“Sometimes.” Mitch always felt as if he were walking along a cliff edge when he talked about the bones with Jack. Maybe it was guilt. “No one is special. We’re all humans. The young learn from the old, dead or alive. I respect you and what you say, Jack, but we may never agree.”
“Sue makes me think things through,” Jack said with a shade of petulance, and glanced at Mitch with deep-set black eyes. “She says I should talk to you because you listen, and then you say what you think and it’s honest. The other fathers, they need some of that now.”
“I’ll talk with them if it will help,” Mitch said. “We owe you a lot, Jack.”
“No, you don’t,” Jack said. “We’d probably be in trouble anyway. If it wasn’t the new ones, it would be the slot machines. We like to shove our spears at the bureau and the government.”
“It’s costing you a lot of money,” Mitch said.
“We’re sneaking in the new credit-card roller games,” Jack said. “Our boys drive them over the hills in the backs of their trucks where the troopers aren’t watching. We may get to use them for six months or more before the state confiscates them.”
“They’re slot machines?”
Jack shook his head. “We don’t think so. We’ll make some money before they’re removed.”
“Revenge against the white man?”
“We skin ‘em,” Jack said soberly. “They love it.”
“If the babies are healthy, maybe they’ll end the quarantine,” Mitch said. “You can reopen the casino in a couple of months.”
“I don’t count on nothing,” Jack said. “Besides, I don’t want to go out on the floor and act like a boss if I still look like this.” He put his hand on Mitch’s shoulder. “You come talk,” he said, standing. “The men want to hear.”
“I’ll give it a shot,” Mitch said.
“I’ll tell them to forgive you for that other stuff. The ghost wasn’t from one of our tribes anyway.” Jack pushed to his feet and walked off down the hill.
85
Kumash County, Eastern Washington
Mitch worked on his old blue Buick, parked in the dry grass of the trailer’s front yard, while afternoon thunderheads piled up to the south.
The air smelled tense and exciting. Kaye could hardly bear to sit. She pushed back from the desk by the window and left off from pretending to work on her book while spending most of her time watching Mitch squint at wire harnesses.
She put her hands on her hips to stretch. This day had not been so hot and they had stayed at the trailer rather than ride down to the air-conditioned community center. Kaye liked to watch Mitch play basketball; sometimes she would go for a swim in the small pool. It was not a bad life, but she felt guilty.
The news from outside was seldom good. They had been on the reservation for three weeks and Kaye was afraid the federal marshals would come and gather up the SHEVA mothers at any time. They had done so in Montgomery, Alabama, breaking into a private maternity center and nearly causing a riot.
“They’re getting bold’’ Mitch had said as they watched the TV news. Later, the president had apologized and assured the nation that civil liberties would be preserved, as much as possible, considering the risks that might be faced by the general public. Two days later, the Montgomery clinic had closed under pressure from picketing citizens, and the mothers and fathers had been forced to move elsewhere. With their masks, the new parents looked strange; judging from what she and Mitch heard on the news, they were not popular in very many places.
They had not been popular in the Republic of Georgia.
Kaye had learned nothing more about new retroviral infections from SHEVA mothers. Her contacts were equally silent. This was a charged issue, she could tell; nobody felt comfortable expressing opinions.
So she pretended to work on her book, drafting perhaps a good paragraph or two every day, writing sometimes on the laptop, sometimes in longhand on a legal pad. Mitch read what she wrote and made marginal notes, but he seemed preoccupied, as if stunned by the prospect of being a father…Though she knew that was not what concerned him.
Not being a father. That concerns him. Me. My welfare.
She did not know how to ease his mind. She felt fine, even wonderful, despite the discomforts. She looked at herself in the spotted mirror in the bathroom and felt that her face had filled out rather well; not gaunt, as she had once believed, but healthy, with good skin — not counting the mask, of course.
Every day the mask darkened and thickened, a peculiar caul that marked this kind of parenthood.
Kaye performed her exercises on the thin carpet in the small living room. Finally, it was just too muggy to do much of anything. Mitch came in for a drink of water and saw her on the floor. She looked up at him.
“Game of cards in the rec room?” he asked.
“I vant to be alone,” she intoned, Garbo-like. “Alone with you, that is.”
“How’s the back?”
“Massage tonight, when it’s cool,” she said.
“Peaceful here, isn’t it?” Mitch asked, standing in the door and flapping his T-shirt to cool off.
“I’ve been thinking of names.”
“Oh?” Mitch looked stricken.
“What?” Kaye asked.
“Just a funny feeling. I want to see her before we come up with a name.”
“Why?” Kaye asked resentfully. “You talk to her, sing to her, every night. You say you can even smell her on my breath.”
“Yeah,” Mitch said, but his face did not relax. “I just want to see what she looks like.”
Suddenly, Kaye pretended to catch on. “I don’t mean a scientific name ,” she said. “Our name, our name for our daughter.”
Mitch gave her an exasperated look. “Don’t ask me to explain.” He looked pensive. “Brock and I came up with a scientific name yesterday, on the phone. Though he thinks it’s premature, because none of the—”
Mitch caught himself, coughed, shut the screen door, and walked into the kitchen.
Kaye felt her heart sink.
Mitch returned with several ice cubes wrapped in a wet towel, knelt beside her, and dabbed at the sweat on her forehead. Kaye would not meet his eyes.
“Stupid,” he murmured.
“We’re both grownups,” Kaye said. “I want to think of names for her. I want to knit booties and shop for sleepers and buy little crib toys and behave as if we’re normal parents and stop thinking about all that bullshit .”
“I know,” Mitch said, and he looked completely miserable, almost broken.
Kaye got up on her knees and laid her hands lightly on Mitch’s shoulders, sweeping them back and forth as if dusting. “Listen to me. I am fine. She is fine. If you don’t believe me…”
“I believe you,” Mitch said.
Kaye bumped her forehead against his. “All right, Kemosabe.”
Mitch touched the dark, rough skin on her cheeks. “You look very mysterious. Like a bandit.”
“Maybe we’ll need new scientific names for us, too. Don’t you feel it inside…something deeper, beneath the skin?”
“My bones itch,” he said. “And my throat…my tongue feels different. Why am I getting a mask and all the rest, too?”
“You make the virus. Why shouldn’t it change you, too? As for the mask…maybe we’re getting ready to be recognized by her. We’re social animals. Daddies are as important to babies as mommies.”
“We’ll look like her?”
“Maybe a little.” Kaye returned to the desk chair and sat. “What did Brock suggest for a scientific name?”
“He doesn’t foresee a radical change,” Mitch said. “Subspecies at most, maybe just a peculiar variety. So…Homo sapiens novus.”