“He looks like he’s crying,” one of the girls, Sarah, said. “Why?”
“What? Josh don’t cry. He’s a beast,” Leeroy said, his eyes bloodshot and nearly closed.
Leeroy was correct, my brother was a beast. He was 240 pounds in Grade 11 and had shattered the long-standing bench-press and leg-press records at our school. He was also one of the biggest and fastest rugby players in the district and struck fear in the hearts of many of his opponents. He could also fight better than anyone at our school if he got pissed off enough, but he had a gentleness about him and only fought when provoked.
“No, seriously, Jesse. He’s crying.”
Just as Sarah finished saying that, I saw one of the teachers, Mrs. M., burst out the side door. She tried to grab Josh from behind but he collapsed on the ground before she could reach him. I dropped my empty book bag and ran to his side.
“What’s wrong, yo? Josh, what’s wrong?”
When he looked up I saw his eyes were wide and red.
“I . . . ,” he mustered, unable to catch his breath. “You . . .”
“Back up,” Mrs. M. said with the force of a lioness. “Something happened in class and he needs air.”
I was confused. Had someone died? Had someone said something hurtful to him? Had someone done this?
“I saw . . . I saw you,” he said. “I had a vision and . . . It was horr . . .”
A scrum of teachers came out of nowhere and pushed me aside before he could finish his thought. They sat him up and kept anyone—including me—from talking with him. An ambulance came. High off my tree, I soon lost interest and turned my back on him, drifting over to my friends in the smoking pit.
“What the hell happened?” Leeroy asked.
“I don’t know. He said something about a vision, like he’s a mystic Indian or something.”
Leeroy and the gang snickered and talked about the feathers we’d seen Josh with earlier. “You’re alright, though, Jesse,” Leeroy added.
“Yeah, you’re not into that Indian shit. I remember at public school when you used to say you were Italian,” someone else said and laughed some more.
I joined in.
BERRIES
IT WAS THE HOUSE PARTY of the century, and in walked a young girl with a Tupperware container.
“Does anyone want muffins?” she asked, her mouth full of braces.
I was sitting by the fireplace sucking on a cigarette and watched the guys in the gang make fun of her. But she persisted, bubbly and friendly, walking around the room. When she offered me a muffin, I took it and just stared at her. Her smile was angelic despite the dental hardware.
As I ate the best blueberry muffin of my life, I was perplexed—by the taste, by our encounter, by everything. There were lots of other girls there, but this odd girl with the muffins captivated me. I mean, who does that? Who brings baked goods to a party with piles of cocaine, weed, and speed? She was like a walking loaf of wholesome Wonder Bread amid a torrent of hard candy. That pure goodness attracted me to her. I followed her into the kitchen and introduced myself and asked for another muffin.
“Sure,” she said and gave me the largest one, blueberries popping out all over. The music in the house was pounding louder than a rock concert, and when she handed it to me I had a hard time hearing, but she batted her eyes—they were huge and blue. I almost dropped the muffin.
“Thank you,” I said, trying to figure out what she was all about.
“Anytime,” she mouthed.
Icebergs cracked and fell away inside me.
A month later we were going steady and were in love. Her name was Karen and she was eighteen, old for those braces.
I was afraid to tell Karen I was half Native at first, but she said, “I think it’s wonderful. You should be proud of who you are.”
I just about cried.
When Karen took me home to meet her family, I got to talking with her father, and he told me that they were Scottish and Dutch and had settled near Toronto after the Toronto Purchase of 1805 between the British Crown and Mississauga Indians. Their family received a swath of land that they’d farmed ever since. Karen had worked on the family farm since she was young, and she was comfortable doing manual labour. We had that in common.
And when I told Mr. A. about my Scottish side, he asked me all sorts of questions and I could tell he really was interested, just as Karen was, even though I couldn’t answer most of them. He was even more interested when I told him about my Native family. He wondered if I was still in touch with anyone. “I read up on history quite a bit, about Canada, the prairies,” he said. “And I’m curious: Do you know if your mother’s people were Cree or Métis? If they hunted bison? You said they were from Saskatchewan, right?”
“Yes, she’s from there, but I wish I knew more, Mr. A.,” I said. “She wasn’t really around to tell me about that stuff.”
The three of us decided to go canoeing one day down the Credit River. It was the end of March and the ice had almost thawed.
I sat at the back of the canoe, Karen in the middle, and Mr. A. was up front.
The river ran fast underneath us, bending wildly down twists and turns. Shelves of ice broke off as our bow slammed headfirst into them—I wasn’t good at steering and couldn’t get the craft to turn when I wanted it to. There were spots on straightaways where it seemed like I knew what I was doing, but they always gave way to turbulence when we hit a bend. Karen still cheered me on and held on to the sides, laughing and sending up clouds of frozen breath in front of me, but it was hard to deny I was shit at canoeing. Mr. A., though, knew what he was doing and tried to compensate, pulling us forward with his paddle and powerful farmer’s arms.
“Watch the corner,” I heard him yell as we hurled into a sharp turn. I thrust my paddle into the water and we broadsided the bank. The canoe shifted, Karen’s blond hair flew in the wind, and the winter water slammed into my chest.
My ribs ached as I drifted down and down, my arms and legs quickly became heavy and lethargic. I gasped twice and sucked in mouthfuls of water. The heavy cotton and wool of my winter clothing tangled around my body like dead weight as I settled onto the riverbed. I saw a paddle drift by. I screamed for help, releasing a muffled burst of bubbles; then, silence.
I noticed a lock of Karen’s hair swaying gently like seaweed as her body writhed above me, the current pulling her downstream in the frozen water. Her movements were slow and getting slower. Her leg kicked, and her boot came loose.
I don’t know what came over me then, or how I managed to shift myself. But I ripped off my jacket, kicked off my boots, and swam upward. In a few strokes I was with her. She was already above water, though, gasping for air. She grabbed my arm and pulled me to shore, where we collapsed beside one another.
We shivered and held each other for warmth. She smiled, then her expression froze.
“Where’s my father?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. I raised my head and right away saw him laughing about twenty feet down shore.
“That’s how I know you love each other,” he shouted and waved. “You didn’t even think of dear old dad.”
Karen and I went everywhere together.
“You’re always with that girl,” Leeroy complained. “You’re never around anymore.”
It was true. We had busy schedules, and spending time with Leeroy interfered with my time with Karen. I worked nights after school, and Karen helped on the farm until I finished at around ten p.m., then she would pick me up in one of her father’s old trucks. It smelled like cow shit, but I didn’t mind—it was our love shack on wheels.
We’d drive out into the country and talk until dawn, or we’d take off to a rave together and dance until our legs just about fell off. When the beat dropped, and she was grooving right there in front of me, with a huge smile beaming light and love, I was so free and happy.
OPENING UP
THE SIDE DOOR OF KAREN’S truck was open, letting in the cool midnight breez
e. We lay side by side on the seat, heads hanging out, staring up at the sky. We were parked out front of my old elementary school, where Leeroy and I had thrown gum in Sylvia’s hair. Our friends had wanted to drink and cause pandemonium as usual; we just wanted quiet and each other’s company. There was a stillness between us broken only by the rustle of the leaves in the wind.
“Look at that one,” I said as I pointed to the North Star. “That’s the star Indians used to hunt by; they’d follow it and know where to go.” I let the mystic nature of my comment linger in the night air.
“Bullshit,” Karen said. She laughed, but I could tell she was halfway convinced.
I took a drag of my cigarette and blew the smoke up and watched it dissipate. The stars grew lighter the longer I stared.
Karen shifted. “Move, you beast, my arm is asleep.” She giggled and pushed me over to the gas pedal, right where the scent of cow shit was strongest. I gasped and held my throat, and we both laughed, then wiggled out of the truck.
Once we were settled on a nice spot on the grass next to the playground, Karen said, “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure. Shoot.” I wrapped my arm around her shoulder.
“You never talk about why you live with your grandparents.” She picked a blade of grass and twirled it.
It was odd for her not to look me in the eye. I searched for the right words. There’d never been boundaries between Karen and me, and I wanted to tell her the truth.
“Sometimes life just tears people from one another. That happened with my family when I was young.” I paused and sat up so Karen would look at me, and she did. “Dad had a lot of issues—drugs and violence and other things . . .”
A million years of silence followed. Stars flickered and extinguished one by one, civilizations rose and fell, great pyramids were built and crumbled, yet she kept looking at me. And the wall, a thousand miles high, that I kept between me and the rest of the world didn’t exist—not a brick anywhere in sight.
Memories of Josh peeing himself by the bathroom, the hornet by the tub, and the sweet smell of Saskatoon berries along the road allowance with my mushoom and kokum filled my soul. As did the blue bruises along my mother’s face. I breathed in and exhaled the rest of my truth.
“My mom had to do what she had to do.” I looked up and saw a comet soar by and fall off into the horizon. I thought of Mom standing in front of the mountains in the Polaroid and wondered where she was. “When she left, it all fell apart.”
Karen pulled me close.
“I understand,” she said. She reached up and knocked off my baseball cap.
I was staying out of trouble for the first time in my life. I stopped stealing and lying, and had saved up lots of cash, around five thousand dollars. I was taking care of my health, too, cutting back on drugs and alcohol.
My grandparents saw the change in me and came to like Karen even more than when they first met her. I would chance to say that they came to love her. They asked her over for dinner every other week, and she always came, blueberry muffins in hand. My grandfather loved those muffins almost as much as I did, and sometimes he’d pick them over Grandma’s butter tarts—Grandma didn’t like that, but she still had a soft spot for Karen.
Grandpa even sat me down one afternoon and said that if I broke her heart he’d find me and neuter me. “You don’t find girls like her every day,” he said. “She’s special.”
I should have listened to the old man.
PRIDE
I CLEARED THE SLEEP OUT of my eyes. It was 5:45 a.m., and Grandpa was driving me to my morning shift at the grocery store. My head pounded, the sour smell of whiskey strong on my breath, the after-effects of a buddy’s birthday. It was a reasonable enough occasion to fall off the wagon.
“Grandpa,” I announced, “I want to buy a car.”
He rolled down his driver-side window and the cold morning air hit my face.
“You will not,” he barked.
“But you taught Josh how to drive at sixteen. And I’m nineteen now and you never taught me.”
He turned down the Hank Williams song on the radio as we rounded the corner and gunned it. It looked like we entered warp speed as we hit a wall of snowflakes illuminated by the headlights.
“You’re wild—always were. You’ll kill yourself driving drunk.”
I heard the wheels squeal. “But—”
“I said no.” He pounded the steering wheel.
I thought the column might break under the force. I kicked my feet and muttered out my window, “I work hard. It’s my fucking money.” I’d never sworn in front of the old man before, and I recoiled as soon as the words left my mouth.
He slammed on the brakes and the load of tools in the back of the van shifted. “If I ever catch you talking like that again,” he said, “I’ll snap your neck.”
I went to the bank ATM and withdrew the last $2,000 I’d saved. The wad was thick in my hand as I looked at the receipt—$0. It was all gone.
Leeroy waited in the car, jungle music pounding, weed smoke pouring out the window. It was our last stop on our way to the rave.
I’d run through my savings in little under two months since the argument with Grandpa, buying everyone drinks, smokes, and endless amounts of drugs. Destroying my future was my way of getting back at the old man.
“Jesse, please,” Karen had pleaded. “How are you going to afford college now?”
“College? Are you fucking kidding me—I got kicked out of school last semester.”
I never believed post-secondary education was attainable for me, like it was for my friends, whose parents had saved for their education since they were born. Getting kicked out of school and having a car denied me were the final straws.
“Don’t talk to me about school, Karen.” I hissed. “You’re rich—it’s different for you.” She looked stunned, but I was furious. Leeroy and the other guys never questioned me about my spending. I tried to avoid her after that.
“Wicked,” Leeroy said as he opened the passenger-side door of his father’s Pontiac 6000. I was waving my cash around like Diamond Jim, the last of the Gilded Age big spenders.
“Let’s get there before the line gets too big,” I said and hopped in.
I lost Leeroy two hours into the party. I’d picked up a bag of purple Es and a couple ounces of weed from one of my dealers when I first arrived and kept it in my front jean jacket pocket with my roll of money while I tripped about. The Es were so strong I had a difficult time training my eyes on anything for more than a few seconds, so it was inevitable I’d lose him. Every six hours, I dosed another E and puffed another joint hoping Leeroy would show up.
STEFAN KNIGHT
Me, nineteen and high on opium.
The rhythm of the ragga jungle pounded through me as the night wore on. I danced myself into a deep trance. My throat burned with thirst as sweat poured down my face and neck. I must’ve drunk ten bottles of water. My sneakers darted nimble on the slick floor, and I grooved with speed like a hummingbird. Shouts and cheers roared with each move, and soon a circle formed around me—women in miniskirts, combat gear, and baseball hats; B-boys and B-girls breakdancing in Adidas tracksuits; dudes with their shirts off pumping their fists in the air; and a horde of other ravers blowing their whistles to the beat. They all looked as high as me. I closed my eyes and kept dancing harder and faster with everyone, the drugs now completely in control of my body and mind.
There was a silence that came over my spirit, followed by what sounded like a gust of wind. The noise of the rave receded into the background, and I heard something emerge from inside my core. My eyes pressed shut, I focused inward on that sound. There was a distant drum—louder, louder, louder still, until it vibrated every molecule in my being. The beautiful cry of Indian drummers rang aloud in every direction—from the north, south, east, west, up, down, over, under, within, and without. I opened my eyes and saw I was dancing alone on the flatness of the great plains. I was dressed in a plume of feathers
, deerskins, a bustle, beads, moccasins, a rattle, and tassels. My legs rushed in perfect coordination over top of the grass, pressing and tamping it down, as vast fields undulated before me. The sun hung low as red clouds of dust were kicked up by my feet, filling the air. I danced and danced, moving this way and that, until my thirst for water and the rave seemed but distant memories of a life I once lived.
Only the blinding morning warehouse lights snapped me out of my trance, the music turned to half power, throbbing some mix of breakbeats and house. My jacket, my money, my drugs, and most of the rave attendees were gone, and my white muscle shirt had spots of blood the size of cookies on it. There was one girl still dancing next to me, her eyes as wide as some starry universe. The bottoms of her pants were grim and black with cigarette ash and trampled innocence.
“How long have we been dancing?” I asked, disoriented and shaky.
“Two days,” she said. Her jaw muscles flexed and clenched as she continued to gyrate, glow sticks dim in both hands. She pointed to the blood stains. “That happened to me once.”
I peered inside my shirt and saw that the ends of my nipples were open wounds, like they’d been hit with a belt sander.
“Rubbed them raw against my shirt,” she added. “Happens to marathon runners, too.”
I never did find Leeroy.
BANANA SPLIT
A WOMAN NAMED SUE SHOWED up at my work one night. “Call me,” she mouthed, holding a banana to her ear like she was on the phone.
I was stacking Florida oranges near the lettuce wet case. She put the banana down and pointed to it, then glided toward the cashier to pay for her groceries. I walked over and saw that she had scrawled her number on the side of the banana and had planted a bright red lipstick kiss over top.
That’s creative, I thought.
From the Ashes Page 12