Mudville

by Kurtis Scaletta

“That's what I think!” Ted or Tom or whatever his name is shouts. “The dam screwed up the local ecosystem.”

  “Hey, hey!” Frank raises his voice just one notch above normal indoor voice, and everyone listens. “No talking about the weather. That's the rule, okay?” Moundville is the one place on earth where it's not a safe topic for conversation.

  Most of the guys nod, and it looks like things will calm down, but then Lou mutters something and Peter throws a wadded-up napkin at him, cursing. Pretty soon they're shoving each other and everyone is joining in, sticking up for Lou.

  “I said knock it off!” Frank steps between them. They stop but keep glaring at each other. “Peter, I've talked to you before. You've had warnings. What is it going to take? Do I have to let you go?”

  Peter crumples. “I'm sorry. I got carried away. Please don't fire me.”

  “Come on, Frank,” one of the guys says softly. “You know he's got a family.”

  Frank throws his hands up in surrender.

  “All right, all right.” He wags his finger in Peter's face. “One more fight, though, and you're gone. I mean it this time.”

  “Thanks,” Peter says with a sniff.

  Frank turns to Lou and the others. “Peter is going to stay on this crew. I don't want anyone messing with him just to get him in trouble.”

  “But he threw something at me,” Lou complains.

  “It was a balled-up napkin, you sissy,” one of the guys reminds him. Everyone laughs.

  “Still. I thought we had one of those zero-tolerance policies.”

  “You called me a dirty name,” says Peter. “There should be zero tolerance for that, too.”

  “No more throwing anything, names or napkins.” Frank's voice is now two notches above normal. You don't hear a peep out of anyone.

  “All right, Frank,” a few guys mutter.

  “I wasn't asking for consensus. Lunch is over. Everyone, get back to work.” The guys start filing out. Frank grabs Peter's arm as he walks by.

  “You're on probation. Get a shovel and help the kids.” The men howl with laughter. Apparently, working with me and Sturgis is a good punishment.

  Peter grabs a shovel and digs like he's got to hit China by dusk.

  “I think Lou deserves to be digging as much as you,” says Sturgis.

  “He's in pretty good with Frank,” I tell them. “You don't want to mix it up with Frank's buddies. I've been around long enough to know that.”

  “You're right. I should know better than to argue with that fathead.” Peter starts to smooth the sides of the ditch with his shovel.

  “So are you an Indian?” Sturgis wonders.

  “I'm part Sioux. A lot of people from Sinister Bend are … or were. That name is inaccurate, though, just like ‘Indian.’ Our family didn't pay much attention to our heritage, but lately I've become interested in my roots. I've been reading about Native American spirituality.”

  “I'm part Indian, too,” says Sturgis. “A small part,” he adds. He points at his face, maybe showing us the features that best reflect that aspect of his heritage.

  “How did you get that scar?” Peter asks bluntly. “Were you attacked by an animal?” I'd been wanting to know for a few days, and Peter asks just like that. I'm impressed.

  Sturgis's eyes widen. “Yeah. It was a wolf dog, actually. Part wolf, part dog.”

  “All dogs come from wolves. How did it happen?”

  “When I was little, we had this big wolf dog named Sammy. I used to play catch with him, throwing tennis balls as far as I could into the woods. He'd always find them and bring them back, even if they went into a hole or some water or something. He was a great dog.”

  I'm kind of jealous. I've always wanted a dog, but dogs aren't exactly practical around here, so we just have Yogi.

  “My dad trained Sammy to fight other dogs, though,” says Sturgis. “Sammy was a great fighter. He won lots of fights.”

  “Dogfights are awful,” I say without thinking.

  “Oh, I agree.” Sturgis nods. “It was my dad's idea, not mine. Anyway, my dad brought me to one of Sammy's fights. It was in the dirt basement of this bar in Sutton. We were right in front, surrounded by maybe a hundred guys, all making bets on which dog would win. I'd never seen Sammy fight and couldn't imagine him fighting. Once he was in the ring, though, he knew what to do. The other dog was bigger, but Sammy was faster and got his licks in.”

  “It's not the size of the dog in the fight; it's the size of the fight in the dog,” says Peter. It's a kind of bumper sticker thing to say, but he has a point.

  “Well, that big dog did get a piece of him,” Sturgis continues. “I was scared and yelled Sammy's name. Sammy turned when I called him, and the other dog tore right into him, going for his throat. I jumped into the ring to save Sammy, but the other dog jumped on me, too. Maybe would have killed me, but my dad grabbed that dog and threw him off of me.

  “There I was, bleeding all over the place, and these guys were just yelling at me for stopping the fight and yelling at my dad for letting me get in the way. Anyway, it was already over for Sammy. He was on his side, bleeding, and not breathing.”

  He says all this matter-of-factly, like it's something he's seen in a movie.

  “The wolf attacked you to test you.” Peter holds two of his stumpy fingers to Sturgis's face. “He wanted to make sure you could handle his power. He left his mark on you.”

  “Really?” Sturgis touches his own scars thoughtfully.

  I don't put much stock in Peter's theory. That dog didn't try to test Sturgis; it tried to kill him. I don't say anything, though. I don't want to argue with Peter and get him in more trouble. Besides, if it makes Sturgis feel better about his face, what's the harm?

  “I have a mark, too,” says Peter. He pulls up his shirtsleeve and shows us a horrible scar on his arm. It looks like a bear tried to take his arm off or something.

  “Wow! How did that happen?”

  “Cougar,” he says with obvious pride.

  “You got attacked by a cougar?”

  “I was foolish once.” He might as well be talking about a speeding ticket. I wonder if I'm the only one who's made it through life without getting mauled by an animal. I guess I'll have to find a bear and let it take a swipe at me if I want to fit in.

  Frank and all his crew are coming with shovels. Peter begins digging furiously, to show he's a hard worker.

  “Afternoon break is over,” says Frank in a friendly way, clapping me on the shoulder with his big hand. “Come on, champ, let's dig. We're not going home until we finish this house.”

  I hope we can make short work of it and go home early.

  Sturgis has finally slowed down, though. He throws up a few thoughtful shovelfuls of mud now and then, and that's all.

  “There was a fight at work today,” Sturgis tells my dad on the drive home.

  My dad looks anxious. “Nobody swung a shovel at any-one, did they?”

  “No, no.” I wish I could kick Sturgis from the front seat. “Just an argument. It was no big deal.” I don't tell him that it nearly turned into a fistfight. I don't want to get anyone in trouble. “Frank took care of it.”

  “Whew,” he says. “Good thing nobody swung a shovel at anyone. I don't need that kind of trouble. So what was it about?”

  “The rain,” says Sturgis.

  “Of course,” says my dad. “I bet one side said we're cursed.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And somebody else blames the dam?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I've never heard such foolishness,” says my dad. “Curse this, dam that. I say curse them all and dam them all.” He chuckles at his own joke.

  “Why does it rain, then?” asks Sturgis.

  “Who knows? I'll let the other guys run around with their prayer books and candles, their balloons and charts. I just say, ‘When it rains, sell umbrellas.’” It's my dad's favorite saying, kind of like “When life throws you lemons, make lemonade” and “Seize
the day” wrapped into one slogan. It's not such a bad motto, if you sell umbrellas.

  Steve calls me Saturday, wanting to play basketball. I'm sore all over from digging, but I decide to go anyway. For one thing, I said I would. For another, I miss hanging out with those guys.

  “Want to shoot some hoops?” I ask Sturgis.

  “I don't really know how.”

  “We'll show you. We just mess around anyway.”

  “I guess I'll come if you want me to.”

  I lend him some of my gym clothes. Also, my old basketball shoes, which are at least a size too small.

  “My feet hurt,” he says.

  “Sorry.”

  We put our raincoats on over our shorts. I usually just shower and dress when I get home. I'm not a big fan of the rec center locker rooms—they typically look like they've been used by a bunch of bears in a big hurry.

  Nothing is very far from anything else in Moundville, so we walk to the rec center, which they put next to the school so the kids could use it for gym class. I point out the school to Sturgis.

  “The school only goes through sixth grade,” I tell him. “What grade are you in anyway?”

  “Not sure. I haven't been in a while.”

  “What?”

  He shrugs. “Just haven't.”

  Steve and the other guys are already shooting baskets inside. The other guys are Miggy, Tim, and Ty. We hang out together pretty often. People at school might call us the jocks, but we're barely enough to make a basketball team, so it's not much of a clique.

  “Hey, what happened to your face?” Tim asks when he sees Sturgis.

  “Dude!” Steve shakes his head at Tim. “You don't just ask a guy something like that.”

  “What?” Tim gestures at his own face. “I'm just asking.”

  “I know you're just asking, and that's what I'm telling you a guy doesn't just do.”

  “It was a wolf,” Sturgis says. Steve and Tim forget their argument and look at him in disbelief.

  “Yeah, right!” says Ty.

  “It's true,” I tell them, even though I only half believe it myself.

  “Man, how did you get bit by a wolf?” asks Miggy.

  “He was bringing a basket to his grandma,” I tell him. “What do you think?” They all crack up and don't bother asking any more questions. It helps the joke that Sturgis is still wearing his bright red raincoat with the hood.

  We only have a part of the gym reserved. They cut it up into eighths on weekends, but there's a hoop in every section and enough room to play three-on-three.

  Sturgis is a pretty good shot, sinking baskets from all over the court. He doesn't know the rules, though, and the other guys keep calling him out for blocks and hand checks.

  “Man, does this game have a lot of rules,” he complains, bouncing the ball, hard. The ball rebounds and smacks Ty in the face.

  “No way!” says Tim.

  “That's a T!” says Miggy.

  “Sturgis, you can't do stuff like that,” I tell him. “Miggy's right. It's a technical foul.”

  “It's a stupid game anyway,” says Sturgis. His face is red, making his scar stand out more. “I quit.” He grabs his rain-coat from the corner where he left it and heads for the door.

  “Dude, come on,” I say, trying to keep up with him.

  “My feet hurt anyway,” he says. “You have small feet.” He bangs out the front door and is gone.

  After the game, Steve and I go get a pop in the vending area.

  “So what's his deal anyway?” Steve wants to know, meaning Sturgis. I start to explain that he's a foster kid and who knows what he's been through, but I'm distracted by a couple of girls. One is kind of tall with brown hair—I think her name is Shannon—and she's with a shorter girl I've never seen before.

  “Do you know her?” I ask Steve, subtly pointing out the shorter girl.

  “What, do you assume I know every black girl in Mound County?”

  “Yep.”

  “Well, her name is Rita,” he says with a sigh. “She lives here but goes to school in Sutton. That's why you don't know her. I know her because my mom sold them their house.” Steve's mom is a real estate agent. She's one of the flippers my dad talks about. She buys up derelict houses in Moundville, fixes them up, and sells them to people from Sutton looking for cheaper places to live. I bet she makes a load of money, but Steve says she started doing it because she felt sorry for those houses.

  “You've met her, then?”

  “We had dinner with them one time.”

  “You like her?”

  “She's all right,” he says. “Kind of a book snob.” I want to ask him what this means, but the girls walk right by us, so I change the subject.

  Sturgis wakes me up Sunday morning by flipping on the lights.

  “Hey, a little warning next time!” I blink, trying to get used to the light.

  He's being quite a jerk these days, I think. First he fights with my friends, then he sulks all night and barely talks to me. Now he's waking me up at the crack of dawn. Well, more like the crack of 9:00 a.m. Still, it's a weekend.

  “Sorry,” he says. “I need to see myself.”

  He's wearing a new pair of slacks and polo shirt. My dad took him shopping yesterday. You can still see the crease mark across the middle of his shirt, so he tries to press it out with his thumb.

  “Where you going?” I ask. “You got a date or something?”

  “I'm going to go see my grandma.”

  I half laugh, remembering the Red Riding Hood business from yesterday. “Seriously, what's up?”

  “I am serious. My grandma is in a home, and I'm going to go see her.”

  “Oh.”

  “Don't you ever go see your grandma?”

  As he combs his hair, I tell him how my dad's father passed away and his mom lives in Arizona, and how I never see my mom's parents anymore because I never see my mom anymore.

  He finishes dressing and starts to put on his new sneakers with his slacks.

  “I've got some nice dress shoes if you want,” I tell him.

  “Another day with pinched feet? No thanks.”

  “They're a little big for me, though.” I climb out of bed and find him the shoes.

  “These aren't too bad,” he says, putting one on, then the other. “Yeah, I can deal with these.”

  “You look pretty sharp,” I tell him.

  “Just have to go get the basket of goodies ready,” he jokes.

  By the time I've had my own shower and pop into the kitchen, he's gone, and so is my dad. There's a note on the marker board on the fridge—“Back this afternoon”—and that's it. There's also a marker drawing of a little smiley face wearing a baseball cap. My dad has drawn those since I was a kid. I think it's supposed to be me.

  I have toaster waffles and frozen sausage cooked in the microwave, then play on the computer until 1:30, when there's finally a baseball game on—an interleague game with the Cubs and White Sox. My official favorite team is the Tigers this year, but I always end up watching the Cubs because their games are all on cable.

  The Cubs score seven runs in the bottom of the first inning, and for the rest of the game, any time the Sox mount a little comeback, the Cubs come right back and score a few runs themselves.

  Dad and Sturgis get home around the seventh inning. They've been grocery shopping. Sturgis hauls a couple of bags into the kitchen.

  “How was your grandmother?” I ask him.

  “What big teeth she has,” Sturgis jokes before heading back to the bedroom to change.

  “Who's playing?” my dad asks.

  “Chicago and Chicago,” I tell him, even though he can see for himself.

  “The old ‘city serious,’ as Ring Lardner used to call it.” He sees the score is thirteen to ten. “Pitchers’ duel, huh?”

  “Yep. National League baseball at its finest.”

  “Well, I guess I better think about dinner,” he says, heading off for the kitchen. “They had li
verwurst on sale. I have something special planned!”

  “Then I better not think about dinner,” I mutter.

  We start on a new job on Monday. Peter is still working with us on ditch duty.

  “Did you talk to your father about giving my son a job?” he asks me.

  “No, I didn't think about it. Anyway, laws and stuff, you know.”

  “I just wondered,” he mutters, but I feel like he's looking at me a little sideways, mad that I didn't do it, laws or no laws.

  Sturgis and Peter work about twenty feet away from me, the two of them doing ten times as much work as me by myself. They're whispering like long-lost cousins, probably about curses and sacred land and totem animals and who knows what else. I don't know if it's because I'm obviously zero percent Native American or because I'm the boss's kid or because I've never been snacked on by a wild animal, but they don't bother to include me.

  I'm a bit skeptical about all of it. I'm also feeling left out.

  “Hey, something's been bugging me,” I holler over at them.

  “Who, me?” asks Sturgis.

  “No, Peter,” I say. I haul my shovel over to where they're digging.

  “So this Tutankhamen guy,” I say.

  Peter furrows his brow. “You mean Ptan Tanka?”

  “Whatever his name is. Why did his curse take so long to kick in? If it's true, I mean, about his curse and the rain?”

  “First of all, I never said it was a curse,” Peter says simply. “People twist the story around and leave out the most important part.”

  “What's that?”

  “The fact that Ptan Tanka had a son. His name was Ptan Teca. Ptan Teca was a great athlete. He could run faster and jump higher than any other boy. He could swim further un-derwater, throw stones harder, and climb trees more nimbly. The boy was amazing.

  “Ptan Teca was also a natural at the settlers’ game of base-ball. He could hit a ball a mile, then run out and catch it before it hit the ground. He pitched so fast the batter couldn't even see the ball. That became his best and favorite sport.

  “When Ptan Teca found out he had to move to the Dakota Territory, he was furious. He was nearly as famous for his temper as he was for his athletic feats. ‘They can't make us leave,’ he said. ‘We were here first!’ He was also bitter about giving up baseball—he wouldn't have anyone to play with on the reservation. ‘They want me gone because I'm the best at their game,’ he said. His anger turned to hatred, and he swore that he would make the white settlers pay for their mistake.”