Parallel Lives Excerpt

Chapter One

The Ryle brothers chased Billy Wayman Wolden for a mile before he fell through an underground arroyo. Behind him, a tunnel of overgrown trees blocked the boiling sun. Leaves in the past week that had turned ramshackled and dry hid his view of the enemy. Still, as Grandma too often warned, "Just because you can't see danger, don't mean it ain't there."

Billy ripped off his torn shirt and laid it on the ground. He pulled a sack of flour from a pocket of his dungarees. To the shirt, he added a box of sugar, two packages of butter, and a tin of salt. He wiped the sweat from his eyes, tied the arms and tail of the shirt into a package, slung the bundle over his shoulder, and took off quick. The breeze, what little there was, felt good against his bare skin. With no sign of the brothers behind him, Billy chewed the fleshy inside of his cheeks. Could be they waited for him at Grandma's house. If they hurt her, or his dog, either... He pumped his free arm and ran faster still.

At the goat fields, bees buzzed around his head. Coming up on the bleached backside of Grandma's house, he heard the cars and trucks from Route 99 on the other side of the embankment. He sneaked through the kitchen garden, heedless of the garlic and green beans, now shriveled and dead in the relentless late summer heat. Around the side of the house, he stopped. Grandma sat in the old washtub smack in the middle of the front yard. Her knees stuck up, mostly covering her nakedness. Even so, the last thing Billy wanted was for the brothers to see her like that. Shkena, he muttered to himself.

"Hey, Grandma," Billy said. He peered down the dirt road that ran parallel to 99 for a cloud of dust signaling the brothers' arrival. The all-clear bought him some time.

"Hey, Running Wolf." Grandma turned to look at him. At two hundred pounds, she sort of spilled out over the sides of the tub. Her long black braid was sopping wet.

"Call me by my real name, Grandma," he scolded.

"Why ain't you wearing your shirt?" she scolded back.

"You done here?" he asked, eager to get her out of the tub and into the house.

Grandma looked up at him with a big smile. She had her mother Martha-the-Gobbler's wide nose and round face. Her hands clutched the washtub's rusted siding. She shook her head no; she wasn't finished.

Nice and soft as Grandma was, she was also tough as a pine nut. They were poor as dirt, but that didn't stop her from rescuing dogs, cats, hurt raccoons, and him. How good she was didn't matter though. The brothers would only see a naked squaw.

Billy looked toward the house, hoping for an idea how he was going to get her out of the washtub. Past the peeling paint and rotted porch, he noticed his dog wasn’t at the screen door scratching to get out.

"Where's Ginger?" he asked. His body tensed for a fight.

"Huckleebuck, Billy," Grandma said. "That dog of yours is in heat. I got her tied up out in the side yard."

From where he stood, all he could see in the yard was the clothesline where shirts and towels hung limp in the heat. Ginger must be tied up on the far side.

"You best be real careful she don't take off. We don't be needing any puppies. Can't hardly feed ourselves."

"Ginger's in heat?" He looked back and forth between Grandma and the side yard, as if trying to make sense of her words.

"She sure is," Grandma said. "A bunch of males came sniffing around while I was feeding a bum out back."

"You couldn't feed a bum." Billy scowled. "We haven't had any food." His empty stomach weakened him. They'd only had corn and squash for the past two days.

"State Aid truck came while you was gone," she mumbled.

Grandma turned her head away, but not before Billy saw her hurt and shame turn down her mouth. He hadn't meant to make her feel bad, but he was good at that, blurting out the first thing that erupted in his mind.

Two months before, State Aid had gotten wind of the money Mexican women had paid Grandma to look after their children while they were out picking crops. The truck hadn't shown up for an entire month. If Ma had come through and sent money like she had promised when she took off a few years back, Grandma wouldn't have to take the women's pennies and he wouldn't have to steal. But nothing ever came from Ma. Billy figured she was either dead or just plain broke. He hated depending on State Aid almost as much as he hated his ma.

"State Aid thinks Okies don't deserve better than them old dented up cans." The words bullied themselves out in the open. Billy untied his shirt bundle. "Look, here, Grandma. I got you some sugar, and here's some flour. Let's go inside," he pleaded.

"I won't have it, Billy." Grandma closed her lips tight and slapped her knee. Billy was glad she was in the tub and not able to slap him upside the head. "You get caught stealing and then what?" The sunlight caught her hair and turned the mass of pitch black almost blue. "Billy, I got something to tell you--"

A thumping sound started at regular intervals from beyond the embankment.

"What's that?" His eyes narrowed. He was ready for a fight, reckless for one, if truth were told.

"Workman digging a trench alongside the highway." Grandma opened her mouth and gulped at the air like she was thirsty. Billy had never seen her act like that. His heart froze over.

"Something wrong with you, Grandma?" he asked. "You sick or something?"

"I ain't sick," she said. "I got something to tell you."

"Uncle Willy coming?" Billy's mood lightened at the thought. For weeks now, he had been pestering her about when her brother, his namesake, was getting out of San Quentin and coming for a visit.

A shiver raked across his shoulders. Expecting trouble, he glanced down the road again. Nothing. Must have been thinking about Willy. San Quentin gave him the willies.

"I'd like to get out of the tub first," she said. "And I do believe I'm stuck."

"You are?" he said.

"You best not laugh at me, Billy boy," she said. "You best be thinking of a way to get me out of this tub."

"Let me give you a hand," he said. Eager to hear her good news and relieved to get her out of the tub, he took both her hands and pulled real hard. She didn't budge. He spat in his palms and rubbed them together.

"Try tipping me over instead," she said.

He squatted in the dust, pondering how he would tip over the tub with a two-hundred-pound lady sitting in it. He grabbed the rusty handle on his side of the tub for leverage and yanked up real hard. The handle snapped off in his hands. The momentum of his pull sent him stumbling backwards, and he ended up on the ground again. He picked himself up and walked back to Grandma, considering how best to proceed.

"Count to three, before you lift up," she said. "I'll lean over at the same time."

"You ready?" he asked.

She gripped both sides of the tub and nodded.

"One. Two. Three." He yanked up on his side. She leaned. The tub tipped over.

Grandma slid out of the tub and landed naked in the dirt. Seeing her like that, Billy started laughing. He couldn't help it. She was as dirty as a gravedigger. He wrapped his arms around his head to protect himself, but she didn't swipe at him. Instead, she broke out laughing, too. He sat down in the mud next to her, both of them laughing their heads off and both a muddy mess.

"Run get me the drying cloth," said Grandma, nodding to the porch.

When he got back, she had sloshed herself with what water was left in the tub. It hadn't made her less dirty, just spread the mud around. She took the towel from him and wiped herself off.

Billy stared down the road and checked over his shoulder. Having Grandma exposed and naked as she was turned his knees as weak as his empty stomach.

"When's Uncle Willy coming?" Billy thrust her housedress at her, thinking it strange she didn't come right out and speak her mind. At least with Uncle Willy around there would be some fun to be had and someone to watch his back when he needed it. Privately, he hoped Uncle Willy would come with a plan on how to get them out of this place.

Grandma slipped her housedress over her head. She straightened the apron around her waist, like she was preparing herself. Suddenly, he wasn't all that anxious to know what she had to say. His breath turned shallow.

"Your ma's coming," she said.

So, Ma wasn't dead after all. He stared at the smudge of mud across Grandma’s forehead.

"She found herself a new man. They're coming to take you back with them."

Billy turned away from Grandma and tried to picture Ma in his mind, but he couldn't anymore. He did remember the day she left. He was barely five. She had only just come back and he sort of sensed she was planning on leaving without him again. All day long he had planted himself as near to her as he could get. He wanted to be real close by, ready in case she wanted to hug him. She never did. And now, as much as he wanted to get out of the valley, he didn't want her, either.

"You coming with me?" he asked, his head sunk low on his chest.

"This is my home," she said.

"Then, I'm not going." He crossed his arms and glared at her. "I'm not leaving you out here all by yourself."

"Now, Billy." Grandma wrapped her arms around him. "I do believe it's for the best," she whispered. "You should be with your family."

"You're my family." Tears burned the back of his throat.

"You've got little brothers you ain't even met," she tried.

"They aren't my brothers." His voice was as flat as an old tire.

"You share the same mother, Billy," she said. "Your ma can give you more than I can. Just think, you'll get plenty to eat. Maybe you'll even start putting some meat on your bones."

She tickled him, but he wasn't in the mood. He untangled himself from her, spat on the ground, and watched the dust rise up.

"I never told you this, Billy," she said. "But when you was on your sacred fast a vision came to me."

"Ah, Grandma," he protested, still angry about the stupid ritual she made him do early in the summer. He hated the ash she had smeared all over his face before Mkede'ke'wen, only to find out it hadn't done any good; she said he still didn't have any self-control. Later, she had admitted that he was a mite young at ten years old to stay outside by himself with no food, no water, and no nothing for four days. To Billy, the ritual wasn't much different than all the other times he and Grandma had gone without food. Just thinking of the ordeal made him hungrier than he already was.

She took him by the arm, her grip tighter than he had felt before.

"You listen to me and listen real good, Running Wolf. You're Bodewadmi gdaw."

"Speak English, Grandma," Billy growled.

"You are Potawatomi, the true people of great warriors," she said, speaking as if he hadn't interrupted her. "Your spirit is too big for this place. One day you will find the woman of your other half and you'll become a wkamek, a chief of big medicine. I've been expecting this. They got good schools up there in the city. We'll put down tobacco before your journey. Whenever anything bothers you, you'll have that tobacco to depend upon just the way our ancestors always have. Offer your sema to the fire, pray, and you'll be safe. Iwkshiye'tuk."

"I don't need me a damn Indian ghost to tell me what's going to happen." He kicked the dirt in front of him. "I can tell you myself right here and now. Me going with Ma is gonna end up like shit."

"Don't talk like that, Billy. You're never going to get that life you dream of if you can't learn to control that mouth of yours."

Billy yanked his arm away, and then he ran. Nowhere. Anywhere. Always toward the highway. The further his legs stretched, the better he felt. Ginger set to barking the second he passed the side yard. She yanked herself free from the clothesline pole and made a beeline for him, the frayed rope hanging from around her neck. Her tail wagged every which way.

If Billy had been thinking, he never would have let Ginger head toward Highway 99 with him. But all Running Wolf could hear anymore was the drone of tires against the asphalt, the rush of a truck horn and gear changes, snatches of music from a car radio. Through the trees he spotted the fender of a brand new '55 Hudson as it sped past on the highway. A '53 Studebaker, '49 Chevy, and a '51 Ford whizzed by, cars he had always believed would one day reconnect the sections of his life that had been washed away. Billy knew that the road led to his future and to the someone special for him, and him alone. Far south in the distance, sunlight glinted off the grill of a car he had never seen before. He turned and headed for the light with one hope: that that someday was today.

At the same time Billy and Ginger ran toward the highway, a Cadillac Fleetwood Seventy-Five Series spirited north toward the same spot in the road. A chauffeur, in full regalia, sat behind the wheel with no idea he was driving his passengers, or rather one passenger in particular, on a collision course with destiny. A young girl by the name of April was impatient to get home. She and, her parents, and her Swedish grandmother, Mormor had just spent two days at Mr. Walt Disney's sunburned kingdom. They were on their way back to the Bay Area in the great black limousine.

April sat between Mormor and the window. She was tall for a seven-year-old. In every other way, she was but a wisp, right there in full view, but not there at all. Hair so white as to be invisible, she was a shadow. Translucent skin made her older next-door neighbor and best friend Clay laugh at the tiny blue veins pulsing at her temples. He teased her about having writing on her head.

"Once upon a time," Mormor started.

April turned down both socks and smoothed her pleated skirt, careful not to upset the Mickey Mouse hat her father had crowned her with just that morning. She kept an eye out the window, and settled into her grandmother's voice. As much as she had liked Disneyland, she liked even better Mormor's stories of trolls and giants, dragons and elves that reigned in all the land. Most of Mormor's Swedish tales included reminders to be a good girl or suffer the fury of Loki, but April wasn't afraid of the handsome and evil fire-giant. April was brave, or so she liked to imagine she was.

"A little princess lived in a far away country." Mormor's Swedish accent turned the story into a dancing rhyme. Her voice lifted at the end of each phrase and helped April to follow the story. "Olle-the-Loyal watched over the princess, for she was delicate and as pale as a lily," continued Mormor.

April held her breath. She had been anxious to get home to hear, finally all the way through, the Little Princess Dream Castle Who Spoke Without Words. Mormor had started to tell her the tale many times before, but April's mother had always stopped her. April wouldnt have guessed that her grandmother meant to tell it here in front of her mother and now. That her mother had no objections to any of Mormor's other stories made April curious why the Little Princess Dream Castle Who Spoke Without Words.

April sat very still, not wanting to do anything that would cause her mother to become angry and stop the story. April begged her mind to concentrate and not to wander.

Mormor unraveled a row of her knitting. "But it was not her beauty that people spoke of. The princess was most renowned for her wondrous blue eyes, eyes which spoke of things without words." Mormor's story kept time with the click-clacking of her knitting needles.

"Don't tell April that story," said April's mother.

At hearing her mother's command to Mormor, April stared straight ahead. She saw herself in the glass that separated the front seat from the passenger area and imagined herself a princess and the driver as Olle-the-Loyal--strong and faithful and true.

"Fem, sex, sju, atta, nio, tio." Mormor muttered tightly, counting her stitches in Swedish.

"April must learn to use her words," her mother said. "She could be in the movies someday. Like Greta Garbo. You have eyes just like her. I told you that, April. Remember? I still think it was mean of you, Richard, not to let me look up Greta. Disneyland is right next door to Hollywood."

April concentrated on the view out the window, searching for sign of a prince or a fairy godmother dressed in gold from Mormor's fairy tales. She did remember being told about her eyes, but her mother had a way of making April believe she'd missed something. Besides, she didn't want to be in the movies. Movies were big and loud and confusing.

"There were lots of people on the same ship to America," said April's father. "Greta Garbo wouldn't remember you, Birgit." Her father changed to his happy voice and April knew he was talking to her. "Kiddo, do you know what all those little puffs of white are on those plants?" He pointed outside where row after row of shrubby plants filled with creamy white masses disappeared into the distance.

"Why wouldn't Greta remember me?" Her mother interrupted him. "Because I wasn't allowed on the upper deck? She was waiting every morning when I snuck upstairs. She asked me, in her famous low and husky voice, to call her Greta, you know. She was lovely to me, not at all withdrawn and private like the newspapers say."

As her mother spoke about the days of her great crossing, the air in the car cooled. Still, April wanted another line from her grandmother's.

"April, I will tell you a story," her mother started. "You didn't know your mother had adventures, did you? I was only eighteen years old when I boarded the ship to come to America all by myself. Was I scared? No. Back home we didn't have money to go to the movies, but I saw pictures of Greta Garbo, the famous Swedish movie star in magazines. Greta and I could have been sisters. The only difference between us was that she was discovered, but my photographs were just as beautiful.

"Two weeks into the voyage, we heard that a hurricane had just destroyed half of Long Island and killed more than 700 people. The captain said it was heading straight toward us. The waves were giant. The wind horrible. Greta and I stood side-by-side together and clutched the railing for dear life. Everyone else was seasick. You don't just forget the person you shared an ordeal like that with.

"She started out modeling for newspaper advertisements, like I did when I first arrived in New York. You will, too, April," she continued. "Obviously you are not going to be anything like me since you can't even talk right, but in this country a woman's beauty counts more than her brains. It is up to us to teach you to use that to your advantage. But to be in the motion pictures, April, you first must to learn to speak. Try to say something for me now."

April called to the words. Hurry, hurry. Quick, quick. The words turned their backs on her and folded their hands behind them. She didn't care; she didn't want to have her picture taken. She hated people looking at her.

"April's only seven, and already you've decided she's going to be a movie star?" her father said. "Really, Birgit, who is being foolish now?" He reached out and patted April. "And while we're on the topic, I've made my decision. You are not to put a cast on her arm."

"I've already made the appointment," her mother said.

"When I expressly told you not to?" Her father sounded like Perry Mason on television.

"She just hasn't learned to use one arm well. A cast will force dominance in her right arm, and her speech will improve," her mother said. "Dr. Blemmer wouldn't have agreed if he didn't think it would help."

"He only did it because you asked him to," her father said. "This cast business is voodoo to get April to talk."

"That's not true. Dr. Blemmer agreed with the research I found. Stabilize the motor mechanism in her brain and her speech will improve," she said.

Mormor said that the reason April didn't talk right was because her mother had stood too close to an elder tree when she was pregnant. April secretly hoped a cast would make her words dance and flow like a water-sprite, but she also knew her father did not believe in magic, and that made her worry that the cast could do no good. Besides, now she wasn't even sure she wanted to learn to speak right, especially if it meant she had to be in the movies.

Mormor's knitting needles stopped talking. Her breathing turned noisy. She was asleep. Now she would never finish the story. April thought about her waking up. If she thought it hard enough, Mormor would open her eyes.

Mormor snorted and woke up. "The princess's eyes spoke a language all people and every animal understood." Her voice was sleepy, but stubborn.

"Not her eyes, Mother, her words. If our princess can't learn to speak up for herself, she'll be crushed at the s-c-h-o-o-l. You know that as well as I do," said her mother. "You're gaping, April. Close your mouth."

April did as she was told, even knowing she had missed something. Her mother said April had to learn to pay attention, but words crowded into everything. They droned on and on, shouted and whispered, hollow and useless, muttered and confused. Without the words, other sounds had a chance to be heard, like the car horn from up ahead. April wondered where the horn came from and why it didn't stop honking.

The louder the horn became, the slower their car moved. The driver pushed back his hat. April followed his eyes. The car ahead of them pulled to the side of the road and stopped. Another car had smashed into a tree on the side of the highway. A man in an orange vest leaned over a woman with blood on her forehead. Two other men held something long and furry between them, the color of dusted brick. A dog. April sat up straighter and peered out the window. The dog had a hazy cloud above it, like the one she had seen when she had found her goldfish Polly floating upside down. Mormor had called it an ande, a ghost. The sadness she had felt then came back to her now. The doggie was dead.

April rolled down the window and scrambled to her knees. The limousine slowed to a crawl. She poked her head out, brushing the ears of her Mickey Mouse hat against the top of the window. Outside, beneath the sound of the car's horn, trees whispered and the bushes sighed. Soon he is coming, they chanted. April held onto the mouse ears and leaned out further, wondering who was coming. The men with the orange vests swung the dog out over an open trench. The animal dropped in the ditch.

A boy appeared from the trees. His face was red and dirty and streaked with tears. The dog was his. Tears leaked out of April's eyes in loneliness for him. The boy stood tall and straight.

"Be a good girl, April. Tap on the driver's window," her mother said. "For heaven's sake, Richard, he's stopping. April, roll up your window and sit down. Richard, do something."

Her father waved his arms out in front of him to get the driver's attention. April stared at the proud line of the boy's back and dared to disobey her mother. She wanted to take the boy home with them.

An old woman the color of Mormor's copper kettle hobbled up behind the boy. She snatched his arm and held him against her to stop him from running to the trench. The boy turned his head. In his eyes, she saw shadows part. A wild yearning burst inside of her. Lines of the trees, the shapes and people sharpened. Colors shimmered like a peacock with its feathers spread on a summer day. April could see that his heart was rugged and true. Even crying, he was handsome as a dream. A smile shone through her tears at the sight of him.

Her father motioned for the driver to keep going. The big car speeded up. Trees whipped by. A ribbon of water flashed through the brush. The road started to curve. The horn from the car on the side of the road became weaker.

April stuck her head further out the window and waved in an attempt to give comfort to the boy. The wind ripped at her face. Her mouse ears tumbled backward down the highway until all sign of her crown was gone in a wink.

"Now look what you've done, April," said her mother. "Sit down."

April gave in to Mormor's hand pulling at her. She slid into the seat, the leather cool against her bare legs. At Disneyland, she had searched everywhere for Cinderella's prince. Instead, she found him here.

"Oh, look, Richard," her mother said. "Have you seen anything more beautiful than those golden hills? This is truly a magic land. I think I shall paint them when I get home."

As her mother went on about a canvas and her paints, April reached over to put her hand on Mormor's knee. Two words tumbled out of her in an urgent whisper, as if she had sipped from a magic cup. "My prince," she said to Mormor alone.

"He will come when you are older," Mormor's words murmured across her neck. "First, you must work hard in school. You must learn to speak so that others besides me can understand you." Mormor reached out and brushed April's hair from her face. April wanted to ask Mormor what she meant, but the words brooded in a dark corner, sad just like her. She sank in her seat. An ache sat in her heart for the boy and his dog.

She held his face in her mind.

The strength of his neck strengthened her.

April dreamed of the day she would see him again.