FADING IN THE GRASS

a novel by

Tim Laskowski

approx. 46,000 words

We are but a moment’s sunlight
Fading in the grass

• Chet Powers

CHAPTER 1

Julian Kenny remembered Lisa Goshawk: the first air bubbling from her nose as he carried the six-year-old Salish Indian girl up the gray stone bank of Mission Creek, her dripping raven hair splayed over one of his blue uniformed arms while her barefoot legs dangled over his other. Though the bank was steep and slick, in all his years of being a cop, he had never been more sure of his footing or of his grasp, since finding Lisa after a day and half of searching, after her white foster mother had woken from her drunk to report her missing. And now Jule Kenny dreamt anew of the swollen eyes and arms bruised with laces of fingerprints that explained why she had run off. Though never a believing man, on finding her, Jule had instinctively whispered a prayer for her life, not sure where he was directing the prayer, whether to the Christ of his childhood or the spirits of his ancestors. Who knew who had heard, but some answer came as the girl coughed water out of her lungs and sputtered to life.

There was a lot more to his recollections, but the images of that time well over two decades ago quickly scattered, leaving him dazed. Daylight streamed through his living room window, encroaching on the darkness of his corner recliner, where he now spent most of his time, scuttled under two afghans, surrounded by conveniently placed magazines, CD player, and TV remote. Fatigued and confused from the chemotherapy cocktails he had been given intravenously for most the week, he sucked in air with his mouth open, heard a clattering from the kitchen, and wondered why with the warmth and light he saw outside the window and with the two blankets on him, he felt so cold. Then like a brick of memory, another image pounced on him, and it took the last of his strength to chase the picture of Birch Stevenson from his mind. Birch was the only man he had ever had to kill as a cop or soldier and he had been successful for twenty years in keeping himself from thinking too hard on it. With effort, he managed to bury the image again, though just barely.

He relaxed into his fatigue and thought he could just about hear the gurgle of the potions in his blood: the latest round of chemotherapy that had been injected into him that week, the paradox of poison meant to save him. Then he heard noises again from the kitchen, felt thirsty, and wondered who was home with him.

Laying back in his recliner, Jule wondered why visions of the Goshawk girl had returned to him since it had been so many years ago, and he had no idea where she had ended up. He recalled the ambulance taking her away, and his follow-up with state social workers. As far as he knew, she had been placed in another foster home and had long ago left the reservation. He clutched at the memories though, and hoped, wherever she was, she was happy, that her life had been worth saving.

A naturally smart man, Jule regretted not having a chance at college after high school, and so had taken advantage of any education offered him by the tribe or town to do his cop job. And he had been an active man, especially liking to hike the mountains and hunt, who kept himself from too much reflection on things past. Now his pain and the cancer had reduced his activities, giving him too much time alone in the corner of his living room, with the TV tilted towards him, with country music CDs in reach, books and magazines sitting amidst the medicine bottles.

“Do you need anything?” It was his wife’s voice shouting from the kitchen, prefacing her appearance before him in the living room. Greta was a couple years younger than him, salt and pepper short hair, full lips and few wrinkles other than crows feet around her eyes and lines just starting to deepen downward from her corners of her mouth. She kept her distance, buttoned up in a polyester lavender pant suit that seemed designed to discourage imagination.

“You hear me?” she said in her German accent not lost or tempered despite forty years of living in America. She didn’t like hiking or hunting or the mountains, but she had done well, with Jule’s help, owning and running the café in town for over a generation. “You want something? I’m going into Meriweather.”

“No,” Jule stammered. In every way, physically and mentally, the chemo had slowed him down, so that he often needed extra time to process even the simplest conversation. He frowned because he knew she was going to the casinos and gamble away her money in keno and poker machines. After years of arguing over this this habit of hers, he had given up protesting.

“Sally will stop by to look in on you,” she said. “I got my phone with me too.”

“When are you coming back?”

“This evening. Don’t worry too much. God will take care of you.” She looked at him icily. “But you don’t let him, do you?”

“Suppose not,” he sighed. Another brick in the wall between them. She had been going to the Assembly of God church for the last ten years, and as she fidgeted in front of him, not too close, he felt she was deliberating between her desire to leave and her self-ordained obligation to try again to turn him towards Christ. As he expected, her urge to gamble won out.

“I’m going now. Sally will be here soon.”

As she left through the kitchen, he heard the back door swing open and shut, then the car start, and he was alone again. Funny how being alone for weeks in the mountains had never bothered him, but now an hour alone in his home was nearly unbearable. Yet he was relieved Greta hadn’t stayed. Though they had managed to love one another, there had been a steady growing apart almost from the beginning. She used the space they gave each other to run her business and to gamble, and he used his space for work, his forays into the mountains and his affairs with other women. Forgiving or ignoring each other’s faults, they had settled for a faithfulness to kids and a shared home and they enjoyed the freedom each allowed the other.

Two years ago at the age of 61, Jule was finishing his career as tribal and town cop, reluctantly retiring after a fall had wrenched his back. Not long after, the enduring pain had forced him to demand specialist doctors and tests and to the eventual diagnosis of multiple myeloma, and onward to the chemotherapy that was decidedly more debilitating than the cancer itself. Only a quarter Indian, Jule had just enough blood quantum to qualify him as a tribal member, with the dark skin and hair and eyes of his Salish great-grandmother who had married an Irish-American man years ago. Though carrying a small pot belly, he still had all his hair and had remained tall and muscular. He was considered a good cop, not too Indian and not too white, allowing him to maneuver effectively among all the people of the town and keep a relative peace.

Besides being known for his years as a cop, Jule was also a legendary hunter, a reputation aided by the fact that tribal members weren’t as restricted as whites by quotas and hunting seasons. His greatest peace came in climbing mountains, spending days and nights in the wilderness, never coming home without a deer or elk. From boyhood he knew great swaths of the Surround Mountains, had scrambled up and down their sides hunting and fishing, cutting trees and gathering firewood. He had camped on his own for weeks at a time lying in the soft lupine meadows or perched on an angry cliff. The only time he had spent away was with the army in Germany when there were no^[a] wars to be drafted into, and he brought himself home a German girl for a wife. They raised two boys and a girl, keeping them mostly out of trouble, away from most drugs and drinking – not a small feat on the reservation.

When Jule retired, he would have been happy to wander the mountains whenever he wanted, but his back acted up regularly and then he began feeling pains in his right lowest ribs, first as a chronic throb, then more acutely, hurting whenever he breathed deep. Initially he ignored it, thinking it to be one of the temporary aches come from age and a life of hiking and occasionally fighting with other men. But when the pain got worse, his daughter Sally persuaded him to see the young reservation doctor, who was working in the clinic just long enough to get his school loans forgiven.

“You’re just getting old, Jule,” the doctor looked up from his laptop just long enough to make brief eye contact. “And you’ve been in some scuffles in your life. Nothing to worry about, I’d say.”

The clinic examining room had bare walls with a sink and counter space where supplies were kept. The doctor was white, maybe twenty-seven, and looked bored.

“You sure about that, Doc? It feels like something different than my usual stuff.”

“We could run tests and x-rays but I think it’ll be a waste of time. I didn’t feel anything out of whack. Let’s give it a month and if it’s still bad or worse, we’ll do more.”

“Okay, Doc. That’s a relief.”

“Go slow when you’re up in the mountains. Take your time, and you’ll be fine,” the doctor said as Jule buttoned up his shirt.

Jule happily followed the advice to hike and hunt but two months later he was back to the clinic, telling him about increased pain, and so he was given the first of his pain pills. Then another month later, he went back, this time with Sally, who was a social worker in Meriweather, the closest city of any size in the area. Sally insisted on the doctor ordering x-rays and scans that eventually showed that one rib had somehow dissolved and the others were withering. More tests were ordered and analyzed till a few weeks later, he and Sally found themselves in the office of Doctor Charlotte Lovelander, oncologist.

In looks, Sally had the dark skin tone and black hair of her Indian ancestors, though her personality reflected more of the European heritage of her mother. She was persistent in ensuring Jule got to his appointments and followed the experts’ recommendations. When they had first walked into Doctor Lovelander’s waiting room, there were about ten other people seated in soft chairs, surrounded by pale green walls and birch wainscoting, book shelves built into one wall, a water cooler and small fridge in a corner, and a desk and computer opposite that. Though filled with patients and family and a couple women nurses with stethoscopes, bending over or kneeling to talk with patients, the room’s warm colors maintained an aura of peace, offering a place you could take a nap comfortably. After Jule and Sally signed in with the receptionist, they turned and Jule noticed one woman on her haunches in front of an elderly man, her hand on his knee, the back of her cotton flannel pants riding low enough to expose an angel tattoo on her lower back and just the very top of her butt crack. Above her pants, she wore a black leather vest over a tank top. She stood up straight to greet them.

“Hey, you must be Marshall Kenny,” she said. “I’m Charlotte, the new doc in town.”

Jule smothered the urge to run away. He had heard this doctor was unconventional, but Sally had also assured him she was the best. Doctor Charlotte left them in the waiting room for well over an hour past their appointment time, but once they finally found themselves in an examining room with her, she spent almost four hours with them, answering every question they threw her way about multiple myeloma and the treatments available. Using a speaker phone, she even called the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota to get a couple of his questions answered though they were interrupted repeatedly by her cell phone ringing with calls from other patients.

“I’ll always be honest with you,” Charlotte said as she sat close to Jule, and placed a warm hand on his knee, a touch he felt light and tender with compassion, and a tangible acknowledgment of his pain and weariness and the fear he’d been harboring ever since he heard the word, cancer. “This isn’t going to be easy. Your case is advanced and your chances aren’t the greatest, but I think you can beat this. Only we need to be quick and aggressive. I’m recommending at least six rounds of chemotherapy. That means one week of chemo in my infusion room then two weeks off. Repeat it six times and see where we’re at.”

“I’ve heard chemo is pretty rough stuff. You sure I got a chance?”

“I don’t make guarantees but without the treatment, it’s a sure thing that you’re a dead man, Marshall. Chemo is horrible but it’s all we got. I’ll also order meds to keep the nausea down and we’ll give you shots of B-12 for energy.”

Jule studied Doctor Charlotte’s face then looked at his daughter who gave him an almost undetectable nod. “I’ll give it a try as long as you stay honest with me and don’t try to hide nothing.”

“It’s a deal then, Mr. Kenny. We might follow things up with radiation after the chemo but that’s not as bad. We’ll see.”

She talked on, offering them more information than they would ever be able to retain; she talked till their eyes glazed and their heads ached.

“Here’s my cell number,” she said as she finished. “Call me anytime, day or night. Even if you’re just scared or confused. I’ll answer or call back as soon as I can.”

Surprisingly, he found her true to her word. The first time he called her was just to test to see if she was truly a crazy enough doctor to be so available to her patients. And he had called a few times afterwards, once in the early morning, before sunup, when his wife, Greta, was still in bed, and he was sleeping in his recliner, where he had pretty much taken up permanent residence at home. Feeling very alone, he asked Doctor Charlotte point blank if he was dying, and if he was, what was the point of continuing the chemo, which by then, had stretched into the fourth round. She was usually blunt enough with her responses, but he felt this time she skirted around her answer. “The odds aren’t improved much,” she had said. “The chemo’s getting some of the tumors, but I’m not seeing all the progress I’d hoped for. I think we need to take a break with the chemo though. Give you time to get stronger. Then maybe try something different.”

That was over a month ago, and now he was started on yet another round of a slightly modified formula. He imagined the poison filtering into his chest, flowing around his heart and lungs, infiltrating every blood cell, destroying cancer cells and most everything else it could find. His skin was yellow and his mouth constantly dry. He had long ago lost his hair and eyebrows, though funny that what he missed most was his nose hair. Without it, snot ran too freely out of his nostrils and down his upper lip where his moustache used to be, into the corners of his mouth. He was tired of wiping it or having Sally or someone else wiping it for him. He was tempted to tell Charlotte to hell with the chemo. He’d had enough. Another round or two would kill him just as surely as the cancer. Couldn’t he die in peace, without another round of pain?

Cooper, Greta’s little fox terrier, was his primary company now. The sicker he got, the more the dog sat near him, especially since he dropped bits of his food, both intentionally and not. Cooper got in the habit of parking himself at Jule’s feet, looking up hopefully, and when determining that Jule wasn’t eating anything at the moment, Cooper settled himself down and closed his eyes. Often now Jule slept too. The chemo had battered him, making him feel an exhaustion unlike what he felt after a long hike when his muscles ached but he could feel good with the pain. This exhaustion came from the inside out, as though each cell rebelled and waged war against the interior walls of his skin and organs. At times, he was beyond fatigued, to a point where he could only retreat into a fetal ball, both mentally and physically. Sometimes, hot sweat would pour from him, and he welcomed it, imagining the poisons escaping his body, bestowing hope and some promise of normalcy.

He fell asleep till wakened by the sound of the front door opening and Cooper yapping annoyingly, then backtracking his steps to the protection behind Jule’s chair.

“Hi, Daddy.” He heard a voice from the shaft of spring sunlight that the open door let in. Then as his daughter stepped from the light and closed the door, Jule was able to focus his sight and his thoughts on Sally. She leaned over and kissed him on the forehead.

She was the youngest of their three kids, who had all married white. Their oldest son lived in Seattle with his family, running a cleaning business, and got back home about every other year, though he had visited for a few days when Jule first got his diagnosis. Their other son lived at the northern edge of the reservation on a ranch with his wife and four kids. He didn’t visit much, citing the time and energy he needed for ranch and family. For Jule, being a father had been on-the-job training since his own dad had spent most of his time out of the house and had often belittled and cuffed his kids when he was around. With each of his children though, Jule got better at fathering, certainly getting softer, more gentle and more appreciative of what his kids could do. He grew more able to stifle his anger and show the love he felt for them. Maybe, he thought, his shift in attitude had come too late for the older two, and only Sally had benefited from him growing wiser and that is why she was here for him now.

“How are things, Dad? Where’s Mom? I thought she’d still be here.”

Jule saw his daughter’s disapproval as she looked around the house for Greta.

“It’s dark in here.” She pulled a curtain back from the main window. “It’s finally acting like spring out there. Do you want to get outside?”

“No,” he said quickly. Since the chemo, he reflexively turned down most opportunities to do things. He fumbled for a few decent words to give to Sally.

“How are the kids?” he managed.

She smiled, said, “Okay,” and, “Are you thirsty? I’ll get you something.”

She grabbed a glass off the end table next to him, and chattered about her two sons, ages ten and twelve, and she walked to the kitchen, her voice getting louder as she drifted away, but still he couldn’t hear her well enough to catch the details of his grandchildren’s lives. And he didn’t really care, not being able to keep the stories straight about each kid. For now, he just wanted to hear Sally’s voice and know that she was there and he mattered to her still.

When she got back with a fresh glass of orange Gatorade --one of the few things that tasted good to him, since chemo tended to taint everything with a metallic tinge -- Sally sat down on the couch, still talking, but looking at him as though he was under cross-examination, the way a lot of people had looked at him now, trying to judge how sick he was, how much time maybe he had left. It used to bother him, but no more. It reminded him of himself somewhat, the way he had looked at suspects, or when he had come across someone where they shouldn’t have been, and he’d have to study them to make sure of their intent. His life had once depended on such observation.

He wanted to tell her of his memories of the Goshawk girl he had rescued from the creek – it was like a dream, how the memory infiltrated his sleepy afternoon. He wanted to tell the details of his rescue of the girl from the water that had risen with spring snow melt. And ask Sally if she knew anything about the Goshawk family now. Instead, he felt the chemo fog around him, couldn’t keep his eyes open, and lost the fight to stay awake.