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THE VOICE OF THE RIVER

FC2

Contents

List of Names......................................................ixLove Song for Tulanie Rey..........................................31. Saviors.........................................................112. The Red Fox.....................................................193. Rika, Marika: Love Song for Griffin.............................254. Morning Twilight................................................315. Silent Snow Singing Sparrow.....................................416. River's Edge....................................................477. Niña, Pérdida: Love Song for Iris.....................518. A Song Unbroken.................................................679. Love Song for the Unsaved Father................................7910. In This Light..................................................9111. Love Song for the Mother of No Children........................10512. Lost Children..................................................11713. Deer Song for Juliana and Roxie................................13114. Retreating Light...............................................13915. Survivors......................................................15316. Unforgiven: Lullaby for Lela...................................16317. The Companionship of Stone.....................................16718. Birdsong Under Water...........................................17919. Early Darkness.................................................18720. The Miracle: Lullaby for Lost Children.........................197Acknowledgments....................................................199

Chapter One

3 February 2006: 6:26 A.M.

Talia paces the dark hallway. If Kai doesn't get her out soon, the whimpering will start and then the yelping. Frost on the windows this morning, cold air from Canada moving down the Rockies. The boy would like to sleep another hour, but he promised long ago she'd never need to howl again if he could help it.

He loved the shivering dog the moment she saw him. Five years now, and Talia was going to die that day if he didn't take her. Half-starved, half-wild, two years old and not housebroken: the dog cowered in her cage, Talia, a tattered rag, long gray hair thin and tangled.

Kai's mother wanted him to love the sweet spaniel or faithful shepherd. She wanted him to take the little black terrier who danced on his hind legs like a tiny bear at the circus. But the girl with one blue eye and one gold-flecked hazel chose him, and he heard her name as if she spoke it.

Talia was afraid of the leash, afraid of the collar. She'd been smacked too many times, chained in the yard all night in winter. Kai's mother locked him out one day. He couldn't remember how long—fifteen minutes or five hours—but he did remember how cold he was as he ran door to door, window to window, trying to break into his own house, trying to see his own mother. Six years old, a lifetime ago. He wanted to forgive her even now, but she pretended to forget and never said that she was sorry.

In the house where Talia lived before his house, the bad dog shredded the pillows and drank from the toilet, pissed on the bed and dumped the garbage. She growled at the crawling baby. And why not? The little girl grabbed Talia's long hair and pulled, or climbed on top of her when she was sleeping.

Eight days before Kai found her at the shelter, Talia nipped one soft baby hand. Now the condemned dog had four hours left to live in exile. The baby's bright-eyed mother said, If the gun had been in the kitchen drawer and not in my husband's glove box, I would have killed the bitch, I swear it.

The baby wailed but did not bleed, and the mother dragged Talia into the yard and whacked her face with the chain as she hooked it. She never said the dog's name. She didn't know it.

Kai did not own Talia any more than his mother owned him or his grandfather owned the river. He loved her because she wanted to live. Talia chose him and spoke her name and shivered. He was twelve that day, and she was two. The dancing terrier could go home with any child, but this torn animal needed Kai, and only he could save her.

She's housebroken now, seven years old and mostly patient, but her howl could still pierce the dark and wake his mother. He thinks of his cousin Tulanie Rey, paralyzed more than two years, what a privilege it is to walk in snow, a mystery and a miracle to go out in the world and move without wheels. He whispers, Shush, I'm coming, and the dog lets out a shivery cry, already joyful.

Theo hears Talia's voice. He has ten minutes at most if he hopes to walk with his grandson. He loves the beginning of day: the cold, the quiet, the dark hour before the boy goes to school and the dog spends the day mourning him.

The question for Theo this day and every day is not one of will and desire, but of hips and knees, hands that can or cannot pull on pants, fingers that can zip and button. He's too proud to ask any seventeen-year-old boy to help him. Across town, Theo's other grandson wakes and touches his legs, and does not know them. Tulanie sees the dark shape of the chair beside the bed. This dream is mine. This dream is real. Sleep is better. Sometimes the legs are gone, and Tulanie floats free without them, up the stairs and out the window. Like smoke, he says, soon enough, some day. He's not afraid. What could be more strange than this? Stone, air, water.

Last fall, a one-legged man pulled another man from a truck on fire. Theo remembers the photograph of Willis Brodie in the paper, left pant leg rolled to expose his prosthesis. The crippled savior is a spur, a spark, a reminder of a thousand failures. He remembers Louise Brodie holding her husband's arm, smiling like a girl, gazing up at him with adoration. You could see how they were: more in love each day after forty-nine years together. Behind them, their little house appeared, a tiny tilted log cabin sinking into the earth south of Coram. They were poor, yes, but their front window reflected tall pines and open sky, a whole world.

The man Brodie saved had a pregnant wife and three children. Willis and Louise had driven down to Polson that day, sixty-six slow miles to celebrate the wonder of Brodie's birthday. He'd almost died in January, knocked flat in the snow, heart clenched and nearly strangled. Chopping wood, he said, like a fool. Now he had a pacemaker and three bypasses. Little brother Sam played mandolin, and cousin Marty sang, ragged as Johnny Cash, then tenderly as Elvis. In praise, in gratitude, Willis pulled the sweetest sound he'd ever heard from his harmonica. They were old men, but they still knew how to whoop and laugh, how to let the song be the spark that set their sweet old bodies humming.

Nine days before he saw Vincent Flute's truck on fire, Willis Brodie couldn't even walk, hot wires of pain in the hip of his half-leg strung so tight they left him weeping. Two shots of cortisone had him in his shoes again. Ambulatory, he said, my life is perfect.

The Brodies headed home at dusk and were fifteen miles up the lake shore when they spotted the rolled truck sparkling. Three drivers passed ahead of them. Almost dusk now, so Willis couldn't say for sure whether they'd noticed the vehicle down the ditch and the shadow of a man dangling.

Dead or...