Give Me Some Truth

by Eric Gansworth

  John Lennon

  1980

  December 8, 5:59 p.m.

  The Bokoni family was a lead Sunday Lifestyles feature in yesterday’s Niagara Cascade. Maggi and Marie both got attention for their “installation,” whatever Art-Fart talk that was. Bringing Maggi a copy would be a good excuse to stop by. We hadn’t spoken since the Bazaar.

  “Hey, Marvin,” I said after he’d yelled for me to come in. He waved. “See yourself in the paper? Got it right here, if you want.” I held it up. “Your whole family.”

  “I know what we look like already,” he said, not looking away from the TV.

  “Thought I’d bring it over for Maggi. Maybe she’ll be excited your stuff’s in the papers.”

  “She knows what we look like too.” Stone cold. “We don’t share your desire for fame.”

  “Just thought this could raise the profile of your work. Get you better going rates.”

  “Pfft!” he said, like his sisters. “Marie’s man invited a whatchamacallit woman to the Bazaar. She picks art for shows in Buffalo. She gave Maggi a little card with her information. They don’t need that rinky-dink paper to raise their profile.”

  “Did you get one of those little cards?” Marvin kept his eyes on the TV.

  “Nah. Wasn’t really my work,” he said, pausing on a channel with sitcoms.

  “Sure looked like your work to me.”

  “I was just following Maggi’s ideas. I don’t have those kinds of dreams.”

  “Still your work,” I said. “You guys could get an art show if you wanted, I bet.”

  “That thing with art shows?” he said, switching channels. “They never pay nothing. When we lived in The Projects, I talked to artists showing their work at the Turtle. Said they only survived doing Traditional work. Stuff like Maggi wants to make? Nobody looking for Indian art buys that kind of thing. Museums might show it, but you know what they pay? Wall space.”

  “Don’t know what you mean,” I said, but I kind of did. The music industry magazines said most bands didn’t get shit to make a record, only making money on tours and T-shirts.

  “You don’t get paid,” he confirmed. “They think exposure on their walls is payment. Our ma has opinions about that. She ain’t stopping Maggi’s new stuff, but supplies gotta come out of Maggi’s pocket, and she’s gonna put up with it only if Maggi keeps doing stuff that sells too.”

  “The regular Double-Heart Canoes.”

  “Yup. The ones in that piece were rejects my mom wouldn’t allow on the Table. Maggi stored up those busted canoes. Everyone in this shack has been kind of tense. You know, look at it. Not a lot of personal space. I made the weird little people to ride in those busted canoes to make Maggi and Marie laugh. I thought they might stick around longer if they were happier.”

  “Stick around?” I asked. I couldn’t help but feel jealous. I’d had all these fantasies about running off to New York City, and I couldn’t even keep my shit together enough to qualify for a stupid Battle of the Bands. “You and Maggi are, what, sixteen?”

  “Fifteen. We’ll be sixteen toward the end of next month.”

  “Okay. Still, not exactly a Peeling-Out-on-Your-Own kind of age. Look at you. You’re not going anywhere.” He shrugged. I felt like he wasn’t telling me something, but Marvin owed me nothing. We hadn’t grown close. Even as I hung out with his sisters, it was never at their house.

  “No, I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “But I don’t have the opportunities others do.”

  “You pissed at me about not being in the band?” What else could it be? “Look, Maggi never told me you played an instrument.”

  “You are the vainest person I ever met,” Marvin said, shaking his head. “Do you just sit around thinking about all the ways you think other people want to be near you?”

  “I got a lot to offer,” I said, but even as it came out of my mouth, it sounded like a lie.

  “Not to Maggi, you don’t. I mean, I don’t even know what she wants anymore, but one thing’s for sure, there’s lots my sister never told you.”

  “Like what?”

  “If you have to ask, then you must not understand how much.” He cut a sharp sliver of mirror into my brain. “Ever since we moved back, she don’t tell me stuff, and we’re twins! Now it’s just her and Marie, and Marie ain’t even here half the time. If you think giving my sister that newspaper is gonna score you points, you don’t understand anything about her. You think you gotta find something to pay her back for giving up her virginity for you. That’s all you know, the Carson Universe.”

  Was that true? Weren’t all relationships about what I give you and you give me?

  “Wait, what?” I said. “If your sister was giving that to me, I think I’d know about it.”

  “She ain’t giving it to you. It’s not a piece of jewelry or a car! Damn, Carson, grow up! I’m fifteen, and I know more about the world than you. And my sister knows way more.”

  “Sorry, you lost me here.”

  “She’s giving it up,” he sighed, irritated. “Because of you. Partly. She must like the guy some, but I’ve seen him. He ain’t nothing to look at.” He shut off the TV. He offered me a pop, but drinking store-brand pop was a low-budj skizzler move, so I passed. “She was asking Marie for tips about … the first time. I’m not hip enough for that talk.”

  “Look,” I said, urgent blood pushing from my heart, “I really don’t know what you’re talking about, but it sounds like I should. Truth? I really did come here to give her that paper, but as an excuse. I thought maybe me and her …”

  “Some other fox has gotten to that henhouse, Carson,” he said. A bizarre, old-fashioned statement, something my dad or Albert might say, but I understood. “Anyway, yeah, she thinks she’s helping you and Lewis. Some old pervo named Jim who she works with, I think. I’ve been in his car—a sweet, sweet Smokey and the Bandit deal. He told her he lied for you three with a teacher over, um, a turkey? That sound right? Said he claimed he was the one who made the swap. And she was all, Jim, my hero! I don’t know. Maybe? Maybe I misheard.”

  The pieces were starting to come together. Maybe there was a way to stop this. But who was the guy? Who had access to Marchese that could make her change her mind?

  “You’ve seen the guy?” I asked. “You’d recognize him?”

  “He’s just a scummy guy. You seen them like that before.” Marvin seemed weary. How long had he kept this inside? “When I saw what she was up to, and figured out she wanted to be tricked, I went back to Lost in Space, which I’m gonna do now.” He turned the TV on. “Nope, Land of the Giants. If you dig, stick around.”

  “No thanks,” I said. He had shit taste in shows.

  “Old Dude’s got her sold on how deep he is, how this is all for real with him. Even had her name pinstriped on the door. Girls are such suckers for that shit. They don’t know they can be scraped off with a putty knife and buffed out with a little rubbing compound and Turtle Wax.” He made scraping motions, and then blew debris from the invisible scraper he held.

  “How do you know all this? Unless you got their room bugged, there’s no way you’d catch that much. This is bullshit.”

  “When I wanted to surprise Maggi with new little people for her projects, I looked in this diary our mom forced on her, trying to shut her up at the Vendor Table.” He stared at the TV for a while. “I knew she’d been using it to sketch out her new ideas. She’d shown me some.”

  “A diary,” I said, thinking of all the ways I’d been able to keep my privacy at our house. This tiny shack didn’t seem to offer any.

  “Yup, you’re smarter than you look, isn’t it?” He reddened. “Turns out she wasn’t just using it as a sketchbook. Turns out too, I’m kind of a shitty twin brother.”

  “Would you know this guy if you saw him?” I asked again. Marvin filled me in on what little more he was willing to reveal, saying he hadn’t really seen the guy except by the Bandit’s dome light. “Where is she now? How do you know it’
s tonight?”

  “I don’t know where she is. But your cousin Tami’s covering, pretending she’s staying over or some shit. Whyn’t you ask her?” I didn’t say anything to that. “Don’t believe your cousin could lie to you?” Marvin said, laughing. “You know what they say about Karma.”

  “Yeah, it’s instant and it’ll knock you on your ass.”

  “I thought it was Instamatic,” he said.

  “That’s a camera,” I said, heading to their door. “If I find them, will you help me straighten this guy’s ass out? Stop your sister from making a giant mistake?” The guy sounded big, by Marvin’s description.

  “I’m done trying to figure out my sisters,” he said, sliding deep into the couch cushions for the long haul. “Besides, you only think it’s a mistake ’cause this dude beat you to home base. She’s serious about him. If you’d have looked at her art for real, you’d know that. She laid out their whole story, plain as day on that hanging, and the only ones who saw it were me, her, probably Marie, and maybe the guy himself. She thinks Old Dude’s gonna take her away from our little shack.”

  I flipped to the newspaper article. Even in the fuzzy newsprint photos, the sequence told a story, like filmstrips from science class. The first strip shows a girl discovering her canoe was becoming fractured, splitting from too much pressure, too many others crowding her out. In the second sequence, she sees someone alone in a different canoe, and the third line traces the two of them reaching out to one another. All the Polaroids echoed those same ideas, the leaving of one canoe for another. When I’d seen her amazing piece at the Bazaar, I’d somehow imagined I was the man in the other rickety canoe, inviting her to leave hers and help stabilize my own.

  Marvin turned the volume up, and we watched the Land of the Giants opening credits. A cartoon man ran from a spotlight across the screen. The owner of the spotlight was no regular man, though. The tiny man discovered too late that the spotlight was the least of his worries. It was actually a flashlight, belonging to a giant, who then scooped him up and carried him away.

  “Find your buddy, Lewis,” he added. “I got the sense that guy’s been hassling him and now with Maggi involved, that don’t happen so much. Lewis shoulda learned to stop getting his ass beat on his own, but you can’t blame him for accepting the benefits of my sister’s hooking-up life. Lewis is like the cartoon guy here. He knows what it’s like to be squeezed in the giant’s fist.”

  “Well, I have a pretty good guess where Lewis is. That’s something. But if I need you?” I asked, getting up. “Will you … at least pick up the phone?” I had to find her, but what then? What could I possibly do by myself?

  “I guess,” he said, going back to his show. “One thing, Carson? Out here on the Rez, maybe you’re special, but we’ve been living in the city. For every girl like Maggi, there’s ten dudes like you lining up to try and impress them.”

  I left then, heading home. Marvin was impervious to my persuasion, so calling Tami was next, but I didn’t want to. What if she confirmed she’d willingly lie to me? But I caught a lucky break. When I pulled into my driveway, I could hear music streaming from Derek’s room.

  “Hey, brother. I need your help,” I said, taking the stairs two at a time. It felt strange to lean in his doorway the way he’d leaned in mine all those months ago. “It might get us in trouble. I’m pretty sure it’s off the Rez. I wouldn’t ask, all things considered, but I’m gonna need muscle.”

  “Where do I sign up?” he asked, grinning. “I owe you. But I’d do it even if I didn’t.”

  I smiled back, mostly genuine but a little tough too. I hated seeking Derek, because he couldn’t blend in like me off the Rez. And I hated that he was eager for trouble again, but I was running out of trustworthy options.

  “Be back in an hour,” I said. Normally, Derek ran on Indian Time, but other people were counting on us. One other person. And she didn’t even know it. “If you’re not ready, I’m gonna split. I gotta call Tami and get Lewis. I need you and him.” He hobbled up. The Ass Toothache would be a part of his life for a long time, maybe forever. “When did Mom and Dad leave?”

  “Hour ago? Dad wanted to warm up. Indian league’s against the district this week.”

  “Our school district?” It was like a gift. I didn’t need to call Tami after all. “Teachers?”

  “Yeah, our district,” he said. “Team’s whoever signs up. Probably all maintenance guys and lunch ladies,” he laughed. “Dad’s always pissed because Darwin bowls for the school instead of the Indian league. That’s why he wants to win so bad this week. It’s personal for him.”

  I ran to my room and pulled out two tall cans of red spray paint I’d bought to make a Dog Street Devils backdrop for the band. The cans were full. I didn’t know what I was going to find down at the bowling alley, but if this guy Jim felt about his car the way I felt about the Chevelle, I knew at least one way to maybe hit him hard, even without swinging a punch.

  “An hour for real, a little less, maybe,” I said to Derek when I passed by. “Not Indian Time.” I pointed to the clock radio on his nightstand.

  “Heard you the first time. You gonna tell me what you need me for?”

  “Dress like you don’t want to get noticed.” He grinned at this and reached for the darkest pair of jeans on his dresser, untying his boots to swap out of the faded jeans he had on.

  December 8, 6:59 p.m.

  “Lewis!” I yelled, stepping in. He was upstairs, trying to play along with the new David Bowie. Someone was with him. They were picking out a new tab. My job! “It’s Carson! Can I use your phone?” I asked, already dialing. Marvin answered on the second ring. I asked him if he thought they might have gone to the bowling alley. He said he’d told me everything he knew and again suggested, more irritated, that I talk to Tami. I could hear isolation in his voice. Maybe he wanted me to confirm that I was almost as isolated, that my own cousin had worked against me.

  Lewis’s bike was leaning in the corner, his giant chain wrapped around the seat shaft. Perfect. I quietly twisted the chain off, ’round and ’round. Heavy-duty and hard-core, exactly what I needed. Maybe I’d be okay with just Lewis after all, if Derek flaked on us.

  This beautiful heavy chain would be almost invisible once inside my bulky winter coat. I was going to use it either on that guy Jim’s car or on his ass, depending on how I found him. I thought of Marvin’s Instamatic karma comment and grinned to myself. He’d given me all the keys I needed. And now I was prepared. “You sure you don’t want to come? Last chance.”

  “Don’t call me again,” Marvin said. “Whatever my sisters find, they find.” He hung up.

  “So what’s up?” Lewis said, coming down from his room.

  “Your phone get cut off for lack of payment?” Doobie added, following behind him.

  “Funny,” I said. “Where’s your truck?” Lewis was easier to sway when he was alone.

  “Lewis’s mom borrowed it to run to the store.” I couldn’t imagine lending the Chevelle.

  “She’s not a big Bowie fan,” Lewis said. “She was getting sick of hearing ‘Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)’ over and over.” He always insisted on using full titles whenever he talked about songs, like I’d confuse it with a different “Scary Monsters.” “We need Susan’s keyboard to sound decent. My acoustic isn’t getting me anywhere. Chords are easy, but everything’s processed.” It also needed a lead player, since it continued, even when Bowie sang.

  “Listen, I went to Maggi’s, I was gonna drop off a copy of the paper.”

  “I don’t think she cares that much,” Lewis said, frowning at his bike in the corner.

  “That’s more your thing,” Doobie added as he wiped down his bass and cased it.

  “Like you’re not trying to get your picture taken with every ambulance in the county,” I said to him. He shrugged, letting me know that was a pathetic jab. “Anyway, she wasn’t home. Marvin says she’s with a guy, and that she’s gonna …”

  I could
n’t even say it. It was supposed to be me! I’d done everything right! I was from the right place! Coming back was hard enough. Coming back and getting involved with someone who wasn’t from the Rez? You might as well have stayed in the city. It never occurred to me to watch out for guys from the outside.

  In September, I’d welcomed her to join us at the little back hallway where all the Indians hung out between classes. Marie was easy to have back because we knew her. But we weren’t the Welcome-Wagon types, by nature. I felt a little bad now we hadn’t helped Marvin more. Could we have made an effort instead of looking at him like he was a new kind of insect anytime he’d cracked a joke? Yeah, but then Maggi would have thought I did that for just anyone. She wouldn’t know that I thought she was special.

  “Look! They’re gonna …” Was there a non-ridiculous way to say this? “Gonna do it.”

  “How would Marvin know that?” Doobie said. Like Lewis, he was always interested in Eee-ogg sources.