Jason
They rode the first fifty miles in silence. JC fit herself into the corner made by the door and the front seat, her suitcase neatly laid on the floor. The cab was huge, at least to JC; the steering wheel seemed as large as one of the wheels on the trailer. JC could feel the vibration of the road and the rolling weight of the long trailer behind the cab. There was a smell of leather and coffee. She had only slightly glanced at the driver. She saw a young man, heavy but not fat, with lank black hair, high cheekbones (or cheekbone, since she could only see his profile), and a skin that looked copper in the white light of the dashboard. His eyes, when he had opened the door for her, were a full black and glinted like onyx. His hands were what impressed her the most: brown like wrapping paper with muscles like thick twine tying the fingers and palm into a neat strong package. They rested on the steering wheel but were never asleep. She tried to push him out of her mind, let herself stretch out along the road and trees and dark sky and have no thoughts, but every time he looked over at her she was uncomfortably aware of wanting to talk to him and chided herself for her weakness. At least he doesn't make dumb small talk, she thought.
He stopped at a Howard Johnson's. He climbed out of the cab, leaving the engine running, and as she watched his broad back catch the glow of the headlights then disappear, she felt the strong thrum of the diesel engine, and wondered why he hadn't shut if off. Five minutes later he came back carrying a cup of coffee and a can of soda. He leaped easily into the cab, slammed the door. "Here," he said, placing the soda on the seat, and without waiting for a reply, slipped the truck into gear and pulled onto the highway.
She watched the soda, then slowly took it. The young man, sipping the coffee gingerly, his faced wreathed in steam, said gently, "At least we should share names."
JC popped the soda top. "I'm JC."
"JC," he echoed. He rolled the sound in his mouth. "Last name?"
"Yes." She took another sip.
There was a slight silence, and then he said, "I see. My name is Jason."
"Last name?"
He grinned and looked her full in the face. She was startled by the movement, but didn't feel as if she had to turn away. "Yes, I do. Skywater. Jason Skywater."
"Skywater?" She thought for a second. This was unexpected and for a brief moment she felt lifted out of her sadness. "Are you an Indian?"
"Me big-um Indian, yes," he answered in a deep guttural voice. Jason, glancing at her, saw her interest, and smiled. He sipped his coffee. "I am a Seneca."
"A Seneca. What's that?
"He laughed out loud and his face seemed to glow copper. "Many white people have asked that question."
"White people?"
"You," he pointed his finger at her, "are a white people."
"What's that got to do with it?"
"They don't teach you much in your history lessons." He sipped his coffee, then snapped the plastic lid back on and put the cup in a holder on the dashboard. "Since we're going to trade histories, it's only fair that I get to ask you something. Okay?"
She heard herself say okay, but found herself squeezing into her corner, suddenly feeling pressured. She wanted to tell him, even though she didn't know him, because he seemed so sure and calm, but she didn't want to give up so easily the pain -- it was too much hers, too fresh, and Marci was too much alive in her to make her into a memory just yet. Not that any of this came to words in her brain. She just felt pressured. She calmly sipped her soda, fighting herself inside, and waited.
"First of all," he said, "when I see a kid your age standing under a streetlight with their thumb out, I immediately wonder why. Just a part of me, you see. Anyway, I don't like to see a young kid all alone like that, no matter what the reason, and so I stop. When she steps into my truck," he tapped the seat, "I want to ask her if she's running away, and just get ready to do that when I get these...sensations. You see, we Senecas are a strange group of people. For instance, we believe everything has a spirit and is intelligent. That's right." (She had half-turned, her profile soft in the dim light, at his mention of this.) "We talk to rocks, wind, tree, water, even a clod of dirt, because it was all made by the Creator and it all contains a part of him. Follow?"
She thought she did, but she couldn't picture a Creator, and she didn't have the least idea of how or why he'd gotten from her age to the Creator, but at least it was better than talking about the weather. And she liked the sound of his voice -- it took off some of the pressure. She nodded yes and drank her soda. Some of the carbonation ran up her nose and she hiccupped loudly. "Excuse me!" she said automatically, and was startled by his laughter.
"That's okay. We'll just kill ourselves, me on caffeine, you on sugar. You all right?"
"Yes I am. Whew!" She wiped away some tears from her eyes. "Powerful stuff."
"Moonshine for sure." He waited until she finished wiping her eyes. "Anyway, to get back to what I was saying, since we're trading histories here, everything has a spirit. We can talk to everything because we are all created out of the same stuff. Another way to put it is that all of us speak the same language coming out of our hearts. So right away I heard some of that language coming out of you and I knew it wasn't parents. Not at all."
"What was it then?" She wasn't sure she said the words. When he went on she was sure she hadn't said the words, but she wasn't completely sure.
"Senecas are a strange people. I've said that. I'll say it again, too. Strange. Some of my people have told stories of how they can send their thoughts over great distances to other people, and I believe them. I've seen it done."
"Really?"
"Oh yeah. My grandmother for one. She believed she could control howling dogs as far away as twenty miles. I've seen it done. Oh yes, it happens. Part of this language everything speaks often goes to dead people. Senecas believe there's a kind of Master of Souls where all souls of dead people go, and these souls help the living people get the power to live and speak to life." He paused, staring out the windshield at the stroke of lighted highway in front of him. He seemed to be listening to something, and when JC made a movement to put her soda in the holder, he started. "Just listening to the rig. Listening to her speak."
JC thought that over, wondered what he heard that she didn't. She wanted to ask him what it was he'd heard out of her, and yet everything inside her was raw. For a moment she see-sawed over the question, then quietly dipped back into her silence. And in that silence images of Marci's face were woven, and her silence was shot with unwhispered words of ache and pain. Part of her mind needed to clean out the dead and part of her mind wanted to keep the dead safe from the living. Her whole insides were squeezed tight, were screaming, and she wondered how loud she was in the language of the heart. She glanced at him, but his face was set and seemed to be listening to other things, so she melded into the metal of the door.
