Gives Light(Gives Light Series) Read Free

hard thump on the shoulder, and took off in the night.  I stood in the doorway and watched her until I couldn't differentiate between her receding form and the shadows cast by the pine trees.
     
    A leaden weight had settled in my stomach.  I couldn't postpone it any longer.  I turned my back on the reservation and stepped into my grandmother's house for the first time, snapping the door shut behind me.
     
    There were handmade quilts on the walls--brightest blues and blood reds and soft, pearl grays--but apart from those, the little wooden home was austere.  Officer Hargrove had been right about the lack of telephone.  Now I saw that there wasn't a television, either.  Not even a sofa; just a couple of rocking chairs.  There was a loom next to the hearth, the hearth unlit; the room was chilly. 
     
    "Well?" said Catherine.  She was standing with her back to the arching kitchen door.
     
    I smiled uncertainly and lowered my garbage bag to the floor.  It occurred to me that she might not know I couldn't talk.  I started to part the collar of my jacket by way of explaining.
     
    "Not that!" she interrupted.  "Fool boy!  Do you think I'm stupid?  I'm asking whether you've eaten anything this evening.  I doubt it; you're as wispy as a cricket."
     
    I hadn't eaten; the brief trip home and the long car ride that followed had taken a chunk out of my night.  I wasn't hungry, though--I didn't think I could swallow anything just then, my throat dry, lead sitting in my stomach--so I lied with a nod.  Catherine gave me a suspicious look out of the corner of her eye and said, "Hmph," but didn't contest it.  She flicked her hand at me dismissively.
     
    "You may take your father's old room," she said.  "It's upstairs and on the right.  You will be in bed no later than eleven every night and you will awaken no later than eight in the morning.  I don't know sign language, so you'll have to find someone else to talk to.  Should my name come up in conversation, you will refer to me as 'Grandmother.'  I don't like Granny.  It sounds silly."
     
    I smiled wryly.  I had already pieced together that she wasn't much for silliness.
     
    I found my father's old bedroom at the top of the stairs.  It was exactly as he must have left it when he was a kid, the stiff, checkered blue quilt on the mattress, the yellow "California or Bust" poster on the wall opposite the window.  The window, dusty, hadn't been washed in a long time.  I told myself that I would try to clean up in the morning, but I knew I'd probably forget it; Dad and I were perpetual slobs, and we'd never had a woman around to tell us to pick up our trash.
     
    When I set my belongings on the floor, when I sat on my father's old bed, the mattress sagging beneath my weight, I felt like gravity was pulling me down, down toward the earth beneath the musty foundation of the house.  How horrible uncertainty was.  How cruel.
     
    If I'd never get to see my father again, I didn't want to know.
     

 
     
    2
    Chronic Loser Syndrome
     
    I woke before the alarm clock sounded the next morning.  Through the dusty bedroom window, I watched the first rays of sunlight climb above the tops of the pine trees, bleeding into the ink-blue sky.  It really was a beautiful sight.  For a moment I wondered how Dad could ever have left the reservation.
     
    I touched the rigid scars on my neck and remembered how.
     
    I dressed quickly and went frantically down the stairs. 
     
    "Outhouse!" Catherine--Grandmother--shouted from the little kitchen, the acrid scent of cinders wafting from the wood-coal stove.
     
    I found the outhouse behind the cabin and washed my hands at the water pump when I had finished.  I caught sight of a round wooden tub beside the pump.  So Granny--I mean, Grandmother--so she took her baths right out in the open.  Was that normal around here?  Around the reservation?  I tried to remember, but couldn't.  I was still puzzling it over when an old man a