protest. Even nice white guys get irked that we require them to buy a tribal license to fish on our lakes and from the rez shores of the Columbia. But how is that any different from the state of Oregon requiring Washington anglers to buy a separate license to fish from the southern shores of the lower Columbia?

“I own a gun,” I confess.

“You do not.”

“Yes, I do.” I laugh. “Not here, of course. It’s at my mom’s. I hunt deer and elk. One day I want to hunt moose.”

“You’ve killed a deer?” Her eyes get even bigger.

“I’ve skinned and quartered many a muley. Don’t people hunt in California?”

“Rednecks.”

“Well, I’m a redskin.” I don’t mean to make her feel stupid. She’s hard enough on herself. “We have to eat up north. The snow can get deep. Old people on the rez and even off the rez, they can’t hunt for themselves anymore,” I explain. “The elders take us older boys hunting to help stock their freezers.” She keeps silent. “But even if they didn’t, I love to hunt with a bow
and
a rifle. The elders encourage it.”

Shit, they practically beg us teenage boys in the tribal newspaper to learn to hunt. Almost as much as they plead with us, and our parents, to stay off drugs and off the bottle, or I should say off the can, six-pack, half rack, full rack.

“I should keep my mouth shut,” she says.

“Don’t do that.” I squeeze her hand. “I love your teeth.”

“My what?”

“I love your teeth.” I could go on. “I love your collarbone.” And now I love her breasts.

“Thanks for the rain, Reuben.” She smiles, then widely like a goofball to show me all her teeth. “And thanks for the flannel shirt.” She smooths the hem and pretends to fix a button. “I don’t plan on giving it back, by the way. It’s very grungy. Very Kurt Cobain.”

“It’s an Indian shirt. And what do you know about Kurt Cobain? You seem more the Lilith Fair type.”

She laughs. “I’m both.”

Come to think of it, she does occasionally wear a “grungy” green jacket, worn looking, and one day she wore a thermal and that explains her Converse. She looks cute as hell in my shirt. “Call me about tomorrow,” I remind her. “I want to take you to pizza.”

Even better, she shows up in person at Teresa’s a few hours later. I happen to be outside, smoking on the front porch, which is hidden from her view.

“Caught you,” she says. I go to put out my cigarette. “Don’t, Reuben. I like the smell.” She climbs the steps. “I’m going to smoke all through college.”

“A girl with plans.”

“I find smokers sexy,” she says. “Does that make me old-fashioned?”

“You’re making me nervous, Miss Emmy.” I stub out my cigarette. She really is making me nervous.

“Wait until you hear what I came to ask you.” She tells me her aunt and uncle agreed to let me take her to church. But they want to join us for pizza afterward. “It was Matt’s idea.”

“I’m game.”

“It was supposed to be our first date.”

“I just want to be around you.” I grab her hands. “Chaperoned or not.”

“I’m happy, Reuben.”

She kisses me sweetly, as if we were twelve and I hadn’t yet seen her bra.

“Your hands,” I observe. “They’re glowing again.”

She says she thinks she’s having an allergic reaction to the oils her aunt massaged into her hands before the healing. But that’s not it.

“I’ve never been happier,” she says.

She can’t quit smiling, and I can’t speak because of it. The Fourth of July Pow Wow in Nespelem has already started. It always begins about a week before the Fourth, ever since Chief Joseph’s band of Nez Perce settled on the Colville after their exile to Indian Territory. It was Moses who invited Joseph onto the Colville, which outraged Skolaskin, whose land they were occupying. The Not-So-Great White Father was overcrowding the rez, a dozen tribes, while at the same time slicing off strips to give to white miners and cattlemen. It’s the descendants of these very same miners and cattlemen whose dicks I like to knock in the dirt during football games. Not that I haven’t had my own ass handed to me by them a time or three. This year, for the first time ever, I’m not going to the Pow Wow. I don’t want to be away from Emmy. If only I could take her. She could hear my dad’s name being called during the first laps of the horse procession when people submit the names of their lost loved ones to be read along with the names of all war veterans, my grandfather’s included. The third lap is a celebration. This year Emmy’s smile is my celebration.

“I’m being sappy,” she says. “Sorry, best chappie.”

I laugh. All I can think to say back to her is “Come climb on my lappie,” which isn’t appropriate given that she hasn’t yet. Yet.

“Neither of us has a pappy,” she continues, “so let’s curl up and take a nappie.”

“You’re the weirdest girl. I swear.” I push her back toward her aunt’s house.

Teresa is laughing when I go inside. I forgot the door was open, only the screen shut.

“She’s funny,” my sister says. “And kind of dorky.”

“In a good way?”

“What other way is there?”

“I’m going to take another crack at your washer.” My adrenaline pumps. I need to do something to get my mind off taking a nap with Emmy.

“Give it up,” Teresa says after half an hour. “I’ll call Felix.” Felix is Emilio’s dad. He’s Mexican. “If he doesn’t bring me a decent washing machine, I’ll take his ass to court for back child support.”

“You go, girl,” I say jokingly, but I mean it. I look around for the screws Kevin was supposed to be holding for me. “I’m sorry about Felix, sis. Seriously. All the men. Their dads.” I point at her kids.

“Be quiet. You got slacks to wear tomorrow to church?”

“Shit, no. I didn’t even think.”

“Don’t get mad,” she says, “but in my van are two bags of clothes from a nurse at work. Her son just graduated from high school. He left early for college. She asked what size you wore. I’ve been toting them around because I knew you’d get pissed.”

“You suck, Teresa.”

I go outside and smoke two more cigarettes. Then I go get the bags of clothes from her van. At least I didn’t go to high school with the guy, right? There’s a pair of dress pants, two pairs of Levi’s, shorts, T-shirts, a thermal, a track jacket, and a zip-up hoodie with the tag still on. All my size and hardly worn. If Teresa had an extra dime to her name, I’d be suspicious. I’m still suspicious. I’d rather she’d gotten clothes for her kids.

“You don’t suck,” I say. “Neither do the clothes. Thanks.”

“You suck,” Emilio says to no one and everyone. “You suck. You suck.”

Emmy listens intently during the church service. She brought her mom’s old Bible and tries unsuccessfully to find verses when the minister says to flip to a certain passage. She’s probably this attentive in all her classes at school. I picture her using lots of sticky pads and highlighters. That’s cool. It’s better than the girls who twist their face piercings all class period or eyeball me or sleep off their hangovers or stretch ten times to show off their thongs. The chicks at this church wear normal-fitting dresses, but Emmy’s the only girl wearing a vest buttoned over her dress. Does Emmy wear thongs? I don’t think so because I’ve seen her underwear lines. Her uncle Matt picked this particular church because some of his coworkers attend it. Emmy said Matt asked one guy to make us feel welcome. He comes up to Emmy as soon as the service is over and introduces himself. He doesn’t give me the time of day. Which is fine. Indians already know it. And I know his type. But Emmy is appalled. “That guy was fucking rude,” she says once we’re in my truck and driving away. “What a fucking asshole.”