A String of Beads (Jane Whitefield, #8)(22)

They walked for another couple of blocks, and when they came to a trash basket, Jane looked into it, then reached down and pulled up a newspaper. “The Syracuse Post-Standard.”

“What’s the date?”

“Today’s. I guess we’re in Syracuse.”

“Okay,” Jimmy said. “Let’s see about that food.”

They walked toward the streets with bright lights, and passed a small pizzeria. They looked in the window and saw a few people at tables wearing jeans and casual shirts. “What do you think?” she asked.

“Just the smell makes me want to break down the door.”

“Give me a few seconds.” Jane stepped into the doorway, then stood still for a two count while Jimmy was still outside, partially shielded from view behind her. She scanned the people inside, saw nobody she knew, or whose face held an expression of recognition, and nobody who looked hostile. She saw a few women, which was good, because the presence of women usually discouraged the more extreme forms of male misbehavior. She saw a hallway at the back of the restaurant that led to restrooms, and another on the left leading to the kitchen. If they had to they could slip out through the exit that was sure to be at the rear of the kitchen. Jane stepped in, and Jimmy followed.

A sign said they should seat themselves, so Jane went to a table by the wall and they sat down. Jane sat so she could face the front window and door, and Jimmy could face the back. The side location of the table meant that no matter how rough things got in the place, they couldn’t be surrounded, and nobody could approach unseen.

They set their backpacks on empty seats by the wall and looked at the printed menus that had been left at every table. In a few minutes a middle-aged waitress emerged from the kitchen with a tray in each hand—the plates on the left and the drinks, which were heavier, on the right. Jane studied her. She had a weary but alert look as she maneuvered between tables. She showed relief when she set down her heavy trays on an empty table and served two couples at the table beside it. Over the years Jane had learned to check the faces of the waiters and waitresses. If there were some kind of trouble, they would see it first, and show it.

The waitress stopped at their table and took their order, then went off to the kitchen with her trays. She returned immediately with their pitcher of cola and glasses.

They poured some and drank, and Jimmy spoke to her quietly in Seneca. “I haven’t bothered to thank you for coming to help me. I know you were asked, but we both know you could have found a way out of it if you tried.”

“I suppose I could have,” she said in Seneca. “They knew I wouldn’t.”

He raised his glass of cola and clinked it against hers. “You’re more old-fashioned than my grandmother, and it’s a good thing for me.”

“They said you were innocent,” Jane said. “But I didn’t have to take anything they said on faith. I knew what kind of man you were the same way they did—by knowing you as a boy. I climbed trees with you. And in case you’ve forgotten it, you once saved me from getting raped. I didn’t forget. Now let’s talk English.” She moved her eyes to be sure nobody nearby had overheard them speaking another language.

“Certainly,” he said. “Everybody else’s food looks so good. I can hardly wait for ours.”

“Neither can I,” said Jane. “I guess we’ve both been living on protein bars and candy for too long.”

While she sat in the restaurant, Jane couldn’t help thinking about what Jimmy had said about her—that she was old-fashioned. What he meant was her attachment to old customs. She hardly ever thought about herself that way, but at times something reminded her that the Seneca ways of looking at the world were part of the structure of her mind. And she knew that one reason she had clung to Seneca traditions was to maintain the connection with her parents and grandparents—especially her father since he’d died.

She was eleven that summer, and she and her mother had been staying at the reservation because he had been away working on a bridge in the state of Washington. One day he had been standing on a steel beam as a crane lowered it into place. The cable snapped, and Henry Whitefield and the beam fell to the bottom of the gorge below. She sometimes dreamed about his fall.

In the dream, her father was wearing his bright red flannel shirt and blue jeans, his yellow hard hat and his leather tool belt. As he fell, the beam stayed beside him. He turned as he fell, doing a slow somersault, so his tools spilled from his belt pouch. His hard hat left his head and his black hair fluttered in the wind as he came right again. He spread his arms and legs and faced downward, his shirt flapping violently. In the dream the disembodied Jane was beside him. He and Jane could both see the bottom of the canyon, the thin ribbon of water winding down the gorge like a silvery snake—the water not wide enough to catch him or deep enough to do anything for him but wash his body after he hit. The white buttons of his red shirt gave way, and it opened and flew off him. But as he fell, his fluttering black hair grew longer, and seemed to spread down his back and arms, first like fringe, and then widening and flattening like feathers. And soon his arms were revealed to be wings.

His head and shoulders dipped forward and he swooped downward. As he did, he changed more, and when his swoop arced upward again she could see her father was a crow. He circled once and looked back at Jane with his black, shiny crow eyes—so much like his own bright obsidian eyes—and she felt the deep, painful love he was sending to her, all of it now because there would never be another time. When the circle was complete he began to fly straight across the open canyon to the other side.