Then one week them bracers really got us goin’. We didn’t even figure on gettin’ drunk. We just met up in the morning, sat down in the hideout an’ had a few big slops of moose milk, an’ the next thing we know we’re smokin’, talkin’, and gettin’ pissed-up drunk. We stayed there six days. We only went out to get more or wobble down to someone’s kitchen for other company at night. I don’t know how much we drank on accounta it all got weird, but we drank lots. Then Tom Bruce had had enough, an’ waved me away finally. So we both headed back to our shacks, tired an’ sick feelin’.
That’s the night my brother asked me to watch Earl. I told him I was sick but he was mad an’ he liked to hit things an’ people when he was mad an’ I was too sick feelin’ to put up with that so I waved him off an’ they left. Maybe if he’da listened, it never woulda happened. Maybe if I’da said we was drinkin’ six days, they wouldn’t have got me to look after him. Maybe if I’da just passed out in the hideout. I don’t know. I only know what happened. I only know how them feet looked stickin’ out of that lard pail.
I ran. I ran through the darkness an’ fell down on the ground in the hideout. They found me there the next day an’ hauled me off to the county jail. That was the worst on accounta I was dead sick an’ they made me shake it off in a cell. Horrible. Nightmares, sweats, puking. I got through, though, an’ they brung me up in front of the judge, charged with drownin’ Earl. But Tom Bruce told how we drank all them days an’ my brother told how I said I was sick an’ that judge let me go. He called it an accident. He said it was a horrible accident an’ I was free to go. Free to go. When I walked out of that county jail there was nowhere to go. I hitched a ride back to the sawmill town an’ walked to the hideout. My jar was still there. I took it an’ walked away without saying nothin’ to nobody. Took it and headed toward Tucumcary, where them palm trees could hold me soft an’ gentle, rockin’ me kinda, helpin’ me forget the sight of them tiny feet in the flickerin’ light of that television. I never made it there an’ I never forgot.
Ironweed brung it all back an’ I thought about it all while I walked around drinkin’. I walked a long time an’ I was gettin’ drunk out there on the street so I turned into a motel, got a room, an’ settled in. The night man liked me but he liked the roll I showed him better. He got me some more bottles. He got some girls to come over. He got me a player an’ some movies. When I called him Tom Bruce, he answered an’ laughed. I liked that. Me ’n Tom Bruce. Together again in the Rainbow Motel. Tucumcary. We was finally gonna make it to Tucumcary.
One For The Dead
I SLEPT IN HIS ROOM. I had to. I wanted to be there if he walked back in late at night and needed someone there. I wanted to be the first to let him know that it would be all right. I wanted to see him. So I curled up in his armchair and slept by the light of a single candle I kept burning for him. I placed it on the win-dowsill and slept by its wavering glow, surrounded by all the movies that Dick had come to love, all the possible worlds he felt attracted to, all the dreams not his own that he watched, hoping a little of that magic might shine for him sometime. I wished I still had the medicines. Wished for the sweetgrass, the sage, the tobacco, and the cedar. The prayer medicines of my people. I hadn’t had any for years. If I’d had those medicines, I’d have burned them for Double Dick Dumont, right there in the room that was his home. Burned them so their fragrant smoke could carry my prayers for his safety to the Spirit World—to the Grandmothers and Grandfathers, the Spirit Helpers who watch over us—and ask them to bring him home to me. Burned them so the shadowed ones would know that someone cared for that lost one and maybe whisper something in his ear to remind him of us. Burned them so the spirit of the People from which he came might spark in him again, and he’d find the warrior’s strength to travel the dim trail back to his lodge. Burned them so my dreams would be good. Burned them to ask forgiveness for myself.
I should have known. I should have felt the weight he carried more strongly. I should have asked more questions, provided more safety, let him know how much I had seen, survived, and grown up and away from. I should have talked about my Indianness more. Should have told more stories and coaxed his own out of him, allowed him to talk about his father and his father’s tribal past. I should have made the path more clear for him because he was incapable of reading signs for himself, unable to follow even the boldest of blazing on the trees, not skilled enough to navigate the way himself. I felt all of that curled up in that armchair, breathing his scent and feeling the hollow where his body rested. I felt his awkwardness cast off and discarded in the nearness of all those stories on the shelves. I felt the unscalable wall of literacy dismantle itself and tumble to the carpet next to the magnificence of time and place and texture presented in those shining tales. I felt loss replaced by dreams of gaining the crown of the world, grief replaced by glorious victory, shame salved by forgiveness, wrath tamed by love, love itself illuminated by a love returned, and homelessness, loneliness, and woe rendered speechless in the face of welcomings radiant and warm. I felt his jubilation in seeing all those things. I felt that just as I felt the chill of departure when the story faded to black again and the man in the chair faced the darkness alone, afraid, ashamed, and not drunk enough to dream a shining dream of his own. I felt all that and I slept there so there would be one place he would not have to feel like he wandered into alone. One place where someone waited, eager to alter the way she had done things, desiring to carry more stories forward and help him blaze a trail through the darkness.
Timber
I CARVED AT NIGHT. While the others slept, I worked on the man in the chair. In the flicker of candlelight I seemed to be able to see him in sharper detail, the shadow moving like a hand telling me where to chip, scrape, slice, and etch. I never knew how much shadow he lived in, how much the darkness haunted him, how twilight never held the romance it sometimes graced other people’s lives with, how it only talked to him of another vigil to be maintained, another gathering of hours huddled like bandits waiting to waylay the unprepared. While I worked I thought about the years we’d travelled together, how we had thought we knew each other, how we had called that semblance of knowing friendship, and all the while my grief over Sylvan rested under all that like an uncobbled stone—the pathway to knowing incomplete, the treading difficult, impossible perhaps, impassable. I thought about how I had failed him. How my secret had taught him how to keep his own. My pain granting his permission to fester and growl away at his guts too. I thought about how easy it is to hide in the company of others, allowing the motion of lives to obfuscate your inner workings so that what’s presented becomes more a bas-relief than sculpted image. I had failed him then. Failed to let him see me. Failed to let him know me in all the corrugated chips and fracture lines. Failed to let him know that friends are imperfect replicas of the people we think we choose, and that imperfection is the nature of it all. We come together in our brokenness and find that our small acts of being human together mend the breaks, allow us to retool the design and become more. I never taught him that.
So I worked. I let my hands feel our friendship. Those moments when our less-than-perfect selves hold the adze we shape togetherness with. I let my hands trace the face I knew so well. Allowed them to cut and gouge the hollows I had never taken the time to fill with learning, let them trail the fine spray of wrinkles around the eyes that told stories I’d never heard, the dump of mouth above the chin that spoke of disappointments grave and eternal, the angular cut of jaw that spoke of a resolute holding back, a reining in never questioned: the geography of my friend I had never walked. I worked in shadow and allowed shadow to permeate the image, because that is where he was born and lived and dreamed, if he allowed himself to dream at all. I allowed myself conjecture because conjecture was all I had, and I sculpted an idea, made it live and breathe, made it hope, made it dream, made it offer up prayers to a god shunted away perhaps because the crimes of living in the shadow’s realm made any other kind of god too difficul
t to seek out. I carved that. I carved my friend in all his unspoken woe, and I carved my shame over my neglect into the blanket he wore draped around his shoulders.
Digger
I DROVE THE SHIT out of that truck. I stormed around the city going places I’d never gone in twenty years because rounders like Dick and me know how to dis-a-fucking-ppear and recent places ain’t the hole-up you head for. No. You head for the private places. The ones you never talk about, like I never told no one about the Palace. Out of all of us, me ’n Double Dick was the most rounder of the bunch and we knew the drill better than the other two on accounta they landed on the street and me ’n Dick was made there. So I drove around like a crazy motherfucker trying to live in his head and figure where he mighta gone those days before we met. Or I tried to think of a new place he’d pick to stash himself and I drove and drove and drove. Gave me time to think. Fucking guy always used to piss me off in the beginning. How come this and how come that. Loogan talk. Drove me crazy until I started to understand that his wick wasn’t completely lit. The light didn’t shine into all the corners, and that was okay with me then. The real loogans and loons I never had no time for, but once I realized that Dick was short a few matches I started to lend him some of mine. Goofy motherfucker was always solid, always there, always game even though he’da been as good as a loose fart in tight trousers in a fight. Solid. Stand-up. A fucking rounder. I’da taken him as a winger over a hundred better-spoken, better-thinking assholes who’d crumble under half the shit we seen. I loved that fucking guy. Loved him on accounta he showed me it was okay to not be in fucking control all the time, that sometimes not being fucking clear was good for a guy on accounta the questions got sharper so the answers could come. He taught me that, the flat-footed fuck, and I loved him for it. But I never told him. I never told him. So I drove and I knew that when I found him I was gonna let him know a few things. I was gonna let him know that he taught me something big. I was gonna let him know that he was a solid fucking rounder I was proud to have on my wing. I was gonna tell him that no matter what the fuck was going on I was gonna be on his wing and there wasn’t nobody big enough or bad enough to move me from there. Ever. And I was gonna tell him I loved him. On the sly, though. Wasn’t no need for anyone else to hear that coming from me.
Double Dick
TOM BRUCE couldn’t remember about Tucumcary. When I asked him he just laughed an’ told me to have another drink. That was okay. People always forget stuff an’ we was just kids. He didn’t remember nothin’ about me an’ little Earl neither an’ that was even better on accounta I didn’t wanna think about it no more. He made sure I didn’t. We got goin’ on a really good run. Tom Bruce knew the hooch delivery guy an’ we was always workin’ on a bottle even when he was supposed to be workin’ the desk. Some of the girls he knew brung me movies an’ we’d sit in my room an’ watch them together an’ some of them girls gave me blow jobs an’ stuff. I liked that. Made me forget all about Ironweed an’ Earl an’ even bein’ afraid of wakin’ up at night. Sometimes they stayed with me an’ I liked that better on accounta I could roll over an’ feel them beside me an’ they’d let me fuck them before I gulped down some hooch, rolled over, an’ passed out again. I liked that. We never had parties like that with Digger an’ Timber. All Tom Bruce needed was some cash every day, so me an’ one of the girls would take a cab to a bank machine an’ I’d get it for him. He took care of my room an’ made sure we kept the party goin’. I was with Tom Bruce again. My first friend an’ he made sure I was took care of.
We just partied. It was like it was never gonna stop an’ I liked that on accounta finally there wasn’t nothin’ in my head. I kinda felt bad about not tellin’ anyone where I was but when I told Tom Bruce he said that it was better if I let them be an’ stuck with him.
“We’re old buds,” he said. “We’re pals. Old times, huh? Old times.”
We partied. Night an’ day. No one said nothin’ when I got sick. No one said nothin’ when I couldn’t walk to the bathroom an’ had to piss in an empty bottle at night. No one said nothin’ about nothin’. We just kept right on rollin’. We had movies, music, girls, an’ hooch an’ a room like the hideout me ’n Tom Bruce used to have in the woods behind the sawmill town.
“Linda needs shoes,” Tom Bruce said one day, an’ I gave him some money on accounta I liked Linda.
“I gotta get some work done on my car,” he said another time, an’ I gave him a hundred or so even though he never brung his car around.
“Pearl don’t have enough for the dentist,” an’ I’d shell out on accounta Pearl would strip for me whenever she come around. Real slow an’ sexy an’ then she’d let me fuck her. I liked her smile.
Every day I went to the cash machine an’ that’s all I had to do. Tom Bruce took care of the rest. When I started to get sick from the drinkin’ he got me some pills that fixed me up real fast. I never had that before. I never knew you could find some pills that’d take the sick away an’ let you keep on goin’. Pretty soon I was takin’ pills every mornin’ or when I woke up at night feelin’ all antsy. Tom Bruce called them my “magic pills” an’ they sure was. Helped me forget about everythin’. Everythin’. Once I got goin’ on those pills we started goin’ around to where Tom Bruce’s new friends hung out. He knew lots of people an’ they was always real glad to see me.
For a while it looked like I found a whole new kinda life. I’da stayed there except for the one night. I was alone. It was rainin’. Everyone had somethin’ else to do an’ I was sitting there all alone, drinkin’ an’ starin’ at the television. I didn’t feel nothin’ except a buzzin’ in the head that wouldn’t go away. There was a man on the TV. He was just sittin’ there talkin’. Talkin’ to me. Talkin’ to me an’ tellin’ me about my life.
“There’s nothing you can do to change things,” the man said. “You can run but you can’t hide. The facts are the facts and you can’t get away. You can’t get away.”
That’s what he was sayin’, an’ pointin’ at me an’ lookin’ at me all hard an’ angry. I didn’t like it. I didn’t know how the man knew who I was or how he knew about my life. But he did an’ he kept right on talkin’ to me. I was scared. Scared. So I walked over to the television an’ clicked it off. Except it was already off. It was off.
I felt the walls start creepin’ in on me. My heart started pound-in’ in my chest an’ I couldn’t breathe right. There was crawly things on the floor an’ in the walls an’ the rain outside was blood. Blood on the sidewalk. The shadows from the streetlights were movin’ an’ comin’ toward me. I saw them through the open door an’ I ran over an’ slammed it shut. Then I grabbed a bottle an’ tilted it back an’ gulped an’ gulped an’ gulped, feelin’ the fire in my chest an’ closin’ my eyes like I could push it into my blood an’ make the horrible things go away. I fell on the floor an’ felt the crawly things on me. I stuffed a corner of a blanket hard into my mouth so I wouldn’t scream an’ when I felt the cottony numb feelin’ at the sides of my head that told me the whisky was work-in’ I opened my eyes. The pill bottle was by my head an’ I fumbled it open an’ swallowed a few before I took another few gulps of hooch. There was still crawly things but they was slower now an’ the TV was blank. I got to my feet, grabbed my coat, an’ got out of there. Got right out of there an’ walked down the road. Walkin’. Walkin’. Walkin’ an’ tryin’ to remember how to breathe.
Granite
A WEEK WENT BY. Two. Then three. The house on Indian Road became a glum place. It sat within the weight of its own shadow. The rounders kept more and more to themselves and the television in the living room was ignored, as though it were to blame for Dick’s absence. James had informed us that because Dick was making regular withdrawals from his bank account, he didn’t qualify as a missing person to the police and so there was nothing they could do. It was, apparently, his choice to be absent. That news hit them hard. They sat in their chairs dumbfounded; the idea that one of them would want to be separated fo
r longer than a night was as awkward in their minds as choosing to starve. They tried to stick to their routines. Digger still drove the alleys and back streets in the mornings, but looking more for signs of Dick than for castoffs. Timber carved, but for increasingly shorter durations, returning to sketch in his room for long stretches at a time. Amelia read and sewed and fussed about her garden, but always with an eye to the door or the driveway and always ending on the veranda more content to sit and wait than pass time in activity. They barely spoke to each other. Margo and James and I would arrive each day and need to seek them out in their private spaces rather than be greeted at the door by the gruff boom of Digger’s voice or the quiet, almost regal welcome of Amelia. Our discussions centred on word of Dick, and when none was forthcoming they dwindled off into clumsy small talk that itself trailed off to silences huge and rife with unspoken sentiment. When we departed at night it was a sepulchral house we left behind us, shades drawn against secrets or stories unbidden and unwanted, only the glow of the one small candle Amelia kept burning offering any indication that hope nestled beneath the eaves.
“This can’t go on like this,” Margo said while we were driving over after three weeks had passed with no word or sign of Dick. “They’re eating themselves up and it’s so sad to see them not even talking to each other.”
“I know,” I said. “But they’ve all got that iron-rod spine the street gave them, and when they don’t want to speak they certainly don’t speak.”
“But it’s pulling them apart.”
“I know. After everything they lived through all those years, hanging together through it all, I didn’t think anything was capable of pulling them apart.”
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