Tears welled in Chess’s eyes. She breathed deep and looked at Thomas, who kept silent and waited for the rest of the story. Then Chess excused herself and went to the bathroom, so Thomas just sat at the table and looked around the small, clean house. The kitchen sat in the center, while the living room, two bedrooms, and bathroom surrounded it. Nothing spectacular, but spotless by reservation standards. A clean, clean house.
“Your sister left her light on,” Thomas said to Chess as she came back to the kitchen. “Is she still awake?”
“She might be,” Chess said. “But she does sleep with her light on.”
Just in case, Thomas thought.
“Jeez,” Chess said as she sat down at the table. “You’re probably tired of me babbling, enit? You want some more coffee?”
“No, thanks. I’ll be awake for weeks.”
In her bed, Checkers listened to the conversation and cried a little. She remembered Backgammon. After he died, their mom held him against her chest and cried and cried. Checkers and Chess refused to move from their bed. They knew nothing touched them when they stayed still. Their mom cried even louder after their father stormed back into the room, shouted and cursed like a defeated warrior. He shouted until his wife raised Backgammon up to him like an offering.
Luke Warm Water started to scream then, a high-pitched wail that sounded less than human. Maybe it sounded too human. Colors poured out of him. Red flowed out of his mouth, and black seeped from his pores. Those colors mixed together and filled the room. Chess grabbed Checkers’s hand and squeezed it until both cried out in pain.
“Don’t look,” Chess said to her sister. “Don’t even move.”
The sisters kept their eyes closed for minutes, hours, days. When Chess and Checkers opened them again, they buried Backgammon in a grave Luke Warm Water dug for three days because the ground was frozen solid. When the sisters opened their eyes, Linda Warm Water took a knife to her skin and made three hundred tiny cuts on her body. In mourning, in mourning. When the Warm Waters opened their eyes, Luke traded his snowshoes for a good coat, a case of whiskey, and stayed warm and drunk for weeks. Checkers remembered so much about her father. She was sure she remembered more than her sister ever did and wondered if Chess would tell Thomas any secrets.
“You know,” Chess said to Thomas in the kitchen, just as Checkers fell into the sleep and familiar nightmares of her uncomfortable bed, “I still miss Backgammon. I didn’t know him very long. But I miss him.”
“What did you do after he died?” Thomas asked.
“We mostly kept to ourselves,” Chess said. “We’d wake up before our parents and be out the door into the trees and hills. We’d play outside all day, eat berries and roots, and only come back home when it got too cold and dark.
“Sometimes we’d climb tall trees and watch the house. We’d watch our father storm out the door and down the road to town. He’d stay away for days at a time, drinking, drunk, passed out on the muddy streets in Arlee. Mom played the piano when Dad was gone, and we could hear it. We’d stay close enough to hear it.
“I used to think her songs drifted across the entire reservation. I imagined they knocked deer over and shook the antlers of moose and elk. Can you believe that? The music crept into the dreams of hibernating bears and turned them into nightmares. Those bears wouldn’t ever leave their dens and starved to death as spring grew warmer. Those songs floated up to the clouds, fell back to the earth as rain, and changed the shape of plants and trees. I once bit into a huckleberry, and it tasted like my brother’s tears. I used to believe all of that.”
Thomas smiled at her. He had just met the only Indian who told stories like his. He took a sip of his coffee and never even noticed it was cold. How do you fall in love with a woman who grew up without electricity and running water, who grew up in such poverty that other poor Indians called her family poor?
“Jeez,” Chess said, “there I go again, running at the mouth. You must be tired. Why don’t you sleep on the couch?”
Thomas stretched in his chair, rubbed his eyes.
“I am tired,” he said. “Do you think it’s okay?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Why don’t you go lay down and I’ll bring you a blanket.
“Okay. But can I use the bathroom?”
“Sure,” Chess said and went to look for bedding.
Thomas used the bathroom and marveled at the order. The fancy soaps waited perfectly and patiently in their dishes, but Thomas used a little sliver of Ivory soap to wash his hands and face.
“Are you okay in there?” Chess asked through the door.
“Oh, yeah,” Thomas said, unaware of the time he’d spent in the bathroom. “Do you have a toothbrush I can borrow?”
“Yeah, use mine. It’s the red one.”
Thomas picked up Chess’s toothbrush, unsure if she meant it. She brushed her teeth with this toothbrush, he thought. She had this in her mouth. He hurriedly squeezed Crest onto the bristles and brushed slowly.
“Jeez,” Chess said after he came out, “I thought you fell in.”
“I had a life preserver,” Thomas said, embarrassed.
“You can sleep here,” Chess said and motioned toward the couch. He lay down and pulled the quilt over himself. She sat beside him and touched his face.
“You know,” she said, “my mom made this quilt.”
Thomas studied the patterns.
“You think Junior and Victor are okay outside?” he asked.
“They’re fine,” she said. “It’s warm.”
“How did your mom die?” he asked.
“Of cancer,” she lied.
“Mine, too.”
“You go to sleep now. I’ll see you in the morning.”
She leaned over quickly and kissed him on the cheek. A powerful kiss, more magical than any kiss on the mouth. She kissed him like he was a warrior; she kissed him like she was a warrior.
“Good night,” he said.
“Good night,” she said and walked to her bedroom.
Chess tried to sleep, but the memories crowded and haunted her. The sisters grew strong in those Montana summer days but felt weak when they crawled into their shared bed. Before Backgammon died, they had often listened carefully to their parents’ lovemaking. The hurried breathing and those wet, mysterious noises shook the sisters’ bodies. It was good.
After the baby died, those good sounds stopped. The sisters heard their father push at their mom, wanting it, but Linda rolled over and pretended to sleep. She slapped his hands. Luke fought and fought, but eventually he gave up if sober. If drunk, however, he forced himself on his wife. Sometimes, he came home from drinking and woke everybody with his needs. He fell on their mother while Chess and Checkers listened and waited for it to end. Sometimes their mother fought their father off, punched and kicked until he left her alone. Other times he passed out before he did anything.
The winters and summers arrived and left, as did the family’s seasons. Luke and Linda Warm Water raged like storms, lightning in the summer, blizzards in the winter. But sometimes both sat in the house, placid as a lake during spring or an autumn evening. The sisters never knew what to expect, but Checkers grew taller and more frightened with each day. Chess just wanted to be older, to run away from home. She wanted to bury her parents beside Backgammon, find a way to love them in death, because she forgot how to love them in life.
Then it was winter again, and Linda Warm Water walked into the woods like an old dog and found a hiding place to die. Checkers and Chess nearly fell back in love with their father that winter. He quit drinking after his wife disappeared and spent most of his time searching for her. He refused to believe she had dug a hole and buried herself, or climbed into a den and lay down in the bones of a long dead bear. Because he’d convinced himself that Linda ran away with another man, Luke wandered all over Montana in search of his unfaithful wife.