St. Clair (Gives Light Series) (12 page)

"Ack! Hm? Oh, I'll probably go on helping

Reuben and Isaac with the farm."

An uncomfortable silence hung in the air. I

understood

that

silence

to

mean:
If the

reservation is still here.

"Zeke?" Annie said politely.

"Uh..." Zeke laughed nervously. "I'll be the guy

who stops dads from hitting their sons."

The second silence was just as uncomfortable as

the first. No one wanted to acknowledge that

Zeke's father had been hitting him. It was one of

those things you didn't talk about if you were a

Shoshone. Or, you know. Mute.

"Oh, Skylar," Aubrey said, breaking the ice. "I just

found something funny in our history book. It says

right here that the Indian who created Shoshone

peyote songs was named White St. Clair! Maybe

he's your ancestor!"

I couldn't keep a straight face.
Makes sense
, I

signed.
I'm as white as they come.

We separated just before evening, and each of us

went home. I couldn't find Dad anywhere. I found

Granny in the front room, trying her hand at the

computer, and wrote her a quick sticky note, asking

about his whereabouts.

"Hmph," she said. "Can't you see that I'm busy?

He's off building a house. I don't know why."

I knew why. I thought it was obvious. He wanted

Racine to move to the reservation.

Against my better judgment, I started to get

excited. If Racine and DeShawn and Jessica came

and lived here, we wouldn't have to wait for

parties and holidays to see each other. Maybe Dad

and Racine would get married. Maybe Annie

would let me show Jessica the grotto--

Was Dad so sure the reservation would be here in

two or three years?

Stop that, I told myself, irritated. Stop looking for

the worst case scenario.

"Keep an eye out for bergenias," Granny

instructed. "I would like some for a bouquet."

Bergenias are an autumn plant. You'd know them

if you saw them: They've got really unusual

leaves, heart-shaped, a burnt shade of red.

As September melded into October, the bergenias

bloomed from the ground. I collected the leaves in

a willow basket for Granny. I collected the oak

leaves, too, fallen foliage in shades of sunny

yellow and blazing orange. The weather didn't

really feel like autumn--I guess that's what happens

when you live close to the desert--but the wildlife,

lush and untamed, hadn't gotten the memo.

I stood up with Granny's willow basket and came

face-to-face with Rafael.

"You have to see this," he insisted.

He took me by the hand before I could inquire and

dragged me off to the farmland. It was all I could

do to keep Granny's plants from spilling out of the

basket.

The apples were round and heavy in the treetops,

the autumn sun pale and bright. Rafael led me to

Aubrey's farm--and then, to my bewilderment, right

through the gates. He tugged me over to the

pasture and came to a stop, his hands on the

wooden fence. Inquisitive, I followed his gaze.

A part of the pasture was sanctioned off. A little

bull calf was feeding at a low trough. His mom,

on the other side of the gate, lowed loudly in

longing. I felt sorry for her.

"She'll get used to it," he told me. His face was

alight with a boyish grin. "Isn't it cool? Reuben

says the calf's two days old."

If you've ever seen a newborn calf before, then

maybe you'll understand why I wanted to jump the

pen and put my arms around his neck. I refrained,

of course, but the sentiment was strong. So

innocent, so new to the world, I'd seldom seen

anything as beautiful as that bull calf, his ears

floppy and his coat gleaming and black. I laughed

fondly, silently. He went on eating his cracked

corn and his cane molasses, oblivious.

The ranches all over Nettlebush teemed and

burgeoned with their autumn output: chives and

lettuce and leeks, onions and snowpeas and

potatoes, radishes and soybeans and gigantic

swollen pumpkins with big, woody stems. Mr.

Red Clay let us out of school early for the next few

days while we went out to the farmland with our

families to pick up crops from our neighbors.

Again I looked around for Balto, heartsick when I

didn't see him. He used to love huge gatherings of

people, especially when fresh food was involved.

I wondered whether he'd found a mate out in the

wild. Maybe he had babies of his own. I couldn't

really picture that. After all, I'd known him since

he was five months old, no more than a baby

himself.

"Come here!" Stuart Stout hissed suddenly.

I was helping Dad to gather eggplants and cherry

tomatoes when I heard him. I looked up; and I saw

Stuart gesturing to me, then to the flourmill, his

auburn hair tucked behind his ears.

I looked to Dad for permission. He frowned

pensively. He knew we were up to something.

"Go on," he said. "I'll chat with Martin for a

while. But please be back by three."

I thanked him with a smile and jogged off to meet

with Stuart. Already I noticed that the At Dawn

sisters were hurrying over to him, and his sister

Siobhan, and a couple of ninth grade boys I didn't

know by name.

"In there," Stuart said, jerking his head toward the

flourmill.

The doors were already open. We filed neatly into

the flourmill, and I saw why. Ms. Siomme was at

the grist, pouring acorns into the feeding tray.

Ms. Siomme looked over her shoulder and smiled

at us, warmth in her pretty green eyes. She

churned the heavy hand crank with impressive

ease. The acorns in the feeding tray crunched and

ground noisily. A fine white powder spilled out of

the mouth of the grist and into the paper sack at her

feet.

"Hey, kids," she said. "You here to make flour,

too?"

The group of us exchanged uncertain looks.

"No, ma'am," said Allen Calling Owl, a neurotic

eleventh grader who had apparently been born

without the lying gene. "We're here for a

clandestine meeting regarding a matter which we

dare not discuss in front of you for fear of legal

repercussions."

Daisy At Dawn smacked her forehead. Allen's

right eye twitched.

"Okay. Have fun."

Ms. Siomme picked up her flour sacks and left the

mill. Holly At Dawn turned on Allen and began to

shake him violently.

Stuart sighed loudly. "Daisy," he said. Daisy

stood up straight, attentive. "Has your father said

anything lately about the Bureau of Land

Management?"

"I don't see why you're asking her," Holly said

sullenly. Poor Allen was huddled in the corner of

the flourmill, rubbing the feeling back into his

head. "He's my father, too."

"Right," Daisy said cheerfully, "but Dad likes me

better than you!"

The At Dawn twins began bickering. This was a

very bad thing. Once those two got started, they

could argue for hours without surfacing for air. I

wanted to ask Stuart:
Why didn't you just talk to

Ms. Siomme while she was here?
Ms. Siomme

was as much a member of the tribal council as Mr.

At Dawn was. I couldn't say a word, though,

because none of the kids present knew sign

language.

I caught Shy Lorna's eye. She blushed noticeably

and looked away.

"Well," said Stuart, "I'm going to assume that no

news is good news. At any rate, those contractors

haven't been back since August. So long as the

government thinks they can't make a profit off our

land, we should be safe."

"Maybe we should try self-immolation next time,

like the Plains Shoshone of yesteryear," Daisy

suggested, snickering. I was surprised she had the

presence of mind to drag herself away from

quarreling with her sister. "The government sees

us lighting ourselves on fire and they run the other

way."

And then we have a population shortage, I thought

grimly, and infanticide.

Not long after the autumn harvest came the pauwau

on the Hopi reservation.

The Hopi lived on the Black Mountain

Reservation, a few hours north of Nettlebush. I

suppose attending their pauwau was a way of

thanking them for having attended ours. Really,

though, those Hopi were a solemn bunch, and their

pauwaus were less like parties and more like

processionals.

On the afternoon of the pauwau, I told Dad I wasn't

going.

"Why not?" he asked, surprised, when he read my

sticky note.

I shook my head. I just wasn't in the mood, I

guess. I didn't like that Dad was confined to the

reservation while the rest of us were free to come

and go as we pleased.

"Really? Well, Racine's coming over. Would you

like to have dinner with us?"

I shook my head quickly. No way did I want to

crash Dad's date.

"Are you sure you don't want to go to the pauwau,

Cubby? You'll be bored out of your mind."

No, I wouldn't, I thought with a smile. I liked

Nettlebush. Everything about the land was

amazing to me. It's impossible to be bored when

each sight is enthralling, ever-changing; when the

earth, unchanged, speaks to you across the ages.

Granny came out of her bedroom in her white and

blue regalia and scolded me with stern gray eyes.

I smiled apologetically. She showed me the back

of her snow-white head and tromped out the door

arm-in-arm with Reverend Silver Wolf.

Not long later, I went upstairs to sort through my

bags of medicinal herbs. I rooted around in the

drawer beneath my bedside table and tossed a

spark plug and a beeper on the mattress. Mainly I

was looking for some licorice ferns to soothe my

throat; I'd had trouble swallowing again at

lunchtime.

I didn't get very far in my search when Dad called

up the stairs to me.

"Cubby! Rafael's here."

I puzzled over that. I hurried down the stairs and

to the front door. And sure enough, Rafael was

standing on the other side--in a white t-shirt and a

light gray jacket. Where was his regalia?

"Your grandma said you're not going to the

pauwau. You wanna hang out?"

I smiled before I could stop myself. It had been a

while since we'd spent time together without a

third party.

Rafael smiled, too. He had a really nice smile, the

kind that lit his eyes, dark blue as they were, and

crinkled the corners of his mouth. I liked the way

he looked in gray.

I went upstairs to grab a fleece jacket. Nettlebush

may be xeric, but the later it gets, the colder it

gets. I darted back down the stairs and found

Rafael waiting for me in the front room.

"Wanna go to the library? There's a book I wanna

check out."

Why wasn't I surprised? I rolled my eyes, but

smiled my consent. I tossed an arm around his

shoulders. Gruffly, he wrapped his arm around my

waist. I felt warmed from the inside out.

"Don't stay out too late," Dad called from the

kitchen.

I'm not sure why that embarrassed me as it did.

Nettlebush looked strange when it was vacant. It

was about five o'clock, the sun inching toward the

horizon, and the reservation was devoid of its

usual bustle of activity: neighbors walking to and

from each other's houses, children playing on their

front porches, the sounds of idle chatter and long-

traveling laughs. I knew there were a couple of

old folks who'd stayed behind--the shaman, for

example--but I guess they were all locked in their

houses. I'd never known Nettlebush to be so

lifeless, or so silent. It felt like a ghost town. I

looked around at the empty lanes, at the cold

firepit, and my imagination ran away with me. I

imagined that this was Nettlebush after the

government had taken it away from us. It was a

really creepy thought.

Rafael walked at my side, his arm around my