The Removed(21)

Back in my bedroom, though, I heard barking outside and looked out the window. In the fog outside I saw hounds rummaging around, tearing into garbage. One of the hounds ran off with a small animal in its mouth. The others were fighting, growling and barking at each other, their eyes yellow in the night. I saw the red fowl strut right past them, its head cocked. How did it follow me here? The fowl walked slowly, pecking at the ground. The wind moaned through the cracks in the windowsill. I saw dark trees with drooping branches out there. I saw black vultures hanging in the moonlit sky.





Sonja


SEPTEMBER 2

WHEN RAY-RAY WAS STILL ALIVE, in the summers we used to ride our bikes out to the river and swim. We splashed and wrestled in the water. I was only one grade ahead of him. We got along really well, and because he was my little brother, he was very protective of me. I remember once a group of boys from his school showed up when we were swimming in a shallow area. Some of the boys started teasing him about me, telling him I was pretty.

“Hey, look at that hot ass,” they said. “Hey, Ray-Ray! Your sister easy?”

“Shut up, fuckers,” he called to them. “You guys wish she would even talk to you.”

“Faggot,” one of them said.

I thought it was all harmless, at least at first, but then Ray-Ray ended up getting mad and fighting one of the boys. I watched the whole thing until the other boys broke it up.

“I hate them,” Ray-Ray told me later, but he wouldn’t tell me why. I just assumed it was because they were harassing him. I wasn’t as social as he was. I was quiet, mostly an introvert in high school, and other kids knew I was unpopular. Maybe my being quiet and unpopular bothered him. I wish I knew. We were a private family. Papa gave me comfort by telling me to let people think what they want. Let bad people be bad people, he told me.

The day after our encounter, Vin called, but I let it go to my voice mail. He left a message saying he had been thinking about me and wanted to know whether I would like to have coffee with him in downtown Quah at the Roasted Bean. It was noon. I waited an hour to return his call, partly to give the impression that I was busier than I actually was and partly to show that I was not checking my phone so often, waiting for him to call. When he answered, he asked if we could meet for coffee while Luka was in school, or was I too busy? So I agreed to meet him at the Roasted Bean in an hour.

When I saw him there, I pretended to act happy, and the first thing he did was apologize for acting a little “out of it,” he said, or maybe he said “out of touch,” or maybe “out of town.” He said he was taking Benadryl due to all the rain stirring up his allergies. He bought me a chai tea and himself a mocha, ordering for both of us; I found it strange that he ordered for me.

“My dad’s really sick,” he said.

“Oh, really?” I said, and my attention sharpened. “Sick how?”

“He’s on chemo. He has lung cancer, and they’re bringing in hospice to care for him at his house. It’s so sad to watch him have to go through this.”

“You’re close to your dad?” I asked.

“We’re closer now than ever. He’s kept to himself since he retired. He lives out in the woods north of town.”

“He doesn’t come into town much, huh?”

“No, why do you ask?”

“I know more about your family than you think.” He gave me an uncertain look, so I laughed it off and told him I was joking.

“Does chemo really even help?” I asked quietly into my cup. “Doesn’t it just kill people eventually?”

“It depends.”

“Well,” I said, “I’m Cherokee, and we live forever, you know.”

“I was thinking you were Hispanic. I mean, I knew you were part something, something, but I wasn’t sure.”

“I’m something,” I said.

He laughed, oddly, and I sensed a part of him I didn’t care for. Why he’d said it that way: something. We walked down the sidewalk, past the little shops selling university paraphernalia, past the tattoo shop and the flower shop and the Thai restaurant where Papa liked to eat. We crossed the street, and I took his arm, feeling his energy as we walked. We strolled over to the alley between Muskogee and Shawnee, passing a dumpster behind Morgan’s Bakery, and came to the back entrance of a local club where Vin played every so often. We stopped walking here, and he pushed me against the red brick of the building and kissed me hard. I embraced him, running my fingers through his hair. I let him touch me, run his hands over my body. We kissed for a while. I reached down to feel that he was hard and grabbed him, telling him I wanted him to take me right there. He said we could go to his house.

“I want you here,” I told him, right there in the alley, and he pulled back somewhat aggressively, telling me it wasn’t safe, people walked down the alley all the time.

I laughed at him.

“What’s so funny?” he said. “We can’t do it here, people will see.”

“So what if we get caught? Someone may watch us and get off, or take a picture and post it online. Who cares?”

I dug in my purse for a cigarette and looked at him.

“Let’s just go to my house,” he said again.

His car was parked down the street from the Roasted Bean. During the walk back, I didn’t take his arm. I wondered what had happened and why he was suddenly so stressed, or if it was something else entirely that had created such a strange shift. He drove us to his house and parked in the drive. From here I could see the iron-fenced backyard, his back porch with its lawn chairs and table. I had seen none of this from the library. Outside, somewhere nearby, I heard an owl in broad daylight. I asked Vin whether he heard it, too, but he said he didn’t. We stopped by the back porch and waited to listen, but the bird didn’t call again. Vin asked if I was sure it was an owl. Maybe it was a car horn far away, he suggested. Or maybe a different bird or a bobcat. But I told him I know when I hear an owl. It worried me because Papa taught me that owls can be messengers of bad news. Papa had told me old Cherokee stories of dead people turning into owls and bringing warnings to people. When I said this to Vin, he said he found superstitions fascinating. I could tell he didn’t take it seriously.