Page 78 of Trapped: Until The Darkest Of Night

She looks at me confused. “You’re portraying me far too well. There was nothing to miss. Everyone has always taken care of me. I grew up in a house full of love. You’re wrong about me.”

“No. Definitely not. If there’s anyone who loves life, it’s you.” Suddenly, I’m glad again that I kidnapped her because otherwise, I would never have met the other, strong Lou. But how can I be happy about doing something so bad and hating it at the same time? And how is it possible that Lou is sitting here with me and talking to me like it wasn’t me who took her and kept her sedated for five days? Who puts her in chains and makes sure she doesn’t leave?

Looking at Lou, I can see her sinking into her feelings, maybe thinking about what I said and getting sad.

I clear my throat to get her attention. “We shouldn’t talk about this anymore today,” I suggest, pointing at the sleeping wolf on Lou’s lap. “It’s Grey’s big day, isn’t it?”

She nods and seems grateful for the change of subject.

“Perhaps you would like to tell me the story to which he owes his name.”

“You mean Jayden’s story?” The most contradictory emotions are reflected on her face. Confusion, understanding, sadness.

Maybe the story wasn’t such a good idea after all because now she must be thinking about her brother even more. I want to tell her it was stupid and thoughtless of me, but then she puts down the beer she has been sipping.

The bell bracelet around her wrist jingles, but Lou smiles. “Okay.” She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “The story is called Grey, but it’s not about a wolf, it’s about a Native American boy.”

I feel irritated by her sudden kindness. Out of sheer nervousness, I light a cigarette and lean back in my chair.

“I’m not a good storyteller”—Lou looks at me a little apologetically—“but this one I know pretty much by heart.”

“I don’t remember ever being told a story, so I won’t know if you tell it well or not, Lou.” I nod encouragingly.

Lou nods back. She closes her eyes for several breaths and her facial features smooth out, glowing orange and soft in the light of the fire. As she begins to speak, she stares into the flames and her voice suddenly sounds as if she is far away.

“Many summers and winters before the white man’s ships brought death to the Big Muddy River area, a small tribe of Lakota lived near the river valley.”

I exhale the cigarette smoke and stretch out my legs.

“There were lush forests of tall white plane trees, stout maples, and horse chestnut trees as far as the eye could see. When there was a clearing, a carpet of red flowers would cover it, and in the Indian summer, all the trees shone like torches. The boy in this story wasn't born with red skin like all the Lakota, but with gray skin.”

We look at each other, but Lou actually seems to be there, at Big Muddy River, which probably feels better to her than the Yukon.

“Truly, it was completely gray, pale gray like ash, not reddish like ripe cranberries. His mother called him Delsin, which means, he is like that.”

“She didn’t call him Grey even though that’s the title of the story?” I interject dryly.

Lou reprimands me with a look. “No. She knew he’d never get a better name with the defect, and before the other kids called him Dead Skin or Gray-Face, she chose Delsin to show the others that she accepted him the way the Great Spirit had made him. Young Indians are allowed to choose a different name after a glorious feat, but she feared it would never come to that. Even as a five-year-old, his ashen skin made him look like an old man. Girls feared him and went into hiding whenever he came near them, whereas the boys excluded him and threw stones at him if he tried to join their games.”

I swallow. “It’s a sad story.” It reminds me of my early days in the slums. After I passed the Bones’ initiation test, I could have chosen a name. I didn’t need to be Hoover anymore, but I didn’t want any other name. I wanted mine. There was a time when I wanted nothing more than to know what my mother called me as if it would give me my old identity back. It would have been like I was no longer the bastard, the little shit, the weakling. But of course it didn’t change anything.

Lou looks at me like she knows what’s going on inside me. Her eyes shimmer in the fire like two deep lakes.

“When Delsin was six years old, his mother died while giving birth to his sister and he had no one left to love him,” she continues. “Delsin’s father, the head of the tribe, was ashamed of Delsin. He had wanted to drown him soon after birth, but the tribe’s medicine man had prophesied that it would bring bad luck if he drowned his firstborn like a deformed dog. So, whenever warriors from a friendly tribe came by to plan battles and conduct negotiations, he would say to them, ‘This is not my son. He was given to me by the Great Spirit and I must bow to his fate and raise him.’”

Like me, Delsin grew up like a bastard. Without friends. Isolated. I’m enveloped by darkness. I miss part of the story, but then I go back to focusing on Lou’s voice, holding on to it like I did that night in the thunderstorm when I had my flashback.

“His sister, Alaska—meaning, where the sea breaks—avoided him too, afraid of also being ostracized by the others and of never having a man take her to his wigwam,” I hear Lou say. “So, Delsin was left to his own devices and became a gray shadow, flitting like a ghost between the forest, the low willows, and the teepees. His father put a bowl of beans in front of the wigwam every day. Delsin only crept in to sleep and rose long before his father so he wouldn’t offend his eyes, as he always said.

“At some point, Delsin himself began to believe he was only a shadow. A gray shade. And since the Lakota didn’t talk to him, he went deep into the woods and started talking to the animals and plants. Eventually, as the sunny days lengthened, he simply did not return to the Big Muddy River camp. He lived for himself, but not alone. He spoke to the maples and plane trees, to owls and deer. Yes, he even spoke to the moon and the stars for he had many things to say, many things which he had heard and seen among the Lakota but did not understand.”

The words continue pouring out of Lou, creating a bubble around us. It’s only Lou and I and the fleeting images her words create.

“He confessed everything under the skies—on the peaks of green-gray hills far from the forest, where his words soared high and wove pictures in the sky. He called the moon his yellow friend in the black sea and he gave shimmering names to the brightest stars that glittered in the mouth and palate just by saying them.”

“What were those names?” I demand, surfacing for a moment as if to catch my breath. It almost seems to me that the inside of my mouth is tingling like after a spoonful of fizzy water.

“I had asked Jayden the same back then.” Lou smiles. “He said he knew the names but couldn’t write them down or say them. They were too beautiful. His letters would shatter like glass if he tried. To Delsin these stars he named were like drops of silver pressed into the sky by the Great Spirit. And sometimes, in the most secret of dreams, he wished his skin was the color of the stars. Silver instead of gray.” She looks at me conspiratorially through the darkness. “At the time, I hated Jayden for not telling me the names.”

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