Great Short Stories by Contemporary Native American Writers

by Bob Blaisdell

  “Citizenship?”

  “Blackfoot.”

  “I know,” said the woman, “and I’d be proud of being Blackfoot if I were Blackfoot. But you have to be American or Canadian.”

  When Laetitia and Lester broke up, Lester took his brochures and maps with him, so Laetitia wrote to someone in Salt Lake City, and, about a month later, she got a big envelope of stuff. We sat at the table and opened up all the brochures, and Laetitia read each one aloud.

  “Salt Lake City is the gateway to some of the world’s most magnificent skiing.

  “Salt Lake City is the home of one of the newest professional basketball franchises, the Utah Jazz.

  “The Great Salt Lake is one of the natural wonders of the world.”

  It was kind of exciting seeing all those color brochures on the table and listening to Laetitia read all about how Salt Lake City was one of the best places in the entire world.

  “That Salt Lake City place sounds too good to be true,” my mother told her.

  “It has everything.”

  “We got everything right here.”

  “It’s boring here.”

  “People in Salt Lake City are probably sending away for brochures of Calgary and Lethbridge and Pincher Creek right now.”

  In the end, my mother would say that maybe Laetitia should go to Salt Lake City, and Laetitia would say that maybe she would.

  We parked the car to the side of the building and Carol led us into a small room on the second floor. I found a comfortable spot on the couch and flipped through some back issues of Saturday Night and Alberta Report.

  When I woke up, my mother was just coming out of another office. She didn’t say a word to me. I followed her down the stairs and out to the car. I thought we were going home, but she turned the car around and drove back towards the American border, which made me think we were going to visit Laetitia in Salt Lake City after all. Instead she pulled into the parking lot of the duty-free store and stopped.

  “We going to see Laetitia?”

  “No.”

  “We going home?”

  Pride is a good thing to have, you know. Laetitia had a lot of pride, and so did my mother. I figured that someday, I’d have it, too.

  “So where are we going?”

  Most of that day, we wandered around the duty-free store, which wasn’t very large. The manager had a name tag with a tiny American flag on one side and a tiny Canadian flag on the other. His name was Mel. Towards evening, he began suggesting that we should be on our way. I told him we had nowhere to go, that neither the Americans nor the Canadians would let us in. He laughed at that and told us that we should buy something or leave.

  The car was not very comfortable, but we did have all that food and it was April, so even if it did snow as it sometimes does on the prairies, we wouldn’t freeze. The next morning my mother drove to the American border.

  It was a different guard this time, but the questions were the same. We didn’t spend as much time in the office as we had the day before. By noon, we were back at the Canadian border. By two we were back in the duty-free shop parking lot.

  The second night in the car was not as much fun as the first, but my mother seemed in good spirits, and, all in all, it was as much an adventure as an inconvenience. There wasn’t much food left and that was a problem, but we had lots of water as there was a faucet at the side of the duty-free shop.

  One Sunday, Laetitia and I were watching television. Mom was over at Mrs. Manyfingers’s. Right in the middle of the program, Laetitia turned off the set and said she was going to Salt Lake City, that life around here was too boring. I had wanted to see the rest of the program and really didn’t care if Laetitia went to Salt Lake City or not. When Mom got home, I told her what Laetitia had said.

  What surprised me was how angry Laetitia got when she found out that I had told Mom.

  “You got a big mouth.”

  “That’s what you said.”

  “What I said is none of your business.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “Well, I’m going for sure, now.”

  That weekend, Laetitia packed her bags, and we drove her to the border.

  Mel turned out to be friendly. When he closed up for the night and found us still parked in the lot, he came over and asked us if our car was broken down or something. My mother thanked him for his concern and told him that we were fine, that things would get straightened out in the morning.

  “You’re kidding,” said Mel. “You’d think they could handle the simple things.”

  “We got some apples and a banana,” I said, “but we’re all out of ham sandwiches.”

  “You know, you read about these things, but you just don’t believe it. You just don’t believe it.”

  “Hamburgers would be even better because they got more stuff for energy.”

  My mother slept in the back seat. I slept in the front because I was smaller and could lie under the steering wheel. Late that night, I heard my mother open the car door. I found her sitting on her blanket leaning against the bumper of the car.

  “You see all those stars,” she said. “When I was a little girl, my grandmother used to take me and my sisters out on the prairies and tell us stories about all the stars.”

  “Do you think Mel is going to bring us any hamburgers?”

  “Every one of those stars has a story. You see that bunch of stars over there that look like a fish?”

  “He didn’t say no.”

  “Coyote went fishing, one day. That’s how it all started.” We sat out under the stars that night, and my mother told me all sorts of stories. She was serious about it, too. She’d tell them slow, repeating parts as she went, as if she expected me to remember each one.

  Early the next morning, the television vans began to arrive, and guys in suits and women in dresses came trotting over to us, dragging microphones and cameras and lights behind them. One of the vans had a table set up with orange juice and sandwiches and fruit. It was for the crew, but when I told them we hadn’t eaten for a while, a really skinny blonde woman told us we could eat as much as we wanted.

  They mostly talked to my mother. Every so often one of the reporters would come over and ask me questions about how it felt to be an Indian without a country. I told them we had a nice house on the reserve and that my cousins had a couple of horses we rode when we went fishing. Some of the television people went over to the American border, and then they went to the Canadian border.

  Around noon, a good-looking guy in a dark blue suit and an orange tie with little ducks on it drove up in a fancy car. He talked to my mother for a while, and, after they were done talking, my mother called me over, and we got into our car. Just as my mother started the engine, Mel came over and gave us a bag of peanut brittle and told us that justice was a damn hard thing to get, but that we shouldn’t give up.

  I would have preferred lemon drops, but it was nice of Mel anyway.

  “Where are we going now?”

  “Going to visit Laetitia.”

  The guard who came out to our car was all smiles. The television lights were so bright they hurt my eyes, and, if you tried to look through the windshield in certain directions, you couldn’t see a thing.

  “Morning, ma’am.”

  “Good morning.”

  “Where you heading?”

  “Salt Lake City.”

  “Purpose of your visit?”

  “Visit my daughter.”

  “Any tobacco, liquor, or firearms?”

  “Don’t smoke.”

  “Any plants or fruit?”

  “Not any more.”

  “Citizenship?”

  “Blackfoot.”

  The guard rocked back on his heels and jammed his thumbs into his gun belt. “Thank you,” he said, his fingers patting the butt of the revolver. “Have a pleasant trip.”

  My mother rolled the car forward, and the television people had to scramble out of the way. They ran alongside the ca
r as we pulled away from the border, and, when they couldn’t run any farther, they stood in the middle of the highway and waved and waved and waved.

  We got to Salt Lake City the next day. Laetitia was happy to see us, and, that first night, she took us out to a restaurant that made really good soups. The list of pies took up a whole page. I had cherry. Mom had chocolate. Laetitia said that she saw us on television the night before and, during the meal, she had us tell her the story over and over again.

  Laetitia took us everywhere. We went to a fancy ski resort. We went to the temple. We got to go shopping in a couple of large malls, but they weren’t as large as the one in Edmonton, and Mom said so.

  After a week or so, I got bored and wasn’t at all sad when my mother said we should be heading back home. Laetitia wanted us to stay longer, but Mom said no, that she had things to do back home and that, next time, Laetitia should come up and visit. Laetitia said she was thinking about moving back, and Mom told her to do as she pleased, and Laetitia said that she would.

  On the way home, we stopped at the duty-free shop, and my mother gave Mel a green hat that said “Salt Lake” across the front. Mel was a funny guy. He took the hat and blew his nose and told my mother that she was an inspiration to us all. He gave us some more peanut brittle and came out into the parking lot and waved at us all the way to the Canadian border.

  It was almost evening when we left Coutts. I watched the border through the rear window until all you could see were the tops of the flagpoles and the blue water tower, and then they rolled over a hill and disappeared.

  THE DOG PIT (1994)

  Eli Funaro

  Funaro seems to hail from Minnesota, where he is a video director. This plain-spoken and shocking story was written for a program at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe.

  IT WAS A sunny Saturday, the day that dog died. My pop snapped me outta unconsciousness with a reminder of Garbage Day.

  “Get your butt up,” he said. “I wanna get to the dump before noon.”

  “Aw jeez,” I mumbled, wiping the cheese out of my eyes. “Why we going so early?”

  “Cuz I gotta work at three,” he said. “And I wanted to go to Bonimart.”

  Quickly I got up and ate my Fruit Loops. The thought of going to Bonimart brought high hopes of getting a new toy, and Zartan was well on my mind. I got dressed with enthusiasm and eagerly fetched the plastic Rubbermaid trash cans.

  On the rez, there were no garbage trucks that came to pick up your trash. We had to haul our own to the dump. So like all the previous Saturdays, I loaded up the van with our garbage bins.

  I found enough strength in my eight-year-old body to lift the barrels into the back of the van, even though they were about the same size as I was. And before I left, I filled my dog’s dish with water and Kibbles ’n Bits.

  “Here you go, Corky,” I said as my black Labrador came to his bowl. I began to pet his neck. “Chow down.”

  “Hurry up, will ya?” my pop called from the van. “You fed that mutt yesterday.”

  “He’s hungry,” I said.

  “He’s always hungry,” he replied. “Let’s go, huh?”

  I got into the van and my pop drove us off to the dump.

  As we drove along the untitled roads I sat in the passenger seat fiddling through the glove compartment. There was a pink rubber sponge ball inside. I picked it up and bounced it around in my hands.

  “You can have that,” my pop said.

  “Where’d you get it?” I asked.

  “At work,” he answered, and I wondered. My pop was a janitor at the hospital, so why would he get a ball from there?

  “At work?” I said. “What are a bunch of balls doing at work?”

  “Well,” my pop explained, “I was in some room sweeping and there was an old man laying on the bed. He was just laying there and he was holding that ball.”

  “He gave it to you?” I asked.

  “Sort of,” he said. “The doctors sometimes have sick people squeeze them balls to see how strong they are, or to see if they’re still alive.” My pop laughed a little bit. “And that old man wasn’t squeezing nothing.”

  “You mean he was dead?” I asked, twitching my nose.

  He looked at me with an evil grin. “Yup.”

  “Yeeks!” I squealed, dropping the ball. He tried to give me a dead guy’s ball. And I didn’t want the guy’s ghost coming after me. I just let it go.

  “So I just grabbed it,” my pop said. “Besides, what’s a dead man gonna do with a ball?”

  I didn’t say anything. I just sat there staring at the ball, imagining what it was like to die holding it. I wondered how many balls the doctors gave to dead people and wondered if they got buried with them. I wondered if that old man would be mad at us for taking his ball. But my pop just sat there smiling as he drove.

  The dump was in view and as we approached, the oddly familiar scent of burning trash embedded itself in our noses. Thick, black smoke crawled into the sky like oozing charcoal toothpaste. Seagulls flocked overhead, making their high-pitched yells. A breeze blew various debris about the waste.

  The site was full of garbage mountains with dirt roads winding around the huge mounds. The flames of burning trash danced around the site. We found a space away from the other cars that parked throughout the dump throwing out their own waste. The rancid smell of decomposing garbage was everywhere.

  I got out and opened the back door of the van. Arching backwards, I heaved the huge plastic barrel out of the van and dragged it to the edge of the mound. My pop grabbed the last two trash bins.

  After they were empty we filled the bottom of each barrel with bleach. That would kill the rotten stench of a week-old garbage bag as well as kill the maggots that adopted the barrel as a nest.

  The seagulls still flew around squeaking their voices above. We waited a few minutes for the Clorox to kick in. I gazed around the mountains of trash and noticed the other people who unloaded their garbage. I watched the flames of burning piles while pieces of junk blew around. I looked at the opened side door of the van and saw the pink ball sitting on the floor. I went to go and pick it up. While I sat on the bumper looking at the ball my pop came up to me.

  “You know those are real good for playing baseball with,” he said. “You could hit them real far.”

  I looked at him.

  “Do you think that old man will be mad for taking his ball?”

  “No,” he laughed. “I don’t think he was thinking too much about that ball when he keeled over. He couldn’t even hold it. Why would he want to keep it?”

  “Yeah, but what about all the other balls?” I asked. “Did the other dead people get to keep them?”

  “No,” he said. “I bet about twenty different people died holding that same ball.”

  I looked at the ball. Now it wouldn’t only be one old man being mad, it was a whole cemetery. I put the ball down again.

  A thunderclap exploded suddenly. It echoed throughout the sky, making the seagulls rave in a commotion. But under their high-pitched yells was a faint squeal. It came not from the sky but from the other side of the dump. My attention was drawn to an old white pick-up. An old man stood outside. He held a shotgun and pumped another round into the chamber. I stared curiously at what he was gonna shoot. It was a yellow pillow sack on the ground. The faint screams wallowed inside the bag.

  I watched in amazement as the old man pointed the barrel at the wiggling sack. Another explosion echoed as the pillow case burst with red haze and pieces of cloth blew away. The seagulls spoke anxiously overhead.

  I stared as the old man picked up the bloodstained pillow sack. He walked onto the lawn of garbage and tossed the bloody sack away. I looked at my pop.

  “Did you see what that guy just did? He just shot something in that bag.”

  My pop looked back at me.

  “He took his dog to the Pit.”

  “The Pit?” I asked. “What’s that?”

  “When your do
g dies,” he explained, “you throw it in the Pit. It’s like a cemetery for pets.”

  “Yeah, but he shot it,” I replied.

  “If it’s too old or dies,” he said. “Whichever comes first. When my dog got too old, my dad shot him too. And he’s in that Pit right now.”

  I looked back at the old man, who climbed in his beat-up pickup and drove away. I walked across the dump, stumbling over junk and debris strewn all over the ground. The seagulls settled down somewhat and my pop began to load the trash cans back into the van.

  As I walked toward the Pit, I saw a hole in the ground. There was a faint whimper coming from below. The hole was deep, about four feet in diameter. It was an old well.

  I stood at the edge of the Pit and stared down. About thirty feet deep there was a pile. It wasn’t garbage but the remains of dead pets. Bodies of half-rancid dogs. Bones and fur covered with maggots. Skulls decaying with rotten hides. And on top of the pile was the bloody pillow case that still wiggled slowly. Faint low whimpers came from below the rotting mound, surrounded by the cryptic brick walls of the well, all dusty and covered with cobwebs.

  I was shocked and impressed by the sight below me. The pillow case vibrated with lagging reflex as the whining died. The movements slowed to a halt. The pillow case was still and never moved again.

  “Hey, let’s go!”

  I turned around and saw the van on the side of the dirt road. My pop was waiting inside. I ran to the truck and we took off.

  “So what do you think of the Dog Pit?” my pop asked.

  “When Corky dies,” I wondered, “is he going down there too?”

  “Well,” he said, “if you want, we could bury him in the backyard, but Corky ain’t gonna die for a long time, so quit worrying.”

  I saw the pink rubber ball and picked it up again. I wondered what it would be like to be down there. Rotting with all the rest of them bones. Bugs and worms crawling all over. Covered by a bunch of dead bodies.

  As we drove down the road, I took a glance into the rearview mirror. The flames of the garbage fires still crept into the sky and the scent still lingered in the air. I looked back at the pink rubber ball, squeezing it around my palm. I wish I’d never seen the Pit.