Page 36 of Lily's Eagle

Because maybe, just maybe I’ve finally found what I came here looking for.

11

LILY

It’s beentwo days since I walked into the Helping Hands Center though it feels like it’s still the same day. Just obscured by the fog of sadness and pain wafting from the phones. I can hear them ringing even when I’m trying to sleep in the tiny bedroom at Tina’s and they’re ringing in my dreams too.

I’ve hardly slept, haven’t been eating much, or done any of the things I planned, like visiting my grandparents’ graves or the trailer I grew up in. I’ve just been answering phones. I’ve never felt so useful in my entire life.

Joyce and her friend Miriam, the other lady who runs the center, have organized a community get-together in a large park at the edge of town. It’s a memorial for Greg, and a chance for everyone to grieve together. His death has hit the community hard, because he was considered one of the success stories having gotten through rehab and staying clean for months afterwards. He had just started attending college, his mother told me proudly when I visited her house with Joyce yesterday. She was clutching a photo of him as a little kid and fighting to hold back tears. We all were.

Greg’s death would’ve been easier to process if it had been an isolated event. But he’s the eighth young person who overdosed this year, and it’s only September. Six others took their own lives and four were locked up. “We’re running out of young people,” Miriam said in a hard voice and with tears in her eyes when she told me these statistics.

Miriam was helping Joy set up the folding tables for the memorial. She’s wearing her traditional, white leather dress with blue and yellow tassels and stitching. Her waist length hair is braided with blue and yellow strings too. I wish I still had my own traditional dress. But my mom didn’t pack it when we left and I doubt it survived the years and the elements. Maybe Miriam can show me how to sew a new one. I do still remember how to braid my hair. Vaguely. It’s been years since I’ve attempted it.

Tina and I are putting candles into the store-bought paper lanterns, which everyone who attends the memorial will release into the sky to commemorate another young life ended too soon. And as a reminder that life goes on. It’s a beautiful idea. Good symbolism. But will it do any good?

Tina’s asked that question a couple of times already, and I didn’t answer her, because I simply don’t know. A few people are already here. Greg’s mother is standing off to the side of the tables, encircled by her cousins and friends. She looks like she needs more than a paper lantern with a lit candle inside to take the edge off her grief, which is written plain in her pale, sallow, sunken face and her red, puffy eyes. But it’s a step in the right direction. Maybe. A few guys are cursing as the tipi they’re erecting just won’t stand straight. No one is talking much.

It was a bright, windy day today, and the sky above us is bright red for as far as the eye can see. A blood sunset. I’m sure my grandma told me something about what that means once, but I can’t remember what. Nothing good, I don’t think.

“I could really go for a drink right about now,” I say to Tina.

She gives me a shocked look, and then grins. “No alcohol allowed on the Rez. How dare you suggest it?”

She’s joking, but not entirely, I think.

I’m stuck between apologizing for my error and laughing. I opt for just grinning back.

“I think we should go up to the campground tomorrow,” she says. “To look around. Make some plans. Get away. Tonight is going to be heavy.”

The last couple of days have been heavy. But I don’t say it, because that will make it even more real. It doesn’t help that I think I can hear a Harley approaching and I’m really hoping it’s real and not just in my head. I’d love to see someone from home. One, in particular. But that kind of thinking is useless. My homesickness will pass. Just as the one I had after leaving this place did.

More and more people are gathering now, coming in groups of five to ten, accompanied by barking dogs and children laughing and shrieking, because they have no idea that this is a grave, sad occasion. Lucky them. The way life is here, they’ll learn soon enough.

Joyce and Miriam are greeting everyone that arrives, shaking their hands, welcoming them. At the other end of the big park a tall man, wearing a similar outfit as Miriam and a large, eagle-feather adorned headdress is doing the same with the people who come from that direction. He’s Frank, Miriam’s husband, and the chief of this tribe. He knew my grandparents well.

The sound of the bike is growing louder and louder. I know it’s just in my head.

Until he rounds the corner.

Not in my head, but at the edge of park. And he’s riding closer.

All chatter around me has ceased as everyone stops what they’re doing to stare at Eagle as he dismounts where the road ends and the grass begins. He’s wearing his helmet and the shadows of twilight are obscuring his face, but I’d know him anywhere, from any distance, even in the dark. I figured I’d be happy to see him, but not that I’d be just happy and nothing else.

“What the hell is this?” a man yells angrily behind my back and pushes past me, knocking me forward on his way towards Eagle. “How dare he?”

The man is joined by ten others, at least, all asking similar angry questions. Eagle doesn’t stop approaching right away. Only when the first of the men pulls a pistol from behind the belt of his jeans. A second later, he’s not the only one pointing a gun at Eagle.

“You and your kind have no business here!” one of the men yells. “And I think it’s high time we sent you and yours that message loud and clear.”

He means to kill him. They all do.

I’m running to stop them, but I hardly feel my feet hitting the grassy ground. I’m yelling something, but I don’t hear the words. This is all my nightmares rolled into a single event. And all I know is that if Eagle dies today I’m following. Stupid as that is.

* * *

EAGLE

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