Free Something to Hold by Katherine Schlick Noe Page B

if they know this little girl.
    Maybe they were in the cars that followed the hearse and the truck full of mourners this morning, turning at McKenzie's where the road curves down the hill, across Shitike Creek, toward the longhouse.
    Miss Anthony clips the attendance sheet to the doorway for one of the office helpers to collect. She picks up her Bible from the chalk tray like she does every morning. "Some of you know that we have had a death in this school," she says. "Today I'm going to read my favorite psalm. Please bow your heads and listen."
    I can feel the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and it feels like the steep draws full of juniper and sagebrush on the way to Simnasho. A curvy road that ices up in the winter, and you can't see the danger until you hit it. Where little girls fly up out of pickup beds and don't come back.
    ***
    All morning, we work on poems for the Christmas pageant. Tomorrow night, the parents will crowd into a gym transformed by sparkly lights and tinsel. We'll recite our poems and then go home for the break that is always the next best thing to summer vacation.
    I can only pretend to write. My head is full of questions, not Christmas. Did her family have to see her lying in the road? Did she know what was coming? Was she cold?
    I imagine yesterday when the radio squawked to life in the hall, the police signing in and telling the story in code.
    "We got a ten forty-two on the Simnasho road."
Traffic accident.
    "What's your ten-twenty?"
Where are you?
    "Milepost eight. At the curve by the river."
    "Ten thirty-eight?"
Need an ambulance?
    There would be a pause. Then "No ... ten-five the coroner."
Relay message.
    "Ten-four. Over and out."
    ***
    I walk home by myself at noon. The trees stretch their bare branches around the campus as if they're begging for spring. From the street, I can see my family through the kitchen window.
    "Mary Ann dropped by this morning," Mom is saying to Dad as I come in. "She was on her way to the longhouse for the dressing." Mary Ann is Mrs. Sahme, one of Mom's friends.
    "The funeral's tomorrow?" he asks.
    Mom nods. "She told me I would be welcome. But I don't think I could go. A child..." She shakes her head and sits down.
    Dressing?
I want to ask her about it, but my dad starts talking about work and I stop listening.
    A moment later, I realize that they're both waiting for me. "Her cousins?" Mom asks again. "I think they're in your class. Those kids who live at Simnasho but stay at the boarding school."
    All those empty desks this morning. Jewel and Raymond. And then I see the small hand reaching over the counter at McKenzie's to offer a last penny that will not be enough.
Tela.
My stomach squeezes tight.
    Mom puts her hand over mine on the table. "Did you know her?" she asks gently.
    I can only nod, blinking hard to hold the tears in place.
    As we walk back to school, Joe chatters about the song his class is rehearsing for the pageant. I know that he is trying to cheer me up, but I can't listen. I'm watching the clouds where a little girl lies still, her arms folded across her chest. God and Jesus and the angels comb her hair. They smooth down the skirt of her dress and pull her knee socks straight. This makes me feel a whole lot better than the Twenty-third Psalm did.
    ***
    After supper, Mom cleans up the kitchen while we kids help Dad finish decorating the Christmas tree he brought from the woods. When we're done, Bill and Joe go brush their teeth. I stay put. I sit close to Dad on the sofa, rest my cheek against the soft sleeve of his shirt. He smells like pipe tobacco and the woods.
    I watch him lean over the coffee table to pick up his pipe. He taps the cold ashes into the ashtray and opens the yellow pouch he keeps in his back pocket. He carefully packs new tobacco into the bowl—a steady and calm ritual that has always been a part of my life.
    "Dad?"
    "Mmm-hmm," he answers, his teeth steadying the pipe for the lighted match.
    "What's a dressing?"
    He pulls air