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Thomas Builds-the-Fire went to Seattle after his grandmother died. Victor heard a lot of stories around the rez about why. Some people said he'd promised his grandmother on her deathbed that he'd go to college. Some people said he was doing something called slam poetry, although none of them seemed to know what it was. Victor looked it up on the computer in the tribal library, on one of the days when it wasn't broken, and decided it was possible. Yet another story involved Thomas embarking on a quest for a long-lost uncle, combing Seattle's waterfront, parks, and homeless shelters to find the one last person who shared his own blood. The stories got really crazy from there. One day, Victor even heard that Thomas was working for the FBI. He wondered how many of the crazy stories Thomas had planted himself before leaving and how many had sprung up on their own like the weeds in the gravel parking lot of the Trading Post.
Victor got restless. When he found himself sitting in his father's pickup truck, staring off at the sunset, a case of beer sitting unopened on the seat next to him, he knew it was time to leave. He drove off the reservation, pausing to hand the case off to Lester at his traffic post, and kept driving until he got to Spokane.
But he didn't feel like Spokane was far enough. And it was too easy, a Spokane in Spokane. He thought about driving on, all the way back to Phoenix, the reverse of the drive he and Thomas had done with his father's ashes. But if he was going to do that, he might as well have started drinking. Instead, he settled for heading down 195 to Pullman. If college (or poetry, or the FBI) was good enough for Thomas, it was good enough for him.
He didn't enroll, of course. Thomas probably would have gone off to school years ago if he hadn't had his grandmother to take care of. But Victor had never really pictured himself leaving the rez, and for him, school had mostly been a place to play basketball. He took a landscaping job, mowing grass, raking leaves, and trimming trees, he worked on his father's truck enough to keep it running, and sometimes he went into one of the gyms and watched basketball practice. Fall slid into winter. He was putting salt on a path when a white girl, a student with long, dark braids trailing out from under her stocking cap, asked him for directions. She offered to buy him a cup of coffee as thanks and as defense against the cold, and he accepted.
Lying in bed later, her braids draped across his chest, Victor listened to her stories. They weren't Indian stories, of course, but they almost could have been. She talked about distant fathers, families where taking a drink came as easy as taking a breath, and the things that get you through. For her it was school and books, but she thought it could just as easily have been drugs or liquor or a man who hit. "You don't hit, do you?" she said, teasingly. At least, he thought it was teasingly.
Victor shook his head. He could have said, "But my father did," but he didn't. He'd only ever said that to Thomas.
"I didn't think so. I'm too lucky for that," she said, and rolled back onto him. "I'm a great believer in luck."
While she slept, Victor stared at the ceiling in the half-dark of the snowy night. He didn't know what it was that got him through. His mother's fry bread, maybe, and basketball, although that didn't seem like quite enough. That was probably why he'd left the rez. Then he thought of Thomas, and wondered what was getting Thomas through now that his grandmother was gone.
His impulse was to slip out of bed, dress in the dark, and leave for Seattle right away, maybe write a note before he went that said he was lucky to have met her or something like that. He thought she'd like that, and he didn't want to leave her feeling used or abandoned or anything. She was a nice girl. But it was sure to be icy out, and there were a lot of mountains between him and Seattle. The pass might not even be open overnight in this kind of weather.
So instead he waited for morning, and left his note shortly before dawn. He went home and called his mother, sure to be up and in the kitchen by that hour, and said, "Hi, Mom. Do you know if anybody is still in touch with Thomas?" He waited, expecting her to say no, to ask why he wanted to know. He pictured himself wandering the streets of Seattle, hunting for Thomas like Thomas was perhaps hunting for his long-lost uncle. There was a long silence.
"He's right here, actually," she said, sounding puzzled. "Do you want to talk to him?"
"Yeah," Victor said, a grin splitting his face. "Thomas! What are you doing in my mom's kitchen? You couldn't have known I was looking for you."
"Oh, but I did. I heard it on the wind, I heard it from the birds, I felt it in the sunlight. But mostly, your mom still makes the best fry bread in the whole world."
Victor couldn't stop grinning. "She does. I haven't had it in months."
"Then you should come have some," Thomas said.
"Tell her I'll be there in a couple of hours," Victor said, and hung up the phone.
The roads weren't bad in daylight, a little hairy in places but Victor hardly noticed, keeping his father's truck out of the ditches by instinct when he hit the occasional small patch of ice. He walked into his mom's kitchen and breathed deeply. It smelled like home. He grabbed a piece of fry bread and kissed her on the forehead.
"Thomas went home, but he wanted me to tell you you should come over there once you've eaten," she said, as if he'd never been gone.
"Did he tell you what he's been doing all this time?"
"No, and I didn't ask. That's his business, enit?"
Victor shrugged. "I'll be back later," he said, and headed for the door.
"I know," his mom said.
He paused to smile at her, and she smiled back. Then he was off to see Thomas.
When Thomas opened the door, looking the same as he always had, Victor resisted the impulse to hug him. "Come in," Thomas said, "it's cold out."
Victor did. "Where have you been, Thomas?" he asked, barely inside the door. "What have you been doing?"
Thomas hesitated, then said, "I've been gone. Our cousins in Australia would call it walkabout."
"Why did you come back?"
"I had a dream we were in a rock 'n' roll band," Thomas said, closing his eyes, "and there was a magic guitar. I knew that if I came back, you'd be here." He opened his eyes. "Where have you been? What have you been doing?"
"I went to Pullman," Victor said.
"To college?"
"No, the FBI," Victor said. Thomas broke out laughing at that, and Victor knew for certain then that at least one of the crazy stories had started with him. Probably all of them. "There was this girl," he said, and paused at the look of hurt that passed quickly across Thomas's face. "No, wait, let me start over." He closed his eyes, the way Thomas did when telling a story, and began again. "I got lost, even though I knew where I was. So I left. I wound up in Pullman, and I got a job at the university. I met a girl with braids yesterday, and she told stories. They were good stories, but not... I didn't want to tell her my stories. I didn't know I had any stories, but I guess everybody does, and I didn't want to tell them to her. You know my stories. You're in my stories. And I'm not a storyteller, not like you, so it's good that I don't have to tell them to you, because I'm no damn good at it."
He kept his eyes closed for a moment, not sure if he was finished or not. Then he felt lips touching his. The kiss was firm, not hesitant for even an instant, and when it was over he opened his eyes and saw Thomas grinning at him.
"That was a good story, Victor," Thomas said. "Have a seat, and I'll tell you some stories from my travels."