means? You, Danny?
Nope.
It’s Dakota. It means the spirit has gone south. It means that Skipper’s dead. Your mom or dad ever try to teach you our language, Danny?
Our language is English, Danny said.
I suppose it is, his uncle said. I suppose it is.
You got a letter, Danny said. He pulled it folded from his back pocket and handed it to his great-uncle.
The man took the envelope and squinted. He reached into his shirt pocket and drew out a pair of glasses with thick lenses and with rims that looked made of gold. He didn’t put them on but used the lenses instead in the way you might use a magnifying glass and painstakingly read the return address. Then he slid his finger under the flap, carefully tore it open, pulled out the letter, and read it with the glasses in the same slow fashion.
I stood uncomfortably waiting to be dismissed. I was eager to be gone.
Shit, Danny’s uncle said at last and crumpled the letter and threw it into the yellow sand. He looked up at Danny. Well, didn’t I tell you what to say to your mother? What are you waiting for?
Danny backed away and turned and hightailed it out of the clearing with Jake and me at his heels. When we were a good distance away and the wall of bulrushes blinded his uncle to us I said, What’s with him?
Danny said, I don’t know him very well. He’s been gone a long time. There was some kind of trouble and he had to leave town.
What kind of trouble? Jake asked.
Danny shrugged. Mom and Dad don’t talk about it. Uncle Warren showed up last week and my mom took him in. She told my dad she had to. He’s family. He’s not really so bad. Sometimes he’s kind of funny. He doesn’t like staying in the house though. He says walls make him feel like he’s in jail.
We walked back to where the river ran near Danny’s house and we climbed the bank and Jake and I went our way toward home and Danny went to deliver his uncle’s message to his mother. I wondered what exactly he would tell her.
We reached our yard and Jake started up the front steps but I hung back.
Jake said, What’s wrong?
Didn’t you see?
See what?
Those glasses Danny’s uncle had.
What about them?
They don’t belong to him, Jake, I said. They belonged to Bobby Cole.
Jake stared at me a moment dumb as a brick. Then the light came into his eyes.
8
T
hat evening my grandfather came to dinner. He brought his wife, a woman who was not my mother’s mother, a woman named Elizabeth who’d been his secretary and then became
more to him. My real grandmother had died of cancer when I was too young to remember her, and Liz—she insisted we call her Liz, not Grandma—was the only grandmother I knew. I liked her and Jake and Ariel liked her too. Though my father wasn’t fond of my grandfather it was clear that he felt differently about Liz. Only my mother had problems with her. With Liz she was polite but distant.
My mother fixed cocktail martinis which my father, as always, declined and we all sat in the living room and the adults conversed. My grandfather spoke of the influx of Mexican farmworkers and how it was bringing an unwelcome element to the valley and my father asked how the farmers were supposed to get the work done without the help of the migrants. Liz said that when she saw the migrant families in town they were always clean and polite and the children well behaved and she felt bad that often the entire family, young children and all, had to labor in the fields to earn a living. My grandfather said, If they’d just learn to speak English.
Jake and I often suffered through this kind of discussion in silence. No one asked our opinion and we didn’t feel obliged to offer it. My mother had prepared roasted chicken and stuffing and mashed potatoes and asparagus. The chicken was burned and dry and the gravy lumpy and the asparagus tough and stringy but my grandfather raved. After dinner he took Liz home in his big Buick. My mother and Ariel went to practice with the New Bremen Town Singers, a vocal
Nope.
It’s Dakota. It means the spirit has gone south. It means that Skipper’s dead. Your mom or dad ever try to teach you our language, Danny?
Our language is English, Danny said.
I suppose it is, his uncle said. I suppose it is.
You got a letter, Danny said. He pulled it folded from his back pocket and handed it to his great-uncle.
The man took the envelope and squinted. He reached into his shirt pocket and drew out a pair of glasses with thick lenses and with rims that looked made of gold. He didn’t put them on but used the lenses instead in the way you might use a magnifying glass and painstakingly read the return address. Then he slid his finger under the flap, carefully tore it open, pulled out the letter, and read it with the glasses in the same slow fashion.
I stood uncomfortably waiting to be dismissed. I was eager to be gone.
Shit, Danny’s uncle said at last and crumpled the letter and threw it into the yellow sand. He looked up at Danny. Well, didn’t I tell you what to say to your mother? What are you waiting for?
Danny backed away and turned and hightailed it out of the clearing with Jake and me at his heels. When we were a good distance away and the wall of bulrushes blinded his uncle to us I said, What’s with him?
Danny said, I don’t know him very well. He’s been gone a long time. There was some kind of trouble and he had to leave town.
What kind of trouble? Jake asked.
Danny shrugged. Mom and Dad don’t talk about it. Uncle Warren showed up last week and my mom took him in. She told my dad she had to. He’s family. He’s not really so bad. Sometimes he’s kind of funny. He doesn’t like staying in the house though. He says walls make him feel like he’s in jail.
We walked back to where the river ran near Danny’s house and we climbed the bank and Jake and I went our way toward home and Danny went to deliver his uncle’s message to his mother. I wondered what exactly he would tell her.
We reached our yard and Jake started up the front steps but I hung back.
Jake said, What’s wrong?
Didn’t you see?
See what?
Those glasses Danny’s uncle had.
What about them?
They don’t belong to him, Jake, I said. They belonged to Bobby Cole.
Jake stared at me a moment dumb as a brick. Then the light came into his eyes.
8
T
hat evening my grandfather came to dinner. He brought his wife, a woman who was not my mother’s mother, a woman named Elizabeth who’d been his secretary and then became
more to him. My real grandmother had died of cancer when I was too young to remember her, and Liz—she insisted we call her Liz, not Grandma—was the only grandmother I knew. I liked her and Jake and Ariel liked her too. Though my father wasn’t fond of my grandfather it was clear that he felt differently about Liz. Only my mother had problems with her. With Liz she was polite but distant.
My mother fixed cocktail martinis which my father, as always, declined and we all sat in the living room and the adults conversed. My grandfather spoke of the influx of Mexican farmworkers and how it was bringing an unwelcome element to the valley and my father asked how the farmers were supposed to get the work done without the help of the migrants. Liz said that when she saw the migrant families in town they were always clean and polite and the children well behaved and she felt bad that often the entire family, young children and all, had to labor in the fields to earn a living. My grandfather said, If they’d just learn to speak English.
Jake and I often suffered through this kind of discussion in silence. No one asked our opinion and we didn’t feel obliged to offer it. My mother had prepared roasted chicken and stuffing and mashed potatoes and asparagus. The chicken was burned and dry and the gravy lumpy and the asparagus tough and stringy but my grandfather raved. After dinner he took Liz home in his big Buick. My mother and Ariel went to practice with the New Bremen Town Singers, a vocal
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