Keeper'n Me

by Richard Wagamese

  Then there was the period I roamed around being Pancho Santilla, the Mexican/Apache boxer who’d quit fighting forever after kililin’ some guy in a bar fight in Taos. Got the name Taos from watchin’ “McCloud” on TV and figured it was a cool-soundin’ name to be talking about. Taos. Kinda rolled right off your tongue and made whatever story you were running prettier and more believable, I thought. It was cool to be part Apache since there weren’t any Apaches in Canada and I wasn’t likely to run into any and Apaches were rated pretty highly on mainstream society’s masculinity scale anyway. Anytime you had to be Indian, see, anytime the other shtick wasn’t a go, well, you had to be one of the top-rated prime-time kinda Indians. Didn’t dive into that one too often but the old Pancho Santilla routine was always worth a few draft somewhere.

  Not being Indian was a full-time occupation and maybe me gravitating towards bein’ a storyteller isn’t that difficult a thing to understand now. Some of those tales were pretty wild back then, but when they say that the truth is sometimes stranger’n fiction they musta had me’n my life in mind.

  When I discovered the blues I was pretty much ready for anything. I’d just gotten back from working a few months on a railroad gang tamping up big stretches of track across southern Ontario. So I hit Toronto with a lotta money and figured a new set of clothes and a girlfriend would make life pretty sweet for a while. Managed to find a rooming house close to the downtown strip and I remember thinking that life wasn’t such a bad deal after all. I’d been kind of a Toronto regular over the years, stopping in for a few months every now and then. One night after supper I changed into my new duds and headed out for a big night on the town, not really sure where I was headed except I wasn’t going anywhere near the Warwick Hotel or the Silver Dollar where all the Indians hung out. But something big was in the air and I set out just knowing that this was one a those nights that would go down in history.

  That was the night I met Lonnie Flowers.

  Lonnie Flowers was a tall, rangy black guy who hung out downtown selling pot and shooting pool. I’d heard of him from some of the other streeters but until that night never had anything to do with him. Hanging out on the street, you hear a lotta names but mostly you hang with those you know and circles can be pretty small there. Anyway, the way things turned out we’d both heard of each other but never crossed paths.

  I was heading down Yonge thinking maybe I’d catch a few strippers at the Zanzibar and my mind was a few million miles away in the future when I heard this voice calling out to me.

  “Say, my man, what it is? You lookin’?”

  He was standing there in the doorway with this great big purple silk superfly hat on and an orange leisure suit with bell-bottoms and those platform shoes that were real big back then. Had a Fu Manchu mustache and an Afro sticking out from under the hat and he was smiling. Good-looking guy but giving off the air that tells you this isn’t someone you mess with.

  “Huh?” I said with all the cool of a downtown pro.

  “What, you deaf foo’?” he said, leaning in a little closer. “You sorry ass need some mendin’, my man. Bring your narrow tired-lookin’ butt over here.”

  “Huh?” I said again, wondering where in the heck this guy had come from.

  “Shit. You real downtown, ain’tcha? Got me a regular Jethro Bodine here. Man, c’mere!”

  There wasn’t anything else to do, so I edged into the doorway beside him. I’m about six feet even but Lonnie Flowers was head and shoulders taller than me even without the platform shoes. Besides, I kinda liked the way he talked, all fast and moving around, hands and feet going in rhythm with his speech. We stood there a moment and then he offered me a smoke. I don’t smoke but I took one anyway and tucked it behind my ear like a lot of guys I knew. He watched me, smiling with his eyes and shaking his head.

  “Damn, man, you got that Jimmy Dean shit down, don’tcha? Where you from? Buffalo?” He laughed at his own joke and it was one a those big rolling laughs that makes everyone feel good around it. “Don’t mind me, man. I’m just funnin’ witcha. What’s your name, man, really?”

  “Huey,” I said, glad to be able to squeeze out something a little more cool-sounding than huh. “Huey Kolahey.”

  “Kolahey? Damn. Sound like junk food for cows or somethin’. Where you from, Kolahey?”

  “Hawaii.”

  He slapped his thighs a little while he bent over in laughter. A few heads turned our way and I wished suddenly that I was anywhere but that doorway.

  “Damn. You that dude runnin’ that King Kahmaymaya shit around. Man, look at you. You be havin’ them great big Sasquatch cheekbones, squinty little kung fu eyes and you got like two square feeta unused denim where you butt should be. Gotta get you a wallet or sumpthin’ fill them cheeks out. Damn, one look tell people you a redskin man. But you runnin’ aroun’ bein’ Hawaiian? Who the hell you think you are? Don-fucking-Arapa-HO? Shit.”

  This was the first time I’d ever been confronted with my own phoniness and I just wanted outta there fast. He was laughing now but I’d heard and seen a lotta big black guys that turned mean real quick.

  “Hey, look, man,” I said, “I, uh, I gotta go. Gotta meet someone down the street a ways and I, uh, I’m kinda late.”

  “Damn, brother, only dude you gotta meet is yourself. Who you kiddin’ gotta meet someone? Who you gotta meet? Hawaii Five-O? Shit. Where you goin’ really?”

  “Man, I don’t even know you, okay,” I said, getting kind of irritated myself and feeling pretty put down and scared. “I’m mindin’ my own business here, okay? See ya.”

  “Wait wait wait,” he said, holding out his hand. “You right, you right. I be runnin’ track all over your ass, you don’ even know my name, man. That ain’t right. My name’s Lonnie, man. Lonnie Flowers. How you doin’?”

  We shook, exchanged a high-five, and I started to feel a little better about this strange-sounding guy in the doorway. We stood there, arms crossed, looking out over the street, moving up and down on our toes, heads bobbing and not saying anything.

  “My name’s really Garnet. Garnet Raven and I, uh, I guess I’m from here now, man.”

  “Hey, thass better, man. Garnet Raven’s cool, man. Kinda got that spooky Indian shit workin’ through it, y’know?”

  “Yeah, never thoughta it that way before. Better’n fuckin’ Tonto.”

  We both laughed and I remember thinking that this was the first time I’d ever really hit it off with someone without having to run a game on them. It didn’t seem to matter to Lonnie Flowers that I was Indian and it sure didn’t matter to me that he was black. If anything I was starting to wish that I was too.

  “Say, man, look,” he said, “I gotta meet with someone for a minute in this club see, but you wanna go do a rack of eightball or two, man? That is, if your social calendar got room for it, I mean.”

  “Sure. Pool ain’t my thing but I’ll shoot you if you want.”

  “Damn. ’Nother person wanna shoot a poor black man on sight. Tell you, it don’t pay to be colored no more!” he said, laughing, slapping his thigh and pulling me outta the doorway and down the street. Follow me, Arapa-HO. Drag your pineapple-squeezin’, hula-hoopin’ redskin ass this way!”

  We wound up in a tavern somewhere off the Yonge Street strip. Reason I don’t know exactly where it was or the name of the place was because I was so fascinated watching Lonnie Flowers “doin’ the locals” as he called it. The man was in constant motion, bobbing and weaving through groups of people, head nodding, waving, thumbs upping people and chatting with and to everyone. It was amazing to watch, especially for someone like me who tried to be invisible most of the time. I just tagged along in the background trying to look like I was with him but not doing too good a job of either keeping up or looking good.

  It was worse when we got inside finally. People were calling out to him, laughing and whistling as soon as we walked in. He found us elbow room at the bar and ordered a couple beers from the bartender he introduced as
Raoul.

  “Gotta watch Raoul, my man, he be one of them John Wayne–lovin’ niggers might wanna be shootin’ your ass,” he said, laughing and lighting another smoke. “My man Garnet here’s a Hawaiian Injun, Raoul. Regular Don Arapa-HO,” he said with a wink and a slap on my back.

  “Meetcha.” Raoul offered a handshake across the bar. “Really Injun?”

  “Uh, yeah. Yeah, I am. Good to meetya.” I was wondering whether this had been such a good idea.

  Well, the place was full of black people. I’d been around colored people before in my travels but like everyone else at the time, I figured going into a black bar was tempting fate just a little too much and I’d avoided them. Back then there was three places you didn’t go: gay bars, cowboy bars and black bars, and I guess if you ever heard about gay black cowboy bars you really gave them distance.

  People were wandering over every minute or two to chat up my new friend and it was fun to watch. I was getting right into the loose way these people acted. For a guy always concerned with how he looked to people, watching a whole room fulla people acting so casual was a treat and I found myself wishing I could be like that and that maybe me’n Lonnie could become good enough friends that I could hang around for a long time here. I just leaned back against the bar with my beer in my hand eyeballing everything.

  Two things happened real fast. First Lonnie starts whooping and slapping the bar in delight when three women and two men walked into the room together. He hustled me over to their table and there was a lotta hugging and squeezing and shoulder punchin’ before we got sat down and he introduced me to his mother Delma, sisters Gladdie and Maddie and his brothers Truman and DeWayne. They all just kinda nodded politely in my direction, ordered a tableful of beer, lit up smokes and started talking to each other and laughing.

  The second thing that happened was the music started. One vibrating note from an electric guitar that slid into another one and was followed by a bunch of notes all tumbling over each other before the drums, bass and horns kicked in behind it. It was like nothing I ever heard before and I turned in my chair to face the stage to see who was making this noise that made me shiver inside. Kinda got lost in it, forgetting where I was, who I was with or what I was doing. The music seemed so wild, so ancient and full of danger, pain and heartache that I fell, as Lonnie would later say, “head over heels, puppydog-eyed in love.”

  It was the close-up laughter that pulled me back.

  “Oooo-eee shit!” Delma was saying, leaning forward in her chair and staring at me. “Lonnie, this boy’s got the blues in a bad way! He be twitchin’ around and bumpin’ his ole leg up and down and shakin’ his head around like a dog with a new bone! Damn! You sure he ain’t no black man?”

  “Maybe not now, Mama,” Lonnie said, “but if he gets to likin’ it too much he might try bein’ one sooner or later for someone somewhere!” He winked at me.

  “Lonnie says you Indian,” said Gladdie. “That right?”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” I said.

  “What kinda Indian you be?” DeWayne asked, looking kinda impressed with this information.

  I caught Lonnie’s eye for just a second and he nodded slowly.

  “Don’t know, really. Canadian Indian, I guess. Was raised in foster homes and never got to know where I was from. Got taken away real young and I don’t really remember anything before I was in foster homes.” I felt all the shame and nervousness I always felt when I had to explain my history.

  “Damn. Sounds like Indians are the niggers now,” Truman added, offering me a smoke, which I tucked behind the other ear while they laughed. “You don’t know your family?”

  “No. No need now, though. I’m old enough to be my own person.”

  “Shit, man. Everybody be needin’ fam’ly!” Lonnie said. “You know, I hearda this guy runnin’ around tryin’ to tell folks he be Hawaiian? A man can’t be his own person if the man don’t know himself. Right, Mama?”

  “Thass right.” Delma reached over and patted my hand. “My kids have all known their fam’ly history ever since they was old enough to listen. No matter what happens to them now, they always gonna be proud of who they are. Always.”

  “Must be kinda nice to have that. You all seem so together. Like a family’s gotta be, I guess. Me, I never had that. You’re lucky. Real lucky.” I took a long swallow of beer. I wasn’t so sure about talking so openly to strangers.

  Maddie winked at me and dragged me out of my chair onto the dance floor, where we shuffled around to a song called “Caledonia” that’s still one of my favorites to this day. The family whistled and pointed and laughed all the time we were out there, and I remember feelin’ like I was welcome and it felt real good.

  We danced and laughed and talked all night long. The music got better’n better and by the time it was over we were all kinda drunk and the whole lot of us headed over to Delma’s in a cab with more beer and a couple pizzas, singing the blues all out of tune, clapping hands and laughing. Maddie was being real friendly and when I caught her brothers looking us over I felt kinda scared until Truman, who was bigger’n Lonnie by about three inches and thirty pounds, started laughing and pointing our way.

  “Lookee here, lookee here,” he said, his big head bobbing up and down. “Maddie’s ’bout to learn ’bout Indian Affairs!”

  “Damn,” Lonnie said, “snuck right in there, di’n’ he? Gotta watch them Arapahos!”

  Hanging around Delma’s got to be a usual thing. When my money started running out and finding a job got to be almost impossible, she invited me to stay there. By this time she was calling me her “brown baby” and I started to feel like a part of the family and it sure was a good feeling. I told them about the foster homes and how even though you always had full run of things you never ever felt like people really wanted you around. Talked about being a loner and how it felt better most of the time to be moving around instead of sticking somewhere and settling down like other people. Talked about all the empty Christmases or of being shipped off to another home for a couple weeks while whoever I was staying with went on summer vacation. Talked about how all those things leave little holes in your gut and how eventually they all turn into one great big black hole in the middle of your belly and how on lonely nights it still felt like the wind was blowing and whistling through me. Told them lotsa things I had never told anyone before, and Delma’s eyes used to get all shiny and she’d hug me real warm and tight and tell me it was gonna be all right.

  Never talked about Indians though. And I never tried to hang around with any. I was taking Lonnie’s hint in the pub that first night and was working real hard on becoming black. About six months after I’d met them all I walked into the house with a brand-new sixty buck permed Afro. I had it all picked out and it was like a big curly black halo around my head.

  “Sheeee-it!” Truman yelled when he saw me. “My man got hisself a natural. Superfly lookin’, downtown brown now!”

  “Damn,” said Lonnie.

  “Shit,” said Delma.

  Gladdie, Maddie and DeWayne just shook their heads and smiled and everyone started bumping and jiving to a Buddy Guy record while I studied my new look in the mirror. It wasn’t too long after that that I started dressing like Lonnie and his brothers, adopting their strut and mannerisms and really feeling like I’d found where I wanted to be in life. The blues was everywhere and I was liking it and my new friends more and more. People in the clubs were talking to me and about me now. I was getting the eyeball from women, and being an Indian was the furthest thing from my mind again. I walked around with a head fulla blues, Motown and soul and feeling like I’d come home.

  One day while Lonnie and I were heading for the pool hall two scruffy Indians on a corner asked us for change. They smelled of cheap wine and were already unsteady on their feet. I took a step back and looked away over top of their heads, feeling safer behind my mirrored shades. Lonnie handed them a couple bucks and we headed off with their “thank you, brother” ringing i
n our ears.

  “Gonna have to face it someday, my man,” Lonnie said, pointing back over his shoulder with his thumb. “Can’t run away from who you really are all your life, y’know.”

  “Who’s runnin’, man? I’m doin’ what I want with my life, okay? Besides, what have those dudes got to say that would matter to me anyway?”

  “Never know till you find out, will ya?”

  “Find out what?”

  “Shit, man, I don’t know. Indian stuff. What it’s like out there livin’ Indian, man. Maybe the brothers came up the same as you or maybe they know somethin’ about it all you ain’t ever figured out. I don’t know.”

  “I don’t know either, man. All I know is that I’ve been around this town now about a year and a half which is longer’n I ever stayed anywhere and I don’t wanna be anywhere else. I don’t wanna be anywhere or anybody else, okay? You got a problem with that?”

  “Ain’t never a problem, you know that. I’m just sayin’ this ’cause I think you be missin’ out on sumpthin’ important, thass all, man. Thass all. Don’t be goin’ all Arapaho on me, brother.”

  “Fine. That’s it then.”

  “S’it, man.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay.”

  But it wasn’t it really. The more I thought about that conversation the more I started to see the truth in it. Trouble was, I had no idea of how to start up talking to any Indians. There were lots around and I knew the Indian bars but there was no way that I had any clue of how to get to know any people. They still kinda embarrassed me. I was moving a little pot for Lonnie now for extra cash and was wearing some really bad-looking threads as well as always having a few bucks. Didn’t wanna be seen talking with or hanging out with scruffy people and I figured Indians were all the same, ’cept for me. I’d found myself and for all I knew then there was no goin’ back.