by Patrick Best
“Tommy?”
“Tommy Hawk,” he said with a smile. “Let’s go this way.”
They started walking past the big top tent.
He whispered, “It’s not really, but that’s what the posters say. My real name’s Teddy.”
Frankie smiled. That was a much better name, she thought. “Where are you from?” she asked.
“I’m from LA originally.”
“No, I mean… Um…”
”Oh,” Teddy laughed. “I’m Cheyenne through and through.”
“There was a boy in school was a… uh…”
“You can say Indian,” Teddy said. “It’s not a dirty word. What tribe was he from?”
“He was a Cheyenne, too,” she said.
“Then that’s what call him, a Cheyenne. Not many of us left. Here we are.”
They’d arrived at a smaller tent. It wasn’t designed for visitors and looked more like a military tent. A sign outside said, simply, “Animals”.
“Is there really an elephant in there?” Frankie asked. “You’re not shitting me?”
Teddy laughed. “No shit, Frankie.”
The tent was empty but for two large cages and buckets of some kind of animal feed. The first cage was empty. Teddy looked shocked for a second and whispered, “Oh, God, no! The tiger’s escaped!”
“Shut up,” Frankie said, grinning. “I’m not an idiot.”
“No, you’re not,” Teddy said with a nod. “Frankie, meet Tabitha.”
Tabitha was gray and wrinkled with pock-marked skin and small course hairs on her head. She was the size of a van. Her trunk touched the ground and was curled up slightly. Her tail flicked here and there. She was very still otherwise, only moving her head slightly when she saw her visitors. Frankie ran up to the cage and put her hands on the bars.
“She’s beautiful!” Frankie said with a wide grin. “Come here, girl.”
The elephant moved back a little. Its eyes, old and tired around the outside but vivid and alive within, watched Frankie warily. Tabitha’s enormous ears twitched as a fly buzzed around her head.
“How old is she?” Frankie asked.
“She’s ten, I think,” Teddy said.
“Is that old?”
“She’s still a baby. Elephants can live until they’re sixty, you know?”
Frankie was impressed. She smiled and tried again to reach out to touch Tabitha, but Tabitha backed away. Something about her troubled Frankie. In the twitches of her ears, the light flap of her tail and the shifting of her great weight on her feet, Tabitha looked nervous. Frankie noticed her cage was only somewhat bigger than the elephant herself, and food was piled on the ground and left uneaten.
Teddy noticed Frankie’s smile starting to fade.
“She’s, uh, very friendly usually,” Teddy said. “She’s scared of new people, I guess.”
Frankie drew her hand out. “Does she come out of the cage much?”
“Only for shows,” Teddy said, grimacing a little.
Tabitha turned in her cage to face away from them.
“We better leave her rest,” Teddy said.
Frankie noticed whip marks on the elephant’s back.
Teddy caught her looking at them and started walking away from the cage, expecting Frankie to follow. “Come on,” he said. “You want to see where I work?”
Frankie looked at Tabitha a little longer. Tabitha didn’t look back.
Maybe she doesn’t like to be looked at or touched either, Frankie thought.
*
Teddy worked out of a small, brightly colored gypsy caravan.
“Cheyennes don’t live in these, do they?” Frankie said.
“No,” Teddy said, “but it’s all the same to the whites who run this place. They don’t think anyone can tell the difference.”
Inside was decorated with clay and wooden ornaments of owls, deer and wolves, and feathers hung on strings from the roof. A compartment at the back, behind a curtain, had just enough room for a small refrigerator, a television set, an old Nintendo and a bunk.
“What do you do?” Frankie asked.
“Tattoos,” Teddy said. “Mostly temporary tattoos of Indian designs. Sometimes I have to branch out into face-painting for the kids to make a little more money. I can do real tattoos, though. I taught myself a long time ago. I got pretty good at it.”
“Were you in prison?” Frankie played with a feather that was laid on a table in the middle. Teddy sat down.
“I was,” Teddy said, going into the back. “I’m not so scary, though.”
“I know,” Frankie said.
“Here,” Teddy said, handing her a soda pop. “You eaten anything today?”
Frankie’s face turned red. “Leaves,” she said. She sat down and held the feather in her hand. She looked at it so she wouldn’t have to look at Teddy. He was a do-gooder, she could see that now. The trailer park was full of them. A hundred times Frankie had walked around with a black eye or cigarette burns on her arms and people would stop her and say how terrible it all was, but none of them would ever do anything for her. They thought saying was enough, but it wasn’t.
She didn’t want words.
“Your daddy make you do that?” Teddy said.
Frankie shook her head. Teddy handed her a Twinkie and she opened it up, smiling a sad thank you.
“Hey,” Teddy said, “how about I give you a tattoo? A little one? I can do a little elephant for you.”
“My daddy wouldn’t like that.”
“Just a temporary one. I can do it at the top of your arm there, where he wouldn’t see.”
Frankie’s hands shook as she nibbled her Twinkie. “He’d see,” she said, “wherever it was.”
Teddy went into the back and came back with a beer for himself, opening it with his teeth and spitting the bottle cap out on the floor. As he had his back turned, Frankie wolfed down the Twinkie. She didn’t like people to see her eat. Teddy sat and drank - he appeared changed in some undefinable way - and Frankie had some of her soda. Frankie saw that Teddy’s hand was shaking a little, too.
“Can I tell you a story?” Teddy said.
“Sure, I don’t mind,” Frankie said.
“A long time ago - I’m talking about the 1800s, now - there was a village of Cheyenne people and some others down in Colorado. They used to have a great big piece of land, until, one day, someone struck gold nearby. Then, the government came on down and they took that land away from my people. Some of my people agreed. They signed contracts they couldn’t read, took gifts, and then they found themselves cooped up with nowhere to go, like Tabitha back there. After a while, some of the Cheyenne, they didn’t like this, so they started to get angry. They started leaving the cage that had been made for them, riding and hunting in the old lands they used to own.”
“Like in movies?” Frankie said.
“Just like in the movies, riding and shooting guns and arrows with their shirts off and all that great stuff. Then there came the war, and lots of soldiers came with it. And to the white men, my people weren’t worth a damn. All they could see was land, lots of it, which my people had the nerve to live on. There was a chief at this village, he’d been to the White House, you know? The president himself had given him an American flag. And he was so proud, this chief. He’d raise that flag every day over the village. And when he heard that soldiers had been going around the country, murdering his people? He said, ‘No. This will not happen to us. We are Americans.’ Even when the soldiers rolled up on his village, he just raised that flag. The men were all out hunting that day, leaving only women, kids and the old folks. And this chief gathered everyone up and said, ‘If you stand under this flag, nothing bad will happen to you.’ So they did. Have you heard about this in school?”
Frankie shook her head.
“You won’t. The white men call it The Battle of Sand Creek. My people had a different name for it: The Sand Creek Massacre. Nearly a thousand soldiers rode in there and murdered a hundred and fifty,
two hundred people - women, children, old folks. And they murdered them good, let me tell you. Even the babies. They took trophies so they could show off to their friends back home: ears, noses; they’d even skin the tattoo off someone as a keepsake.”
Frankie was starting to feel a little sick.
Teddy nodded. “Yep,” he said. “My daddy used to tell me all about this stuff. ‘That’s how the white man’s world works,’ he’d say. Because, you see, Frankie, white men take and take and take and they convince you that it’s for the best. They take everything you have, and they get you so scared and so beaten down that eventually you have to convince yourself that you’re happy with what you got, because otherwise what’s the point in living?”
Frankie put the feather down on the table. Teddy swigged his beer and took a deep breath, trying not to look angry, but Frankie could still see it.
“Let me give you a tattoo,” Teddy said, putting down his bottle. “A real one.”
Frankie swallowed. She didn’t want to say no to him when he looked that upset.
“I have some special ink,” he said. He leaned in and lowered his voice. “People like those who you met today, people like your daddy, they don’t give you respect. They don’t treat you like a human being, right? Growing up Cheyenne, I know all about that. It nearly took my life, but then I got myself an education, a dark education, you get me?”
Frankie was quiet. She hugged her arm with her hand and her leg was shaking.
“You can’t be afraid your whole life, Frankie,” Teddy said. “Let me help you. No-one will ever touch you again, I promise you that.”
Frankie wanted to say yes.
“There are forces in this world that men like that haven’t even dreamed of.”
Frankie wanted to say yes. Teddy walked into his bedroom compartment and pulled up the carpet in the corner. Underneath, in a small, dark gap, was a wooden box with horses carved into it. Teddy brought it back and laid it on the table.
“This isn’t Cheyenne stuff I’m talking about here. This isn’t some kind of Indian magic bullshit,” he said. “This is the real deal. The ink that’s in this box will give you all the help you’ll ever need. You won’t have to ask for it, it’ll just come. This ink will connect you with the earth itself. This is dark shit. This is low magic. The dark and the low creatures, they’ll become your friends. You’ll never have to be afraid of anyone. You’ll never had to run from anything ever again.”
Frankie wanted to say yes. “Are you tricking me?” she said.
Teddy took her hand and looked her in the eye. She tried to pull her hand back at first but then she looked up at him. She could see in his eyes a lifetime’s worth of anger, but also compassion. “I don't want your money, Frankie. People like you and me,” he said, “we have to look out for one another.”
“OK,” Frankie said. “Do it.”
Teddy nodded. He opened the box. Inside was an ink bottle, a series of different sized needles and a small wooden stick.
“The design is very specific,” Teddy said.
“It’s not an elephant, is it?” Frankie said.
“No. Roll up your sleeve.”
"What is it?"
Frankie turned up the sleeve of her baggy t-shirt. Underneath was a large, sore bruise. Teddy clenched his fist when he saw it. He looked at her and said, “It's a snake.”
*
Frankie’s tattoo burned her skin as she jumped over the fence and got back on the road home. She had tears in her eyes and a little blood was seeping out from under the bandage. Walking back in the full light of day, Frankie felt like she had emerged from a dream in which she’d made a horrible mistake. She took the long path back through the trailer park which stayed well clear of Henry and Heinrich’s trailer and out of the woods. When she got home it was ten o’ clock and she knew her daddy would be waking up soon. The trailer, once painted green and white but now mostly green with mold and brown with weathering, was little bigger than Tabitha’s cage.
The door closed behind her and she stopped and held her breath for a moment, listening for signs that her daddy was awake. There was nothing. Frankie went into the tiny bathroom, no bigger than an airplane bathroom, she imagined, and she rolled up her sleeve. Unpeeling the bandage from the bottom, Frankie got her first look at the design. The ink was a deep black and spots of blood surrounded it. The long, thick snake was wrapped around the top of her arm, its head resting just under her shoulder. The snake's scales were intricate patterns that looked like words in a long-forgotten language. It didn't look like any Indian drawing she'd ever seen. The snake was angular and almost mathematical-looking.
"Cool," she whispered, but she couldn't shake the sickness in her stomach, the knowledge of what her daddy would do if he saw it.
Wiping away the blood, Frankie pulled on a long-sleeve t-shirt and began tidying up the trailer ready for her daddy. When a low moan sounded from the bedroom, Frankie went in to begin their daily routine. Her daddy's legs weren't what they were before the crash. It was a long time since he wrapped the car around a tree and killed his wife and son. Somehow, the physical pain remained. It would come and go. Sometimes it was a dull ache that caused him to be irritable, other times it was a sharp agony which meant he couldn't walk more than a few steps, sending him to the bottle, to shouting, to violence.
Opening her daddy's bedroom door, Frankie saw him sat on the edge of his bed with his head in his hands.
Today is a bad day, she thought.
"What are you lookin' at?" he said, without turning his head. "I can hear you sneaking around from a mile away."
'Want some breakfast?" Frankie said.
Her daddy grunted. Frankie went to prepare bacon and eggs. He followed her through, leaning on the walls and on the kitchen units, groaning in pain. A small patch of wetness on Frankie's arm started to nag at her attention.
It's still bleeding, she thought.
She tried to turn herself away from her daddy at every opportunity as he shuffled by and slumped onto the sofa chair beside the dining table. His face was drawn and gray beneath permanent stubble and the dark eyes and red nose of a habitual drunk. As Frankie lay his breakfast on the table in front of him, his half-glazed eyes fell on her shoulder. On seeing his daughter bleeding, his first words were, "I didn't do that."
Frankie said nothing. She took out a single Pop Tart for herself and jumped up and sat on the counter to nibble at it.
"What you do?" her daddy said.
"I just cut myself on a branch in the woods," she said, trying to sound relaxed as every muscle in her body tensed. "It's nothin'."
Through a mouthful of bacon, her daddy said, "I decide what's nothin'. Come here."
"It's OK," she said, forcing a smile. "I'm OK."
"I ain't askin' if you're OK," he said. "I'm asking what you done to your goddamn arm."
Frankie sat and took a small bite of her breakfast. She was shutting down. Her eyes fixed on a spot on the wall opposite. Her legs stopped swinging. She didn't even swallow her breakfast, rather, she chewed it gently as if stuck in a loop. She let herself enter the loop automatically. Trouble would either begin or go away and all she could do was wait and see.
"Come over here, right now," her daddy said.
Trouble had begun.
"What the hell have you been doing around here?" he said. He stood.
"It's nothin'," Frankie said, the loop dissolving under the pressure. "I got beat up," she said quickly.
Her daddy scowled at her. "Who?" he said.
"It doesn't-"
"If you tell me one more time what does or doesn't matter in my own house then you can get out and never come back."
"It was Henry and Heinrich," she said. "Those guys are assholes."
"Did you hit them first?" he said.
"No! I told you, they're assholes. They always hit me!"
"You musta done something," her daddy said, pointing. "I know their mom pretty good. She's a good friend of mine. You better go o
ver there right now and apologize."
Frankie felt as if she'd been hit in the stomach, again.
"Apologize for what?"
"You better get your skinny ass over there right now and tell them you're sorry for whatever you did or I'm gonna make you sorry."
Her daddy came around the table and stood right in front of her. He snatched her Pop Tart from her and threw it to the floor. Frankie looked at her shoes.
"You hearing me, girl?" her daddy said. "I have had just about enough of your shit."
"I didn't do anything," she mumbled.
"What?"
"I didn't do nothing," she said.
"Lift up your face," her daddy said. "Lift it up. Look at me."
Frankie slowly lifted her head to look at her daddy. As she got high enough to look up into his eyes, his open hand slapped across Frankie's face with a clack. She turned and put her face in her hands. Through her own sobs she could hear him.
"I say what you've done around here," her daddy said. "I'm not having the whole park thinking I'm keeping a troublemaker."
He grabbed her arm and yanked her down to the floor. She hit hard and didn't want to get back up. From her position on the floor she could see underneath the sofa, into the trailer's hidden places. Something was moving in the dark, she thought. Looking closer, ignoring her daddy's insults, she could see that the darkness was alive.
Everything was moving in there.
The darkness had a hundred legs and a hundred eyes. Her daddy pulled her to her feet and grabbed a walking crutch and threw her out the trailer door.
"We're going visiting, you little shit," he said.
*
Henry and Heinrich's trailer was twice as long as Frankie's and built into a ramshackle L-shape with an extension crafted from scrap wood and plastic sheets which acted as a tool shed and (not very) secret meth lab. Her daddy stumbled as best he could through the mud behind Frankie, hurling curses at her the whole way. Frankie had stopped proclaiming her innocence. She had resigned herself to humiliation.
But something inside her was ready.
Frankie felt a kind of stillness. She had felt acceptance before. She had taken the beatings and everything else and put it to the back of her mind. This wasn't the same. This acceptance felt different. Her face burned red, but not with shame. For the first time, she was angry on schedule, as needed, and she felt something of a purpose rising within her.
