The '49 Indian

by Craig Moody

  I turned to face her, my skin still damp with tears.

  “I will have you know that I am being more than patient with you right now,” she continued, adjusting the clarity and firmness of her voice. I could tell she had been waiting to have this conversation with me.

  “Your father and I are not too happy with all the time you have been spending with that neighbor boy.”

  She steadied her eyes on mine, her anticipation of my response, verbal or otherwise, as intense and powerful as a lioness crouching just feet from an infant gazelle.

  “There is something about him we are not too keen on,” she stated, her face stern, her eyes unmoving. “I am not sure what it is, but it’s enough for us to say that we think you would be better off just staying away from him.”

  I could only stare, the broken levee of my emotions too uncontrolled and flooded for me to begin processing her words.

  “Plus, I think it is high time you figure out what you are going to do.”

  She waited for my reply but continued to speak when I failed to do so in the time allotted by her patience.

  “You need to either get your butt back in school or get a job. But you are certainly not going to hang around here all the time doing God knows what with that boy.”

  She threw her head in the direction of Aunt Mert’s, her face now crinkled and aged under the unrelenting weight of her disapproval.

  “He is probably on drugs or something. He looks like he hasn’t bathed in weeks, and I would bet he didn’t even complete high school.”

  I continued to stare, my pulse now racing, the flooded valley of my emotions now boiling with the rising rage of anger.

  “He’s a loser, Dustin. You are so much better than someone like him. Don’t let him drag you down. You need some better friends. I think you should get out and go to—”

  “I love him!” I shouted, my voice so loud and unexpected that it startled even me.

  I watched as my mother’s face melted from selfish anger to sudden horror.

  “What?” she murmured, her expression alarmed, her hands reaching for the security of the hallway wall.

  With the levee already broken, I found strength and courage in the raging waters of truth that now rushed beyond the normally secured and steadfast concrete emotional embankment.

  Without warning or thought, without a plan or even an inspiration, I flooded my mother with a truth that I myself had been too afraid to fully accept and embrace, much less speak out loud. Still, the words fell from my mouth as solid and honest as an elephant’s sturdy footsteps across an African plain.

  “That’s right, Mom,” I bellowed into the space between us. “I’m gay!”

  I watched as my mother nearly fell over, her head bobbing slightly to the side as her feet shuffled beneath her. Instinctively, I moved toward her.

  “Mom,” I called as I approached her. “Mom,

  look at me.”

  The stinging rush of pain triggered by the open impact of her hand to my face electrified the nerves of my head like a lightning bolt. I swallowed hard, the nervous dryness of my throat relieved by the sliding moisture as it passed. I took in a breath before turning to fully face her again.

  “No,” she growled through tightly clenched teeth. “No son of mine is gay. No!”

  Again, she raised her hand to slap me, but this time I moved to the opposite side of the hall, leaving the power of her arm to strike a family portrait that adorned the wall that had stood beside me.

  “No!” she screamed again, this time the presence of fearful tears clogging the projection of her voice.

  “Yes, Mom,” I continued, my own voice wobbled and shaken. “It’s true. I have always known it. It just took me a while to finally understand it.”

  She lifted her eyes and glared at me, the shadows of a million confirmed suspicions escaping her skull like bats fleeing a dynamited cavern.

  “It isn’t true!” she yelled back, her eyes bulged and watered. “You know it isn’t true.”

  “But it is, Mom! It is!”

  I felt myself fall back against the wall, my spine slowly inching my body to the floor.

  “Is that why you were at the bathhouse?”

  I looked up as she fell from her unstable stance to a crouched squat. We were now eye to eye, perched like vultures over a rotting carcass.

  “Were you really raped or was it just sex?”

  I closed my eyes as she crawled toward me, her hands and feet scraping the wooden hallway floor like a crab scurrying across a dry boat dock.

  “Is that what really happened?” she asked as she closed in on me, her rage and disappointment now staining her face, her sky-blue mascara running with her tears.

  “Answer me!” she shouted, her face only inches from mine.

  “No!” I screamed back. “No, I was attacked.

  I went there on purpose, but I was attacked…raped!”

  I opened my eyes just as my mother dropped her weight onto my chest.

  “No, no, no,” she sobbed into my shirt, the smell of her faint perfume seeping through the air and into my nose.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” I whispered, placing my hands on her trembling shoulders. “I don’t mean to hurt you. This is just the truth. This is who I am.”

  “No,” she spoke with confidence as she raised her head. “This is not who you are. This is what people have told you. This isn’t you. It was probably that boy. He put all this into your head. I should have known he was some sort of pervert.

  He—”

  “Stop!” I cried, pushing her from my chest and to the open area of the hallway. “It’s nothing like that. He has nothing to do with this.”

  “The hell he doesn’t,” she scoffed, lifting herself from the floor.

  “You listen here, boy,” she seethed, her voice now dark and hollow. “No child of mine will ever live under my roof while partaking in some disgusting lifestyle of unnatural…whatever.”

  She paused, ensuring that my eyes were locked on hers.

  “It’s sinful and it’s revolting.”

  She directed her words at me, as fiery and dangerous as a burning arrow. She was certain to strike the softness of my emotional belly with her angered intent.

  “We are going to get you to someone,” she announced breathlessly as she moved toward me. “There are people you can talk to about this.

  People who can help you sort out this confusion you are feeling.”

  She lifted her hand to cover my mouth before I could respond.

  “But most of all,” she stated in a bone- chilling tone, “your father must never know about this.”

  She moved her eyes into the dim light.

  “He will disown you.”

  With that, she slowly spun on her heels and disappeared toward the stairway. My heart beat in unison with the creaking boards as she neared the first floor. I allowed myself to fall back against my closed bedroom door, the enormity of what had just occurred replaying through my mind like a flapping bedsheet left out in a Kansas rainstorm. It was several minutes before I could muster the energy to turn the knob and move into the room.

  Closing the door behind me, I fell to my knees, my sobbing tearless, my breathing broken and exhausted.

  Just as the sun set beyond the rooftops, I cried myself to sleep, the haunting voices of a dismissive Gauge and a raging, unaccepting mother pressed upon my heart like some Shroud of Turin that neither time nor tundra could erase.

  ***

  I hardly left my room for the next three days. During the few, brief encounters I had with my mother, she barely glanced at me, much less spoke. In the middle of the second night, I heard her sobbing in the downstairs guest bathroom as I made my way from the kitchen. She was there to avoid disturbing my father, and I imagined that her tears were over me.

  I obsessively glanced out my bedroom window, praying to catch a glimpse of Gauge. I never did. For three days straight, not a shred of evidence of his existence could be found. I would see Au
nt Mert’s giant silver Cadillac backing down the driveway, returning eight or so hours later like clockwork. Still, no Gauge.

  As the sun was setting on the third day, I finally heard his voice. Cracking my window, I pressed my ear into the wind, allowing the small bones to sense the direction of the voice. It took me several minutes to figure out that it was coming from the backyard. It sounded like he was speaking to Aunt Mert, her high Midwestern drawl peppering the conversation from time to time, accenting the powerful bass of Gauge’s baritone like a wind chime.

  On the fourth day, I went outside. Standing in the driveway, I watched as some neighborhood children made their way from the school bus stop. Their carefree chatter and laughter swirled around me like a soft breeze in the stale, humid air, lifting some of the heaviness of my burdened and troubled mind.

  I envied their innocence. Life had yet to penetrate their silk-like childhoods. If only I could recapture my own trouble-free existence. If only I could go back. Back before the bathhouse. Back before meeting Gauge. Back before breaking my mother’s heart.

  “Hey.”

  I turned to see Gauge standing beside me, his shirt off, his worn blue jeans creased and wrinkled from what appeared to be extended wear.

  “Hey,” I replied, my voice creaking to life for the first time in days.

  “Sorry about the other day, man,” he said, his eyes connected to mine. “I shouldn’t have messed with that Jack Daniel’s.”

  He brushed his hands over the sides of his jeans.

  “I shouldn’t have done what I did.”

  I watched as he lifted his hands to rub his

  face, some sort of greasy residue sliding across his skin like a tribal war paint.

  “It’s…” my voice broke into silence. “It’s okay.”

  “Cool,” he responded, his nervousness giving way to relief. “Wanna see what I’ve been doing to the Indian?”

  I stared at him, my eyes unable to blink, my brain unable to think.

  “Come on,” he grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the garage.

  Before I could react, we were inside Aunt Mert’s open garage, the 1949 Indian in pieces all over the solid concrete floor.

  “I am completely refurbishing the carburetor,” he announced, squatting to adjust some of the chrome pieces. “When I’m done, this baby will be ready for the wide-open road.”

  He stood to face me.

  “We could make it out to LA.”

  I closed my eyes, the silly dream-talk now a faded memory, yet present annoyance.

  “Look, Gauge,” I started, forcing my voice into a stable and focused key.

  “Well, look who it is!” a high-pitched female voice broke into the space around us. “I haven’t seen you in days! For a while there, I thought you two were conjoined twins or something.”

  I turned to see Aunt Mert, a tray of blueberry muffins perched upon her flattened right hand.

  “I figured my Gauge was working up an appetite out here, so I tossed in some of these muffins I baked up for work this morning.”

  She moved the tray between Gauge and me.

  “Please, boys, eat up. Heaven knows I don’t need to eat any more of these!”

  She laughed, her girlish giggle cleansing the air of the emotionally-heavy fog that had only recently set in.

  “Thanks, Aunt Mert,” Gauge chimed in, lifting one of the oversized muffins from the tray. “These babies are my favorite.”

  Aunt Mert and I watched as he peeled down the paper wrapper and shoved the entire morsel into his mouth.

  “Well, dear me!” Aunt Mert responded in a sing-song voice. “It isn’t like someone is going to take it from you, dear. You know you can take more than one bite.”

  Gauge smiled, his cheeks stuffed to capacity, bobbing left and right as he struggled to consume the muffin.

  “So, how’ve you been, Dustin?” Aunt Mert questioned, her lilac scent wafting through the garage like an invisible purple scarf.

  “Doing fine,” I lied, my eyes glazed with the truth of pain.

  “I see,” Aunt Mert replied, her eyes confirming that she didn’t believe me.

  “Well, I’ll leave you boys to it then.”

  I watched as the tiny red-haired woman glided back into the house, the smell of her muffins and perfume swirling behind her like a majestic cape.

  I turned back to Gauge, who was still attempting to swallow the contents of his mouth.

  “Goddamn, Gauge. You’re gonna kill yourself eating that way.”

  He chuckled, the sound of his laughter absorbed by the mass of sugary dough churning inside his jaws.

  “Okay, so listen,” I started again, this time my words calm and stable. “Things are not good for me at home right now.”

  Gauge’s face morphed from playful to serious.

  “I said some things to my mom that I guess I shouldn’t have.”

  I dropped my eyes to the floor, the lack of confidence and uncertainty that consumed me now as plain as the flesh that surrounded my bones.

  “I think it’s best that I don’t hang out with you so much right now.”

  With an audible gulp, Gauge swallowed the mashed muffin and focused on catching his breath.

  “What do you mean?” he questioned, his voice bursting with concern. “What did you say to her?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I fired back, my anger launched from the surface of the deep pool of shame and regret that filled my being.

  “Okay,” Gauge replied softly, placing a hand on my shoulder. “You know I’m here for you, Dustin,” he spoke gently, his booming voice now fragile and sincere.

  He placed his index finger under my chin, lifting my face to his.

  “Always.”

  His breath was heavy with the sweetness of the blueberry muffin. My heart beat faster as I realized how close I was to him, the tenderness of his ruby lips glistening from the caress of his tongue. The burning desire I had buried three days prior now reignited beneath the flimsy covering of my contrived mental block like an inferno below a forest canopy.

  “Thank you,” I whispered, a tear escaping my left eye. I wiped it away before Gauge could notice, too afraid to allow this encounter to become any heavier than it already was. “That means a lot.”

  “This is about the fourth time I’ve rebuilt this carburetor,” he announced after a few seconds of silence, stepping aside to allow the deconstructed motorcycle engine take the focus. “I’ve built and rebuilt this engine so many times I am beginning to wonder if it is even worth the trouble.”

  He brought his eyes back to mine.

  “Junkyard parts, ya know. I guess you get what you pay for.”

  He laughed, his crooked smile revealing a rogue blueberry bit smashed and stuck between two of his front teeth.

  “Blueberry stuck in your teeth,” I stated, pointing to it. I watched as he leaned toward the Indian’s left chrome mirror, sliding the baked fruit away in a unified movement of fingertip and tongue.

  “Well, I need to get back home, Gauge,” I said, moving to the open garage door. A rare, slightly crisp breeze greeted me as I edged the covering of the roof.

  “Wait,” Gauge boomed, his voice halting my movement.

  I didn’t look at him as he neared me, the heat from his skin overpowering the remaining hint of the elusive breeze.

  “I want you to know that I didn’t mean to upset you,” his voice quivered, his struggling breath lost to the final sweep of the escaping wind.

  “That is the last thing I would ever want to do.”

  I could feel him staring at me, the presence of discomfort and guilt practically another being standing in the small space between us.

  “I know, Gauge,” I said, lifting my eyes to his. “You’ve already apologized, and I’ve already told you it was okay.”

  I rested my left hand lightly on his shoulder, waiting for his gaze to steady over mine.

  “We are past this.”

  He nodded, relief melti
ng from him like the droplets of salt-laced dew that covered his furrowed brow.

  “I’ll see you later,” I concluded calmly, the weight of my hidden emotions now so cumbersome it was as if I were wading in a mud pit. Still, I managed a confident stride down the driveway and onto the sidewalk that led back to my parent’s house.

  I didn’t stop once I was inside. I slowly ascended the stairs, rounded the corner to my bedroom, and slipped inside the door. Falling face first into my pillow, I started to drift away, the churning of emotions silently slipping through my body like the sluggish sands of an hourglass. I was just starting to doze when I heard my bedroom door open, the pressure of the hallway air filling my room like a fast-rolling fog.

  I lifted my face and saw my mother, her image slowly clearing into view beneath the haze of impending sleep and waterless tears. She was in her nightgown, an enormous glass of red wine in one hand, her rarely touched Bible in the other.

  She took a giant chug of wine before fully entering the room, closing the door quietly behind her.

  “Mom?” I whispered, quickly lifting my body into a sitting position. My heart began to race at the surprise of not only her presence, but also the unusual appearance of her nightgown at such an early hour, and the holy book, which she only seemed to touch on Easter Sunday or take to funerals.

  “Shh,” she hissed at me, stumbling a bit as she made her way to the bed. “I don’t want your father to hear me in here.

  “Okay?” I answered inquisitively, darting my eyes toward the door as if expecting my father to appear at the mention of his name.

  “Mom, what’s going—”

  “Shh!” she commanded, shoving her wine- stained finger over my lips.

  She sat beside me, bending slowly to set the wine glass on the floor. She groaned a bit as she lifted her body back into place, turning to me with a clouded, tear-stained face.

  “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,” she whispered, her voice raw in a cocktail of fermented grapes and emotion.

  I watched as she fumbled the pages of her Bible, a coupon for hair removal cream falling to the floor as she located a space in the massive tome.

  “This,” she pointed, shoving the neatly crisp pages onto my lap. “Read what I’ve highlighted.”