Truth and Bright Water by Thomas King Page B

away.
    This theory is simple and complete. The only problem is that there are better places to throw a suitcase into the river. And closer. You could go across the tracks on Division Street South to the overlook and toss a suitcase off there. The woman might have wanted privacy, but angry people generally don’t care about things like that. When Ida Jerome caught her husband, Jerry, with Stella Watson, the whole town knew about it. The moment it happened.
    But if the woman was angry, why was she dancing? I’m working on this when I hear the toilet flush and the water pressure drops to a trickle.
    “Hey!”
    “You in there, cousin?”
    “Lum?”
    “Quit playing with the soap.” Lum tosses a towel against the shower curtain. Part of it loops over the bar and hangs there.
    “I just got in,” I say.
    “You don’t have that much to wash.”
    The water returns to normal and I put my head back under the spray in order to drown out Lum’s voice. The tub drains slowly and the water is up to my ankles now. I’m just beginning to enjoy myself again when I feel something bump up against my butt. It makes me jump, and when I turn around, I see Lum’s arm sticking through the shower curtain. In his hand is the skull.
    “Have you seen a bone around here?” Lum says in that stupid tinny voice of his, and he moves the skull up and down as if it’s talking.
    “You been drinking again?”
    “A teeny-weeny bonie.” Lum balances the skull on the edge of the tub and then lets it slide down the porcelain. It hits the water, tumbles over, and floats up against my leg. It bobs around in the soap suds for a moment and then settles to the bottom of the tub. The skull looks funny sitting there, half-submerged, the soap slick floating in and out of the eye sockets.
    “Your brother’s drowning,” I tell Lum.
    “Just don’t piss on him.” Lum’s hand dives into the shower and snatches the skull out of the water like a hawk hitting a fish. “Yuck!” shouts Lum. “What’s this white shit all over him?”
    “It’s soap.”
    “Pervert!”
    My second theory is that the woman’s boyfriend or husband has died or been killed. She packs his favourite clothes in his favourite suitcase and drives out to the Horns. When she gets there, she discovers that she can’t bear simply to throw the suitcase into the river, so she jumps in with it and, as a gesture of love, floats along with the suitcase for a ways before she sets it free in the current. She swims to shore, gets out, has a good cry on the bank, climbs back up to the Horns, gets in her car, and drives away.
    That would explain why the woman didn’t throw the suitcase off the overlook. She wanted to be alone. Sorrow is different from anger. When my father left Bright Water and moved to Truth, my mother didn’t yell and throw things the way you see women do in the movies. She stayed in the house and worked on the quilt. I was pretty sure she was angry, but maybe she was sad at the same time.
    When I come out of the shower, Lum is sitting at the kitchen table, wrapped up in my mother’s quilt, eating toast and drinking apple juice.
    “Hey! Take it off. My mother sees you with that and I’ll catch shit.”
    “I’m not going to hurt it.” Lum stands up and spins around in a tight circle so that the feathers lift away from the quilt like tiny wings and the ribbons tremble like tongues. “There any more apple juice?”
    “You drank all the juice?”
    “Water’s better for you anyway,” says Lum. “This stuff’s mostly sugar.”
    “Thought you were in training.”
    “Long-distance runners need sugar.”
    There’s a pan on the stove. It’s empty, but I can still smell the sausage. “What else did you eat?”
    “A traditional Indian would never ask that question.” Lum folds the quilt up and puts it back in the basket.
    “My sausage, right?”
    “Protein.” Lum opens the oven and takes out a plate with three sausages on it and hands it to me. “How do you expect