Just Shelby

by Brooklyn James

  Unthinkable, I can’t stop thinking about how the past three years of training, trying, running have culminated into this. Three years of improvement—finally qualifying for state—gone in one night. One foolish split-second reaction. Why couldn’t I leave the damn dresser be.

  My shoulder hurts worse today than it did yesterday.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have been so adamant about refusing those pills. A break from the pain would be nice. Feeling nothing, the way I did after that cocktail, would be even better.

  A three-day or four-day supply of “oral narcotic analgesics” is reasonable, the doctor said. But an over-the-counter pain reliever may do until the pain subsides.

  It will subside?

  Like that unfilled prescription, are my dreams destined to be unfulfilled.

  Why do we have dreams if we are destined for other things. Is it like wants and needs. We want certain things out of life, but life needs us for other things. Are we merely vessels? Minds and bodies and hopes through which dreams are transferred to others.

  Ace didn’t dream of leaving Poke County. Until recently. Until he started hanging out with me, subjected to my dream of leaving and encouraging him to follow music. He’ll start playing city gigs on the weekends. They’ll love him. He’ll love it. After graduation, he’ll be gone, playing anywhere and everywhere.

  An inverse manifestation, I’ll be the one to stay in Poke County? Like my father who died here shortly after a plan, a revised dream, to finally get out.

  Like those tubes and wires Ace and I were born unto, sustained by, are we interconnected—kinnected as Grandpa says—giving life to the other’s dreams?

  On the way home, these are the questions I ask Ace.

  “I think the pain is going to your brain,” he says. “We’ve gotta get you some relief.”

  There is no relief from reality here.

  By the time we make it to the dirt road leading to the hollow, any hint of pink is gone. The color of the atmosphere, the color of reality, there is nothing left but gray.

  Ace takes me to Enisi’s. Who else will keep me.

  As Wren said in the hospital, I am in the right place. And this is the appropriate time for medication—Enisi’s medicine.

  Similar to the “ceremony” she performed after I donated blood, she starts with “smudging.”

  In an abalone shell she burns sage to cleanse away negative energy, sweetgrass in a two-strand braid to attract positive energy, cedar to ward off sickness, and tobacco to chase away negative feelings and bring on positive thoughts.

  “Don’t go taking up tobacco,” Enisi says. “It is sacred. It demands respect. If abused, it can be poisonous. In this ceremony, it connects us to the spiritual world, the smoke carrying our message to Unelanahi.”

  Smudging evokes the fifth element—life energy. The shell represents water. The unlit herbs and their ashes represent earth. The lit herbs represent fire. The smoke from them represents air. The four elements together awaken the fifth, or at least bring it to our consciousness.

  “It’s always there,” Enisi says. “Unused until we honor it. Respect it, like tobacco.” She gives me a counseling glance, “washing” the smoky, herby air over me with an eagle feather, stringed in leather and fringe at its quill.

  She chants in Cherokee. I understand none of it. But I feel the incantation—its anthemic cadence—in my bones. Opposite of the cocktail, this is feeling everything. This is being aware of even the slightest change in her intonation and how that shift affects my mind, my body, my soul.

  “You’re an earnest subject,” she says, smiling proudly and extinguishing the herbs. “So was your e do dah.”

  I can see why my father took to it. It’s too fascinating not to.

  She helps me remove Ace’s t-shirt over my good shoulder, down around the other one, and off the cumbersome splint.

  “How’d you get into this thing in the first place?” The almond shape of her mocha eyes narrows with a squint, cautioning but kind of playful.

  Into one of the ubiquitous Mason jars in her house she dunks a hand towel, wrings it then wraps it around my shoulder, fastening it with a wide leather strap.

  I flinch. Not because of my shoulder but because of what is in the Mason jar. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen it in person. I have seen it in magazines and online. Palmate leaves with serrated leaflets—there is at least a handful soaking in moonshine in the jar. Marijuana?

  “Galunlati,” she clarifies. “They’ve shoved all the bad in your brain but neglected to teach the good of the ‘teaching plant.’ The healing and spiritual qualities. And they call it education!”

  I am so confused. Drugs are bad. But they are good, sometimes? Like the cocktail they gave me in the hospital. Enisi loathes my mother for popping pills. But marijuana in a jar is okay?

  “You’re not ingesting it, Shelby. That would have to happen before you would experience any body, mind, behavior, dependence mumbo jumbo. And if that were to ever happen, I’d dislocate your other shoulder.” She laughs.

  “It’s a topical. And a darn good one for joint pain. No different from Bengay…only better. It’s as old as time, as old as my people, your people.” She eyes me, the next generation—a shame that we have lost the know-how.

  “Drugs aren’t the only things that are addictive, abused. Technology, food, drink, work, running, knowledge…” she waves her arm at Mason jars and amber glass bottles, lining her cabinets and her counters, that must require excessive amounts of knowledge to cultivate “…the way you feel about that boy.”

  I blush. It is more than consuming; it is addictive.

  “Things are not the problem. They have no control over how we use them, how we disrespect their purpose. The tsitaga I prepared at your mother’s: If you had to grow, butcher, and prepare everything you ate, how much of it would you eat?”

  I’d starve. Not that I couldn’t bring myself to do it, but I lack the expertise to do it.

  “If you had to forage, plant, make your own medicine, how much of it would you take? Some say it ain’t living without convenience. Convenience has no time for ceremony, tradition, honor. A culture who honors nothing, takes everything.”

  The throbbing in my shoulder has stopped. It hasn’t felt this good since the cocktail. But my mind is untouched. I’m here. I’m lucid. And pain free. Galunlati didn’t seep through my skin and into my body, my veins, my brain the way the cocktail did—the way I feared it might.

  Although, the cocktail had its purpose. Like Wren said, it made realigning my shoulder tolerable. I don’t think this topical would have afforded that. There was a reason my brain and my body were anesthetized. Brain and body—where was the spiritual aspect of healing in the hospital. It seems to be the foundation of Enisi’s herbal arsenal.

  Where is the point in treatment or recreation that people go beyond purpose, ceremony, and into intoxication, addiction?

  Educated on both topics in school, I know as little about drugs as I do sex. Just enough to fear them, I have not been taught the “honor” in either.

  “Can you teach me? The way you taught my e do dah,” I give Cherokee a try, likely butchering it the way Enisi did that hen.

  She grins. I butchered it. “It takes a lot of time, Shelby. There is nothing convenient about it.”

  I have time. Six weeks to heal, four months to redeem myself with the start of track season, and seven months until I can get out of here.

  A few nights later, respecting medicine—drugs—and using it appropriately becomes even more baffling.

  From a dwelling roughly the size of Grandpa’s in a room Enisi cleared of distilling supplies and assigned to me—the one my father grew up in—I hear a timid knock on the front door.

  “Come in,” Enisi says.

  “I’ll just take the tea and be on my way.” I cannot see the woman from my room, but something has the after-hours visitor highly strung.

  I thought tea was supposed to be calming.

  “Has she re
ached her eighth week?”

  “Somewhere around there.”

  “It’s most effective if used by the eighth week,” Enisi counsels. “A tablespoon of each steeped in a cup of water, three times a day. No more, no less. You’ll know in as little as two days to two weeks whether it’s going to take.”

  “She was drugged and raped, you know, or else we wouldn’t be doing this,” the woman’s voice breaks.

  “’Til they walk in our moccasins, they have no right to judge,” Enisi says, steadfastly supporting the choice and her own conviction in providing the tea. “Healing does not discriminate. She will need healing. Bring her to me when she is ready.”

  “Thank you,” the woman whispers, the door closing behind her.

  I don’t know if Destiny drank the tea or not, but she did lose the baby.

  And the cops did find the Shelby, after Billy Don and my mother sold it to a collector four hours away in Nashville. My mother turned herself in, inadvertently, while turning Billy Don in for leaving her high and dry. It actually surprised her that he took the money and ran?

  Billy Don’s in jail.

  My mother’s in rehab.

  Thanks to Miss Patterson for arranging it with the judge to allow me to plead my case—my mother’s case.

  “A year in prison or a year of mandatory rehabilitation to include three months’ inpatient, three months’ outpatient, and six months’ community service. The choice is yours, Ms. Lynn,” the judge said.

  My mother cried, as if there was no choice at all.

  I cried when she actually chose rehab.

  “Finally!” Grayson said, when I sought his advice in finding the appropriate facility. “She’ll get the help she needs. I know just the place. It is a bit pricey, though. ‘Mandatory’ doesn’t equate to equal. She has insurance?”

  “Medicaid, maybe.”

  “They won’t want to pay, but they can and they will with the right convincing. There is the UCAN stipend. As a family member of an intern, she qualifies for that. Heck, you’re sitting on at least $40,000 right here.” He tapped the hood of the recovered Shelby. Just like Ace said, Johnny Allman vouched for him, for me. But why?

  “Nooo.”

  “Yeees.”

  “Look at it.” It’s gray, primer gray. I stopped myself from saying out loud not only the color but the first syllable in his name. I have no way of knowing the meaning of his name, but gray is the color of reality. And reality would have it that I cannot be sitting on $40K!

  “I am looking at it. She’s stunning. I’m surprised you can’t hear the blood coursing through my veins.” He laughed. “It just needs a topcoat. Same color, but with a little shine. Inconspicuous, subdued, the loneliness and isolation of it released on the road.”

  He does understand gray.

  “I’ll take everything I fixed out of it before I see you sell that car. Throw the money away to put her through rehab.” I thought this was established: “I fixed it for you, not for her. She never sees it through, you said so yourself.”

  “She has to, Ace. It’s mandatory this time.”

  “See how easily it sells when it doesn’t run.”

  “According to Grayson, it’s worth a lot of money, running or not.”

  “I could’ve told you that.” I snap, like some jealous hillbilly, over the preppy college schmuck she’s been confiding in.

  “Well, then, why didn’t you?”

  For the same reason I haven’t told her that Johnny Allman may well be her father. What would it mean? How would it fuck everything up even more? I knew the car was worth something. But I didn’t know it was worth that much.

  “Because of this right here. Look, if you sell that car, it has to be for you. For college, to live, for tiddlywinks, I don’t care. But for you. Not your mom, not your grandpa.” Don’t think she wouldn’t throw it away on some lawyer with the promise of freeing her grandpa. “If Grayson is so selective about rehab, let him pay for it.” With a name like that, he wouldn’t miss it.

  “It’s all hypothetical, anyhow. Johnny Allman’s name is still on the title.”

  Good! Hopefully I can convince him to keep it that way until she comes to her senses.

  “And…it’s the only thing I have left of my father. He loved the Shelby. How could I sell it?”

  See. If I tell her about Johnny, how does it affect her feelings for Mason? Does it tarnish the memory of the only father she’s ever known.

  “I thought we were doing a ‘ceremony’ here.” I am happy to change the subject. Although I’m not thrilled about being “smudged.”

  Shelby has me reclined on the hood of the Jeep, my back against the windshield. On this Thanksgiving Eve, we sit at the same spot—our spot—as that night after the circle. The only place where we can just be together.

  Like an old married couple, we spend the first half arguing. Both projecting the frustration of having to sneak around to sneak in a minute with each another. If Mom were here, we wouldn’t have to sneak at all. One more reason to feel guilty that I have taken her for granted.

  “Relax…if you can after that. Enisi would not be pleased. This is supposed to be soothing.” Shelby inhales and exhales deeply, causing me to do the same.

  “Fire away,” I say.

  She does by lighting up herbs in a bowl. Waiting for them to smolder, she holds a small brown feather tipped in white.

  “Enisi uses an eagle feather,” she says.

  “Isn’t that illegal?”

  “Not for Native Americans and use in their ceremonies. She’s so different from anyone I’ve ever known. She honors everything for its purpose. And she makes everything from what the earth provides with her own two hands, for all purposes. Mostly good, healing, on the up and up. Some…one in particular…could be considered controversial.”

  “Controversial?” Plants, herbs are controversial? Oh, marijuana. “Your grandma grows weed?” I don’t know if that’s the oddest thing or the coolest thing. How many grandmas grow weed!

  “Not for smoking. Well, maybe she does? But I’d say rarely, occasionally. And for its spiritual purpose, not the ‘high.’”

  Marijuana has a “spiritual purpose”?

  “But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about a tea that she made for…”

  “For…?”

  “Never mind. It’s not mine to tell.”

  “Remember you said that.” I make a note that she did. “So, what’s the eagle feather’s purpose?”

  “The eagle signifies courage and wisdom. Its purpose is as a messenger to Unelanahi—the Creator. The feather, along with the smoke from the herbs, carries our message. If you believe in that sort of thing.” She shrugs.

  “Do you?”

  “I’m starting to.”

  “And your feather…what is it?”

  “A wren feather.” The apples of her cheeks turn to rose in the moonlight. “From a Bewick’s wren. Enisi gathered one before they all but disappeared from these mountains. She says they’re shy and secretive, and they represent protection. My mom has a tattoo of one on her ankle.” Her brows upraise, maybe wondering how exactly it has protected her mom. “But I chose this feather for you, for this, because of your mom.” Wren. “Because she signifies courage and wisdom. She’s a messenger too. I guess I just wanted to honor her.”

  van den Berg would say that is lovely. Everything to him is “luxurious” or “lovely.” I can’t recall ever uttering the word myself, and I have grown to loathe it because of his overuse. But if “lovely” is applicable to anything, what Shelby just expressed is lovely. So I honor it by suppressing my skepticism and willfully giving this thing a go.

  I close my eyes and breathe meditatively. With the wren feather in hand, Shelby fans over me the smoke—or the smudge. Then she starts chanting in a language I cannot make heads or tails of. I don’t think she’s got it down either. But I love her for trying. Talk about courage!

  “Do you feel anything?” she asks sounding hopeful
, breaking from her chorus.

  Cold. I feel cold. Underdressed for the light snowfall the higher elevation is about to receive. But I know that answer won’t do. I dig deep and at least tell the truth. “I feel like I could be a better son.”

  “Oh. Okay. Cool.” She fans faster. “What about colors or images. Do you see any?”

  Feeling isn’t enough? I’m supposed to see, too. Smudging, feather, wren—too obvious. Birds, feathers, owl—“I see an owl.”

  “An owl!” she screeches, much like the feathered avian. “I think that’s a bad omen. A symbol of death?” She extinguishes the herbs, crushing them and their embers to bits. “I must have done something wrong. Unelanahi, disregard everything I just sent you!” She shouts into the sky, as innocent as the stars.

  I chuckle, sitting upright and sliding forward on the hood, my legs encircling her hips. “Yes, death. If you don’t kiss me, I just might die.”

  Her lips, so alive, are the perfect antidote to the grim reaper. The smudging may have been a flop, but she is a healer.

  Spending time with her has begun to heal things within me that I didn’t know needed healing. My future aspirations, my relationship with Mom, the emptiness—she fills it.

  Moments later I am no longer cold. In the back seat of the Jeep, we are boiling. This is how we spend our second half, making up for the first…making nearly impossible to stop what our lips started.

  Astraddle my lap with her hair down, the texture of it on my face is my newfound favorite sensation. Her hands prepped over the zipper of my jeans is even more arousing. Not a new sensation, I have felt it before. But not with her. This is Shelby. God! I should stop her.

  Three weeks removed from dislocating her shoulder, the splint is gone. She seems to move faster than before. Second base now a given, she’s reaching for third. Whatever she is learning from Enisi is translating to more than just herbs.

  My hands, more protective than my impulse, clasp around hers. Weak in their attempt to impede, at least it is an attempt.