LaRose (23 page)

One of the matrons in the little boys’ wing, plump and freckled with blazing thick white hair in a short bowl cut, explained to Landreaux the system of demerits. His name was added to a chart in a bound book, at her office desk. If he didn’t wash or if he wet the bed, if he overslept, if he was noisy after lights-out or backtalked or went out of school boundaries, or most especially, if he ever ran away, demerits would be marked by his name. Mrs. Vrilchyk explained that if he had too many demerits he could lose recess, trips to town. If he ran away it would be much worse, she said. He might
not get his privileges back. Landreaux had heard they made boys wear long green shame dresses, shaved their heads, made them scrub the sidewalks. But no, another boy had told him on the bus, they had done this in a different school and now they’d stopped. Mrs. Vrilchyk was still talking. Running away was dangerous. A girl had died two years ago. Mrs. Vrilchyk, whom everyone called Bowl Head, said that the girl was tossed in a ditch. There are bad people out there. So don’t run away, she said. Her voice wasn’t mean, or kind, just neutral. She patted his shoulder and said that she could tell he was a good boy. He wouldn’t run away.

Every time she said the words
run away
, Landreaux had a feeling about the word:
runaway
. The word bounced him up inside.

He took the bundle of clothes and bedding. A man matron stood in the bedroom and showed the boys how they were supposed to make their beds. He was an Indian, like an uncle, but with little eyes and a hard, pocked face. The matron stripped the bed he had made and told all of the boys to make their beds that way. He was called from the room. The boys who were to share the room started pawing the sheets and blankets into shape.

Except a pale, hunched boy. He sat on the edge of his bed and said, in a low voice,
Go to hell, Pits.
He kicked the bedclothes on the floor and stamped his foot on them. So this was Romeo. At four or five years of age he had been found wandering beside the road on the same reservation where Landreaux grew up. Nobody knew exactly who his parents were, but he was clearly an Indian. He was burned, bruised, starved, thought mentally deficient. But once he was sent to boarding school, it turned out he was one of the smartest boys. He snarled to show he was tough, but he was not. He was in love with Mrs. Peace and was working in her class to make her notice him, take him home with her. Adopt him. That was his aim, maybe high but not impossible? After all, he had graduated from the pee boys.

Romeo had stopped pissing in his sleep because he’d stopped drinking water. Just a cup in the morning and a cup at noon. Was he
thirsty? Hell, yes. But within a month of enduring this great thirst he was no longer a pee boy and it was worth it. Not a drop passed his lips after noon feed, even if he got too dizzy to run around, even if his mouth turned dry and tasted of rotting mouse. It was very worth it not to piss the bed.

He heard them talking in the other bunks.

Can’t have a top bunk, Romeo. Might drip.

But Landreaux looked at Romeo, gave an open, friendly smile, and said, Nah he looks steady. I’ll sleep under.

Landreaux put his bedding in the bunk below.

Romeo was flooded with a piercing sensation that started as surprise, became pleasure, and then, if he’d known what to call it, joy. No boy had ever stood up for him. No boy had ever grinned at Romeo like he might buddy up with him. He had no brothers, no cousins at school, no connections at home except a dubious foster aunt. This moment with Landreaux was so powerful that its impact lasted days. And it got better. Landreaux never wavered. Because Landreaux called him steady, Romeo became steady. Landreaux was instantly cool with his careless slouch and rangy confidence, and he acted, simply, as though Romeo had always been cool right along with him. Because of Landreaux, Romeo stood straighter, got stronger, ate more, even grew. He began drinking water later in the afternoon. Stayed dry. Landreaux was ace at archery, hit bull’s-eye every time. Romeo could do math in his head. They became known. Other boys admired them. Many times that year, Mrs. Peace took them home with her. She was the mother of a little girl named Emmaline, who seemed to adore them equally. Landreaux ignored Emmaline, but Romeo adored her back. He sat on the floor with her, played blocks, dolls, animals, and read her favorite picture book whenever she pushed it into his hands. Mrs. Peace laughed and thanked him, because, she said, the book was repetitive. Romeo didn’t care. The little girl hung on his every word. As they grew, his love grew also, but she forgot about him.

Mrs. Peace’s home had a yard with a knotted rope dangling from
a tall tree. The boys took turns clinging to the ball of rags at the end of the rope. They twisted each other up tight and then swung out, untwisting in great loops, until they got sick. After their stomachs settled, they ate meat soup and frybread, corn on the cob. Mrs. Peace made them read
The Hardy Boys
, which she’d taken from the library just for them, sometimes out loud. Romeo was a better reader than Landreaux, but he hid that. He listened to Landreaux strain along, his whole body tilting as if each sentence was an uphill walk. The friends were contented all fall, all winter, all spring. They stayed two summers, and were best friends. Around year three, however, Landreaux began to talk about his mother and father. They had never visited. He talked about them in fall, then winter. In spring he began to talk about going to find them.

That’s running away, said Romeo.

I know it, said Landreaux.

This one girl? She run away by crawling under the school bus, hanging on somewhere under there. She sneaked out when it got to the reservation. She run back home. Her mom and dad kept her because of how she taken the chance. They were afraid of what she might do next if they sent her back.

The boys were talking back and forth in their bunk beds, hissing and whispering after lights-out.

I dunno, said Landreaux. You could fall out. Get dragged.

Flattened like Wile E. Coyote.

Ain’t worth it, said Sharlo St. Claire.

You’re too big anyway. Gotta be small.

I could do it, said Landreaux. This was before he started eating and got his growth.

I could do it too, said Romeo.

Couldn’t.

Could.

We should do it quick then. School bus going back in a week. Nobody else gonna take us, said Landreaux.

Isn’t so bad here in summer, said Romeo. His heart hammered. What if he got “home” and there was nobody for him? Yet there would be no Landreaux, here, if Landreaux left. That was unthinkable. Romeo knew how his life was saved and knew the scars along the insides of his arms represented something unspeakable that he could not remember. He didn’t want to leave the school and didn’t want to hang beneath the bus.

Look, Landreaux. In summer, we go to the lake and swim and stuff? Right? That’s fun.

They watch you alla time.

Yeah, said Romeo.

Well, said Landreaux. I am sick of their eyes on me.

Even Romeo knew that Pits was after Landreaux, cuffed him around, so it was more than the seeing eyes.

Next day on the playground, Romeo looked at Landreaux.

Whatcha think?

Landreaux nodded.

Romeo saw the dullness behind his eyes. This opacity of spirit—well, Romeo would never have called it that, but many years later Father Travis was to call it exactly that as he considered the man hanging his head before him. Romeo knew only that when Landreaux shut that spark off behind his eyes, it meant he was asleep and would do anything no matter how dangerous. It made Landreaux look extremely cool, and Romeo felt sick.

During the weekend, they got in good with Bowl Head, who let them deliver a broken step stool to the woodworking shop. The buses were parked just beyond. After they dropped the stool off, they sneaked behind the corner of the building and then crept to a school bus, rolled beneath. They could see immediately where you might hang on.

Maybe, said Landreaux, if you were shit-ass crazy. Maybe a few minutes. Not for hours and hours.

Though you might hol’ on longer if you knew falling off would kill you.

Don’ look like much fun, said Romeo.

Don’ you believe ’bout that girl? said Landreaux.

But there was something irresistible in Landreaux’s intense planning. He could not stop thinking, talking, how they might strap themselves on with belts or ropes. How it might get hot or might get cold. Need a jacket either way.

THE DAY CAME.
Romeo and Landreaux ambled into the go-home line and lingered at the very end. Bowl Head stood by the open bus door, scanning her checklist. Each student in the line held a sack of clothing. Romeo and Landreaux had sacks too. At the last moment, they ditched, sneaked around the tail end of the bus, rolled into shadow, then wormed into the guts of the machine. There was a flat foot-wide bar they could hang on that ran down the center, and beside it two catch pans that could help them balance. They put their bags in the pans and fixed themselves in place on their stomachs, feet up, ankles curled around the bar, face-to-face.

A thousand years passed before the bus roared violently to life. It bumbled along through the town streets. The boys could feel the gears locking together, changing shape, transferring power. As they pulled onto the highway the bus lurched, then socked smoothly into high gear.

They lifted their heads, dazzled, in the vast rumble of the engine. Their ears hurt. Occasionally bits of stone or gravel kicked up and stung like buckshot. Seams in the asphalt jarred their bones. Their bodies were pumped on adrenaline and a dreamlike terror also gripped them. On their stomachs, feet up, ankles curled around the bar, face-to-face, they clung fear-locked to their perch.

The pain burrowed into Romeo’s eardrums, but he knew if he lifted his hands to his ears he’d die falling off. The pain got worse and worse, then something exploded softly in his head and the noise diminished. The boys tried very hard not to look down at the highway.
But it was all around them in a smooth fierce blur and the only other place to look was at each other.

Landreaux shut his eyes. The dark seized and dizzied him. He had to focus on Romeo, who didn’t like to be looked at and did not ever meet another person’s eyes, unless a teacher held his head and forced him. It wasn’t done in Landreaux’s family. It wasn’t done among their friends. It drove white teachers crazy. In those days, Indians rarely looked people in the eye. Even now, it’s an uneasy thing, not honest but invasive. Under the bus, there was no other place for the two boys to look but into each other’s eyes. Even when the two got old and remembered the whole experience, this forced gaze was perhaps the worst of it.

Romeo’s rat-colored buzz cut flattened and his pupils smoked with fear. Landreaux’s handsome mug was squashed flat by wind and his lush hair was flung straight back. His eyes were pressed into long catlike slits, but he could see—oh, yes he could see—the lighter brown splotches in Romeo’s pinwheel irises, mile after mile. And he began to think, as minutes passed, endless minutes mounting past an hour, a timeless hour, that Romeo’s eyes were the last sight he would see on earth because their bodies were losing the tension they needed to grip the bar. Arms, shoulders, stomach, thighs, calves—all locked but incrementally loosening as though the noise itself were prying them away from their perch. If they hadn’t both been strong, light, hard-muscled boys who could shimmy up flagpoles, vault fences, catch a branch with one arm, and swing themselves into a tree, over a fence, they would have died. If the bus hadn’t slowed exactly when it did and pulled into a rest stop, they would also have died.

They were speechless with pain. Landreaux gagged a few words out, but they found they could hear nothing. They watched each other’s mouths open and shut.

They cried sliding off the bar as blood surged back into muscle. From beneath the bus, they saw Bowl Head’s thick, creamy legs, and the driver’s gray slacks. Then the other kids’ boney ankles and
shuffling feet. They waited on the tarred parking lot ground until everyone had gone to the bathrooms and was back inside. The doors closed, the driver started the bus idling, and that’s when they rolled out from underneath. They dove behind a trash barrel. Once the bus was gone, they staggered off into a scrim of thick blue spruce trees on the perimeter. For half an hour, they writhed beneath the branches and bit on sticks. When the pain subsided just enough for them to breathe, they were very thirsty, hungry too, and remembered they’d left their sacks stuck beneath the bus. They sharply recalled the bread they’d squirreled away with their clothes.

The rest stop was empty, so they left the bushes and went in. They drank water from the taps, pissed, wondered if they could hole up inside for the night. But there was nowhere in the bathroom, really, to hide. Digging through the trash, Romeo found a bit of candy bar. The chocolate just got their juices flowing. Walking out the door, they noticed a car turning off the highway. They sneaked around back and flung themselves beneath the trees. A family of four white people got out of the car with two brown paper bags. The children put the paper bags on the picnic table, and then the family went into the restrooms.