Your friend,
John
It made me bawl like a baby. Right away I took it upstairs and locked it in my treasure chest, where I keep all the stuff that means the most to me. I read it once more first. I’ll never forget you, John, I thought. Don’t you ever stop caring, either.
That night, when Daddy came home from work, I told him about the baby and that I wanted to have it and keep it. He was pretty upset at first, but he didn’t have a hemorrhage like I’d thought he would. Actually, he was pretty cool about it. He asked if Anthony was gonna marry me, and I said I didn’t know about that yet, which kind of surprised me because until that very minute I’d been so sure I wanted Anthony to stay out of my life for good, particularly after what that asshole brother of his tried to do to Ms. Sixkiller. Daddy said that, well, whatever happened I wouldn’t have to raise the kid by myself — I could stay right here at home and he’d help me, if that was the way things worked out. Yeah, pretty cool. He stays out all night gambling too much and works too hard and sometimes I think he’s like the Bitch and doesn’t give a shit if I live or die, but I guess he really does love me after all.
One thing I didn’t tell him about: the baby. I won’t tell anyone until the time comes, not even Selena. It’s my secret and I’m not gonna share this one.
If it’s a boy he’ll be named John, and if it’s a girl she’ll be called Faith.
Audrey Sixkiller
I’ve been to see Dick several times now at the county correctional facility. At first our meetings were awkward; he wouldn’t look me in the eye and what little conversation we had was limited to neutral topics — my teaching and volunteer work, how Mack was adjusting to living with me. But at the end of each session he asked me to please come back, with a kind of desperation in his voice, and I couldn’t have refused him even if I’d wanted to. He has no one else. In all of Pomo, in the entire time since his wife left him, he’s had no one but me. And it wasn’t until now, when it’s too late, that he realized it.
There’s a hard irony in that, and in the fact that our roles have been reversed. He needs me now, but I no longer need him. I still care about him, and part of me will always love him, yet the feelings are detached, heavy with sadness but without yearning. It’s over. It would have been over even if there weren’t bars and steel mesh separating us. Indians are as blind as whites sometimes, but when we do see, we see more clearly than anyone. And we know better than anyone how to make compromises and adjustments, how to live with loss, how to channel feelings and be satisfied with less than we hope for. There is no self-pity in that; it’s a simple statement of fact. I would be all right. Continue to try to make life better for my people, and my own life would be better for the effort. Someday, perhaps, I’ll meet someone new to need and love, and who will need and love me in return. I think if this happens he’ll be red, or more red than white, but in any case it won’t matter. What’s important is that then the long nights won’t be lonely anymore.
I told some of this to Dick the last time I saw him. He said he understood and I think he does. It was the first time we’ve been able to talk about what matters to both of us — a good omen for him, too. Jail has been difficult for him, and prison will be twice as bad, but he takes full responsibility for his actions; the bitterness he feels is mostly toward himself. He won’t be the same man when he’s free again, or necessarily a better man, but he will be a wiser one.
His one blind spot is John Faith’s role in all that happened. He’s said more than once, with anger in his voice, that if John Faith had not come to Pomo there wouldn’t have been nearly as much trouble. Deep down he may even believe that if it weren’t for John Faith, he wouldn’t have killed Storm.
But he’s wrong. What Dick doesn’t understand is that John Faith is not guilty of anything other than poor judgment. He isn’t a poison-maker; he’s another victim, in a way the most tragic victim of all.
He can’t help that he was born a catalyst. Or do anything about it other than destroy himself, and he isn’t made that way. Hope hasn’t died in him yet. Neither has a streak of idealism. That’s why he keeps moving from place to place. It’s what makes him both crave human contact and shy away from it. It’s what makes him run.
John Faith is looking for a place where enough people can see past the outer man to the one who lives inside; a place where he’ll be accepted for what he is, not what he appears to be. He’s looking for what he’s never had and wants more than anything else.
He’s looking for a home.
And what he keeps finding, wherever he goes, is a wasteland of strangers.
Author’s Note
While the town of Pomo, Lake Pomo, and Pomo County are loosely based on actual Northern California locales, they are nonetheless products of the author’s imagination. Similarly, while the Pomo is a very real Native American tribe, and care has been taken to accurately describe its customs, legends, and historical and modern travails, the Pomo characters portrayed in these pages are fictitious. Also fictitious are all other characters, and the author’s interpretations of social, economic, political, and racial issues concerning the general geographical region depicted herein; in no way are they intended to represent real people or actual, specific issues.
Thanks to Bette Golden Lamb and Melissa Ward for providing valuable research information and to Peter Crowther and Edward E. Kramer for including a much different, embryonic, novelette-length version of this novel, under the title “The Intruder,” in their White Wolf anthology, Heartlands.