So then what happened?
Suddenly my eyes began to water and I bent over my plate.
My father picked his fork back up. He quickly shoveled Clemence’s well-known macaroni and tomato sauce/hamburger concoction into his mouth. He saw that I had stopped eating and was waiting, and he sat back. He drained another cup of coffee from his favorite heavy white china diner mug. He put a napkin to his lips, shut his eyes, opened them, and looked at me directly.
All right, Joe, you’re asking a lot of questions. You are developing an order to things in your mind. You’re thinking this out. So am I. Joe, the perpetrator couldn’t light the match. He went to look for another book of matches. Some way of lighting a fire. While he was gone, your mother managed to escape.
How?
For the first time since we’d pulled out those trees the Sunday before, my father smiled, or it was some version of a smile, I should say. There was no amusement in it. Later on, if I had to classify that smile, I would say it was a smile like Mooshum’s. A smile of remembrance of lost times.
Joe, do you remember how I used to get so exasperated when your mother locked herself out of her car? She had—still has—a habit of leaving the car keys on the dashboard. After she parks, she always gathers her papers or groceries off the passenger seat, then she puts her keys on the dash, gets out, and locks the car. She forgets that she left her keys in the car until she needs to go home. Then she rummages through her purse and can’t find her keys. Oh no, she says, not again! She goes out, sees her car keys are on the dashboard, locked inside, and then calls me. Remember?
Yeah. I almost smiled too as he described what had been her habit, the whole rigmarole we went through. Yeah, Dad, she calls you. You use a mild swear word, then you get the extra set of keys and take a long walk over to the tribal offices.
Mild swear word. Where’d you get that?
Damn, I don’t know.
He smiled again, put his hand out and nicked at my cheek with his knuckle.
I never really minded, he said. But one day it occurred to me that your mom would be really stuck if I wasn’t home. We don’t go many places. Our schedule is pretty boring. But if I wasn’t home, or you weren’t, to bike her keys over.
That’s never happened.
But see, you might have been outside. Not heard the telephone. I thought, What if she really gets stuck somewhere? And thinking this, about two months ago I glued a magnet onto the back of one of those little metal boxes Whitey sells mints in. I saw someone else had a key holder like it. I put a car key in the box and stuck it inside the car’s frame just over the left rear tire. That’s how she escaped.
What? I said. How?
She managed to reach under the car; she got the car key. He came at her. She locked herself in the car, then she started the car and drove away.
I took a deep breath. I couldn’t help a sense of her fear from slashing through me and it made me weak.
My father started eating again, and this time he was clearly going to finish his meal. The subject of what had happened to my mother was closed. I went back to the dog.
Pearl bites, I said.
Good, said my father.
He’s still after her then.
We don’t know, said my father. Anybody could have picked up those matches. Indian. White. Anybody could have dropped them. But probably it was someone from around here.
You can’t tell if a person is an Indian from a set of fingerprints. You can’t tell from a name. You can’t even tell from a local police report. You can’t tell from a picture. From a mug shot. From a phone number. From the government’s point of view, the only way you can tell an Indian is an Indian is to look at that person’s history. There must be ancestors from way back who signed some document or were recorded as Indians by the U.S. government, someone identified as a member of a tribe. And then after that you have to look at that person’s blood quantum, how much Indian blood they’ve got that belongs to one tribe. In most cases, the government will call the person an Indian if their blood is one quarter—it usually has to be from one tribe. But that tribe has also got to be federally recognized. In other words, being an Indian is in some ways a tangle of red tape.
On the other hand, Indians know other Indians without the need for a federal pedigree, and this knowledge—like love, sex, or having or not having a baby—has nothing to do with government.
It took me another day to find out that it was already going around that there were suspects—basically anyone who acted strange or had not been seen or had been seen walking out of his back door with loaded black garbage bags.
I found out by going over to my aunt and uncle’s house to pick up a pie on Saturday afternoon. My mother had told my father that she thought she had better get up, bathe, get dressed. She was still on pain pills, but Dr. Egge had told her that bed rest wouldn’t help. She needed mild activity. Dad had announced that he was cooking dinner from a recipe. But he could not manage dessert. Thus, the pie. Uncle Whitey was sitting at the table with a glass of iced tea. Mooshum sat across from him, hunched and frail, wearing ivory-colored long underwear, and a plaid robe over the long johns. He refused to dress in street clothes on Saturday because he needed a day of comfort, he claimed, to get ready for Sunday, when Clemence made him wear suit pants, a pressed white shirt, and sometimes a tie. He too had a glass of iced tea, but he was glaring at it.
Bunny piss, he griped.
That’s right, Daddy, said Clemence. It’s an old man’s drink. It’s good for you.
Ah, swamp tea, said Uncle Whitey, swirling the glass appreciatively. Good for everything that ails you, Daddy.
Cures old age? said Mooshum. Takes the years off?
All but, said Whitey, who knew he could have a beer as soon as he got home and quit pretend-drinking with Mooshum, who was lonely for the old days when Clemence poured smooth whiskey. She’d become convinced that it was harming him and was always trying to cut him off.
This goes down hard, my daughter, he said to Clemence.
Cleans out your liver good, though, said Whitey.
Here, Clemence, pour a little swamp tea for Joe.
Clemence poured me a glass of iced tea and went to answer the phone. People were calling her constantly for news, gossip really, about her sister.
Maybe the pervert really is an Indian, said Uncle Whitey. He was carrying an Indian suitcase.
What Indian suitcase? I said.
The plastic garbage bags.
I leaned forward. So he left? But from where? Who is he? What’s his name?
Clemence came back in and flared her eyes at him.
Awee, said Uncle Whitey. Guess I’m not supposed to talk.
Or have even a little glass of whiskey. Or piss in the sink, as I will do until she no longer pours swamp tea. A man’s kidneys overflow, said Mooshum.
You piss in the sink? I asked.
When given tea, always.
Clemence went into the kitchen, came out with a bottle of whiskey and three stacked shot glasses. She arranged them on the table and poured two a quarter full. She poured the third half full and tossed it back. I was astounded. I’d never seen my aunt toss back a whiskey like a man. She held her drained glass delicately for a moment, regarding us, then put the glass down with a short smack and walked outside.
What was that? Uncle Whitey asked.
That was my daughter pushed too far, said Mooshum. I pity Edward when he returns. The whiskey will have set by then.
Sometimes whiskey sets Sonja too, Uncle Whitey said, but I have tricks.
