Strawgirl by Abigail Padgett Page B

of New York State never stayed there. Those that did, died. There had been no further sightings. It was time to go elsewhere, and the group had selected California for the state's renowned openness to unorthodox ideas. A desert location for privacy and an ascetic wildness that might free the group to shape whatever philosophy it would make of its joint experience. A desert location within driving distance of the Goldstone Tracking Station in Barstow, where NASA scientists watched as a computer program sifted a million radio bands of celestial static for the telltale, nonrandom blips that would prove we are not alone in the universe. Blips that could only be created by nonearthly intelligence. Eva Broussard wanted to interview those scientists, include that perspective in her research. Wanted it deeply.
    Paul Massieu had been sent to purchase the land. Eva felt concern when he announced that Bonnie and the children would go with him, but they preferred to remain together. Bonnie was sure she could get a part-time secretarial job to pay for trips to Disneyland and the thousand things she wanted the girls to see. And as a lifelong resident of New York State, Bonnie Franer had hated to be cold. The prospect of a winter in sunshine was too attractive to forestall. Now her younger daughter lay dead while the other clung to the man accused of the crime. Eva Broussard had driven them away from Albany and into the Adirondack deeps, weighted with apprehension. The act that robbed Samantha Franer of her life had also slammed like a fist through Eva's fascination with a collection of strangers and their encounters with tin men in the woods. A psychological inquiry that had seemed sufficient to occupy the rest of her life paled before the anguish of the man and child now huddled in her car. Eva felt a cold, murderous resentment for the man who had shattered their lives, whoever he was. He had shattered hers as well.
    Later Eva took Hannah alone to the five-sided tower and gave her, one by one, the strings of Iroquois grieving beads she'd woven for the child after the news of Samantha's death. In candlelight reflected from two hundred panes of hand-blown glass in the tower's windows, she gently recited the words in Iroquois and in English. The words Hayenwatha had given to a people who lived in cloud-shadows and sometimes perished of a terrible grieving that would only later be named depression.
    "Samantha is gone and cannot return," she began the soft, chanting ritual. "Samantha has died. And you hurt so much that tears blind your eyes. With these words I wipe the tears from your eyes so you can see. These beads are my words for your eyes, Hannah."
    The child took the woven rush with its irregular purple beads carved from the shells of the quahog clam. Wrapping dry, tremulous fingers about the small strip, she buried her head against Eva Broussard's ribs and sobbed. Eva sank to the floor, rocking the child against her and humming a song her own grandmother had sung in the dark. A story of the Huron prophet Deganawida in his canoe of white stone. Deganawida with a speech impediment so profound he must carry his voice with him in the person of Hayenwatha, the translator mystic. The story gave form to an Iroquois reverence for sensitive communication and human interdependence. It was also, Eva had realized years ago, an excellent therapeutic model.
    After a while she said again, "Samantha is gone and cannot return. Samantha has died. And you hurt so much there's a roaring in your ears that drowns out everything else. With these words I silence the roaring so you can hear. These beads are my words for your ears, Hannah."
    When the third strip of beaded rush had been given to the child, so that her throat choked by pain might be opened for speech, Eva Broussard breathed deeply and contemplated the words she would next pronounce. They were truly necessary, she concluded. And she was prepared to undertake the responsibility.
    "As the oldest woman