CHAPTER TWENTY
IN the dark, beneath a pouch blessed with good medicine, Cassie told Will the story of her life. She talked the whole night. At times Will only watched her; at times he held her while she cried. And when her voice fell quiet, Will sighed and leaned back against his nearly new couch, painfully aware of the awkward and suffocating silence. Cassie sat now with her head bowed, her hands clasped between her knees.
Will could not have said how, but he’d known Cassie was going to show up on his doorstep. He’d known before she flattened her shirt against her stomach that she was pregnant. He’d known that it was up to him to spirit her away. What he could not understand was how, even now, she could worry about hurting Alex.
“I just have to leave for a little while,” she said abruptly, startling Will. She nodded slightly, as if she was still trying to convince herself.
“It’s the end of February now, and I’ll have the baby in August.”
“I could be wrong,” Will said carefully, his first words in hours, “but I don’t think Alex will just sit around for six months, waiting.”
Cassie turned her face up to his. “Whose side are you on?” she asked.
The problem was that Alex Rivers had the money and resources to find her anywhere. “What I need,” Cassie mused, “is a place where he’d never even think to look.”
And that was when Will understood why the spirits had brought Cassie to him at St. Sebastian’s, a week ago. He pictured the tar paper shacks that served as houses in Pine Ridge, the willow skeletons of sweat lodges that dotted the plains like the carcasses of mythical beasts.
Like everyone else, the government had basically forgotten about the Sioux; most Americans didn’t know living conditions like theirs still existed. For all intents and purposes, the reservation could have been on a different planet.
Will listened to the fragile hitch of Cassie’s breathing and turned her hand over in his, palm up, as if he could read her future. “I think,”
he said quietly, “I have just the spot you’re looking for.”
SO AFTER BEING IN LOS ANGELES FOR ALL OF TWO WEEKS, WILL FLYing Horse boarded a plane and headed to the place he hated more than anywhere else in the world.
When he arrived in Denver to make the connecting flight, his throat tightened up and his head spun. He was imagining, already, the red dust of the Pine Ridge Reservation; the vacant-eyed Lakota, who waited for their own lives to speed by them. He stared out the scratched window of the plane, knowing it would be at least an hour, but still expecting to see the sharp, rocky needles of the Black Hills. He pictured them ripping through the belly of the little plane, scattering gray and wine-red luggage.
Beside him, Cassie was asleep. He wanted to wake her up, just to remind himself why exactly he had come full circle when he’d been running in such a fixed line. But she’d had so little rest the night before that the skin beneath her eyes was blue-bruised. He envied her—not her exhaustion, and certainly not her life, but her ability to look at this trip as a fresh start instead of a foot-dragging trudge backward.
He would get her set with his grandparents, but that was where his obligation ended. He’d go back to L.A. and pick up where he’d left off:
days filled with traffic detail and speeding violations, and stifling, quiet nights. He could make detective in another year, and if he got out more with the guys, he could find some leggy young thing to stretch across the other half of his bed.
The truth was that he did not understand his newly adopted city.
He couldn’t remember the LAPD’s special rules about arresting politicians or celebrities. He didn’t know what to say in bars when flawless women told him they read crystals, or were on the water diet. His breath caught every time he merged on the freeway and saw a rolling carpet of cars, more people concentrated in one steel knot than in the entire town where he’d grown up. But regardless of what he cared to admit to himself, this is what he would tell the Lakota people he saw during the weekend: Life’s great out there; I’m on the fast track; I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
In her sleep, Cassie’s head lolled to the right, coming to rest on his shoulder. She restlessly crossed her arms over her abdomen, protecting her child.
Now, that was something Will could understand. Not the egoserving me-first attitude of Los Angeles, but the concept of extended family. Hell, his own parents had died, but there had always been people to look after him, even if it meant giving up something in their own lives.
Will breathed in the honey of Cassie’s hair, shocked by the smell of his own shampoo. He rested his cheek against the curls, calmed by the awesome responsibility of being her deliverance.
DURING THE EIGHTY-ONE YEARS HE HAD BEEN ALIVE, CYRUS FLYING Horse had made and put up fence posts, taken care of cattle, dug potatoes, ridden broncos for prize money. He had been a rodeo clown, he had repaired roads, he had exterminated rattlesnakes. Up until three years ago he had been working at a factory that manufactured fishing hooks, but now he just fashioned hooks for the hell of it; he was technically retired, which as far as he could tell only meant there was never enough to make ends meet. And this was even with Dorothea working three days a week in town at the cafeteria. She brought home minimum wages, a perfume mixed of grease and labor, and the leftover fish sticks and meatball subs. But Cyrus worried more about filling up his day with activity than about a lack of money. He had relatives, and that was the Lakota way—you took care of your own, even if you barely had a pot to piss in.
He sat on a stump outside his government-built house, the wood having softened to his bottom after all this time. The snow was melting;
it was still cold, but nice enough for you to forget winter if you stayed long enough in the sun. Today, he was doing a crossword puzzle. It was not exactly a mental challenge; he’d gotten it from Arthur Two Birds, who had erased all his pencil answers, so even when Cyrus got stuck he could take out his bifocals and peek at the shadows of the words that wouldn’t come.
His face was lined, like the craggy landscape of the Badlands, the otherworldly patches of the Black Hills where, as a child, he had believed evil spirits lived. Of course, he knew now that evil did not seat itself in rocks. Instead it seeped into people, becoming as distinctive a part of them as their scent or their fingerprints. Had he not seen it in the glittering blue eyes of the wasicuη clerk at the BIA? In the tired mouth of the banker who had repossessed the first truck he’d ever bought? In the dazed, drunken glow of the traveling salesman whose careening car had killed his only son a hundred years ago?
Cyrus sighed and bent his head to the frayed paper. Some of the clues were beyond him: Marla’s man had filled in as Trump, which Cyrus had always believed was an ace; and apparently Bert’s buddy was Ernie. He was especially pleased when he’d get an answer without having to check Arthur’s work. “Outcry of the greedy,” he read aloud, tapping the pencil to his temple. He hunched closer to his lap, carefully forming the letters in the four little boxes. M-I-N-E.
“He can really dish it out,” Cyrus said, turning the phrase over and over, giving emphasis to different words in hopes that the answer would come in a flash.
“Chef,” said a voice behind him; then a light laugh. He hadn’t even seen Dorothea approaching, but he nodded and filled in what now was crystal clear. He rolled the pencil into the crossword puzzle and stood up, stamping slush from his boots. He followed his wife into their oneroom house.
Dorothea shrugged off her parka and began to unpack containers of coleslaw and turkey loaf, the blue plate special of the day. Her hands fluttered nervously over the plastic tablecloth like two scattering birds.
Finally, she sat down and turned bright black eyes to her husband.
“Today,” she told him. “Uyelo. He is coming.”
Cyrus looked at the plump curve of her hips, the heavy braid of white hair that quivered down her wide back. She had always been in touch with the spirits. He sank heavily into a chair across from Dorothea, pretending to be annoyed with her mystical hints. This was a game they played, one that had been going on for sixty years. He stabbed at the turkey loaf with his fork. “You’re crazy, woman,” he said gruffly, when what he really meant was, You are my life. “How can you know this?” he said. You can still amaze me.
Dorothea made a noncommittal sound. Then she turned her head and sniffed, as if the answers came to her on a Chinook wind. She swung her gaze to him, level and dark, and she pointed a bent, knotted finger.
“You watch,” she said, the trace of a smile peeking out from behind her warning. She reached across the table and grasped Cyrus’s hand with a strength and a conviction that speeded his pulse. He looked up at her. I love you, she was saying, clear in this space between them where there were no words. Walk beside me forever.
ALEX MADE TWO PHONE CALLS. THE FIRST WAS TO HERB SILVER, ordering him to postpone the production of Macbeth indefinitely; to warehouse all the scenery and props in Scotland and send everyone else home until Alex sent further instructions. The second was to Michaela, telling her to anticipate the publicity such an abrupt change in schedule was going to cause. “I don’t care what you leak to the press,” Alex said wearily. “Make up some excuse that doesn’t sound like I’m covering for a stay at the Betty Ford Clinic.”
“What’s really going on, Alex?” Michaela demanded, but Alex couldn’t speak past the closing of his throat. He hung up on her before he was forced to recount what had happened.
Cassie had left him. Again.
Except this time it was different. There hadn’t even been a fight, a catalyst. She had just taken off as if it had been premeditated.
Alex stretched back on the bed and touched the pile of clothes she had been packing for Scotland, clothes that wouldn’t make a hell of a lot of difference now. Goddammit, last week had been perfect. He had been keeping himself in check, refusing to let it start all over. And it had been working: when he laid his hands on Cassie he’d been gentle and tender and everything she deserved. He had watched Cassie, in return, giving him tiny pieces of herself—a kiss here, a question there, a memory. Alex had been gathering these tokens like wildflowers, waiting for the moment when he would have all of her, a lush bouquet that bloomed in his presence.
He had given her back her past, with a few details missing that she’d obviously figured out herself. He never meant to hurt Cassie, God, not Cassie, and every time he struck her he swore that it wouldn’t happen again. He wasn’t just saying that; he really did mean it. If he could have found a way to turn the red rage into himself instead of toward her, he would have done it in a heartbeat.
Alex rolled to a sitting position and looked out at the rainy morning.
He’d spent most of last night with John, scouring the neighborhoods surrounding Bel-Air. John had even checked the police station, discreetly. None of the airlines or bus depots had had a passenger with her name, married or maiden. Finally, Alex had given up. He’d gone to sit in the bedroom, not sleeping, just waiting for her to come back to him.
She had to come back. If the press found out that Cassie had left him, or even that she was missing, all kinds of rumors were going to fly—about infidelities, divorce, maybe even the sorry truth. Whatever form it took, the publicity generated would decimate his chances for the Oscars. He had always been able to count on his sterling reputation.
Alex ran his hand over his stubbled jaw. She had to come back. He couldn’t live without her. Cassie was the only person in his entire life who had reached into him and pulled out the fine, glowing soul and said over and over, Yes, you are good. He remembered that once in the redwood forests they had seen two separate giant sequoias that had twined around each other, leaning into the same sun, until they had grafted themselves together into a single tree. He would not admit this to anyone but himself, but Cassie was, simply, the point at which Alexander Riveaux ended and Alex Rivers began.
AT EXACTLY NINE O’CLOCK, A MAINTENANCE MAN UNLOCKED CASSIE’S for Alex. “Thanks,” he said, staring at the man, unsure of whether or not he was supposed to tip him. Alex closed the door, checking the leather swivel chair for Cassie’s imprint, searching out clues that would suggest she’d recently been there.
He was sifting through the research on her desk when the door swung open. “Good morning,” a gravelly voice intoned, and Alex glanced up to see Archibald Custer bearing down on him, his hand held to the voice microphone at his throat. “Oh.” He let his eyes sweep the room, searching for Cassie. “I was told your wife had been ill. When I saw the light on, I thought . . . well, I was just looking for her.”
“She isn’t here,” Alex said, gesturing. “You probably noticed.”
Archibald Custer stared at him strangely. “But you are,” he said.
Alex glanced down at his fingers, clutching a manila file marked Personal and Confidential. His thoughts tumbled over each other: Cassie was not here. Cassie had not told Custer her whereabouts, or he wouldn’t be looking for her also. “She asked me to send her some things,” Alex said, pretending to be completely surprised when Custer raised his eyebrows at this mention of Cassie being somewhere other than L.A.
“Ah . . . she must not have had a chance to phone you yet. Her father’s been hospitalized, in Maine, and she was called in to look after him.”
He glanced at his watch, an easy prop. “I’m sure she’ll be getting in touch with you in no time. Family emergencies, you understand.” He tapped the file on the edge of the desk. “Is there something I can ask her for you? Or send to her with all this?”
Custer flapped about for a moment, taking in the carelessly tossed files and the clutter that defined the little office. Satisfied that she had indeed left last-minute, he shook his head. “We’ll get someone from the department to cover for her until the situation sorts itself out,” he said graciously. “Tell her not to worry about it.”
“No,” Alex said. “I’m sure she won’t.” He watched Custer leave, and then sank down into the chair behind the desk. Christ, he was helping Cassie. He had just smoothed one of the snags in her escape. He stared blankly at the manila folder, at the rough black-and-white photos scattered across the desk’s surface. Skulls, and a pelvis, and a series of bones that might have been fingers once. Nothing out of the ordinary for Cassie. She’d been studying things like this since before he’d even known her.
He was up and through the door before he could map out where he was going. Turning through the winding campus roads of UCLA, he made his way to the highway, to Westwood. He remembered which apartment was Ophelia’s only because of a stooped palm tree in front of it that Cassie said had always reminded her of an old man.
Alex rammed his fist against the door. “Goddammit, open up, Ophelia. I know she’s in there.” He took a deep breath, ready to break down the door with his shoulder, the way his stunt doubles had done in the past.
Ophelia cracked the door, a sliver of darkness. Her cigarette smoke rushed out through the narrow opening. “Jesus Christ,” she muttered.
“Looks like I’ve been granted a fucking audience.”
She unlatched the chain and pulled the door open, standing in front of Alex in a peach chiffon robe that was virtually transparent. Underneath she wore nothing; Alex dispassionately noticed that the shadow between her legs did not match the hair on her head. She blew a ring of smoke into Alex’s eyes. “To what do I owe the honor?” she said, pinching the bridge of her nose.
“I’ve come for Cassie,” Alex said, already pushing past Ophelia into the tiny living room of the apartment.
He felt hands picking at the back of his shirt, ineffectual, like the feet of tiny wrens. “Well, you might want to start by looking in a place where she is,” Ophelia said. “I haven’t even talked to her since that day at the apartment. I thought she’d be in Scotland with you.”
Alex peeked behind the floor-length hanging curtains, peered into closets. “You’re a shitty liar, Ophelia. Just tell me where she’s hiding.”
He barreled into the kitchen, checking the pantry and the floor-level cabinets, knocking over a half-finished bottle of cabernet.
When he turned back to Ophelia, her eyes were so wide Alex could see a ring of white going all the way around her irises. Good, he had her terrified. He grabbed her by the shoulders, shaking her hard. “Did you put her up last night? Did she tell you where she was headed?”
Ophelia let out a little cry, and at that the bedroom door creaked open. Alex released her abruptly, running around the corner and slamming into a man in a flowered silk robe, still groggy from sleep.
“Alex, Yuri. Yuri, Alex.” Ophelia ground out her cigarette against the half of an orange fermenting on the kitchen counter. “See, Alex? I haven’t been hosting Cassie. I was otherwise occupied.”
Alex didn’t even bother to glance at her. “Get out,” he murmured to Yuri.
A dawn of recognition flashed across Yuri’s eyes. “Hey,” he said.
“Aren’t you—”
“Out,” Alex yelled. He propelled Yuri to the door and locked him on the other side of it, still wearing Ophelia’s robe.
Ophelia threw herself at Alex, yelling and scratching. “How dare you,” she screeched. “You walk right into my apartment like you own the fucking world and—”
“Ophelia,” Alex said softly, his voice breaking, “I can’t find her. I looked everywhere. I can’t find Cassie.”
Ophelia absently rubbed her hand over her black cast, watching Alex Rivers sink onto her stained couch. Her mind raced through possibilities and places that she was certain Alex had already tried. What would make Cassie leave in such a goddamn hurry? If it was Alex, didn’t Cassie know that she would have done anything to help?
Ophelia stiffened her spine and walked toward Alex until she was standing directly in front of him. “What have you done to her?” she said, her voice tight and cold.
Alex buried his face in his hands. “God,” he said. “I don’t know.”
IT WAS A TWO-HOUR RIDE FROM THE RAPID CITY AIRPORT TO PINE Ridge, and as Cassie bounced up and down in the rental truck she noticed two things: that the land stretched unmarked so far it could have been a sea, and that the deeper they drove into this swirling red earth, the more uptight Will became.
There was a policeman at the border of the reservation, someone who gave Will a high five and let his eyes slide down Cassie in the passenger seat. “Hau, ko´la! ” he said. He began speaking in a language Cassie did not understand. To her surprise, Will whipped off his sunglasses and started to talk to the policeman in the same dialect, then pulled the car onto a grass trail.
“What did he say?” Cassie asked.
“He said hi,” Will muttered. “In Lakota.”
“Lakota?”
“The language of the People.”
Cassie brushed a flyaway strand of hair away from her mouth. “Is your Sioux name Ko´la?”
Will couldn’t help himself; he laughed. “No,” he said. “It means
‘friend.’ ”
Cassie relaxed in her seat. If they were back on the reservation and Will had already seen someone he knew well, it was a good omen. “So he’s a friend of yours,” she said, making conversation.
“No,” Will said. “He’s not.” He ran his hands over the steering wheel, telling himself Cassie had no right to demand explanations about his life and yet knowing that she wouldn’t shut up until he told her more. “He’s tribal police. We were in the same grade together in school.
Once, he got three kids to hold me down and he took dog shit and smeared it all over my face.” Horrified, Cassie stared at him. “Said it would take some of the white out from my skin,” Will said.
“Kids are cruel,” Cassie murmured, feeling she should say something.
Will snorted. “So are Indians.”
Cassie turned her face to the windshield, wondering how Will even knew where to drive. There were no roads, only dirt paths worn through the snow, or little runners like the kind left by cross-country skis. From time to time, Will would take a left or a right. His eyes never flickered from the expanse in front of them. “You know,” Cassie said haltingly, “you might try giving it a chance, instead of telling yourself how much you hate it.”
Will slammed on the brakes until the truck skidded to a stop. Cassie felt herself being strained against the seat belt, then falling back. Instinctively, her hands went to her abdomen. Will stared at her, incredulous, and then with a look of utter disgust he turned away and started to drive again.
It sobered her. After all, Will—who did not really know her—was going out of his way to give her shelter. She had no right to pry into his life, much less criticize the way he lived it. “I’m sorry,” Cassie said.
Will didn’t answer, but he gave a terse nod. A few moments later, the empty plain gave way to a little cluster of hovels, some substantial log cabins and others fashioned out of plasterboard and tar paper. Three children were running through the snow in sneakers and short-sleeved shirts, switching at each other with pine branches. “These are your nearest neighbors,” Will said, slowing the truck and pointing to the individual houses. “Charlie and Linda Laughing Dog, Bernie Collier, Rydell and Marjorie Two Fists. Abel Soap lives over the hill there, in that bus.”
Cassie tried to keep the nervous laughter from bubbling up past her throat. A day ago she’d bathed in a green marble tub with gold-plated fixtures. She’d walked on carpets softer than a breath and had wrapped herself in a dressing gown of violet Chinese silk. She had been a little uncomfortable with the scope of Alex’s luxury, but this was the other extreme. She was in the middle of nowhere, hidden among people who did not know about running water, who lived in broken-down school buses. She dug her nails into her palms to keep from grabbing at Will’s coat and begging him to take her home.
Cassie bit her lip and glanced at Will again, now aware of the pain that he carried, the heavy failure that pulled down the corners of his mouth. What could it feel like to finally leave here only to be dragged back weeks later by someone else’s sorry circumstances? When Cassie reached across the seat and squeezed his hand, Will returned the gesture, but not before she noticed the surprise in his eyes. He pulled the truck into the front yard of a small cement-block house. Immediately, a black mutt that was tied to a fence post began to wail. Will jumped out of the driver’s seat and knelt in front of the dog. “Hey, Wheezer,” he said. The dog wiggled its back end so hard it fell over sideways. “You miss me?”
Cassie sat for a second in the cab of the truck, collecting her breath and her thoughts. When she stepped outside, she sank knee-deep into the snow. She shuffled her way to Will and the dog. “Is there always this much snow?”
Will jumped at the sound of her voice, as if he’d forgotten she was there. “Actually,” he said, swinging toward her, “a lot of it’s melted.
Most winters the drifts are bigger than you.”
Wheezer jumped up and put his paws on Will’s chest. His ears flattened; he began to whine. Will looked over the dog’s head to the front door of the cabin, which was slowly swinging open.
Cassie watched a man step onto the front porch. He was as tall as Will, but his skin seemed to hang loosely on his frame. His face was the color of walnuts and was riddled by so many wrinkles it nearly appeared smooth again. He came down the steps and stood in front of Will, murmured something in Lakota and embraced him.
Cassie shifted nervously, knocking her feet against each other to clear off some of the snow. Wheezer nuzzled her hand, looking for food.
“Sorry,” she whispered. “I don’t have anything.”
At the soft syllables, Will and his grandfather looked up. But before Will could introduce her, a woman appeared at the doorway. She had a long white braid pulled over one shoulder; her eyes burned with the fire of stoked coals. Her fisted hands were planted on her hips, ready for a confrontation, and when she spoke in her low-pitched voice, her words were in perfect English. “So,” she said to Will, although her eyes never moved from Cassie. Her glance went from Cassie’s hair down to her snow-soaked knees, and then snapped up again, clearly finding her lacking. “You come back from the big city, and this is what you bring us?”
CYRUS AND DOROTHEA FLYING HORSE’S HOUSE WAS ONE OF ABOUT a thousand subsidized by the government for Sioux senior citizens.
They’d moved into it only ten years before; Will had done much of his growing up in a log cabin like the ones they had passed on the drive through the reservation. But the government houses were considered plush by Lakota standards. They had running water and electricity, and a toilet that worked some of the time. With the exception of the narrow bathroom at one end of the house, the rest of the building was a single room.
The kitchen area, where Cassie was sitting, was very clean and seemed to have been fashioned out of scrap Formica from the 1950s. The countertops were avocado green with little gold flecks, the table that jutted out from one wall was a fake pink marble. There was one hanging row of unpainted cabinets, missing their doors, but most of the cans and glass jars were stacked below the sink and counter on shelves made of boards and cinder block. There was a refrigerator—the really old kind with a big fan on the top—that gasped and shuddered every few seconds.
The rest of the house consisted of the large living area and the “bedroom,” shut off from the rest of the space by a calico curtain. A mismatched sofa and armchair sat on a rust-colored throw rug. On one corner of the couch was a ball of yarn speared with knitting needles, on the other end a leather purse intricately half sewed with blue beads. A large wooden spool, the kind used for electrical wire by contractors, was now a coffee table, and it was piled high with magazines dated three or four years back.
Cassie hadn’t seen the bedroom, where Will had gone to talk to his grandparents in private. She heard them whispering, hissing really, but it didn’t make much difference, since they were speaking Lakota. She rapped her fingers on the Formica table and counted to ten. She rubbed her knuckles over the slight swell of her belly. You know, she silently said, I’m doing this for you.
Will came out from behind the curtain first, his face set. Then came his grandmother, her arms crossed over her chest, and finally his grandfather. It had been more difficult than he’d imagined, since Cyrus and Dorothea had never heard of Alex Rivers, so they couldn’t possibly understand why Will had had to bring Cassie all the way to Pine Ridge.
He had told his grandparents everything, including the physical abuse and Cassie’s pregnancy, but they stood before her now, looking at her as if she were some kind of scarlet woman who’d brought this on herself.
“Cassie Barrett,” Will said, intentionally leaving off her married name, “these are my grandparents, Cyrus and Dorothea Flying Horse.
They’d be happy to have you stay here until the baby comes.”
Cassie couldn’t help the flush that ran up her stomach and breasts and flooded her face. She told herself it wasn’t shame, it was relief.
“Thank you,” she said quietly, holding out her hand. “You don’t know what this means to me.”
Neither Cyrus nor Dorothea took Cassie’s hand. She waited a moment, then wiped it on her coat and let it twitch at her side. Will stepped closer to her and leaned toward her ear. “I’m going to make up some story to leave you here alone with them,” he murmured.
“Trust me; it’s just a matter of them getting to know you.” He squeezed Cassie’s shoulder and turned back to his grandparents. Dorothea had already moved off to the kitchen to begin rinsing plates. “I’m going over to Abel Soap’s to see if he’s still breathing,” Will said easily. “He owes me fifty bucks.”
He loped toward the door, where Wheezer was already waiting. “Remember,” he warned his grandparents. “English. You promised.”
The door sealed shut behind Will with an indrawn breath, and Cassie stared at it for several seconds. Over the running water, Cassie could hear Dorothea muttering in Lakota. Occasionally she’d glance over her shoulder, as if to see if Cassie had left yet. Obviously the old woman spoke English; she should at least be giving Cassie a fair chance.
Straightening, Cassie turned to Cyrus. “Can you tell me what she’s saying?” she asked.
Cyrus shrugged and walked toward the couch. “She wishes Will had taken you with him.”
For a few minutes Cassie stood in the center of the living room, wavering between having a good cry or just walking out that front door and continuing until she got back to Rapid City. Cyrus settled onto the middle cushion of the couch, which heaved under his light frame, and picked up the knitting. He looped the yarn around his fingers and clicked the needles faster and faster until they chattered like teeth.
Dorothea finished washing the dishes and started to sweep the spotless kitchen floor.
In fact, neither of Will’s grandparents showed the slightest inclination toward making Cassie more comfortable, or talking sociably to her, and neither seemed to think this behavior was unaccountably rude.
Cassie vaguely remembered a colleague who had done his dissertation on what he referred to as tipi etiquette: how the Plains Indians of the nineteenth century had lived. She could recall something about women on one side and men on the other, about warriors eating before anyone else, about the impoliteness of walking between a person and the central fire. Cassie didn’t know if these customs still held, but she felt there was a set of rules that she hadn’t been told, rules she would have to divine herself.
She began by straightening up the magazines. Cyrus looked over his needles once, grunted, and kept on knitting. When Cassie had made two neat stacks, she stood up and walked into the kitchen area. She rummaged through the shelves until she found a stack of white dishcloths, and she wet one with soapy water and began to scrub down the front of the refrigerator.
Dorothea didn’t look up at Cassie, didn’t even acknowledge that Cassie was less than three feet away. “You know,” Cassie said, her voice too loud and bright for the tiny house, “I have a friend at UCLA who specializes in Native American anthropology.” She didn’t add that the man was a cultural anthropologist, so she’d barely spoken to him in three years. Instead, she racked her brain trying to remember his course syllabus and her own graduate work.
“The truth is,” Cassie continued, “I don’t know anything about Indians. I don’t know what Will told you, but my specialty dates back before that.” She rinsed her dishcloth in the sink. “Except for weapons,”
she said. “I’m pretty good with weapons. I did my dissertation on violence, on whether it was learned or innate—” Cassie stopped, thinking of the irony of that, given what her marriage had come to. When nobody responded, she kept speaking. “Let’s see . . . I can remember a New Mexico group called the Clovis culture that invented a stone spearhead that could be lashed to an arrow, which obviously made it easier to kill mammoth . . .” Cassie’s voice trailed off, thinking of this group of nomads forty thousand years ago slaughtering a huge, shuddering beast; and then Cyrus’s own grandfather, who might have hunted the buffalo in much the same way just a hundred and fifty years earlier. She stopped herself from continuing, realizing she sounded as if she was giving a lecture. Over her head, Cyrus and Dorothea exchanged a look: Is she always like this?
“Well,” Cassie said more quietly. “You probably already know this.”
She shook her head, calling herself a fool for coming on like a locomotive when she should have been creeping along quietly.
Dorothea came over to her and wrung the dripping dishcloth, draping it over the sink and gesturing with her hands so Cassie understood this was the way she liked it to be. Dorothea glanced around the gleaming kitchen, nodding, and then pulled on her parka. She crossed in front of Cassie, grasping Cassie’s chin with strong fingers and turning her face up. In Lakota, she said something, a strange collection of clicks and syllables that Cassie thought softer than a lullaby.
After Dorothea walked out the door, Cyrus stood by the window, watching her go back to work for the afternoon shift. He knew what Cassie was about to ask. “She says you should remember something while you are with the People,” he translated. “What you consider these specimens of history are still our great-great-grandfathers.”
He did not turn from the window, but he held up his hand, beckoning Cassie. She stood and walked over to Cyrus, and he settled his arm around her shoulders in a gesture that was not an embrace but more of a prodding. His long, straight fingers rested on her collarbone.
Cassie gazed at the vast landscape with Cyrus, knowing he did not notice the oceans of snow, the corpses of abandoned trucks, and the tattered tarpaulins blowing off a neighbor’s hut. Instead he saw the place where his ancestors’ footsteps lay beneath his own, the place that—because of this—he would call home.
WILL SAT UP FROM THE PILE OF BLANKETS HE WAS USING AS A BED and stared at Cassie, asleep on the pull-out couch. When he lived with his grandparents it had been his bed, and he watched her body press into the hollows in the mattress he himself had made.
He was drenched with sweat; he had been dreaming of her. Crazy as it sounded, she had been a Kit Fox, a member of one of the ancient warrior societies. Every Sioux boy had grown up hearing of the Kit Foxes and the Strong Hearts, wishing that the People were still at war with the Chippewa so they too could count coup and prove their bravery. The Kit Foxes had been the most dramatic. They had worn red sashes they would peg to the ground, meaning they’d fight on that spot until they won, they were killed, or they were released by a friend. Will could remember how he’d played at this behind the school during recess; how once he’d filched his grandmother’s shawl to use as a sash and had been grounded for a month.
In the dream, Cassie’s belly was swollen with her child, and she wore the sash high, just below her breasts. From a distance Will saw her stake herself to the soft earth and begin to sing.
I am a fox.
I am supposed to die. If there is anything difficult If there is anything dangerous That is mine to do. Out of nowhere, Alex Rivers appeared, circling around her, coming closer and closer. He cuffed Cassie across the side of the head, and from where he stood Will shouted out to warn her, but she did not move.
She stood her ground, even when the blows brought tears to her eyes.
Will dreamed that he screamed at the top of his lungs and started moving, racing toward the spot where Cassie was. Without losing speed, he reached down and pulled up her stake, wrapping his arm around her hips and forcing her to run just as fast as he was.
He woke up panting, angry and somewhat amazed that Cassie lay three feet away from him, curling and uncurling her fingers in her sleep.
He moved quietly, in rhythm with the sounds of his grandfather’s breathing coming from behind the bedroom curtain, and sat on the edge of the mattress.
Cassie was awake before his entire weight had eased down. Will put a finger to her lips, and then pointed in the direction of the curtain.
“I’m leaving tomorrow,” he whispered.
Cassie struggled to a sitting position, but Will held his hand on her shoulder, pressing her back. “Why?”
“Because I have a job in L.A. Because I hate it here.” Will smirked.
“Take your pick.”
She had to know it was going to come to this; he’d as much as said it straight out. But to his horror, Cassie gulped back a sob. “You can’t leave me here alone,” she whispered, knowing full well that he could and he would.
When she turned away from him, he stroked his hand over her brow, feeling guilty. Cassie was small and plain, the girl next door; he’d seen a hundred women prettier than she was. He wondered what it was about this woman that could rob his mind of set intentions, that could trap a movie star into marriage.
Will stared at the back of Cassie’s head, forcing himself to remember the way he’d kept his thumb over his grade school report cards when he carried them home, because the students were listed not only by surname but also by the percentage of Indian blood in their veins. He tried to think of the winter he and his grandparents had lived on beef jerky and canned squash because the government rationing program had gotten screwed up. Yes, he thought, I need the distance. But even as Will thought this he lay down beside Cassie until her quivering back was pressed tight against his chest. He did not move against her, not wanting to make this into something it wasn’t. Instead he listened to her heart, and to his grandparents’ soft snores, twisted around each other. He gently covered Cassie’s stomach with his hand. “You won’t be alone,” he said.