Woodbury, Minnesota
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More Than Good Enough © 2014 by Crissa-Jean Chappell.
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for Harlan
one
Names are like tree rings. You might end up with a lot. But if you chopped me open and looked inside, you’d find only one. That’s the first thing I learned after I moved onto the Miccosukee reservation with my dad.
We were gliding through the Everglades on Uncle Seth’s airboat. The late afternoon sky gleamed in the smooth surface of the water, as if the clouds rolled under us. All around the boat, a chain of lilies floated. Nothing to hear except the fan blades roaring away.
On my lap, I held the baby alligator that we’d caught
in the tall grass. My uncle said that somebody must’ve kept the gator as a pet. When it grew too big, they dumped it in the swamp.
“They probably kept him in a bathtub,” he said, tapping the gator’s snout. “He didn’t eat right. Not enough meat and bones. See, his back’s all twisted.”
The gator squirmed in my fingers, looking for escape.
I knew how he felt.
We swerved up to the docks and cut the engine. A sign bolted to the post said MICCOSUKEE PROPERTY. NO TRESPASSING. The breeze smelled like woodsmoke and low tide. My aunts had waited for us all day, cooking sofke with cornbread.
Our sneakers clattered down the boardwalk. In the middle of the island was a chickee hut, its thatched roof jutting above the oak trees. No walls. Everybody was hanging out by the fire, talking super fast in Hitchiti. I didn’t understand a single word, but I had a feeling it was about me.
A bunch of kids were running around, playing stickball. They wore patchwork shirts that drooped over their jeans, and in both hands, they carried rackets. They took turns, lunging across the grass. I wanted to join them, but I had no clue how to play.
As I turned away, Dad called out, “Trent, aren’t you hungry?”
“No,” I said, heading to the water.
I found a quiet spot by the canal. Uncle Seth and my dad used to climb the big trees here, but that was a long time ago. Now the shoreline was choked with stringy cattails, the “gravestone” of the Everglades.
“A lot of fish have disappeared,” my uncle said. “Back in the day, we had so many, they used to jump into my canoe.”
I couldn’t tell if he was making this up. Uncle Seth was real good at stretching the truth. Not that I’d call him a liar. I mean, at least he didn’t mess with my head. That was my dad’s job.
In my arms, I held the gator. Did he even have a name? I crouched down near the canal and let go. Uncle Seth told me it couldn’t survive on its own, but I didn’t believe it. For a second, the gator didn’t move. Then it crawled into the water like it knew exactly where it belonged.
A couple weeks before, I was in the garage at my mom’s house, messing around with my bass guitar, trying to teach myself this epic spider-walk technique I learned on YouTube. It was sad how much I’d been neglecting my bass. My pinky kept slipping over the frets and making this wacked-out zppppptttt noise. It was beyond irritating.
Music is what got me into Southwinds, the magnet school for super-obsessed people who start playing violin at age two. Right. Everybody’s a genius. Here’s the truth. My grades had crashed and burned that last semester. I just wasn’t into it. Not when you’ve got teachers like Mr. Harding (aka Hard On) forcing you to play Canon in D over and over. It was so freaking boring. If I tried to freestyle, he’d get pissed.
When Mom found out I’d been ejected from Southwinds, she blamed the school. Then she called the principal and he blamed me.
“How could you fail all your exams?” Mom wanted to know.
Easy. I never went to class.
“This is inexcusable, Trenton,” she said, slamming down the phone. “I can’t have you going to Palm Hammock with all those druggies. Lord, what is this world coming to? They’re installing metal detectors on campus. I read it in the paper.”
If you asked me, regular school sounded a hell of a lot better. Metal detectors were nothing major unless you’re, like, carrying a Bowie knife in your sock.
Mom wouldn’t drop it. “We are having a discussion. Now.”
Discuss what? I was already done. Over and out.
I sank into the chair and slapped the tabs to “All Along the Watchtower.” My dad used to say that Jimi Hendrix was part Cherokee. When I was little, Dad would lock himself in here and play along with 94.9 Zeta Rocks. He’d crank the stereo so nobody would catch his mistakes. Still, I could tell he was good. More than good.
Mom got so frustrated with my little solo, she left the garage. I think she started crying. I felt kind of guilty for a nanosecond. Then I heard her on the phone, talking to my dad. They got divorced when I was little and he spent the past decade behind bars, but now that he’d gotten out of jail, he was staying with us. He was supposed to be looking for work, but as far as I could tell that wasn’t happening.
I played louder.
Jimi’s refrain buzzed through me, as if his rage had channeled into my hands. That’s the most awesome part about bass guitar. It’s a physical thing, almost percussive. I was so into it, I didn’t hear the car pull into the driveway.
The garage door rumbled open, ultra-dramatic. I watched a blade of light cut across the wall. In my mind, I heard drums thumping like the soundtrack to an old Western. I really hated those movies. The Indians were usually white people in headbands. The director would record their lines and play it backward, just to make it sound like another language. How dumb is that?
My dad marched up to me, wiggling his hands in the air. “Rocking out” on air guitar. Yeah, that’s what
he was doing. God, just kill me now.
“Very cool,” he said. “How long you been playing?”
“About an hour,” I said.
He looked confused, then gave me a fake-ass laugh. “No, I mean, when did you start taking lessons?”
Dad had never heard me play, but he’s the one who’d promised to teach me. Obviously, that’s hard to do behind bars. So Mom dragged me to Suniland Music, this place inside a strip mall. A player piano gleamed in the front window, the keys thudding all by themselves. Mom said it was “high class,” but it always scared the shit out of me.
Dad tried again. “So, I hear you’re switching schools. What’s going on with that?” He scratched his goatee, one of his “very cool” props, in addition to the “awesome” cargo shorts and the “bling” around his neck. Yeah, he was living the thug life.
This whole situation was making me sick. Without saying anything, I picked up my skateboard and shoved past him. Dad was yelling at me. There wasn’t much I could do about it. What did he want? I couldn’t go back in time and change my grades.
I slammed the board on the concrete. God, I used to skate, like, the second I woke up on Saturdays. Now the deck was chipped and I needed to glue it back together. The bearings were gunked with dirt. Basically, I’d been abusing that board with neglect, just like the rest of my life.
As I rattled across the driveway, I made up lyrics in my head. Nothing that deserved an award. Just random phrases about the darkness, how it swallows you whole. Guess I was talking to myself. Pretty sad, I know.
The neighbors at the end of the block were really getting into Christmas. They had this massive palm tree in their yard. All the fronds sparkled with plastic snowflakes. It must’ve taken them forever to decorate it. At that moment, I couldn’t decide if I admired their efforts or thought they were balls-to-the-wall crazy. Maybe both.
Somebody had plunked a Dixie cup onto one of the lower branches. This made me so mad, I rolled over there and snatched it up. Then I didn’t know what to do with it. I kept skating until finally I just left it in this lady’s mailbox. She was mean, anyway. One time, she called the cops because I was playing my bass at night. It wasn’t even that late, but old people
have no concept of time. They’re always sleeping.
When I got back, the garage smelled like bacon grease, this morning’s leftovers. Mom hadn’t even started making dinner. A bad sign. I dumped my board near the door and barged inside. Dad was sitting on the couch with Mom. Even worse, he had his arm around her, like she was his personal possession. I watched him blink and knew he was telling some bullshit story.
“ … needs to learn how to restructure his time,” Dad was saying.
I wanted to restructure his face.
Mom got up, real fast. “Where have you been?” she asked. “You can’t just run off like that.”
Before she could hug me, Dad was there, smashing his gut between us. “Go to your room,” he said, which was totally laughable. There was no place I’d rather be.
Everybody was screaming. I could hear them from the kitchen, where I checked below the sink for Dad’s tackle box. His secret stash. Not exactly a secret. I pulled out a bottle and shoved it in my back pocket.
I slammed the bedroom door, making sure they heard. It didn’t matter. They were busy with their own issues. Besides. The High Life was calling. I took out my lighter and hooked it under the bottle cap. Just one twist and it was mine.
The Miller dribbled foam all over the carpet. Great. Now my room stunk like those crackheads on Biscayne Boulevard, the guys with the cardboard signs saying WILL WORK FOR BEER. I mopped up the mess with some dirty boxers I’d tossed under the bed. Then I took a long gulp. Dad was yelling in the other room.
“You think this has been a vacation for me?” he said. “Well, it’s not Disney World.”
Mom was blabbing about “negative emotions” and “talking it out.” I could hear everything through the cheap drywall. Yeah, this was officially the worst day in the history of Trent.
I grabbed my iPod and scrolled through the playlists. For some reason, I hadn’t deleted my ex’s stupid mix. Why? I had no idea. And another mystery I couldn’t explain: Why was I listening to it?
Maybe I should’ve tried harder. Michelle wasn’t the perfect girlfriend, but I had no right to judge. And now I was switching schools. This was insane. Part of me was like okay, good. This gives me a chance to start over. I could totally become a different person.
At the same time, I was kind of freaking out. Reality had sunk in. The blank days of Christmas break. Nothing to look forward to in this house. The same empty rhythms. Waste the whole day playing Gears of War on the Xbox. Just me and
the Delta Squad.
Man, this sucked.
I chugged the beer so fast, I almost gagged. Soon a fog settled inside me. Usually when I drank alcohol, it turned down the volume in my brain. This time, the beer had the opposite effect. All my dark thoughts multiplied. Their weight dragged me into a black hole, the final resting place for a billion dead suns.
My bedroom door swung open. Dad lurched over to the desk and sort of collapsed. No respect for privacy whatsoever. He looked so pathetic sitting in that troll-sized chair, gawking at my Chiefs of America poster. I couldn’t help noticing that he and Sitting Bull had the same pissed-off look.
“Your hair’s too long,” Dad said.
“Fine. I’ll take care of it,” I told him. Mom always let it grow when I was a little kid. She said it represented a mighty spirit. If I chopped it off, I’d lose my bond with the universe. How did she know all this stuff? She wasn’t Indian.
“And get rid of those headphones,” he added. “What’re you listening to these days? Hillbilly music?” He grabbed my iPod.
The Miller bottle was on the desk. Bet he could smell the fumes. If you lit a match in my room, it would burst into flames. Too bad this didn’t actually happen.
Here’s what did happen.
Dad was fumbling with the iPod. He landed on a playlist so old I’d forgotten about it. “What’s this? Some bootleg Hendrix?”
I burned with pride. “It’s this track I’ve been working on.”
“Want to run that by me again?”
“I wrote it.”
The quality was mega shitty. I’d spent a lot of time trying to adjust the recording levels on Audacity, this free software I’d downloaded. Whatever. I could totally do it justice now.
“You know something?” Dad said, wrapping the earbuds around the iPod. No doubt twisting the wires into oblivion. “Son, you don’t need that fancy school.”
The power of music had saved me.
“Your mother’s got it in her head,” he rambled on. “She’s got all these ideas about how things should be.”
Wow. He was finally making sense.
“I’m thinking, me and you. Maybe we could live on the Rez.”
“The reservation?”
I wasn’t exactly jumping with excitement.
The Miccosukee reservation was in the Everglades. The middle of nowhere. I was still getting used to the idea of Dad being around, much less camping with him in some grass-covered chickee hut.
On the other hand, Mom was all kinds of drama. When Dad wasn’t around, she was sneaking off with some dude. Mr. Nameless. And she was constantly up in my business. It would only get worse.
“Your mother and I have already discussed it,” he said.
“So basically I have no choice?”
Dad eased himself out of the chair. He reached the door and I figured I was home free. Then he looked at the empty beer bottle. I was freaking so bad, waiting for him to explode. He took the Miller and walked into the hall without saying anything. Just closed the door slowly, not making a sound.
The bottle had stamped a ring of dampness in the fake wood. I rubbed my fist through it, b
ut the smear didn’t go away.
It probably never would.
My dad is one hundred percent Miccosukee. Ever since I could remember, I’d heard all these crazy stories about him. Stuff that involved stolen cars, pot brownies, and playing bass in a Jimi Hendrix cover band.
Dad grew up on the Rez. He had to move out once he hooked up with Mom, who is one hundred percent London hippie chick.
That makes me half native, half white, and one hundred percent nothing.
two
The Rez didn’t look much different from the flat concrete houses in my old neighborhood. Most houses were painted ice cream colors, lime green and strawberry, all lined up next to a canal laced with water lilies. Each house had its own theme, judging from the life-sized Elvis statue on a front porch. Kids ran around, steering golf carts along the dusty road. I waved to a little girl in a SpongeBob T-shirt. Her bare feet could hardly reach the pedals.
At the end of the block, people docked their airboats. That’s how we got to the tree islands in the Everglades. Sometimes this big old gator would swim up to the docks. I’d give him slices of toast and he’d blink, like he was saying thank you.
Me and Dad were staying next door to Uncle Seth in the Little Blue House. More like a shed, it was so damn small. And with Dad around, it was even smaller. The house was behind the Miccosukee Welcome Center. That’s where tourists can buy tickets to airboat rides and gator shows.
After we got back home from the cookout, I snuck off with my air rifle. I started blasting a pile of crap my ex-girlfriend gave me. Puka shell necklaces I never wore. A keychain that was supposed to store a hundred digital memories. Instead, it got stuck on one—me and Michelle with our mouths smashed together.
“Which do you like better?” she’d asked, deleting shot after shot.
I’d told her they all looked the same.
Wrong answer.
At first, I tried to set fire to the stuff, but the freaking keychain wouldn’t burn. The plastic wrinkled like a slug. So I dumped all that shit on the hood of Dad’s Jeep, the “swamp buggy” he left rusting behind the shed. I loaded the rifle and took aim.
More Than Good Enough Page 1
