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Overview
Storm Riders examines the conflicted love of a single father struggling to raise his adopted Native American son, who was born with fetal alcohol syndrome. When a small girl mysteriously drowns near a student-housing complex, the boy is implicated and the father wrestles with his own doubt, guilt, and responsibility.
Bringing to life the austere beauty of the Tlingit Alaskan village of the boy's family, as well as the highly educated pockets of the East Coast, Lesley vividly portrays a father and a son struggling to come to terms with each other and above all, with the truth. This novel, as The Chicago Tribune noted, is "a powerful tale with a strong emotional core."
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780312263980 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Picador |
| Publication date: | 02/03/2001 |
| Edition description: | First Edition |
| Pages: | 360 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.73(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
Amherst, Massachusetts, 1977
Mrs. Kagita held out a small child's pink plastic raincoat. She stood beside the playground gate anxiously calling first in one direction, then another. Her lustrous black hair hung down her back like a raven's wing.
Clark Woods couldn't hear her call Yukiko's name but he read her lips through the rain splatters on the pickup's windshield. She ought to keep better track of that kid, he thought. The engine still idled. Paul Simon sang "Slip Sliding Away."
He was slow to shut off the engine because he had to face his mother, Grace Woods, and Wade White Fish, his foster son, in the cramped apartment at Puffton Village, a single-story maze of tiny apartments reserved for graduate students and their families. "Married student housing" the University of Massachusetts called it, but the students' term was more apt and cynical—"divorced student housing."
Climbing out of the pickup, he balanced two pies and a block of Vermont cheddar as he kicked shut the door. Raindrops struck the top pie's cellophane cover. Moving toward Mrs. Kagita, he asked, "Are you looking for Yukiko?"
She held the raincoat toward Clark as if presenting an offering. "Yukiko gone." She nodded at the empty playground.
The gate into the fenced playground stood ajar.
"She's all right, Mrs. Kagita," Clark said. "Probably with the other kids." In the distance a group of eight or ten children raced along the weed fields beside the marshes backed up from theConnecticut River. He recognized Wade among them in his orange-and-white U-Haul cap and a navy blue sweatshirt. He wondered what had happened to his new maroon J. C. Penney coat.
"You look this way," he said, indicating the apartment buildings away from the children. "I'll check out those kids. Go," he said, gesturing broadly and speaking more loudly than he needed to. Seventy feet from the playground, a high culvert drained rainwater into the murky slough. Some days, the apartment kids played near the culvert's mouth building muddy roads or gigging frogs. As Clark crossed the lawn to the culvert's edge, a wind gust lifted the wrap covering the pies. "Nuts," he said, afraid the crust would get soggy. Suddenly rain whipped into his face, sheeting his glasses. He wiped them on his shirtsleeve and looked down to the trampled mud at the culvert's lip seven feet below him. No kids. He smiled. For once, Wade hadn't found the muddiest place in Massachusetts. The older running boys and the weedy fields had attracted him more. He double-checked the swamp's edge. No sign of Yukiko.
"Back to reality," he sighed, approaching unit L-26. He and his girlfriend, Natalie Kravtchenko, had just returned from Vermont, where they had spent the day viewing magnificent fall colors. In Dummerston, they visited with tourists and purchased pies baked by local churchwomen.
As Natalie had gazed at the hazy mountains and valleys, Clark had admired her obsidian eyes, the eloquent gestures of her long hands. She had a reserve about her, a mystery; and she was dark and exotic. Almost as beautiful as his ex-wife Payette.
* * *
Inside the unit, his mother was reading Sunset. She wore a light cotton dress and three sweaters. Her right ankle was swollen from a recent sprain, and the skin was stretched and shiny.
"Hey, Mom," he said. "Try a piece of Vermont apple pie." He set the pies on the small kitchen table.
"Those look wonderful. Did they have any peach?"
"No, it was the apple festival."
"Sometimes they put too much cinnamon in apple pie." She set her magazine on the sofa. "Well, sit down and tell me about it." Grace slapped her knees. "Start talking! I'm excited to hear!"
"Later," he said. "It's getting awful wet out there."
She peered out the window. "Wade should come in. He was getting soaked, but he was having such a good time. I thought, why not let him just go ahead. I can do the laundry tomorrow. Look." She pointed to a pile of Wade's clothes near the back door.
"Jesus, look at the mud on his new coat!" Clark wondered why his mother had let him wear the coat out to play.
"He had to change all his clothes and I made him put on rubber boots. The leather boots were all caked with mud. I never saw a boy could get that muddy. Not you."
"You're getting addlepated," he teased. "Remember when I rode steers through the mud and manure with Danny Freeman?"
"Just lucky you weren't killed," she said. "I was mad enough to throttle you myself."
Clark pulled on a gray-and-red UMass sweatshirt. "Have you seen Yukiko? Her mom's looking for her."
His mother limped to the table, pinched off a tiny piece of crust and put it in her mouth. "Mmmm," she said. "I'll bet they use lard." She shook her head. "I saw her earlier playing out in the rain all by herself. I just figured her mother took her back inside."
"Guess not," he said. "I'm going to check with the boys. What about Michelle? Sometimes she watches her."
Grace pinched another section. "Her father came and got her for the weekend. She's in Lowell. I feel sorry for that gift. Split in half like Solomon's child." She glanced at the rain. "Bring Wade in. He's wet as a priest at a picnic."
* * *
As Clark followed the bobbing U-Haul hat in the high weeds, he realized Wade was off a distance from the other boys whacking at the grass with a thin stick. The boy was so intent on his task he didn't see Clark approach until he grabbed him in a bear hug. "Got you, Spiderman!"
Wade kicked and flailed but Clark held tight. The boy's arms and legs were so long and thin he really did resemble a spider.
"Let go. Let go. I saw a rabbit!"
Clark released him and he kept swinging the stick. Each time he whacked the weeds, beads of water flipped into the air. "He was a big rabbit. The others saw him, too. He's hiding around here somewhere close. You got to help me look."
As Wade glanced up, Clark saw the streaks of clear snot running from the boy's nose. He recalled how Wade had green or yellow snot coming out of his nose for the first six months he had come to live with Clark and his ex-wife Payette.
"Undernourishment," the pediatrician had said at Oregon's Crippled Children's Hospital after Payette and Clark had brought the little boy down from Sitka, Alaska. "Chronic ear infections; the drums are pretty scarred so he's lost a little hearing. We see that a lot with Alaskan Natives." The doctor had prescribed antibiotics, vitamins, a stable home life. Payette took notes. Ninety minutes to assess six years of harsh Alaskan life. Learning disabilities and emotional handicaps, the result of his mother's hard drinking and abuse by her boyfriends. "But you'll see vast improvement," the doctor promised. "You'll be amazed." He shook Clark's hand and patted Payette's shoulder.
"We'll chase after that rabbit later," Clark said. "Right now I'm looking for Yukiko. Have you seen her?"
Wade took a couple more swings. "That rabbit is hiding real close."
Clark noticed the stick had a pointed end. "Let me see that, pal." He gently took the stick from the boy's hand and set it down. He kneeled so he could look Wade square in the face and rested his hands on the boy's shoulders. "Have you seen Yukiko, Wade? Her mother is looking for her and needs to give her a coat. It's important because the rain is getting cold. You've got your sweatshirt and hat on, see? Let's find Yukiko and then come back after the rabbit."
Wade nodded. "She might get too wet and catch a cold."
Clark explained the situation to the other boys and they scattered to look also.
"Maybe she's over there," Wade said, pointing to another section of swamp farther from the student housing. "She was there earlier, I think."
"Today? That's a long way." Clark glanced back at the boys hurrying around helter-skelter. He decided to take a quick look where Wade was pointing, but when they searched that area and called Yukiko's name they got no response.
"So, listen, Wade. Are you sure you saw her over here today?"
The boy shook his head and then his face brightened. "See what I found. It's a surprise." He pulled a red-and-yellow fishing bobber out of his pocket. A piece of line and swivel were attached to the bobber. "Can we go fishing? This is where I found the bobber, right there." He pointed. "A good surprise, huh?"
"A great surprise," Clark said, examining the bobber. "But I think there are better places to fish than this. Maybe we'll go tomorrow. Right now we need to find Yukiko. It's getting dark."
"There's a flashlight in the truck," Wade said. "If it works." His lower lip stuck out and he dropped his head. Clark wondered if the boy had been fiddling with the light again, breaking it. Wade couldn't keep his hands off tools or lights.
"Okay, we'll get the flashlight and then we'll find Yukiko. Good idea." He touched Wade's arm.
"This sure is a cool bobber," Wade said, turning it over and over in his thin, nervous hands.
"It's a dandy all right."
* * *
Clark was relieved to see Mr. Kagita back at the playground. He spoke much better English than his wife and had been studying electrical engineering at UMass a couple of years. He wore a jacket and tie. Mr. Kagita seemed to be scolding his wife, but then he smiled as Wade and Clark approached.
"Did you find Yukiko, Mr. Woods?"
Clark shook his head. "Not yet. We better get some other adults to help look."
"It's getting very dark. I'm worried about her." He said something to Mrs. Kagita and she hurried into the apartment. He was now holding the pink raincoat.
"I'm just getting a flashlight out of the truck."
Mr. Kagita followed him to the pickup. Clark felt a little embarrassed by all the clutter behind the pickup seat: Coke cans, Fritos bags, Snickers' wrappers, jumper cables, screwdrivers, and wrenches. He found the big four-celled Sportsman lantern and switched it on. It cast a beam for a good fifty yards. Back home in Oregon, a lot of people he knew used them for poaching. He handed a smaller flashlight to Mr. Kagita.
"You go that way," he said, pointing to the right side of the village. "I'll take the left. Ask some other adults to help." He grabbed Wade's hand. It was slick and cold.
"I want to hold the light," Wade said.
"Not now. Maybe later."
The rain had stopped temporarily but the wind stiffened and Clark felt chilled. If I catch a cold because Mrs. Kagita was goofing around watching Charlie's Angels, I'll be pissed, he thought. "Yukiko's probably in one of the houses right now," he told Mr. Kagita, who was pointing the flashlight beam at them. "Most likely somebody took her in since it's starting to get dark. Knock on some doors. I doubt she went far."
Clark knocked on the doors of lighted apartments. Columbus Day was a holiday in Massachusetts, and undergraduates had left. The older men remaining in Puffton had scruffy beards or owlish glasses. The women seemed gaunt and strained, the children unruly and unkempt. No wonder they call it "divorced student housing," he thought. "We're looking for Yukiko Kagita, a little Japanese girl about this high." He indicated with his hand.
"Green rubber boots," Wade added. "She has rain boots."
Clark smelled Hamburger Helper, Rice-A-Roni, spaghetti. The living rooms were not much larger than most kitchens. The kitchens about the size of closets. Several adults offered to help look. One man got so excited he carried his fork and water glass outside.
Few of the graduate students had flashlights, a neglect that frustrated Clark. Of course, this is the East, he thought. No raccoons or polecats slipping around at night. No changing tires on long stretches of desolate empty highways.
He held on tightly to Wade's coat sleeve, not wanting to lose the boy and add to the confusion. He had only made his way to the G section, and it seemed to be taking forever. The place was a maze. Only a university could construct such a tangled mess, he thought.
He paused halfway through the G section of Puffton, trying to decide whether to push on to the main road or go back toward the Kagitas and the playground. Surely no one had kidnapped her, he thought. She had just wandered off. Something dark flashed across his mind. Back in Portland, a distraught Japanese mother had poisoned her children with carpenter ant pesticide. Two had died and the third suffered irreversible nerve damage. Bad stuff like that doesn't happen in Amherst, he thought. A stolen bicycle, cows on the road, a drunk music major singing opera on the library steps. Quaint and charming, the Amherst police reports made fun reading and he'd clipped out the better ones to send to his uncle Roy back in Oregon. He recalled Roy's Silverado pickup with the bumper sticker which read, "Support Your Local Search and Rescue. Get Lost."
He smelled drifting smoke from town fireplaces and felt comfortable in spite of being wet and concerned about Yukiko. Amherst was almost three thousand miles from Oregon, but small towns were small towns—sleepy and safe. Not much had happened in Clark's hometown since Speed Pierson threw a giant carrot through the movie screen because Elvis wasn't singing enough in Flaming Star. Rather than pay to repair the screen, the owners shut the theater down. After that, the kids had to drive to Portland for a movie.
Clark smiled at the memory. As soon as they found Yukiko, he'd tell the Kagitas some colorful hometown stories, maybe offer them pie and tea.
In the distance, he heard sirens and his pulse quickened as the wails grew closer.
"Here comes an ambulance," Wade said. "And police cars. Wow! A big fire engine! That's cool, huh? They're going to help look."
It seemed as if every rescue vehicle in Amherst was turning into Puffton. "Now we'll get a little help," Clark said. He figured one of the Puffton residents called in the missing girl. "Come on, Wade."
Emergency vehicles blocked the apartment road near the playground. Clark had expected the rescue teams to fan out through the complex, but the activity remained close to the playground. As he arrived, two firemen in yellow coats and hip boots knelt by the culvert, peering into the water.
Clark was going to tell them he had already looked there when the older fireman scrambled down the slippery bank beside the culvert. "Get the goddamn oxygen over here!" he yelled.
Clark felt his chest tighten and he gripped the boy's hand. The second fireman went over the side and a tight knot of firemen, police officers, and ambulance personnel assembled near the culvert. Spectators crowded closer but a plainclothes officer in a blue raincoat waved them back. "Stay clear," he warned. "Give these workers room. Move back now, folks."
"Is she in there?" someone asked.
"No, they're just looking."
"Hey, I can't see anything."
"Louis. Come here. I don't want you watching this." Susan Lemke grabbed her boy by the arm and pulled him back toward their apartment. He tried to kick free, but she held him tight.
"Yukiko. Yukiko. Yukiko," Mrs. Kagita said over and over. Mr. Kagita tried scrambling down the bank but a policeman grabbed him by the jacket.
The fireman clambered up, cursing the muddy slope. He held on to what appeared to be a wet bundle of clothes. Clark saw a flash of green and yellow, then black hair and a porcelain-white doll's face. "What the hell."
"They found something," Wade said. "Is that her?" He moved forward but Clark held his wrist.
The fireman and three ambulance workers blocked Clark's view.
A yellow helmet fell to the ground. In a few moments, two ambulance medics rushed toward the vehicle carrying a small stretcher. The child's feet appeared to be kicking but she only wore one green boot. Clark felt relief to see the movement.
Mr. Kagita still held on to the pink coat. The plainclothes officer helped the adult Kagitas into the police car and they sped off after the pulsing red light of the ambulance.
As the fireman retrieved his helmet, Clark noticed he was bald and appeared older than Clark had imagined. A couple of younger firemen thumped his back. "Good eyes."
"Why isn't there a fucking fence back here?" the fireman said. "Fucking cheap college."
Wade pulled at Clark's arm. The boy was smiling. "Don't worry, Dad. They can fix her at the hospital."
Clark held Wade close a minute, then rubbed his bristly crewcut under the U-Haul hat. "They can do miracles all right, buddy. I'm sure she'll be fine."
"That man's right," Russell Lemke said. "We need a fence to protect our children. I'm going to start a petition."
Several people offered to help Lemke collect signatures, but Clark started back toward the apartment. He didn't like Lemke or his son Louis, who often quarreled with Wade over toys.
Away from the crowd, still hanging on to Wade, Clark offered a silent prayer. Even so, he felt sick, blaming himself for a near disaster. While he was off chasing after Yukiko, she had wandered out from a hiding place, or come around a corner, and fallen into the water. He should have stationed someone there. Water, cars, drop-offs. Those dangers hurt kids. He could hear his uncle Roy's warning. "When you're lost or confused, don't move around. That's when you get into big trouble. Stay put and chances are you'll come out fine." Clark felt embarrassed at his greenhorn mistake, but at least they'd found her. She couldn't have been in the water long. Clark tugged Wade back to the apartment.
* * *
"What a commotion," Grace said. "I burned the pork chops running out to look. All those sirens and lights. When I remembered I'd left the burner on, I ran back in. So they found the little girl okay?"
"They took her to the hospital," Clark said. "She'll probably be fine." He crossed his fingers for luck. "I saw her legs move."
The kitchen was smoky and Grace had opened the back door. The burnt frying pan lay outside in the grass. Four burnt pork chops were on the Corelle plate.
"Just sit down, you men. I'm all shaken." She fanned her face with a potholder.
"She's fine, Grandma," Wade said. "Don't worry."
"Oh, I do hope so," she said. "With children, you can't be too careful. What a racket. Now you take off your wet clothes and sit down to enjoy some of this meat." She emphasized the final t and had done so ever since Clark was a boy and they ate three meatless meals a week to save money.
"Wash your hands, Wade. No telling what's in that field. I saw a dead cat one day. You're likely to get cholera. That's what your great-uncle Herb got—in the Canal Zone. He was dead in a week."
Wade washed and sat at the table. "You should have seen the fireman, Grandma. He had big boots and a yellow hat just like the man in Curious George. And he was swearing, too, about needing a fence. Maybe I can help them build one."
"Public servants shouldn't swear. He's a bad example." She shook her head. "Clark, why don't you offer thanks tonight. I'm just so glad that you're both here and that everything is okay. Wade, bow your head so your father can offer thanks."
Clark bowed his head and mumbled thanks, then prayed earnestly that Yukiko would be all right. "I'll go and check on things in a little bit." Later, he planned on driving to Northampton to see Natalie. Frequently he spent the night with her or at his small study apartment behind the Amherst post office.
"Me too," Wade said.
"You stay put tonight, buddy. I think those firemen have things under control. Anyway, you need a warm bath. You're soaked from head to foot."
"I'm so thankful we're all here safe and sound," Grace said. Her eyes glistened. "A nice little family."
Reading Group Guide
Storm Riders is a story of love in the wake of violence, and trust even in the face of fear. Clark Woods is a man trying his best to raise Wade, his adopted Native American son, born with fetal alcohol syndrome. Stricken with a disease that cripples both the mind and spirit, Wade has had anything but an easy life. He spent the first six years of his life with his natural mother in Alaska, neglected and abused, before starting a new life with his foster father in Massachusetts.
One day, when Wade is only nine years old, the young girl who lives next door is found dead in a pond where Wade had been playing that afternoon, making him the prime suspect. Clark, who is fiercely devoted to the boy, must face the possibility that his son's violent tendencies and inability to know right from wrong may have had the most drastic of consequences. Clark must wrestle with his own doubt, guilt, and the burdening sense of responsibility that only seems to grow heavier with each day.
With unfaltering poignancy and feeling that comes from his own experience raising a Native American boy with fetal alcohol syndrome, Lesley weaves a spellbinding tale of a father's loyalty to his son, and what happens when that loyalty is pushed to the limits. Split between the austere Tlingit Alaskan village nearly destroyed by the U.S. Navy a century ago and Amherst, Massachusetts where Clark is a University professor, Storm Riders uses the idea of preserving a culture as a parallel to Clark's own struggle to maintain his bond with his son.
Discussion Questions:
1. Craig Lesley once said "When you take away a people's culture, you take away their lives." Is this statement demonstrated in Storm Riders? Do you think it pertains to Wade? To Payette?
2. What is Clark's relationship to his parents? How does his relations with them affect his own parenting ideas? Do Clark's ideas of fatherhood change as he experiences life with Wade? How?
3. "The problem of damaged children is, I believe, a ticking time-bomb in our society." Craig Lesley states. Is Wade a "ticking timebomb"? How does society react to Wade? What social services help or fail Wade and Clark? Is there a place for Wade in any of the communities described in Storm Riders? 4.
How does the novel portray Native American traditions and beliefs? How does the Tlingit ceremony honoring the 1883 massacre of their village reflect these traditions?
5. Storm Riders is based on the author's own experiences as a foster parent to a child with fetal alcohol syndrome. "The thing I want people to realize most as they read this book," Lesley said "is the challenges and rewards of working with a damaged child." What were some the rewards Clark found with Wade?
6. How does the narrator's position add to the novel? How do you think the mood of the book would have differed if the narration had been in the third person instead of the first person?
7. How does Clark come to realize the problems his son will face in his life? How does he come to grips with his son's illness? How does day to day life with Wade change his expectations for his son?
8. One reviewer has said that "Literature is full of novels about children, but novels where the point of view is distinctly parental-those are few and far between. The day-to-day truth of parenting is largely composed of drudgery and small, hiccuping epiphanies that don't add up to anything resembling the scale of literature" (LA Weekly). How does Craig Lesley's novel move toward remedying the absence of dramatic parental fiction?
9. In the beginning of the novel, Clark refuses V to give Wade up. Why does he later change his mind', How does his relationship with Wade change because of this decision? How does Clark's view of himself change because of this decision?
About the Author:
Craig Lesley is a lifelong resident of the Pacific Northwest. He was born in The Dalles and now lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife and two daughters. He graduated from Whitman College, where he has also received a Doctorate of Human Letters. He received an M.A. in English from the University of Kansas and an M.F.A. from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He has spent much of his life exploring the outdoors, including an eight-year stint with the Deschutes River Guide Service in Oregon. He received the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award for both Winterkill and The Sky Fisherman, and is also the author of the critically acclaimed River Song. He currently holds the Hallie Ford Chair in Creative Writing at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon.