Give Me Some Truth

by Eric Gansworth

  As that month wore on, our house formed a new rhythm. Derek could put up with it or leave, and he wasn’t a Moving Out kind. The rhythm was so steady, you could tell when our dad was ready to rumble. He usually started quiet with “Where’s that cap I gave you anyway?” Derek would mumble some shit about misplacing it. This was an excuse for our dad to poke at him with a You Gotta Be Careful speech, usually with some unwelcome umph, like a backhand whack or a lacrosse stick jab on Derek’s left butt cheek anytime he was in striking distance. He never actually asked about the night in question, and Derek never back-talked, and so it went on.

  Our house wasn’t the only place the story was kept alive either. The Buffalo Evening News had printed enough information for Derek’s new nickname to spread across the Rez within a week, though no one would ever say it around any outsiders. Derek’s stupid move became a celebration for some and he usually drank free on nights he showed down on Moon Road. He’d been the first Indian to do something about Custard’s Last Stand, and I kind of admired my brother for taking a stand of his own. I didn’t think I could. Not like that.

  I tried to get out of the house as fast as possible when my dad started up. At first I tried to get him to lay off, but then he started giving me lessons on why that was a bad idea. When my dad’s monster hand slams you, you didn’t forget it. So now if they revved up at night, I split and didn’t come home until past two in the morning. I’d check Derek’s wound for him, go to bed, and then wait for our dad’s bullshit machine to crank again the next day.

  Finally, yesterday, the school year ended. I’d set my alarm for 7:00, just in case, but my stupid body still woke up at 6:30 like I was getting ready to go to first period. And I wouldn’t have to do that for another two months. For the summer, I was working with my mom repairing lacrosse uniforms as they came in, which kept me in gas money and guitar strings, and didn’t require early rising. My mom worked a lot at home in the evening, watching TV, so she usually went in around ten. This morning, I could smell her making coffee downstairs.

  “You wanna cup?” she asked.

  “Nah, I’m up. Thought I’d give Lewis a ride. His summer hours at the garage start today—I told him ahead of time I’d swing by this morning.”

  “Nice of you,” she said, in a tone that meant: Why are you being nice? “Tell him I said to drop by. We haven’t seen him in a long time.” I guess in her eyes, Lewis was still one of my best friends, even when I blew him off for months.

  “Promise.” She’d be seeing a lot more of him. Sometimes I was a nicer guy than anyone gave me credit for.

  After our Memorial Day surprise gig, I had made plans. By the fall, I’d have Lewis, Doobie, and myself in place as three foundation members of my Kick-Ass Rez Band. And now it was time to let Lewis know about his future, in the usual way. Partway to his house, I spotted him hoofing it to work.

  “Get in, Gloomis,” I said, pulling over. “Told you I’d give you rides until you could afford to get your bike out of the repair shop.”

  “Like you haven’t stiffed me before,” he said. “And quit calling me that.”

  “You live on a Rez, man. You get the nickname you deserve, not the one you want. You want a different one, quit walking around like someone ran over your dog.” He didn’t move. He had a backpack over his shoulder and he was still wearing that beat-up leather jacket Albert gave him a few years ago. Except now it fit.

  “You gonna get in?” I asked, revving the Chevelle’s glasspacks.

  “Only if you turn around,” he said.

  “What’s the diff? Your job’s five minutes away from any Rez road.”

  “I wanna see something up that way,” he said, pointing the direction he was walking.

  “You gonna tell me what it is, or do I have to guess?” I asked, already doing a three-point turn. When I was done, he finally walked around to the other side and got in.

  “Still smells funny in here,” he said, wedging his backpack between his feet. I thought the odor had faded. Maybe I’d grown used to it? I ignored him and got to the point.

  “So how’s your playing these days? Been a while since I’ve needed any pointers from The Bug, but we sounded good at the graveyard. You still doing lessons?” The Bug was our old guitar teacher who I’d stopped going to six months ago, this wooden-legged, Cowboy-song-yodeling Dog Street Skin. He was a chord player who could do finger-picking if he had a good rhythm backer, and his playing got looser the deeper he was into a jug. Dealing with someone else’s natural rhythm forced you to work different skills, and even Lewis, keeping time with the two of us, had become a decent player.

  “Good to play with someone else,” he said. “Besides, The Bug enjoys it.”

  “Maybe I’ll stop by. Always keeps you on your toes.” Lewis nodded, trying to stone-face me. I knew The Bug had asked him to play backup for a July Fourth shindig, with pay. My dad had heard about it too and negotiated a deal with both of us playing. Clearly, no one had broken the news to Lewis yet.

  “Guess we missed it,” he said, shrugging at the crossroads, looking both ways.

  “What’s the ‘it’ we missed?” I asked, turning south on Snakeline, heading to his job. “It’s early. Wanna grab a coffee at the Shop and Dine?”

  “I’ve only got two bucks. Pay day’s tomorrow. What’s Tami doing for the summer?” he asked, switching from his broke ass to my cousin who he’d worshipped the last couple of years.

  “Washing her hair,” I said—her standard response to him. The perfect Rez Joke. One you laugh at because you know you’re being made fun of in it.

  “Asshole,” he said. I laughed. He knew I still called the shots.

  As we rounded the bend, Gloomis mumbled, “Hmm, there it is,” like he’d spotted a pen he dropped. But what we saw as we drove closer was a spectacle I’d never before seen visited upon the Rez—a U-Haul flying out of the driveway of a small shack. The truck had off-loaded a collection of old furniture and boxes with sayings like “Kitchen Shit” Magic-Markered on them.

  This might not seem a big deal most places, but it was unheard of here. Nobody moves back to the Rez. Nobody leaves either, but still, a U-Haul leaving fully loaded might have made slightly more sense. I’d never even seen that before, but I’d heard the desire, like a fire drill: proceed to the nearest exit.

  More shocking? I knew the shack. Maybe this would be the Summer of Surprises.

  “Stinkpot’s moving back to the Rez?” I asked Gloomis. I took my foot off the gas. She and another girl left the shack and stood by the boxes. “And who’s that hot little chick with her?”

  “If you’re going to call Marie that, I can get out right now,” Lewis said. “And I can talk to them myself, and then, as always, walk to work.”

  “Don’t get your panties in a bunch.” I tried to remember the last time I saw her, before she and most of her family ditched the Rez for the “big city life” of Niagara Falls seven years ago. She was the girl with greasy hair and dingy Goodwill clothes she was always outgrowing.

  But now? Stinkpot’s—Marie’s—hair was long, parted in the middle and curling down a little in front, framing her cleavage. Those boobs, in a white tank top, glowed like a perfect pair of velvet beadwork pillows. Her clothes were still too tight but it was on purpose now, and I couldn’t agree more about how nice they fit. “Fine! Marie’s moving back to the Rez?”

  “She told me a few weeks ago,” Gloomis said as I stopped. “I assumed it was their U-Haul, but I didn’t want to be wrong.” News on the reservation spread like a runny nose, and I had a hard time believing I’d missed this bit of Eee-ogg, but I’d been making myself scarce on the Rez since Derek debuted his Hamburglar career. I hadn’t even caught on to the obvious clues of change, like the old-fashioned camper trailer now parked right behind the Shack.

  “Hey, Carson,” Marie said, smiling and leaning into my window as Gloomis got out.

  “Hey.” I couldn’t believe her amazing City Teeth, all gleaming with fluoride beauty. Rez water
, thanks to treaties, all came from wells. Without the benefit of forced oral hygiene treatments, our teeth were dotted with dirty gray metal fillings. “Moving back?”

  “Such a keen observer! You move up with Lewis to the Brainiac classes?” she said, laughing. “What gave it away?” Her laugh was light, easy, not quite the Broken Glass Joke Delivery most people on the Rez used. A small change in tone really made a difference.

  “Listen, I’m giving Gloomis a ride to work, but first we were getting a coffee. Wanna come? Bring your cute friend?”

  “Cute friend?” she said as the other girl walked up to join us. “Um, this is my sister? Maggi?” This amazing girl was Marie’s younger sister? Incredible! Made sense, though. I hadn’t seen her in seven years and she’d been a kid for real, but it seemed like she had a different name then. An old lady name. Even more old-lady than Maggi. Marie turned to the girl—who was dressed like she was splitting for a nightclub—and poked her collarbone. “And don’t you be getting a big head about your looks either. Carson’s goofing.” I wasn’t goofing. “Even with all that eye shadow on, anyone taking a good look at you is still gonna know you’re only fifteen.”

  “That’s what I’m counting on,” Maggi said, looking sideways at me and touching her front teeth with her tongue. Her teeth gleamed like Marie’s. She gave a surprising Scandalous Rez Girl laugh, even though she hadn’t lived here in so long. “Gimme my gloss,” she said to Marie, examining her lips in my mirror. “I need a smooth coat.”

  “You could always carry your own purse,” Stinkpot said, producing a tube that oozed some shiny goo that Maggi worked carefully into the curves of her lips. When she was done shining up her appearance, she pouted her mouth and asked what I thought. I smiled and nodded.

  From where I sat, the one major difference between how Rez girls and white girls acted around boys was that Rez girls understood “snagging” was an equal opportunity sport. They never pretended they didn’t notice guys. They still made fun of you, but if they were silent about your looks, you knew you were at least in the running. The drawback for guys was that if you weren’t interesting, they made that clear, no matter who might hear. She handed the tube back to Stinkpot without even acknowledging the favor.

  “Your lips are so shiny,” Stinkpot said, “crows are gonna carry them away.” She pinched a finger and thumb like a beak and swooped over Maggi’s face, making crow noises.

  “Should try some, yourself,” Maggi said in an instant. “Instead of those Old-Lady-Bingo Lipstick samples you steal from Mom.” Maggi made eye contact with her sister in the mirror before adjusting it back for me. “What color you got on? Fire Hydrant?”

  “See how sisters are?” Stinkpot said to Gloomis, putting Maggi’s little tube back in her purse and snapping it shut. “They’re the worst. You don’t even want to hear it.”

  “I got a sister and I like her just fine,” I said, grinning at Maggi.

  “She means sister to sister,” Maggi offered. “And she’s right. They are the worst. They pretend they don’t like that cute top you showed them on sale, and by the time you get some funds from your mom, the top’s gone. And what do you know? Two weeks later, there’s your sister, picking it up at layaway, and it doesn’t even fit her as good as it does you, ’cause she likes the big Family Economy-Size bag of Doritos, washing it down with a Boss of Pepsi.”

  “Hey, come on,” Gloomis said, always trying to make peace. “You just have different styles, that’s all. Marie’s like the sister on that new show with the hot orange Dodge, wearing these shorty-short cutoffs. And look at me. I’ve got my steel toes on,” he said, impossibly lifting his leg high up into the air to show off his big, clompy work boots.

  “And Carson’s probably wearing something shiny and narrow,” he added, peeking over. “The Indian in Cowboy boots.” He leaned back against my car, laughing and smiling at Stinkpot. She grinned, doing an exaggerated lean into him, her bare shoulders resting on his arms.

  “No shit kickers for me,” I said. No matter what Maggi said, it wasn’t going to change his mind about how Stinkpot—Marie!—looked. I suddenly understood why he’d backed off on the Tami questions so quickly. In an instant, on this early morning in June, he’d finally moved on. It seemed like the someone else was maybe even kind of interested in him too. If Marie had been a straight-up Rez Girl, I’d know for sure, but her years in the city could have stripped off some of her Snagging Mojo, like bad vinyl upholstery on an old kitchen chair. Marie leaned over to Maggi and whispered something in her ear, and Maggi instantly frowned, getting ready to protest, but the more Marie talked, the more Maggi chilled.

  “Listen,” Lewis said, looking at his watch. “I actually do have to get to work, and we’ve pretty much run out of that extra time we were gonna spend on coffee. No offense.” I decided not to point out that it was the two bucks in his pocket he was worried about spending, not the time.

  “We got things to do too,” Marie said, pointing to the stuff covering their overgrown lawn. “But I did want to talk to you about that job.”

  “Tell you what,” I said. “You and your sister get in, we’ll drop Gloomis off at work, and then we’ll go get some coffee and after? I’ll help you unpack.”

  “We need someone to stay here,” Marie said, looking at Maggi, who really wanted to punch her sister, or whatever girls did in a fight. “Marvin’s packing, and our mom and dad are heading up to get the rest of our stuff. We’re supposed to have this in by the time they get here.”

  “Marvin?” I asked.

  “Maggi’s twin,” Marie said.

  “Your mom and dad named a girl Marvin? Cruel even by Rez standards.” How did I not remember that Marie had twin sisters and that one of them was given a boy’s name?

  “Fraternal twins, genius,” Maggi said. “You’re in the smart-kid classes?” she asked me. Then she grinned and turned to Marie. “Is this why you wanted to come back here?” She pushed Marie’s shoulder, harder than a joke warranted. “So you’d seem comparatively smart?”

  “You can continue to see what I meant about sisters,” Marie said to me. “And that sister had better be nicer since I’m the one trying to get her a job.” And then she turned to Lewis, smiling, “Which was what I wanted to talk with you about.” Lewis tried his best to cover his Gloomis expression. I guess he’d been hoping she wanted to talk with him about something else. “Are there any summer jobs in that program you work through?”

  “Not sure,” Lewis said. “New summer kids don’t start for another week. I’m on early because I work during the school year.”

  “Any applications?”

  “Probably at the high school office.”

  “Special skills needed?”

  “You gotta have a physical. I don’t think girls get the cough test,” Lewis said, grabbing his package and coughing. We all laughed.

  “What kind of test is that?” Maggi said, fake alarm pasted on her face.

  “One you’d fail,” I said. “You are definitely All Girl.”

  “I’m sure you don’t have to worry.” Lewis added. “Other than that, the only requirement is having a broke-ass family. If your parents make too much, you won’t qualify.”

  “No problems there,” Maggi said.

  “So you both want job applications?” Lewis asked. “I could probably walk over to the office on my lunch break and get you a couple.”

  “No, just for me,” Maggi said. “Marie’s still working the tourists. And who knows what Marvin’s doing. Probably our dad will draft him into carving those little animals full-time.”

  “Just come with us,” I said, though Marie clearly didn’t want her sister to tag along. “We’ll dump Gloomis, get you an application, and work on it over coffee. And then we’ll drop it off. You’ll have a job in no time. I’ll even give you the physical myself,” I said, giving her my own version of the Scandalous Rez Laugh. “Minus the cough part.”

  “Not a chance,” Marie said, walking toward the Chevelle to join us. �
�But I’ll take you up on that ride.” She opened the passenger side door, slid in all the way, bumping me in the middle and patting the seat next to her. “Come on, Lewis. We don’t want you to be late.” Lewis slid in, close enough that their legs touched too. His cheeks got darker, and he casually crossed his hands over his package to hide the immediate reaction to being this close to a girl he thought was hot. It took all my willpower not to point this out, as I hit the ignition and blackened the road with my Goodyears.

  “So how’s the guitar playing?” Marie said, leaning a little closer to Lewis as we passed the road sign announcing that we were leaving the Rez. “I see you don’t have it with you.”

  “Yeah, they’re not likely to pay me for musical interludes at the garage,” he said. “It’s going all right, Nyah-wheh. I practice every day and still go to The Bug’s. Unlike someone else.”

  “I don’t need to,” I said. How did she know Lewis played? Maybe he told her about us?

  “I didn’t know you played too,” Marie said to me. What the hell?

  “Since before Gloomis. I’m more advanced, you might say.”

  “You might say,” she cracked. I didn’t remember her being so quick with a comeback.

  “Listen,” Lewis said as he got out at the garage, keeping the door open to be close just one more minute. “If you guys are still moving boxes when I get out, I’ll stop on my way home.”