Chapter 18
Chapter
Eighteen
Ilie in the teepee with my eyes wide open. Bren is gone. Darrow has told me a couple of times, but I didn’t understand. At first, I couldn’t comprehend anything in my dazed state, after that, I didn’t want to understand. I simply wanted to lie there and deny the truth. So, I told myself I was dreaming. When I wake up again, none of this will have happened. They don’t know who we are. Amarok and Bren never fought for me and I never intervened. Bren’s punch didn’t hit me mercilessly in the temple. I didn’t fly a few feet and lose consciousness.
I’m good at dreaming. I merely have to visualize everything, like Liam’s pink rhino, and then I can live in a completely different reality. Whether there’s sunlight or moonlight above me, it doesn’t matter. I don’t need anything to eat or drink.
I hear nothing, I see nothing. Only at night do I stare at the stars through the tent’s smoke vent.
Like now. I stare up at Bootes with Arcturus, the red gas giant, the star in its final stages of existence. Yes, that’s how I feel, too. Sore and red inside, full of scars as deep as volcanic craters, in the final stage of my existence. The cold inside me is like the cold of the universe. Nothing else exists.
Despite the denials, I know deep down that my snow globe burst. I knew it the moment I saw Bren, his wide, terrified eyes after his punch knocked me out. Maybe that’s why I didn’t come to for so long. Maybe I was stuck in the dark, waiting for him there. I knew he would be gone when I woke up.
They banned him from the village after the incident, but he snuck into the camp at night to check on me. I know that from Darrow, the only one who knew about Bren’s late-night visits.
Of course, Bren visited until he was certain I was going to be fine. That’s Bren. He would never have left me if I hadn’t woken up.
Maybe that was the reason for my persistent unconsciousness. This time, I wanted to hold him by force, but obviously that doesn’t work forever. And then when I finally woke up, truly woke up enough to understand, he was gone. Without saying goodbye, without a word. He told Darrow to tell me not to wait for him, that he wouldn’t be coming back. I haven’t seen him again, at least not in my right mind. And now, beneath all the denial, I feel my infinite sorrow, a vale swimming in tears. They are stuck in my throat and I suppress them with all my might. I must not cry because once I start, once I truly start, I’ll never stop.
In my head, Ethan is telling me not to be so theatrical because nothing lasts forever.
But Bren is gone. For good, forever, for eons. He no longer believes in our love, he doesn’t believe in himself, and doesn’t believe in me. He doesn’t believe I’ll forgive his mistakes, over and over again. He has given up. Nothing matters anymore. It could be night or it could be day. Summer or winter. Hot or cold. I don’t feel it. Darrow could sing and I wouldn’t hear it.
Bren is gone. He left me behind like all those summer months meant nothing. As if we hadn’t daringly jumped onto moving trains, as if we hadn’t loved each other with all our infinite love, our insatiable desire, and ultimately, our desperation. Like he never made the promise that nearly cost us both our lives. As if I had never laid my hands on his in the darkness of the tunnel, ready to die with him.
I don’t know how I’m going to survive a single day without him.
“Louisa, you need to drink.”
I pull the fur over my ears and sniff my hair, which still has Bren’s scent in it, trapped like a dream catcher.
“Come on!” I think it’s Darrow. I hate him. I hate the camp and Amarok. But the truth is, I hate reality. That cold, lonely thing called life. Nashashuk has said that reality is the dream and the dream is reality, but now both are unbearable.
“Louisa, drink now or I’ll drag you out to the creek and throw you into the freezing water. Believe me, it helps.”
Only Bren’s hug could help me now! My skills. I need them so badly.
“Is that what your damn spirits say?” I snap because he won’t leave me alone and I’m instantly sorry for how mean I am to him. He means well. Everyone means well. They didn’t send a party to call the police. Of course, it was not done out of the goodness of their hearts, but because they do not want the authorities to learn of their camp. Neither the Indian tribal sheriff nor the American police—at least that’s how Darrow explained it to me, I understood that in my daze. They don’t want to give up this place, which has been their home for seven years, because of us. Or maybe he lied and they’ll report Brendan as soon as one of them goes back into town. Maybe they let him go because they were afraid of him and his condition and didn’t want something like that to happen again. I think of Nashashuk’s words. Such shadows only disappear when you face them.
Whatever the reason that things are the way they are, I don’t care right now because if they report him and he’s caught, at least I’ll see him again and I’ll know where he is.
God, how can you think such a cruel thing! How can I wish that someone would lock him in a cell with no windows so that he’d be thrown back into the blackness of his childhood? In a tight space he can’t escape from. In which it gets dark at the push of a button.
God, yes, I should get up and throw myself into the creek so I’ll stop thinking things like that! I must be crazy.
However, I’m selfish and a whiff of desire lingers, even when I finally lie stark naked in the freezing water and the cold begins to burn my skin, and I begin to physically feel something again for the first time after many days and nights. I just have to believe that one day, I’ll see Bren again because if this is goodbye forever, I want to die. That is all I know. I can only continue breathing when there is hope.
Midsummer flies by even though I don’t know how to continue or where I belong. The shock of Bren’s disappearance still holds me in a state of emergency. I know I can’t stay with the Navapaki forever, although Amarok would certainly like that. John has had strong words with him, so he holds back when it comes to me.
If only Amarok had done that sooner. But the truth is, he wasn’t the reason Bren left me, that becomes clearer to me as the summer draws to a close.
Bren knew back at the RV that we didn’t stand a chance. However, our love was too wonderful to give up and he gave it a try, maybe for my sake. Maybe he thought he owed me something.
I miss him more and more. He is in the stillness between my breaths, in every thought, and in every breath. A place inside me is empty as if something had been cut out of me. I vomit from morning to night and can hardly eat.
It’s not lovesickness, it’s worse. Everything inside me is broken, like last year. But this time it’s different. I can’t simply return to my old life this time. Everything will be different. Me, my brothers, my life.
Today is the seventeenth of August and I have decided to leave the camp. I’m done dreaming. Amarok hasn’t spoken to me all day, but many Navapaki welcome my decision. They want their camp back to normal. They fear Bren might be caught and their village exposed if I’m still here. Besides, I’m healthy now, at least on the outside. The pain in my ankle has almost subsided and the massive bruise that traveled from my temple down my face is now a small yellow-green butterfly on my cheek. There’s no reason to stay anymore.
I pack the few things I have left: my cell phone with the photos of Bren, which I haven’t been able to look at to this day. I wear my jeans and T-shirt the day I decide to leave. Thea urges me to take the dress and moccasins, but they remind me too much of my last night with Bren, so I leave them there. He took the pocketknife with him when he left as well as the solar power bank. At the bottom of the trunk, under Liam’s scarf, I discover Henry Cunningham’s missing person notice. It is carefully placed in the plastic bag as if Bren didn’t want anything to happen to it. I should hang it up like we’d planned and I make up my mind to do just that.
I knot the scarf and tie it around my waist. Amarok and Darrow will escort me to the nearest town where I will call Jay. I hope Ethan returned his phone after he took what he wanted.
As I walk through the Navapaki camp for the last time, saying goodbye and thanking everyone, I feel more homeless than ever. I almost envy them, this spot of earth. There is no place in the world where I want to be right now. I don’t feel at home anywhere without Bren. Yoomee cries a little and I hug her but don’t feel anything. I’m hollow inside, burned out by the pain. Then I go to Darrow and Amarok, who are waiting for me at the edge of the forest.
We travel by canoe for a long time through the labyrinthine waterways, across lakes, and along rivers from which poplars and oaks drink their fill along the banks. I feel a bit like I did after the kidnapping when I took the bus to Ash Springs. Back then, however, I felt like a stranger, not like myself. Today, I know who I am. I just don’t know what’s happening to me. On the endless, sweaty trek back through the wilderness, I hardly speak but my gaze repeatedly slides to the undergrowth, searching for Bren, the shadows and the light of the past, but I can’t spot him. Maybe he’s actually around, watching me like he used to, or maybe he’s long gone, somewhere in the woods, lonely, lost in himself.
I can’t think about how he’s doing right now or else I’ll go completely insane. Some things are still too much to handle. I must stay focused on myself, on breathing, drinking, and eating. On not throwing up continuously. On keeping up my strength.
Again and again, guilt catches up with me. I should have told him what I know about his mom right from the start because now he will never know and will always feel like the unloved boy who was abandoned. Is that why he left? So I wouldn’t leave him first? Did he honestly have so little trust? Why didn’t I tell him what I know? I had several opportunities to do so in the camp, but at first, I didn’t want to upset him because he was so sick, and then I thought it best to postpone it until a more favorable time.
Exhausted because I rarely sleep anymore, I peer into the thicket of passing trees. We travel the last section again in the canoe, of course another one, which was in a second bay. I keep imagining I’ll spot Bren among the leaves and low-hanging branches. His dark eyes, with which he just had to look at me in that special way—making me feel like the most precious, most loved girl in the whole world. But of course, I don’t see him. There is only emptiness, a void where I wish he would hold me again, kiss me again, love me again. Be jealous again, hold me as a possession, but at least he would be with me then.
Yet there is nothing.
After five and a half days, we reach the city—actually, it’s a village since it consists of only a few houses and farms. Cormorant. It’s the only settlement Amarok knows of in the world, and for some reason, that makes me even more sad, knowing what he’s missing out on in life. When he hugs me goodbye, tears well up in my eyes, but I can’t cry. Tears don’t help, not for me, Bren once said.
“Take care of yourself,” Amarok says unhappily after letting go of me. “Konoronhkwa.” I love you in Mohawk.
I know how hard this farewell must be for him and I nod as Amarok pulls out a knife.
I flinch at the sight.
“Just a piece.” He looks at me pleadingly and points the knife at my hair.
This is crazier than anything else. He wants my hair, like Bren. At first, I want to deny him, but then I recall how he carried Bren without complaining even though he was afraid of me.
I hold out a strand of hair to him and close my eyes as he cuts it, only to notice he puts it in his medicine pouch, the little leather pouch he always wears around his neck under his shirt. He thanks me in Navapaki, then cuts a strand of his waist-length hair.
“For your sacred pouch,” he says in his broken accent that I enjoy so much, pointing to Liam’s knotted scarf.
I swallow hard, shake my head, and then nod. I haven’t had my necklace for a long time—if anything, it was sacred to me. Still, I tuck his sturdy lock of hair into Liam’s scarf. Why shouldn’t I?
“You mustn’t show this bag. To nobody,” he says seriously, almost sternly, like Bren.
“Why not?” I ask, puzzled.
“Guard dreams in the heart. Otherwise, things have no power. Not dreams, not sacred things.”
“Okay,” I say more to reassure him. “I won’t show it to anyone.” To whom, anyway? I hug him again to say goodbye and let go. He quickly turns and takes long, springy strides in the direction of the forest, wiping his face with his forearm. The feather in his headband bobs. I’m not crying even though it hurts to see him go. I don’t know how many goodbyes my heart can handle.
“Why isn’t he coming with us?” I ask Darrow.
He shakes his head. “He’s afraid.”
“Of the city? Of people?”
“Of losing his spirits.”
Are you happier with them? I think about it for a long time, happy for the slight distraction.
In an ancient Chevrolet, which Darrow says is always parked in Cormorant with an old friend, he drives me to Le Pas, the next bigger town. On the way there, I turn on the phone and after fifteen miles on the road, three bars flash at me.
I stare at the phone momentarily as if I no longer know how to use it.
“You’re scared,” Darrow says, glancing sideways at me.
“Hm.” Denial makes no sense. What am I supposed to tell Jay? How will I deal with all that is to come? I’m not so naive as to think that the world has already forgotten me or that I can hide forever.
They will come. Police officers. Doctors. Psychologists. And they’re going to ask me about Bren. I wish I felt as invincible now as I did with him on the freight trains between sky and wind.
I stare at the screen. Maybe Ethan still has the cell phone. I don’t want to talk to Ethan. Preferably, never again.
Finally, I type one word into the old WhatsApp dialog Jay and I used, our code word.
Jonathan.
Our father’s name.
I don’t have to wait long. Shortly before Le Pas, my cell phone beeps every second.
Lou!
Lou! Tell me it’s you!
How are you doing?
Lou?
Are you still with Brendan? Get in touch. OMG, say hi!
I feel tears and my throat is sore.
Jay?
YES, yes—it’s me, little sis! WHERE ARE YOU? Please tell me you’re okay!
I’m miserable, but I won’t text that. I don’t cry either because then I won’t stop.
I’m in Le Pas, Manitoba. Can you come pick me up?
What do you think? I’m leaving right now! Will call when on the road. Whatever happened, remember, it gets better!
Yes, that’s how it is with brothers. At least with Jay, Liam, and Avy. They are always there when I truly need them.
Darrow turns his head in my direction again and looks at me with his small friendly eyes. “Family?” he asks. Maybe I made a strange noise.
I nod.
“Family is everything,” is all he says. “Many people come and go, family stays.”
I’m almost crying now, so I quickly press my lips together. I know he’s right. He and Nashashuk oftentimes summarized the most important things in life in just a few words.
Darrow drops me off at a motel on the outskirts of town, the room and the smell immediately reminding me of Seattle. He gives me a handful of dollars. I don’t ask where they’re from, it’s none of my business, besides, First Nations people find it impolite to ask any kind of question.
After we inspect the room, he pays for three days at the front desk since it’s a twenty-seven-hour drive from Ash Springs to Manitoba, at least according to Google Maps, and I have no idea how long it will take Jay. Then, he buys me something to eat so I don’t have to go out among people.
When we say goodbye, we hug for a long time, and I swallow. I will certainly never see Darrow and Amarok again. In a hundred and eighty years, I would not find their camp in the woods again. And that’s a good thing—because they want to stay hidden. Still, it weighs on my heart. It sits on my chest like a huge crystal, like it could fall out of me at any moment and shatter against the floor.
“How can I ever thank you for everything?” I ask Darrow before he gets in the car.
He waves it off. “Your presence with us was thanks enough. You showed Amarok what life out there has to offer. Maybe that will help him find his way into the world one day.”
“Do you want to get rid of him?” I ask, almost startled.
Darrow laughs his warm laugh. “Of course not. But I think he should still get to know the world because only when he knows the cities and people can he truly choose the wilderness.”
And with that, he leaves. I watch him for a long time as he drives away, unable to wave, unable to do anything but stand there on the gray asphalt, silently saying goodbye.
I spend the next three days in a vegetative state. I pace the room as if asleep, feeling like a caged animal. I wonder if Bren thinks about me often, if he’s dying of grief and longing. Eventually, I can’t stand the confines of the small room anymore and go outside. Instinctively, I march down the desolate streets, unaware I have only one goal.
The forest. I have to see the sky and the trees or I’ll go insane. Only there do I feel close to Bren. So, I run around like a deranged person, crossing the Saskatchewan River only to get to the wilderness on the other side.
Dazed, I roam the land through the undergrowth, touching the tips of the feathery grasses and the bark of the trees with my fingertips. My heart pounds heavily in my chest. It feels rough and sore, like my chest is tight from the pent-up tears.
At some point, I come to a clearing in the forest and lie in the tall grass with outstretched arms, staring at the gray-blue sky with ragged wispy clouds.
Why did you leave?
Why did you break your promise?
Why did you stop believing in my love?
God, I want him to come back! I want to feel, smell, and taste him.
I close my eyes. Dream. His hand on my cheek, his thumb brushing my upper lip, I feel his rough skin.
Why did you leave me alone?
He doesn’t answer, just keeps stroking me. Touches my temples and then eyelids. Pushes back a strand of hair that has fallen across my face. His warm breath tickles the tip of my nose as he bends down to kiss me. I still remember exactly how his tongue feels. Sometimes cool, sometimes warm. His breath, tobacco and mint. His hoodie, forest and smoke. He’s here, really here. I see his dark brown, deep shining eyes with light flecks like spokes. The long black eyelashes. His unyielding lips.
I miss you immensely. Come back!
I can’t do that. I hurt you.
That’s it. Yes, of course. He was always so afraid of that.
He kisses me again in my dreams, gently and tenderly, as if it were the first time. Goodbye, Lou. My heart trembles, my body shakes.
I’m crying now. I’m crying so much I think I’m going to choke. For endless minutes, deep sobs erupt from me, tearing apart everything inside me that wanted to be brave and strong.
And it’s only during those moments that I realize what I’ve lost.
A whole world. My world with Bren.
He is truly gone and will never come back.