The Lake of Dreams - Kim Edwards [55]
One day I sat on the swing next to his, digging my toes into the scuffed-hard dirt. We’d been to a museum in Syracuse where we’d seen the wide round stones the Iroquois had once used for crushing corn. I told Keegan I thought this was interesting and asked him if he really was an Iroquois.
He glanced at me to see if I was planning to make fun of him, but this happened after the split in my family, so I think he knew I wasn’t on Joey’s side in this or any other matter. We watched boys in the near distance kicking a soccer ball along the edge of the field. The school was at the top of a hill, and though we couldn’t see the lake for all the houses and trees in the way, we knew it was there.
“My mother’s grandmother grew up in the Seneca Nation,” Keegan said, finally. “You know all that land where the depot is now? That used to be their land.”
“Maybe one of your ancestors was a chief,” I ventured, thinking of the beads we’d also seen, round and smooth and colorful, which I’d longed to touch.
“Maybe,” Keegan said.
We’d been too absorbed to watch our backs, and Joey had crept up behind us. He heard me say this and shouted, “Me Big Chief!” pounding on his chest. The boys behind him hooted with laughter and the mask fell across Keegan’s face once more.
“Why don’t you hit him?” I asked, softly. “You ought to hit him in the face.”
Keegan didn’t say anything, didn’t even look my way as the bell rang and we filed in from recess. Nothing happened that afternoon, but the next day when Joey started riffing about smoke signals, Keegan turned around, swift as the wind, and punched him in the face.
Both Keegan and Joey got pulled out of school, and when Keegan came back the next day, he sat in his usual place by the window, though a couple of boys were talking to him, asking about the fight and what the principal had said. When they left I went over quietly and sat next to Keegan and slipped him a piece of gum. He took it and looked up, studying me with the same intent expression he’d had the day before, just before he punched Joey, and then a smile lit up his face, though it was so swiftly gone that I was hardly sure I’d seen it.
After that, we were friends. We never talked much and we didn’t hang out at lunch, but we sat next to each other in class and took to giving each other things—a pencil, the prize from a box of Cracker Jack, a funny picture. A secret friendship, so we wouldn’t get teased.
So there was that history between us, that connection. We talked about it when we met up again years later, sitting next to each other at a basketball game. Keegan was with his friends and I was with mine, and halfway through the game he looked down the row with that funny half-smile he had and passed a note down, hand to hand, until it reached me.
Hey there, Lucy Jarrett. How have you been all these years?
“Damned right on that,” Art said, his face shadowed by the faint light from the dying fire. “He’s had good luck, but he counts on the summer to get him through, just like the rest of us. Steve Peterson called today, by the way. He’s interested in signing on for the first stage, too.”
“First stage of what?” I asked, stepping out of the shadows.
There was a silence.
“She might as well know,” Art said, finally. “I don’t suppose it makes any difference at this point.”
“We made a bid on the depot land,” Joey said. “On two parcels of land. The first is toward the village, and that’s the one we’ve pretty much got nailed down. The other is adjacent to your mother’s property, just over the tree line.”
“We’ve got plans for it,” Blake put in, and the muted excitement in his voice made me worry for him. No matter what Art said, I didn’t trust him to treat Blake with any fairness. “A housing development called The Landing. This area used to be a stopping point for steamboats. It’s historical. Maybe you saw the designs down at