Give Me Some Truth

by Eric Gansworth

  “Okay. I wasn’t really hoping you’d be good backup in a fight,” I said, still struck by the lies people can tell themselves. Doobie had left, and Lewis, alone, thought he had the edge here.

  “That isn’t something a friend would say, but it does sound like you,” he said. I had to turn over my last card and hope it worked. If I had to reveal a secret weapon, I was glad I had one. I thought about everything I’d overheard that guy say in the garage that afternoon, the way he’d treated Lewis at the Labor Day party.

  “But it is something a friend’s telling you,” I said, picturing those Land of the Giants opening credits, a cartoon Lewis in a spotlight he didn’t want, captured by a massive man. “This friend. For your own good. Ever wonder why that Jim messes with you? Why, out of all the scrawny work kids, he dumps on you?” Lewis knew I was going to tell him the truth.

  “Cowards go for easy targets,” he said. He couldn’t think his luck was that shitty, could he? “I’ve been small my whole life. I never get to control things.” He thought, forming ahead whatever he wanted to say. “You surround yourself with people you think you can control. But you really just deliver a good enough time that I choose to stick around. There’s one small thing I can control. I put up with you, even though you’re a dick. It’s never occurred to you, but I can walk away at any time. You don’t put up with me. I put up with you.” Did I want the truth? Was I ready?

  “Please? Just come! I’ll give you the details on the way, but we got to go!” I said.

  “Look, Maggi’s choices are her business, not mine. You’re mad she didn’t pick you. That’s in her control. You feeling like you’ve been blocked isn’t reason enough for me to act.”

  “You think it’s as messed up as I do but you like being left alone. You think that guy’s done with you? She’s probably gonna sleep with him partly to keep him off your back, and because he did us a big favor.”

  Lewis gave me his patented Yeah, Right! Look.

  “Remember Groffini didn’t know why Marchese pulled the deficiency mark? That guy Jim told Marchese he swapped out the turkeys, and he apologized.” I still hadn’t been clear enough for this to sink in. “Lewis! Guys who buy Hustler? Even their favorite centerfolds, they eventually get rid of them when the right new one comes along.”

  “What? Look, drop this. She …” He hated when I used his own info against him.

  “Lewis,” I said, locking eyes. “Grow up! That guy Jim can’t take Maggi’s virginity twice. Once he’s got that itch scratched, he’ll need some other kind of fun, then it’s straight back to yanking old Lewis’s drawers down and nut-punching him. Don’t kid yourself. Maggi’s just a little pause in this guy’s life.”

  “What do you think that has to do with me?” I’d wanted Lewis to do this for my reasons, but I had to go with the nuclear option, the one thing guaranteed to get a reaction out of him.

  “That guy is Evan Reiniger’s uncle, Lewis. Evan’s uncle. Maybe as close as you and your uncle. I overheard him talking about you once, but I didn’t put everything together until just tonight. Evan’s still hassling your ass even though he hasn’t been in school for what? Four years? Did you think he was going to forget about you? He still found you, and it ain’t gonna end because that Jim finally got the piece of ass he’s been fantasizing about.” I handed him his jacket, the jacket his own uncle had given him.

  “You are so lying,” Lewis said. But Evan Reiniger, I could see, still lived inside Lewis’s brain. The guy who stole Lewis’s Brainiac title. The boogeyman who had never left.

  “Decide when we get there whether you’re gonna help or not, but you might get some satisfaction giving this Jim some of the shit he’s been dishing you. You can stay in the car if you’re too chicken, but please!” Lewis’s breath rushed through his nostrils, more fear than anger. He’d stood up for Derek, and for me, and now I wanted him to stand up for himself. “Use that new pair of balls you grew,” I said.

  It was too easy to get him that way, but it worked, and I didn’t have time to fart around. A few minutes later, with Lewis riding shotgun and Derek in back after we picked him up, I headed to the bowling alley.

  “Sorry, guys.” Derek said when we pulled into the shelter. “I was up for a rumble, but that would send me to jail.” He pointed at a van. Its side was covered with the Custard’s Last Stand logo, including a cartoon of Marchese’s husband, guns blazing. Teachers did bowl?

  “How about this?” I said, pulling the two cans of red spray paint.

  “That I can do,” Derek said, grinning. I watched as he rattled spray paint cans.

  “So, any ideas?” I asked Lewis as Derek started a red cloud around the van.

  “I’m going to wander around, see if I can find Jim’s car,” he said.

  “Well, you do know what it looks like. Marvin says it’s got Maggi’s name pinstriped on the passenger door.” Lewis dropped his eyes. He’d already seen that, maybe even some time ago, and he’d kept silent. Inside my coat pocket, I wrapped Lewis’s chain around my wrist, leaving a few feet hanging before the lock. I wanted the power of swinging the chain. If I found that Bandit first, I could bust windows or dent doors, or tear side mirrors off for starters.

  Derek was a natural vandal. He’d have better ideas.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I asked, walking over to where he was working.

  “I don’t want to go to jail, Little Brother. You can’t change the world from a jailbird cell. But he’ll see this message.” In the gravel, he’d sprayed a crime-scene body outline in the stones, the ass all saturated. “Custard’s gotta know what he’s doing is messed up, right?”

  I wanted to be honest, but I just looked at him. I still didn’t really get why he’d walked into Custard’s that night to rob the place, why he had chosen to strike fear, why he avoided a peaceful protest. Didn’t he remember how the Onondagas had made it work? Had Derek maybe chosen to forget, thinking that alone, he’d never bring enough people together?

  “I don’t mean just about shooting my ass,” Derek said, holding my eye. “What I did was stupid, no argument. So maybe my First Aid Scar will remind me there’s all kinds of bad ideas floating around out there. Don’t make the same mistake I did, okay? I coulda come out much worse. But the rest? The name of the place, his stupid costume, that sign? He’s gotta know that’s screwed up, right?” He didn’t wait for me to share an opinion and handed me the second spray can, still full. “Soon as I’m done, I’m taking the back way to Red Man’s Drop and following it to the Rez. Don’t forget to pick me up when you’re done.”

  December 8, 11:09 p.m.

  The last section of the Playboy interview was about writing songs, both the Beatles’ and John’s solo work. Jim had teased me, saying “your friends John and Yoko” when he handed me this magazine, but he was kind of right. Even without my being aware, they’d somehow become a part of me, a part of my life and the ways I thought about the world. And their world wasn’t so far away from mine.

  Yoko was having an art show in Syracuse, her first solo show in America, and they’d heard the Onondagas were refusing to let the state build a thruway through their Rez. The state kept raising the stakes, thinking the Onondagas were holding out. They couldn’t understand our connection to our land, the thing that brought my mom back to my dad. She claimed it was for us, but I think I understood now, months after, that she’d been waiting for the day she could return.

  I could imagine John and Yoko coming here, and standing up for the Porter Agreement, so my family could keep our Table without worry. We had treaty rights but still were forced to apply for our permit every year, as if we’d stopped being Indians sometime in the previous 364 days. John and Yoko were living, breathing examples that you could take preexisting ideas and forms and make them your own, that you could be true to your traditions, yourself, and your art (and to one another, which brought me back to a new truth creeping into my horizon).

  I hated that this love of my life had to be secret. I thou
ght I was going to be okay with it, but the longer I sat in this car, the more I realized I wasn’t. Girls in school always said my boyfriend did this and that, but what was I going to say?

  My boyfriend lent me his porno mag while he went bowling on the night we made love for the first time, was Ghost Marvin’s suggestion.

  In the interview, John had no issue saying which songs were his and which were Paul’s. Even when it wasn’t a fifty-fifty partnership, they worked together, and all those Beatles songs wouldn’t be the same if they hadn’t shared responsibility. This new album was different. You knew John’s songs and Yoko’s. I couldn’t decide which was better.

  I loved playing in the band, adding my own signatures, and being able to make those additions with confidence. With Jim, I felt less like I was that bold. You didn’t have to love your music partner, but you should be able to have a say in how your romance develops without worrying about upsetting that person’s desires. The way this whole night had been planned out came from Jim’s mind and Jim’s alone—I would never have come up with the idea of sitting in a car, waiting for hours because someone didn’t want to be seen with me. I don’t know how I would change things, but I hadn’t had the opportunity. Which was better, collaboration, or clear, single decisions made by two separate people toward the same goal?

  I dug around the cassettes inside Jim’s console to find some music. Bingo! Beatlesie Love Songs for My Girl. The tape began with “And Your Bird Can Sing.” The lame joke I’d heard my whole life, but Jim had somehow made it seem okay to hear my name as MaggiPie. The second song was “Woman,” the one Jim played for me the night we almost finished taking each other’s clothes off. I could picture him in the break room in only his briefs. Without him really standing that way in front of me right now, my memory made it seem sexy instead of goofy.

  Suddenly, I couldn’t wait until later, when I’d finish undressing him for real. Until this moment, I’d thought that I’d take his clothes off because he liked that idea, but I admitted to myself that, in the right place, I did want to do this. When was this going to end? I listened to the whole tape, trying to make time pass faster.

  Partway through a second listen, I ejected it. Weirdly, John Lennon was on the radio too. How random! And it wasn’t even a hit. It was “Remember,” from Plastic Ono Band. Lewis always noted how raw it was, but it just sounded like John Lennon to me. Maybe stripped down (Jim in his briefs popped into my head again, and I laughed what Carson called my Scandalous Rez Girl Laugh, and that blue flash sparked through me again).

  I could hear individual instruments as the song went on. Piano, bass, and drums. Yeah, stripped down. (Again, Jim. Again, laugh.) Its drum pattern was so weird. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to master it if we ever decided to do it. I liked that it ended with a sound effects explosion too. Just neat and sudden. A shock you couldn’t anticipate.

  “And that was ‘Remember,’ by John Lennon,” the DJ said when it ended. “Off the classic, raw Plastic Ono Band.” (Did Lewis get all his ideas from DJs?) “And that is what we’re doing tonight. Remembering John Lennon.” (What?) “For those of you just tuning in, tragic news from New York City. As we get more details, we’ll pass them along. A little before eleven o’clock tonight, John Lennon was shot and killed outside his apartment building. Just forty years old. For the rest of the night, we’ll be bringing you—”

  I switched it off. It had to be wrong.

  I looked around the parking lot. No movement. Nothing different. Shouldn’t the world look changed? It felt changed. Like it would never be the same. I pulled the keys and ran into the building. Everything at the lanes looked the same, people sitting around, adding scores, drinking beers. The DJ had to have been wrong.

  Then I looked at the man at the counter, setting a big, clumsy microphone on the desk, and he looked like he was going to be sick. He made a brief phone call, and a few seconds later, “Imagine” came over the speakers mounted in the ceiling, and I knew it was true. I ran to the lounge. Even if they tried to kick me out, I had to find Jim.

  Inside the murky room, my eyes adjusted. The far corner was dominated by a projection TV straight out of Marvin’s space shows, cheaply futuristic. Three light cannons, blue, red, and green, were mounted below a curved screen, pointing at a low unit that reflected onto a big screen. The picture was like TV through a dirty fish tank.

  The packed room buzzed. Some talked quietly while others raged. No one paid me any attention. On TV, Nightline began, Ted Koppel saying they had a suspect in custody. He cut to footage of the Beatles. The woman reporting got basic Beatles facts wrong, stuff even I knew!

  Some people in the lounge held each other, crying, but a lot studied the TV, like maybe there was some way they could change the facts of the past hour, to alter the way this fell apart. I worked my way to the front, to catch people’s faces. Finally, I spotted Jim at a table, his eyes on me.

  As I moved, he shook his head slowly and held his hand up in a small “stop” gesture.

  Anyone else would think he was telling himself this news couldn’t be, but I knew what he was saying. I understood, suddenly, that this was what he’d be saying to me for at least another year. Probably longer. We’d never hold hands window-shopping at the mall, or go for ice cream, trying each other’s cones. We’d never kiss at the edge of the Falls, with a giant rainbow spraying out of mist, like all the other couples in love visiting our city. We would never shop for just the right tourist souvenir to commemorate our vacation. I had known we wouldn’t, but now I knew we wouldn’t, and I knew I wanted it. I wanted it and I deserved it.

  I wasn’t ever going to be MaggiPie, not really. I might be Motel Room Maggi, but that was it. I hadn’t even seen Jim’s apartment yet. Liz, the garage bitchlette, came up and hugged him, crying. I had a hard time feeling bad for her. At first, she’d insisted on using Magpie, the full name I hated, but even that wasn’t humiliating enough. Lately, she’d settled on SkagPie—calling me what she’d thought of me all along.

  Emphasis on the “Skag,” Ghost Marvin jabbed, my predictably charming twin.

  Liz shared one of Carson’s talents. Like all crappy nicknames, like Stinkpot, Liz knew how to arrive at those that would stick. If Jim and I started seeing each other in public, I’d be SkagPie forever.

  December 8, 11:29 p.m.

  “I found Jim’s car,” Lewis said, and I stood up to follow him.

  “You should spray paint a big cherry on the Bandit’s back deck,” Derek said, a phrase I’d never use. Vulgar for something special. Okay, I would for someone else, but not someone I cared about. “I’m outta here,” he called. “Don’t get caught.” Dressed in black, he disappeared. He’d learned how to be a Vanishing Indian, even without the help of Edward Curtis’s camera.

  The Bandit’s hood was still warm when we got to it, engine ticking. “Maggi’s bag,” Lewis said, pointing to the passenger’s seat. “And Playboy?” Weird. What the hell was going on? The word MaggiPie and a tiny pinstripe bird were still on the door. Naturally, this asshole would have a giant predator on his hood for himself and a vulnerable bird for her. Like Marvin said—easily scraped and sanded off, buffed out and polished into nothing.

  “Listen,” Lewis said. “I’m going inside. Maybe I can talk her into leaving with us.” He walked toward the bowling alley and disappeared. I stared at the Bandit for a while, thinking Lewis would be right back. I knew what it was to love a car. Eventually, I pulled out Lewis’s bike chain and swung the lock for momentum. Aiming, I neatly busted the taillight.

  Maybe I could spray that hood decal too. How would that look with a big gash across it? Not Derek’s suggestion, but something else. What? Something he’d have to see every time he drove. I really wanted to swing this lock and whack that guy’s nuts as hard as I could. Put him out of commission. But Lewis should get to see that. Where was he?

  Just then, a PA system clicked on. Did this rinky-dink bowling alley have security cameras too? I had a trucker cap and hooded sweatshir
t on under my coat, but cameras would have caught the Chevelle’s arrival. I was so stupid! Instead of a Rent-A-Cop yelling at me to freeze, though, John Lennon’s “Imagine” started playing. What the hell? Was he everywhere? His new album was decent, but it wasn’t that good.

  The music faded out, and I heard someone take a breath.

  “Attention, Frontier players and patrons.” The guy’s voice sounded thick, like he had a cold. “If you’re still at your lanes, you haven’t heard. The news just reported that John Lennon’s been shot outside his home in New York City. He was rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, which I guess is nearby? … But he was pronounced dead on arrival. We’ll extend lounge hours. Monday Night Football’s just ended. Nightline’s beginning full coverage, if you’re interested. Up here, we’ll keep piping his music, from us at Frontier, to you, as we report this terrible news.”

  “Imagine” came back, followed by “Strawberry Fields Forever,” as I walked to the entrance. Was this some prank of Lewis’s because he’d chickened out? Typical, but getting a bowling alley clerk to use the PA? Impressive. I had to check it out, admit he’d gotten me. He was usually a crappy prankster, but this was amazing. Maybe the best ever, for him.

  Before I got to the door, a guy charged at it. Not the one I’d come here for, but maybe better. Even without his Cavalry costume, I recognized Custard and his ridiculous mustache and pageboy. He was alone. I slid my hand in my coat pocket and felt Lewis’s bike chain. When Custard stepped out, I ducked behind a pillar, eventually following. I knew where he’d parked.

  The parking shelter PA piped in audio from Nightline. Ted Koppel said they were cutting to a reporter outside the New York City hospital. It was real? You could hear people surrounding the reporter, hundreds it sounded like, and you knew the kind of goons they were without even seeing them. They were the kind just trying to get on TV, even as the cameraman would attempt to zoom on the reporter, and for the rest of their lives, they’d say in their gooniest voices: “I was on TV the night John Lennon got shot.”