Thomas Perry - Vanishing Act

She started to feel the proximity of the Niagara River long before she came close enough to make out lights along the shore. There was something different in the air, and in the water. Suddenly, the motor’s pitch skipped up to a whine again and the boat glided to a stop. She cut the throttle and said, "Broken again. This time we’d better row to shore."

"Okay," said Felker.

"I’ll help," she said. "We’d better get in quick." She tipped up the motor, moved forward to sit beside him, and took an oar.

"Why?" he said as they took their first stroke shoulder to shoulder.

"Why what?"

"Why quick?"

"The river is an international boundary. Over there is Canada. They’re not especially hard-nosed about it, but both sides probably have somebody watching. If you saw a man and a woman rowing a fourteen-foot boat in off Lake Ontario on a cold night with the motor out of the water, what would you do?"

He looked up to his right above the water. "Is that them up there? It looks like a fort."

"It is," she said. "Fort Niagara. It’s old. Ignore it."

They rowed hard. He provided most of the forward movement, and Jane concentrated on keeping the boat straight against his size and strength. Felker had a good eye for strategic places. This was the narrowest part of the river. The name for it was O-ne-ah, the Neck, and at one time it had been one of the prizes of the earth, the strangle point in the North American fur trade. The portage around the Falls, the Carrying Place of Niagara, was the one big obstacle in the route from the center of the continent to the sea. The French, the British, the Americans, and all of the Indian tribes allied with each of them had fought for control of that fort from the 1680s to the 1780s. Now it was empty, a museum. It was one of the quiet places where all the old human blood had made the grass grow green.

They rowed on, and crossed the border a mile or two out from shore. When they had rowed in silence for a long time, Felker said, "Somehow I can’t picture Harry doing this."

"No." She chuckled. "Not Harry. Harry got to ride in a car."

Jane let Felker’s stronger strokes push them toward shore just before dawn. They could already begin to make out shapes in the little Canadian town. There were beautiful old houses and perversely neat lawns and tightly planted beds of flowers everywhere. It looked more like England than the American towns a half mile across the river.

Jane guided the boat up to a concrete jetty and tied it between two cabin cruisers so that it was hard to see. Then they took their bags and walked up the dock into Canada.

"What is this place?" asked Felker.

"Niagara-on-the-Lake," she said.

"It must save them a lot of time giving directions," he said. "Where to now?"

"To find a phone."

The police car seemed to come from nowhere. It appeared on the street ahead and two cops got out. "Let me handle this," she whispered. She watched the two men come toward them. They looked like policemen from another time, tall and Irish or Scottish, one of them with bristly blond eyebrows and a pink face and opaque blue eyes. "Good morning," he said.

"Good morning," said Jane, but Felker had spoken too, in a little chorus. She hoped he wasn’t going to get overconfident because he thought he knew more than she did about policemen.

"The two of you look a bit ... lost. We wondered if there was some sort of assistance we could offer."

"No," said Jane, and forced a smile. "We’re on vacation. We arrived in town a little early, so we’re waiting for a decent hour for breakfast at the Oban Inn."

This seemed to please the cop. "Really." He glanced at his partner. "I believe they’ll be serving at six or so." His partner nodded smartly.

"Good," said Jane. "Thank you very much." She started to walk past the two policemen, and Felker drifted along with her.

"Ah, one moment, please," said the cop.

Jane stopped.

"I believe you’re Americans?"

"Yes."

"I’m sorry to trouble you, but it’s rather unusual to see two Americans arrive with rucksacks at this hour. If I could see your identification ..."

Jane took her wallet out of her leather bag and opened it. She did the sort of searching people did when policemen asked. It wasn’t an accident. It allowed her to flash a thick sheaf of American money. Policemen were fairly predictable: seeing the money would reassure them that Jane and Felker weren’t burglars.

Jane ended her search and handed the policeman a lot of little plastic windows. Felker could see credit cards and a driver’s license. Then, to Felker’s surprise, she reached into the bag again and pulled out a man’s wallet.

"Ah," said the cop. "Mr. and Mrs. Whitefield. And where did you cross the border?"

"Niagara Falls," she said. Then she turned to Felker. "Da-gwa-ya-dan-nake ne-wa-ate-keh."

Felker nodded thoughtfully, but the policeman said, "I’m sorry, but I didn’t catch that."

"I beg your pardon," said Jane. "It’s a habit. We use the old language at home."

"I see." He handed the two sets of documents back to her. "Well, thank you very much. I hope you enjoy your holiday."

"Thank you."

The two cops got back into their car and smiled at them, then drove off. "I seem to be using my last resorts first," she said. "I couldn’t let them ask to take a look inside the bags and find your money."

"How did you do it? What was that gibberish?"

"It wasn’t gibberish," she said. "It’s an Indian language. One of the old treaties gave Indians the right to go back and forth across the border. Anything that sounds like police harassment would be a lot of trouble."

"Where in the world did you learn that? Do you know some Indians?"

"Yeah. My family."

He looked at her closely. "What kind of Indian?"

"The usual kind," she said. "Feathers and beads."

He looked at her skeptically. "What tribe?"

"Seneca. Wolf Clan."

"You have blue eyes."

"Yes."

"Are they contact lenses?"

"No."

"Okay, then ..." He seemed to expect her to supply his conclusion, but she only waited. "What did you say?"

"Just now?"

"In Seneca."

"Part of the Lord’s Prayer: ’Deliver us from evil,’ " Jane said.

"Do you pray?"

"No, I run," said Jane. "But things my mother taught me come out of my memory sometimes while I’m doing it. Let’s go find a phone before we get into more trouble."

11

It was already eight o’clock. Jane and Felker were sitting on the edge of the dock, swinging their feet above the water. Felker had been silent for a long time. Jane watched him out of the corner of her eye. It was times like these, when he was stuck waiting and had time to think, that would wear him down. She knew she should do something to keep him from spiraling downward. "Tell me what you’re thinking."

He smiled, but he kept his eyes on the water out beyond the harbor. "I was thinking about you."

She looked away from him. She had made another mistake. He was at the point now where he realized that he didn’t know anybody anymore. Except the nearest woman.

"I was thinking I should apologize," he said. "I mean, it doesn’t matter to me whether you’re a full-blooded Indian or one ninetieth, does it? I guess I should say Native American."

It wasn’t what she had been dreading, and she was relieved. "Not to me," she said. "I’m as Indian as I can be."

"Then where did the blue eyes come from?"

"My father looked pretty much the way you would have wanted him to. He had a face like a tomahawk and skin the color of a penny. He was a Heron."

"A what?"

"A Heron. The bird, you know? Big long legs? That was his clan."

"Oh," he said. "So why are you a Wolf—a blue-eyed Wolf?"

"Blue-eyed because my mother didn’t start out as a Seneca. She looked like a negative of one. Very blond and white and Irish." She smiled as she remembered. "When I was really little they started making Barbie dolls, and the first time I saw one I thought it was supposed to be my mother. I called them Mama dolls. There weren’t a lot of people in Deganawida who looked like that."