LaRose (29 page)

She wanted to change everything about everything when she got home. She was able to amend a few things in small ways. She lived with her father, Wolfred. She married a cousin. She was a teacher and the mother of a teacher. Her namesake daughter became the mother of Mrs. Peace. All of them learned two languages, four levels of math, the uses of plants, and to fly above the earth.

HER FATHER SIPPED
his whiskey. He still hadn’t spoken, but now a pile of papers rested under the hand that didn’t hold the whiskey cup.

Will you tell me, at least, where she is buried? asked LaRose.

I can’t tell you that, said Wolfred.

Why? She came close, touched his shoulder.

Because I don’t know.

In spite of her conflicting thoughts, LaRose had always tried to be realistic, to imagine a grave, a stone with her mother’s name on it, a place she could eventually go to visit. What her father said made no sense.

That can’t be, she said.

It is true, he said. Then he repeated the words she had forgotten and remembered many times since she was young.

She was stolen.

He patted the pile of papers, looked straight at her.

Daughter, it is all right here.

1,000 KILLS

2002–2003

The Letters

MRS. PEACE AT
her sparkle-chrome kitchen table. The lacquered surface covered with beading trays, cigar boxes of beads, stacked papers. Snow and Josette carefully slipped very old letters into page protectors. Most of the paper that Wolfred Roberts had written on through the 1860s, then 1870s, was still thick and supple. Some was more brittle, lined, torn from ledgers.

That old-time paper was made so well, said Mrs. Peace. Stuff nowadays crumbles in a few years.

It’s the acid, said Snow. There’s acid in most paper now.

Wolfred Roberts had written fair copies of the letters he had sent in order to recover his stolen wife, fiercely building an archive in his quest. The dates were on the letters, and there was a record of the dates they were mailed, and dates upon which he received replies, if there were replies.

The original backup plan, said Josette.

He used his training as a fur trade clerk, said Mrs. Peace. Keeping track of every transaction. My aunt told me that he kept these letters in a metal box, locked. She was young when he died, but she remembered that little key. It was kept in an old sugar jar, the handles broken off. He worried that kids would mess around with these papers. This here was all he had of her, proof he looked for her.

Mrs. Peace locked the plastic pages into a ring binder. The first
letters were addressed to Dr. Haniford Ames. Each of the letters from Wolfred, later from a lawyer also, requested the remains of LaRose Roberts. Her chipped incisor, fractured and knit skull, injuries from the vicious kick of a dissolute fur trader, as well as her tubercular bones, would make her distinctive. His letters searched after her, then the letters went on. Wolfred’s daughter, the second LaRose, kept them going. There were also letters from her time in Carlisle. And then the letter writing passed on to her daughter and then to Mrs. Peace. For well over a century these letters had searched after the bones of Mirage, the Flower, LaRose.

LaRose had some use, first of all, in Dr. Haniford Ames’s research. Letters from Dr. Ames politely refusing Wolfred’s requests attested to the value of her body in the name of science. Her bones demonstrated the unique susceptibility of Indians to this disease, and also how long she’d fought it. Over and over, her body had walled off and contained the disease. She had been, said the doctor, a remarkable specimen of humanity. For a time, also, LaRose had become an ambassador to the curious. Ames, according to the lawyer, had no right to take LaRose on the road as an illustration for his scientific lectures on the progress of tuberculosis. Ames had willed all of the human remains in his possession to the Ames County Historical Society in Maryland, where he spent his old age. The bones went on display.

After the letters from Wolfred, the bones were kept in a drawer next to the bones of other Indians—some taken from burial scaffolds, some dug out of burial mounds, some turned up when fields were plowed, highways constructed, the foundations of houses or banks or hospitals or hotels and swimming pools dug and built. For many years the historical society refused to return the bones because, wrote the president, the bones of Wolfred’s wife were an important part of the history of Ames County.

LaRose’s bones went on display once again and were abruptly removed after an unsolved break-in. Later still, the human remains of the first LaRose, who had known the secrets of plants, who could find food in any place, who had battled a rolling head and memorized
Bible verses, that LaRose who had been marked out for her intelligence and decorated with ribbons every year, and marked out also as incorrigible by two of her teachers at the mission, that LaRose who had flung off her corsets and laughed when she walked again in moccasins, not heeled shoes, that LaRose attended to by pale-blue spirits and thunder beings during the births of her children, the LaRose who loved the thin scar next to Wolfred’s smile, that LaRose, what remained of her on earth, was, to the president of the historical society’s great regret, somehow lost.

AUGUST LIGHT POURED
long through the trees. The ticks were dead. The grasses flowed in the ditches and LaRose could not stop his thoughts. He was compelled to sleep on the spot of ground where the boy he replaced had died. This inner directive was so strong that LaRose lied for the first time in his life in order to accomplish it. He told Emmaline that he was supposed to go to Peter and Nola’s over the weekend. He invented a friend from school because they didn’t know kids from Pluto, he talked about a birthday party, and he made it sound plausible. He felt a flicker of wonder that his lie was so easily delivered and so instantly believed. Peter would pick him up while she was at work, he said. Emmaline was disappointed. She often brought LaRose to work with her on weekends and he helped in her office, in the classrooms. At noon they went to Whitey’s and bought mozzarella sticks or a petrified-tasting fish sandwich from Josette.

No, said Emmaline at first. No, you can’t go.

LaRose looked into her eyes and said, Please? That look got him things. He was learning to use it. Maggie had taught him.

Emmaline took a deep breath, let it out. She frowned but gave in. LaRose hugged his mother good-bye and kissed her cheek. How long would that last, Emmaline thought, pushing back the flop of hair he now affected. The dark wing hung to his eye.

See you next week, Mom. He gave her an extra hug, extra-sweet.
There was something in that hug that made her step back. Holding him by his shoulders at arm’s length, she scanned him.

You okay?

He nodded. Already caught.

I just feel kinda bad but kinda good, he said. Which meant nothing but was also true, so he could say it with conviction. She was still uncertain, but she was also late for the usual emergency meeting. After his mother left, LaRose went back into the bedroom, took a blanket from the storage closet. He rolled the blanket up and tucked it beneath his arm. He unzipped his backpack full of action figures, added a spray bottle of mosquito repellent. In the kitchen, he turned on the tap and filled a canning jar with water.

In all of these things, LaRose was precise and deliberate. He was becoming an effective human being. He had learned from his birth family how to snare rabbits, make stew, paint fingernails, glue wallpaper, conduct ceremonies, start outside fires in a driving rain, sew with a sewing machine, cut quilt squares, play Halo, gather, dry, and boil various medicine teas. He had learned from the old people how to move between worlds seen and unseen. Peter taught him how to use an ax, a chain saw, safely handle a .22, drive a riding lawn mower, drive a tractor, even a car. Nola taught him how to paint walls, keep animals, how to plant and grow things, how to fry meat, how to bake. Maggie taught him how to hide fear, fake pain, how to punch with a knuckle jutting. How to go for the eyes. How to hook your fingers in a person’s nose from behind and threaten to
rip the nose off your face.
He hadn’t done these things yet, and neither had Maggie, but she was always looking for a chance.

When he reached the place, he spread out his blanket beside the tobacco ties, cedar, disintegrating objects, leaves, and sticks. It was a hot, still day, the only breeze high in the branches. The mosquitoes weren’t the rabid cloud of the first hot summer hatch, and once he sprayed himself they whined around him but didn’t land. At first, they were the only sound. The stillness, the too-quiet, made him
uneasy. But then the birds started up again, accepting him into their territory, and he sat down on his blanket. He realized he had forgotten to bring any kind of offering—you were supposed to do that. For sure you were supposed to do that if you went into the woods. You had to offer something to the spirits. He had himself, the pack of action figures, the mosquito spray, his blanket, one song, and the jar of water. The song was the four-direction song he’d learned from his father. He held the jar of water up the way he’d seen his mother do this, offering the jar to each direction. He sang his song as he poured the water out on the ground. He carefully capped the empty jar. Then he lay back and looked into the waving treetops and bits of sky. The trees covered almost all the sky but what he could see was blue, hot blue, though down here the air was warm but not blistering. If not for the mosquitoes that got in an ear or went up his nose and occasionally bit through the repellent, he would have been comfortable.

The chatter of birds, the light hum of insects. He lay there listening to his stomach complain, waiting for something to happen. Toward late afternoon his stomach gave up and the wind came sweeping along the ground. It was harder for the bugs to light on him. He fell asleep. When he woke it was extremely dark. He was thirsty, wished he’d brought a flashlight or some matches. But his parents might have seen a light, he told himself. He’d done the right thing. He was uneasy, thought of going back. But they would find he’d lied and never trust him again. He’d never get this chance. So he lay in his blanket listening to the leaves rustled by small animals, his heart plunging in his ears. Late summer crickets sawed. A few frogs sang out. There were owls. His parents talked about the manidoog, the spirits that lived in everything, especially the woods.

It is only me. He whispered to the noises and their nature changed. They became a whispery chorus, willing to accept him. He fell asleep, at last. He slept so fervently that he couldn’t remember dreaming when the loud birds woke him in the morning. Now he was thirstier, and hungry, but also deliciously weak. He didn’t
want to move at all. His body needed food; it was stretching out. Everybody said he was getting his growth. It would be so easy to show up early at Nola’s and say that he’d been dropped off. He’d done what he needed to do—that one night. But he decided to stay because he was strangely comfortable. His throat was so dry and scratchy that it hurt to swallow, but he didn’t care. The heat of the day clenched down, pressed through him.

After a while LaRose heard, or felt, someone approach, but he was held too fast in the hot lethargy to move. He did not feel afraid. Most likely, it was his father. Landreaux liked to range around the woods too. But it wasn’t—in fact it wasn’t one person at all. It was a group of people. Half were Indians and half were maybe Indians, some so pale he could see light shining through them. They came and made themselves comfortable, sitting around him—people of all ages. At least twenty of them. None of them acknowledged or even looked at him, and when they started speaking he knew that they were unaware of him. He knew because they talked about him the way parents do when they don’t know you can hear. He knew right off it was him they were talking of because someone said,
The one they took for Dusty
, and another asked,
Is he still playing with Seker and the other Actions?
, which of course he was, but which he tried to hide. All of a sudden one pointed.