Jonny Appleseed

by Joshua Whitehead

  “Get out!” she yelled, looking down at herself, tears meeting blood meeting sweat. “Get the fuck out!”

  On the beach, after hours of us playing “Keep Up,” Tias’s mom cooked us up hot dogs and Kraft Dinner over the fire. By then his dad was getting drunk and talking to their neighbour about his Ford F150. As we waited for supper, Tias started reading a book from school that someone had handwritten “Robert Frost is a fag” on the cover. I decided to draw a picture of our camp. I made steep uphill lines for trees, soft twirls for water, and used heavy pressure to shade in the skin of the boy I knew I loved. I always had trouble drawing his face; there was no amount of lead that could properly detail his features: that low forehead, the concave jut of his cheeks, the bushiness of his unibrow before he learned how to trim it. After dinner, his dad played Johnny Cash on his guitar, his mom cleaned the dishes, and Tias and I sat and stared at a fire that never let up.

  When his parents fell asleep, we snuck back to the beach with a handful of sparklers and a few fireworks we smuggled in from the rez. We threw our towels on the sand, ripped off our clothes, and ran into the water that was as shiny as a whale’s back. The air was cold but the water was warm; we swam in circles around each other, dipping our heads beneath the water, holding onto each other so we didn’t drift off into the darkness. Water always has a way of hiding imperfections—giving my body, still puffy with baby fat in places that shamed me, long lean lines as I dove beneath the surface. And it gave Tias, who already had a beautiful body, muscles that glistened, his skin as tight as a hand drum, penis coming into itself like a mallet.

  We got out after what seemed like hours, shivering in the lake wind. We laid on the beach naked, our cocks and balls shriveled into themselves—we must have looked like aliens there, no genitals, just flat, sexless bodies. The night was thick so we lit our sparklers, the flakes of metal flaring between us, touching our skin, burning for a second, leaving marks like hickeys on our chests and legs. Then we kissed, our chins above a heat that scorched our budding hairs, his lips tasting of stale water and crinkled like tinfoil. But our heads fit together without having to twist much. When I bit his lip, my teeth caught some dead skin, which I pulled into my mouth—he tasted like the salty skin of a pickerel.

  “The fuck?” he said, pulling away, his lip shiny with a single bead of blood.

  “Sorry, man,” I said. “My tooth got caught.”

  Sand had crusted on our bodies, found its way into our bottoms, powdered our scrotums like the Shake-n-Bake that my kokum put on her chicken.

  “Don’t worry about it, man, but fuck, that hurt,” he said, as he wiped himself with the back of his hand and then stared at it. “We should probably get back anyways, y’know?”

  We threw on our shorts and tees and wrapped our towels over our heads to dry our hair, but truth be told I thought mine looked like a luxurious war bonnet. On our way back we got lost as we pushed our way through a path Tias called a short-cut, the long arms of branches slapping at us and the sharp needles of thistle weeds underfoot.

  “I know the way,” Tias said unconvincingly.

  “Ekosi,” I said.

  “You know, I read this poem today,” he said while holding two branches apart so I could walk through them. “Basically about this right here. The woods are scary, dark and deep!” he recited, inflecting the final two words to try and scare me—I wasn’t scared, but I did pretend to jump to please him. He put his hands on his hips like a confident warrior, but I thought he looked more like a jester than anything. We continued along the path, Tias leading the way like a bulldozer.

  “Hey, Tias?” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder. “You never did finish your story from the other night.”

  He turned around. “Yeah, what about it?”

  “Can I hear it?”

  He stared at me for a second, then turned his head back and continued down the path. I didn’t say anything, just followed close behind him, our gaits matching and hands sometimes smacking into one another. Our feet were beginning to feel bruised, but he said he still knew how to get back. I trusted him, since he came here more often than I did—and there’s a kind of safety in letting someone else lead the way. Still, it’s funny how your mind plays tricks on you in the dark—everything looks like it’s ready to pounce on you, to grab you, to shake and slap you.

  The third time our hands bumped together, he grabbed my hand, laced his fingers through mine, pulled me along like a string.

  “I have this picture,” he said, pulling me in closer, our hips almost aligned. “She’s a baby.” I didn’t want to respond this time, I knew I’d fuck it all up—betray his trust again. I needed to listen fiercely and respond through my body.

  “We’re sitting together on this lawn, I don’t know where it is.” I squeeze the meat of his thumb.

  “She’s sitting between my legs, maybe three months old or something, I’m maybe two?” I continue to squeeze the ball of his hand like they taught me at Camp Arnes.

  “She’s so goddamn tiny, you know?” Squeeze it like they taught me after we sang “Jonny Appleseed,” amen.

  “We’re just hugging each other. And her fingers are so little and pink. And every time I look at them I see how dark my knuckles are—I know I haven’t fought enough in my life for them to be that black, you know?” I’m squeezing SOS into his palm like I’m pressing an orange.

  “And then I look at hers and see that hers are not much lighter than mine.” I squeeze a different word that Louis the camp counselor taught me with the grinding of his hips into mine, watch Tias’s body crumple like a piece of paper in a fire.

  “Why were they so dark, Jon, why are they so dark?” Then all of a sudden Tias is hunched over crying and his palm goes limp. I pull him into me, wrap my arms around him like an oyster. I kiss his forehead and he looks up at me, his lashes clumped together from tears.

  “Why did I have to lose her too?” he asks. I have no answers for him other than this is the way it is for NDNs—but that’s a truth I don’t need to repeat to him.

  “I think I see it,” I say, take both his hands into mine, pull him upright like I’m a powerful ox all of a sudden.

  “You know what the fucked-up thing is?” he says, wiping his eyes. “When I showed my parents, they said she looked cute enough to eat. Who the fuck says that?”

  I steered the both of us in the direction of the path again and this time I led the way, pulling Tias along with all my might. We didn’t say anything else to each other that night, but as I churned those images over and over in my head, I heard him whisper to himself, “Miles to go before I sleep.”

  XL

  I’ve always been afraid to sleep alone. See, I had a lot of “invisible friends” when I was a toddler. My mom took no notice of it; to her, it was natural for little NDN kids who lived way out in the middle of nowhere to have invisible friends. But one day, I told her, “Mom, Grandpa says hello.”

  I never met my kokum’s first husband, my mother’s father. My grandpa’s name was Roderick Simpson and he was a beloved hunter on the rez. He used to trap rabbits and sometimes lynx in the summer and skin them for their pelts, then my kokum would cook rabbit stew and make a roast of the occasional lynx that would get caught. My grandpa and kokum became well known for their pelts and dried meats and were popular with the Ukrainian colony that was situated next to the rez; my grandpa would trade them for their chicken eggs and potpies. My grandparents became good friends with the Ukrainians that way—my kokum would always have a chicken potpie from the Ukrainians on hand, ready for company.

  My mother freaked out when I told her I saw Grandpa. Not only that, I described him in perfect detail, from his short, thin hair that made his head look like a stippling brush to the crooked twist of his nose. When my mom called Kokum, she came over right away and brought her smudge bowl, tortoise rattle, drum, sweetgrass, and sage to cleanse the house of spirits. I wasn’t allowed to watch, so I sat in my room in the basement while they conducted t
he ceremony.

  The basement was always dank and cold. My mother and Kokum’s loud footsteps made me shudder, and I could smell the smoke of their medicines. I finally fell asleep listening to the rhythmic shake of my kokum’s tortoise rattle. When it was over, both women came downstairs to wake me and told me that I wouldn’t be bothered by spirits anymore.

  But around this same time, I began to see a lot of shadows in the basement—which could have been caused by the swaying ceiling light, or from what I would later learn to call the “little people.”

  I had a lot of night terrors.

  Because of this, I slept with my mom almost every night for a year, much to Roger’s dismay. I never ventured downstairs to my bedroom save for a fresh pair of clothes and the odd chore for my mother. On occasions when I did, I would turn on all the lights and run back upstairs as quickly as I could. To help me with my anxieties, Roger concocted a plan. He told me a story of the mannegishi.

  “When I was a boy,” he said softly, “I used to see little people too. I always saw them jumping down from the ceiling light in my room in the basement. Used to spook my mom out so much that one time when I saw a shadow run across the wall and screamed, my mom pushed me out of her way and ran upstairs. We were all afraid of them. But my gran told me that it was a blessing to see the mannegishi. They say that only children and medicine people can see them. And if you treat them right and offer them tobacco, they’re supposed to help you. They’re super hairy and ugly—so don’t look them in the face. But they’re little, very little, and like to play tricks on people. That’s probably why they’re bugging you.” Then he pulled out a handful of jelly beans from his pocket. “We’ll use these,” he said, “to get them to ease up on their tricks.”

  He led me by the hand to my basement bedroom. We searched the room from top to bottom. We pulled out my drawers, checked in the pockets of my sweaters, hell, Roger even unscrewed the vents to peer into them with his flashlight. We didn’t find any mannegishi.

  “See, little people, they love shiny things,” Roger said. “My gran told me that. She said that you can never get rid of them, that they follow families around when they move. So we’re stuck with these damned little annoying fucks!” He was half-shouting, half laughing. “She told me that if you can offer them treats, they’ll usually leave you alone. This is what I always did.” Then he pulled out a crumpled bit of tinfoil and placed it on the floor. He unfolded it, shaped it into a little bowl, and placed the jelly beans inside. “This here tinfoil will attract them. They’ll take the jelly beans as an offering. To them, in the spirit world, a jelly bean is like the equivalent of receiving an entire elk—a little goes a long way. They’ll be full and sugar-high for a while yet. Give them more in a few months and you’ll be okay, Jonny.”

  Together we placed the tinfoil bowl of jelly beans beneath my bed and we went upstairs, where my mom made us hot chocolate, and then we all sat down and watched Family Feud. That night, I slept in their bed straight through till morning, when Roger and I went to check on our tinfoil trap. To our astonishment, the jelly beans were gone. It never occurred to me that maybe my mom or Roger himself woke up in the middle of the night to eat those jelly beans—as far as I knew, they were gone to the spirit world. I had fewer nightmares after that, fewer visions of shadows running across the walls. And fewer hangouts with Roger.

  My kokum told me once that the mannegishi are helpers to medicine people—that she too had seen them and asked them for help. She joked that this was how she found all of her keys that she had once lost. When I told my kokum of my dreams, she let me talk and would listen carefully, nodding gently while sipping her tea. “Some people think their name means hairy—that they’re ugly and mean spirits,” she finally said. “But from my experience, m’boy, they’re quite nice. Other people say that their name means butterfly, from the Ojibwe word memengwaa. Maybe that’s what they are to you, m’boy? Butterflies.”

  It reminded me of this poem we read in school once, by John Keats, who said that he wished he were a butterfly and lived only three short days—and he would fill those three short days with more delight than fifty common years could contain. Since my conversation with my kokum that day, I’ve always thought of my relationship with the spirit world along those lines, that the mannegishi and the dreams they gave me showed me that I was a pupa and the rez my chrysalis; that I was living on borrowed time and that my three short days had a deadline—but hey, it’s like I always say: what’s three days in regular time is five in NDN time.

  XLI

  I walked from St. James to Ellice and then caught a cab for the rest of the way home—I just made fifty dollars, I thought, so spending ten isn’t going to ruin my trip. It figures I’d forget my keys at Tias’s place so that I’d have to break into my own home, Native Problems 101. Every NDN I’ve ever met has devised several methods to do this. Mine was asking my neighbour if I could shimmy from his balcony to mine, where I always left a window unlocked. And if my neighbour wasn’t home, I let myself in using the key he hid in the nook beneath his door—he never seemed to mind.

  When I finally got inside, my phone was blinking with messages from more clients; this time I had an additional three unread messages. That meant twelve clients. If each averaged twenty dollars a pop for a webcam peek-a-boo, at roughly twenty minutes per session, then I could, if my body were up to it, earn up to 240 dollars today. That would put me well over the amount it would take to get back home to the rez; that is, if I could only stop spending money on cigarettes, Big Bites, and cab rides when I still needed to top off my rent for the month and pay back Ernie for his weed.

  I figured I’d call my mom to see how she’s doing before I began my all-night webcam sessions. Her cellphone was cut off because the outstanding bill on her landline was hefty, so I resorted to the old-school NDN method of instant messaging. I picked up the phone and dialed her collect; when the operator asked me to state my name, I fit in as many words as I could: “Hi Mom, it’s Jonny, how’s things on your end—” Beep. The operator cut me off and rang my mom. On the sixth ring, I heard her answer, “Hello?” and the automated answer of, “You have a collect call from: Hi Mom, it’s Jonny, how’s things on your end—beep.” I heard her laugh. I then hung up so she could collect-call-instant-message me back. This was how we used to talk all the time, when neither of us had a penny to put on our MTS phone bills.

  When my phone rang, I quickly picked it up. “You have a collect call from: Hey babe, I’ve been better when you coming—beep.”

  “You have a collect call from: Should be there tomorrow, low on funds—beep.”

  “You have a collect call from: You better get your scrawny ass here, boy—beep.”

  “You have a collect call from: I will, Momma, promise—beep.”

  “You have a collect call from: Mmkay m’boy, make sure you d—beep.”

  “You have a collect call from: Pinky swear, love you—beep.”

  I had twenty-four hours to do ten webcam shows, earn another 200 bucks, pack, sleep, and find myself a ride for the four-hour drive to Peguis.

  In addition to the three missed phone calls, there was a text message from Tias: “Where’d you go? I want to talk to you about something.”

  A part of me wished that Jordan had a landline too—the harsh clank of a thrown-down receiver was the aural equivalent of a slap to the face. It was the best way to tell a person to fuck off without having to say the words. I texted him back with a simple, “No.” I made an emphasis to punctuate my text. In the digital universe, a punctuated sentence is as powerful a slap as slamming down the landline.

  I knew what was coming, heck, it was the same-old-same-old routine any couple of NDN breeders went through, on or off the rez, salmon patch and all.

  It was going to be a long night.

  XLII

  When we were kids, all my cousins and I used to visit my kokum’s house every day. I loved playing with the mangy rez dogs that hung around her home. She always kept a l
arge bag of dog kibble and had each of us scoop out bowlfuls for the dogs that came to her porch hungry. And she had a large field in front of her house where they’d wrestle, fuck, sleep, and shit. I spent far too much time in that field sweet-talking dogs that never called me weird or faggot. Truth be told, I was afraid of men and I learned a lot about my masculinity by playing with those dogs.

  The men in my family often tried to teach me practical skills like how to use tools, start a fire, hunt, and skin animals. I never had an aptitude for many of these, hell, whenever I built a piece of furniture from Wal-Mart it always seemed inevitable that I would build it backwards three times, get mad, and then leave it like that. The end table in my apartment has three unfinished edges that I’ve coloured over with black sharpie to hide the flaws. I may not be a goddamned carpenter or a hunter, but let me tell you, I’m crafty as all hell.

  I always preferred having female teachers, friends, and guidance counselors. The men in my life liked to pressure me to butch myself up and ridicule me for my feminine ways. When I was in the fourth grade, my school had a Halloween dance. I wanted to be Minnie Mouse, but Roger wouldn’t let me buy a girl’s costume—instead, he bought me the Mickey Mouse version. Before going to the party, my kokum made me a makeshift bow, then she painted my face up like a mouse, adding her blush to my cheeks and mascara to my lashes. I felt like Minnie in that moment and that was enough for me.

  No one at the party seemed to care about what any of us were wearing. I remember a lot of dreadfully tacky fabrics and Scream masks. When “Ghostbusters” started playing, Shane, my only friend at the time, asked me to dance. He put his left hand on my hip and his right clasped my left hand, and we waltzed around the room to Ray Parker Jr.’s exhortations. That was the first time I’d ever touched a boy beyond the exchange of chest bumps or pats on the back.