Give Me Some Truth

by Eric Gansworth

  “Um, are you?”

  “If they think you are, you can be in as much trouble as if they caught you out right,” Lewis said. Then he pointed to a floor drain that looked remarkably like the Jackson Pollock painting I saw on that art museum field trip. That painting was called Convergence, but I thought of it as Portrait of My Mother’s Brain When Child Protective Services Shows Up. I wasn’t sure what was going on here.

  “What about it?” I asked, staring at his pointing finger and then leaning in closer.

  “Anywhere you see those, avoid stepping,” he said, pulling me back a little.

  “What is it?” I asked, right as I noticed a horrible smell coming off the swirl, with a hint of wintergreen on top of the stench.

  “Chew,” Lewis said, wrinkling his nose. “Kenny, that old guy with the bottom lip bulging out? He chews tobacco.” Almost on cue, this short, potbellied man came out and smiled at me, raised his fingers, and contributed a jet of black spit onto his Floor Drain Abstract Expression.

  “New kid?” he asked, extending a rough hand, like an overstuffed work glove, to shake mine. “Come on in. We’ll introduce you around,” the guy said. “As the oldest, I have seniority.”

  “You wish,” one of the younger guys said. “If you had seniority, you’d be retired.”

  “Kenny,” the potbellied man said, ignoring that comment. “Mechanic’s helper at your service. It’s true, I don’t have that seniority, but if I did, I wouldn’t retire. I’d have to put up with my wife all day instead of only half.” Charming. I wondered if they had gone to Niagara Falls for their honeymoon. Most of these garage guys were in their late twenties or early thirties, almost all of them white. Some were cute. One had a nice smile, perfectly framed by a bushy mustache.

  “Liz,” a woman said. “The only name you need to know.” She wasn’t wearing the Work Blues I loved, like most everyone else. Her outfit was just beat-up regular clothes, a grungy T-shirt, cutoffs, and sneakers. “I’m the one you answer to.” She flipped a wall switch, and an enormous cylindrical machine in the corner roared on, killing any further conversation. Everyone trudged out through us. Lewis stepped out of the way, like the guys would knock him down if he hadn’t. But I wasn’t putting up with that.

  “Maggi,” I said loudly to Liz. She’d need to know my name too.

  “Save it ’til we get to the wash bay, kid.”

  “We didn’t punch in yet,” Lewis said. “I can do them both.”

  “No, show her what she’s gotta do. Meet me at the bay. I’ll have buses up.” She spun around and peeled out, letting us know she was done.

  “Friendly,” I said to Lewis as we went back to the time cards. We passed by guys hauling open big bay doors. In the entry, we stuck our cards into the wall-mounted clock and something inside stamped the exact minute and second.

  Right as we did, the guy with the bushy mustache came out of the men’s room and gave me that nice smile again. “So you’re working here, huh?” he said. I nodded. “You hang out with this Loser?” he asked, poking a finger into Lewis’s chest.

  “He’s a nice guy,” I said. “He helped me get this job. I wouldn’t be here without him.”

  “He didn’t help you get any job,” the guy said, stretching his arms above his head, flexing. Where his T-shirt sleeves rode up, his arms were pasty, the tan mismatched from hanging one arm out his truck window when he drove. “Some kid up and quit on them.”

  “I still wouldn’t have known,” I said. Lewis was trying to nudge me into the bays, but I pretended not to notice. It was weird and exciting to be working close to actual men in the real world. Most of the men I’d met so far in my life were the New Grooms on their best behavior. I was charged with electricity being here.

  “A real gentleman’d give you the ride,” the guy said. “But you can see this Loser ain’t a real man. Look at these bug feelers.” He slapped lightning fast at Lewis’s jaw so hard his teeth clicked. Lewis was trying hard to grow a mustache and beard, and now I realized he was probably trying to fit in with the guys here.

  You always heard about Indians not being able to grow facial hair, only from white people who didn’t know any actual Indians. All they saw were fake TV Indians that cranked out bullshit stereotypes: Our men couldn’t grow facial hair; our women had mystical powers; we hung out with our animal friends and whispered to our crops to make them grow; we were soulful (whatever that meant). If we had these superpowers, we wouldn’t have been nearly genocided off the map.

  We knew that a lot of white people thought this way, but you corrected them only if you wanted people to notice you in a bad way. I tried only to be noticed in a good way. Lewis, on the other hand, was on a one-man mission to prove those stereotypes were wrong. And the sad mustache was one particular battle he was losing. It looked like parentheses around his mouth, and his beard did resemble black twist ties stuck on his chin. You noticed it only in bad ways.

  “This,” the guy said, presenting his own face, “is how a real man keeps a mustache.” Agreed! Up close, it was thick and auburn, neatly trimmed and hanging down a little on the ends, bracketing his smile. “My Kiss Tickler.”

  “Don’t you have somewhere to be, Jim?” Lewis said. “We have to check with Liz and get our assignments for the day.” Trying again for distraction, he grabbed my arm gently.

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but yeah, I should get to it,” Jim said, subtly stepping between us. He put his big hand on the top of my head and shook it gently, bringing our faces close, looking me in the eye. “You know, I’m a kid short on my team.” He gave my head a gentle squeeze. “Wouldn’t be hard to transfer. You know how to use a riding mower?”

  “Sorry,” I said, shaking my head. “I gotta go. I believe in holding up my share.”

  “Bet you do,” he said. “All right.” He let me go. “I gotta get my crew their assignments too. Maybe I’ll stop here for lunch today. Don’t matter where I eat.” He stopped and turned around. “Could teach you how to use the rider. Super easy. Just ask for me, Jim Morgan, if you change your mind.” He smiled and walked with us through the garage to the far bay, where Liz was pulling a second bus in through a back bay door. She told Lewis to give me a quick lesson in cleaning a bus and then she said she’d be back to check on me later to see how I was doing.

  I grabbed the basket of cleaning supplies Lewis said was mine, and slid into the enormous driver’s seat. Lewis said front to back was best. The front seemed to be the most finicky, spraying all the surfaces with cleaning solution and wiping away every drop with crappy, budget-grade paper towels. I couldn’t quite get over how strange the driver’s seat felt. I’d recently watched Carson drive his car, on the few Rez Laps cruises he and Lewis had picked us up for, but by comparison, this looked impossible. The long gearshift jutting out of the floor had a strange geometric design on it that I could swear I’d seen on some Lost in Space episode. Too bad Marvin wasn’t here to give me the scoop on navigating this ship. Terrifying!

  Just before ten, Liz reappeared and got on Lewis’s bus for a few minutes. She was carrying a spray bottle of the Purple Soap, heavy-duty stuff, and handed it to him, pointing to the garage entryway, several bays removed from us. We were supposed to go on a scheduled break, and Lewis was heading that way, but Liz came onto my bus.

  “Still on the dash, huh?” Liz said, stepping into my bus. I nodded. “Pacing yourself?”

  “Getting the feel of things,” I said. “I’m a quick learner.” (I had, in fact, already learned that Liz was not going to be a nice boss, at least to me. Lewis had still been on his dash too, but she was pretending I’d been solo dawdling.)

  “We don’t get too many girls here,” she said, nodding slowly, as if she were, in fact, not a girl herself. “You don’t get a pass from the tougher parts ’cause you’re a girl.”

  “Pretty sure I can handle anything,” I said.

  “Bet you’d like to,” she said. “But listen, Magpie—”

  “I prefer Maggi.�
��

  “When you get to choose, I’ll let you know. You just keep to yourself and Lewis. If any of the guys ask you to give ’em a hand, you tell them they go through me.” She started to get off and then seemed to remember something. “If someone asks you to get something upstairs? You go up, get it, and come right back on down. Especially if they ask you to help them up there. You’re only supposed to be here two months, but sometimes that’s two months too long. I’ll shit-can you for any funny business. We have an understanding?” (As a matter of fact, we did.) I nodded and slid out of the seat. “Two buses a day. You gotta get better and quicker.”

  Finally, she left. I decided I couldn’t afford a break, even though we were told at orientation that we were legally entitled to two paid fifteen-minute ones a day.

  By the time lunch rolled around, I had mostly caught up to Lewis. He nodded, looking over my work, acting like a Little Liz. I started toward the break room, hoping Jim Morgan would join us and that maybe I could sit near him. If not, maybe I could get a chair where I’d at least be able to look at him without being noticed that much.

  “This way,” Lewis said, putting his arm around my shoulder. “Remember? We only go in there if we get invited.” As he steered us toward the time clock vestibule, I shrugged his arm off.

  “I don’t think that’s gonna happen,” I said. “I can tell already that Liz doesn’t like me for some reason that has nothing to do with me.” It sounded lame ass, the kind of thing Trouble Kids always say just after they’ve been caught putting rubber cement on a teacher’s chair. “She was saying shit like I better not head off alone with any of these guys, like that would somehow be my fault, like I’m wearing a neon sign that says ‘EASY.’ ”

  “I think Dave Three Hawks has somehow got her thinking all Indian girls sleep around.”

  “That big guy? I wondered if he was from the Rez.”

  “Yes and yes. We’ve had a couple Indian girls here, but they don’t last. Liz always finds some official thing wrong with them, but after they leave, she claims they were rubbing up on someone. Total bullshit, but just as well you know early,” he said. I realized that the table assigned to us was in the sink area of the ladies’ room. The stalls were behind two separate closed doors, but still, our table was technically inside. I guess it was sort of a “Lounge.”

  “Don’t you feel weird inside of the ladies’?” I asked, grabbing my lunch from the fridge.

  “No pop?” he asked, digging in his front jeans pocket.

  “Didn’t bring any change,” I said, failing to add that I didn’t, in fact, have any change.

  “I’ll get you one.” As he went to the machine, I pulled my drum out of my bag and was getting ready to play a little when he put a hand over the skin and shook his head. “If you want to do that,” he said quietly, “let’s finish eating quick and I’ll take you to a better place.”

  “Why are we whispering this time?” I asked. He cocked his head, gesturing that I should listen to the wall. The Real Workers were talking and laughing on the other side. I couldn’t tell if Jim Morgan’s voice was among those deep, rumbling murmurs and sudden cackles, all muffled together, but apparently it didn’t even matter. I shrugged like, What about it?

  Lewis didn’t seem especially talkative, so we just finished our lunches fast and in silence (since neither of us had much). Then he quietly slid his chair in and gestured for me to follow as he walked to a bus in the parking lot’s far end.

  “Now you can play if you want,” he said. “Those walls in there are too thin.”

  “Why would they care if I wanted to play my water drum?”

  “I used to think being invisible was bad, until I discovered that being noticed can cost you way more, if you’re not paying attention,” he said. This I did understand. Liz wasn’t my first bad supervisor— Dark Deanna and her ever-changing mood wasn’t exactly fun to deal with.

  “Is this where you go when you bring your guitar to work?” Marie had told me Lewis and Carson both played (even together sometimes, though they didn’t exactly act like friends).

  “I’d never bring it to work. I try never to let them know about anything I love.”

  I couldn’t argue and didn’t feel like drumming anymore. So Lewis filled me in on the workers for the rest of our allotted lunch break. I wanted most to know about Jim Morgan, so I waited and listened, but Lewis never mentioned him.

  “Guess we better get back in there,” he said.

  “By my watch, we still got a few more minutes.”

  “Best if they don’t see us coming from the lot. They’ll wonder what we were doing.”

  “Eww!” I said, and his face slipped down a bit. “No offense.”

  “Yeah, how could I take offense?” he said, leaving briskly enough to put distance between us. For the rest of the afternoon, I stayed on my bus, working. My only company was the endless boring cowboy music that streamed from Kenny’s radio in the bay. Finally, someone shouted “Break!” which was immediately followed by a bunch of rustling. That was the fastest they’d moved all day. They pretended it was a break, but it was so close to punch-out time, the workday was pretty much over. Most summer days, according to Lewis, one person stayed to punch everyone out. Low supervision. He’d predicted that at the day’s end, it would be him, me, and one Real Worker. Everyone else would have left forty-five minutes before.

  I watched Lewis follow them, but I stayed to finish my second bus. Liz had already shown herself to be a pain in the ass, so I kept working. When I was almost done, I reached for my water drum and started playing, a little flavor of Indian sound on top of Kenny’s cowboy songs. The big bay walls might serve as amplifiers, but no one but Lewis would notice—a Social song backbeat was like an Indian dog whistle. It might get his attention and he’d come back. Then I could apologize.

  “Nice,” someone said, just outside my bus’s open door. It so startled me, I dropped my stick. “Never heard any drum like that before,” Jim Morgan went on, bending over to grab my stick from the step well, his T-shirt pulling out the back of his Work Blues. He leaned in, not quite stepping up, his arms on the frame. “No break for you?”

  “I got a little behind,” I said.

  “I noticed that this morning,” he said, holding the stick out and grinning, flicking his eyebrows up and down. I stuck out my tongue. “That’s not fair to you.” Jim looked at Lewis’s empty bus. “Was there any Bus Garage Wrestling Federation today or was today a Work All Day deal? I bet they wanted to make you believe it’s all hard work.”

  “Wrestling Federation?” That must be a euphemism for something.

  “You’ll see. Of course, the Loser would never be man enough to wrestle.” Jim untucked more of his T-shirt, reaching under the hem to scratch his side. He caught me peeking at his Happy Trail and scratched higher, revealing more as he went up. I wondered what it looked like at his chest. “Where is he anyway? Out brownnosing Liz?”

  “On break. I decided to stay and finish up,” I said, keeping my voice low and hoping he would do the same. Maybe Kenny’s stupid cowboys would keep Liz’s ears out of range.

  “You could come on break with me,” Jim said.

  “Liz’d be all over my ass if she saw that I wasn’t where I’m supposed to be. I’ve only been here six hours, and I already got a lecture. Aren’t you supposed to be with your crew?”

  “They’re good kids,” he said, nodding and lighting a cigar. “Know what they’re doing. If I’m not there by quarter after, they’ll start cleanup on their own.”

  “Don’t count on it,” I said. Even at fifteen (maybe especially), I knew people would go to great lengths to get out of work, even if it was harder than the work itself.

  “See, that’s why things are different here. I can trust my kids. You change your mind, just say the word.” We heard the compressor come on. Break over. “I’ll see you again,” he said, and slipped out the bay door. I watched him disappear, his firm silhouette stark against the bright sunlight beyond m
y bay. When he stepped out, he stayed burnt onto my retinas for a few seconds, and I stared into the void until that afterimage faded. A few seconds later, he passed by in one of the school’s big utility dump trucks, waving to me with two fingers, imperceptible to anyone else who might be looking.

  I pulled up to Lewis’s, just as a sharp whack! issued from the side of their place. “You’re hopeless!” someone shouted as I got out of the Chevelle. If this had been my house, that sound would have been my dad prodding Derek, and Derek taking it, biting the insides of his cheek so he didn’t yell. Here, it meant Lewis’s lacrosse-star brother Zach was practicing. I scoped them through the safety of their front windows and leaned in to listen for any Eee-ogg.

  “Can’t you at least pretend you’re tending goal?” Zach said, cradling with his stick.

  “I don’t have a cup on,” Lewis said. “Your stardom doesn’t need my nads as a sacrifice.”

  “You ain’t using them,” Zach said. “Wear my cup, right there.”

  “Disgusting,” Lewis said. “You haven’t even washed it.”

  “Suit yourself. Small target anyway,” Zach said. Lewis pretended to goalie so Zach could practice shooting at a Magic Marker square he’d drawn on the front room wall years ago.

  “Was that ever funny?” Lewis asked. “First time someone said it to you?” Zach was only five years older than us, but the Rez’s All Lacrosse All the Time culture meant MVP Zach was too cool to hang with us. Even as obnoxious as he was, he had a fan club. I reached into the Chevelle and honked. I didn’t want to step up and sacrifice my nads.

  “Saved by the bell,” Lewis shouted, ripping the door open. He dropped the goalie pad he’d been holding like Captain America’s shield and grabbed his guitar, heading out the door. On the porch, he stopped and turned to me. “You’re just here for Zach’s uniform stuff, right?”

  “I am picking up,” I said. Zach pointed to a stuffed duffel bag giving off nearly visible stink fumes. “But I thought maybe we’d practice some.” I held out my acoustic case. “Maybe we’d call those Bokoni girls to see if they wanna come to that drive-in I wanna check out.”