The Lesser Blessed

by Richard Van Camp

  “Yeah,” he called back, “the first line will be, ‘She’s a little bitch with a capital B!’“

  I shook my head and smiled. We were listening to Van Halen. The synthesizer and drums were pounding “I’ll Wait until Your Love Comes Down.” I turned it up just a bit while Johnny fired up the hot knives on the stove in the kitchen. He peeked around the corner and smiled. “Landlord’s gonna shit!”

  “Piss on ’im!” I yelled. I was on the couch, having another coffee. I was downing coffee about five times a day. The cool thing about Johnny’s place was they drank coffee out of glass mugs. I always felt like a trucker on Highway 5, taking a break in some diner in South Dakota, taking sips from my glass mug, having a smoke, my rough scraggy beard on my face, my wallet thick with fifties.

  I started thinking about Juliet. I really had this thing for her—I’m talking twelve cylinders of love! I mean, my nipples became fire ants at the thought of her: red, hard and venomous. I could close my eyes and see her, and when I did it was like somebody pulled my heart a little. She got grounded for what happened at the party and tonight was her first night of freedom. I know. I marked it on my calendar.

  Johnny told me tons about his past. He had a slew of pictures of pretty girls. Mostly he went for brunettes. In lots of the pictures, they had purple hickeys on their necks and bottles in their hands. I was always hoping that he’d open up about Juliet and tell me more about what she was like, what she did, how she did it. I had brought this best of Iron Maiden tape over that I had mixed. Man, the music felt good. “Wasted Years” was blaring now, and if it weren’t for Donny, we’d have had it cranked even higher. Johnny came around the corner from the kitchen and gave me thumbs-up. I joined him and inhaled the hash. No hooter this time. Just me and the smoke.

  “Yeah,” I thought, “the day I saw Juliet Hope was the day I felt my pubic hair grow.” I could still close my eyes and see her on the bed. I looked at Johnny, who was at the table rolling a fatty.

  “You know, Lare, I had this girl once, her name was Lisa Beatty. What a fuck doll. This one time we were fooling around and she gave me a hickey. I told her not to do it again, and she did. She gave me another one and I got her back. I gave her hickeys on her ass. I did a big J on one cheek and a big B on the other. She was a lifeguard at the swimming pool in Hay River, and she had this bathing suit that was green and white. When she dove into the water, you could see the J and B—and I wasn’t the only one who noticed!”

  “Wow!” I said. “Now that’s a story!”

  “Yeah,” he smiled, “that’s Hay River for you. She was smooth, brother, smooth.”

  “Wasted Years” ended; “Power Slave” began. We paused to listen to the guitars. The glasses on the table were shaking as I inhaled some more.

  I sat down next to Johnny and put my hand on his shoulder. He looked at me and I smiled. I had never really said anything to him about helping me out, and now it seemed like I could say it without sounding like a pansy. “Thanks for taking care of Jazz, man.”

  Johnny smiled back. “No prob.” He thought about it as he rolled. “Listen, Lare, I gotta teach you some new moves.”

  “Yeah?” I asked. “Yeah, you better. I don’t know how to fight.”

  “The next time you smoke someone it better be three hits: you hitting them, the shit hitting their shorts and the ambulance hitting ninety!”

  I laughed.

  “Stand up and put your arms on my shoulders.”

  I did.

  He whipped his arms over mine and slapped them around my back. He pulled up while he kneed me in the gut.

  “Ugh,” I grunted and hit the floor.

  “Lare,” he laughed, “you gotta block it.”

  I struggled up and rested on bent knees. I guess he could see that I was mad because he sat down again and straightened his hair with his hands. I could smell the Right Guard in his scalp. He had showed me that if you sprayed your head with it for a long time, you could do cartwheels and your hair wouldn’t move. Rubbing my gut, I stared at him.

  “So tell me about being fool blood,” he said.

  I sat down. “Whattaya wanta know?”

  He got up and handed me a cigarette. He was saving the joints till later.

  “Well, what tribe are you? Chip? Cree?”

  “Dogrib.”

  “I thought they were from around Yellowknife.”

  I got a little nervous. “Yeah.”

  “What’s the scoop?”

  “Well, Jed told me that our tribe came from a woman who gave birth to six puppies.” I eyed him while I said that because I knew some people would laugh. He didn’t, so I continued.

  “Well, she had to live by herself in the woods so she could raise ru pups. One day she left her hut so she could check her snares, and when she came home she could see human footprints in the snow and ashes.”

  “No shit,” Johnny said.

  “Yeah ... so one day she went out like she was going to check her snares but she snuck back and watched her hut. She could hear her pups yapping like this: Yap! Yap ! Then she could hear them laughing like children. After a while she could hear kids running around the hut and choo! Out from the hut run six kids, all naked.”

  “Whoah!” Johnny said.

  “Yeah! So she watches them and they’re playing in the snow all laughing and having a great time. She runs out of the bush and chases them back into the hut. They all make a run for the bag she used to leave them in. Three make it and turn back to pups. A girl and two boys don’t. She catches them. They stay human and they’re the first Dogribs. She raised them to be beautiful hunters with strong medicine.”

  “Hunh. Wait a minute,” Johnny interrupted. “What happened to the three that made it back to the bag?”

  “Humph. I don’t know. Jed never told me that part.”

  “Better find out.”

  We were quiet for a bit. Then he spoke.

  “Lare, that’s something. That’s really something. You’re a storyteller, man. Your voice even changed when you talked.”

  “Yeah?” I asked, proud of the moment and the revelation. That was the first time I had told the story and I liked how it felt.

  “Larry?” Johnny said. “Do you drink?”

  “Oh,” I said, “I had a bet going with my dad that I wouldn’t touch a drop of liquor until I turned eighteen. He said he’d give me a hundred bucks if I make it.”

  “Where is your dad?” he asked.

  “Oh ... uh, I don’t know. He and my mom split up. It was a bad scene.”

  “Yeah, ” he said, “I know what you mean. Shit city, hey?”

  “Hunh,” I agreed. “How come you?”

  “Long story, man. It sucks the cockaruski.”

  “Aaah, come on.”

  “I’ll say this,” he said. “I have a feeling if I picked up a bottle, I’d never put it down.”

  I nodded. “Deep.”

  “It’s casual, man. You only bet a hundred dollars with your old man?”

  “I was nine when I made that bet. At the time, a hundred bucks was a hunk of a hunk.”

  “Sounds good. I should get that deal going with Donny.”

  Johnny lit a joint and handed it to me, looking at my lips. I got nervous, so I asked, “What do you think of Miss Sauvé’s tits?”

  “Don’t matter to me,” he winked. “The kind of fucking I do, you don’t need tits.”

  I started to laugh, and he pointed to my lips.

  “Time for a shave.”

  “What?”

  “Time for a shave there, muskrat mouth. You look like Charles Manson.”

  “You figure?”

  “Yeah, look. Juliet’s coming over in a bit. You better shave before she gets here. Maybe she’ll bring a friend. Go in the bathroom and shave that fuzz off your lip.”

  “I never shaved before.”

  “Well, it ain’t that hard. Go on!”

  I felt the whiskers on my lip and agreed. I walked to his bathroom. “Use my elect
ric!” he yelled. I locked the door and saw dirty towels, toothpaste spitting out of the tube and yellowed Q-Tips lying on the counter.

  The doors under the sink were hard to open so I yanked. They gave. It was the weirdest thing; behind some blue Tampax boxes and rolls of toilet paper, I saw some bottles. I moved the boxes aside, and there were two big-ass bottles of Golden Wedding.

  “Holy shit,” I whispered. What if Donny got a hold of these?

  I thought of Johnny saying, “That’s one woman you’ll never want to meet” about his mom. Looking at those two bottles, I suddenly knew why.

  “House of Pain” began on the stereo. I was a bit nervous because of what I had found. I shut the cupboard door and continued with my search. I couldn’t find an electric razor, so I used a pink one lying on the side of the tub. I could hear the buzzer go off in the hallway. That meant that someone was downstairs in the lobby and wanted to come up. I ran the water and squirted some shaving cream into my hand. I put the lather on my lips, under my nose, on my cheek and in my sideburns. I grabbed the razor. Resting it on my chin, I yanked up, just like in the movies, and sliced my nostril.

  “Shit!” I hissed. I started bleeding in the cream. I pushed down on the blade the next time for traction and I screamed some more. Shit! What was I doing wrong? The next time, I pulled the razor down my lip. That seemed to be smoother. I shaved my sideburns too, and then I dried my face on a white towel, leaving a blur of blood behind. I looked into the mirror. My upper lip was red and blotchy, and it was swelling up like a worm about ready to burst. My sideburns itched and my face was starting to feel like it was on fire. I put some after-shave on. My face burned even more, and I whimpered like a puppy. The music stopped, and I heard Johnny start it up again. I looked at myself again in the mirror.

  “Shit,” I said. “Juliet.”

  I didn’t want her to see me bleeding to death so I knocked on Donny’s door.

  “Enter,” he said. I did.

  Donny’s room was pretty barren. All he had was a box spring, a mattress and a lamp. He was sitting on the carpet, drawing.

  “Whatcha doing?”

  “What’s it look like, chief?” he said, holding up his picture.

  It was bizarre. There was a kid holding a gun and he was smiling; in the background there were five dogs lying dead, with a hundred lines behind them saying the same thing: “Stab the dog stab the dog stab the dog.”

  “Whatdaya think, chief?” His eyes were looking into me for a reaction, so I told the truth.

  “Pretty grim.”

  He snatched it back. “Yeah, what do you know?”

  As I looked around, I realized he had drawings hung up all over. In the bare closet he had drawn on the wall. There were men and women crying and there were fallen-down scarecrows, thousands of them. He had tried to write swear words, but they all came out like, “Fok FoK fOK.”

  “Shit, man, you psycho?”

  “Gotta be, it’s a fuckin’ war zone,” he said.

  “You’re rude.”

  “I guess,” he said and looked down.

  “It snowed,” I offered.

  “Big deal. Snow melts.”

  “No,” I said, “you should be playing outside.”

  “And freeze?”

  We were quiet.

  “You know,” I tried. “I was reading that playing Mozart helps plants grow.”

  He went back to drawing. “Fuck Mozart.”

  “Sol later, man,” I said.

  “Yeah, sol, chief.”

  Aha! At least somebody knew some Raven Talk.

  I walked down the hallway, and the synthesizer shot Van Halen’s “1984” into my veins. I got piss shivers. I heard the clink of bottles and laughter. I went around the corner and there she was, Juliet.

  But she was with Jazz! Jakka Jazz! The biggest asshole in the universe ! The Leonard of all Leonards ! I looked at Johnny, but Juliet and him were hugging and kissing, slopping their tongues all over each other. Johnny had his hands in her hair and she was grabbing him back.

  “Were you pushing or pulling in there?” Jazz asked me. Johnny’s giving him a lickin’ hadn’t changed anything at all.

  “What?” I slurred. That music was too loud. I could see Juliet laughing at me and my fat lips. I could see Johnny squinting at me, and I felt humiliated. Everyone was laughing and I hated it. I could see Juliet’s ass in those black pants that I loved. I could see Jazz and his smug skinny-ass face. He was drinking out of my favourite glass mug and he had beer in it. I could see Johnny giving me the knee and I could hear the hoofs on the pavement again and I could hear the puppy being torn to pieces and dogs roaring. The whole damn world was turning up the volume. I could see the nurses who made me look in the mirror and me screaming when I saw the skin peeling from my cousins as the people pulled the blankets off; and my father doing it—my father fucking, the teeth of the hammer sinking into his soft eyes and me yelling, “I send you to hell, Daddy, I send you to hell!”

  “I said!” Jazz reached out and pinched my nose. “Were you pushing or pulling in the bathroom—”

  I punched Jazz so damn hard his feet touched the ceiling. He hit the floor rolling and I landed on top of him. I was yelling so loud I couldn’t hear the music. Johnny pulled me off him after a bit. I guess he knew Jazz had it coming. I felt like I had water in my lungs. I couldn’t breathe. I just couldn’t take it. I tried to put my fist through Jazz so hard that I heard something snap. After that, I blacked out.

  Next thing I knew, I was on the couch. Johnny and Juliet were looking at me. Juliet’s eyes were huge as she put a blanket over me.

  “Holy shit, Larry,” she said. “If you were Mexican you’d be Rocky!”

  “Larry, holy fuck.” Johnny shook his head and offered me a smoke. “You didn’t have to do that, man. You busted his nose!”

  I waved the smoke away and looked at Juliet. I savoured her hair. It looked like a fire on a mountain rolling down into the forest. She was chewing gum: Bubblicious. I could smell that it was strawberry flavour. I wanted that gum so bad. I saw the glint of her teeth and I wanted her. Big time.

  “Gimme gum,” I said, and she gave it to me. She stuck it in my mouth and I bit soft. Johnny took her other hand and led her away. I watched them as they went around the corner. I heard a door close. The music had changed. This time it was Power Station: “Get it on! Bang a gong!”

  I got up and sat at the kitchen table. I was looking at my swollen knuckles. The blood from Jazz’s nose had caked on them and turned chocolate brown. There was blood on my white socks. I could see cigarette butts in an ashtray, one with Juliet’s lipstick on it. I picked it up. It was a small butt and I lit it. I placed my lips where she had placed hers. I puckered and swallowed deep. I burned my thumb and lip; I coughed and hacked. The music had ended, so I put Van Halen back on. I turned it low and sat down. I looked out the window and tried pretty hard not to look at my reflection. When I heard the bed bang chang against the wall, I turned up the system as loud as it would go.

  I had it bad for Juliet. I wanted her for my secret, my prayer. I wanted her as my sweet violence of seeds and metal. I wanted to spill candles with her, to hold hands and walk around in gumboots with her. I wanted to do anything and everything with her. I mean, if she were in a coma, I’d make sure the nurses played her favourite music over and over so she’d come back to life and thank me.

  I was looking at the floor, past my bloody socks, and I saw those burns in the linoleum floor, the ones that looked like scorched blurred eyes. Except this time it wasn’t the ceiling they were staring at; it was me. They were studying me and I wondered what they were seeing, what they were thinking.

  I sat back on the couch, and all I could do was think of when I was younger. I looked around the living room. There was a couch like this one in the old house, but ours was green. The music was blasting then, too. My dad stood over my mom. He had called me out of my room. He was holding the yellow broom. He was speaking French. He had learned i
t in the residential schools. He never talked about what had happened there, but he always talked French when he drank.

  My mom was passed out on the couch. A couch like this one. This was back when she used to drink. She had gone to residential schools, too. She was passed out, in her bathrobe. My father took the broomstick and started laughing. He spread her legs and with the yellow broomstick—

  I shot awake.

  “Fuck fuck fuck,” I said. “No!”

  I purposely made myself remember the lake in Rae. One time before the accident, I was hanging out with my cousins there. We used to play in the sand way down the beach. We’d take some toys down and build houses. We’d also sniff gas. I wasn’t too crazy about it at first, but after seeing my dad do the bad thing to my aunt, it took the shakes away. I could feel the heat on my back from the sun. Every now and then we’d stop to eat or take a leak. Me and my cousin Franky were good pals, even though he was demented. He was the guy who told me that if you touch gasoline to a cat’s asshole, the cat’d jump ten feet into the air. He was the guy who taught me about bennies.

  He’d say, “Close your eyes, Larry. Close them tight. Now face the sun, that’s right. Face it and feel the bennies bouncing off you.”

  I’d close my eyes so tight my forehead would stretch, and after a while I’d relax and, sure enough, I could feel bennies bouncing off me. They’d hit one area and the warmth would spread. It was glorious. I began to shout, “Hey! Hey Franky! I feel them! I feel them!”

  One time we were taking leaks and facing the sun. We could feel the bennies bouncing off us and we were yelling, “Bennies! Bennies! Bennies!” but soon I was the only one who was yelling, and when I opened my eyes, there was Franky pointing at my feet.

  “Cousin,” he whispered, “you’re pissing blood.”

  I was.

  That’s all I remember.

  I woke up when Johnny led Juliet to the door. She was putting on her running shoes and her damn sweater was inside out. Why didn’t she just goddamned advertise on the blue channel: “Hello! I just got plowed!”

  She had her damn socks off and I could see her tiny toes. I wanted to run over there and bite her ass! Johnny kissed her and told her he’d call her. She hugged him and whispered something to him. He laughed. After she left, he came over and sat next to me. His hair was messed up and he didn’t look too happy either.