My brother’s funeral was held on Friday at St. David’s Church in Palliser, my father’s church, but the Reverend Wallace Garner from St. Timothy’s on the east side of town volunteered to take the service. A lot of it was just a blur, I was still in such a shock, and I couldn’t seem to cry for my brother. Which was crazy. I felt like crying, wanted to cry. My father was on the other side of my mother, I remember that, each of us holding one of her hands as we sat in the first pew, my cousins, aunts and uncles in the rows behind us, but when the service began she removed her hands from ours, picked up the Book of Common Prayer — it was the one she’d chosen, wanting the more stately language of the past — and turned to the funeral liturgy.
When we’d come down the aisle a few minutes earlier, the three of us walking together, supporting my mother, or so I thought — I didn’t yet know how strong she was — and leading the procession of relatives, I had glanced up from where my mother held my arm and been surprised to see that the church was full. Many of the parish congregation were there, as one might expect, and Evan Morgan, I knew I could count on him, but I also saw quite a few other kids from my grade nine classes, many more that I knew were seniors, and then, filling the better part of three rows, Coach Conley and the football team.
Except, of course, for the three who’d been remanded to the youth facility in Regina. Everything had changed with my brother’s death.
Vaughn Foster began to talk as soon as he learned that Blake was dead. He said he was out there with Anna Big Sky, the other car had hemmed him in, he had no idea who it was, didn’t want any part of what they might do. When he saw it was Jordan Phelps and Todd Branton, he knew it was going to be bad.
After that, Todd Branton couldn’t wait to lay the blame on Jordan. He said it was his car, but Jordan had been driving, they’d followed the Foster car all right, but he thought they were just going to have some fun with Anna, put a scare into her, sure he’d helped Vaughn Foster hold her, but only after Jordan had grabbed her and she’d slugged him one. Then Jordan had started hitting her, hammering her in the face, and he had let her go. So had Vaughn a minute later, but Jordan kept hitting her, striking her even as she fell. They had both seized him then, but he kicked her twice while she lay on the ground. When she didn’t move, Jordan had said they were in this together, they were all guilty, they had to keep it quiet or the three of them were finished, there was a way they could show they were going to stick together, something they could do together. Todd said he didn’t want to do it, of course, but what choice did he have? Once Vaughn agreed to do it, he had to do it too.
They were guilty, yes, but they were still alive.
Vaughn Foster told a somewhat different story. He didn’t know what made him hold her, but she’d slugged Jordan when he reached for her. Then she’d called Jordan an asshole and he’d started hitting her. Vaughn claimed that he’d been the first to let her go, that he was the one who didn’t want to piss on the girl. It wasn’t their fault, they both agreed on that; Jordan Phelps was the one responsible and, besides, everybody was drunk.
I still hadn’t cried for my brother. It was his funeral, sure, but I kept thinking of Anna Big Sky.
Regaining consciousness under that chill October sky, she wonders where she is — the clothes she wears, the snow beneath her, everything soaked with urine. Somehow she climbs to her feet, her legs barely holding her weight, her eyes so swollen from the beating that she can hardly see. Pale grasses like ghosts moving slowly over the snow. Brush and deadfall, the dark shadows of broken maples like warnings scrawled upon the drifts, but somewhere out there, far beyond the trees, she sees a light. Shivering now, her whole body beginning to shake, she knows that distant light is the only hope she has. Her clothes already begin to stiffen with the cold.
The bastards, the dirty bastards. Jordan Phelps wanting his revenge because Anna had the nerve to take him on and show him up for what he was. Branton along for the ride, not just to put a scare into her, but because he’d do whatever Jordan wanted, yeah, that was true, he’d follow Jordan anywhere. And Vaughn Foster, I wasn’t sure about him. He might have gone along with it, but Anna liked him, and I think he liked her too. Maybe he was just another victim. I guess I’d never know.
She sets off toward the light, her feet slipping on stones and fallen branches. She stumbles, sinks to her knees, forces herself to rise again. Pushes on, through the brush and fallen trees.Branches lash across her face, cut her battered cheeks. She raises a hand before her eyes, blunders on, breath sharp in her throat.She bounces off a tree, almost goes down again, but she keeps her feet moving, keeps them under her, pushes a branch away from her face, breaks through the line of trees, and the whole prairie lies before her, snow like a frayed and dirty sheet dropped upon the stubble field. She wavers above her aching legs. The light is straight ahead, warmth and safety waiting there, but she can’t stop the shaking.
She begins to walk again, the crust of snow clawing at her feet, trying to pull her down, but she keeps dragging one foot around, putting it in front of the other. She trips on something in the snow. Falls. Lies there a moment, the snow so soft beneath her. But there’s a light ahead somewhere; she knows she has to reach it. She gets her legs beneath her, crouches until her legs have the strength to lift her. Yes, the light is there.
She starts off again, leaning to her right — she can’t seem to help it — the light is side-stepping away from her. She pauses, shakes her head, goes straight toward it, but it’s slipping off again. She knows she’s staggering. Stops, her body shuddering, her hands quaking at her sides. She sinks into the snow.
“ — the kind of kid who always tried to do his best.” Coach Conley was delivering my brother’s eulogy. My parents, I suddenly noticed, were gazing at him as if every breath they took came straight from him. “Blake did not believe in giving up. I remember when he was in grade ten the Lightning football team was not the power it’s been the last two years. One Saturday afternoon, we were down by three touchdowns at halftime. The boys are all lying on the sidelines, chewing on oranges, wondering just how bad the score is going to be by the final whistle, wishing they could get it over with and go home right now, and this grade ten kid stands up, tells everybody he doesn’t know if they can win this game, but one thing he does know is that none of them are quitters, if they put their hearts back into it and all pull together, sure as shooting they can win the second half. It’s obvious the kid believes this himself, and pretty soon the other guys are starting to believe right along with him. They do outscore the other team the rest of the way, darn near pull out the victory. Because Blake Russell believed in them and in himself.”
Coach Conley paused, gazed out above the microphone in the chancel, gazed down at us. My parents stared back at him, their faces glowing, as if they could see my brother standing there beside him.
“Like I said, this was a kid who tried to do his best. He didn’t always succeed, but you knew he’d always try. And it’s true sometimes he made mistakes. He was human — just like the rest of us. But in all my years of coaching, I’ve seldom seen a boy with the sense of responsibility that he had.” Both my parents were crying now, but it was crazy — I was too damned rational to cry. Even then I was wondering if maybe Coach was getting kind of schmaltzy here, but the thing about it was, he pretty much had it right.
“When Blake made a mistake,” Coach continued, “he never forgot it. That was why we picked him for quarterback even though we knew he wasn’t the best athlete on the team. He might make a mistake, throw a pass, say, when he should have grounded the ball, but he was never going to make that same mistake again. That’s a good quality all right, but I’d have to say it’s a heavy burden too. When Blake Russell did something wrong, I don’t believe he ever forgave himself.”
There was a sudden noise, not much louder than a sigh, something like a gasp and moan combined, a stunted cry of pain. I didn’t have to look at either of my parents to know they turned toward me.
Coach Conley was going on about the kind of student my brother was, but his words were running together now, his hands dissolving on the lectern, his face a blur, his shoulders melting down, collapsing, and mine were shaking; I was digging at my eyes, the tears streaming for my brother.
After the relatives had all left for home, driving back to Saskatoon and Estevan, I helped my parents gather up the dishes, collect uneaten food in plastic bags and take them downstairs to the freezer. We stuffed all the dishes we could into the dishwasher, then with my mother washing, my father and I drying and putting things away, we finished off the other dishes, hardly saying a word, the washer whirring mournfully beneath the counter. I thought that if anybody got started, we might have to talk about the way my brother died, and I knew it was too soon for that. I couldn’t bear it yet. As soon as I’d set the last glass in the buffet, I went up to bed.
The room across the hall from mine was empty. It always would be now.
Lying in bed, I felt chilly, even with a comforter pulled over my blankets. The room was somewhat brighter than usual, the blind over my desk pulled just halfway down. I stared at the ceiling, the shadow above my bed dark and ominous, shivers rocking my spine. It was nothing but the shadow of the lighting fixture, but on the stippled ceiling of my bedroom it looked like a body lying on snow. If it had begun to move, crawling, staggering to its feet, I wouldn’t have been surprised.
Anna, I thought, oh Anna, you never had a chance. Those rotten bastards never gave you a chance. You didn’t know it, Anna, but I loved you, I would have done anything — no, that was craziness. I liked her because she always spoke to me, admired her for her nerve, felt sorry for the way she’d suffered, but that was not the same as love. I hardly knew her.
My brother was the one I loved.
My brother who was dead, dead and gone forever.
I hadn’t found a way to forgive him. And he couldn’t forgive himself.
Some time later I crawled out of bed and lowered the blind to the sill. Before I pulled it down, I stared a moment at the street outside. Though the traffic had worn the snow away, the whole street shimmered, pavement transformed to ice by the spare glow of moonlight. It was the street where we used to gather after school, a whole gang of kids, choosing sides for road hockey. My brother always picked me early so I wouldn’t be the last one taken.
“We need to talk,” my father said, coming into my room on Tuesday night. I’d gone back to school that day, was at my desk now, trying to scratch out a long enough descriptive paragraph to satisfy my English teacher.
“I’m kind of busy writing,” I said. “Got a paragraph that’s due tomorrow morning.”
“I’ve been standing at your door — must be nearly five minutes. Your pen hasn’t moved.”
“I’m thinking.”
“Maybe you need a break.”
I heard his feet pad across the floor, heard springs squeak. Knew he was sitting on the bed beside my desk. I kept my eyes on the sheet of foolscap, half a dozen lines scrawled at the top of the page.
“Before your brother died,” he said, his voice not quite his own when he pronounced the word ‘died’, “it was obvious something had gone wrong between the two of you. You were barely talking. You’ve been in a deep funk ever since.”
Get off my case, I thought, and suddenly I felt like hurting him. “Naturally,” I snapped. “My brother’s dead.” I felt sorry at once, turned to look at him, shaking my head, hoping he would take it for apology.
Sitting there on my bed, the mattress sunk below the level of my chair, he looked withered, older than his years.
“I don’t want to argue with you, Blair, but I think there’s something there you need to talk about.”
He was studying my face, and I tried not to blink.
You really want to hear this, I thought. What your son did to Amber, I could tell you that. Really hurt you. Yeah, might as well shove a knife between your ribs.
“What about it, Blair?”
I shook my head. Why couldn’t he just leave me alone?
“Blair?” He wasn’t going to quit. Leaning toward me, his right hand out as if he expected me to drop an offering in it, looking so pathetic.
“Okay,” I said. “Okay! There was something between us. I was mad as hell at him. Because of something he’d done.”
My father didn’t look surprised — just more tired than usual — and I knew I’d gone too far already. I didn’t want this leading to the truth.
“Don’t clam up now.”
“It wasn’t all that serious, but . . . well, it really got to me.” He was still leaning toward me, wanting more. Not serious, hell, another bloody lie, I was through lying. I’d tell him as much as he could handle. “Blake did something that was really stupid. I promised him I’d never tell anybody.”
“You need to tell me, Blair. For your own sake.”
“No, I don’t.”
“You do.” He stood up, stepped toward my chair. “Right now. I’m not leaving till you do.”
“You really want to know? You’ll be sorry.” He nodded. I had to tell him, there was no other way to get him out of here. “That night Blake came home so drunk, he wasn’t the only one like that. A bunch of them were drunk, a girl too, Amber Saunders. She passed out on Fosters’ lawn, and those guys — ” My voice was shaking now. “ — it wasn’t Blake’s idea, it was Jordan Phelps’ — they all stood there and . . . they peed on her.”
My father sat down, suddenly. He looked as if I’d hit him.
“Blake was sick about it. I said I wouldn’t tell you.” I took a deep breath, tried not to sob. “When Anna died — where she was beat up, the snow was all yellow. They’d done the same thing. That’s why I thought it was Blake. But I was wrong. He’d never do anything like that again.”
My father had tears in his eyes. “I see,” he said. “That’s what was going on.” I could barely hear him.
“I wasn’t supposed to tell. I promised.” And then I broke down, sobbing like a fool. I’d betrayed my bother.
“The two of you,” he said, his voice louder now, “you were both going through hell.”
“Yeah.”
He stood up again, bent toward me and gave me an awkward hug in my chair. “You were right to tell, Blair. Some things need saying, or they just eat away inside.”
I thought he was finished, but he sat back down, taking his weight on his hands, and pushed himself across the bed until he was leaning against the wall. “I know you loved your brother.”
“Of course, I did!” Was he going to stay here all night and make stupid comments?
“Yes.” He looked almost relaxed with his back resting on the wall. His eyelids slowly closed. “The thing is, I think you’re still angry with him.”
“Maybe I am.” I was surprised at his statement, surprised at my response.
His eyes were still shut, but he had more to say. “Judge not, and ye shall not be judged; condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned.” His eyes flicked open, held me like spotlights on a deer. “Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven.”
“I don’t think I believe that stuff anymore.” I said it, angered by the way he was always going to the Bible now, but I might have been afraid that he was right. I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand.
My father looked hurt. “It’s been serving people well for centuries, advice on how to conduct our affairs, how to live. It’s been good enough for more brilliant people than we can imagine, people a lot smarter than we’ll ever be.”
There was something in what he said, I know, but his Bible-spouting inflamed me. I wanted to take him on. “How come every time you turn around they’re changing what it says?”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s the King James Version, the New Revised Version, the Jerusalem Bible, the Good News Bible. I don’t know how many others.”
“The language might change a bit, they make the same point.”
“How do we know it isn’t all a load of crap? Every version of it pure bullshit.”
“Blair! You’re angry. You don’t know what you’re saying.” He was rigid against the wall, trying to hold his temper.
“I know exactly what I’m saying. If God had any power at all, he would’ve kept Blake alive.”
“Don’t blame God!” he said, his voice rising as he heaved himself across the bed. “Don’t you dare blame God!” He grabbed me by the hand, squeezed it tight. “And don’t blame yourself. You mustn’t do that.” His grip like pliers on my fingers.
I felt tears stinging my eyes again.
He noticed, dropped my hand at once. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
I could still feel the pressure of his fingers, but it wasn’t that. He’d squeezed my hand exactly the way that Blake had squeezed it, the last time I’d seen him.
If I didn’t say something, I knew I was going to cry again, but I’d done enough of that already, crying for Blake, crying for myself. “Whose fault is it then?”
My father shrugged. Hesitated, ducked his head. Then he said something that surprised me, something I’d often heard from mouthy kids spouting off at school, something I never thought I’d hear from him. “Shit happens. It gets smeared everywhere. It’s just part of life. What matters is that we figure out a way to handle it.” He reached for me again, put his arms around me, held me, my head buried against his chest.
If he looked he would see that my cheek was wet, but he wasn’t going to hear me crying any more. I let him hold me till I was certain my voice wouldn’t waver when I spoke.
“I want to see where he died,” I said.
After my father talked to him — I have no idea what he said to convince him, or even if it was difficult — Mr. Hammond agreed to show us around. It’s still the only time in my life I’ve ridden in a cop car. My father sat in the passenger seat, and I was in the back, a Plexiglas screen separating me from the front seat and the driver. My mother chose to stay at home. She said there was nothing there she needed to see. Or wanted to see.
We drove through the city parking lot, past sites reserved for the mayor, the chief of police, the city commissioner, entered the police station through a huge grey door, which rose before us exactly like the automatic door in our garage at home. When Mr. Hammond shut the engine off, I glanced out the car’s rear window, the door dropping closed behind us. Mr. Hammond got out of the car and opened the back door for me.
“Blake came down to the station himself,” he said, “through the front door, but this is where they brought the others in. It’s a secure bay.”
I looked around me. Drab blank walls without a window, a wire cage full of bicycles, probably stolen, bikes that had somehow been recovered, another cage with three cases of beer locked inside it. Mr. Hammond saw me looking at the beer. “Evidence,” he said, but offered no further explanation. It was all new to me. When I’d been down to see Blake, I’d come through the street entrance with Ms. McKinnel.
Mr. Hammond led us to a metal door, punched four numbers into a key pad, swung the door open, motioned for us to enter. When I hesitated, my father stepped into the station first. Following behind him now, I saw a brightly lit hall, the kind you might find in any office building. It didn’t seem like a jail.
I felt foolish, holding back like that, and turned to Mr. Hammond. “Which way’s the basement?”
He looked puzzled. “You want to see the basement?”
“Aren’t the cells down there?”
“No. Cells are this way.” He must have seen my ears begin to burn because he quickly added, “I guess in the old building they were in the basement. Before my time. I dare say, it wasn’t the best place for a lockup.”
Was I thinking about a dungeon? Was that what it was? Stone walls and darkness, dank smells, prisoners clinging to iron bars.
We walked along the hall and passed a central desk, a clerk doing paperwork, a monitor on a shelf in front of him. Mr. Hammond led us through a doorway, its metal door wide open. I noticed a video camera mounted high on the wall beyond the door.
“No one in the cells today,” Mr. Hammond said. “That’s the case a lot of the time.” He motioned to another open door. “We can take a look at a cell if you like. They’re all the same.”
The three of us stood a moment in the empty hall. I saw my father turn to Mr. Hammond and raise his eyebrows.
“Yes, well,” he said, “I guess you might say this is where it started.” He took half a dozen steps down the hall and pointed to another sliding door. “Right here.” So that was the door he’d hit.
We already knew what had happened.
Mr. Hammond had come over to the house himself to tell us the story, to make sure we got the details straight. I remembered how hard it was for him, crushing his cap in his hand, seated in our living room on the same chair where he’d sat for my parents’ open house at Epiphany, my mother sobbing on the couch, but, although he glanced more than once toward our front door, he made no attempt to leave until he was sure he’d answered all my parents’ questions.
I stared at the cell door. Metal hard and solid as a wall, the kind of thing you might expect to see on a bunker in a bomb shelter. We were standing where he had stood. I knew I could close my eyes and see it happen.
The guys are wearing handcuffs as two officers escort them down the hall. They all walk slowly, as if they’d prefer to remain in their individual cells rather than have to face a judge together. My brother’s in the lead, Jordan Phelps a step or two behind him. Vaughn Foster and Todd Branton are even farther back. They shuffle along, seem to dawdle until an officer says, “Move along, eh. We’re not going to a picnic.”
That’s when Jordan Phelps speaks, his voice so quiet only one of the men is close enough to catch the words. “Bastard, you’re the one who killed her.”
But as he speaks, he lunges at my brother, ramming him from behind, his shoulder driving Blake into the metal door.
Blake’s head slams against the door, snaps back. Before anyone can catch him, he falls over backwards, landing hard, his head bouncing on the floor.
One of the officers shoves Jordan aside, the other pulls Blake to his feet, asks if he’s okay. Blake nods his head, and they lead him down the hall to face the judge. After that, he doesn’t speak to anyone.
I was staring at the door. It was solid metal, not a bar on it. A window so thick, you suspected even a brick wouldn’t crack it.
Mr. Hammond must have noticed me. “It’s a sliding door,” he said. “Once it’s shut, nothing budges it but us.”
I had to ask the question. “Is this the cell where he — ?” But I couldn’t say it.
Mr. Hammond frowned. He walked down the hall and nodded toward an open door.
We stepped through the doorway. There were no bars anywhere; the cell was made of concrete. A stainless steel toilet on the far wall, a sink attached to it, also stainless steel. There was no toilet seat, I noted, and no handles, the water in both sink and toilet controlled by pressing buttons. The bed was in the corner, but there was no bed frame. The mattress, which looked thin, lay on what seemed to be a shelf of solid steel. The whole place cold and sterile. I couldn’t imagine spending a single night here.
“Not much to see,” said Mr. Hammond. He looked uncomfortable. “It’s basically your bare room.”
My father was already backing out the door, but I was staring at the vent on the wall above the sink. I had to be sure. “This is . . . where he did it?”
Mr. Hammond took a deep breath, let it slowly out. “He must’ve been depressed as hell. That, and the knock on the head, maybe. We had his shoe laces, his belt, but he took off his shirt, ripped it into strips. Knotted them together, tied a noose in one end.” Mr. Hammond was talking faster now; he’d already told us what had happened, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself. “Only way he could’ve reached the vent would be by standing on the sink there. Somehow he got his line threaded through the vent. Clerk at the desk checks the cells on a regular schedule, saw him hanging there. Lord, he was still warm when they got to him, but they couldn’t bring him back.”
Right here was where it happened — because I lost my patience with him, because I wouldn’t wait and turned the others in. Because Jordan Phelps figured Blake had ratted on him and labelled Blake the killer.
I was leaning on the door, the metal hard and chill beneath my palm, my forehead resting on what seemed a slab of ice, when I felt my father’s hand fall upon my shoulder. He pulled me to him then and wrapped me in his arms. A while after that I heard his voice behind me.
“Thanks, Ham,” he said. “I don’t know if it will help, but I think we’ve seen enough.”
A few minutes later, Mr. Hammond drove us home.
Another night of staring at the ceiling, my legs, my arms taut as the metal frame on the bed.
I’d gone through everything — well, almost everything — tried to keep it all in order, see it as it happened. For three years after Blake’s death, my parents went about their business the same as usual, but they moved as if they were hypnotized, as if they’d been told what was expected of them, but they couldn’t quite get it right. For a while my father talked about leaving the Diocese of Qu’Appelle and applying for a transfer to Rupertsland, but my mother wouldn’t think of moving east to Winnipeg. This was our home, she said, we weren’t going to leave it.
Sometimes in the evening when I walked by my father’s den, I’d see him hunched over his desk and wonder if he’d been crying. If he did cry, he made sure I never heard him, never saw his tears. Once or twice, when he was conducting a funeral I’d hear him hesitate in the middle of his homily, and I’d think that he was struggling to control his feelings, but I couldn’t be sure. He kept going because he had his faith to keep him going. So did my mother.
I never saw her cry but once after my brother’s funeral. Late one evening they were at the dining room table, the last time my father talked about a transfer. “No,” she said, “we’re staying here.” They’d done nothing wrong, she added, and neither had Blake, not really. I suspect my father never told her about what had happened that night in Fosters’ yard. I knew I’d never tell her. She had enough to deal with.
“Paul,” she added after a pause, “you gave Blair some advice one night, and he took it — nothing wrong in that.” Then she was crying, tears running down her cheeks, her chest heaving as she strained for breath. My father was so surprised, he didn’t move for a minute. By the time he got to her, she had her handkerchief out, was dabbing at her eyes.
“It was me that was wrong,” she said as he bent awkwardly towards her, putting his arms around her. “I was angry, crazy with anger. Pulling away from both of you. When we should have been talking. We might have been able to help Blake. To help each other.”
“I didn’t know what to do,” I said. I thought I was going to cry too.
“Don’t know why it is,” my father said, “but sometimes it’s easier to talk with people in the parish you hardly know.” Although one arm was still around my mother, he reached toward me with his other hand and squeezed my shoulder. “Instead of the ones you love.”
“Well,” said my mother, “well. I guess that’s sometimes how it is.” She leaned against his chest for just a moment. “It’s okay, Paul. I’m all right now.”
When he released her, she reached for her coffee cup and took another swallow. “I was wrong about something else too,” she said, “saying what I said that night. As if Indians didn’t matter.” She dumped what was left of her coffee into the sink. “I’m going up to bed. I’ve got things to do tomorrow.”
The next morning, she started phoning people in the parish, proposing that on the second Sunday of every month it should be a parish project to bring donations for the food bank. That very day she went up to Canadian Tire and bought a huge rubber tub to hold whatever food was collected. I wondered if she was trying to ease her guilt, but I thought it best not to ask.
Amber Saunders came back to Palliser for the trial. Her family had moved to Saskatoon in the second semester of grade nine, Amber so cowed by events of that fall, by the talk that always swirled around her, she must’ve been glad to get away. At school in Palliser, it seemed, her eyes never left the floor. Even then, as green as I was, I was smart enough to see that whenever a guy or guys did something to a girl, it was usually the girl that everybody talked about, the girl whose reputation suffered. Saskatoon had to be a sanctuary after that. Still, when she gave her testimony, she was able to take the stand and describe how Anna Big Sky had angered Jordan Phelps. She didn’t look at Jordan, but her voice never faltered.
It was a murder trial, of course, all three guys charged with first-degree murder, but the lawyers must’ve had some kind of weird influence on the jury, maybe the judge too, because even Jordan Phelps was convicted of nothing more than manslaughter. In his instructions to the jury the judge seemed to favour the boys who were alive over the girl who was dead. He emphasized that, except for a single liquor charge, these were boys with no criminal records, and they were all drunk, a fact that he said merited some consideration. He reminded members of the jury that the girl had been alive when they abandoned her, that she had, in fact, walked at least the distance of a city block.
After the verdict was announced, a Sioux chief from Wood Mountain spoke to the press on behalf of the Big Sky family. “This isn’t justice,” he said. “The family’s outraged. It should be murder in the first degree. This one boy, he wanted to kill her, and that’s exactly what they did. It was clearly racism.”
I have no idea what the jury considered in their deliberations, but you had to feel for Anna’s family. They couldn’t help but be furious.
I thought it significant that, a week after the verdict, when the judge did the sentencing, he spoke of the repugnance of a crime so marked by brutality and degradation. The offenders, he said, were despicable cowards. He hadn’t used those terms before, and I wondered if he was trying to make amends for the influence he’d had with his soft charge to the jury.
Jordan Phelps got the stiffest sentence, but it was only six and a half years. There was a series of letters to the paper after the sentencing, a big stink, in fact, but it didn’t change a thing. Anna was still gone, and my brother too — his life snuffed out in an instant, and it’s weird as hell, but for some reason I remembered that hawk in our backyard, falling on its prey, my mother startled, her hand at her mouth, suds dripping from her chin. There’s the fate we face, I’m sure. It can strike at any time. Somehow we have to find a way to live with it.
“Forgive,” my father said, “and ye shall be forgiven.” Advice he found, I’ve long since learned, in the Gospel according to St Luke, and good advice it is, no doubt. Sometimes, though, it takes a while before you find a way to forgive yourself. When you know in your heart that if you weren’t so pig-headed, if you’d sat down and talked to your brother, if you’d only levelled with him, things might have been different.
I’m older now than my brother when he died, and still I sometimes think I feel his hand gripping mine, his eyes imploring me, the moment already passing when I might have told him I understood his shame, his need to lie to me. The moment when I didn’t speak.