The Raven's Gift - Don Rearden [41]
“They asked about me? They asked why you married me? Even your students don’t like me?”
“Relax, Anna. They asked about everything. Then, when they couldn’t come up with any more questions, I started asking questions. And that’s what we did for the day. We just talked and got to know each other. Sometimes we just sat there and didn’t say anything.”
She stood up and let her hair down. She tasted the chili and poured herself a cup of hot water from the kettle on the stove and began to dip a green-tea bag.
“What sort of questions did you ask?”
“I started simple. Nicknames, favourite subjects, favourite sports. Then I asked about things they learned over the years in school, past teachers, and what they wanted to do in the future—but that’s the one thing that stumped them a bit, or something they couldn’t really answer.”
“No one expects high school kids to know what their future holds,” Anna said.
“Yeah, but not just that. The question really took them back. I mean—I tried to reword the question. You know, what will they being doing in ten years, and that drew even less of a response. Michael, that tall, skinny, talkative kid? He said they don’t think about the future like that. It’s against their culture, he said.”
“To talk about the future?”
“Yeah, I guess. I don’t know. Maybe I misunderstood him, or they just didn’t quite get my question. This chili is as ready as anything from a can will be.”
He began filling two blue plastic cereal bowls with the meatless chili. She took her bowl, sat down, and pushed her spoon around the bowl.
“You’ll do fine, hon,” he said. “Just give them some time. I would guess that with those young ones, they’ll be a bit shy at first and then you’ll have to beat them off you with a stick.”
“Yeah, well, if tomorrow doesn’t go any better, I might get a stick, and then you might be teaching here alone.” She pushed her bowl away and he pushed it back to her.
“Eat. You’ll need your strength to swing the stick tomorrow.”
THE GIRL AND JOHN awoke to a rare clear, crisp day that reflected against the snow a blinding white and forced him to squint until his forehead burned like an ice cream headache. A strong wind pushed at their backs, and he was happy to not have to worry about frostbite on their faces. Travelling went smoothly enough that his mind wandered back to thoughts of Anna and their first night together. He forgot the blind girl walking beside him, and the toboggan with their gear, a few cans of food, and her grass bundle. For those few moments he was in an anchored rowboat, rocking with the waves, in the middle of a lake, naked from the waist down, with Anna on top of him. Above them, the stars of a Wyoming night sky pulsed.
The memory slipped away when the girl asked if they could stop for water, but that night, when the two of them made camp beneath the stars, exhausted, the memory came back, and he escaped to the boat again. She rocked with the waves, dropping down onto him, letting her long brown hair fall over him, covering her eyes, and when she lifted her lips to him, her withered face twisted with pain, and she coughed and lurched toward him.
“John? John? You’re nightmaring again,” the girl said, gripping his shoulders.
“Sorry. Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “Anna … That was your wife?”
He nodded, then remembered she couldn’t see his head move. The girl smiled and returned to her work with the grass.
“It’s okay. You must have been dreaming of her,” she said, and put the end of one grass stalk into her mouth.
He tried to close his eyes, but as soon as he did, Anna’s face would reappear, the horrible image hanging in the sky above him. He tried to see through it, to the stars, but it wouldn’t go away.
“What did she look like?” the girl asked.
He couldn’t answer her. She waited for a while, and then asked another question. He knew she changed the subject for him.
“It’s clear tonight. Can you see the northern lights? We say those are spirits playing