Page 8 of So Far Gone

At the highway fork, they didn’t turn west toward Loon Lake, the way they’d come with Anna Gaines, but drove south toward the town of Ford, past a sign that pointed to the entrance of the Spokane Tribe of Indians.

Rhys began muttering to himself. “Oh boy. I probably shouldn’t. Or maybe—” He bit his lip. “And maybe they aren’t even...”

He slowed the car. “I’m sure they don’t want to—” He eased the car to a crawl, craning his neck to scope out a newer double-wide

trailer just off the highway, two cars parked in front.

“Well shit,” he said, “they’re home. I guess now is as good a time as any.” He pulled off the highway into a fenced dirt yard,

parking in front of the double-wide, which sat next to a large steel building with a faded sign that read: spokane tribal surplus. There were also homemade signs on the fence that read: midnite mine kills! And: clean up dawn uranium . And: doe lies!

“Okay, kids.” Rhys took a deep breath. “I apologize in advance for any language you are about to hear, but this will be a

good lesson for us all. Don’t put things off. And don’t drink wine in the afternoon.”

“Whose house is this?” Leah asked.

“It belongs to my friends Brian and—”

Before he could finish the sentence, a German shepherd came out of the house and began barking, followed by a top-heavy Native

American man in gray sweatpants, fuzzy slippers, and an Oakland Raiders sweatshirt, who burst out of the double-wide’s doors

and down two steps. “Kinnick, what the actual fu—” But the man caught himself when he saw the children in Kinnick’s car. “What

do you think you’re doing?”

Rhys climbed out of the car and showed his hands. “Brian. I’m sorry. I would’ve called first, but I just realized I don’t

have a phone.”

“I don’t believe it. You just show up like this?”

The dog continued to bark but stayed on the porch. A woman, also top-heavy, came out next. “Okay, Billy,” she said, and the dog went back in the house. The woman was thick and pretty, lighter-skinned than the man, with short, gray, spiky hair. “Rhys, are these your grandchildren?”

“Allegedly. Hello, Joanie. How are you?”

“Fine. Just fine.” There was a swirl of activity then. The men stepped in close and talked quietly to each other through gritted

teeth. The woman, Joanie, hustled over and pulled the kids out of the car and brought them into the house, and somehow, had

cocoa and maple cookies ready to go before they got out of their shoes and raincoats. It was a warm place, with shag carpet

and a big-screen television facing two leather recliners beneath old Native ledger paintings of warriors on horses. The dog

fell onto a lumpy bed in front of the TV. Joanie put the kids at a small bar with their cookies and hot chocolate, which were

delicious.

“Have more,” Joanie said, and pushed the package of maple cookies their way.

“Do you have an indoor toilet?” Asher asked.

“Of course we do,” Joanie said, “just down the hall.”

They watched out the window as, in the dirt lawn in front of the double-wide, Brian pointed and yelled at Kinnick, who stood

sheepishly, hands in his pockets, nodding along.

“What’s he so angry about?” asked Leah.

Joanie looked them over and must have decided they were old enough to hear. Either that or it was just too good a story not

to tell.

“Well, see,” she said, “one day we was up to Two Rivers boat launch, drinking wine, me and Brian and Rhys, and out of nowhere, your grandpa gets me alone and tells me that he might be in love with me...” Joanie didn’t stop speaking, but sort of hummed a little laugh.

Then, without looking away from the two men, she fell back into the story: “But that wasn’t the worst of it.

I would’ve just said ‘O-o-okay, Rhys,’ and chalked it up to the wine and him living all alone like he does.

But Brian comes back from taking a piss and your dumb grandfather decides he needs to tell Brian what he just told me. ”

“That he loves him?” Asher asked.

This caused Joanie to look away from the window and laugh with her full chest, a sound like someone barking. “He does love

Brian! That is true, son. Sure more than he loves me. Them two talking politics is like watching a mating dance.

“But, no, he told Brian that he was taken with me, and that he didn’t plan to do nothing about it, but that such business

had caused trouble in his life before, etcetera. He said he was trying this new honesty approach or some such thing, and he

didn’t want nothing, it was just something that needed to be said out loud—apparently while we were all drunk on wine at the

Two Rivers boat launch!” Joanie laughed again.

“When did this happen?” asked Leah, remembering Rhys saying something about not putting things off.

“Be a year in July.”

“And you haven’t seen him since?”

“Nope. Because your drunk grandfather starts in about how, also, while he’s on the topic, maybe Brian ought to treat me better,

pay more attention to me—which is true by the way—but that was a lot for Brian to take in on the same day he hears that your

grandfather has taken a liking to his common-law wife, and so Brian tells Rhys that maybe he should mind his own damned business,

and them two rise up and nearly come to blows! Like I told your grandfather, I was flattered, but Brian and me, we have a

good life together, going to the casino, fighting the Department of Energy, all the work we done blending our families together.”

She waved like she was shooing a fly away. “Anyways, I’m too old for a... what do you call it?”

Both Leah and Asher shrugged. They had no idea what you called it.

“A throuple?” Joanie made that barking laugh sound again and the dog’s ears rose. “No. Thank. You. That just sounds like twice the cooking and laundry.”

Asher and Leah glanced quickly at each other, Asher mouthing, Throuple?

“I figured they’d need some time apart, but a few months passed, and a few more months and Brian just got angrier and...

well... they can both be a little stubborn.”

In the yard, Brian seemed to be winding down, no longer pointing, just leaning forward and lecturing Rhys, who continued to

nod. Finally, he seemed to run out of gas. Kinnick said something, and offered his hand, and a second later, Brian took it.

They shook. Clapped each other on the back. Then Rhys said something that made Brian laugh.

“About time,” Joanie said. “Peace has come to the valley.” She toasted the window with her coffee cup. “Don’t tell your grandpa,

but Brian has missed his friend something fierce.”

The men came inside.

“Coffee?” Joanie asked.

“Thank you, Joanie,” Rhys said. “That would be nice. I wanted to apologize to you, too. I shouldn’t have—”

“No, no, no!” Joanie interrupted. “You do not get to take back what you said, Rhys Kinnick. You are on the record, my friend.”

She turned and winked at Leah. “Girl my age doesn’t get too many confessions of love, even drunk ones. You’re not taking that

one back, thank you very much. You’re going to have to suffer it.”

“Go on,” Brian said to Rhys, “ask her your other thing.”

“Well,” Rhys said, “Joanie, I wasn’t expecting to be watching my grandkids today, and, as you can see, I’m a bit of a fright.

I was wondering if I could use your shower, and after I got cleaned up if... maybe...” He fluffed his bushy graying

hair. “Would you cut my hair?”

She put her hand to her chest. “Why, of course I would, Rhys.”

This caused Brian to smile. “Shower’s a good idea,” he said to Rhys. “You’ve gone a few miles past stale, my friend.”

Kinnick smelled his armpit.

“Are you an Indian?” Asher suddenly asked Brian.

“Asher—” Rhys began.

“Native American—” Leah corrected.

“Oh. Right. Sorry,” Asher said. “Are you a Native American?”

“I am,” Brian said to Asher. “Spokane and Colville.”

“Do you have a different name than Brian? Like, a warrior name?”

“Sure,” Brian said. “I am known to my people as Standing Water. My older sister is Flooded Basement. And my younger brother

is Ruined Carpet.”

“Brian,” Joanie scolded. “Be nice to the boy.”

Brian winked. “I am known to my people as Brian.” He offered his hand. “And you?”

Asher took his hand. “I am known to my people as Asher,” he said.

***

Rhys ran his hand over his clean-shaven face, then over the short, stubbly hair on the back of his head. It reminded him of

being a boy, on bath night, after his father had cut his ratty hair and his younger brother’s ratty hair, with his old US

Navy clippers, little Rhys tracing his hand along the soft, stiffening stubble running up from his neck.

He glanced over at his grandchildren. They could never have imagined that he was a kid like them at one time, and that, one

day, they would be as old and as brittle as he was now. Of course not. No one could. He hadn’t seen his grandfather or his

uncles or his parents as the children they once were. They were another species, dinosaurs. “All of them gone now,” Rhys said.

“What?” Leah asked.

“Nothing,” Kinnick said. He had gotten so used to speaking aloud to himself, he didn’t always realize when the words were coming out.

Of course, he would be gone one day, too, soon enough, like his grandfather and his father and his brother before him. Everything

he did would exist only in the minds of people who recalled him. He would cease being flesh and blood, or even a book in someone’s

basement, as he had realized back at his house—and would be a fading memory for the few living souls who recalled him, and

not nearly as warmly or vividly as the way his grandkids remembered their grandma Celia, gone now to the loopy Unitarian heaven

she longed for. Or, if Kinnick was right, gone back to the earth and the simple elements that had made her. Or, if Shane was

right, burning in an eternal hell-pit beneath the hooves of a dancing goat-demon for not choosing the right church, for not

speaking in tongues, for not voting the right way. Oh Celia .

“They’re nice,” Leah said. “Joanie and Brian.”