Give Me Some Truth

by Eric Gansworth

  “’Cause he’s another Indian?” he asked, cutting me off. Jim was now acting like a jealous boy, not the man I was beginning to know better. Out here, miles from home, I didn’t like where this was headed.

  “If you’re treating him this way because he’s Indian, how am I supposed—”

  “It’s not ’cause he’s Indian. I just don’t like the kid, for my own reasons. He knows why.”

  “I can assure you, he doesn’t. And if you really like me, really want to be nice to me, you’ll leave him alone.”

  “Okay, I’ll leave him alone,” Jim said. “But you know, not everything happens to someone because of their race. Some people are just assholes.”

  “Yeah, well, you know that some people do things to other people solely because of their race. You helped me at the Sanborn Field Day Beer Tent. You knew what was going on.” He nodded and looked down. “I’m not sure I ever thanked you for helping me.”

  “What a gentleman does, when he sees a young lady in trouble.”

  “Just the same,” I said. “Thank you.” A lady, he’d said. I leaned over and kissed his cheek, rough, stubbly, and smelling of aftershave. He must have spruced up in his apartment.

  “Look, me and Lewis, it’s more like … shared history. My parents know his. My grandparents knew his. And now we’ve got our band. We’re signing up for Battle of the Bands. Ever work those things?”

  “I could,” he said. “Never had a reason to before. Other than the overtime.”

  “Maybe I could be a reason?” I said. His face transformed, as he smiled the warmest smile I’d ever seen. When it appeared, that other Jim vanished, as if he lived in a different dimension and just occasionally broke through to ours, only to hassle Lewis. This smile made me want to hug him, like when I saw those crappy stained shades on his apartment windows. I’d felt something catch beneath my breastbone that moment, and I felt it again now. I bet that place was very lonely sometimes.

  “What time is it anyway?” I asked. I turned his wrist to read his watch. His arm shivered a little, like he was chilled. “I gotta get home, Jim. Sorry. Where did you want to go out here?”

  “Was gonna take you to a drive-in out this way. Figured you might want something to eat. Didn’t seem like you got anything at the party.”

  “Sweet of you,” I said. I didn’t ask if it was that drive-in. “This too.” I tapped the camera. “Can’t tell you how much I appreciate your trust. This is one of the nicest things anyone’s done for me.”

  “Just a camera,” he said, but smiled anyway. “And, uh, go ahead and use that film in there and, uh, if you need it, I got more. Just let me know.”

  “I don’t mean the camera. I mean, that’s great, but I mean … that you believe in me, and you don’t hardly know me at all.”

  “I know you’re talented, and sweet, and good-hearted and …” We both knew the word he wanted to say. I wanted him to say it too, but it was a scary word. Once someone said it, you knew what that meant. No one had ever said it about me, but guys in our old school said it about Marie. They thought grabbing the crotches of their jeans when they said it would convince her they’d be a good match. Maybe that was how she ended up with Ben-Yaw-Mean. I’m almost positive he never groped himself and told her she was sexy. He was too Toot-o-file for that.

  “Anyway, you’re welcome,” he said. He gave a gentle smile and another nod. “Guess we should get you home. Drive-in rain check?” I nodded, though I wasn’t taking him up on it. I wanted to keep good thoughts about Jim Morgan. “Got a leftover plate in my trunk. Want some?”

  “I’m good,” I said, looking at his watch. “Thanks, though. Sweet.”

  We got back in the Trans Am and listened to a cassette. It was the Beatles, but not a sequence I recognized. I was coming around to them more now. And after that booklet Carson showed me, I was way more interested in Yoko Ono too. Everyone said she broke up the Beatles, blah blah blah, but it turned out she was an artist on her own before she met any of them. She even met Paul first! She was Yoko Ono, a badass conceptual artist, not Mrs. John Lennon.

  “You make this, yourself?” I asked.

  “No, new album,” he said.

  “Oh, right, the Beatles put out a new album and I didn’t hear about it.”

  “A new collection. Not even all that new now. It’s, I think, a couple years old. Called Love Songs. Can make you a copy if you want. Or you can have this one.”

  “They take songs people already have, put them in a different order, and call it a new album?” He nodded. “I didn’t even know you liked the Beatles.”

  “Honey, I was buying Beatles records when they were putting them out,” he said, laughing. “I’ll have you know I saw maybe the one and only performance of the Plastic Ono Band. So there.”

  “You lie!”

  “No lie. It wasn’t on purpose, though. It was a rock-and-roll revival show. Mostly, I was there to see the Doors, but it was a lot of old Rock and Rollers, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, and—real weird—Alice Cooper.

  “Are you making this up?”

  “Swear to God. Some college stadium in Toronto. They kept saying some secret special guest was coming. There were rumors it was gonna be Lennon, I guess the other reason I made the trek up there. And sure enough, the secret guests were John and Yoko, Clapton, a drummer I didn’t know, and that guy Klaus something.

  “Voormann,” I said, stunned. “What was the show like?”

  “How do you know Klaus Voormann?”

  “Um, artist who made the cover of Revolver?”

  “Oh yeah, that’s right. How’d your Revolver art thing come out anyway? You never showed it to me. Anyway, show was good, but John played mostly old songs, ’cause they’d never played together before. Only one Beatles song. That crowd wasn’t feeling Yoko’s experimental stuff—mostly her laying on the stage in a bag making screaming noises while John and Clapton made feedback guitar noise.”

  “My experimental beadwork’s almost done,” I said. “I’ll show it to you. Promise.” Jim grinned.

  “You want these love songs?” he said, turning on Snakeline. We were almost home. “Never know when they’ll come in handy. You could find yourself falling for someone.”

  “You think they’ll ever get back together?”

  “They kept saying all that you need’s love. Maybe they don’t have that for each other anymore. Maybe all they got is a gaping hole. That’s one I know.” He held the tape out to me, pulling over by the wooded, houseless strip before the Shack.

  “All I have’s a record player,” I said, opening the door.

  “Could lend you the album, if you want.”

  “No thanks. New sequences always sound weird to me. I keep expecting the familiar and something new comes up instead.”

  “Something new can be good, you know,” he said, and gave me the sad smile he’d had earlier. I almost couldn’t bear to look at it. I might get back in.

  “Good night, Jim, and thanks again.”

  “Thank you,” he said, lifting the photo of me from his console catchall. He’d put his shirt on when we’d gotten back in the Trans Am and now slid my picture in his T-shirt pocket, just a line of muscle, ribs, skin, and hair between it and his heart.

  Heading up the driveway, I wondered if those Beatles songs were the magic my dad used to get my mom to come home. Maybe Marie had nothing to do with it after all. Maybe our dad had sent out radio requests, telling the DJ to say, This next song’s from Mel to Deanna, “All You Need Is Love,” knowing it would work. My mom used to say my dad was so handsome, she knew in elementary school she was going to marry him. I couldn’t imagine who he was back then, what she saw. Even their senior pictures on our living room wall (her in a feather boa and him in a white tuxedo) looked like the sample photos in place when you bought a frame. Or I should say, it would look like that if there were non-white people on Picture Frame Planet. Even people with brunette hair had a hard time in that world.

  In
the Shack, Marvin gave me a disinterested look as I scrounged in the fridge. I decided he probably wouldn’t be amused by my force-field story after all.

  “Where were you?” I asked Marie once I got to our room.

  “Vendor Table, duh,” she said. Maybe she didn’t know Ben-Yaw-Mean was at the party. “Bigger question, where were you? Party ended hours ago.”

  “And where’d you get your Eee-ogg? Ben-Yaw-Mean Gaward?” She whipped her head at me. I’d planned to save my info for when I’d need her silence, but I needed it now. I just wanted to lie in bed, picturing Jim’s smiling face, the warmth of his touch, the scent of his aftershave, and way I was beginning to like the surprisingly rough feel of his cheek, when I pressed my lips against it.

  “You going out with him tonight?” I asked. Silence, but I knew. She had her Going Out lipstick on. “It is a school night,” I added, and turned to stare right at her. “For both of you.” For the first time in years, my sister was speechless. I enjoyed the moment. Like all good things, it was sure not to last.

  Things were shaping up. The band was continuing to evolve with new and solid arrangements. Maggi’s water drum had turned out to be a bigger success than I’d anticipated. It gave us a sound like no one else, and it was awesome marketing. With our newest members, and the chronic tension between Rez kids and white kids at school, we found ourselves as Poster Children for Finding a Cultural Bridge. If we won, the prize money would be smaller for each of us, but we’d all still be awarded the New York City trip part of the prize.

  To keep us on top, I developed Money Punishment—the one place you’d always feel it. If you missed practice, you had to pay five bucks to each band member for wasting their time. It was rare, but everyone paid with no complaining. And when we had free time, it wasn’t free. It went to the band. We’d had today off. It was Canadian Thanksgiving, or National Genocide Awareness Day, or, as we refused to call it, Columbus Day.

  “What about Moondogs?” Lewis said as we broke our gear down.

  “Gloomis, we are not a Beatles cover band,” I said as I cased my Casino. Lewis thought he could sneak this obscure one in, but I researched all the names the Beatles had before they’d settled on the right one. This one was a decent attempt, but not decent enough. “And we’re already in the schedule under the name we agreed on.”

  I still loved the ring of Dog Street Devils, so that’s what we were going with. We’d been assigned the second Battle of the Bands elimination round, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. The final Battle wasn’t until January, just before third-quarter marking period ended. If I won Battle of the Bands and made my rock-and-roll life connections in New York City, I wouldn’t have to worry about marking periods or the fact that I’d blown off school for the last three years.

  “We’ll play some songs,” I added. “Some! I get it! They’re classics! People love them even though they split ten years ago. If that’s who you want to be, start your own damned band.”

  “You’re opening with that Stones song all the time!” he said, scrunching his face up. “I just figured, you know, Dog Street and the moon, like in the Traditional calendar.”

  “Like many moons ago?” Susan asked, giggling a little.

  “Well, where’d you think that phrase came from?” Lewis asked.

  “Cut the bull, Lewis!” I said, shutting down that intraband arguing nonsense quick. “No Moondogs, no Quarrymen, no Silver Beatles, no Eggmen. We are the Dog Street Devils,” I said. Lewis, as the only other senior in the band, apparently thought he could give me some shit. “Told you before. No room for two leaders in this band.”

  “Fine,” he said. “So, hey, was Mrs. Marchese afraid to be alone in the home ec room with the Devil on Friday?” He hunched, prancing on tippy toes, pretending he held a pitchfork.

  “Why would I be in home ec on Friday? I don’t need extra credit.”

  “Funny.” He scrunched his mouth. “Can’t you be serious? If we blow this project …”

  “Artie, these two are in your cooking class?” Susan asked. Artie and Tami had driven Susan and had both stuck around to listen. They were competing too, so were probably spying, but an audience kept me on my toes.

  “Artie’s got it the period after us,” Lewis said. “You guys doing the same thing we are?”

  “Canadian Thanksgiving?” Artie said. “Heck yeah! I’m not Canadian, eh? But it’s turkey!” Artie stacked Susan’s keyboard rig near the door. “I’m doing some sweet potato thing,” he added. “Our mom just mashes, but we have to do a recipe. It is cooking class. Plus, mini marshmallows! I’m all over—wait!” Artie stopped himself, his grin widening. “You guys are doing the turkey?” he asked. Lewis nodded but looked worried. “Indians bringing the turkey to Thanksgiving? Marchese is so twisted.”

  Mrs. Marchese, our home ec teacher, said it would be good for us to know different cultures, so our holiday dinner project coincided with the Canadian one. She was a weirdo, but at least we weren’t having Columbus Day dinner. Each student pair had to cook one part of the big feast, and Lewis and I had wound up with the turkey.

  “Who do you think brought the main courses to the first Thanksgiving?” Lewis said. Every once in a while, he would go all Indian Patriotic. “It wasn’t your sorry-ass ancestors.”

  No matter how long we all hung out, things would never be easy between Lewis and Artie. George Haddonfield had been friends with Artie too. Nothing specifically bad there—we’re used to sharing. But when George and his family up and moved away in eighth grade, it was like they vanished from Earth. As far as I knew, Lewis had never heard one word from him. Always, I could see, right on the edge of his nerve, he wanted to ask Artie if George had ever reached out to him. Either answer would have killed Lewis, so he just kept himself in the dark, but sometimes it bled over into the shit he said to Artie.

  “No offense,” Artie was quick to say. “Seems like Marchese is putting you in a box.”

  “Who’s doing your class turkey?” Lewis asked, before the Artie chatterbox train could start again.

  “Two guys on varsity football. Twenty-five pounds of turkey is nothing to mess with. Almost dropped it a couple times.” He was about to launch into a story and paused. “Um, Carson? How come you weren’t there? For real. I hung out to give our turkey guys a ride home.”

  “What are you doofuses talking about?” I said.

  “Tell me,” Lewis started saying slowly, looking directly at me, “that you remembered to go in Friday after activities bell and move our turkey from the freezer to the fridge.”

  “That’s tomorrow,” I said. “We’re not eating until Wednesday. How long could it take? Ice in a cooler doesn’t stay ice, even overnight. How hard could it be for a turkey to thaw?”

  “Shit,” Lewis said.

  “Lighting Can,” Maggi said, and peeled open the coffee can we kept, our other costly way of shaping our public image. Tami had decorated it with $$#!%@$$. Any time one of us swore when we practiced at someone’s house, that person had to toss five bucks in the can. It was a rule. Susan and Artie’s dad didn’t seem thrilled on those nights he was stuck having a bunch of Indians in his basement, so we tried not to give him any more reason to be annoyed. When we had a decent amount in the can, we’d get something to help with our stage-lighting rig.

  “Gloomis, you said we’d wash it in class on Monday,” I added. “Remember? You were all ‘save the giblets,’ doing Dan Aykroyd’s doing Julia Child on Saturday Night Live!”

  “How’d you think we were going to get those giblets out?” Lewis said. “It has to be thawed enough! Weren’t you listening in class? You had one job to do!” Artie looked down. He could have called, or just taken mine out. Still, this was my fault. All on me.

  “Sorry, guys. Wish I knew how to help you,” Artie said. “But I’m empty. Zero ideas.” He ran Susan’s keyboard out to his truck. They knew I was in trouble, in a particularly Rez Kid way. Did white kids forget the primary step in their major quarter grade? I’d barely passed f
irst quarter.

  I’d been cooking since I was seven, though. Sheila and Derek had taught me how to take care of myself early, but I didn’t know Marchese’s fancy way. I got a D+ on our first project, so Marchese assigned me and Lewis the turkey to get my grade up by the end of the quarter. I told Lewis it was the Indians-and-Thanksgiving thing and he’d been naive enough to buy it.

  “Can I use your phone?” Maggi asked me.

  “You don’t need to ask,” Tami said, sharper than she needed. “It’s the Rez,” she added, just to be annoying. Artie and Susan passed each other that Wild Kingdom look, like they were observing a foreign species. Maggi stretched the phone cord to the back porch. I wondered if I’d be able to sneak in a ride offer to her when we were done tonight.

  “Freezing out there,” Maggi said, rubbing her arms, as she came back in. “First frost is gonna come early this year. How do you guys yack on the phone without getting frostbite?”

  “Usually use the upstairs extension,” I said, laughing. She stuck out her tongue.

  “Swear,” she abruptly said to Artie.

  “Swear to what?” he said. I hated when Maggi did these cutesy things. It was the only thing about her that was a turnoff. In the moment, I was kind of glad, for real. I didn’t need the distraction.

  “Just swear.”

  “Okay, crap.”

  “A real swear,” she said, peeling the lid on the coffee can. I had an idea where this was going. We each said a round of swears and chipped into the can, adding up to thirty-three bucks.

  “Am I done in my part of saving your ass?” Artie said, and everyone laughed. He dropped another five. “I’m not even in this band. I got to get Susan home. Still a school night.”

  “Dad’s paranoid sometimes,” Susan said, leaving out: When we’re on the Rez with you.

  “Yeah, you’re fine,” Maggi said. “The fewer people who know details, the better.” Artie narrowed his eyes. “No offense,” she clarified. “And settle down. We’re doing something … not exactly aboveboard, and I don’t want you having to lie if we get caught. Better for you,” she said. I was intrigued.