Give Me Some Truth

by Eric Gansworth

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw the cogs turning in Lewis’s head as he looked between the two of us, like in cartoons of someone thinking too hard. Eventually he just gathered his stuff and walked out the door, glancing back while he slowly unlocked his bike chain.

  “Jeez, what is he, a retard?” Jim said, watching him through the open door.

  “Don’t say that word.”

  “Awww, been spending too much time being a Short-Bus Kid?” he said.

  “You know what? I’m going to go wait out by the gate.”

  “I won’t punch your card,” he said, plucking it from its slot. He looked at it, something I had not anticipated. “Magpie? What kind of name is that? That’s, like, a noisy bird.”

  “You’re just like the rest,” I said, snatching it from him. “You tell me it’s better to work for you and then you go and act like Liz.” I looked out the door, but Lewis had already gone.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” Jim said, and put a convincing enough face on. “Truce?” He held out his hand to shake. I took it and he pulled me in for that one-armed Guy Hug. I was surprised, and somehow went with it. “Forgive me, Magpie?” he asked, pressing a little more firmly.

  “Don’t call me that. I hate it.” I pulled away from him.

  “Aw, come on. I like it,” he said. “How about if only I call you that, when it’s just the two of us around. Like a pet name.”

  “I’m not a pet,” I said. “Save it. I’ve heard every bird joke at least three times on the reservation. And that’s when they’re being nice. Some people just call me Pie when they want to be mean.”

  “Why’s that mean?”

  “Don’t act ignorant, Jim. If you didn’t think ‘pie’ could be used as a dirty word, you wouldn’t have left me a half-eaten one next to a Twinkie.”

  “Okay, fair enough. Guilty.”

  “There’s a third reason my name is wicked bad,” I said. “You gotta promise to tell no one.” I had no idea why I was telling him this, but it was exciting to have a secret with him.

  “Who’m I gonna talk to?” he said, getting annoyed. “Okay, I promise. Jeez.”

  “The Tuscarora word for ‘bird’ sounds almost identical to, well …”

  “Well, what? Come on, you can’t take me to the edge and leave me hanging.”

  “It’s almost identical sounding as the word for …” I gestured to the front of my cutoffs, where I had on a nice, studded belt. (I just could not say any of the variety of words for external female genitalia to this man. Even the scientific ones somehow sounded like scandal.)

  “Ooh, you got some mean parents.”

  “They named me for my dad’s mom. He’s from a different Rez, so it’s kind of like a tribute. And in his language, that’s not the case. If you tell anyone—”

  “I made a promise. I keep my promises, Magpie.”

  “Good,” I said. I thought about the idea of allowing him to call me by the name I’d always hated. In some weird way, it gave me that electrical shiver I’d recently become aware of.

  “So forgive me for earlier?” he said, reaching out in that half embrace again.

  “Only if you’re nicer from now on,” I said, letting him.

  “I’m always nice to you,” he said, still not pulling away.

  “Not really, but I meant Lewis. Nicer to Lewis.”

  “I’m going to need a real hug to try that,” he said, and released my hand, embracing me fully. We stayed that way a little too long, and he began to press harder, shifting a little.

  “You promise?” I said, pulling away. The front of his Work Blues pants stuck out more than usual, but I only glanced for a second. I didn’t want him to catch me noticing. I could do the same things to guys that Marie did. She kept saying I was just a kid, but the evidence in front of me right now was proving her wrong.

  “I promise to try,” he said, laughing. “But come on, enough bullshit about the Loser. I brought a change of street clothes with me. Thought I might hit the shower in there quick,” he pointed his thumb to the men’s locker room. “See what trouble I can get myself into tonight.”

  “Okay. I’m gonna wait outside,” I said. “It’s almost two thirty. Can I have Lewis’s card and mine?” He handed me the two I wanted, lifted a small duffel bag, and headed into the men’s room. I punched out and headed to the gates, hoped he wasn’t going in with the intention of leaving a surprise like Lewis was suggesting he might. After a hot June weekend, that men’s room would be rancid.

  A couple minutes later, he pulled up to where I was standing at the chain-link gate, in his personal truck (which looked like his district truck, minus the official number on the sides).

  “Thought you were showering. And why do you drive a dump truck?” I asked, leaning in.

  “Changed my mind. Just swapped out my shirt. And this?” he said, patting the truck’s door. “Bought it off the district when they upgraded. Got a great bargain, and I’d been the only person driving it.” He stepped out and shut the gate, locking it with a gigantic industrial chain, gleaming in the sun. “You don’t like it?”

  “It’s just kind of an old-man set of wheels,” I said.

  “Would you like a bicycle better?” he said, laughing. He got back in the truck and patted the passenger’s side of the bench seat. “You sure I can’t give you a ride?”

  “The reservation is, literally, right across the road,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Well, listen …” he said, but then didn’t have any follow-up. He looked me in the eye, but his eyes flicked down every few seconds. The silence stretched between us, neither of us sure how we should end this day. He shifted in his seat and glanced down at himself.

  “Thanks,” I said, just to say something. “Um, thanks, for the dessert.”

  “My pleasure, Magpie.” He looked back up and grinned. “Anytime.” He dropped his truck into gear and pulled away, shouting, “Maybe see you tonight.” I watched his truck peel out and wondered what accepting that offer would have been like. I could have climbed into the passenger’s side, sliding across the bench, and we could have left. I didn’t like what had happened today with Lewis, but I also kept picturing Jim scrambling around, sweat glistening on his shoulders, dampening the hair on his chest.

  When his truck was out of sight, I admitted the truth to myself that no one from home was coming for me. I began the walk to the border, alone.

  Sanborn Field Day, the last weekend in June, kicked off the lame summer things we had to do in our super-dull chunk of wasteland. I was already fifteen minutes late. I tried to creep down the stairs quietly, but then a shout of “Carson!” came from my dad on the back porch. Sneaking out wasn’t an option if I didn’t want to get roughed up when I got home.

  He and my mom sat in rickety lawn chairs there, watching my cousins’ dance moves.

  “What?” I said to my dad from the mudroom, grabbing a jacket. “I’m almost late.”

  “I know you’re gonna drink,” he said, cracking a bottle of Molson.

  “Not me,” I said. Absolute truth.

  “Don’t think I’m stupid, buddy boy.” He gave me the Serious Chair Lean Forward from his very small collection of Dad Moves. “Now shut up and listen. I found your fake ID a year ago, but I didn’t throw it out. You’ll just scam another one, even though you’re almost legal. So I ain’t wasting my time or your money, which is my money anyway.”

  He was wrong about that, since he wasn’t my sole income anymore. Every Can-Am tournament Rez lacrosse player was filling my pockets these days. Say what you will about a guy knowing his way around a sewing machine, but I was as free as I wanted to be until I graduated.

  “I swear, I’m not drinking. I got other things on my—”

  “Will you shut up and let your old man speak?” He paused. “Now, there’s a pay phone down near the Fire Hall, out front. You call home and one of us will pick you up. And you be careful. A Field-Day Beer Tent is no place for a youngster with a tendency to get mouthy, such
as yourself. And we don’t want any other Hamburglar-type incidents, do we?”

  “I’m really not. And anyway, by the time they shut down, you’re not gonna be sober.”

  “True enough,” he said, clinking bottles with my mom, who laughed down a swallow.

  “And I am not a Hamburglar. I pay my own way,” I said. I didn’t like throwing Derek to the wolves, but I was telling the truth.

  He gave me his I Know Your Bullshit Look as I slowly turned away. You never wanted to appear to stomp out unless you wanted your ass dragged back in for a Sit-Down. I was also telling him the truth. A young guy with a muscle car at the Sanborn Field Day was asking to get pulled over and I wasn’t about to lose my wheels for Driving While Seventeen.

  Whoever said “they’re gonna have a field day with this” never went to a Field Day in Niagara County. Niagara Falls was a city, but for thirty miles north, this area was Podunk farm villages and the reservation. The Rez was its own Podunk—everyone up in everyone else’s business—with a few exceptions. One of them was no cops and no firehouses. Which meant no Field Days.

  Around here, the Field Day business was locked down by volunteer fire companies and Catholic churches. You could hit one every two weeks from mid-June to Labor Day. Field Day attractions reminded you of everything you weren’t allowed to do, up to the time you didn’t want it anymore. First, you couldn’t ride the big-kid rides, and you couldn’t reach the counter for the Midway-game stuffed animals. When you were allowed on the Salt and Pepper Shaker, you were thinking about the Beer Tent and the Monte Carlo games. As soon as you were old enough to stick around for the bands, you realized they sucked. But six pitchers deep in cheap keg beer, you didn’t care all that much. The Beer Tent usually kept a giant pickle jar full of confiscated fake IDs to discourage fourteen-year-olds. Truly, the tent was a field day—for Bargain-Basement Alcoholics looking to get drunk, get in a fight, and get laid, not necessarily in that priority.

  Lewis and I rode mostly in silence to Maggi and Marie’s, and he smiled that dream smile you have when you knew you were headed to something you were guaranteed to enjoy.

  “You two are gonna fit in fine at the Field Day,” I said to those Bokoni girls when we pulled up at their hodgepodge house. “You and all the other shit-kicker kids gumming up the Midway games with cotton candy hands.” Lewis hopped out and Marie climbed in the back, where he followed. Maggi climbed in next to me.

  “So why are we going to this Farmer John Dealie if you guys hate it there so much?” she asked, making a sharp point with a Kleenex to finish touching up her lips in my mirror. No mention of my twenty-minute lateness. Rez Points to her. She expertly put the mirror back.

  “You got something better to do?” I asked. She was dressed more like she was going out to a singles bar. She looked hot, but in a weird way, like a thirty-year-old trying to pass for fifteen instead of the other way around. Where did those Bokonis get funds to buy designer jeans when they lived in a shack with a camper attached and an outhouse out back?

  “I definitely don’t have anything better to do,” Maggi said, making minor adjustments to her fancy-ass blouse seams and jeans. In truth, I couldn’t throw stones at that glass shack. My parents also bought us clothes they couldn’t afford so we didn’t look like the Raggedy-Ass Indians the white kids called us. “Not since we moved back to the shack thanks to Stinkpot.”

  “I told you never to call me that,” Marie said, acid in her voice. She gave Maggi three quick whacks to the head, like on Saturday-Afternoon Kung-Fu Cinema, instantly destroying Maggi’s perfectly feathered hair. Satisfied, Marie changed into a soft DJ voice to add “and don’t even think about asking for my travel can of Aqua Net.”

  “See what I mean about sisters?” Maggi said, revealing a rat tail. In a minute, she had a part so sharp, a paper airplane would overshoot that runway. “Any cute guys go to this thing?”

  “Only one I can think of,” I said, grabbing the mirror. We were nearing the Rez border.

  “Who’s that?” she asked, suddenly interested in what I had to say.

  “You’re riding in the passenger seat of his car,” I said, and put on my Charm Grin that always got me what I wanted—my own secret Indian magic. Maggi laughed her Scandalous Rez Girl Laugh and swiveled her head to study the endless fields of corn dancing in neat rows. As we closed in on “the hamlet of Sanborn,” the amplified music and neon lights washed over us. But I didn’t feel my usual excitement. Impressing this girl was going to take more than a Midway-game prize or the Tilt-A-Whirl and Octopus.

  We parked and headed toward the food stands, tramping on ground that smelled chemically sweet, like those fluorescent hockey pucks floating in men’s room urinals. Truth? I’d never noticed that smell before. Who wanted to smell like a urinal cake while trying to eat a funnel cake? But as soon as we hit the Midway, an overwhelming cloud of Fair Food air blasted it out. Hamburgers, hot dogs, corn dogs, and fresh-cut fries showered us with a grease mist.

  “There’s where I’m going!” Maggi said, veering out ahead of us to a stand with a long line of couples. The wraparound sign shouted FRIED DOUGH $3.00! in bright yellow light bulbs. Women in tight halters showed off their tanned braless backs—the same ones you’d see stretched out on beach towels during the day, bikini strings undone to avoid tan lines.

  “So your sister’s not a Frybread Queen?” Gloomis asked Marie, nodding toward Maggi, disappearing into the crowd. They both laughed.

  “She needs it all sweetened up,” Marie said. Frybread, a mainstay at Indian events, was absent here. Fried Dough was its closest Fair Food relative, but we didn’t use a deep fryer, and didn’t cover it in confectioners’ sugar. Not that Frybread was healthy or anything, as a million Indians flirting with diabetes will tell you. But it was survival food through Indian history. Adding sugar was a cheat.

  Every local volunteer fire company had Indians among their ranks, but it seemed like the companies never wanted our foods to mingle with theirs, so you never saw it here. Not having Corn soup made perfect sense—that was definitely something you had to grow up with. But Frybread? I could never understand why they didn’t even try getting a Rez vendor to set up a stand. Maybe it was because Fire-Hall Indians checked their skins at the door, like heavy coats.

  “She’s just a kid,” Marie added, reading my face. “She was raised in the city. Can’t blame her for not knowing. Take that up with my mom and dad.”

  I examined the Fried Dough stand more closely as Maggi got in line. I could see why so many couples were there together. The counter man would hand the lumpy disc to the woman, she’d tear off the first piece in a cloud of sugar, and then she’d feed it to the guy, like he was a baby bird. That was a sweet deal. The guy would be digging in his pocket to pay while trying not to bite the hand feeding him. Why didn’t they just dig money out first?

  “Gloomis,” I said. “Why don’t you two go get us some ride tickets? We can make the rounds and maybe check the bands out later.” I held out some cash.

  “Rides? Do I look twelve?” Lewis stared at me as if I’d lost my mind. The idea that a guy might want to be in a cramped, fast-moving cage with a hot girl and centrifugal force had never occurred to him. Ten bucks for the Gravity Magic of carnival rides? A bargain, even at rip-off Field Day prices.

  “You’re the same height as a twelve-year-old, but the chin pubes suggest otherwise,” I said. Marie laughed. “C’mon, my treat if you get going!” If you’re pushy, people listen. Particularly school-age people. They’re used to being bossed around. “And if you see Doobie, ask him what time he’s off duty.” Hubie was supposed to walk the grounds as a freelance living first-aid kit. He wasn’t allowed in the ambulance, but he could lead people to it. He was dying to use the radio strapped to his shoulder, but it had to be justified.

  Gloomis took my ten bucks. Did he know that Doobie played the bass? It was possible he had no idea, but either way, he didn’t say anything more as he and Marie took off. I was left with three one-dollar
bills in my hands and a plan. I flew across the Midway. As Maggi placed her order, I leaned in close, sticking my hand to the counter guy with the bills fanned so he didn’t have to count.

  “Young lady’s already paid,” he said. “Gotta do better than that if you wanna impress her,” he said, laughing and handing her the shapeless blob of bread blotted with powdered sugar.

  “He’s right,” Maggi said as we walked away. “Nobody likes that guy who reaches for his wallet only after someone else does. Not fooling anyone.” She offered me the Fried Dough.

  “How would you know?” I asked, shaking my head. “You’re fifteen.”

  “Fifteen in the city is different from fifteen in the sticks,” she said back, not a snotty note included. I knew what she was saying. I liked home fine, but I understood that city life gave you something different, sharp. “Marie says everyone out there parties,” she added. She still called the Rez “out there,” like she didn’t quite live there with us. “Aren’t there guys who never have the right amount to add to the kitty when people are buying?” She offered again.

  “How come you only say guys?” I asked, nodding anyway. “Girls don’t contribute?”

  “If you think a girl buys, then the Rez is more backward than I thought,” she said, making a face, sort of an Am I Really in This Situation? annoyance face.

  “On the Rez, women …” I had to be careful. No matter how true it was, Off-Rez people never understood. “They’re tough. They don’t take crap from anyone, and they also don’t expect guys to treat them different. The fiercest I’ve been yelled at? My mom’s friends. They—”

  “But you were trying to buy this for me. You were trying to treat me like—”

  “I was being nice. Why’d you climb into my Chevelle, if you didn’t care for this?”

  “Was either this,” she said, spreading her free arm wide, “or the stock car races, and I didn’t feel like breathing in car exhaust all night. I’ll have plenty of opportunities later. Seems like that’s where everyone from out there spends every frigging Friday night.” “Out there” again. Truth? I’d spent enough of my Friday nights over the years, watching carved-up cars go ’round and ’round the mud track, hazing the black sky blue with burnt oil and overheating engines, filling the night with a roar like a thousand pissed-off lions. That sounded potentially cool when you haven’t done it, but it got old after a gazillion times.