her? I bet they’re keeping her locked up until they move. So she can’t go over to the post office. Wrack their lives! I’ll wrack their lives? By loving their daughter with a true love?
Look at me, brother, he begged.
I did.
Look at me. He threw his hair back, tapped the tips of his fingers on his chest. Would I wreck her life? The Creator made us for each other. Me here. Zelia there. Space was put between us by human error. But our hearts listened to divine will. Our bodies, too. So fucking what? Every bit of what we did was made in heaven. The Creator is goodness, brother. In his mysterious mercy he gave me Zelia. The gift of our love—I can’t throw it back in the face of the Creator, can I?
No.
That’s what her parents are asking me to do. But I won’t do it. I will not throw our love back in God’s face. It will exist for all time whether or not her parents can see that. Nothing they do can get between us.
Okay.
Yeah, said Cappy. His hair flopped down again. He set fire to the letter with the burning coal of his cigarette. Watched it catch, flare, and burn to the tip of his fingers. He dropped the scrap and the flimsy films of burnt paper floated down around his feet.
I’m going home to get that bus money, said Cappy. And then I’m gassing up Randall’s car. I’ll come and get you at your house.
Where are we going?
I can’t sit still, Joe. I can’t stay here. And I know there will be no rest for me until I see her.
We left Zack and Angus drinking pop in Zack’s cousin’s car and went home. My place was empty. I filled a backpack with a change of clothes and all the money I had, which came to $78.00. I still had some from Sonja, and I’d never spent the cash Whitey paid me for the week I’d worked—he’d overpaid me, maybe to try and keep my mouth shut. I took a jacket. Because I was still waiting for Cappy, and because in spite of what I’d done I was still the kind of person who thought ahead and made lunch, I put together a dozen peanut butter pickle sandwiches. I ate one and drank some milk. He still did not come. I remembered how hard it was to start Randall’s car. Engage, I thought. Pearl followed me around. I went into my father’s office. I tried the desk drawer my father had been locking for a while now, and it caught, but he hadn’t quite turned the key all the way and I jiggled it open. In the drawer was a manila file folder. It was filled with greasy Xeroxes. There was the copy of a tribal enrollment form. On the form it said Mayla Wolfskin. She was listed as seventeen years old and the mother of a child named Tanya. Curtis W. Yeltow was listed as the father, just as Linda had said. I closed the file and put it back in the drawer. I managed to turn the lock with a paper clip so it would seem that the drawer had not been opened; what that mattered anyway, I don’t know. I was glad that I wouldn’t have to talk to Bjerke. I took a sheet of writing paper from a leather box. My father kept a cup of sharpened pencils on his desk. I took one and wrote my parents that I was going on a camping trip. They should not worry, I’d be with Cappy and I was sorry for the short notice. I said that we’d be gone for three or four days. I’d call them. I imagined writing: ask Bugger Pourier about his dream. But I didn’t. There was some noise outside. Pearl barked. It was Angus and Zack. They wanted to know why we’d ditched them and so I told them about the letter, and about how Cappy was going to get Randall’s car.
I’ve got something, Angus said.
He showed me an ID. It was a driver’s license, which his cousin had pretended to lose and got another one. He’d sold the ID to Angus although the picture didn’t look like him at all.
Don’t you think it looks like Cappy though? He could buy for us.
It looks like him enough, I said. Right about then Cappy drove up and we all got into the idling car. I sat in front and