Ziggy, Stardust and Me

by James Brandon

  We don’t move.

  For a long time.

  “I was really mad at you that night,” he says finally, clutching the albums to his chest.

  “I know . . .”

  “Still kinda am.”

  “Right . . .”

  “But . . . I don’t know . . .” A slight curve starts to inch up his right cheek, when—

  “OW.” A hand grips my shoulder from behind.

  “Sorry there, big guy.” I’ve heard that voice before. I whip around. It’s the Web Doppelganger!

  “Oh, heyheyhey!” he says. “How you doin’, my main man? Damn, lookit you, you’re like the Human Torch!” He smiles a bright crescent moon, then does some weird hand-jive thing with my hands I guess I’m supposed to know, and grabs me in a bear hug. Me: Raggedy Andy in his arms.

  “You two know each other?” Web asks.

  “Know each other? Heck yeah! Two days ago, was it?” He pulls me back.

  “That’s right. Hello again,” I say.

  “Yeah, yeah. Great place that is. Great man, that Chester. Only place in town we can really go where it’s safe.” He’s still smiling. So bright it’s almost blinding. He wears a bone choker tied around his neck, and his eyes seem to have each caught an ember from the fire and ignited.

  “This is my uncle Russell,” Web says. “Uncle Russell, this is . . . Jonathan.”

  “Oh, you’re Jonathan? So glad to finally meet you, my man. Officially.” He grabs my hand again. This time, I have sense enough to shake.

  “You too. I love Smokey Bear.”

  “What?” he says.

  “Your shirt.”

  “Right, right.” He laughs and it’s like a roaring waterfall, cooling and relaxing. “Only you can prevent forest fires,” he says, putting on Smokey’s bear voice.

  “Yeah . . .”

  “Why don’t you come over and join us?”

  He starts to pull me toward the fire; I panic. “Figglyfops!” flies out of my mouth. God.

  “What?”

  Web chuckles. “He talks in tongues sometimes.”

  “Oh, thought I was missin’ out on some jive you kids are usin’. A man needs to know these things to keep up. Come on.” He leads me to the circle.

  Oh no. I look behind me to see if there’s any movement at the trailers. None that I can see from here, but if they return and I’m not there—

  “I’m glad you came back,” Web whispers in my ear.

  I’m staying put. For now.

  The second we approach, his grandfather stops talking to the woman who sits across from him on a wooden stump. They stare, stuck in mid-laugh. Like I caught them telling a joke and took a Polaroid.

  “Uh. Hello,” I say. And lift my hand, spreading my fingers like a stupid Vulcan. I seriously do this. And now I’m frozen. I can’t put my hand down. Someone please say something.

  “Look what the cat dragged in!” Uncle Russell says. “It’s Jonathan! Sit.” He plops me down on a log between him and Web’s grandfather.

  Web sits on the ground next to the woman, fixated on Aladdin Sane.

  “That’s my wife, Sunny,” Uncle Russell says.

  “Hello,” I say.

  “Heard a lot about you,” she says.

  “Oh?” That can’t be good. Her face is soft and warm. Her hair’s twisted in two loose braids and she’s wearing a rainbow-colored vest, stitched in such a way that it looks like the bird is about to fly right off her chest. She laughs. I dart my eyes back to hers. Oh man. Does she think I was looking at her breasts? Oh God.

  “So, the troublemaker returns,” his grandfather says, reclining back in his lawn chair.

  “Oh . . . Yeah . . .” I brush some pebbles together in a little mound.

  “Lookin’ the part, too,” he says, chuckling. “A little devilish, if you ask me.”

  “Oh, heh-heh . . . I was on the—it was so hot today and . . . never mind . . .”

  “He’s teasing,” Sunny says.

  “Yeah, he’s the Lakota jokester,” Uncle Russell says. “Always pulling pranks when you least expect it. Better watch your back.” He punches my arm playfully. I rub it, smiling. Thinking it might be permanently bruised now. Damn, that hurt.

  “Wanna hear a joke now?” his grandfather asks.

  “Here we go,” Sunny says.

  “Knock knock.”

  “Oh, uh, who’s there?” I say.

  “Cash.”

  “Cash who?”

  “No, thanks, I prefer peanuts.”

  Web shakes his head.

  “Oh, I get it. Good one,” I say.

  “Please don’t encourage him,” Sunny says.

  “Knock knock—”

  “Who’s there?” I ask.

  “A broken pencil.”

  “A broken pencil who?”

  “Never mind,” he says. “It’s pointless.” He laughs so hard at this he nearly falls out of his lawn chair.

  “Oh man,” I say.

  “See? What’d I tell ya?” Uncle Russell says. “Back on the rez, people flee when they see him coming toward them. Slam their windows shut, bolt their doors.” He winks.

  “Yeah, just wait’ll we get home to Pine Ridge,” his grandfather says. “Been over a month now. I have a whole notebook full of ’em.”

  “If we get home . . .” Web mumbles. The circle goes quiet. I watch Web’s smile slowly melt in the fire. Sunny rubs his back. He looks like he’s crying . . . Hard to tell out here, but—

  “Hey!” Grandfather booms, thumping his lawn chair down in the gravel. I jump. Web lifts his head. He is crying. What’s going on? “We’re gettin’ back home. You hear me? No news is good news. Don’t you get lost in that crazy maze in your mind—you know better. What was it you said? ‘Navigate something something . . .’”

  “The negative,” he says softly. Our eyes meet.

  “Right. You said it helped. So do it. Everything happens for a reason, you hear me, Web? You know I don’t think what happened is right, but it’s done. We’re together now. That’s what matters. Those white goons are gonna get what’s coming to them, trust me. Sometimes these things take time, you hear?”

  Sunny kisses the top of his head, strokes his hair. “You can’t blame yourself, hon . . .”

  “You know what your dad used to say to me growing up?” Uncle Russell says. “‘White men are lost little boys, scared of what they don’t understand.’ And if it scares the hell out of ’em, they gotta get rid of it . . .”

  “Including us,” Sunny says.

  “Ain’t that the truth,” his grandfather says.

  Everyone stares off in different directions, silent. What are they talking about? Why is Web crying? Why is he afraid he won’t get home? He said something on the cliff that night about a white cop—I should say something. But what? If Starla were here she’d know what to do. She’d flip if she were sitting here, actually. What was it she talked about that day I first met Web? About going somewhere to help them. That must be what they’re—

  “Wounded Knee!” I blurt out. Crap.

  They look at me.

  “I mean . . . isn’t that . . . why you were at Wounded Knee?” I run my fingers through my hair, scratch the back of my head.

  His grandfather lifts a smile. “That’s exactly why the movement came to the Knee. You heard about that, then?”

  “I mean . . . my friend Starla . . . she told me something about . . .” I shift on the log. Web looks up at me, lifting his crooked, dimpled smile. “But . . . What happened? Why were you there?”

  His grandfather eyes me. “We were fightin’ for our voice to be heard again,” he says.

  “That. And all the corruption we’re dealin’ with,” Uncle Russell says. “And the racism. And our poor living conditions. I could go on—” />
  “I just wish they hadn’t destroyed so much land,” Sunny says. She holds Web’s head against her chest. “All those people fighting. So many homes were ruined . . .”

  “But seeing our peoples show up in support, coming together like that from all over Turtle Island—”

  Uncle Russell leans into me. “That’s what we call North America.” He winks.

  “That never happens.”

  “Those goons weren’t getting through that wall of Red Power!” Uncle Russell says.

  “No, sir . . .”

  Web wipes his eyes, lost in the fire.

  “Starla said it was dangerous,” I say, sitting up. “That people even . . . got killed . . .”

  “We lost a couple men when they started shooting—” Uncle Russell says, shaking his head. “We all knew what we were gettin’ into, but, man—bullets whizzed all around us—like we were in Vietnam. They blocked us in. Wouldn’t even let people bring us food or water. Cut off our electricity. Tried to force us off our land again.” He squeezes my shoulder. “But you know something, son? We stood our ground. For seventy-one days. We didn’t back down.”

  “Yeah, we finally put a face to who we are, let the world see all the promises and treaties those white men have broken all these years . . .” his grandfather says, looking up at the sky. “That’s what we showed ’em when all those cameras and news people came . . . Man, it was somethin’ else. You shoulda been there, Jonathan.”

  Everyone’s silent again.

  Until Uncle Russell chuckles. “I still keep picturing all those white people seeing us on TV like that!”

  “Oh, you know they kept hitting their sets, thinking the color was off!” his grandfather says, slapping his lawn chair.

  “Probably haven’t seen so many Natives together since The Lone Ranger!” Sunny says.

  They laugh.

  Web stands, brushes off his jeans. “Come on, Jonathan.”

  “Oh. Okay. Where?”

  “Just come on,” he says, walking toward the house.

  I stand. “Uh. Thanks for . . . having me here,” I say to the others. “I’m glad, you know, you’re okay.” God. What a stupid thing to say.

  Uncle Russell smiles, pats my back. “Nice seeing you again, kiddo.”

  “You too—I mean, nice seeing you again, too. All of you . . .” I do not do a Vulcan goodbye again, thank God. I wave. And as soon as I leave the circle, I hear them whispering in a language I don’t understand.

  39.

  WEB CLIMBS THE BACK steps.

  “You okay?” I ask him.

  “Yeah, why?”

  “I mean . . . you were just . . . What happened back there? What was he talking about not going home and—”

  “It’s a long story . . . You comin’ in or what, man?” He holds the screen door open.

  “Inside? No way, Web, I can’t. I have to get back over there before—”

  “Over there? Over where?”

  Dammit. I really didn’t want him to know. I promised myself I wouldn’t say anything. Mostly because I don’t want to be thought of in the same galaxy-breath as them, but—

  “We’re staying there. Dad and me. With his girlfriend.”

  “Oh.”

  “For a few more days.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh.”

  We turn to the trailers. I left the light on, so now it looks like two eyes are staring back at us, taunting us. Still, no one’s back.

  “They’re all assholes,” I say.

  “Yeah.”

  He doesn’t move. It’s possible he’s trying to create a windstorm with his mind to blow the trailers to kingdom come. Or now he’s really pissed at me. Either way, can’t blame him.

  “Anyway, I should go—”

  “What? No. Come on.” He bounces down the stairs and grabs my hand to pull me up.

  “I can’t. I should really get back before Dad knows—”

  “I got something for your sunburn.”

  “Oh?”

  “It’ll just take a few minutes.”

  “Well . . . I mean . . .” My brain says, Go. Now. Before it’s too late. My heart says, Too late. “Okay. Thanks. But then I need to go.”

  His grandfather and the others stop talking as we ascend the stairs. I swear someone even turned the volume knob down on the cicadas and crickets and birds and the entire universe.

  “Are you sure this is okay?” I ask him.

  “Yeah, why?”

  “They’re all staring.”

  “Oh. They’re curious is all . . .”

  “Curious? About what?”

  “Come on.”

  We walk inside. Whoa. Holy Heatwave, Batman. My body instantly starts sweating. I’m getting dizzy. I sit at a wooden table in the center of the room. Web disappears, rummaging through some drawers.

  I see three other rooms and they’re only a few feet apart and they’re each curtained in a faded tie-dyed tapestry. There’s a tiny fridge in the corner next to the fireplace. And next to it, a wooden crate stuffed with canned goods and generic foods like a box of Rice Crunchies and bags of “Cherry-Flavored Powdered Drink Mix.”

  Underneath me: a vibrant star-shaped rug in yellows and reds and blacks and blues. Woven so perfectly it thumps in and out like a heartbeat when you look at it. I close my eyes. Breathe.

  “Your house is neat,” I say.

  “It’s not my house.”

  “Oh. Right. Whose is it?”

  “A friend of the family’s.”

  “Hey, it’s like a hundred and fifty degrees in here,” I say. “Why don’t you open some windows?”

  “Can’t.” He disappears into another room.

  “Why not?”

  He doesn’t answer. He’s making so much noise he may be constructing a new wing on the house, banging drawers open and closed.

  A small bookshelf stacked with old books sits against the wall, propped up with cinder blocks and a record player. An herb smolders in a bowl. Patchouli maybe? Aunt Luna used to burn that all the time. Hers smelled like the forest floor, but this one’s more minty.

  He runs back in heaving and sweating, carrying scissors and a spiky plant.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah. Just trying to hurry.”

  “Oh.” Right. Because I. Need. To. Get. Back.

  “Why can’t you open a window?” I ask.

  “Hiding.”

  “From what?”

  “Not what. Who.”

  “Who, then?”

  “Those assholes across the lake, man.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. Take your shirt off.”

  “WHAT?”

  “So I can put this on.” He puts the plant on the table and cuts some leaves. A little clear goo oozes out.

  “What is it?”

  “Aloe. It’ll help. Trust me.”

  “You learn that from your grandfather?”

  “Yeah. And from the ancient Greeks and Romans and Egyptians and Chinese and—”

  “Okay, I get it.”

  “So . . . ?”

  “Right.” Besides the presentation, which doesn’t count because it was dark and I was covered in gold glitter, I’ve never let anyone see me without a shirt. I mean, I barely let myself see me without a shirt. I close my eyes, slowly inch it over my head.

  “Ouch,” he says.

  “I know. I look like a piece of red construction paper.”

  “No. Looks like it hurts.”

  “Yeah . . .”

  He dabs the aloe on my forehead. A cold, slimy prickle from his fingers starts to tingle through my scar. “OW.”

  “Sorry, man. It may hurt at first, but it’ll help, I promise.” He whispers thi
s. Oh boy. I keep my eyes closed.

  His fingers start to sizzle. Could be a side effect from the treatments. But could be his fingers. Because, oh man, the way he’s touching my skin . . .

  And now his hands . . .

  Oh God, his hands.

  I forgot how soft they were. Like dryer sheets. They massage my chest.

  “Feel okay?” he says to my cheek. His breath tickles my neck.

  I can’t answer.

  He keeps massaging. A shock rips through his hands, like paddles on a defibrillator charging my heart. Breathe through it, breathe through it, breathe through it—

  His hands move to my legs. Sweet. Ziggy. No. Like the electric cuffs are wrapped around my thighs. Scorching. Breathe, breathe, breathe through it . . . I can’t . . . do it . . . it hurts—I open my eyes.

  He’s inches from me, his hands glued to my legs . . .

  I breathe in.

  He breathes out.

  He inches closer.

  I’m so hard right now you could launch rockets off of it and I wouldn’t feel it. But I know he can. It’s pressed against him. And it burns so bad, a tear falls from my eye before I can stop it.

  He wipes it away. “You okay?”

  I nod.

  We sink into each other’s eyes, like that moment in the presentation, the only two people in the universe . . . Being apart from him these past two weeks, I almost forgot what it felt like. Almost . . .

  “I’m glad you came back,” he whispers.

  “Me . . . too . . .”

  “You shouldn’t have said those things that night,” he says. “You really hurt me.”

  “I know, Web. I’m—”

  “I didn’t think that was possible. That you could hurt me. That anyone could. Not like that . . .”

  “I’m sorry. I was scared. And when I get scared, I get all crazy inside. That’s not an excuse, but—”

  “You shouldn’t let them do that to you.”

  “What?”

  “If you didn’t hide, maybe you wouldn’t feel so crazy inside . . .”

  “I wish it were that easy . . .”

  “Yeah . . . I know . . . me too . . .” He wipes another tear off my cheek, sits back on his knees. His hair’s parted in the middle and floats down his chest. “It’s funny, I . . .”

  “What?”