I found out five years ago that there are some things that cannot be cured by medical science. That was when I learned that this embarrasses those people, and, that inexplicable maladies that don’t threaten your life are usually swept under the rug. That was how I felt, like I had been swept under a rug. I lived alone and there was no one close to call on, or even to visit. I had spent five years talking to myself and had grown tired of my own company. The days came and went, separated by restless sleep. The only difference was the change in the weather. I had stumbled into something evil and I was paying the terrible price.
I knew they’d come; knew it like I knew my own name, except that I wasn’t expecting them to send two young boys to relay the message. They were no older than twelve and they could’ve been a lot younger than that; I wouldn’t know; I never had any kids of my own. They rode up to my place on their bicycles and waited for me out by the equipment shed.
The morning was sweltering hot and the air was thick with humidity, but there was a nice breeze blowing out of the west and the equipment shed is on the west end of my property. The boys may have been young, but they were smart enough to make their stand up by the shed. I’ll explain that in a moment. They stood out there in the hazy sunshine and flung rocks against the old corrugated steel and hollered my name after each toss. They couldn’t have been out there for long; the racket was loud enough to wake the dead, not to mention washed-up drunks, such as myself.
I dressed after splashing cool water on my face and taking a nip of the bottle. The cheap whisky tasted like turpentine and I washed it down with a Coke and a Lucky Strike. I may be a drunk, but I don’t usually drink my breakfast. I simply needed the liquid courage to face them.
My name is Huckleberry Brindle, but my family raised me as Huck. I am forty years old and I own what used to be a thriving demolition business just outside of Carlton, Minnesota, a two hour drive to the north from the Twin Cities. Let me be clear on one thing, the booze came after the incident, long after I lost my crew and my business had dried up like a fallen leaf. I don’t want anyone to think it caused any of my problems; I brought them all on myself, the whisky simply helps me deal with them.
I walked out of my little trailer and sat down on one of the steel folding chairs. I then laced up my Red Wings and watched the boys head over towards me. They moved like a pair of whipped dogs, careful and wary, and they stopped a respectful twenty yards away. “Close enough,” I said. “What the hell do you want from me?” I asked, snarling my teeth. I didn’t want them on my property, young as they were, they were from town and they would know all about me.
“We need your help,” replied the taller of the two. “Please…”
The two kids looked tired and dirty, like they’d ridden up a mountain to come and see me. They kept their distance as they waited for my reply. I stood up and put my hands on my hips, preparing myself for the argument that was sure to come. I knew why they were here and I knew exactly what they wanted of me. I wasn’t about to risk my life for a town that had banished me from its city limits for nearly five years.
I looked at the boys again and I could see the tears falling down their cheeks. I immediately understood why the town had sent the two young messengers; no man with an ounce of self respect could look them in the eyes and turn them down. I closed my eyes and nodded my head in defeat. “Fine,” I said. “Go back and tell the others that I’ll do what I can.”
I couldn’t believe how fast they were, they covered the twenty yards in the blink of an eye and were on me before I could think. They grabbed me by the waist and hugged me with all of their strength. I couldn’t help but hug them back, what was I supposed to do? One of them handed me an envelope and I took it in my right hand.
“Oh,” snorted one of the boys, as if I’d poked him in the ribs.
“Whoa!” the other one shrieked, holding his hand over his nose.
And, just like that, they were gone. The two boys ran away from me as if their hair was on fire. I stood there and laughed, I couldn’t help myself. I watched them hop on their bikes and speed away as fast as their little legs could pump the pedals. I laughed until I cried.
I already told you that I was raised as Huck Brindle, but for the past five years the locals have taken to calling me Stinky; and as much as it pains me to say so, the name fits me like an old shoe. I may have grown accustomed to the stench, which smells similar to the inside of a turkey barn in high August, but the people from town certainly aren’t. I live like a pariah on the edge of town. My supplies are delivered and I never get any visitors. I’ve tried every product known to man to scrub that stink away, but five years down the road and I still smell the same as I did on that first terrible day.
Which brings me to the beginning of my story: I wasn’t always a stinking lowlife, shunned by anyone, or anything, with a pair of nostrils. I used to be a respected member of the community, a second generation owner of a family business. Brindle Demolition employed thirty men in its heyday, but that was years ago. I still get a little work, just enough to make ends meet, but the glory days are in the past and I’ve been sitting at rock bottom for as long as I care to remember.
I should feel fortunate, God, how I know that. I remind myself of that simple fact a hundred times each and every day. Five summers ago, on a day not much different than this, I became the last man to walk inside the Soliah Home and live to tell about it.
The Soliah Home had stood alone on the shores of Spirit Lake for as long as anyone could remember. Spirit Lake lies just outside the Fond Du Lac Indian Reservation, and is two miles from the nearest gravel road. The majestic old Victorian looks out of place, as if it had been built only yesterday. The truth was that it had been vacant for nearly fifty years, when the last of the Soliah clan had passed into the next world. The last time I had been there the lawns looked to have been freshly tended and flowers blossomed in the many window-boxes. There are people who claim that there has never been a time when the house wasn’t there, but that would be impossible, right? I’ll let you decide for yourself.
I sat on the couch and took another nip of the bottle; I then opened the envelope and read what had been printed on the wide-ruled page of notebook paper. I sat and reread that folded sheet of paper for nearly half an hour.
Being an outcast has its advantages; it spares you from the local news, the type of news that the media shuns because it can’t be spun or twisted. On that sheet of notebook paper, written in pencil, was that type of story. The news left me feeling short of breath, unable to trust my knees or my bladder. The house was up to its old tricks again and it was calling me home.
The letter had been printed by an old Ojibwe man who lived on the reservation. Odd Whitefeather was a name I immediately recognized, even though I had never met the man. I had heard the stories and understood that he, like myself, was an outcast among his own people. He was said to be a Medicine Man, half crazy, and I knew he had to be well into his nineties. His was a name that was whispered in both communities, as if speaking it aloud would bring bad luck. The last line of the letter said that he’d be visiting me, and soon.
The first stone he tossed at the shed sent a ripple of fear down my spine. I didn’t have to get up and look out the window to see who it was. Odd Whitefeather had come to bring me back to the Soliah Home; to where death waited to embrace me, to where five of my closest friends had perished in unspeakable agony. I reached for the bottle, but the brown glass felt scalding hot and I instantly pulled my hand away. I rubbed my cheeks, stood, and walked out the door into the blazing sunlight.
I had never seen the man and he looked much younger than I had expected. He was tall and stood straight with long white hair hanging beneath a straw hat. He was dressed in blue jeans and a faded shirt that looked older than he was. Something that looked like a homemade fanny-pack was belted around his waist. He smiled at me; his bronze-colored face was lined with age. “Huckleberry,” he called from the shed in a leathery voice. “Have a seat for a mo
ment, please.”
I pulled up a stump next to the woodpile without saying anything. Odd Whitefeather was digging in the fanny-pack and muttering something I was too far away to hear. He seemed to find what he was looking for, which couldn’t have been very big, because when he held it before his eyes between his thumb and finger, I couldn’t see a thing. He then sang something that I was able to hear. I had no idea what he was singing about, the words were periodically lost in the wind and utterly foreign to me, but the melody was haunting and somehow beautiful at the same time. He slowly began to circle in an area roughly five feet across, chugging his long arms. I had to stifle a laugh, because Odd Whitefeather looked like he was doing the locomotion to his own strange tune.
It became easier to stifle that laugh after five minutes.
I don’t wear a watch, but a long time passed before Odd Whitefeather finally finished his dance. He grabbed the back of his hat and lifted his nose high in the air. He remained like that for nearly a minute before he seemed satisfied. He then walked up and stood over me, closed his eyes and muttered something under his breath.
“How do you feel?” he asked, looking at me with a slight grin playing at his lips.
I hadn’t noticed anything different, but something had definitely changed. I instantly knew what he meant. The smell; the terrible decomposing odor that spewed from my pores had been shut down like a fire hydrant. I held my right arm up to my nose and snorted it like a buck in the rut. If I have ever felt truly thankful for anyone, or anything, more than I felt gratitude towards Odd Whitefeather at that moment, I can’t remember it. I leapt to my feat and put my arms around him, careful not to squeeze too hard, but not giving a damn what he thought about the gesture. “Thank you,” I managed, before I fell to my knees and wept with absolute joy.
Odd Whitefeather hunkered down on one of the stumps with the sun at his back, and he watched me with interest as I composed myself. Imagine having a tumor the size of a basketball removed from your face after five years, without any visible scars, and you’ll begin to know how I felt at that moment.
“You got air-conditioning in that thing?” Odd Whitefeather said, pointing towards my trailer. “How about anything to eat? I sure could go for a cheeseburger. I had one a while ago, but I think I could use another. Do you like cheeseburgers?”
I nodded and wiped the tears from my eyes. I was suddenly hungry myself and I knew the temperature was close to ninety. I certainly didn’t want the old guy to drop dead of a heatstroke. I got to my feet and motioned towards the front door. “Come on,” I said. “I think I can do a helluva lot better than a cheeseburger.”
Two sandhill cranes were now standing up by the equipment shed on spindly legs that seemed impossibly long. I held my hand over my eyes to block out the sun. They were common in the area, but this was the first time I had seen them in my yard. They seemed to be watching us.
We walked inside and it suddenly dawned on me that he was the first guest to step inside the trailer in a very, very, long time. I hadn’t done a good housecleaning in at least six months. I figured, what was the point? A great wave of shame washed over me as I recalled the old adage about wearing clean underwear, just in case you end up in a hospital bed. The place was a disaster of epic proportions.
Odd Whitefeather seemed to take it all in stride. “My sister had a place like this,” he commented, clearing a place at the kitchen table. “I think the hallway went the other way. Do you have cable television? I think Andy Griffith is on.”
“No cable, I’m sorry. Can I get you something to drink?” I asked, gathering up pizza boxes and empty Chinese take-out containers. I could suddenly smell things that hadn’t been there this morning. My stomach felt queasy as I realized the stink was of rotting food and garbage.
Odd Whitefeather nodded, but didn’t tell me what he wanted, so I gave him a can of Coke as I continued to dispose of the worst of the trash. He watched me as I worked, sipping from the can of soda and looking interested in an empty cereal box. I left it there for him to read as I took two large trash bags out to the can. When I returned, I looked around for the bottle, but it was gone--never to be seen again. I had taken my final drink of whisky, even though I didn’t know it at the time. I grabbed myself a Coke and drank half of it in one fizzing gulp. “You know,” I said. “I’ve eaten three meals a day here for five years, would you mind if we went into town to eat? Or, I could pull a couple of steaks out of the freezer…”
“Sure,” Odd Whitefeather said. “We could go eat at Bing’s. Just do us both a favor and take a shower, you still smell pretty funky.”
Again, I felt a rush of embarrassment as I remembered the last time I had bathed. I guess it hadn’t seemed very important to me, and I had adopted the old school schedule of bathing on Saturday nights. I sure didn’t have anything better to do. Wordlessly, I excused myself to the bathroom where I took a hot shower. I then shaved and ran the electric clippers over my short, thinning hair. I looked at myself in the mirror and for the first time, I realized how the past five years had aged me. My salt and pepper hair had lost its pepper and I had gained nearly twenty pounds. The weight didn’t sit right on my small frame and the lines on my face made it look like a dried-up apple. I had never been a vain man, but I had been handsome enough in my youth. Those days were gone, the man in the mirror proved that without a doubt. I walked into my bedroom wearing a towel and desperately searched for some clean clothes.
I dressed in an old work uniform, leaving the shirt un-tucked to hide the fact that I was unable to button my pants. I zipped them up as far as I could and held them up with my belt. I looked into the full-length mirror that hung on my door and stared into the face of a stranger. Finally, I walked out to rejoin Odd Whitefeather. He hadn’t said a word about the Soliah Home, but I knew he’d want to talk about it soon enough. The thought made my knees tremble.
When I walked into the kitchen, I was stopped dead in my tracks. Odd Whitefeather had been a busy man in the short amount of time it had taken me to shower and change. The living room and kitchen were sparkling clean, as if a team of hyperactive maids had attacked the mess. I was stunned; the tile floor looked to have been scrubbed and waxed, the carpet had been vacuumed, and the mountain of dirty dishes had been washed and put away. I found myself speechless and once again on the verge of tears.
“I got bored,” Odd Whitefeather said, almost as if he were apologizing.
“Yeah, well thanks a lot. I don’t know what to say…”
“Don’t say anything. There will be time for talk after we eat. I feel like a bear after waking from a winter’s sleep.”
I nodded and led the way out the front door and into the hot sunshine. The temperature had seemed to rise twenty degrees since we’d walked inside.
“We’re not going to have much time,” Odd Whitefeather said, holding his palms up in front of him, as if he were checking the temperature. “Things are speeding up.”
I didn’t ask him what he meant by that and I continued to walk towards the road. Town was a mile away and I didn’t have anything with gas in it that still ran. I’d sold most of the equipment that was worth selling and I hadn’t driven anywhere in years. I hoped that the old man didn’t mind the walk.
“Where are you going?” he asked. “My machine is parked behind your shed.”
I shrugged my shoulders and followed him up towards the equipment shed. “Can I ask you something?” I said. “Just out of curiosity, could you have helped me a few years earlier? I was like that for five years...it was terrible.”
“Life is about what is, not what could have been. You need to remember that.”
I was thinking about those words as we rounded the corner of the shed and I saw his Polaris ATV. The machine had been custom painted with Ojibwe art and looked to be nearly new.
“Make sure to hang on tight,” Odd Whitefeather said, taking off his straw hat and stowing it in a wooden crate lashed to the back of the Polaris with nylon rope. He closed the lid and l
atched it. “I like to feel the wind in my hair.”
I nodded, noticing for the first time that a Bald Eagle was circling overhead. It dove low over the old man, as if to let him know that it was looking out for him. I climbed on behind Odd Whitefeather and my hands found the luggage rack, just as he fired up the engine. He hadn’t been kidding about liking to go fast, the tires howled on the hot asphalt and my eyes watered from the wind. We made it to town in about a minute’s time and before I knew it, we were parked outside of the little Chinese restaurant named Bing Louie’s. I was hoping to see someone I knew along the way, anyone, just so I could prove that the smell was gone. I knew word would travel fast in the small community of Carlton. Much to my dismay, we didn’t see anyone I recognized. Odd Whitefeather led the way into the restaurant and we took a booth in the corner. The air-conditioning was on high and the cold air felt wonderful on my hot skin.
The restaurant was empty and Oriental music played softly from overhead speakers. I could just make out the top of Bing Louie’s head behind the partition in back, and it sounded like we were interrupting an argument. I don’t speak Chinese, but there was no mistaking the tone.
Bing’s wife came out and took our orders, if she recognized me she never commented about it. She was a small, ageless woman, slender and graceful, with jet black hair and creamy white skin. Our food was served a few minutes later, two steaming plates of cashew chicken and fried rice. We ate our meal in silence and I became more nervous with each bite. I realized that this was probably as good as it was going to get; the proverbial calm before the storm. Those thoughts proved to be true.
“Are you going to eat that eggroll?” Odd Whitefeather asked, reaching for my plate before I had a chance to reply.
“Go ahead,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “I’m stuffed.”
The sound of a kettle or perhaps a wok, being thrown across the wall in the next room, exploded inside the small restaurant. The argument had resumed and it sounded like it was getting nasty. “That is why I never remarried,” Odd Whitefeather said, looking back over his shoulder.
Bing suddenly charged out of the kitchen, untying his apron as he did so. His face was wild with anger. Mrs. Louie followed a few feet behind him. She was threatening him with a wooden ladle and screaming at the top of her lungs. Bing tossed the soiled apron over his shoulder and stormed out the front door.
Mrs. Louie stood at the front window and held a tiny porcelain hand over her mouth. She turned to me. “You got to stop him,” she pleaded to us in broken English.
When I didn’t rush to my feet she shrieked something in her native language and ran after her husband. “I wonder what that was about,” I said, wiping my mouth with a napkin. “They always seemed like such a happy couple.”
The sound of tires squealing on the hot pavement brought me to my feet and over to the window. Mrs. Louie was chasing a blue Dodge Caravan with her ladle. She stood in the middle of Main Street with her head tilted to the sky and screamed. I couldn’t leave her out there, not like that, so I gathered my courage and walked outside to bring her in. She watched the back of the van as it became smaller on the horizon.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get you inside.”
“He going to Spirit Lake,” she whimpered, looking small and vulnerable. “Help me… Please?”
I opened my mouth to speak when what she said hit me with the force a wrecking ball. I stood there in the bright sunshine, wanting, needing, to say something, but I felt like a fish out of water. I turned away from her, my mouth chewing on words that would not come out. I walked back into the restaurant and stood next to the table.
“He is headed out to Spirit Lake, isn’t he?” Odd Whitefeather asked, fishing a folded twenty out of his shirt pocket and tossing it onto the table.
I felt lightheaded and all I could do was muster a nod.
“We’d better get going, we haven’t got much time. Are you up for this, Huckleberry?”
I shook my head, but I followed him anyhow. We left Mrs. Louie, weeping inconsolably out on the empty street. She was still clutching her ladle and she looked as pitiful as a lost child. I knew exactly where we were headed and suddenly, I couldn’t wait to get there. Odd Whitefeather drove the Polaris like a man possessed, whooping as we roared west out of town at high speed. I urged him on and tried to make sense of the situation.
Chapter Two
Brindle's Odyssey Page 2