Fire Song

by Adam Garnet Jones

  “The first deposit for tuition and housing is due in a few weeks,” Roberta says.

  Shane squints past her, as though he’s trying to make out a shape in the distance. “That’s the first two grand?”

  Roberta nods. “Sorry it’s not better news. Think your mom can swing it?”

  Roberta must know his mom hasn’t got any money. The only reason she’s asking is because she’s out of answers and she’s hoping Shane has one.

  “You could look into a loan,” Roberta suggests.

  Roberta knows she’s scraping the bottom of the barrel. Education is a right granted by the treaties between The Anishinaabek of Treaty 3 and the Canadian government. There aren’t a lot of kids willing to go twenty grand in debt a year just to get something that the government is supposed to guarantee in exchange for taking pretty much all of the land and natural resources and exploiting them at a massive profit for generations.

  “Think about it, okay?” Roberta says. “We’ll start processing your band membership transfer now.”

  “I should get going,” Shane says.

  “Can you let me know if I need to ask the university to delay your admission a year?”

  They keep talking, but Shane isn’t paying attention anymore. Roberta wants so badly for him to be fine that she’ll never notice that he’s checked out.

  When there’s a gap in the conversation, Shane opens the door of the store and steps inside, feeling the itch of Roberta’s gaze between his shoulder blades. Above him, dusty fluorescent lights hang from the beige popcorn ceiling. Janice’s store has all the charm of a cardboard box. Shane nods at Ashley, who squints her eyes at him from behind the cash register. He doesn’t remember when she got so hard. Back when they were kids, she was one of those bright lights that would never stop smiling. Her humor has survived in the form of a forked tongue that can praise you and cut you down in a single lash. Shane pulls a carton of milk, a box of cereal, a loaf of white bread, and some eggs from the shelves.

  Ashley rings Shane’s purchases through the till without looking up. Janice, the store manager, waves Shane over to her. Everything about Janice—her hair, mouth, hips—all of it droops low down, as though gravity has a stronger effect on her than it does on other people. Maybe it does. Nothing else in life is handed out equally.

  “Hey, College. How’s your mom?” Janice asks.

  “She’s okay.”

  “I still got the stuff for you guys’ roof out back, hey?”

  “My uncle Pete’s gonna pick it up, I think.”

  “He gonna pay for it too?”

  Ashley rolls her head to one side. “Shane, your total’s $28.97.” Shane glances apologetically at Janice and escapes back to the till, grabbing a credit card from his wallet.

  Janice eyes him steadily. “It’s close to seven grand. I can’t just sit on it all summer. You guys gotta pay.”

  Shane nods. “I know. I’ll see what Uncle Pete says.” Shane picks up his grocery bags and leaves the store before Janice can ask any more questions.

  A few months ago they had a particularly bad stretch of storms. One night when Shane and Destiny were home alone, they noticed that what had started as a tiny brown patch on the ceiling had spread to both sides of the wall. It was bulging like the belly of a pregnant moose. Shane dared Destiny to poke it with the tip of her fishing rod. Destiny could never resist a dare, especially one from her brother, so she dashed out of the room and dragged her rod, clattering, out of the cupboard. Do it! Shane laughed.

  Destiny lifted the rod up to the ceiling and pushed, ever so gently. The water must have soaked that drywall pretty good, because her rod pushed through it like a fork through mashed potatoes. And the stinking water that dribbled out was as brown and thick as gravy. Destiny shrieked and jumped away, but not before some of it landed in her hair and ran down her neck. They thought it was hilarious at first, but over time the hole in the ceiling grew; the hole in the roof must have been getting worse too, because the amount of water coming through the ceiling increased with every rainfall. Lately, tendrils of black mold have been shooting out from the edges of the hole like the roots of a hungry vine cracking open a clay pot.

  When Shane and Destiny first asked about fixing it, Jackie pursed her lips and said, If it bugs you, don’t look up. They all laughed and pretended to forget about it for a while longer. And it worked for a while, but the problem grew and eventually Jackie ordered a bunch of construction materials from the store. Pete and some buddies were supposed to help rebuild the roof and re-shingle it when the time came, but he said without materials nothing could begin. Jackie had planned to pay with the bit of money she had saved up, but between her not going to work and Destiny’s funeral, that was pretty much gone. In the meantime, the house was rotting from the inside out.

  *

  Shane hurries home from the store. It’s getting late. The lake is gray with flashes of white. The wind kisses the top of a wave, making it flutter like a tuft of hair blown out of place. Stretched-out plastic grocery bags hang from Shane’s hands, threatening to burst. He pries the screen door open with his foot and pushes against the inside door of the house. The lights are off, but enough afternoon sunlight comes in the kitchen window to guide him through the room.

  The countertop is scattered haphazardly with sympathy cards, ignored bills, and unopened letters, which all probably say nicer versions of the same thing: Sorry your sister is dead. Shane wipes gritty crumbs off a stack of university course selection materials. Impossibly bright, confident faces of young students smile from the cover, gloating about the promises their lives hold. Above their sun-dappled hair, the pamphlet declares that these are The Faces of the Future. Shane buries the pamphlet deep in the random stack of mail, not quite silencing the call to freedom that tugs at him like the moon against the ocean.

  He opens the door of the freezer and rearranges the containers of casseroles with condolence notes taped to the sides.

  “Hey, Mom? Did you talk with Roberta about my deposit for school?” Shane listens for a response. Nothing. He leaves the rest of the groceries on the counter and walks down the hall toward the open door of Destiny’s room.

  “Janice was asking about the roofing stuff again too.”

  Shane pauses inside the door frame. It feels wrong to be in here. Destiny was always protective of her space, and it doesn’t seem right that Jackie has claimed it as her own. Shane wonders if she would have camped out in his room if he had been the one who died. No, she wouldn’t. It’s different with mothers and daughters. Jackie never expected Shane to make his own bed, but his mom used to just lose it if Destiny went to school without making hers. When Shane asked his mom why she was so hard on Destiny, she said, A mother’s dreams for the future live in her son, but her spirit lives in her daughter. Shane thought about that a lot after Destiny died. He can name the pieces of his mother that left with Destiny —the piece that loves the sun, the piece that laughs and teases, the piece that keeps watch over him—all of that’s gone, and it may never come back. .

  Shane steps toward the bed. Jackie’s cheek is pressed into the familiar groove of her daughter’s pillow, like a little girl taking a nap. He tries to picture his mother when she was young, and comes up empty. He has seen pictures of her unwrapping presents in front of a Christmas tree, but when he tries to remember the details, a gnarled vision comes instead: half woman and half child, with his mother’s tangle of salt-and-pepper hair. Her grief-torn grown-up face transplanted onto her little-girl body in a candy cane dress.

  Shane forces himself back to the present. To the room with his mother, asleep. “Mom?”

  Jackie doesn’t stir. Shane lifts a patchwork quilt from the wooden chair and opens it up wide. He feels Destiny enter the room as if his panic has called her to him. When he turns his head, she’s on the other side of the bed, shaking her side of the blanket out by the corners, mirroring him.
She’s wearing the same ripped fishnet stockings and her eyes are sad. He wishes he could yell at her, “This is all your fault!” but he’s afraid that would make her disappear and he would never see her again. So he stays quiet as they lift the quilt up high over their mother’s fetal-curled body. It billows out and comes to rest over her hips, settling like a crane on the water. Something settles in him too, if only for a moment. Shane turns to smile at Destiny, but she’s already gone.

  Jackie lets out a long breath. Her body looks heavy under the quilt. Older. Shane picks up a stack of dirty dishes from beside Destiny’s bed.

  Jackie speaks without opening her eyes. “Close the door on your way out.”

  Maybe it shouldn’t hurt that she has so little to say to him—he knows she’s in pain—but it does. Shane balances a plate carefully on his arm and pulls the door softly behind him.

  “Aanii!” Evie says.

  Shane jerks his head around like a frightened deer. Evie is there by the back door, taking off her shoes. Nothing to be scared of. Shane tells himself to relax, but that terrified animal inside him won’t stop running.

  “Jesus—you scared me. I thought you were gone.” Shane sets the dirty dishes with the others and starts the water.

  “Better not use that guy’s name like that.”

  “Why? You don’t believe in that stuff.”

  “Still. Their spirits are powerful too.”

  Shane nods, more to placate her than anything else. When his mom and Evie are fighting, Jackie calls her a born-again Indian. She says Evie was a good Catholic girl for years after residential school, but when Indians got political in the ’70s and ’80s, she got drawn into the pan-Indian fad for “walking the red road” and never looked back. People called her a faker for a long time, but she stopped drinking, became fluent in the language, and learned their ceremonies from the few who still remembered. She’s been teaching the songs, the language, sharing the culture ever since. If that’s what a faker or a “pretendian” looks like, then he doesn’t know what being a real Indian is. Broke-down cars, bingo, and sconedogs? He doesn’t think so. There’s not much left of the Catholic girl Evie once was, but she does get funny when people bring up Jesus.

  Evie sighs heavily and leans against the counter, watching Shane scrub at some caked-on pasta sauce at the bottom of a bowl. “Why don’t you let me take care of that?”

  “I got it.”

  Evie uses her hip to nudge Shane away from the sink. “I know. You’re doing real good. But let me do something useful. You want to help out later you can give my old feet a rub.” Evie’s eyes twinkle at him. “Neeeeeeee.”

  Shane laughs a little in spite of himself. He watches her rough brown hands moving carefully under the steaming water and wonders how she always makes him feel better without seeming to do anything.

  “Don’t you get tired of being around people who are sad all the time?” Shane asks.

  “Even when we’re sad, our people still laugh. You know that, right? And I’m there for the good stuff too. Don’t worry—I make sure to get my fun in.” Evie winks at him.

  Shane laughs. She’s a terror when she gets on her snow machine. People say she’s basically blind, but it doesn’t seem to slow her down, and if you ask Shane, she sees a lot more than most people.

  “Why don’t you get out of here for a bit tonight?” Evie says. “I’ll stay with your mom. You don’t do any fun stuff anymore.”

  “What should I do?”

  “I’m sure you and that pretty girlfriend of yours will think of something.”

  chapter five

  No matter what else is going on, Shane and his friends always start the night at Debbie’s compound. That’s where the booze is. The place is a ramshackle collection of buildings that have been put up over the last fifty or sixty years by a succession of uncles and cousins and reluctant brothers-in-law. The main little house was built first, by Debbie’s grandpa, and the second building was added out back when he wanted to build a still. It didn’t take long for Debbie’s grandpa to start selling his hooch, and the family has been in the bootleg business ever since. No one much cares, except that some of their best clients are kids. But even so, most people were happy to turn a blind eye until Debbie got ambitious about fifteen years ago and started selling drugs. Nobody has done anything about it other than reporting her to the police, for all the good that does. They come around every once in a while and tell her to keep the noise under control, or warn her not to sell to kids, but that’s as far as it goes. Something pretty serious would have to go down before they would step in.

  Debbie watches over the whole area from behind a folding card table on the porch. In the winter she moves the operation inside, but at the first sign of the thaw, and right up until the snow falls, Debbie can be found out on that porch with her shelves of liquor, ratty old fridges full of beer, and the safe at her feet. Somebody tried to make off with the safe once, but it was so heavy they couldn’t even get it off the porch. All they did was make a mess of her shelves and give themselves a scare when Debbie got up to see what the fuss was. Not that she moved fast enough to see who it was. She just replaced it with a heavier one the next week.

  When Shane steps onto the property, Debbie slants her eyes sideways at him without turning her head. That’s classic; she’s so shapeless, heavy, and hard that she looks more like a bag of cement than a real human woman. She’s probably forty but with all that makeup it’s hard to tell. It sits on her face like a spooky mask, smearing her features into something from the spirit world. Shane once got Ashley to try to picture Debbie on the toilet, but she couldn’t. Ashley laughed for about ten minutes straight, calling out different normal human things that they couldn’t imagine Debbie doing, like kissing or breastfeeding or trying to put in a contact lens.

  “You bring me a coffee?” Debbie says.

  Shane shows his empty hands. Debbie kisses her teeth and goes back to her Sudoku. Sometimes she won’t let people buy from her until they go to the store and get her a coffee—three creams, three sugars. Most of her regulars stop at the store for a cup so that they don’t get turned away; she's got them trained. Debbie is a lot of things, but she’s not stupid.

  Tara, Kyle, and Ashley are sitting around on a beat-up old couch that’s been out in the middle of Debbie’s compound since Shane can remember. Kyle is next to Tara. He’s leering as usual, but he probably thinks he’s being charming. Who knows—Tara might even think he’s charming. He’s definitely the best-looking guy on the rez. Shane has to remind himself sometimes what a greasy shit he is, so he doesn’t get a crush.

  Kyle punches the air. “Colleeeeeege!”

  Shane smiles a little. He’s never sure how to interpret Kyle’s attempts at friendship. “What’s going on?”

  Kyle puts his arm around Tara. “Me and your girl here were just chillin’. She looks good, hey? Shirt’s a bit small though.”

  Ashley gives him cut-eye. “Better throw some of that my way if you wanna get some tonight.”

  Kyle puts a hand on Ashley’s knee and nuzzles her neck. “You know I love you.”

  Tara glances down at her chest and zips up her green hoodie. “Oh hey—you guys hear that Annalise got knocked up?”

  Ashley swivels around to Tara. “Nooooooo—really? Since when?”

  Kyle spreads his legs and leans back. “Musta been some white guy from Brickport. Nobody ’round here’d touch that skank.”

  This whole conversation is bullshit, and they all know it. There’s a new rumor about Annalise every week. She started as the butt of jokes when she arrived from Akwesasne when they were in kindergarten. With no parents or cousins on the rez—just an auntie that married into the community—and being the only Mohawk, it was never going to be easy for her. Not that Shane is innocent. The cruelest thing Shane has allowed himself to think after Destiny’s suicide was that it should have been Anna
lise. At least with her no one would wonder why. Of course the fat, bullied, lonely Mohawk girl killed herself. With Destiny there wasn’t anything specific to point to. Nothing obvious at least.

  No one has said anything for a minute or so. Shane casts a quick glance around the group. It’s weird that after a lifetime of knowing one another it can feel sometimes like they’ve only just met. Or maybe they know each other so well that there’s nothing left to talk about. Drinking usually solves the problem, but not always.

  “You guys got any drinks?” Shane asks. They all shake their heads. “Any money?”

  Kyle laughs. “Nah.”

  Shane twists around to address Debbie. “Hey, Deb! How about cutting us a deal?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  Kyle leans forward. “C’mon, Auntie. We’re family!”

  Debbie snorts. “I know you got money. I pay you enough.” Kyle flops back on the couch.

  Shane turns back to the group. “Never mind—I got it. I’m gonna be leaving you Injuns in the dust once I start making money in the city anyways.” A chorus of ooooooohs and laughter come back at him. This was clearly a stupid thing to say, since he and his mom are careening deeper into debt by the day, but sometimes you have to just say fuck it and go all out.

  Ashley shoves Tara’s shoulder. “You’re gonna have to watch one of those college bitches don’t run off with him. He’s a prize, this one.”

  “I’m gonna be there with him so they won’t get the chance.”