19 • Connor
“He’s awake,” Elina says. That’s all, just “he’s awake.” She is a woman of few words. At least few words for Connor.
“So, can I see him?”
She folds her arms and regards him coolly. Her lack of response is his answer. “Tell me one thing,” she finally says. “Is it because of you he became a clapper?”
“No!” says Connor, disgusted by the suggestion. “Absolutely not!” And then he adds, “It’s because of me that he didn’t clap.”
She nods, accepting his answer. “You can see him tomorrow, once he’s a little stronger.”
Connor sits back down on the sofa. The doctor’s home—in fact, the entire rez—is not what he expected. The Arápache have steeped themselves in both their culture and modern convenience. Plush leather furniture speaks of wealth, but it is clearly made by hand. The neighborhood—if one can call it that—is carved into the red stone cliffs on either side of a deep gorge, but the rooms are spacious, the floors are tiled with ornate marble, and the plumbing fixtures are polished brass or maybe even gold—Connor’s not sure. Dr. Elina’s medical supplies are also state of the art, although different in some fundamental way from medical supplies on the outside. Less clinical, somehow.
“Our philosophy is a little different,” she had told him. “We believe it’s best to heal from the inside out, rather than from the outside in.”
Across the room, the boy playing a board game with Grace growls in frustration. “How can you keep beating me in Serpents and Stones?” he whines at Grace. “You’ve never even played it before!”
Grace shrugs. “I learn quick.”
The boy, whose name is Kele, has little patience for losing. The game, Serpents and Stones, appears to be a lot like checkers, but with more strategy—and when it comes to strategy, Grace cannot be beat.
Once the kid storms away, Grace turns to Connor. “So your friend the clapper is gonna be okay?” she asks.
“Please don’t call him that.”
“Sorry—but he’s gonna be okay, right?”
“It looks like it.”
They’ve been here for nearly a week, and Connor has yet to feel welcome. Tolerated is more like it—and not because they’re outsiders, for Elina and her brother-in-law, Pivane, have been more than kind to Grace—especially after they realized she’s low-cortical. Even when she stitched up Connor’s ostrich wound, Elina was cool and impassionate about it. “Keep it clean. It’ll heal,” was all she said. She offered no “your welcome,” to Connor’s “thank you,” and he couldn’t tell whether it was a cultural thing, or if her silence was deliberate. Perhaps now that Elina knows he wasn’t responsible for Lev becoming a clapper, she might treat him with a little less frost.
Kele returns with another board game, fumbling with black and white pieces of different sizes.
“So what do you call this game?” Connor asks.
He looks at Connor like he’s an imbecile. “Chess,” he says. “Duh.”
Connor grins, recognizing the pieces as he places them. Like everything else on the rez, the game is hand carved and the pieces unique, like little sculptures—which is why he didn’t recognize it right away. Grace rubs her hands together in anticipation, and Connor considers warning the kid not to get his hopes up, but decides not to: He’s much too entertaining as a sore loser.
Kele is twelve, by Connor’s estimate. He’s not family, but Elina and her husband, Chal, took him in when his mother died a year ago. While Elina has offered Connor no information on anything, Kele, whose mouth runs like an old-time combustion engine, has been filling Connor in on a part of Lev’s life that Lev never spoke about.
“Lev showed up here maybe a year and a half ago,” Kele had told Connor. “Stayed for a few weeks. That was before he got all scary and famous and stuff. He went on a vision quest with us, but it didn’t turn out so good.”
Connor placed Lev’s weeks at the rez somewhere between the time he and Risa lost Lev at the high school in Ohio and the time he showed up at the Graveyard, markedly changed.
“He and Wil became good friends,” Kele told Connor, glancing at a portrait of a teenaged boy who looked a lot like Elina.
“Where is Wil now?” Connor asked.
It was the only time Kele got closemouthed. “Gone,” he had finally said.
“Left the rez?”
“Sort of.” Then Kele had changed the subject, asking questions about the world outside the reservation. “Is it true that people get brain implants instead of going to school?”
“NeuroWeaves—and it’s not instead of school. It’s something rich stupid people do for their rich stupid children.”
“I’d never want a piece of someone else’s brain,” Kele had said. “I mean, you don’t know where it’s been.”