The Life and Death of Eli and Jay

by Francis Gideon

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Book Details

  Dedication

  The Life & Death Of Eli & Jay

  About the Author

  THE

  LIFE&

  DEATH OF

  ELI &

  JAY

  FRANCIS GIDEON

  Eli and Jay have known one another since they were children. Their life on the Star Belt government reserve in Saskatchewan isn't great, but the people–like Tantoo, Eli's grandmother, Jay's sisters and grandmother Buffy–have always made life tolerable.

  Until the day Jay kissed Eli only to be rejected, and a moment of misunderstanding drives the two friends apart for years, a misunderstanding that won't come up again until tragedy draws them together once more.

  BOOK DETAILS

  The Life & Death of Eli & Jay

  By Francis Gideon

  Published by Less Than Three Press LLC

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher, except for the purpose of reviews.

  Edited by Emilia Vane

  Cover designed by Natasha Snow

  This book is a work of fiction and all names, characters, places, and incidents are fictional or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is coincidental.

  First Edition March 2016

  Copyright © 2016 by Francis Gideon

  Printed in the United States of America

  Digital ISBN 9781620047248

  For Travis & Janette

  THE

  LIFE&

  DEATH OF

  ELI &

  JAY

  When Eli Hogan's mother was six months pregnant with him, the small house on the Star Belt reserve was struck by lightning. Since this was on the rez, and no one had insurance, there was a lot of damage that no one could really fix. The bolt hit the TV antenna atop the torn roof, making the lights flicker inside the living room until they shattered. Copper wires melted into the carpets, leaving singe marks in their wake. Eli's mother, Nadine, stood in the middle of the floor and shrieked until Eli's dad Randy woke up from his nap in the back of his truck. Rain soaked through his thick shirt and puddles surrounded the truck. Randy hadn't meant to be sleeping there, but he and Nadine had fought the night before, so instead of spending the night alone on the couch, Randy wanted to be closer to the stars. Even during a rainstorm, he was still convinced it was the best place to be.

  Randy rescued Nadine from the shattered glass prison of the house, slipping her over his shoulders and bringing her outside into the rain. Her bare feet hit the mud at the same time she felt Eli kick. And she knew that in spite of the house's damage, and the alcohol on Randy's breath, that a shitty government house on the rez was nothing important. Nothing to cry about. The storm had been a sign—a lightning strike of revelation—that her son would grow up and be a strong man, one that could not be contained by four walls and a roof. He was going to go off and be something good.

  At least, this was how Eli's grandmother Tantoo told him the story of his birth. Months after the rainstorm that destroyed the house, Nadine gave birth inside Tantoo's trailer while Randy and a few other community leaders repaired their house. They got rid of the TV antenna, replaced some electrical lines, and reinforced the roof—but they left the carpet intact. Carpet was too expensive back in the '80s, but keeping the singed lines also reminded everyone of Eli. Randy, in particular, had wanted his son to see what had happened that night he had been outside in his truck, among the stars and lightning bolts.

  Years later, the summer Eli was five years old, Randy would be found in a ditch, too drunk to move and dead of hypothermia a week later.

  "Always looking at the stars," his grandmother—his mother's mother—would say. "Always on his back. Randy was always looking at the damn stars as if he could keep them. As if he thought he had a right to the sky."

  Eli often wondered, though, if his father had really been watching out for thunderstorms. Ever since the first one had snuck up on him and ruined the house, Randy seemed to stay up later and later into the night, always on watch. He drank more, too, but Eli never factored that into the image of his father. Everyone on the rez drank in some form or another. Randy had been a big, hulking man—over six feet tall and with a belly that cast a shadow over his feet. He could handle drinking as much as he did, because he was a mountain that couldn't be moved. Even when they found him in the ditch from drinking too much, they needed four men to lift him into the ambulance and then an additional two at the hospital to carry him in.

  The night his father died, it stormed again. Eli had been watching from the front window, his hands over the singed carpet. Every time someone wasn't looking out, the storms came.

  Soon after his father's death, his mother grew weary of rez life. She dropped Eli off at Tantoo's one morning and didn't come back. Eli watched through Tantoo's window for days until an elder brought a postcard to Tantoo's door that said she was now living in the States with a new boyfriend. Tantoo became Eli's only parent.

  And that night, again, there was another storm. Alone in his bed, with Tantoo snoring in the next room, Eli felt fear about the storms for the first time. The roll of thunder made his heart beat faster, as if it could race with the wind and the sonic booms. He heard the rain against the pipes and Tantoo's TV antenna sway. He imaged the house being struck again and again—no matter how much Tantoo told him that lightning never hit the same place twice. The storms were something to be feared. They were Eli's legacy, but they were also his curse.

  He and Tantoo moved into his family's old house. As she shifted the furniture around, Eli saw the biggest singe mark of them all. Copper wires from the lamp cord had melted into the ground, straight down the centre of the house, and stopped where the old TV used to be. Eli placed both feet on either side of that divide and shook his head. The storm had split the house in two; it had made his parents take sides when they fought, and the split prevented Eli from having brothers and sisters on the rez, when everyone had brothers and sisters, or cousins that they called brothers and sisters. The fear of lightning and thunder, combined with Eli's hatred of his origins. Eventually, Eli got his grandmother to cover up the line again with a couch.

  "You know, Eli," Tantoo said their first night together in the house, with her art on the wall now. "It's better this way—with just you and me. It's better you don't have a million people running around and telling you a bunch of crazy stories."

  "You tell me stories, Grandma."

  "I do, but mine aren't crazy. Mine are true." Tantoo smiled, a small wink in her eyes. She flung her long, gray braids over her shoulders, as if to push away the past. "Now. No more stories for tonight. I think I've talked enough."

  She picked up her sewing from her bag. There were some things for Eli, like darning his socks, but other patchworks were for the marketplace in town. Tantoo would often sell her quilts at a marked-up price at the local farmer's market in order to get by on the rez. As she sewed, Eli would often sit on the couch with her and wonder which side of the divide in the house he fell onto.

  For a long time, this was it: Tantoo would tell the stories of Eli's birth, the family Eli didn't see anymore, and then when she grew tired of nostalgia, Tantoo tried to stitch the future. That was why she liked needlework and quilts, she'd always tell Eli.

  "You pull threads together and you have a stake in the future. Every single one of us can trace our roots back to the source, the first stitch, but there are only a few of us who can go forward and add stitch over stitch." She held up a red patch with a pattern of a house on it, smiled, and then glanced back at
Eli. "But don't get too lost, Eli. There are bigger things out there for you. I know that to be true."

  Eli shifted on the couch. With a concerned, heavy hand, she touched Eli's dark hair and spoke in quick Siksika that even Eli didn't understand fully.

  "What?"

  "Ask nicer."

  "What did you say, Grandma?"

  She smiled softly. "Are you all right, Eli?"

  Eli didn't answer. After she tugged on his hair, he nodded.

  "Good. Then speak up when the time is right."

  Eli moved from the couch to the window in front of the small house. He watched the cars pass by, ignoring the broken stop light, and the people going in and out of the general store. When a low hum of thunder occurred over the horizon, Eli drew quiet and stared at the sky. He hoped that he didn't have to be like his father or mother, but someone completely new.

  *~*~*

  There was another boy on the rez who was raised by his grandmother—Jay Red Feather. When storm season passed, Eli watched Jay from his front window. He was the only boy in five kids, the rest of them all girls—even his cousins, whom he still called his sisters—were all girls. Jay was always stuck in the middle, sandwiched by his big family and his sister's loud voices. While the girls took over the house, doing laundry and then stringing it outside their too-small house across the rez, Eli would watch and wonder how Jay could be so beautiful. He seemed to smile all the time, his eyes crinkling at the edges as if he had already wrinkled from grinning so much. He was tall: taller than Eli, but not as big as Randy, and probably would never be, and he was thin. He looked like any other boy on the rez, Eli tried to convince himself. But next to the background of Jay's sky-blue painted government house, he seemed like the only point of hope and understanding for Eli.

  One afternoon, Eli looked up and saw smoke coming out of Jay's house. It billowed above their small chimney in gray clouds and out through an open window with bright red drapes. Eli sprung from his seat. This smoke wasn't like the kind that came off sage that Tantoo sometimes lit. This was burning smoke, the kind that destroyed houses. Eli ran across the street, past the dogs who tried to chase and catch him, and past the kids who tried to always pull Eli's hair like he was a little girl. He ran directly to Jay's door and pounded his fists.

  "You need to get out. The lightning is striking. Someone's angry. Get out."

  When Jay opened the door, Eli fell at his feet. Sudden and unalarmed, Jay looked down at Eli with a half-smile that came easily to his face. Jay was twelve, Eli was only ten, but they had lived across the street from one another for a decade and yet had never shared words.

  "Eli," Jay said, as if he had discovered gold. "What are you doing here?"

  "Smoke! Where there is smoke, there is fire. Like the thunder that comes after lightning."

  Jay laughed. The lines around his eyes deepened. "Don't worry. That's my grandma. She was making fry bread and it got away from her. The oil burns something nasty, but we're okay. Don't worry."

  Then Eli could smell it: strong and thick, a pungent odour of burned oil inside a cast-iron pan, along with the scent of meat caked in flour. The earthy, easy smells on the rez.

  "Oh." Eli felt his face redden. He sat up, folding his hands over his legs that were still crossed on Jay's front porch. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to…"

  "What's going on, Jay-Jay-Jay-Bird?" his sister, Gabi, asked as she appeared by the small door. Her hair was pulled back in a tight braid and she wore one of Eli's old sweaters Tantoo had given away six months earlier. She tilted her head to examine Eli on the ground, then back to Jay.

  "Nothing, Gabi. Just go back in and set the table. We have another person," Jay said, squatting down so he could be eye-level with Eli, "That is, if you want to stay?"

  Eli bit his lip. "Are you sure?"

  "Yeah, of course. My grandmother makes the best fry bread. I have to invite you, just so you know. Something this good has to be shared."

  Eli's stomach twitched with hunger. He couldn't believe all of this could be so easy—so much so that he had literally fallen at Jay's feet. "Sure, okay."

  When Jay extended his hand to help Eli up, their fingers touched—and Eli felt a spark. He pulled his hand away quickly once he was on his feet, the electrical current still passing through him. Jay noticed Eli's sudden movements, his brows dropping.

  "You okay, Eli?"

  "Yeah… Just…" Eli said, his eyes wide, "Are you sure that all the fire is out?"

  "Don't worry," Jay said, his smile light again. "I've got everything under control."

  *~*~*

  The sparks between them kept happening—and so did storms on the reservation. In Saskatchewan, there was so much flat land that it often felt like Eli could see forever. That made spotting storms easy and hard at the same time. Easy because Eli could always see the flicker of electricity on the horizon, but hard because he never knew how far the storm had to go before it was dangerous.

  In the summer, when storm season was at its peak, everyone on the rez was outside. They played basketball at the one hoop near the radio station and the general store, or they would sit on the back of their trailers and porches and drink. Some, like Jay's sisters, would lie on their towels and stare up at the sky—but Eli soon realized they were sun bathing and not watching. Eli and Jay, whenever they were together, would try to find the tall trees or the greenest grass on the rez away from everyone.

  Eli once led Jay up atop the hilliest part, so he could see over the horizon at the storm coming up.

  "This is barely a hill," Jay remarked as he sat down next to Eli.

  "It's close enough. I can see things here."

  "What are you looking for?"

  "I'm watching the storm. I need to know when to go inside, to protect my grandmother and everyone else."

  "That's what you're looking at. What are you looking for?" Jay clarified. As he leaned closer, to see from Eli's vantage point, their knees touched slightly.

  Eli clenched his jaw, feeling the spark again. "Is there a difference between those things?"

  "I don't know. My sisters seem to think so."

  "How so?"

  "Well. They look at boys not because they want boys, but because they're looking for a family. Something like that."

  "Ah." Eli didn't know what else to say. Though he was eleven, almost twelve years old now, he still hadn't felt much in the way of girls. He and Jay had been too busy that summer playing games and trying to find the greenest grass they could. Jay, though he was two years older, didn't seem interested in girls, either. Eli hoped there hadn't been a sudden change overnight, and this was why they were having this conversation.

  Jay kept looking into the distance, until suddenly, the sunlight disappeared as clouds passed by. "Hey, weatherman." Jay nudged Eli. "What do you predict?"

  "Um." Eli saw a swarm of black clouds in the distance. He placed his hands on the cold grass and thought he could feel the hum of the earth. "I think a storm is coming. We should go inside."

  Eli got up, only to feel Jay pull him back down. His hand on his wrist left a hot mark against his skin, like a tattoo he had sometimes seen on the older boys in the rez.

  "What?"

  "Just stay for a moment," Jay said. "Even if a storm is coming, we have a few minutes. There will always be more time, Eli. So let's just stay."

  Eli sat back down, his back arched with precision. Jay's hand was still on his wrist, as if he would run away at any moment. Jay noticed Eli staring at his hand, but still didn't move.

  "I just don't want to be in a house full of sisters right now," Jay explained.

  Eli nodded, but knew he had the opposite problem. Jay's too-full house made him miss the real world and how open it could be—like the horizon in Saskatchewan. But Eli, with a house that was full of history and his grandmother's snores, felt too empty when he was inside. The world held so much beyond the lines of the reservation, artificially drawn in the sand by people who didn't know what they were doing.

>   "You ever want to leave?" Jay asked suddenly.

  "Leave because of the storm?"

  "No," Jay laughed, eyeing Eli. "The storm'll get you wherever you are. But do you ever think of leaving the reserve?"

  "We already…" Eli was about to add that they went to high school in town, a few kilometres from where they were then. But Jay's serious and strong jaw spoke otherwise. He meant beyond the rez, like where his mother had gone, where other generations had gone, and where they always told him he would go eventually. "My grandmother says I'm destined for something more. She probably means leaving the rez."

  "But do you want to leave?" Jay's eyes, usually soft and fun, were narrowed into serious points. His dark hair, longer than Eli's at his shoulders, got caught in a sudden gust of wind. Eli could swear he felt the electricity through the sudden gust—but Jay's hand was still on his wrist, so he wasn't so sure anymore.

  "Yeah," Eli said. "I guess. I think it would be nice to see other things."

  Jay stared at him, eyes lingering, before turning away. He let go of Eli's hand and then rose to his feet. He brushed off the dirt and dead grass from his knees, a sigh on his breath. "I guess you're right—storm really is coming. We should go before things get too bad."

  Eli rose to his feet, without the hand Jay usually extended to help him up. He had grown used to Jay's sudden moods this far in their friendship, but Eli usually figured Jay's sisters had been the original source of his vexation. Now, as they walked back to their houses, Eli was sure that this time, he had been the one to say something wrong.

  The storm echoed behind him, though, and Eli didn't have much time to determine where his answers had gone wrong. They said a quick goodbye before disappearing inside their separate places. Tantoo was still asleep, so Eli was left alone again at the centre of the storms.

  These were the worst days, but Eli had a system of getting through. Inside his small bedroom, he put up the black-out stitched curtains his grandmother had given him. That way, the lightning and clouds were blocked. He shut off all the lights inside his room. Eli found his pillow and hid his head underneath and tried to sleep. When that didn't work, he covered himself in blankets, like he was sure his mother's body had protected him before, and pretended he didn't exist. He had heard of some people, especially during rituals, using this technique to centre themselves with ancestors. They would think of nothing, forget who they were, in order to become a vessel for something larger. Eli had no interest in anyone else's history—he only longed to forget his own. So under all his blankets, he imagined tracing the line of his roots from each stitch of fabric his grandmother had done, until he was at the beginning of the end. And he would wait, and wait, and wait until the storm was gone or he had fallen asleep. Whichever came first, the danger would be gone.