The Removed(2)
“I’m building a monster,” Edgar told him excitedly. He held up his Lego creature and roared.
“Little brother,” Ray-Ray said, “there are enough monsters in this world.”
Present Day
Maria Echota
SEPTEMBER 1
Near Quah, Oklahoma
AT SUNSET THE LOCUSTS FLEW, a whole swarm of them, disappearing into the darkening sky. They buzzed each night, moving through wind and trees, devouring crops and destroying gardens. The sky was pink and blue on the horizon. Another unusually rainy season had caused weeds to sprout up everywhere, so we were seeing more locusts, more insects.
“When was the last time it snowed?” Ernest asked.
My husband was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. He was seventy-four but looked young for his age. He still kept his gray hair long in a ponytail, still had his same laugh and sense of humor, though he was getting more and more confused. We had known about the Alzheimer’s for almost a year, and of course these things never get easier with time. He grew frustrated easily. He would forget little things like why he’d walked into a room. Whenever he did this, he would look down at the floor and struggle to understand. I would find him rummaging through the garage, and when I asked him what he was looking for, he couldn’t tell me. He was growing considerably worse.
“I’m turning into tawodi,” he said. “Tawodi means hawk in Cherokee.”
We were sitting on our back deck, where Ernest liked to look for geese flying over the lake. I watched him lean forward, squinting.
“I’ll eat locusts and honey like John the Baptist,” he said.
“Ernest,” I said quietly.
“I see a sailboat out there. I see smoke or fog, maybe a spirit.”
“There is no spirit out there,” I told him.
He reclined back in his chair, still looking.
“Ernest,” I said, “tomorrow Wyatt is coming. Did you remember?”
He was thinking.
“The foster boy,” I said. “I have Ray-Ray’s old room ready for him.”
“You already mentioned it before.”
“He’ll be here tomorrow,” I said. “Remember?”
“Wyatt, sure,” Ernest said. “Stop asking me if I remember.”
“I wanted to make sure.”
“I got it.”
The call had come a few days earlier from Indian Family Services. It was Bernice, a former coworker of mine. I had retired from social work a year earlier. Bernice said they needed an emergency foster placement for a twelve-year-old Cherokee boy. Would Ernest and I be able to take him in temporarily?
“You’re our only available Cherokee family,” Bernice said. “His dad’s in jail, mom left the state. Right now he’s at an aunt’s, but she’s in bad health. We’re trying to contact grandparents.”
When I told Ernest, I was surprised he agreed. We had never fostered before. “He can mow the grass,” Ernest said. “He can play checkers. Catch fish.”
We could see the lake behind our house, and a small amber pond down past where the road ended was also visible. Most people liked to go fishing at the lake, but Ernest preferred the pond, which he said was always a decent place to fish, full of catfish and largemouth bass. There were fewer people there, and bullfrogs and yellow-striped ribbon snakes lived in the water. He had been talking about fishing a lot more.
Ernest shivered in his sweater, even though it was still warm. “Time to go inside,” he said, getting up from his chair.
“I’ll be right in,” I told him.
He slid open the screen door and stepped inside. I leaned forward and looked out over the yard. Red and yellow leaves were scattered everywhere on the sloping ground. Evenings were quiet and still. Some mornings I sat on that deck and watched a red-tailed hawk return to its same nesting tree while red-winged blackbirds gathered at the birdhouse. Every now and then several cedar waxwings would land on a branch, apple-blossom petals in their beaks, and sit there watching me.
In the distance, tonight, a fog settled over the lake, and I could sense the presence of something gathering there.
WE LIVED ON A WINDING DIRT ROAD by Lake Tenkiller in a hardwood forest of persimmon, oak, and hickory trees near the Cookson Hills. Many years ago, the Cherokees came to this area during the Trail of Tears to build a nation. They developed a tribal government, constructed buildings and schools, and invented a syllabary. Ernest and I both grew up in Quah. When we were newly married, he built a back deck onto our house, overlooking the slope of trees down to the edge of the water.
It was in this place that we raised our three children. Here, in our house made of rock and brick, with its slanted roof and chimney full of spirits. Here, where we slept under the blue light of the moon in the dark sky, waking sometimes to see a deer at the edge of the yard. I remember seeing a family of deer gather down the hill near the water. And how sad our daughter Sonja was when they never returned, and how Ray-Ray promised they would return one day. Sonja was only a teenager. After Ray-Ray died, she sat watching for a deer all winter, but we never saw them again. “It’s deer season,” she said. “Maybe they died, too. Maybe someone shot them and dragged their bodies away in their truck.” I pictured their bodies hanging somewhere, and all that blood dripping. We sat on the back deck, and I prayed for deer to return and for Sonja to heal. We soon saw other deer along the road, but Sonja was still unhappy. “It’s not the same family,” she said. “I can tell. This deer is different. The deer that came to our house are dead.”