I just feel kinda bad but kinda good, he said. Which meant nothing but was also true, so he could say it with conviction. She was still uncertain, but she was also late for the usual emergency meeting. After his mother left, LaRose went back into the bedroom, took a blanket from the storage closet. He rolled the blanket up and tucked it beneath his arm. He unzipped his backpack full of action figures, added a spray bottle of mosquito repellent. In the kitchen, he turned on the tap and filled a canning jar with water.
In all of these things, LaRose was precise and deliberate. He was becoming an effective human being. He had learned from his birth family how to snare rabbits, make stew, paint fingernails, glue wallpaper, conduct ceremonies, start outside fires in a driving rain, sew with a sewing machine, cut quilt squares, play Halo, gather, dry, and boil various medicine teas. He had learned from the old people how to move between worlds seen and unseen. Peter taught him how to use an ax, a chain saw, safely handle a .22, drive a riding lawn mower, drive a tractor, even a car. Nola taught him how to paint walls, keep animals, how to plant and grow things, how to fry meat, how to bake. Maggie taught him how to hide fear, fake pain, how to punch with a knuckle jutting. How to go for the eyes. How to hook your fingers in a person’s nose from behind and threaten to rip the nose off your face. He hadn’t done these things yet, and neither had Maggie, but she was always looking for a chance.
When he reached the place, he spread out his blanket beside the tobacco ties, cedar, disintegrating objects, leaves, and sticks. It was a hot, still day, the only breeze high in the branches. The mosquitoes weren’t the rabid cloud of the first hot summer hatch, and once he sprayed himself they whined around him but didn’t land. At first, they were the only sound. The stillness, the too-quiet, made him uneasy. But then the birds started up again, accepting him into their territory, and he sat down on his blanket. He realized he had forgotten to bring any kind of offering—you were supposed to do that. For sure you were supposed to do that if you went into the woods. You had to offer something to the spirits. He had himself, the pack of action figures, the mosquito spray, his blanket, one song, and the jar of water. The song was the four-direction song he’d learned from his father. He held the jar of water up the way he’d seen his mother do this, offering the jar to each direction. He sang his song as he poured the water out on the ground. He carefully capped the empty jar. Then he lay back and looked into the waving treetops and bits of sky. The trees covered almost all the sky but what he could see was blue, hot blue, though down here the air was warm but not blistering. If not for the mosquitoes that got in an ear or went up his nose and occasionally bit through the repellent, he would have been comfortable.
The chatter of birds, the light hum of insects. He lay there listening to his stomach complain, waiting for something to happen. Toward late afternoon his stomach gave up and the wind came sweeping along the ground. It was harder for the bugs to light on him. He fell asleep. When he woke it was extremely dark. He was thirsty, wished he’d brought a flashlight or some matches. But his parents might have seen a light, he told himself. He’d done the right thing. He was uneasy, thought of going back. But they would find he’d lied and never trust him again. He’d never get this chance. So he lay in his blanket listening to the leaves rustled by small animals, his heart plunging in his ears. Late summer crickets sawed. A few frogs sang out. There were owls. His parents talked about the manidoog, the spirits that lived in everything, especially the woods.
It is only me. He whispered to the noises and their nature changed. They became a whispery chorus, willing to accept him. He fell asleep, at last. He slept so fervently that he couldn’t remember dreaming when the loud birds woke him in the morning. Now he was thirstier, and hungry, but also deliciously weak. He didn’t want to move at all. His body needed food; it was stretching out. Everybody said he was getting his growth. It would be so easy to show up early at Nola’s and say that he’d been dropped off. He’d done what he needed to do—that one night. But he decided to stay because he was strangely comfortable. His throat was so dry and scratchy that it hurt to swallow, but he didn’t care. The heat of the day clenched down, pressed through him.
After a while LaRose heard, or felt, someone approach, but he was held too fast in the hot lethargy to move. He did not feel afraid. Most likely, it was his father. Landreaux liked to range around the woods too. But it wasn’t—in fact it wasn’t one person at all. It was a group of people. Half were Indians and half were maybe Indians, some so pale he could see light shining through them. They came and made themselves comfortable, sitting around him—people of all ages. At least twenty of them. None of them acknowledged or even looked at him, and when they started speaking he knew that they were unaware of him. He knew because they talked about him the way parents do when they don’t know you can hear. He knew right off it was him they were talking of because someone said, The one they took for Dusty, and another asked, Is he still playing with Seker and the other Actions?, which of course he was, but which he tried to hide. All of a sudden one pointed.