Give Me Some Truth

by Eric Gansworth

  “That Hamburglar business?” He struggled not to react to what I’d just said. No one had told me directly, but like Marvin and Lewis, I knew how to be invisible and listen when I wanted to. “Suit yourself,” I said, clearing my throat. “It’s not like my siblings are perfect.”

  I looked up at the sky. The starry night was a gift from the Creator. Marie would laugh at me for saying something like that, but it was true.

  “So, Lewis’s uncle?” I tried again, bringing us back. This long process was like being shown a map of the Rez, but in the dark, with a flashlight that only worked every so often.

  “You haven’t been here long. The shit that happened with Albert? It’s part of Rez Life, I ain’t gonna lie. Some habits are hard to break, particularly those that get handed down.” What had happened to Albert? I thought if I knew, I could be a better friend to Lewis. “Albert came back from Vietnam around the time me and Lewis started school. He was always the screwed-up guy. But he was our screwed-up guy. Probably on disability. He gets work around the Rez.”

  “Off the Rez too,” I said. I couldn’t get that scene out of my head. If I kept my eyes open, I could block it out. But on Monday, Jim Morgan would ask why I was in the Beer Tent. He’d be wrong in his assumptions, but it was still going to be awkward.

  “Yeah, I didn’t know about that,” Carson said, admitting that I knew something he hadn’t. “Bet he won’t be working there this harvest season.”

  “He will,” I said. “They give shit pay and only people like Albert will work for it. He doesn’t fit in enough for a regular job. All kinds of guys like that in the city. Some women too.”

  “Really?” he said, then sighed. “No, I guess some tough Rez women work the farms like Albert. But what labor like that is in the city that a woman could do?” He put his hand up as if I were going to hit him. “I’m not even being … what was that word? Chauvinist? Just reality. A man’s stronger.”

  “You think hookers do it for perks?” I laughed. Not that it was something to laugh at. In the city, I’d seen women who were clearly prostitutes, and their lives did not look pretty.

  “You are twisted.” He laughed a little too. “But it’s a kind of twisted I like.”

  “You like my twistedness well enough to offer me that job as drummer?”

  “Can you keep a backbeat on a Social drum? Ever tried it on old hillbilly tunes and blues riffs? That’s all we’re playing.”

  “Drum’s a drum. It’s what you do with it that matters,” I said. I figured it might sound a little weird with guitars, but I could make it work. “And you know this already but just to be clear. All the drums I use personally? They’re Social Drums. Once we’ve taken one through ceremony, it never sees the light again outside of ceremony.”

  “Nothing more social than a party at The Bug’s,” he said, grinning, trying to ease off. “Like I said, it’ll be a good Rez decompression for you.”

  “All right, I’m in, but only if you’re straight with me. Why did you bring me out here anyway? I’m guessing you didn’t know I was a drummer at all.” He nodded, though I had to wonder, considering the way he said there were no secrets out here. “And you clearly didn’t have much new to tell me about Lewis’s uncle that you couldn’t have said before we got back to the Farmer John Dealie.” He shrugged.

  “I wanted you to come here,” he said, “because Marie used to do this with us, before you guys left. You’re always gonna see shit like what happened with Albert. That’s our life. You might even be on the receiving end.” I pictured Liz, at the garage, who had clearly already arrived at conclusions about me that had nothing to do with me personally. “The most you can do is rise to the occasion for your community.”

  “I think I get it,” I said.

  “You probably don’t. Not yet, but it’s a beginning. I’m not trying to be ignorant here. I mean, I don’t know what life off the Rez is like, but I’m sure it’s different.”

  “Yup, it is different. That’s a word for it.” I thought long and hard here for a moment. This was going to get trickier.

  I hadn’t had any say in our moving back to the Rez, but I was stuck here just the same, and kind of all alone. Even though we were back, our dad was almost as scarce as when we lived in the city (perhaps like us, afraid to say whatever wrong words invoked the emergence of Dark Deanna). Marvin had seamlessly drifted from the city couch to the Rez one, and Marie was plotting her course, launching herself back out of our world one step at a time (using logic that totally eluded me). And I just could not figure out what kept Carson and Lewis hanging out. Not only that—I couldn’t even tell which of them would tell me a more accurate version of that story.

  “Carson, I don’t know you well,” I started. “Almost not at all, in fact.”

  “We can change that situation very easily. You’re here now. Back where you belong. Perfect chance for us to—”

  “Keep it in your pants.” I wanted that to be a joke, but the truth was that he’d planned to bring me here alone tonight (where he kept a handy strip of Trojans and a sleeping bag at the ready). “Your plan about Lewis doesn’t make that much sense.” He started to protest, but I held up my hand to shush him. “Believe what you want, but I’m telling you. I don’t know either of you too well, but it sure seems stupid to me. Has the idea of loyalty ever come into your head?”

  “What do you think I’ve been saying here?”

  “You keep saying that, but you don’t want to be loyal. You just want others to be loyal to you. Those are different things. What does Lewis get out of this, if it goes forward?”

  “A trip to New York City, if we win the Battle of the Bands.”

  “That’s your dream.”

  “That’s what you don’t understand. John Lennon lives in New York City,” he said, jabbing his left palm with his right hand with each word. “The Beatles are his dream—they’re what he still cares about most.”

  “And you think you and Lewis are just going to walk up to John Lennon’s door and say, ‘Hi, we dropped by, maybe we could jam?’ ”

  “Ha! Well, no.” He started walking back to the tarp. “But it ain’t as big a stretch as you might think. Here, check this out.” He lifted one part, exactly, sliding out a rubber tote like the ones we used for the Vendor Table. He popped the lid, removed some clothes (an emergency change?), and lifted off a fake bottom, pulling out a sealed waterproof case. He handed me a laminated newspaper article with some photos of (according to the caption) John Lennon, his wife Yoko Ono, and some Indians from the Onondaga Rez, just outside of Syracuse.

  “When was this?” I asked. It was too dark to read the small newspaper type.

  “Maybe ten years ago? Was a big deal. Yoko Ono’s first American art show, or something like that. A bunch of people from here went. A bunch of Eee-ogg that there was gonna be some big secret Beatles reunion concert, ’cause it was John Lennon’s birthday. Of course, it didn’t happen, but somehow, they ended up hanging out at Onondaga. Here’s the thing from her art show.” He handed me a newspaper thing titled This Is Not Here, printed with a bunch of articles about her work. I didn’t know she did the kind of stuff I was interested in.

  “Can I borrow this?” I asked. I wanted to be able to read it, to see what someone who really did “conceptual art” had to say about it.

  “Sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “My dad’s. He’d kill me if he knew I had it. He went.”

  “Did he meet them?”

  “Nah, because of the Eee-ogg, there were like ten thousand people standing in the rain, trying to get in an art show.” He started laughing, taking the materials from my hands and putting them back in the tote. “Probably the most people at one time who tried to get into something like that show.” As he lifted the tote’s fake bottom, I caught a glimpse of something hidden beneath.

  “Is that what I think it is?” He paused and then reached in, pulling out a beaded trucker cap, sealed inside a Ziploc. “The famous hat,” I said, taking it. The beadwork de
sign was okay, nothing fancy. Bland. It didn’t look like anyone’s signature style. That was good. “These used to be okay sellers for us. Local demand died out once that news story broke. No one wants to get pulled over for wearing the wrong cap.”

  “Yup, the famous cap. Straight from my crazy Hamburglar house.” He situated the fake bottom, stacking the clothes on top, and slid the tote back with the hat inside. “Couldn’t bear to throw it out, though I should have. My gramma made it for my dad, and he’d been letting Derek wear it.”

  I stood up and walked back about fifty feet. “So we gonna do this?” I hadn’t ever jumped from a roof before.

  “I guess,” he said, looking glum and maybe scared. I walked to the edge and stood near him. The bold Carson Mastick, scared of a jump my sister had made without a second thought. “I always climbed down the tree. That asshole custodian Billy must have cut it down this week.”

  I looked over the edge. It was maybe twelve feet, and if I didn’t land right, I’d hit the concrete sidewalk, risking my ankle. But we couldn’t stay there forever. That was when I saw something that was so totally Marie.

  “Truth?” he said, smiling in a shy smile I’d never seen before. Maybe it was an act or maybe it was the real Carson finally showing through. “If I came here by myself tonight, I probably would have climbed down the rope ladder and tossed it back up and hoped no one would spot it. I need somewhere to go that’s not my crazy house.”

  “You ready to jump?” I asked, trying to sound light. “If Marie could do it, and I’m willing to do it, how hard would it be for you?” I smiled, letting him know I appreciated what he’d told me and that I wasn’t going to pry. He could tell me more when he felt like it.

  “Yeah, how hard?”

  “You gonna give me a ride home so I don’t have to carry those home with me?” I pointed below. On the ground was the little baggie that Marie had left for me, with the pork chop bone and wet paper towels. She was still looking out for me, even when she was gone.

  “Do I get to keep the bone?” he asked.

  “Looks like you might need it. Seems like you’ve lost the one you had there, isn’t it?” I said, looking at the crotch of his jeans, unable to resist. We both laughed. That wasn’t something I could have said to Jim Morgan without him interpreting it as a green light, but here with Carson, I could joke about the advertising he was doing and he could take it. I left him there, still coughing a little laugh, as I got a good running start. “Coming?”

  “Not even close,” he said. “Just breathing a little heavy.” We both laughed again. I was finally getting this reservation humor. We took a running charge, side by side now. The stone wall grew closer as we ran, but lower, more manageable, becoming just another horizon over the black night sky. We put our hands on the cool granite, launched our legs over the edge and let gravity take its course.

  The Bug didn’t want Lewis and me thinking we were guests, so we were supposed to show two hours late to the party. I drove up to Lewis and Albert’s to pick them up, deciding that I wouldn’t mention Maggi unless she showed. In the driveway, Albert was waiting and gave me a Thanks for Helping Me Out nod you got when you gave someone a ride in shitty weather. Then he reverted to his old self as we stepped inside, disappearing upstairs. Maybe he didn’t want a reminder of his playing Beer-Tent Stallion for warm Budweiser foam.

  Lewis was sitting on the couch, practicing some transitions on his acoustic. He wiped it down when he saw me and grabbed his case, glancing at the clock.

  “Ready?” Albert asked Lewis, coming downstairs in a new shirt. He stopped at the fridge, grabbing a chill pack of Bud. A gift for The Bug.

  “Thought I’d pick you two up,” I said, “since we’re all carrying stuff to the same place.”

  “We’ll just walk,” Albert said. “It’s close enough and a little too crowded in your jitney.”

  “All right, well, I can walk with you guys,” I said, a generous offer. “If you don’t mind.”

  “Free road,” Albert said. I’d gotten him out of that Beer Tent, but he still didn’t trust me. That went way back and applied to my whole family—too many times of my dad paying him after completed work, in cheap beer and venison from our freezer instead of cash.

  I passed my guitar case to Lewis, grabbing my backpack and a large cardboard box, and we headed down the road. Caesar, a friendly mutt between Lewis’s place and The Bug’s, ran up and sniffed Albert’s hand, nosed Lewis in the balls, and then licked my boots. He walked with us for a couple houses, then retreated. “All you gotta do,” Albert said. “If they don’t smell fear, they leave you alone.”

  “And admit it,” I said to Lewis, laughing. “You liked getting a little nudge just now.”

  “Yeah, I love when a dog’s teeth are an inch away from my private business.”

  “No fear,” Albert said. “What you gotta remember, with the maybe dangerous kind.”

  “The last time I did that,” he said, narrowing his eyes, “I lost my academic standing.”

  “Dropping out of school for a few weeks will do that to you,” Albert said. “Four years on, you’re still letting that bully get the best of you.” I felt like I was entering the middle of a conversation that had started without me. Lewis didn’t speak much about the bad way he ended junior high. After that bully craziness ended, he was too far behind to catch up to where he’d been. Now, he was probably below 200, maybe even closer to 250, out of a class of 350. I was way way down, maybe around 330, but we had different goals.

  “Good thing you got that job,” Albert added. I was surprised he was jabbing Lewis. That was my role. “You think there’s a chance they’ll keep you on? Any openings?”

  “Not a one,” Lewis said. Lazy workers refused to retire from jobs with great benefits.

  “Then maybe you should get back to looking into colleges,” Albert said when silence had passed. He wasn’t letting up. Maybe I’d jabbed something awake in him at the Sanborn Field Day, or maybe Mr. Plaid-Shirt Man had. “Either that or the military, and you don’t want that—”

  “Yeah,” Lewis said, interrupting his uncle, which almost never happened on the Rez. “Don’t want to risk getting a Section 8.” No one mentioned Albert’s discharge from Vietnam to his face. Most of us didn’t even know what that was. My mom said it meant you couldn’t cope.

  Albert didn’t respond to that, so we walked in silence until we neared The Bug’s house. I never asked Lewis how he and Albert dealt with each other’s privacy with their beds a yard apart. As Lewis got older, that little bedroom must have seemed more cramped for those two, and lately, helping Derek, I was thankful our dad had made sure all of us had our own bedrooms.

  From the road, we could finally hear The Bug’s crowd and smell the corn-roast fire. Food was an hour away, and I put the conversation between Lewis and Albert out of my mind—we had to work to do. I recognized usuals I partied with on Moon Road streaming in with us. This party would be like those, after dark, and we’d have to be on our game.

  If the chemistry was right, The Bug might break out a kerosene lantern, and we’d play into the shadows. I’d practiced like crazy since my dad told me I’d be joining Lewis, and was good enough that The Bug might let me pick songs tonight, even if I had to tell Lewis chords and changes. I wanted him to see he could stay on top of things with pressure on.

  When we stepped into the crowd behind the house, people were setting up folding tables and pans of potato salad, hamburgers, and the usual picnic crap. It was a corn roast, but how far were ears of corn going to take us? Albert’s and Lewis’s hands looked decidedly empty next to everyone else, with just two guitars and twelve cans of warming beer. They both had Basset Hound faces, and that was where my plan came in.

  “Lewis, here, tear this tinfoil off,” I said, pointing with my lips to the box I carried. He did so at the food tables, while Albert unloaded the chill pack into an ice chest. I revealed my mom’s specialty: long rows of Scon-Dogs, always a hit. You fry hot dogs up in a sk
illet, wrap them in Frybread dough, and dump them into the same skillet with a pool of lard. The dough browned up like a beautiful Frybread. Off the Rez, they looked like lumpy breadsticks, but at a party like this, they were homing beacons.

  Though the Fire Hall events ignored Frybread, it was universal Indian food at everything else we went to. It didn’t take much: flour, water, baking powder, a cast-iron skillet, and enough oil to pour a half inch in the pan. Some wiseass Rez elders making Frybread for public consumption always claimed that you mixed the ingredients and kneaded the dough until all the dirt under your fingernails had worked its way out—another kind of “dirty joke” on the Rez.

  My dad had volunteered to bring the tray of food, but I’d said I wanted to. Which had been smart—everyone was ooing and aahing over my mom’s Scon-Dogs and no one noticed that Lewis and Albert hadn’t brought a dish. That would buy me some Rez points with Lewis.

  “Check this out, Bug,” I said, pulling a little amp from my backpack and jacking it in, motioning for Lewis to pull my guitar out. We had made our way to the porch The Bug was using as a stage and joined him. Someone had dragged out one of his kitchen chairs, and he sat right in the center. He’d put on a button-up shirt but it gapped at the belly, and as always, his work pants were a little short, so you could see the mismatched, pale wooden shin under the white sock. This was some signature look of his. I bet if he ever got a replacement prosthetic that was the right color, people would find that more distracting.

  The amp wasn’t fancy, a little mesh-front box with a big, round knob at its center. The Bug stretched the strap over his head and frowned, holding my Epiphone Casino. It was a hollow body, with F-holes. He strummed a few chords, but it didn’t carry without amplification. As he tuned it by ear, he looked at the snaking bundle of orange extension cords trailing from his sister’s house next door, all spoken for with Crock-Pots, coffee makers, that kind of stuff.