A waving arm appeared out of the passenger window as two short honks sounded from the horn. Grace let out a deep breath. Eddie felt her body relax.
The car interior was too dark to see the faces of the people inside. All Eddie could make out were shadows against the rear window—a man at the wheel, a woman passenger, and a small head tucked between them in the middle. Red dingle-balls hanging above the rear-view mirror shook each time the wheels hit a pothole.
The car pulled up between the woodshed and house. When the engine was switched off, water that dripped on the hot mufflers sounded like sighing breaths. Steam rising from underneath smelled sweet, and as the motor cooled, it ticked like an alarm clock. The passenger door opened with a dry groan, and a woman emerged draping a sweater over her shoulders; her clothes looked brand new. She had on dark glasses and wore a red beaded necklace with matching earrings, belt, and purse. Eddie couldn’t take his eyes off her jutting, wedge-shaped bosom.
The lady reached up and removed her dark glasses. “Hello, Grace.”
Grace smiled and touched her arm. “Oh, Isabel. You look like a million bucks. I never get visitors, and who shows up? Elizabeth Taylor.”
The lady laughed. “We haven’t seen you for so long I figured it was time for a visit. How long has it been, three years?”
Eddie watched as the driver’s door opened and a tall man eased out of the car as if he were unfolding himself. He had a flat-top crew cut, his sharp cheekbones looked like they were about to poke through his skin, and there were deep lines on both sides of his mouth. His face looked like it had been carved from a smooth block of golden cedar.
Eddie saw a small tattoo of a cross on the back of the man’s right hand when he adjusted his pants. Running the palms of his hands along the sides of his head just above the cigarette tucked behind his ear, the man thrust out his jaw like he was pulling his neck skin out from a tight collar. His white shirt was unbuttoned below his chest, and the sleeves were rolled up. Eddie saw a larger tattoo on his left arm when he stepped around the front of the car. He wore black dress pants with sharp creases that ran from his belt down to polished cowboy boots.
“Grace Toma. Who the hell said she died?” the man said laughing.
“Hello, Ray. I thought you were a chauffeur for a movie star.”
The man turned and looked at Eddie. His eyes were the colour of tea, and his frown made his smile look like a sneer. “Hello, Eddie.”
Eddie wondered who the man was, how he knew his name, and why he was looking at him like he knew every bad thing he had ever done. The man motioned away from the car with a quick jerk of his head.
“Gregory. Get out here.”
There was no movement inside.
“Eddie, you come over here.”
Eddie had no desire to do what the man wanted. He was fine right where he was. Ray reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out two sticks of gum. Eddie immediately recognized the yellow wrapper with silver foil poking out each end. He could tell it was Juicy Fruit a mile away.
“Soon as you boys do something for me, you can have these.”
Eddie stepped forward as the boy jumped out of the car. They looked the same age, but Eddie was a little taller. Gregory wore a brand-new shirt and a pair of pants, and the front went up to his chest with a strap that went around his neck. It looked like a baby’s bib. Gregory looked at the flowers on Eddie’s blue pants but didn’t say anything. They stood side by side looking up at Ray. “If you find me an old bird nest, you can have the gum. Okay? But it can’t be just any old nest. It’s got to be a robin’s nest. That’s what I’m looking for.”
They nodded.
“Well, don’t just stand there. Get a move on.”
Eddie looked at Gregory. “I know where one is. I seen it.”
The boys turned and ran. They heard Ray’s laughter until they were well into the trees.
They swung around thorn bushes, jumped over logs, and ducked under low-hanging boughs until they came to the place where Eddie had seen two turquoise eggs resting on the ground inches away from an overturned nest. Each time Eddie had come across robin’s eggs, he’d thought they looked out of place. Their colour didn’t look real. He’d even tried scratching the shell with his thumbnail to see if the colour came off.
Eddie had laid the nest over the eggs to protect them. But now the nest had been turned over, and one egg was in two pieces as if someone had cracked it open and placed the shells back down on the ground. He drew in his breath.
“What?” Gregory asked.
“Something broke my egg.”
“How do you know?”
“Well, look. It was good before, and now something broke it and took out the baby robin. I covered it up and everything.”
“Maybe it flew away?”
“Baby robins can’t fly.”
“Maybe it walked away?”
Eddie placed the shells inside the nest, and they rushed back to the house.
Ray was taking groceries out of brown paper bags when Eddie handed him the nest. He looked at the boys with a puzzled expression.
“What’s this for?” he asked.
“You wanted it,” Gregory said.
“I never said I wanted a bird’s nest, did I?”
“Ray, give them the gum,” Isabel said.
Ray held out the gum toward the boys. They each grabbed a stick, but Ray wouldn’t release his grip. Eddie looked at his mother for help, but she looked away. Taking a larger hold of the gum, Eddie pulled hard just as Ray let go. He stumbled backward, embarrassed by the laughter, but held the gum tightly in his fist. He licked the inside of the foil wrapper before he folded the stick of gum into his mouth, and dashed outside with Gregory.
“Hey, hey, hey. Wait a minute,” Grace shouted. “Don’t you go near that river, Eddie. You hear?”
Eddie nodded. They jumped off the steps and were gone. Leaping over small puddles, Eddie led the way down to the hollow cottonwood. As Gregory looked at the tree stump that seemed out of place, Eddie tossed a rock into the undergrowth. When Gregory looked away, Eddie ducked inside the tree. Gregory turned around and Eddie was nowhere in sight. When Eddie reappeared, Gregory was amazed.
They walked deeper into the bush through a poplar grove. The trees seemed to wait for the boys to walk underneath before releasing the rain trapped on their leaves to sprinkle down their necks like cold fingers. The sounds of sticks breaking underfoot sent a squirrel speeding up to the high part of a cedar where it chattered down at them as if cursing.
Eddie pushed aside a salmonberry bush, and they stepped out onto the bank of the river. The sunlight was so bright that it hurt their eyes. A dragonfly speeding above the water’s edge like an air-plane looked like it was placing rings onto the surface with its tail. A haze rose from the damp grass on the riverbank like steam from a kettle. They tossed rocks and sticks into the water until Eddie heard his mother calling.
“Don’t say where we went,” he said to Gregory.
That night in the bedroom Lewis slept at their feet while Gregory and Eddie talked and laughed. Finally Gregory fell asleep. Eddie lay awake, thinking about what he and Gregory had done that day and wondering if there was anything better in the world than finding a friend.
The gas lamp in the kitchen spread light across the bed and threw shadows onto the bedroom wall. He listened to the grownups sitting at the kitchen table smoking cigarettes, their spoons ringing off mugs of tea, their conversation kept low.
Footsteps approached the bedroom. Eddie narrowed his eyes to slits. Someone stood beside the bed looking down at them. Then the door squeaked until the light shrank to a crack. The footsteps walked away.
“They’re all asleep,” Ray said. “I’m going outside.”
The front door closed.
“So Eddie is going to grade one this fall. Are you sending him to the reserve school?” Isabel asked.
“No. He’s going to Falkland,” Grace answered.
“Falkland?” Isabel sounded surprised. “Oh, it’s gonna be rough. He’ll prob’ly be the only Indian there. I can already hear the name-calling.”
“I thought about it a long time,” Grace said. “Mom and me both. She’s the one said we needed to move up here so he could go to the white school. Eddie needs to know how it’s gonna be. It’s not the same as when we were that age. Remember when we rode horses to the reserve school? Remember all the cousins and friends laughing and playing and thinking we had everything in the world?
“Well, where are they now? They’re sitting in their shacks on the reserve, just like I’m doing. Sure, some of them have jobs, but I don’t want Eddie sitting around waiting for his luck to change. He has to be ready to get out there when he’s finished school. I want him to get a good job and have money so he doesn’t have to live like this. He’s a smart kid. He’ll figure it out. He has to.” Grace looked around the room. Then she sat up straight. “What are you guys doing up here, Isabel?”
“Ray wanted to see if anybody heard anything about his sister. It’s over four years now she’s been gone.”
“It’s been that long already? I thought the police said they knew what happened.”
“They don’t know. They’re just guessing. All they said was they found her purse and shoes in the middle of a bridge in Vancouver. They think she jumped into the Fraser River and drowned. But Ray said, how do they know that it’s her shoes anyway? Somebody could have stolen her purse too. If Ray could at least bury her, maybe he wouldn’t think about her so much. I just think how lucky it was Gregory was staying with us by then.”
“Poor Delphine,” Grace said softly.
Eddie had just closed his eyes when he heard the front door open. Then he heard the creak of a chair as someone sat down. All talk had stopped, and it was quiet until Grace spoke in a clear voice.
“I can tell you got something to say, Ray. So you better get it off your chest. Spit it out.”
Ray slid his chair close to the table. “Yeah, I’m gonna say something to you, Grace. You can go right ahead and get mad if you want, but I’m gonna say it anyways. Looks like things is really going to the dogs around here. It’s not good. Not good at all. I don’t know how you don’t freeze to death in winter. I bet there’s no insulation anywhere in the house, and that old heater stove looks ready to fall apart anytime. The walls inside are made of paper, and I can feel a breeze across my back just sittin’ here. Christ, one morning you and your kids are gonna wake up dead.”
“What business is that of yours?” Grace asked coldly.
When Eddie heard the warning tone in his mother’s voice, he crawled out of bed and watched through the door crack.
“Eddie starts school this fall, right? It’s one thing to let him run around here in girl clothes, but you send him to school dressed like that and he’ll get his ass kicked every day. I seen them pants he was wearing and them pink boots. Good God, you don’t know what you might be doing to a boy when you dress him up like that. You trying to turn him into a queer?”
Eddie looked down at his pants on the floor. His girl pants.
“Who do you think you’re talking to?” Grace asked. “Just ’cause I’m not a man doesn’t mean I can’t cut wood. You come up here all shined up with money jingling in your pockets like a big shot and you think you can tell me what I’m doing wrong? When was the last time you put a gopher in a stew and told your kids it was rabbit? I bet you never had to do that. And since when does anybody give a damn about them except me and my mom, huh?”
Gopher stew and girl clothes. Eddie wondered what was to come next.
“I know it ain’t been easy,” Ray said. “All I’m saying is, if the Indian agent came out here today and seen how you lived, he’d grab your kids and send them off to residential school. They can do that, you know. They can just drive in with some cops and take away your family, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. That’s what almost happened to my sister Delphine after her old man left her. She laid around feeling sorry for herself the same as you’re doing now. And don’t say you’re not. It’s a good thing we got Gregory outta there when we did. Next thing you know, she took off for the big city, and nobody’s heard from her since.
“She used to tell me to mind my own damn business. I did, and look what happened. If you tell me to, I’ll walk out the door, and we’ll leave you alone. But you never used to be like this, Grace. If you don’t stop feelin’ sorry for yourself and smarten up pretty quick, you’re gonna end up the same way. You can’t just sit around waiting for the Indian department to do something. You have to do it on your own. Your boys need a man to straighten them out, or Jesus H. Christ, the next thing you know, you’ll have them both wearing dresses.”
Grace replied angrily, but Ray wouldn’t back down. From time to time, when their voices rose to near shouts, Isabel had to calm them down so they wouldn’t wake the children. As the conversation went on and their voices lowered, Eddie crawled back into bed.
The next morning Gregory and Eddie were awakened by the laughter of people trying to talk at the same time. Eddie saw a pair of folded corduroy overalls on the floor where his girl pants had been. He pulled them on and hurried out before he missed anything. Eddie smiled when he saw his grandma and Uncle Alphonse sitting at the table, even though his uncle didn’t have much use for kids. Grandma held Lewis on her lap while she blew on a steaming mug of tea. When she saw Eddie, the wrinkles on her face gathered in a smile.
The room smelled of fresh coffee. A crowded frying pan of bacon and eggs popped and spat fat onto the surface of the hot stove, sending up white puffs of smoke. Eddie sat beside his grandma, who filled his plate with fried potatoes, eggs, bacon, and toast made with town bread. The bread his mom had baked the day before was nowhere in sight, which pleased him, because if it wasn’t fresh out of the oven, the crust would be so hard it cut his mouth. A small tin of peanut butter in the centre of the table caught Eddie’s eye. He had tasted peanut butter only once before but remembered its creamy flavour.
“We’ve been workin’ with this one guy for years. He’s got clean cabins and he’ll do anything to help because he wants good workers that’ll stay until the picking is done,” Ray said. “He gives you a little cash every Saturday and pays you when you’re finished or when you ask for it. He’s even got a list of other farmers that are looking for workers when his crop’s done. We’ll stay in one cabin so we can save money, and Grandma can do the cooking for us and look after the kids. If you tell the Indian agent in Vernon you got a job but no money to get there, he’ll give you some to get you started. If you’re leaving town, those buggers can’t give it to you fast enough.”
Isabel said, “We’ll go into Seattle to this big army and navy store. You should see all the stuff they got, and it’s cheap too, a lot cheaper than here. When summer’s over you can come home with money and everything you always wanted. What do you think about that, Grace?”
“I’d like to get a truck so I can go out to get wood and go into town without having to always depend on other people for a ride. When are you going?”
“Day after tomorrow,” Ray said. “You get all your stuff packed up, and we’ll go to the Indian office first thing so you can see about money. We don’t have any room in the car because we need to pick up a few things, so you’ll have to take the train. I can drop you guys off at the station, and we’ll be waitin’ for you at the end of the line in Yakima. You never know, when you get back, Alphonse might have found himself a cook by then, eh Alphonse? You old mink.”
“You go right ahead and pick them weeds in the hot sun. I’ll stay right here,” Alphonse said.
“After that we’ll head on down to California for the macaroni harvest. They say you can make a lot of money picking that stuff. That macaroni comes off the plant by the handful, and you can fill over a hundred boxes in one day, I heard,” Ray said grinning.
“Baloney harvest, more like it,” Grace said. She turned to her mother. “What do you think about going back down to the States, Mom?”
Grandma nodded. “My mom looked after you and Alphonse while I went out and picked apples. Wonder if anybody I worked with in the orchards is still around there. Our fingers were always red and dry after picking all day, but we made each other laugh with a good story. Used to visit a lot more then.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what I’m talking about. They’re prob’ly all dead now.”
That afternoon Eddie and Gregory giggled when the car turned toward Vernon’s town park. Saturday afternoon was the busiest time in Polson Park. Cars, trucks, motorcycles, and bicycles were parked off to the side of the tree-lined road. Some people pushed baby carriages while others lay on blankets on the grass. Children gathered around the slides and swings. The car had barely come to a stop before Eddie and Gregory bolted out onto the grass. With no weeds to slow them or thorny limbs to scratch and grab at their clothes, the boys raced to the fountain, circled around it twice, and ran back without stopping.
Hot dog buns, wieners—the uncooked kind, Eddie’s favourite—potato chips, bottles of pop, a package of doughnuts covered in powdered sugar, and small jars of ketchup and mustard were laid out on a blanket spread on the ground.
Eddie was given a hot dog and a paper cup filled with pop. Ray held out a paper bag so everyone could see five Popsicles inside.
“Everybody can have one when you’re finished eating all your food. But if you leave the table, that’s it. Dinner’s over.”
Eddie watched a red kite with a long tail zigzag across the sky while a boy with a squirt gun chased a group of screaming girls. As he began to get up, Grace pushed down on his shoulder and told him to finish his hot dog. He wiped his hands on his pants and drank the pop down with a gulp.
Children by a pond were tossing chunks of bread to the ducks. A small piece of his hot dog bun had broken off and was the right size for throwing. Eddie couldn’t sit still any longer; his legs were itching to run. He picked up the piece of bread and ran toward the ducks but stopped and came back.
“Come on, Gregory. Let’s go,” he called.
Gregory didn’t move.
“Gregory,” he called again.
But Gregory kept his head down and wouldn’t look at Eddie. Grace grabbed his arm and pulled Eddie down to the ground. Ray brushed the crumbs off his pants, picked up the paper bag, and began handing out the treats. Eddie reached out his hand.
“Nope. I told you. If you leave the table before you finish eating, you don’t get one.”
Eddie’s eyes filled with tears. He glanced over at his mother, but she looked away and took a bite from her hot dog. When Eddie saw Ray grinning, the tears ran down his cheeks.
The next morning everyone squeezed into Ray’s car. Before Eddie knew what was happening, he was standing on the platform of the Vernon train station watching Gregory wave goodbye from the back seat as the car pulled away and turned a corner. Grace led him quickly inside the station with Grandma and Lewis following behind. It wasn’t long until Eddie forgot Gregory to watch a new and exciting world hurtle past the train window.