White Whale

  "You can't keep running," I told Fox.

  "I have to," he said roughly, desperately. He turned on me. "I've always been running. Since before I was born. That's what it means to be a--"

  He couldn't even say it.

  "Do you really hate yourself so much?" I asked.

  "I hate that Milk is dead," Fox told me. "He shouldn't have died. I should have--I don't know. I don't know what I could have done. But I should have done it."

  "There's nothing you could have done."

  "There's always something."

  "Fox."

  His fingers twitched. I was afraid he'd go home and scratch himself up. He didn't have a home to go back to, not if his landlord knew what he was.

  "Where is your family, Fox?"

  "Please don't ask me that," he said.

  I relented.

  "We'd better go inside," Fox said.

  He stood up. I stood after him. He checked his wristwatch for the time.

  It was my wristwatch. I recognized it. The frame was square and the face was green. It was supposed to light up in the dark. I'd never figured out how. I'd never gotten it to work.

  "Hey," Fox began. "Do you think that--"

  He never finished. When he looked at me he held still. It made me wonder what sort of an expression he'd seen on my face. Maybe it wasn't my face. Maybe he'd come to the same realization I had. He lowered his wrist and rubbed it, like it was sore. He had snow on his eyelashes, short as they were. He had snow in his hair, thick and sandy brown. I wanted to touch his hair and feel the delicate wave of it. I wanted to feel the snowflakes melt beneath my fingers.

  His eyes were so pale I didn't know how he wasn't a desert spirit. I didn't know how I hadn't seen it sooner.

  "Orca," he began again, wetting his lips.

  "Don't do that," I said.

  "Do what?" he asked, his eyes on my mouth.

  "That," I said, and kissed him.

  He drew a sharp breath. He opened his mouth for me. Our mouths slid together and our tongues slid together, his fingers shaking in my hair. His hands locked behind my head and I held his face in my hands. I felt it reverberate through me when he bumped back against the brick wall. The warmth of him spread through me, the icy air thawing on my skin.

  "Someone could see," he tried to say. His words caught on my lips.

  "Do you care?" I asked. I kissed the corner of his mouth.

  "We'll get arrested," Fox said.

  I'd never even heard of that. I pulled back only far enough that I could see his eyes. His eyes were blurry, his breath uneven. He wrapped his fingers around my hair, his knuckles grazing my scalp.

  "That happens?" I asked.

  His eyes cleared. "You didn't know?"

  "Why?" was all I could think to say.

  His eyebrows furrowed. "I guess I don't know."

  I let go of him. He let go of my hair, put his hands down at his sides. It hurt not to touch him. He never took his eyes off me, not even when they flickered, pale and wavering and anise brown. I wanted to crush him against me and kiss his neck, his shoulder, his sloping jaw. I wanted to hold him. I wanted it so much my arms ached. If there was anything that scared me it was that physical ache, the idea that I was helpless in all this. I couldn't believe I hadn't seen this months in advance. There's this plant that grows along the American coastline. It's called Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. It's violet one day and white the next. Sometimes it's red. Sometimes it's green. It'll be white for years, and then suddenly it'll turn orange. Fox was just like that. I didn't know when he had turned into this person I couldn't keep my hands off of. Maybe he was always that person, and I hadn't known it. Maybe it was scary that I'd managed to miss it for so long.

  "I was afraid to write to you," Fox said.

  I tucked his hair behind his ear. "Why?"

  "It--" He grabbed my hand, held onto it. I could feel him shaking. I couldn't blame the cold anymore, not when his skin was so hot. "I thought maybe...you know...everything in Ginza," he said unintelligibly. "Thought maybe it was a fluke."

  I ran my thumb across his bottom lip, smooth and moist. I knew I shouldn't have. I was taller than Fox; I had bigger shoulders. If anyone looked at us from across the street maybe I could cover him. I think I wanted to cover him. I wanted to shield him. People were going to hate him and I didn't know why. It didn't matter why. People who want to hate each other will always find a way. Those are the kind of people I feel sorry for.

  "Stay with me a while," I told Fox.

  "What?" he said, his voice cracking.

  I traced the seams around his mouth. I wasn't immediately aware I was doing it, not until he started kissing my fingertips, his eyes fluttering closed. I'd never seen anything more beautiful.

  "You don't have a home," I said.

  "I've never had a home," he said. "Cigani don't have homes. That's why we're Cigani."

  I held his hips. He pressed into the palm of my hand. It was stupid of me, so stupid. I couldn't stop. Now that I knew what it was like to touch him I knew that I couldn't stop.

  I kissed the snow from Fox's eyelashes. He breathed, a warm puff of breath sliding against my collarbone. The door to the funeral parlor creaked open and I let go. I stepped back, my hands achingly empty. Fox stirred, disoriented, his hair disheveled.

  "Irish isn't doing so hot," Pogue said awkwardly. He didn't seem to know where to put his hands; he kept fiddling with his glasses. "I'm taking him and Terry to a Frisko Freeze. Come with us."

  "Not sure they have a Frisko Freeze around here," I said.

  "We'll find an alternative." Pogue hesitated. "Fox?"

  "What?" Fox said. He cleared his throat.

  "Nothing," Pogue said. "It's just that you look all frazzled."

  "Yeah, well," Fox murmured. "It's cold out."

  "Oh, I know," Pogue said with distaste. "Much rather be in Carson City right now."

  * * * * *

  Salt Lake City didn't have a Frisko Freeze. It didn't even have a Big Boy. We settled for a diner in Sugar House but the hostess wouldn't seat Two-Ply. Irish blew up in a rage.

  "Who the fuck do you think you are?" he screamed at her. She squeezed her eyes shut and shrank back. "Do you know this guy fought for your sorry ass?"

  It didn't surprise me when the cops showed up two minutes later. I think they would have arrested us, too, if Pogue hadn't been wearing his fatigues.

  Pogue found one of those fast food dives out in The Avenues. They served something they swore was deep-fried halibut, but it looked more like tilefish to me. We got our orders and we sat by a big window. I could feel the frost leaking in through the glass. The Wasatch Mountains were right outside, blurry and blue and dominating the sky.

  For a moment I wondered whether we had all died with Milk. That's how quiet it was at that table. Two-Ply must have felt the same. He tried to make small talk.

  "When you go back to Idaho Falls?" he asked Irish.

  Irish didn't answer him. His sister, Cathleen, said: "Couple days."

  "You've been staying in Okinawa?" I asked Two-Ply.

  "Kimiko here's from Miyako," Two-Ply said.

  Kimiko threw him a flustery smile. I hated to think her first experience in America was a funeral wake.

  "Where'd your father go?" Fox asked Pogue.

  Pogue stared dubiously into the bottom of his lime squeeze. "Ogden Defense," he said. "Only reason he came with me to begin with."

  "Are you going back to training?" I asked.

  "I'm not sure," Pogue said slowly. "McCarthy keeps calling for surveillance in the Eastern Bloc."

  "Who?" Fox asked.

  "Some whacky marine."

  "Damn," Two-Ply said. "No more five-and-diver."

  "Stop calling me that," Pogue said brashly.

  "He just did," I pointed out.

  "Shut up," Irish said. "All of you."

  Cathleen gave her brother a dark warning look. Right then and there I knew she was the oldest. Lot of good it did her, though.
Irish bunched up his fists and dragged his knuckles through his hair. He looked spitting mad, too. Irish was one of those types who preferred feeling angry to feeling sad.

  "We all got exposed to that bomb," Irish said. "Think the rest of us are going to die?"

  Fox was tellingly quiet. His earthy gold face lost a shade of color.

  "My uncle," Kimiko began. She faltered, like she thought she wasn't allowed to talk. "He say the bomb in Nagasaki give him cancer."

  The part that made me angriest was that the bombs weren't even necessary. Fox knew that. I knew that. I wondered whether the higher-ups had known all the side-effects going into this. I wondered whether they had cared. Of course they hadn't cared. We were ants to them. We are ants. We raid each other's nests, smash each other's eggs and put each other in chains. We wallow in our own filth. We eat our own excrement.

  Last week I'd gone to Qanuk Island to sell otter pelts for Lady's Mantle. You never know when you'll cut yourself gutting fish. While I was on the mainland I'd picked up a newspaper, five cents. The cover article talked all about how American boys were coming home from war and killing themselves. The columnist kept saying he didn't understand it. He cited psych doctors, all kinds of experts, and they didn't understand it.

  I wonder what it's like to sit in an armchair all day while boys half your age are watching each other get blown apart by mortars.

  * * * * *

  Around three Cathleen said her aunt was expecting her, and she left to catch the bus with Irish. Pogue and Two-Ply and Kimiko went to the foothills to get a better look at the Wasatch Mountains. I asked Fox where his belongings were.

  "Orca, I'm not moving in with you," Fox said.

  "Then where are you going?" I asked.

  He tugged his coat sleeve down over his elbow. "What does that matter?"

  I gave him a Look. All at once he started twittering and sputtering. I wondered whether I should tell him he was the funniest person I'd ever met.

  The staying power of the Look saw Fox scampering back to the bus stop where he'd stashed his duffel bag. I didn't think a bus stop was the best place to keep his personal possessions, especially once he told me a homeless guy had promised to watch them for him. Turns out I was wrong. He caught up with me at the Bingham and Garfield train station, a ratty-looking bag over his shoulder.

  "I don't know about this," he started to say. "I really don't--oh, God, stop looking at me that way."

  The train pulled into the stony terminus. We got on board, sat in the far back on a depressed leather seat. The walls looked like cheap plastic but smelled like caramel. I wondered if the circus was in town.

  "You look like you haven't slept," Fox told me.

  That much was true. "I want to get home to my son."

  Fox smiled and looked away. He rubbed the crook of his elbow.

  "Are you still scratching?" I asked him.

  "Huh? Maybe..."

  "Don't."

  The train rolled slowly out of the terminus. There weren't any windows to look out of but I could hear the wheels screeching outside the thin walls. Through the vents in the ceiling a crackling voice announced the first stop on the Wasatch Front.

  "Where did you live before America?" I asked Fox.

  He pretended to rifle through his bag. I knew him better than that.

  "Here and there," he said evasively.

  I decided not to push it. Instead I thought about Rabbit. He was still in school right now, if I'd gotten the time difference right. I did some quick adding and I realized I wasn't going to be home to see him this evening. I can't put into words how much that upset me. That boy was my everything, my life and my breath. Before he was born I didn't know it was possible to love anyone so much. I didn't know you could see the entire universe, vast as it was, in a pair of tiny eyes.

  "Cedar City," announced the voice in the ceiling.

  The next thing I knew I was waking up. It was a weird feeling; I couldn't remember falling asleep in the first place. My arm was numb and my neck was cramped. I rubbed the vision back into my eyes with the heel of my hand.

  My head was on Fox's shoulder. I didn't remember that, either. I thought to apologize, to move away. His hand on my head stopped me. His fingers dipped in and out of my hair, slowly, aimlessly. His fingertips grazed my scalp. It was almost like he didn't even know he was doing it. I realized how true that was when I saw the rosary chain on his lap, his free hand trailing down the plastic red beads.

  What makes a person devout like that? I'd known Fox about a year now. For as long as I'd known him he was praying for something; I didn't know what. How do you keep God in your heart when it feels like God's forgotten you? What kind of God turns a blind eye while you murder his people?

  In Cree we call God Kice-Munito. I'm not sure God is even a good translation for what Kice-Munito really is. Kice-Munito means Spirit of Spirits. It doesn't have a personality; it doesn't have a gender. It didn't create reality because reality has always been here. It's the spirit in all of us. It's the breath we breathe. Inspiration. A lot of people don't know this, but inspiration is a Latin word. It literally means breath. God, whatever you want to call it, it breathed its spirit into everything around us. Without spirit life is very dull.

  Suddenly I understood why Fox was always praying. In fact, I understood it with a startling clarity.

  In fact, it made me want to pick up a rosary for myself.

  6

  Jonah and the Whale

  When we got to Wapu Island Fox opened his duffel bag and let out a strangled sound.

  "What is it?" I asked him.

  He took out a jar of Tussy and showed it to me, dismal. The cologne was frozen solid.

  "That happens," I said unhelpfully.

  "Augh, not the hair gel," he said, digging through his bag.

  "Just forget it," I said.

  I walked off the wharf. He scurried to keep up with me. A few heads turned his way but he didn't notice. He was too busy eyeing the glaciers out west. Falling snow frosted the tops of the Titans. The sun stretched across the island and lit the stacks of ice in an opulent amber glow.

  Fox laughed, high and nervous. "I'm in the damn Arctic Circle..."

  He followed me home. He got a kick out of the wintersweets on the ground; he kept pointing them out like he thought I'd never seen them before. I opened the door to my house for him, lit the whale oil candles on the counters in the kitchen and he stared at the fishing nets hanging from the ceiling rafters.

  "Do you catch whales with those?" he asked skittishly.

  "No," I said. I stuck kindling over the wood stove. "You need a two flue harpoon. You catch one whale and it'll feed the whole community for sixteen years."

  "That's got to be strange," Fox said thoughtfully. "A whale killing a whale."

  I gave him a Look, but watered it down. I didn't want him jumping all over the place.

  Fox brought his duffel bag into the bedroom and I rolled out a third down mattress for him. I told him to wait and I went outside the house and got the wash tub. It was already full of snow. I dragged the tub inside and hoisted it over the wood stove in the kitchen. The snow melted.

  "Turn around," Fox said.

  Even back in BCT he used to bolt out of the three-minute showers in fifteen seconds flat. I guessed he didn't like people looking at him. He washed himself in the kitchen with the water and a towel and I went into the bedroom to give him his privacy. I pulled back the netted drapes on the solitary window, the winter sun pouring across my face.

  "Alright," I heard him say.

  I went back into the kitchen and he was dressed again, his hair wet. I stowed the wood tub under the bone table. I'd wash myself later. I got pemmican out of the cupboard and made Fox eat some. He never questioned what was in it. That says a lot about him.

  "Aren't you Cree?" Fox asked suddenly.

  I couldn't have been more surprised if he'd leapt up on the table and started screaming. In fact, if he'd leapt up on the table and starte
d screaming I don't think I would have been surprised at all. Probably I would have thought he'd seen a rat. We had a lot of lemmings on Wapu Island. The owls usually fed off them.

  "Why do you ask?" I said.

  "Nothing," Fox said. He changed his mind. "I thought Cree lived in Canada."

  "Some do." I thought of my cousin Bee in Saskatchewan, that weird French guy she'd married. "How did you know I was Cree?"

  "You told me," Fox said, puzzled.

  "I didn't think you'd remember."

  "I always listen when you talk," Fox said. "Probably because you don't do it much."

  "That's not true."

  "It is. Don't you remember AIT? I tried like crazy to get you to say something. All I got out of you was you like candy."

  "Is that why you always gave me yours at mail call?"

  The moment I said it, I realized something was amiss. Fox lived alone. He wouldn't tell me where his family was. If his family hadn't been the ones sending him care packages--

  "I was ordering it for you," Fox said. "I don't really like sweet stuff, you know?"

  He didn't seem to realize he'd said anything unusual. Something cold, something tight stitched its way across my stomach. It was the feeling of being wanted, being sought after. It was a feeling I'd never experienced before.

  I reached across the table and took the pemmican bar from Fox. It was half-eaten.

  "What was that for?" Fox said, at a loss.

  "You don't like sweet things," I said.

  "Oh," he said, catching on. "No, it's alright--"

  "I'll make you soup."

  "Orca, you don't have to..."

  "You didn't have to, either."

  He lifted his head. I think he realized at that moment what I'd realized a second before. Somebody wanted him. Somebody had him in mind.

  I felt Fox's eyes on me when I lit the stove a second time. I turned around to ask him what the matter was. I saw him smiling weakly.

  "You know this isn't normal," he said.

  "Does that bother you?" I asked. It didn't bother me. It should have, but it didn't.