2. Reading Lists
"After everything that's happened, I can't understand why you still hate us so. We're not the enemy."
Her interrogator's expression is somewhere between irritated and confused, and he stands there at the end of her booth, hands on hips like a girl, except at 6'3" and muscled, he's patently no girl. Leah swallows a laugh. "You're white," she tells him.
His lips thin and he speaks too softly for anybody near them -- if anybody had been near them -- to hear. But her ears are almost as good as his. "I thought it's the fact we're vampires -- leeches --" his emphasis is unkind, "that you object to?"
"There's a difference?" She means it as a joke. From his expression, it's obvious he doesn't get it. "You suck the life out of Mother Earth, steal our sacred lands, make treaties then break them whenever its convenient for you. You're all vampires as far as I'm concerned."
His expression changes subtly, but she's not sure how to describe it. "How very convenient, to see the world in such clear divisions of black and white. Or should that be Red and White?"
Humor. That's what he's concealing. He's laughing at her -- and she's the one who loses her temper instead of him. Leaning over the tabletop, fists clenched, she snarls, "You don't know jack shit!" She hates that her snarl sounds doglike.
She is not a bitch. Whatever the boys call her.
His eyebrow goes up. "Then educate me."
"You don't wanna learn."
"How do you know?"
"The white man never does."
"How do you know?"
She resists snarling again. He sounds like one of the Elders, answering her with questions, unseating her certainty, requiring her to think, and she's reminded that he's older than any living Quileute, or anybody in their cousin tribes, either. Sam told her he fought in the Civil War.
Despite herself, a part of her is curious about that -- what life was like then.
She won't ask him.
Instead, she lifts her chin. "Got some paper?"
She didn't think he would, but to her surprise, he tilts his head in the direction of the door and says, "I'll be right back."
He's gone almost too fast, as if afraid she might disappear in his absence, but she's not going anywhere, not with half a cup left of black coffee that cost her 1.89-plus-tax. She occupies a booth in the Forks Coffee Shop -- which is really a pricy, all-day restaurant -- with its light blue upholstery, pale formica table tops, and a stuffed deer head hanging on a column in the divider between shop halves. She finds it vaguely repulsive, like the chintzy Christmas lights, the scenic waterfall wallpaper in the foyer, and the fake rustic rafters. Tourists must eat it up.
Sometimes she thinks nineteen is too old to be so cynical, but life hasn't inclined her to believe in fairytales, even if -- technically -- she's a walking, breathing example. Except her tale doesn't end in happily-ever-after, and how dare that Leech corner her here to ask his annoying questions. Because he had, of course -- cornered her -- to talk of Hidden Things in a public place.
Now, he's back, carrying a pad and pen, and slides into the booth opposite her without so much as a by-your-leave. Oddly, he looks almost eager. "Okay, I've got that paper, darlin'," he says. She can hear -- somewhere buried in the lengthened, flattened vowels -- the hint of an old Southern accent. She doesn't notice it normally.
"Custer died for your sins," she says.
He looks up. "I beg your pardon?"
"It's the name of a book. Custer Died for Your Sins. Vine Deloria -- V-I-N-E, like a grape vine. God is Red, too, but it's even angrier." She smirks. "You'd better be ready for it, white man. Oh, and American Indians, American Justice -- if you really wanna know why we're so fucking pissed off."
One blond eyebrow flickers; she can see it, but his face is bent over the paper. He writes in neat, almost block script. "What else?"
"Killing the White Man's Indian," she says. "Bordewich. In the Spirit of Crazy Horse. Matthiessen." She pauses and spells that for him as well. He doesn't look up, just dutifully records. "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee -- Dee Brown. The Sacred Hoop -- Paula Gunn Allen." She pauses. "That enough for you, white man?"
"My name is Jasper, you know. I don't call you red girl. 'Once you label me, you negate me.' Kierkegaard." He flips over the cover on his tablet, closing it, and looks up at her. "You like to read." His face is serious -- no hint of disdain. But he wouldn't feel disdain, would he? White men with their dead-tree paper books of frozen knowledge that any fool could access . . . they have no sense of living wisdom or earning the right to learn. It pisses her off, even while she feels guilty because she does like books. So she blushes and looks away. Her family teases her for it, her reading, but her father . . . she chokes and shuts off that thought. She misses him terribly, and not just because he defended her love for books. 'Nothing wrong with reading,' he'd say. 'Get you into college. Get you off the rez.' Despite being an Elder, like many, he'd had a love-hate relationship with the reservation. 'You keep up those good grades and they'll get you out of here.'
Except her good grades hadn't gotten her anywhere, had they? She and Sam . . . once, they'd been the pride of the Quileute Tribal School. Over-achievers, the both of them, well-matched -- they could have escaped, and not in the usual way . . . into the army, to jail, or in a pine box. No, they could have gone to college, kept each other company, kept each other from running home in desperation at the alienness of a white world. "Learn," her father had told her for as long as she could remember. "A good education is your ticket to a better life. You Walk Between Worlds, Leah. Creatures of two worlds -- they have special power. You learn, and you bring it back here. You make the People stronger with your World Walking." So what if college hadn't been the usual expectation for an Indian girl? She'd had high hopes for a scholarship anyway.
Until the Cullens had come. Until an old legend -- an old curse -- had manifested. Until damn "destiny" (she didn't even believe in destiny) had torn Sam from her side, and a bad heart had stolen her father. What did a 4.0 matter now? So she'd given up on white school. Her last year had been -- according to her teachers -- an unmitigated disaster.
But she still likes to read.
And fucking Jasper Hale -- yes, she knows his name -- doesn't need to hear any of that. He's not her family, he's not a member of her tribe. He doesn't belong.
"I read sometimes," she says now.
His grin is . . . quirky. He slips the pad and pen into his breast pocket where her father had once kept his cigarettes. It's a familiar male gesture and makes her throat swell with grief.
Abruptly -- and to her great shock -- his cold hand is covering her warm one. "I'm sorry for your loss," he says.
It's absolutely sincere, and she tries to ignore her anger along with the icy-hard feel of him and the rot-sweet stink of vampire. "It was over a year ago," she says.
"Grief is a cycle. It doesn't end overnight. He was your father."
She remembers what Jacob told her -- this one doesn't read minds, he reads emotions. She thinks that is, perhaps, the more invasive and rips her hand free, rubbing warmth back into it. Some completely irreverent and stupid part of her thinks: "Cold hands, warm heart." Except he doesn't have one. A heart. His is dead.
"It's none of your damn business," she tells him now.
"To grieve makes us human," he replies. It's trite, and annoys her. Her coffee isn't finished, but it's stone cold. She stands up.
"You have your reading list." And she walks away. She doesn't really expect him to finish it, doubts he'll make it through the first book before he's too angry to finish.
He's back three days later. She's in the same booth, in the same coffee shop. She'd like to say she's not predictable but her own predictability belies her. "I thought I got rid of you?" she says by way of greeting.
He just grins. He knows her words hold more astonishment than heat. Damn empath. (Yes, she knows what that word means. She's got a good vocabulary, thank you.) Sitting down, he takes out the same pad and flips it open, pen clicked at ready. He looks up at her. "More?"
So she gives him more. Autobiography this time, and fiction. An Indian Boyhood by Charles Eastman, along with his From the Deep Woods to Civilization, also Bead on an Anthill by Delphine Red Shirt, and Lakota Woman by Mary Crow Dog. A House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday, The Beet Queen by Louise Erdrich, Solar Storms by Linda Hogan, Grass Dancer by Susan Power, and Gerard Vizenor's Bearheart. If he can make it through Bearheart, she'll be impressed -- it's a prime example of Red black humor.
"Oh," she adds in conclusion, "anything by Sherman Alexie. He's ours. Well, sort of. He's not Quileute, but he's Pacific Northwest -- Spokane. Why not start with Indian Killer?" It's a sly suggestion, perhaps a little cruel. Indian Killer isn't an easy novel for white readers. She also doesn't tell the Leech that Alexie isn't the most popular guy among his own. She's heard the local gossip. But she's not well-liked by her tribe, either -- seen as just as eccentric and divisive, a little too self-aware -- so she's sympathetic. A prophet is never welcome in his own country . . .
She ignores the fact that comes from the White Man's Bible. She's sometimes selective in what she takes and what she jettisons; she's Traditional -- not narrow. In any case, the Leech takes her suggestions, gives her a smile . . . buys her another coffee . . . and departs.