I doubted he’d do anything stupid, like pitch himself over, but I wondered how many teenagers’ last thoughts before suicide were ones of remorse.
Levi backed away and dropped to the ground. He huddled into a ball and shouldered Shoonga aside until the dog flopped beside him. It reminded me that Levi might act tough and grown-up, but he was still young and vulnerable.
Shoonga panted heavily, too tired to bark at me as I climbed off the machine and ambled across the hard-packed soil.
“I ain’t gonna kill myself, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Levi said.
“I’m not.”
“Then why’d you follow me?”
To see if you needed me.
“To see your secret brooding place.”
Levi straightened up. “How’d you know I had one?”
“All teenagers have them.”
“Even you?”
“Especially me.”
“Where was yours?”
“Which one?” I plopped beside him and narrowly missed jabbing my ass on a tiny barrel cactus.
“You had more than one?”
“Don’t you?”
His cheeky smile was there and gone. “Yeah.”
“I liked to keep people guessing. I thought they’d gnash their teeth and weep and wail, distraught with guilt if they couldn’t find me in my usual spot.”
We watched a red-tailed hawk perform a loop-de-loop and soar higher on a thermal.
“Didja ever tell anyone where you was going?”
“Nah. But I think they knew. How about you?”
“Not usually. Ma don’t care. This is my favorite, but there is another spot with one old gnarled tree. It’s like I can see for a thousand miles.”
I knew that place, but was surprised he did, as it was fairly isolated. “How’d you stumble across it?”
“The person who showed it to me meets me there sometimes.” He tossed a flat piece of toffee-colored sandstone over the edge. It made a hollow chink. “She’s cool. She listens to me whenever I’m mad at my mom. Which has been a lot lately.”
“My brooding spots were directly related to who I was mad at. If it was Sophie, I usually stomped around the kitchen. Drove her crazier than if I’d taken off and left her in peace.”
The corner of his mouth twitched.
“If I was mad at my dad, I hid in that grove of old elm trees. I’d climb to the highest branch so I could see far away, since that’s where I planned to go.”
“Is that the grove where you practice target shooting now?”
“Yeah.” I fiddled with a knobby cottonwood twig and peeled the bark away, revealing the whitish-green meaty wood. “If your mom pissed me off, which was pretty regularly, I holed up down by the creek. I’d stand on that big boulder, shaped like a chef’s hat, and whip rocks in the water.”
Neither of us spoke. The hair on the back of my arms prickled from the heat. The occasional insect buzzed past my ear. No wind meant the leaves in the trees were as quiet as the air between us.
“Why didn’t she tell me?” He absentmindedly scratched behind Shoonga’s ears.
“No clue. What she did was wrong, Levi. I’ve explained the reasons for her actions most of her life. I guess maybe it’s easy for her to avoid taking responsibility for anything.”
“See? You’re still doing it. Making excuses for her.”
Smart kid. “You’re right.”
“Well, I ain’t gonna do it anymore.”
“Do what?”
“Make excuses. And I’m sick of hers. She’s gonna be pissed, and Theo will give me a lecture on respecting my mother if I say anything, and I cannot deal with either of them.”
“Does Theo do that a lot?”
“What?”
“Try to act like your father?”
“
Shee
. If he ain’t yelling at me, then he’s ignoring me. Whenever Ma starts crying, which is all the time lately, he starts acting like it’s my fault… like if I were a better kid, she wouldn’t be sad. I hate it. Makes me wanna run away like Albert had been doing.” Levi nudged me with his shoulder. “Hey, maybe I could stay with you at Grandpa’s house for a while. I used to stay there a lot. That’d be fun, doncha think? You and me hanging out? Like we did that summer you were here? When you showed me how to make those cool native friendship bracelets?”
Like I needed more friction in my life, especially between my sister and me, but Levi needed someone on his side. Truthfully, it touched me he’d remembered those funky, wildly popular friendship bracelets we’d made the year he’d turned seven. I’d been determined to reconnect with my nephew during the four short weeks I’d been on furlough. And because the “craft” gene skipped me, I’d secretly burned the midnight oil, learning to braid, just so Levi and I could do an activity together that interested him. Some people are scared of guns; I have the same reaction when faced with embroidery floss.
“So what do you say?” Levi prompted.
“Sure. But I want you to do one thing first. Go home. Talk to her. Tell her how you feel.”
“About what?”
“About how she treats you. About your issues with Theo.”
“In other words, make sure Ma knows it wasn’t your idea.”
“Pretty much.”
“All right. I’ll do it tomorrow. I won’t be around tonight.”
“Where you going?”
“Out.” He sighed. “Trying to make new friends sucks, eh?”
Thorny silence again. No easy way to lead up to what’d happened to his friend, so I dove right in. “Speaking of friends… Do you think someone killed Albert?”
Levi looked at me strangely. “I dunno. Why?”
“His mom doesn’t think his death was an accident.”
He didn’t seem surprised by that observation.
“She thinks someone killed him and dumped his body here,” I added.
“Is she blaming
me
because he was found on our land?”
Our land
. I liked how that sounded coming from him. “No. Why?”
“Because me and Albert were fighting for a while before he disappeared. He was drinking and shit all the time, not just on weekends. Every bad thing he was doing revolved around that Warrior Society. It pissed me off. That’s really the only reason I wanted to join, so I could see for myself why everyone thought that club was so fucking great, because it sure wasn’t great for Albert. But I’d never do nothing, to like,
hurt
him. Man. He was my friend.”
“Relax. She asked me to poke around, see if I could find out anything new from you or his other friends.”
“Good luck with that. None of them Warrior Society guys will talk to you because you’re white.”
My automatic rebuttal—
I’m not entirely white
—stayed stuck in my mouth.
His head fell to his chest, his hair blocking his face. “They ain’t talking to me for the same reason. Seems everyone I know is ignoring me or is dead.”
Poor kid. “I’m not dead.”
“Yeah, but you were ignoring me up until a couple of days ago.”
Oof
. Guilt kicked me in the gut.
“Gramps is gone. And I miss having Albert—the old Albert—to hang out with. Me and him could talk for hours.” He toed the ground, unearthing stones, sending a mini–rock slide over the edge. Shoonga barked at the sudden noise, and Levi petted his head. “I could still talk to him, I s’pose, but he ain’t gonna answer back so it won’t be the same.”
Sometimes I thought if I talked to my dad out loud I could pretend he was there. But the Gunderson women already had the reputation for crazy behavior, no need for me to add fuel to the fire. “You have anyone else you can talk to?”
“One other person. She’s been through some nasty shit in her life, so it’s like she knows what I’m talking about.”
I didn’t ask if “she” was Sue Anne. I stood and brushed the dust from my butt. “Don’t stay out here too long, okay? Call me and let me know what’s going on.”
“Thanks, Aunt Mercy.”
“No problem.” I resisted the urge to ruffle Levi’s hair. Instead, I reached down and rubbed Shoonga’s sun-warmed fur. When my hand brushed Levi’s, I squeezed it once before I backed off.
He didn’t watch me drive away. He stared straight ahead, lost in his own misery.
I knew exactly how he felt.
“Levi. He’s staying here, right?”
“Why would he be here?”
“Don’t patronize me. I know you told him he could move in with you after all the junk that happened yesterday.” She angled her head so her crown nearly touched the door frame. It made her neck look broken. I thought of Albert Yellow Boy and fought a shiver.
“We talked about it, but nothing was set in stone. He was supposed to discuss it with you first.”
“He didn’t talk, he yelled. And he wasn’t in his bed when I checked on him this morning. But he left that damn dog locked in his room, barking like a fiend. I swear…”
I tuned her out for a second. Levi wouldn’t have gone far without Shoonga.
“… besides, he’s never up this early.”
“Maybe he’s turning over a new leaf.”
She gaped at me as if I’d lost my mind.
“Did you ask Jake if he’s seen him?” A couple of times since Dawson brought him here in cuffs, I’d seen Levi hanging out and helping Jake early in the morning.
“He’s not with Jake. Whenever Levi gets his mad on like this, he runs off. I don’t know where.”
You should
. “Give him some time.”
“Time? I’ve hardly seen him since Daddy died. Acting all secretive. I think he’s sneaking off to meet a girl.”
Sue Anne’s pretty face swam into my mind’s eye. “Would that be so bad?”
“No. But why wouldn’t he tell me?”
“Why didn’t you tell him you were pregnant?”
Temper put color back in her cheeks. “You trying to turn my boy against me?”
I powered down my computer, using it as an excuse to gather my thoughts and smack a lid on my anger. When the screen blanked, I looked at her. “That’s what you think? I’m trying to turn Levi against you?”
Her lip wobbled. She nodded.
Instead of responding with a nicety, the devil on my shoulder jabbed the pitchfork in my tongue. What came out was, “Why would I have to turn him against you when you’ve been doing such a good job of it yourself?”
“That was mean,” she whispered through her tears.
A man metastasized beside her. “I agree.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“Theo Murphy.”
Great. Mr. Wonderful. Mr. Fertile.
“Hope thought we should meet.”
I heaved myself off the couch and thrust out my hand. “Mercy Gunderson.” I studied him. Didn’t care if it made him uncomfortable. He epitomized the soft, intellectual type, who tried too hard to be hip. Square glasses centered on a pudgy face that would’ve been handsome a decade ago. Limp, dulled brown hair, thinning on top. He’d secured his shoulder-length hair in a leather tie at the base of his neck. A tan, V-necked tunic, probably made of hemp, hung off his slight frame like an antique flour sack. Stick-thin, hairy calves stuck out from the bottom of faded khaki cargo shorts. On his feet were ratty-fringed moccasins the color of bleached deerskin.
Wow.
So
not impressed.
I gestured to the kitchen. “We can talk in there.”
After he pulled out two kitchen chairs, he set his elbows on the table and smiled earnestly. “I imagine you have all sorts of questions.”
Yeah, like why the hell have you been lurking in the background?
Probably not the best way to phrase it. “I do. First off, why the secrecy about your relationship?”
Theo gave Hope an indulgent look. “Your father was dying. I didn’t want to intrude on the time he had left with his family. And Hope didn’t want to cause him any more worry. Especially when you didn’t come home before he passed on.”
Bringing up my daughterly failing first thing? Zero brownie points for him.
“I can see where Dad would’ve been stressed about some stranger knocking up his daughter and then that guy not having the balls to face him.” Dammit. It just slipped out.
“Mercy!”
“It’s okay, Hope, your sister has a right to her concerns.” His shit-brown eyes never wavered from mine.
Maybe I was being too hard on him. “Let’s start over. Why don’t you tell me about yourself, Theo? Where you’re from, what you do for a living, all that jazz.”
“I’m from Oklahoma.”
“Are you Indian?”
He preened. “My great-grandfather was part Cherokee.”
I barely resisted rolling my eyes. A big joke on the rez was if everybody who claimed to have some Cherokee blood stood in a line, it’d stretch from reservation to reservation across the country, without a single red face in the crowd. “What did you do before you moved here?”
“For the past few years I worked in North Dakota doing research and studying the effects on the land and the culture of introducing buffalo back to their native habitat.”
“Research like returning a big chunk of the Midwest to a gigantic buffalo commons?”
“You’ve heard about it!”
Crap. The gleam in his eye meant one thing: I was in for a lecture if I showed my ignorance. Or interest. I was so screwed. When in doubt, pull a standard South Dakota trick and change the subject to the weather. “It must’ve been a big change, from humidity to the desert-dry conditions here.”
“Yes, but I missed teaching.”
“So that’s all you do? Teach summer school part-time at the community center?”
“Mercy!”
“I can provide for Hope and the baby, if that’s what you’re insinuating.”
Whoa. Testy. “And Levi?” I prompted. “You willing to provide for him?”
“Until he’s of age.”
A pall fell over the room.
“So tell me about you.” Theo smiled benignly. “What do you do in the army?”
“Heavy-equipment transportation.”
“A truck driver? Seen any combat situations?”
“A couple of close calls. We were out of range in the field outside of Beiji and majorly affected by a massive communication breakdown, which is a big reason I didn’t know about Dad.” That lie never got easier.
He nodded sympathetically and reached for Hope’s hand. “Well, you’re here now, if only temporarily. Hope has talked about the decision you two have to make and how much she’s going to miss this place.”
Hope’s mouth opened, ready to dispute him, but Sophie bustled in. Hope compressed her lips and looked at her hands.
Sophie’s gaze encompassed the empty table. “You didn’t get them coffee, Mercy?”
As far as I was concerned, company manners didn’t apply to my sister and her freeloading boyfriend.
“That’s okay, Sophie. We were just leaving. I’m dropping Hope off before I head out of town for a seminar in Rosebud.” Theo pushed to his feet. “I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other again.”
For one scary second I was afraid he’d try to hug me. Instead, he helped Hope up. Whew. I probably would’ve punched him. Overgrown pothead. He was the pseudo-intellectual type who’d call marijuana
peyote
and pretend smoking it was a cultural thing when in actuality he just liked getting stoned.
Yeah, doubtful he and I were going to be best friends.
“—called again. You really should call them back, Mercy,” Sophie chided.
Everyone was looking at me. “What?”
“That pushy nurse from the VA. Second time this week. Said you never called her back.”
Was nothing around here private? How many people had Sophie told about my visits to the VA?
“VA? Is everything okay?” Theo asked.
My answering smile was pure plaster. “Fine. Just some routine tests while I’m stateside.”
He patted Hope’s stomach. “Plenty of doctor appointments coming up for us, aren’t there, blossom?”
Blossom?
Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me.
They’d nearly reached the door when I remembered the real reason Hope barged in here. “Let me know when you hear from Levi, okay?”
If the hangdog expression on her face was any indication, she’d completely forgotten about him.
That’s when I started to worry.