SEPTEMBER 3
EARLY IN THE MORNING Wyatt and I sat at the table, both of us quiet while he ate breakfast. Ernest had gotten up early, around six thirty, to take a walk. He was now sitting outside on the deck, drinking his coffee and reading the newspaper.
I found myself staring at Wyatt while he ate. His eyes were brown and sleepy, a bit of soot in his lashes. He was dressed for school and ready to go on time, wearing a collared shirt and khaki pants. I had gotten up at seven, not able to fall back asleep, so I made waffles and bacon, which Wyatt devoured. He drank two glasses of orange juice quickly. He was surprisingly calm, adept at making himself appear relaxed and steady.
“I’ll drive you to school this week,” I told him. “But you’ll need to ride the bus home. It will drop you off at the edge of the road, down by the pond. It isn’t a far walk.”
“Will you be there when I get off ?”
“I didn’t know if you’d be embarrassed, so I thought you could walk here. My kids used to get embarrassed if Ernest and I waited for them.”
“I’m not too embarrassed about things like that,” he said. “Hey, does Mr. Echota always drink coffee outside in the morning? It reminds me of my dad.”
“Oh, what does your dad do?”
“He’s in jail for another DUI. Does Mr. Echota drink much?”
“Not really. Not anymore.”
I wanted him to tell me more about his family. I only knew what Bernice had told me, that his mother was out of the state and his father was in jail. But I realized we were running late, so I got my purse and Wyatt put his backpack on. I didn’t tell Ernest we were leaving, since we were in such a hurry. It took about fifteen minutes to get to Wyatt’s school from our house, but we made it on time, and as he got out of the car, I told him to call if he needed anything. “You don’t need to call Bernice,” I said. “You can call me directly.”
“I don’t have your phone number,” he said. He stood at the door, looking around, nervous. I borrowed a pencil and wrote down my cell for him on one of his notebooks.
“There you go,” I said. “Call if you need anything. Don’t worry. Just call, okay?”
He shut the door and started to walk away. Watching him, I felt something inside me fall apart.
ONWARD! I HAD PLENTY TO DO to keep myself busy. I told myself I needed to get the details in order for Ray-Ray’s anniversary bonfire, and I also needed to call Edgar. When I arrived home I saw that Ernest was still sitting on the back porch, so I sat at the table and made a grocery list for the bonfire. We needed a dessert. We needed meat and fresh vegetables. Our meal would be plentiful, but it would take time to prepare for the family. I started writing out what I wanted to share aloud in remembrance of Ray-Ray. I wrote: I remember when you were little and liked to pick blackberries with me alongside the road. You always loved picking blackberries with me. I set the pen down and stared into the table, thinking. But nothing else came.
I got my phone from my purse and called Edgar, praying he would answer. It went to his voice mail. “Edgar,” I said. “Please call me when you get a minute, honey. I really need to talk to you.”
I sat at the table, thinking about Edgar and wondering whether he was at home or out using someplace, roaming the streets. It terrified me to think he was around dangerous people whose lives hung on the cusp of tragedy. I prayed silently for him to live, to think about us and want to come home. In the kitchen I poured a cup of coffee, then went outside to check on Ernest. He was leaning forward, looking out at the water.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
“I’m looking for signs,” he said. “Spirits, messengers, anything.” He turned and looked at me, and I could see the seriousness in his face. “That boy,” he said.
“Wyatt.”
“No, Ray-Ray.”
I tried not to let it bother me. I tried to think about what I was going to do about the bonfire, who was going to run things, since Ernest was not mentally able to. I thought he might burn himself trying to start the fire. It was too dangerous in his condition.
“We should be careful talking about spirits in front of him,” I said. “Wyatt comes from a broken home. His mother has left, his father is in jail.”
“All the talk of music and movies last night.”
He remembered their conversation from last night. This was something of a surprise.
“Ray-Ray liked to collect records, too,” he said. “Remember he liked jazz? I’m almost positive he alphabetized his records.”
ERNEST WENT FOR ANOTHER WALK while I drove to the grocery store to get food and drinks for the bonfire. I called Sonja while I pushed the grocery cart down the aisle. “Papa’s memory is getting better,” I told her. “It just happened last night. He remembered his mother and father. He remembered Ray-Ray’s records.”
“Oh my God,” Sonja said.
“I don’t know why or what’s going on, but something is working.”
“Is it the meds?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “You’ll have to come over and see.”
When I returned home, Ernest helped me put the groceries up.
“How are you feeling?” I asked him.
“I’m feeling good,” he said. He opened the pantry and set cans on a shelf. When we’d finished, he went to the couch to take a nap. I sat in the chair and watched him sleep, then grew sleepy myself and dozed off in the chair.
When I woke, it was time for Wyatt to be heading home. The bus was supposed to drop him off down at the end of the road. I told Ernest we should stand on the porch rather than wait for him at the stop even though he said he wouldn’t be embarrassed. We waited for fifteen minutes after the bus was supposed to arrive, but there was no Wyatt. The road was empty.
“Where is he?” I said. “Maybe the bus is late?”
“Call someone,” Ernest said.
I went inside to get my phone and called the school. I started thinking the worst: he was attacked, assaulted, got into trouble, had to stay in the principal’s office or detention. A nightmare, having to deal with that. But the office receptionist was no help.
“Did anything bad happen at school to him?” I asked. “Did he get picked on?”
While I was on hold, waiting for her to check with the teachers, I told Ernest we needed to start looking for Wyatt. We started down the road, Ernest walking beside me, looking confused. I felt a quick jolt of panic, wondering if Wyatt had run away after getting off the bus. Maybe he didn’t like it with us after all. Maybe he wanted to be elsewhere and would send Bernice to pick up his belongings. It didn’t seem right, though. In the morning he had been happy. Maybe he’d gotten picked on during the bus ride home. Maybe another kid made fun of him. Had he gotten into a fight? What else could possibly go wrong?
“I knew it,” I said aloud, but Ernest didn’t respond. “I knew he’d have a bad day.”
When the receptionist got back on the line, she said there were no problems with Wyatt at school. The buses had all left. I hung up and thought about calling Bernice, but Ernest and I kept walking quickly. As we got to the end of the road, I saw Wyatt up ahead and felt a strong surge of relief. There he was with a group of other kids from school, huddled in the open field across the road from where the bus dropped them off. There were ten or twelve kids total in the field, in two separate groups, which surprised me until we walked closer.
“They’re playing football,” Ernest said.
Sure enough, Wyatt had organized an entire game of touch football. We crossed the road to the edge of the field. He was giving directions to both teams, playing referee. We heard him shouting, calling one boy “Captain Oblivious” and another “Blockhead.” They were both bigger than Wyatt, but taking his orders like lost children. He removed his cap and threw it to the ground, stomping on it in mock frustration. Then he laughed, telling Captain Oblivious and Blockhead to run back to their respective teams.
“They’re having fun,” Ernest said. “He’s with friends.”
The game continued, full tackle without pads, both teams seemingly coached by Wyatt, who ran back and forth along the sidelines to give instructions in huddles or demonstrate head fakes and leg tackles while the boys kneeled and watched. Eventually the game came to an end, and they gathered around him. He showed them speed and agility drills, full circles and half circles, and then ran a receiving route while the quarterback threw a long, perfect spiral to him. He caught it with ease, jogging into the makeshift end zone. The rest of the boys chased after him, cheering.
There were high fives and fist bumps before the players separated. “Catch you guys later,” Wyatt told them, walking toward us with his backpack.
“We were worried you weren’t coming back,” I told him.
“What?” he said. “We were playing football. I’ve known those guys since sixth grade.”
We headed back down the road toward the house. Out of nowhere, Ernest started laughing, patting Wyatt on the shoulder in a proud, fatherly way.
AFTER DINNER Wyatt took a shower, got cleaned up, and spent some time in Ray-Ray’s room, doing homework. When I knocked on the door to check on him, I found him typing an essay on Ernest’s old typewriter, which we kept in the room. It hadn’t been used in many years, maybe not since Ray-Ray used it. Wyatt typed with two fingers slowly, and didn’t look up when I entered.
“We have a computer in the living room,” I told him. “You don’t want to use this old thing, do you? It’s kind of junky.”
“I don’t mind,” he said, staring down at the keys as he typed.
I watched him a moment. “Well, I can leave you alone if you want. Or maybe you need help?”
He stopped, rolled the paper out, and read it silently. With a pencil he wrote something on it, then inserted it into the typewriter and began typing again.
So I left him alone. Ernest was standing outside the door, waiting for me.
“Well?” he said. “What did he say?”
“About what?”
“Is he giving any clues about the Spirit World? I think the Great Spirit may have sent Ray-Ray back to us in another form.”
I saw the seriousness in his face and was confounded. We could hear Wyatt typing on the typewriter on the other side of the door. I motioned Ernest to follow me into the front room and told him in a quiet voice that Wyatt was doing homework and didn’t want to be bothered. “Let’s let him settle in,” I said. “Don’t be disappointed if he doesn’t seem like Ray-Ray.”
“He’s a spitting image.”
“Let’s let him work.”
We sat in front of the TV for a while, watching a detective show. I didn’t care for police dramas, but Ernest loved watching them on TV. Sometimes I watched, but most of the time I did the crossword or crocheted.
“Do you remember our conversation last night?” I asked Ernest as the TV cops drew their guns and chased a suspect down an alley.
“Of course,” he said. “My head doesn’t feel foggy. I’m feeling good.”
“Any other memories come to you?”
He thought a moment. “My moccasins,” he said.
“Yes, you mentioned that last night.”
“I mean the ones I wore as a kid. I remember those moccasins. My mother made them from buckskin. I remember the beadwork. The red beads.”
“A new memory,” I told him. “This is a good sign. This is what we’ve been hoping for. I think you’re feeling better.”
On TV, the suspect fell hard to the ground, and the cops were on him, restraining him with handcuffs.
“The red beads,” Ernest said again, trailing off.
Wyatt came into the room with a few notebooks. He sat down next to me and began flipping through them, pausing to show me his writings—all his poems, stories, and drawings. “I colored this when I was ten,” he said, pointing to a drawing of a big red house surrounded by trees. Most of his drawings were of houses, I realized. What did all the houses mean? I assumed he had been deprived of attention, moving from home to home, constantly thinking about what it means to live somewhere.
“I have a whole series of haiku poems in here,” he said. “All based on different rooms I stay in whenever I’m in a building or school or house. One of the reasons I’m glad to be here is so that I can write a poem about the rooms in this house.”
“I hope it’s a nice poem,” I said. “I like to write down my thoughts, too. It always makes me feel better.”
“Trippy,” he said, smiling.
“Trippy?”
“I’m full-body digging talking to you.”
I found his speech and mannerisms delightful. So animated and exaggerated, such a funny little guy. He pulled out an essay for school. He needed me to look over it for errors, he said; would I mind?
“Of course I’ll look over it,” I said.
“What’s she checking for, spelling?” Ernest asked.
“I’m looking more for development and ideas, not grammar or spelling,” he said.
I put on my reading glasses and moved in closer to the table lamp so I could read easier:
ESSAY FOR ENGLISH CLASS (IN PROGRESS)
Wyatt Eli Chair
This dazzling “prose fragment” poem from our illustrious textbook is about discernment. The poem tells about the reincarnation of a Cherokee boy (the poem is taken from the author’s first book, The Book of Levitation and a Thousand Deaths). The “prose fragment” is titled “The Owl and the Eagle” and is his masterpiece. My humble opinion, dearest and vitiated Reader, is that The Book of Levitation shows themes of spirituality. (At Sequoyah School some years back, I read and reviewed his other books of prose poems for the school paper. One book I read, Faces Reflected in a Spoon, is about spirits and reincarnation.) The eagle in the mirror is a reincarnation. How is this possible? Fondled Reader, allow me to illustrate: with a flickering of strange striated light, the figure floats in a circle before it disappears. Certainly, there is a yellow light, then blue light. Out of nowhere, the appearance of the exiguous Cherokee words: “Tawodi.” Its image remains in the mirror. What if the author is a Spirit or a messenger? Historically, Authochthonous Reader, Eagles are considered messengers in Cherokee mythology. Look for spirits here on Earth . . .
“Well,” I said, handing the essay to him. “Well. Hmm.”
“It needs work,” he said. “I can handle it, please correct what you see is wrong. I want it to be good.”
“I guess I haven’t read a book report in a long time. Who is the boy?”
“The boy in the poem appears in different forms, like as a hawk or an owl. Or an old man or even another boy.”
“In the poem?”
“The author is Cherokee, from here in town, my teacher told us.”
“I don’t know him. Ernest, do you know this author?”
Ernest came over and stood next to Wyatt, looking at the essay in his hands. “Did you say tawodi?” he asked.
“Tawodi means ‘hawk’ in Cherokee,” Wyatt said. “What did you think of me ending it with the ellipses?”
“The what?”
“The three dots at the end.”
Ernest felt at his jaw.
“Take a pencil to it,” Wyatt told me. “Can you fix it and make it good?”
“It looks good to me,” I told him.
Wyatt asked Ernest if they could play chess, so they went into the dining room to play while I stayed looking at Wyatt’s essay. I read slowly with a pen, circling exclamation points and parentheses, but I didn’t know what to do with them. I crossed out a few sentences. I read it over and over, but it was hard to concentrate because I heard Ernest laughing from the other room, so I got up and walked into the dining room, where I found them playing chess.
I didn’t say anything, but I knew Ernest would struggle to remember the rules. Chess had never been an easy game for any of us except for Ray-Ray. He was the only one who really loved it.
“I did what I could with your essay,” I told Wyatt and handed it to him. He looked at it, nodded.
“Thank you,” he said. “Ernest forgot how to play, so I’m helping him remember. We’re talking about spirits, too.”
Ernest was staring at Wyatt. “Tell me more about the spirits,” he said. “Tell me everything you saw in the Spirit World.”
“The Spirit World?” I said.
“Yes,” Ernest said, still looking at Wyatt. “Tell me, son. What did you see?”
“Maybe he wants a snack,” I said, trying to change the subject. “Wyatt? Are you hungry? Ice cream?”
“The Spirit World,” Wyatt said, humoring Ernest, leaning forward and resting his elbows on the table. “Ah, what a place! I met a beautiful woman by a stream. Her name was Clara.”
“Did she have raven-black hair?” Ernest asked.
“Yes sir, she had raven-black hair. Her hair was long. She was really pretty.”
“What else?”
“She was looking for her husband. She was searching everywhere but couldn’t find him there.”
This interaction caught me off guard. I was grateful Wyatt was such a sensitive boy, willing to play along with Ernest’s strange topics of conversation.
“What else?” Ernest asked.
“I met owls and eagles and other beautiful spirits on my walks,” Wyatt said. “I met the Yunwi Tsunsdi, the little spirits. I met Dragging Canoe, too, who told me . . . get this, Pops: ‘You will be a visionary with prophetic gifts’!”