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The trailer I lived in with my granny and grandpa was just as run down as this one. The roof leaked, which was the source of the mildew smell, and the electricity sometimes didn’t work for days. We had to build a fire in the middle of the living room on cold winter nights when that happened. I shared a room with four of my cousins. For a time, Tina was one of them. Before one of her aunties took her to go live with her on the other side of this huge reservation.
But it was a good time. The warmth that can’t come from any amount of electricity or burning wood is filling my chest as I remember the love I had for my family back then, and the love they had for me. It didn’t matter how we lived, or how little we had, because we had everything we needed just being together.
Tina remembers it all much more clearly than I do. But my memories are coming back too like a flash flood.
“We can go by your grandparents’ trailer tomorrow,” she says, then looks at me sharply from the corner of her eyes. “If you want to, that is.”
“That place is still standing?” I say exasperatedly as I grin at her. She’s at least half a head shorter than me, with long, medium brown hair and the prettiest hazel eyes I’ve ever seen. She’s wearing too much makeup, mainly in the form of dark blue, shimmery eyeshadow. She’s something of a makeup freak. Her words, not mine. I don’t much care for those things and only wear makeup when I go partying.
“That trailer is mostly used for storage now,” she says. “Or was, before half of the roof caved in and destroyed most of what was stored there.”
She stops chuckling and looks at me, her pretty eyes very wide. “I’m sorry. That’s just Rez humor. When things go wrong and when times are bad, it’s best to just laugh about it. But I didn’t mean to offend you.”
I hope I didn’t seem offended, because that’s not what I’m feeling. Another memory surfaced when she mentioned the cabin. The one of the twin graves, side by side, where my grandparents are buried. It’s a nice cemetery, on the vast prairie, with nothing but the wide open world stretching out on all sides. Except for the gnarled tree we decorate to remember the dead. It was leafless on the night I spent there, after my grandparents were buried and I didn’t know where else to go. Or didn’t want to go anywhere else. I just wanted to be with them.
I’d forgotten that sadness. Clean forgotten even though that night, I was sure my heart would bust from the sadness and anger at the unfairness of it all.
“I’d like to visit their graves too,” I say in a slightly choked voice.
She nods. “The cemetery has grown some since you were last there.”
Her voice is toneless and low. Dark and hopeless. So different than what it was a few minutes ago while we reminisced. I think I know why.
“Did you know that kid who died today well?” I ask and she shrugs.
After Ariana shooed me from the coffeeshop, I took a walk around town. Except for the stray dogs which seem to be everywhere, and most of them have been barking all evening while we talked, the town was ghost empty. Until I came to a small brick house at the very end of main street.
About thirty cars were parked on the sidewalk and lawn in front of it. Men, women and children were milling around in the small yard, sadness and despair wafting off them in clouds thicker than the ones covering the sky now. More people were inside the house, women were crying loudly, some wailing and the men all looked like they wanted to kill someone. The way Eagle sometimes looks when he gets back from visiting his father at the prison he’s never getting out of.
I knew someone died, someone young and loved.
But I felt like such an outsider witnessing that grief. So I practically ran back to the car, where I would’ve called Eagle if my phone had a signal. I might’ve even called Cross or Roxie. Because the grief I felt there was sticky. And I’m still feeling it now.
“Greg was a good guy,” she says. “He’s the one I told you about. The one that just got out of rehab and was going to help us set up the camp.”
I nod.
“But he lapsed earlier this week and OD’d this afternoon,” she says in a clipped voice. “They think he got some bad shit from one of those seedy biker gang drug dealers. They chased a couple of them off the Rez earlier, maybe you heard the shots.”
The venom in her voice makes my chest tighten worse than it already was. Bikers and shots fired at them is the stuff of my nightmares. My father shifted the Devils’ main line of business of being killers for hire to the less dangerous business of selling weapons, because I was so afraid of losing him too. So afraid that he wouldn’t come back from one of his jobs. I’d forgotten that too, in my years of doing exactly what I wanted, when I wanted and having too much of everything. Including love and devotion.
“He was only twenty-five years old,” she says tonelessly. “And he had a really tough life. His father shot his mother then himself right in front of him when he was a child. It really messed him up. But he was turning his life around. He was so full of hope the last time we spoke. Jesus, that was just last night when I told him you were coming today. He was really excited about that.”
“Drugs are the worst,” I say. “They’ve claimed a couple of my good friends too.”
“Not as many as mine,” she says and gets up in a huff. “I’m sorry. I have to be alone for awhile.”
She doesn’t even glance at me before storming out of the trailer, slamming the flimsy door behind her so hard I’m surprised it stays on the hinges.
I wish Eagle was here with me. That’s the only coherent thought in my brain as I lean back on the lumpy sofa. And the stupidest. I walked away from him the way I did to give him a chance to be mad at me, so he could forget me easier. Among other things. Like the fact that I might not have been able to handle a real goodbye to him. Either way, calling him now would just make everything even more complicated.
* * *
EAGLE
I wasted almost no time packing and said goodbye to no one before hitting the road. Now the sun is rising a pale yellow, coloring the sky in shades of pink over the vast plain, the wind in my face is clean and fresh like a new beginning. That’s how riding feels to me always, but today it’s even more pronounced. It seems like a new beginning for real, not one of those fake ones I’ve tried and failed to bring about with my rides so many times before over the years. I’m alone on the road and it feels like I’m alone in the world. I love it.
But these long rides always, inevitably make me think of my father. He’s the one person I should say goodbye to. I’ve been avoiding his calls since my last visit, because I still haven’t figured out how I feel about him lying to me all these years. Plus, I didn’t need him in my ear while I processed Lily’s decision to leave without me. But that’s not important anymore now. I’m sure she’ll give me more things to process when I actually get to the reservation, but I’ll deal with that when it comes. For now, I think maybe some general advice from my father couldn’t hurt.
