Father Travis Wozniak held their hands and prayed. He didn’t think he would find the words, but they came. Of course words came. Incomprehensible, His judgments. Unsearchable, His ways. He’d had years of too much practice even before he became a priest. Father Travis had been a Marine. Or still was. BLT 1/8, 24th May. He had survived the barracks bombing in 1983, Beirut, Lebanon. The thick scars roping up his neck, twisting down in random loops, marked him on the outside and ran inside of him, too.
He closed his eyes, gripped their hands tighter. Went dizzy. He was sick of praying over the car accident victims, sick of adding buckle your seat belts to the end of every sermon, sick of so many other early deaths, ready himself to fall down on the floor. He wondered, as he did every day, how he could go on pretending to the people he loved. He tried to calm his heart. Weep with those who weep. Tears scored Emmaline’s cheeks. The two kept pushing tears impatiently off their faces as they talked. They needed towels. Father Travis had both tissues and a roll of paper towels. He tore off squares. Two days before, he had done the same for Peter, though not Nola, whose eyes had been dry with hate.
What should we do? Emmaline asked now. How can things go on?
Landreaux began muttering the rosary, eyes shut. Emmaline glanced at him, but took a rosary from Father Travis and kept going. Father Travis did not weep, but his redhead’s eyes were delicately pink, his lids lavender. The beads dangled in his grip. His hands were strong and callused because he moved rocks, hacked out brush, did general grounds work—it calmed him. There was a big woodpile behind the church now. He was forty-six—stuck—powerful, deeper, sadder. He taught martial arts, did Marine workouts with the God Squad teens. Or by himself. There were free weights behind the desk in a neatly graduated stack, and a bench behind the choirboy curtain. Landreaux sat silent after they finished. Father Travis had been through everything with Landreaux—the years sorting out boarding school, Kuwait, then wild years, through the drinking and after, straightening out through traditional healing, now this. In his life on the reservation, Father Travis had seen how some people would try their best but the worst would still happen. Landreaux reached over and gripped the priest’s arm. Emmaline held Landreaux. They murmured another round of Hail Marys together; the repetition quieted them again. In the pause before they left, Father Travis had the feeling that there was something they wanted to ask him.
Landreaux and Emmaline Iron came to the funeral, sat in the back pew, melted out the side door before the small white casket was carried down the aisle.
Emmaline was a branchy woman, lovely in her angularity. She was all sticks and elbows, knobby knees. She had a slightly crooked nose and striking, murky green, wolfish eyes. Her daughter Josette had her eyes; Snow, Coochy, and LaRose had their father’s, warm and brown. Emmaline’s hair and skin were light but she tanned instantly. Her husband, darker, gave her babies a richly toasted color. She was a passionate mother. Landreaux understood after the babies were born he would come second, but that, if he hung tough, one day he would again be first in her heart. Driving home after they saw the priest, she kept her hand on his leg, gripping him hard when he shook. In the driveway, he put the car in park but kept it idling. The shadowy light cut their faces.
I can’t go home yet, he said.
She cast her disturbing gaze on him. Landreaux thought of her at eighteen, Emmaline Peace, how in the beginning of their years that look of hers, if she grinned, meant they were going to go crazy together. He was six years older. They did some wild stuff then. It was confessed but not done with. They had this streak together, had to sober up in tandem. So she knew right now what was pulling him.
I can’t make you come inside the house, she said. I can’t keep you from what you’re going to do.
But she leaned over, took his face in her hands, and placed her forehead on his forehead. They closed their eyes as if their thoughts could be one thought. Then she got out of the car.
Landreaux drove off the reservation to Hoopdance, turned in at the drive-up liquor store window. He put the bagged bottle on the passenger’s seat. Drove the back roads until he saw no lights, pulled over, and cut the engine. He sat for about an hour with the bottle beside him, then he grabbed the bottle and walked into the icy field. The wind rattled around his head. He lay down. He tried to send the image of Dusty up into the heavens. He made fierce attempts to send himself back in time and die before he went into the woods. But each time he closed his eyes the boy was still ruined in the leaves. The earth was dry, the stars bursting up there. Planes and satellites winked over. The moon came up, burning whitely, and at last clouds moved in, covering everything.
After a few hours, he got up and drove home. A light shone dimly from their bedroom window. Emmaline was still awake, staring at the ceiling. When she heard the car crunch on dry gravel she closed her eyes, slept, woke before the children. She went outside and found him in the sweat lodge curled in tarps, the bottle still in its bag. He blinked at her.