“I’m leaving, Sara,” she said. “Finally, I’m leaving.”
Sara looked to her father and mother. Together, the three of them had buried dozens of loved ones. The three of them knew all of the same mourning songs. Two of them had loved each other enough to conceive the third. They’d invented her! She was their Monster; she was surely going to murder them. That’s what children were supposed to do!
“Mom, Dad,” she said. “I love you.”
Sara stepped away from her mother, her father. She stepped away from the table, away from the salmon, and toward Tracy.
“If you leave now,” said Sid. “Don’t you ever call us. Don’t you ever talk to us again.”
Sara closed her eyes. She remembered the winter when her father fell from the roof of their house and disappeared into a snowbank. She remembered the dreadful silence after the impact, and then the wondrous noise, the joyful cacophony of his laughter.
Tracy took Sara’s hand. They stood there in the silence.
“Sid,” said Low Man. “These women don’t need us. They never did.”
“We’re leaving,” said Tracy and Sara together. Hand in hand, they walked away.
With surprising speed, Sid rose from the table and chased after them. He caught them just before they got to the restaurant exit. He pushed Tracy into a wall — pushed her into the plasterboard — and took his daughter by the elbow.
“You’re coming with us,” he said.
“No,” said Sara.
Estelle couldn’t move. “Help them,” she said to Low Man. “Help them.”
Low didn’t know which “them” she was talking about. He rushed across the room just as Sid slapped his daughter once, then again. One Indian man raised his hand to slap an Indian woman, but a third Indian stepped between them.
“She’s my daughter, she’s mine,” shouted Sid. He pushed against Low, as Sara fell back against a glass door, as she turned to hide her face.
Sid and Low grappled with each other. The old man was very strong.
At the table, Estelle covered her face with her hands.
“She’s my daughter, she’s my daughter,” shouted Sid as he punched Low in the chest. Low staggered back and fell to one knee.
“She’s my daughter,” shouted Sid as he turned to attack Tracy. But she slapped him hard. Surprised, defeated, Sid dropped to the floor beside Low.
The two Indian men sat on the ground as the white woman stood above them.
Tracy turned away from the men and ran after Sara.
Sid climbed to his feet. He pointed an accusing finger at Low, who rose slowly to his feet. Sid turned and walked back toward his wife, back toward Estelle, who held her husband close and cried in his arms.
“What are you going to do?” Low called after him. “What are you going to do when she’s gone?”
SAINT JUNIOR
THAT WINTER, ON A full-moon Monday on the Spokane Indian Reservation, the first snow fell sometime between midnight and dawn, when most of the reservation residents — Indian and white alike — were asleep, except for the Cold Springs Singers, those six Spokane Indian men who sat at a drum on top of Lookout Mountain and sang the indigenous blues:
Way, ya, hey, yi, hey, yo.
On the road and on the street,
They’re just trying to keep the beat.
Way, ya, hey, ya, ya.
On the road and on the moon,
They’re just trying to keep the tune.
Way, ya, hey, yi, hey, yo.
Way, ya, hey, yi, hey, yo.
On the road and on the run,
Two little lovebirds having fun.
Will their love survive the test?
Romeo and Juliet.
Way, ya, hey, yi, hey, yo.
Wearing only T-shirts, blue jeans, and baseball caps, the Cold Springs Singers ignored howling winds and the impossibly white snow piling up on their shoulders. Three of the men wore their long black hair in careful braids, two wore crew cuts, and the last was chemotherapy bald. They’d all known one another since birth, since they’d spent their nine months in the wombs of six Indian mothers who’d sat together at their own drum — Big Mom’s Daughters — and sung their own songs. Those mothers had taught their sons public and private songs and the most secret difference between the two. To show their devotion and love, those sons had kept their mothers’ secrets safely hidden from the rest of the world.
From the age of three, those Indian boys sang and drummed together. Over the course of a twenty-year career, the Cold Springs Singers had traveled to one hundred different reservations and had fallen in love with three hundred and nineteen Indian women and sixteen Indian men. They’d fathered seven daughters and three sons. Three of them had married and two had divorced. They’d learned how to sing seven hundred and nine different songs:
Ha, ya, ha, ya, ha, ya.
Don’t tell me you love me
Unless you mean it.
Ha, ya, ha, ya, ha, ya.
Don’t tell me you love me
Unless you mean it.
Ha, ya, ha, ya, ha, ya.
I love you, I love you,
I want to marry you.
Ha, ya, ha, ya, ha, ya.
Marry me once, marry me twice
Marry me three times.
Ha, ya, ha, ya, ha, ya.
But now, as they sang on top of Lookout Mountain, the Cold Springs Singers were in love with the drum and only the drum. They’d forgotten what it meant to love anything other than the feel of stick in hand and song in throat. Of course, the Cold Springs Singers were ghosts, having all been killed when their blue van collided with a logging truck on the S-curves of Little Falls Road, just a few feet away from the natural spring that provided the namesake for the group, but those Indian boys still sang and pounded the sticks better than any other drum alive or dead:
Hey, ya, hey, ya, ho, ya, ho.
I don’t have any money, honey.
I don’t have a nice car.
Hey, ya, hey, ya, ho, ya, ho.
I don’t have a big house, mouse.
I don’t have a fast car.
Hey, ya, hey, ya, ho, ya, ho.
I don’t have fancy shoes, Lou.
I don’t have a new car.
Hey, ya, hey, ya, ho, ya, ho.
Will you still love me?
Will you still love me?
Will you still love me
When I’m old and broke?
Hey, ya, hey, ya, ho, ya, ho.
All night, they sang indigenous songs called “49s,” though there’s not an Indian alive who remembers exactly why they’re called 49s. Some say those songs were invented after fifty Indian warriors went out to battle and only one came back alive. Distraught, the lone survivor mourned his friends by singing forty-nine songs, one for each of the dead. Others believe the 49s were invented when fifty warriors went out to battle and forty-nine came back alive. Distraught, they remembered the lost one by singing forty-nine songs, one by each of the living. Still others believe the 49s were invented by a woman who fell in love with forty-nine men and had her heart broken by each and every one of them. And still more believe the 49s were invented by forty-nine men who mourned the loss of one good woman. However they were invented, those songs have always been heavy with sadness and magic. However they were invented, the Cold Springs Singers knew all of the words and vocables, all the 4/4 signatures and atonal cries in the night.