Steal the North: A Novel (34 page)

Reuben remains a no-show, and Matt is beside himself for offering that ticket.

“I didn’t mean to drive him away, Teresa.”

“You didn’t. I told you. It’s just Reuben.” It’s just Indian men.

Finally Matt admits that Emmy put him up to it. “She thought, or hoped, all school year that she’d be back here this summer. She told me she kept asking your brother in her letters if he even
wanted
her to come, but he never replied. She pleaded with me to bring Reuben to California.”

Matt’s love for Emmy is heartwarming, and heartbreaking. On the rez, love between nieces and nephews and their aunts and uncles is more apparent, or at least more a part of daily life, than off the rez.

“Emmy’s going to have a baby brother or sister. Her mom is big and pregnant—and glowing.” He takes a long puff of his cigarette and looks off for a few. Beth was never given the chance to glow like that. I have four times. He keeps looking off until I pull him back with a question.

“Is Emmy excited about the baby?” I ask.

“Yes, she is.” He looks at me and smiles. I think he’s catching on to the way I’m not letting his thoughts wander too near any edge. “But she’s not excited about Berkeley. She’s sad. Her stepdad worries a lot about her. He told me he worries so much about Emmy that he’s having a hard time getting revved about the new baby. I worry too. There’s a similar broken look in Emmy’s and Reuben’s eyes.”

And a shattered look in Matt’s. Only he doesn’t realize. I put my hand on top of his, just for a second, or so I had intended, but it feels right. So I leave it there.

Reuben doesn’t return the entire summer: not to collect Emmy’s letters, not for the Fourth of July Pow Wow, not for the Omak Stampede and Suicide Race, not for the Indian Encampment. Emmy’s been gone now one full year.

He doesn’t return to attend college in the fall.
Brother.

“I did this,” Matt says.

“You didn’t, Matt. If not for you, Reuben would be a mess.”

Matt starts coming over early in the mornings for coffee, except on my days off, when I try to get caught up a bit on sleep, or on mornings when he goes fishing. We scoot our chairs closer as the weather gets colder.

“We don’t know that Reuben
isn’t
a mess somewhere,” he says. “I can’t believe he missed his scholarship.”

I too am starting to really worry. “Let’s just trust that he’s okay.” I don’t tell Matt, but Reuben isn’t in Washington anymore. No one on either side of the mountains has seen him. My real dad is Puyallup, and I asked his family to check around and keep an eye out.

“Fuck,” Matt says. “I can’t live with this.”

He lets me put my hand on top of his, like friends. Twice he’s put his hand on top of mine. But it has never gone further. I’ve thought about its going further a lot. His wife’s been dead now for almost fifteen months.

“Can you live with this?” I kiss him lightly on the lips.

Surprisingly, he says, “I can.”

He kisses me back. There’s a lot of something in this man. His kiss almost makes me faint. I don’t exaggerate. If he wants, I’ll let him take me to bed right now before the kids wake up. I simply wouldn’t be able to refuse. I am a sucker for a good kisser. If a man knows how to kiss—and sadly, more don’t than do—I’ll excuse his not-so-good looks or his not-so-steady job. Matt’s nice-looking. I usually prefer Indian men, hands down, but Matt has a job, and he isn’t torn between having a job and living on the rez. He kisses me once more, but longer. Oh, Jesus. Then he leaves.

I don’t see him for a couple days afterward. No morning coffee. No evening cigarette breaks. I meet him at his truck on Saturday. He left early to go salmon fishing on a stretch of the Columbia that whites dubbed the Hanford Reach, but that natives have older names for. He went fishing despite it being the coldest morning in six months and despite the fact that the fall chinook are nearly done spawning there. The leaves on the poplars are falling. I sent my kids away after I got a letter in the mail from Reuben. I know Matt will be ecstatic, and I want the moment with just him.

“Teresa,” he says. “How are you?” He’s embarrassed.

“I’m good.”

“How’s Emilio’s ear infection?”

“Emilio’s all better.”

“Did Grace make the team?” he asks.

She tried out for the seventh-grade girls’ basketball team. “She did,” I say proudly.

“Just like Audrey and the fairy kingdom predicted.”

He’s referring to the tarot cards Emmy gave the girls. Grace making the team should help her fit in a bit. She hasn’t quit asking to move back to the rez.

“Land any kings?” I ask him.

“Only two keepers, back trolling, but I released them. The flow was too fast. I kept flying past the fish. That, and my mind kept wandering.” He smiles awkwardly. “About the other morning—”

“Save it,” I say. “Look.” I hand him the letter from Reuben, which also contains three money orders: one for me, one for Mom, and one for Matt to pay back the truck repairs. The letter also gives a post office box for me to forward Emmy’s letters if she’s still writing them, which she is.

“He’s been fishing in Alaska?” Matt says, smiling widely. “I’ll be damned. The kid’s a great fisherman. I swear I’ve never seen anything like it.” He tells me to keep the money order intended for him. I argue. He says he’ll tear it up before he spends the kid’s money. “Oh, this makes my day, Teresa.”

He hugs me. I rub his back. “My kids are gone. Get changed and come over so we can celebrate.”

He does. I give him a beer. He’s so nervous that his hands shake. After we finish our beers, I lead him into my bedroom. I have extra poundage from my four kids. Beth was slim. But I make up for it with my large breasts, or so I’ve been told. I’m worried he might not know what to do with so much breast, but he does. He’s tender. So tender. I don’t remember the last time I was brought to orgasm like that. He cries after we’re through. But that’s to be expected, I suppose, from a recent widower. I give him space.

“I’m sorry,” he says, sitting up.

Does he mean for the sex or for the tears? Reuben told me once that Emmy apologized for everything.

“I led you in here, don’t forget,” I say. “And why apologize? It was nice, Matt. It was fun. It’s okay to have fun.”

“You enjoyed it?”

“Didn’t I make that obvious?”

He smiles. Matt was devastated at first by Beth’s death, but now it seems to be releasing him—not just from grief but from a way of life too restrictive. He must sense this release. How terribly painful.

“Don’t leave yet,” I say when he gets up and starts to dress. “I still have an hour before I have to get the kids.”

“I should leave.”

“Why should you leave? I’m not going to tell anyone.” And I’m not. “No one has to know. It’s no one’s business,” I say. “Not even Reuben’s.”

He takes his shirt back off.

Emmy doesn’t start that big university in Berkeley until January. Something about deferred admission. During the fall semester—the same fall Reuben was supposed to start WSU and Matt and I began our romance—Emmy lived at home and attended junior college in Sacramento and continued to send letters here weekly for Reuben. One week she sent three, and my heart went out to her. After she moves to Berkeley, I get no letters for a month. Has she finally given up? Then I get a padded envelope from Emmy with what feels like a journal inside it—like one of those composition notebooks. I get one a month. The girl hasn’t given up. I have to give her credit for that, having, at her age and younger, waited in silence for Indian boys. In fact, she’s stronger than I’ve ever been about love. Reuben calls in April, after three months without my forwarding anything to him. I was hoping that would work.

“If you want the journals,” I say, “come and get them.”

It’s been eleven months since I last saw Reuben at the graduation party. I can’t go a year without seeing my baby brother.

Reuben shows up on my doorstep a week after his phone call. I barely recognize him. His hair is shoulder length, which makes him look like his dad, whom I miss. Reuben’s dad—I called him Dad—used to swear to Reuben and his sidekick Ray that he stole Mom and me in a horse raid. The version he told me when I was young was far more romantic. He said Mom and I were his to begin with, but we were stolen from him. It took him many lifetimes to steal us back, but he did. I believe him. His devotion in that story got me through hard times: the idea that someone could love me
that
much. He broke Mom’s heart, but he loved her too, very deeply. He loved Reuben the most. Why Dad couldn’t be there for my brother, I never understood. Reuben’s body is that of a man’s now—a man who labors hard for a living. He’s not a boy any longer. “Oh, Reuben.” His hands are rough when I hold them.

“I’ve missed you, sis, and the kids.”

They all hug him for ten minutes or more. He tells them he’s been up north fishing at sea, which the two boys start playing immediately. Reuben says the summer salmon run in Bristol Bay is amazing. He felt high for weeks. And then he followed the fish to more remote places. He’s had success securing work, he says, with recruiters and skippers who think, for some reason, that he’s good luck.

“You’re a bit Coyote,” I say, “like Dad.”

“Not hardly.” He says he’s also worked processing salmon, and there isn’t the least ceremony or prayers. “The bones are discarded in such a way,” he says with sadness, “Dad would be ashamed of me.”

“Dad would be proud of you. And don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re more of a man already.”

“If I am,” he says, “it’s because of you.”

That brings tears. “Matt’s at work. He’ll be so excited to see you.”

“I’m not staying. I’m going to Omak later this afternoon to see Mom and Lena and then over to Aunt Shirley’s.”

“What? You’ll break Matt’s heart. Stay here tonight. I’ll make dinner.”

“No, sis. I only have two days.” He explains that pollock season just ended. He got a processing job until salmon season starts again in June.

“Let me call Matt at work then. He’ll come home now.”

“I can’t see Matt.”

That makes me pause. I tell him to come outside for a cigarette. Grace, as usual, is all ears. Once we’re on the front porch, I tell him, “That’s messed up, brother. Matt blames himself for you leaving. He loves you.”

“I know that. I’ve felt his love—even at sea.”

“Then—”

“The last time I saw Dad was that night Matt came to the rez to get me. Matt called me
son
, and Dad, the wily fuck, appeared awfully quick to give his approval.” Reuben takes such deep puffs of his cigarette. “I didn’t realize it then,” he continues, “but it’s like Dad was turning me over to Matt.” His cig is already gone. “I didn’t allow myself to even consider this until after I left here. Then I felt pissed off, you know. Cheated by Dad. Irritated by Matt.”

“Forgive your dad, Reuben.”

“I have. I have.” He makes a gesture of peace. “In fact, I think it was my fault Dad couldn’t move completely into the spirit world. I had to release him.”

“Accept Matt’s love. It’s real.”

He looks at me. I probably need to respect the fact that he’s a man now, not a boy, and quit being so bossy and pushy. He slowly smiles. “The two of you?”

“What? Matt? He helps out, is all.” But I can’t help smiling. We’ve been lovers now for six months.

“I bet Mr. Miller helps.” He lights another cig.

“Please stay. Just one night. It’ll kill Matt if you don’t. And don’t say anything to him about me. It would embarrass him. He still feels like he’s cheating on his dead wife. But he’s coming around.”

“If anyone can bring him around, it would be you.” Deep puff.

“I haven’t exactly had luck with bringing men around.” He raises his eyebrows. “At least to stay,” I clarify. “You shithead.”

“Matt’s different.”

“Where have you been, brother?” I mean his spirit.

“Canning salmon so the USDA can give it back to Indians as charity.” He finishes his second cigarette.

“
How
have you been?” I ask.

“Making money.”

“For what?”

“College.”

“But you had a scholarship.”

“I need to make money.”

I take his arm. I lean my head on it. “You’ve got some muscles going on there.”

“Fourteen-hour days.”

“Are you happy?” I ask.

“Are you happy when your kids are hungry and you can feed them?” he replies. “Isn’t that partly why you live off the rez?”

“But you don’t have any kids, Reuben.”

“I will someday.” He lights another cig. Jesus.

Not that it’s any of my business, but I ask, “You got any women, keeping you warm in Alaska?”

His body tenses. “If I do, they’re not the one I want.”

“It’s been a long time, baby brother.”

“Nineteen months.” Two deep puffs. “But if anything, Teresa, I love her more.”

I think Emmy’s strength has been like an anchor for my brother. “You want her journals?” I ask.

“In the morning.”

“You’re staying?” He nods, and I jump up and down. “Thanks, Reuben.”

Matt is so excited to see Reuben. My brother is larger than Matt now. I think he always was, but more so now. Overjoyed, Matt accidentally kisses me in front of Reuben.

“Hey,” Reuben says with a grin, “that’s my sister.”

“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” Matt says.

“Yeah, it was,” Reuben says. “Definitely.”

“You look great, Reuben,” Matt says. “It’s just so damn good to see you.” They both tear up. “How long you staying? Or are you back for good?”

“One night is all.” Matt’s face falls. What an emotional day. “I came for Emmy’s journals,” my brother says.

There’s silence at that name. I have to break it with an offer to make dinner while they have a council outside.

Reuben returns again for more journals, but not until the end of salmon season in early October. He has a tattoo on his upper arm, a small one of a baby sea otter. He says it’s from a drawing by Emmy. When Audrey asks him the otter’s name, as she pretends to feed it fish, he says, “Otis,” which makes even Grace giggle. Again Reuben stays only a few days. He is working so that he can have that girl. Matt said Reuben was told by Emmy’s mom that he couldn’t provide for her. He’s changing that. A man can make good money in a relatively short amount of time at sea and in the canneries. But it’s grueling work. Reuben looked tired the second time he came back. I insisted he stop sending me money orders, but he still does. I fear he’s waiting too long for Emmy. She’s a young girl, pretty, smart, and, above all, lonely. Reuben is handsome. All his life I’ve seen how girls and women react to him. His wounded eyes only make him more appealing. I’m sure he’s had a couple flings with women in Alaska. It’s mighty cold up there.