Fire Song

by Adam Garnet Jones

  “Jackie? Is that you?” Shane’s mom was the only one Evie would ever talk to on the phone past six, but it’s been weeks since they spoke. After a few moments, Evie hangs up and sets the phone in her lap.

  “Was it her?” David asks.

  “She hung up without even saying anything.” Evie grabs the remote and turns the volume up on the TV. Behind them, Shane creeps down the hall and into David’s room.

  *

  A few minutes later, David slips inside and closes the door behind him. “Do you think we should talk about … ?” Shane pulls him into a kiss. No, he doesn’t want to talk. Right now all he wants is to be as close to David as possible.

  Without a noise, the two strip off their clothes. Their need draws the air from the room. It creates a vacuum where sound is impossible. No air to tremble. They kiss and bite and tease each other in perfect silence until all that’s left is the telltale dribble running down David’s stomach. They lie in the heavy summer heat, lungs expanding and hearts beating in unison. A train rumbles in the distance, letting sound rush back into the room like light into the dark.

  Shane curls into the curve of David’s back and whispers in his ear. “We’re going to be like this every night soon.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. But we will.”

  *

  The morning light eventually reaches across the edge of the lake and comes crawling over David’s sheets. Shane sits on the edge of the bed in his underwear staring straight ahead at nothing. He’s spent the night chewing on his problem like a piece of gristle. I need to get away, but to do that I need money. There’s no way to make enough money. But I need to get away, and to do that I need money. But there’s no way to make enough money. The other problem, the one he hadn’t thought of, is that he has never broken the rules. Not really. Even trying to sell for Debbie wasn’t that big of a deal really. A guy gets ambitious, he needs something, so he builds himself up on the backs of his people. It’s not the Anishinaabe way, but it’s what lots of them do now. In some ways it’s what people expect. I’m just tryin’ to get mine, he’s heard people say. What Shane hadn’t thought of until right this second is, what if there is a way to help himself by bringing down the people doing the most damage in the community? What if he is willing to do something illegal and dangerous but ultimately … good? People will say he just did it for the money. They’ll call him a thug, a disappointment, but what if what they say doesn’t matter? What if good is good? Could he do it?

  Shane gets up from bed, watching himself in the full-length mirror like a cat stalking a bird. He locks eyes with himself and brushes a bit of fluff from his cheek. He squints like he’s staring into the sun.

  “Gimme all your money! Now!” Shane whispers. Not scary enough. Shane backs away from the mirror and adopts a tough-guy stance, with his fingers pointed at the mirror like guns. He tries again. “Gimme your money!” He breaks into a giggle. “Gangstaaaaaaaa.” Shane tries to relax his body, but he can’t. There’s too much adrenaline pumping through him now.

  David rolls over, rustling the sheet. “What are you doing? Come back to bed.”

  Shane jumps away from the mirror. He almost forgot about David. “I was just playing around.”

  David looks at him strangely. “You seem better.”

  “It’s ’cause I’m a genius.” Shane wonders how much he should give away, but if they’re going to be together in the long run they’ll have to trust each other.

  David laughs a little and rubs his eyes. “Okay …”

  “What if we could get our money for Toronto and stop people drinking and doing drugs?”

  David makes a noncommittal sound.

  “No, but listen,” Shane continues. “If we could find a way to do that, we should do it, right?”

  “Yeah. Okay,” says David. “But it’s impossible.”

  Shane smiles. “If you can’t get a solution, create an explosion.”

  *

  When David hears Evie close the bathroom door, he seizes the opportunity to duck out into the kitchen for the stone mortar and pestle that Evie uses to grind up medicines. Back in the room, he hands it to Shane. Shane’s eyes follow the ropy vein that runs down David’s bicep and curls over the muscles of his forearm.

  “What?” David asks.

  Shane grins. “Aren’t I allowed to look?”

  David blushes and sets the mortar and pestle down in front of Shane. “This is such a bad idea.”

  “No, it’s a great idea.” Shane smiles and kisses David with a familiarity that is sweeter than anything either of them could have said to each other. Shane steps away and shakes a fistful of pills into the bottom of the mortar.

  “You better not kill my nookomis with that shit,” David says.

  “It’ll be all cleaned out before she knows anything happened.” Shane taps at the pills with the pestle, breaking them into large pieces while David gets ready to leave. Shane leans into the job, putting the force of his weight into crushing the hard tablets. How far did they have to travel to get to Evie’s mortar and pestle? Opiates that were mixed up in a lab who knows where, then shipped to a drugstore and sold to someone in pain who turned around and sold them to a dealer, passing from hand to hand until they ended up with Debbie and now Shane. How much money has been made by getting these pills (and others like them) up here to burn a hole in the community his family has called home since the beginning of time? And now he’s here, calling on their power for money just like the rest. Shane pushes the powder around with the pestle, hoping the good medicine that Evie mixed up in the mortar will somehow lend its goodness to his plan.

  A soft shuffling comes from the hallway. Shane didn’t hear the bathroom door open again, but it must have. David puts a finger to his lips, then turns to watch the strip of light under the door. Sure enough, two shadows appear and then pause. Shane pictures David’s nookomis leaning in to put her ear against the door to listen. By her own admission, Evie didn’t live this long and become so well respected by minding her own business.

  “David? You still home?”

  David hesitates. “Uh … yeah.”

  Evie rattles the knob. “It’s locked.”

  “I’ll be out in a minute.”

  Shane watches the shadowy blobs from Evie’s feet, but they don’t move.

  “If you want to know something, you can ask me, you know,” David says.

  A small grunt sounds from the other side of the door and the lumpy shadows retreat. The sound of a faint radio, CBC North, can be heard coming from the kitchen.

  David picks up his backpack. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay by yourself?” Shane doesn’t really want to be left alone, but there are things that he needs to prepare for tonight, and he isn’t about to go cruising the rez right now. Not as long as the cops are still trolling around looking for him.

  “Nah. I’m good.”

  David nods and puts his hand on the doorknob.

  “Hey.” David stops. “Where’s my kiss?” David leans down and presses his lips against Shane’s forehead.

  “I love you,” he says. Before Shane can reply, he’s opened the door. David covers Shane’s mouth with his hand to keep him quiet, gives him a last look, and shuts the door behind him.

  Shane can hear him and Evie in the kitchen.

  “Slept late today?” Evie asks. It sounds like David doesn’t answer. Shane imagines him picking up one of his sneakers, concentrating on acting casual. He probably looks more like an alien anthropologist that’s wearing his body as a skin suit in order to pass himself off as a “local Indian boy” before reporting back to the mother ship about sconedogs, status cards, and tipi-creeping.

  “When did Shane get here?” Evie asks.

  Shane cringes.

  “Ah, it’s just me,” David mumbles.

  “Oh, I thought I hea
rd him in there with you.”

  Shit. Shit. Shit. Stay strong, David.

  “It’s probably just the TV.”

  He can hear David fumbling with something—his shoes? Doesn’t matter. The weather stripping makes a sound like a burst of static when David opens the kitchen door. Shane smiles to himself. If Evie does know something, she must have decided not to badger David about it, which is almost as good as her not knowing at all.

  “See you tonight.”

  Shane moves to the window so he can watch David trudge down the walkway and away from the house. Shane imagines Evie watching him from the living room on the opposite side of the house. They are mirrored halves of the same body, each with their own hopes pinned to David.

  *

  Shane turns back to the pills, now a fine white powder in the mortar. He carefully scoops it out with the handle of a spoon and transfers it back into the little baggie. It doesn’t look like much now that the pills are all ground up. He sees that some of the powder is still stuck to the small scrapes and scratches inside the mortar. Shane smacks the side of it with the palm of its hand to dislodge the last bits of powder, but what shakes loose isn’t even worth trying to get into the bag.

  The doorknob rattles loosely. Shane freezes. Two shadowy lumps have appeared in the band of light below the door. How long has she been there? Did he make any noise? The doorknob rattles again. Shane holds his breath until Evie shuffles away.

  Once she’s gone, Shane takes stock of the room. There isn’t anything left to do until the sun goes down. He fishes around in his pockets for the pictures of Tara and Destiny that he rescued from Debbie’s shrine. The creases add lines to their faces that make them look older than they’ll ever be. How could he not have seen? But of course he saw. It’s just that they didn’t seem like they were hurting any worse than him. It must have been different, though. Their pain has to have been darker and harder than the prickly bundle Shane carries with him. Because if it’s the same, what then?

  Shane tries to smooth the picture of Destiny on his thigh, but the folds are pressed too deep. Destiny killing herself will never make sense. That’s what other people do. Other kids’ sisters, not his. But does it seem impossible because she didn’t leave any clues, or because he wasn’t paying attention? He saw her every day. He shared a bathroom with her, cooked meals with her, went to the same school. He was there. No one liked to say it, but some of it had to be her own fault. If she never said anything, how was he or anyone supposed to help her? Can he really be responsible for the lives of everyone he loves? It’s too much. Icy panic rises from Shane’s stomach, inching toward his throat.

  Fuck her. Fuck her for leaving me alone like this. Fuck her for thinking her feelings were so private and so hard that she couldn’t even reach out to her family. Fuck her for not loving any of us enough to stay.

  Shane crawls into bed, surrounding himself with David’s smell, feeling sick with the desire to run but unable to escape. All of this is supposed to be about school—at least it started that way—but he finds himself caring less and less about the idea of going to class, learning about zoning bylaws, sewage treatment, and the whole network of policies that create a functioning community. Every time he thinks of getting away, he imagines holding David’s hand while they stroll by the water, like something out of a cheesy commercial. But what if they walk away from here and the only thing either of them has left is each other? Will it be worth it? His mom and Evie may never speak to them again. He’s heard of two-spirited people being welcomed back into their communities, but he can’t picture it. Those people must have had different families, different lives, a set of magical circumstances that made it possible. Shane pulls aside the curtain. The robin’s-egg sky is slashed with bright white brushstrokes of cloud. A group of kids zip by on bikes, screaming and laughing at one another. There is magic here, just not the right kind.

  He hasn’t been away from Jackie for this long since Destiny died. He would bet money that she’s been calling the police every few hours to make them promise they’ll call her as soon as they take him in for questioning. Once, when Shane was about eight, he and Jackie took a trip to Kenora for a couple of days. They stayed with his auntie Cher, not a real auntie but a friend of his mom’s from when she was a girl. They lived in a big housing complex full of Indians from all over the north. Kids ran back and forth between the apartments, hardly noticing whose house was whose, eating and playing until one place ran out of good snacks or they got bored of the toys, and then heading on to the next one. Just like at home, but with way more people squeezed close together. There was an older boy who hung around there named Thomas. He wore sleeveless T-shirts to show off his handful of scraggly armpit hairs and he openly smoked in front of the adults. Nobody bugged him about anything. He was terrifying.

  On the morning they were supposed to leave, Thomas called Shane over. He knew his mom would want to hit the road in the next little while, but he couldn’t say no. Thomas chatted him up for a few minutes and then told him to follow him to his house. He set up his game console and announced that they were going to play strip Mortal Kombat. Every time one of them lost a match, they would have to take off a piece of clothing. Shane had never played the game before, but there was no way to refuse. Shane threw everything he had into the game, using the old press-all-of-the-buttons-as-fast-as-you-can-and-hope-it-does-something trick. He lost a lot, but for every game he lost, Thomas lost one too. It was weird, but Shane wasn’t going to question it. Before long, both boys were naked and Thomas was proudly doing tricks like making his penis spin around in circles by doing a little hop and wiggling his hips. He had never been allowed to look at another boy’s body so close before. And here Thomas was, not only letting him look, but encouraging him to. The doorbell rang but Thomas said they could just ignore it. It was while Thomas was showing Shane how he could walk across the room with a whole dollar in nickels stuffed inside his foreskin (he said he could get all the way up to two dollars) that Jackie walked in. She had been hunting for him for hours, ringing doorbells and making everyone crazy. In a panic, Jackie had run around peeping in the windows of apartments where no one answered when she rang the bell. And that’s when she saw them.

  Jackie didn’t speak while he gathered his clothes and said goodbye to Thomas. They got into the car and watched the rows of town houses slouching by. As soon as they hit the highway, his mom began to cry so hard that she had to pull the car over. Shane apologized over and over, but the tears kept coming. Between sobs Jackie said, “It felt just like when we lost your dad.” Jackie shook in his arms. Shane could only think of one thing to do. He started singing “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” in the weird muppet voice that they made up when he was learning to talk. When she started to sing, he knew it was going to be okay. But the whole ride home, Shane couldn’t shake the feeling that something had changed. He had depended on her for everything, but he never thought about how his mom might need him too. Being loved that much was terrifying. What if one day he couldn’t give her what she needed? Would she fall apart again?

  Maybe that was why Destiny was able to make herself do what he had never been able to do, no matter how desperate he felt. She thought her life was hers alone to live or to end because she never had a moment when she saw just how badly they needed her. When she was alone with that emptiness, when she lost sight of the shore, Destiny might have imagined her death like a burned-out bulb on a Christmas tree, a small spot of darkness no one would notice in the chaos of sparkling lights on every side. There was no other way she could have done it. Not if she knew what it would do to them.

  Shane rubs his arm. A constellation of pink scars dots his shoulders where his mother’s fingernails dug into him on the day Destiny died. He runs his fingers over the smooth half-moons. Now that Jackie has fallen apart, she’s not his responsibility anymore. He can’t save her because she’s already gone. Having nothing to lose isn’t the same as being free, b
ut it might be the closest he’ll ever get. Shane sits up in bed. The pads of his feet spread over the floorboards, primed like a sprinter waiting for the starter pistol. Once David gets home and the sun dips past the tree line, they will be unstoppable.

  chapter twenty-five

  When they step outside, the sun hasn’t been gone long. A shred of violet softens the edge of sky that curves around the scrappy western tree line. Stars scatter through the sky like glitter from a cannon. Shane and David walk along the road without speaking. The windows of the houses glow like campfires. Shane can’t remember another time when his brain and his spirit and his pure animal body pulsed together like this. It’s like watching someone else control his body from a distance. He feels like himself and someone else at the same time. Is he transforming, becoming stronger, or coming apart?

  They get all the way to Janice’s store before David realizes that he left the rope behind. Shane doesn’t want to go back. They might lose momentum.

  “Don’t puss out on me, David.”

  “It’s still early, we’ve got all night.” David is already turning back. “I don’t wanna fuck this up.” Shane looks longingly at the lights of the store winking at him, flirting through the trees. The night feels charmed. Nothing can go wrong. David walks back the way they came.

  “Fine,” Shane says. “But no excuses next time.”

  When they get home, the lights in the kitchen are on. Evie should be asleep by now. She never turns the light back on after nine unless she’s got a guest over. They creep up to the edge of the windows, but the curtains are shut tight.

  “What now?” David asks.

  “I’ll go in and out through the bedroom window. There’s no way she’ll hear.”

  David looks back at the house, full of panic.

  “What else am I supposed to do? We can’t go in, and we can’t go to Debbie’s without the rope.”

  Shane boosts himself up to the edge of the window, trying to remember what he might knock over on the dresser when he slides in. Thankfully there’s not much there other than a torn ribbon shirt David’s been waiting to mend. Shane slides the window open and shimmies inside. The ribbon shirt drops to the ground with an airy plop, but otherwise the room is quiet.