by Jamie Zerndt
The drink in front of Kay was Norm size, big enough to sedate a horse. “You may find this hard to believe, but I never used to drink much. Not like this, anyway. I’d have a small one here and there, but that’s all I ever wanted. I didn’t need it. I was busy. I had my family around me.” Kay picked up the glass, swirled it so that the cubes jostled and then settled back alongside one another. “I guess maybe now I do need it.”
“It’s okay,” Shawna said quietly. “I get that.”
Kay looked at the girl. She did get it. Sometimes Kay forgot about the girl’s mother, about what happened, but never for very long. They sat in silence for a bit until Shawna asked to use the bathroom. After the girl had left, Kay sat alone at the table listening as the bathroom fan started up. Norm could be in there, maybe showering before bed. She would never tell anybody this, but sometimes she took the cap off his shaving cream and smelled it. Barbasol. It was a silly thing to do, but it brought him back for a brief moment. He was like an echo in the house now, something she could sometimes hear but could never find the source of.
When Shawna returned, Kay watched as she took a sip of her drink and grimaced. “This is horrible. Thank you.”
Kay laughed. “It’s an old person’s drink. A Manhattan. I don’t suppose you’ve ever had one before.”
“I’ve never even heard of it before.”
They sat staring out at the darkening lake for a bit while the girl nursed her drink. Kay knew that if she pushed the girl too hard, she’d spook. Even so... “Am I still not supposed to ask about the boy or do you maybe want to talk about it now? I’m an old woman, could fall over any second. I don’t have much time for small talk.”
Kay followed the girl’s eyes as she took in the pile of dirty dishes on the countertop, the garbage overflowing in the can. Kay helped herself to a nice, long sip of her drink. It felt like somebody had poured the very spark and glow of life into her glass, but she knew there’d be hooks attached to it come morning.
“I know,” Kay said, more to her drink than to the girl, “I’ve turned into a pig.” She raised her glass. “Here’s to tomorrow. Here’s to clean dishes.”
Shawna nodded, then raised her glass and took a drink.
“You don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to,” Kay went on, “but I’m guessing you go out there to have sex.”
Shawna shrugged. “Sometimes. Yeah.”
It wasn’t the answer Kay had expected. She wondered how much sex Douglas was having, if any. She didn’t give it much thought most of the time. Which would probably be different if she’d had a girl. “Did you tell that boy out there no tonight? Is that why he was yelling?”
“No,” Shawna said, leaning back in her chair. “That was me you heard.”
“Oh.” Kay watched the girl and it seemed to her now that she was all hard lines. She thought about how they say if you see a straight line in nature then you know it’s man-made. And if anything was man-made, it was this girl sitting across from her. “Did you two have a fight?”
“No. It wasn’t anything like that.”
“Then what was it?”
“Just letting off some steam.”
“You angry at anything in particular?”
“The world?”
“Well, join the club. Most people are angry at the world.”
“The white world.”
“Oh,” Kay said and set her drink down. “That’s something different then, isn’t it?”
“For you maybe.”
“Fair enough.”
Kay waited as Shawna stared out the window some more. Both the lake and the window were engulfed in black now, only the yellow kitchen light reflecting back. Even so, the girl sat with her chin in her hand, her long black hair hiding most of her face. It looked safe to Kay. Comfortable. She herself had once had long hair, but it was so long ago now she couldn’t remember how it had felt. A part of her wanted to reach out and stroke the girl’s hair, feel it in her hands, smell it even. She bet it smelled of light and air and outside. She looked at the veins on the back of her hand as she clutched the half-empty tumbler in front of her. She hardly ever noticed them anymore, the veins, but now, for whatever reason, they stood out. Big blue snakes burrowing under blotted skin, skin that belonged to a stranger, to her mother before she died. None of this, the house, the girl, the lake, none of it was Kay. Kay was not the blue snake. Kay was not the skin she could stretch like silly putty. Kay wasn’t any of these things. Kay was this young girl’s hair.
“Elmer got the shit kicked out of him recently.”
“And Elmer’s the boy on the island?”
“Yeah. He’s still in high school, though.”
“He goes to Mercer High?”
“Yep. He’s a senior. We just have to make it to next year.”
“And what happens next year?”
The girl eyed her, cautious as a cat. “We move. To Madison. Further maybe.”
“And what’s in Madison?”
“Nothing.” Again she hesitated, then, like once again she’d decided Kay was okay, added, “Or maybe veterinary school.”
“Douglas mentioned that. Did you get in?”
“I just found out. But it wouldn’t start until next year.”
“Well, congrats, young lady. That’s a pretty big deal.” The girl shrugged, but Kay could see a smile trying to get out behind that hair of hers. “So what would this Elmer be doing in Madison?”
“Paying our rent.”
Kay laughed. “Sounds like you got it all figured out.”
“Not really. It’s just something to think about.”
“Can I ask why he’s getting hurt at school? Is it because he’s Native American?”
“No,” Shawna said, pushing the hair back from her face and looking at Kay. “It’s because he’s an Indian.”
Occasionally Kay heard comments after church, or at the grocery store while standing in line, little whispers here and there about how the Indians were taking all the fish or getting into trouble with the law, but she had rarely seen any outright abuse. Still, she knew it was there, simmering just beneath the surface of the town.
“I hate this goddamned town sometimes. I really do.”
The girl shrugged and, for a brief moment, looked just like any other typical teenager. “It’s just that lately it’s been getting bad. Elmer is strong, but he can’t handle two of them at once. It just isn’t fair. And he won’t ever back down. He’s too proud.”
Kay wriggled a couple fingers, causing the largest blue snake to writhe. “They say the biggest branch either bends in the storm or it breaks.” It was something Norm had said to her once. He was grumbling about having to do something he didn’t want to around the house, but Kay had never forgotten the line. When she asked him where he heard it, he said he thought it was from Buddha. It was only sometime later that he admitted he’d read it on a bathroom wall somewhere. Which, for whatever reason, had only made Kay appreciate the phrase all that much more.
Shawna looked down at her glass, letting her hair fall back into her face. “We’ve been bending for a long time now. You bend too much, you’ll snap anyway, right?”
Kay smiled at the girl. “You’re one smart lady, you know that?”
Again, the girl shrugged. They spoke some more about what was going on with Elmer, how he seemed to attract trouble because he was big and quiet and there were always boys who wanted to test themselves against him or needed to prove something. Then Shawna, her voice hollow, like she was speaking from somewhere deep inside herself, said, “Do you ever think about what your life would have been like if you still lived back wherever your people are from? Sometimes I wonder if I’d think about that if I were a white person. Or if I wouldn’t care at all. I guess what I’m saying is sometimes I wonder what kind of white person I’d be.”
Kay didn’t
know what to say. “Ireland,” she said finally. “My maiden name is Farrell, so that’s where I’d probably be.”
“So both you and your husband are Irish?”
“In name only really. But, yes, just a coincidence.”
“Maybe.”
“What does that mean?”
“Same tribe is all. Anyway, I heard that place is like one big white rez.”
Kay laughed. “I don’t know. I’ve never been.”
“Really? I can’t imagine not knowing where I came from. Even if it is just a shithole.” Shawna looked up. “I meant Lac du Flambeau. Not Ireland, necessarily.”
“It’s okay. I know what you meant.” Kay took a sip of her Manhattan and looked at the girl, at the seeming thickness of her skin, at how adeptly it hid all the pain she knew was there under it. “Can I ask you something?”
“We use protection. We’re not stupid.”
“No, no, nothing like that. But good. That’s good.”
“Sorry. Did I embarrass you?”
“I’m 64 years old. I don’t get embarrassed.”
The girl smiled a touch. “So are you going to ask your question or what?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
Shawna shook her head. “I think maybe you’re a little drunk.”
“I think maybe you’re a little right.”
Kay watched as the girl sipped at her drink, watched as she winced and the corners of her eyes squeezed tight. There was a deep anger burning inside the girl. How, after everything that had happened, could there not be?
Kay raised her glass. “To humanity. To all the limburger cheeses in the world.”
“Limburger?”
“It’s something my Norm used to say. He liked to think of people as different kinds of cheeses. The limburgers of the world were an acquired taste.”
“So what kind was he?”
“Limburger.”
“And you?”
Kay watched the mosquitoes pinging off the porch light outside. Somewhere a loon called.
Somewhere a loon was always calling.
“Norman said I was a porcupine ball. Spiky on the outside but with a little something for everyone.”
“That’s good then.”
“You ever seen one?”
“No.”
“They’re not exactly pretty.”
Shawna wiped at her mouth with a napkin. There were blue flowers on the napkins. Morning Glories. Kay hadn’t ever really noticed the print before. It bothered her for some reason. They were old-lady napkins. If she wasn’t careful, soon she’d be putting out hard candies.
“I should be getting back home. My naan will worry.”
Kay nodded. “Just a few more minutes, okay? I want to show you something.” Kay, trying her best not to groan too much as she stood from the table, went into the living room. When she returned, she handed the girl a small wooden box. “Here lies Limburger cheese.”
Shawna took the box from her and set it on the table, one hand resting on it as one might rest a hand upon a purring cat. “This isn’t a good place for him.”
“No, maybe not, but it’s a good place for me. I like having him close, silly as that may sound.”
“Can I tell you something and you promise not to tell Douglas?”
“I promise.”
“Sometimes I can hear my mom talking to me. And it’s not like a whisper or anything. I can actually hear her. Like she’s standing right next to me. Do you think that’s messed up?”
“Well, if it is,” Kay said, “I guess that means I’m messed up, too.”
As she looked across the table at Shawna, she could clearly remember holding her mother’s hand as she lay dying, the spaces getting longer and longer between breaths, only for the old woman to somehow resurface and suck in yet another long, ragged breath. Kay had heard stories of Indians letting their elderly walk out in the woods without any food or water to die. They went out in the open, under the sky, listening to the wind rather than the ridiculous chatter of humans. Kay’s world seemed so soft and easy in comparison.
“You know what I had for lunch today?” Kay finally said. “A can of beef stew. But these here, these are all recipes of mine.” She tapped a tin can resting in the middle of the table. “Some handed down to me by my mother. There’s a decent lasagna, pot roasts, a meatloaf, that sort of thing. I never really liked my mom, though. That’s the God’s honest truth. When she died, I don’t even think I cried.” Kay waved her hand in the air, like she was trying to shoo away what she’d just said. “But these recipes, you know what’s funny? I made these meals for Douglas and Norm for years and years and now I can’t remember eating any of it. The cooking, sure, I can remember that. But not the eating. I don’t know. Something about that doesn’t seem right.”
Shawna pushed her glass away. “I hate meatloaf.”
Kay liked how the girl didn’t smile much, how she wore flannels and jeans and Doc Martin boots. She knew they were Doc Martin’s because Douglas had asked for a pair his sophomore year. “I don’t suppose I could talk you into marrying my son someday.”
“I don’t date white boys.”
“Isn’t that racist?”
“I’m pretty sure I get a pass on that.”
When Shawna and her horse eventually sauntered off down the road, something about it reminded Kay of one of those poems they were always reading on NPR that she could never quite understand. Or like all that much. Only this poem was floating out there on the dark, the girl herself like a mysterious line held in the hands of the old, weathered road.
Kay made sure to leave the porch light on in case Douglas showed up later and then went about getting ready for bed. The mere sight of her son’s towel on the rack took some of the empty out of the house. When she lay down on her side of the bed, the left side, she knew she probably wouldn’t be able to sleep any time soon. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, she found herself on Norm’s side of the bed, her arm resting atop a cold pillow. She’d considered buying a new bed at one point, something smaller perhaps, but she knew she’d never be able to go through with it. Besides, their bed had never been all that big to begin with. They’d always liked sleeping beside one another; there’d never been any real need for something larger.
Once settled, Kay lay awake listening to the loons. What strange creatures they were. Long ago, they used to serve as a sort of bookmark to her days, reminding her to be thankful, to stop and take notice of the good things in her life. But the loons did something else to her now: they reminded her of her loneliness. Kay turned off the lamp and rolled over on her side, giving herself over to the howling of the strange birds. As she tried to sleep, she found herself thinking of hairy elephants wading out into the dark lake and then grimacing at the question she’d nearly asked Shawna. Had she seriously been about to ask if Ojibwa people ate loons? She buried her head in the pillow, her eyes wide open, realizing she’d forgotten to give the girl the tin of recipes like she’d planned.
Chapter Three:
Douglas
“You know what Ojibwa think happens when a person dies?”
This was typical Shawna. No messing around, straight to the point. And that point was Douglas’s dad. Douglas had found him in the backyard, face down, his fishing rod out in front of him like he was trying to cast his way back up the hill to salvation. And the worst thing about it all was that his dad had asked him just a few weeks before to put in the steps. But Douglas never had. Until now. He kicked his shovel into the dirt and used the bottom of his shirt to wipe at the sweat dripping into his eyes as Shawna and Seven watched.
“I don’t know,” he forced himself to say. “What?”
“They say your spirit enters the body of a large animal and then travels down into smaller and smaller ones until it disappears.”
“Disappears wh
ere?”
“Into the next world.”
“And you believe that?”
“Sure, why not? Seems just as likely as your halos and pitchforks.”
“I don’t believe in that stuff either, so...”
“So it’s just something to think about,” Shawna said. “I like the idea of it anyway.”
Then Douglas said something he found himself saying a lot lately. Something he knew was stupid, but it was like he couldn’t help himself. “My dad died.”
Good fishing today, eh, Douglas? : My dad died.
How ‘bout them Packers? : My dad died.
That’ll be $14.97. : My dad died.
“Who knows,” Shawna said, ignoring him. “Maybe his spirit is hiding out in the Loon.”
“Not funny.”
Shawna jerked the reins so Seven couldn’t leave the conversation. “No, I guess not. Sorry.”
Douglas shrugged, kicking down on the shovel again. “The weird thing is I keep thinking he’s going to stroll into the shop one day, tell me how I’m screwing everything up.”
Douglas’s dad owned an auto repair shop in town called Norm’s. Which Douglas was now running. Into the ground, if things didn’t pick up soon.
Shawna tilted her head, scooping her hair to the side and tucking it behind her ear. “I am sorry about your dad, Douglas.”
Douglas stared at the horse’s nostrils, at how they contracted in and out like a heart. Before he could think of anything more to say, Seven sidestepped away, almost like he was annoyed with Douglas for staring.
“Me, too,” he finally managed to say, and Shawna nodded, like she could hear the lack of conviction in his voice and understood it. The three of them stared at the lake, at the wind blowing across the surface. The small waves pushing across the water reminded Douglas of a blanket being shaken out in slow motion.
“See you then,” Shawna said after a bit, she and Seven turning as one and clomping off down the road again.
Douglas had no right to feel sorry for himself in front of her, not after what had happened to her mother. After the funeral, Shawna’s naan had no choice but to move in with Shawna. She’d bought her Seven shortly after that, and the two had been inseparable ever since.
