I guess she was all sputtered out. She said go ahead.
It didn’t take long for Nicky to turn into your basic clinging vine. He started following me around like a puppy. He figured since we did time together, and since we were roommates and all, we should be friends.
We were on our way home from school one day and he said to me, “Look at this, Charly Black Crow.” He started calling me Charly Black Crow after I explained to him that it was my Indian name, and my preferred name.
What he was showing me was this book on baseball lore he’d checked out of the library. He opened the book to a chapter on tricks pitchers have used throughout history to doctor the baseball. It showed all these devices used by pitchers to cut the ball, or gouge it, or scrape it, such as nails, nail files, razor blades, cheese graters, sandpaper, thumbtacks, and so forth. You couldn’t use a whole cheese grater, of course, you had to use just a piece of one, something small enough that you could hide it in your mitt. The idea of cutting the ball was to make it sink when you threw it. The book had a lot of photographs of these items and how they could be hidden in a baseball glove.
Nicky showed me all of these photographs and the idiotic grin spread across his face. He said, “This is what gives you the extra edge.”
What he knew was, I had agreed to play in the baseball league. I’d even given it a little thought and decided I would be a pitcher. The way baseball is played, the pitcher is the hub of the game, and everything revolves around him. The rest of the players mostly stand around bored, and get real hot in the sun, and talk to their friends, who are maybe in the game, and maybe not. Also, I happened to know that two of baseball’s greatest pitchers, Chief Bender and Allie Reynolds, were Indians. That’s in addition to the great Jim Thorpe, who played professional baseball but was better known for being the greatest all-around athlete in history.
I gave Nicky back his baseball book. It was just another case of his trying to make an impression by sucking up. I told him I was not all that interested in getting the extra edge, and furthermore it was not the Indian way to use illegal deception.
It didn’t faze him. He just shifted gears. He said, “Do me a favor, Charly Black Crow. Come over to my mother’s place, I’ve got something to show you that’s really prime.”
I didn’t know what he had in mind, and I didn’t really want to go to his house, but he kept pestering me about it until I agreed. Besides, I was in no particular hurry to get back to Gates House.
The truth is, going to his place really funked me out. His mother’s apartment was in this run-down brick building in the sleazy part of downtown. There was an old hotel across the street, and a bar, and on another corner was a cut-rate twenty-four-hour gas station.
We had to climb a lot of stairs, because the apartment was on the third floor. The hallways were dark, there wasn’t any carpeting, and the wallpaper was all peeling and water-stained.
Nicky’s brother Earl was passed out in the living room on a bed that folded down out of the wall. Earl was wearing a T-shirt and Jockey underpants.
“This is usually my bed when I’m at home,” said Nicky. “Earl is just home for a little while. He works for the carnival.”
Nicky was shaking Earl by the shoulders, but it was a waste of time, because Earl was out cold. I looked around the living room. There was a half-empty bottle of whiskey on the floor and several empty beer cans. There was a black banana peel with about half the banana still inside it, on the floor under the corner of the bed. Also a half-eaten sandwich right beside it, which was so old it looked like the bread had the texture of an asphalt shingle.
“I guess he’s out like a light,” said Nicky. “Sometimes when he gets drunk and passes out, there’s no way you can wake him up.”
“Where’s your mother?” I said.
“She’s got a second job now. She’s workin’ at Pizza Hut, three-thirty to eight-thirty. Right now she’s just washin’ dishes, but they’re gonna move her up to makin’ pizzas.”
That was the first time I ever felt sorry for Nicky. I never did spend any time with my family or relatives in a regular house, but maybe I was better off for it. Looking at this hairball place and realizing Nicky was hung out more or less permanently between it and Gates House, I started feeling sorry for him.
It wasn’t something I wanted to dwell on. “What did you want to show me?” I said.
He took me out through the kitchen door, which went out onto the landing of the fire escape. And there it was.
It was an old Kawasaki KZ-400 street bike. It could hardly fit on the landing. “How did you get it up here?” I asked him.
“There’s a freight elevator. The manager let me ’n’ Earl use it.”
The bike was yellow, but you could hardly tell through all the dirt and grease. The chrome had a lot of rust, and the headlight was busted. The front fender was gone, and there were spokes missing out of both wheels.
“This bike is mine.” said Nicky. “Earl gave it to me to keep. It’s all mine.”
I took my finger and wiped some of the smear off the speedometer—42, 498 miles. If it was accurate. The front tire had highway tread, but the back was knobby tread like you’d find on a dirt bike. “What year is it?” I asked.
“It’s a ’74. What do you think of it?”
“It may have possibilities,” I mumbled. Nicky knew that I had some experience working on engines, so I guess he wanted me to say something encouraging. “Does it run?”
“Not right now, but Earl says all it needs is a little work.”
That was all I needed to hear at the moment. I told Nicky I thought we’d better get back to Gates House. He didn’t want to, but then I pointed out Mrs. Grice could put us both on pro if we were later than four-thirty. He said okay, but he wanted me to stay long enough to have a Pepsi.
I sat down at the kitchen table while he scrounged around in the refrigerator. There were dirty dishes stacked all over the table, and dried food was stuck on its surface.
It turned out there wasn’t any Pepsi, so he poured me some grape Hi-C. The glass he gave me was filthy. It reminded me of the ones you see the bartenders use in Westerns, where they have to blow the dust out before they pour the whiskey.
“I’ve been thinking,” said Nicky. “I’ve got a bike now, right? What if we both had a bike?”
“I don’t have a bike, and I don’t have any plans to get one.”
“But what if we did? Let’s say we both had a bike, and then in the fall, when we’re old enough, we get our licenses, and then we hit the road.”
“Why don’t you get real?”
“Just the two of us, you and me on the open road. We go all the way to Florida and lay around on sandy beaches, with lots of chicks in bikinis running around. If we needed any money, Earl could help us get a little carnival work.”
I decided I couldn’t stand anymore. “I’m going back,” I said. “You can come with me or you can stay.”
Naturally, he came with me. I was walking fast, but he was keeping up. He asked me what I thought the bike needed to get in running condition.
“I don’t know, you’d have to get it in a shop somewhere to really check it out.”
“Barb said I could work on it in her garage if I could get it over there.”
“She did?” It gave me a little jolt hearing this, but then I figured, how likely was it that the bike would ever find its way to Barb’s garage?
“I’ll talk to Earl,” said Nicky. “Maybe he’ll help me get it over there.”
“Maybe,” I said.
“Then maybe sometime you ’n’ me can try and get it to run.”
“Maybe.” This conversation didn’t do too much for me because from what I could tell, Nicky didn’t have much know-how when it came to engines.
Then he said, “What kind of a social worker would let you use their garage to work on your bike?”
“One that doesn’t have a clue,” I said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
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br /> “She’s only got four clients now, she can do what she wants. It’s like a game. Let the system grind her for a while.”
“I think she’s real nice, Charly Black Crow.”
“Of course she’s nice,” I said. She was nice, but I’d decided it wasn’t a safe subject to dwell on. “I’m not talking about nice, I’m talking about experience.”
He just said she was nice again. I said let’s drop it.
CHAPTER SIX
The second day of the hanblecheya turned out to be a wholesale bummer. Actually, it was Friday, so it might have been the third day, depending on how you look at it.
Thursday went pretty well. I just mellowed out on all the Dakota history represented by my surroundings, and made notes about the time I spent at Gates House. But Friday morning after I got up, I went out of the cave and climbed up to the high ground overlook. I left my journal behind.
Up on the peak of Mount Black Elk, which was my name for this place, there was that view in front of me. As far as the eye could see, the Black Hills, and the vibes of glorious Sioux history.
But all of a sudden, I didn’t feel good. I felt hungry and dizzy. I drank some of the water, but it didn’t help; I just kept feeling more and more light-headed until I was real woozy.
I laid down on my back to try and make it pass. It didn’t altogether pass, but I must have slept through some of it, because it wasn’t until the afternoon that the bad thoughts and the bad vibes began to come.
I tried to fight it off. Here came this picture of Mrs. Bluefish: “You can’t become an Indian, Floyd, you have to be born an Indian.” I rolled over on the ground. Not only was I woozy, but she pissed me off. What right did she have to intrude on my hanblecheya?
Then I saw my conversation with Chief Bear-in-cave, in his trailer. He was telling me the story of Two-Claw and the bear that became like a pet. I rolled over again, but there was Donny Thunderbird. “A writer can do a lot of good for Indians, Floyd. A reservation is a thing of the past.”
I kept trying to fight off these bad thoughts; I wanted to drive them out. But even though I was dozing in and out, sort of floating on the edge of being delirious, there was a warning in a corner of my brain: You don’t manipulate the hanblecheya. You take what comes.
The chief summed up the meaning of the Two-Claw story: “It’s a lot like that when you’re an Indian on a reservation.”
Donny Thunderbird: “A reservation is a thing of the past.”
Mrs. Bluefish: “You can’t become an Indian, Floyd, you have to be born an Indian.”
I kept rolling over, right and left. It was like a conspiracy, the way these same words and pictures kept busting into my brain. I saw myself the first day I got to the reservation; I was walking around the campground picking up Pepsi cans and Styrofoam cups. What did I think I was going to do, live on the reservation and pick up litter for the rest of my life?
I don’t know how long the bad vibes package lasted. Over and over, the same pictures and the same words. I was semiconscious part of the time, half asleep. When I was conscious, I was like partly delirious. There wasn’t any sense of time to it.
By the time I came out of it, more or less, it was close to dusk. I was like a person who breaks a long fever; I was shaky and clammy, but I wasn’t woozy anymore, and I had my faculties.
I only wished I didn’t. I sat up against the base of this shaggy pine tree, and the meaning of things was real clear to me. A lot clearer than I wanted.
The truth was, there wasn’t any destiny. There never had been. What I had, instead of a destiny, was a colorful fantasy, the kind that crazies create in their peculiar little minds when they can’t deal with the world the way it really is.
It was real bitter, but it was a conclusion I didn’t try to fight off. In their kind and gentle way, that was the point that Donny and the chief had tried to make to me. Way back when, when I was just a kid, I felt real close to the Indians because their situation seemed just like mine. They kept getting jerked around all the time, from their lands and places, when all they wanted was to be left alone to live their lives in peace. That’s all they wanted, that’s all I wanted.
I felt so clammy, I started to get the shakes. Since I wasn’t dizzy or anything like that, I climbed down to the cave and got my denim jacket. Then back up to the tree trunk.
I was cold and naked and alone. The only company I had was the awful truth, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. My destiny had been manufactured by my brain to make up for all those years of being bounced around from one placement to another. In the looney bin they call it compensation, or if you’re really off-the-wall, a delusion. Maybe I was just as looney as Mrs. Bluefish thought I was.
I was so lonely all of a sudden. There were even tears running down my face. I didn’t want to stay anymore; I wanted to go back to the reservation. I had my vision, the truth was revealed to me, and now I was all hollow inside. What would be the point in staying any longer?
I think I would have gone back, only it was after dark and I was too shaky. I didn’t like my chances of making it without falling off a cliff or something. The blessing was sleep. I was so exhausted, I fell asleep right there on the clearing.
When I woke up the next morning, I was resigned; it was a different head, a sort of neutral zone, like a return to numb-out. I decided to go ahead and stick out the rest of the vision quest. Or to tell the truth, I decided not to do anything. I drank some water and went back to my journal.
At Gates House, the situation was about to get worse. Not that I could see it coming. Nicky’s Kawasaki got moved to Barb’s garage. I don’t know how, but somehow Nicky got his brother Earl sobered up and the two of them got their asses in gear long enough to transport it.
It was not a situation I was keen on, because it just gave Nicky all the more reason to cling. He was such a pest about it that after a couple of days, I finally agreed to go over there with him to see if we could get it running.
We had to use the sign-out sheet because we had to walk, and it’s over a mile to Barb’s house. Nicky said to me, “You took the X off again, didn’t you?”
“I plead the Fifth Amendment.”
“Don’t bullshit me, you took it off. You’re gonna get your ass in a sling.”
“It’s my ass.”
“How’d you get it off?”
I had to laugh. “She’s making it tougher, now she uses strapping tape. I had to use a putty knife.”
“It’s pretty risky, how come you keep doing it?”
“It’s the principle of the thing.”
“I don’t get it.”
I said, “You take a slimeball like Mrs. Grice. Her power trip is dumping on poor slobs like Kinderhook. It’s too easy. You see what I mean, it’s the principle of the thing.”
“You got balls, Charly Black Crow, but you’re gonna get your ass in a sling.”
When we got to Barb’s house, she was on the phone; she motioned us to get some pop from the fridge. After Nicky got us both a Pepsi, we went out to the garage.
We looked over the filthy bike. “The first thing that’s obvious,” I said, “is that everything will have to be cleaned.”
“I’m with you, Charly Black Crow.”
“I really doubt if you are. I’m not just talking about the dirt you can see, I’m talking about really cleaning this machine up. It needs everything pulled apart and cleaned with gasoline, and I mean everything—plugs, points, and carburetors, filters, even the fuel line.”
“Let’s do it, partner.”
We were in good shape for tools, thanks to Barb’s dead husband. I took the air filter off of the bike and we set it on the workbench. “This’ll show you why it’s going to be such a big job,” I said. “All we can do with this is brush it out. It ought to be blown out with a compressor, but we don’t have one. Even that would be just a temporary solution. What it really needs is a new air filter, which means money.”
“I can get a new one later,” said Nicky.
“Just remember, there’s no way to get this bike running good without spending some money.” I didn’t want to be stiff with him, but there wasn’t any point in hiding from the truth.
We took the gas tank off, which wasn’t too tricky. I gave Nicky some gas and a stiff old paintbrush. “Why don’t you see if you can get that grease and crud off the gas tank,” I said. “I’ll work on this filter for a while.”
After he worked on it for about two minutes, he told me he was done. I looked at it, but all he’d done was smear off some of the crud from the top of the tank. I got pissed and jumped on his case. I told him if he didn’t care enough to do a good job, why should I care?
He said okay, but first he had to go to the bathroom.
Just after he went out, Barb came in. She hung a key on a nail next to the workbench. “This is in case you need to get in the house,” she said. “I’m going out to Nolan’s house for a while.”
“Have a good time.”
“Speaking of Nolan,” she said, “have you been working on your curveball?”
“Night and day,” I lied. “If we ever get this bike running, I’ll probably be working out even more.”
“How did you get roped in?” she asked.
“A certain lady we know made her garage and her tools available.”
“Aha. Are you mad at me?”
“Not really. It’s just that Nicky’s such a clinging vine. If you show him any encouragement, he’ll wrap himself around you. He doesn’t have enough know-how to work on the bike himself; as long as it’s in this garage, he’s going to want me to help him work on it, and that’ll turn out to be me doing most of the work.”
“I never thought of that. I just felt sorry for him because he doesn’t seem to have much going for himself.”
“He doesn’t know how to get anything going. He’s very pathetic, as you’ll find out in due time.”
Then I thought I sounded like a big whining baby.
“I never thought how it might affect you,” she repeated. “I can understand your point.”
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