When I told him about the place I’d grown up in, I said, “It’s probably not all that different from Kadoka, except it has the Appalachian Mountains around it.”
“Tell me about someplace else, then,” Breville said. “Anyplace that isn’t like Kadokah. You don’t ever want to go back there, do you?”
“No, I don’t want to go back.”
So I told him instead about the month I’d spent in Nice when I was twenty, and about how the beach was all rocks, and about how I’d nearly drowned one evening when I went into the sea and the water was rolling hard at the drop-off . It had taken all my strength to break free of the turning.
“How many oceans have you swum in?”
“The Mediterranean, the Adriatic, the Atlantic, and the Pacific.”
“I was once to the Pacific,” Breville said. “Never the Atlantic. But I swam the Missouri and the Mississippi.”
“I’m saltwater but I knew you were fresh,” I said, and he laughed, as I’d meant him to.
“Do you think it was fated that we meet?” Breville asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“I think it was fated. I don’t know how else it could have happened. I’m a thief and a rapist, and look at you. Look at what you are.”
“What am I?”
“You know what you are. How else could we have come together?”
“I don’t want to believe it was fated that I relive my rape,” I said. “If that’s fate, I’m not interested.”
“I’m sorry. You know I didn’t mean that part of it.”
“I think it’s more likely coincidence,” I told Breville. “I don’t know. What does your hand say? What do the lines of your hand say?”
I showed him then from across the aisle the little horizontal lines under the side of the pinky finger that supposedly indicated the number of serious relationships or marriages a person had. I had two lines, but Breville had three.
“You’re more fickle than I am,” I said.
“Which is the life line?”
“The one that snakes down your palm and wraps under the thumb,” I said. “Here are the heart line and the head line,” I said, again showing him my hand, tracing the lines. “And that’s my psychic cross.”
“What is?”
“This cross,” I said, and I sat as far forward in my chair as I could and traced the intersecting lines at the center of my palm.
He leaned close to see as I lightly carved out the cross. He reached out a hand then, and for the briefest of seconds he touched the center of my cross with his index finger.
“Breville, to the guard.”
His name seemed to be called at the exact moment he touched me, and quickly I realized that we were watched closely. Breville sighed and stood up and walked toward the guard’s table.
When he came back to the chair, he was carrying a small white slip of paper.
“Are you in trouble?”
“It’s just a warning,” he said.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“It isn’t your fault. I knew better.”
And though he tucked the slip into his pocket, it took a moment longer to push it from his mind and compose his face.
“It doesn’t mean anything, Suzanne. It’s just a write-up.”
And then they called, “Breville, five minutes,” and I knew I would have to leave soon.
When Breville and I hugged in the taped square that day, it still felt awkward to me. Though I felt the warmth of his body, there was no ease in the embrace, no naturalness. With any other man I’d spent so much time talking and writing to, I would have already had an intimate knowledge— sex was a way I got to know a man, not a culmination. But with Breville there was nothing. As I held him I couldn’t get over the idea that I didn’t know anything about his body— not the way his chest curved into his belly, not the way the muscles of his thighs were braided, not the feeling of his scalp under my fingers— nothing. Even though I’d thought Breville was good-looking from the first time I’d come to Stillwater, I hadn’t thought of touching him until that moment. But just then I wanted nothing so much as to kiss him and find out what his mouth tasted like. If my lips even touched Breville’s, though, let alone if we’d French-kissed and touched tongues, he’d get thrown in the hole. The hole— he’d told me that was the punishment, solitary confinement for a kiss.
But I felt concern for him, over the white slip of paper and for what I knew his life to be, and that was part of my embrace that day. I know I tried to let that feeling travel out through my arms and breasts and hands. And I believe Breville must have felt it from me, because when we parted and began walking away— him back to his cell and me back to the locking cage and the waiting room— we both turned to look at the other. I nodded a few times and tried to show something with my eyes, and Breville did the same, nodding and saying goodbye with his eyes, and then he put his hand out at waist level, palm down, and made a smooth pass through the air, as if to say he was fine, that what ever feelings he had were smoothed over, that he was steady. That he would remain so until I came again.
In the air in front of the guards, that was what he told me with no words.
13
IN HIGH SCHOOL, Cree and I usually parked out at Brommer’s old farm house, but a week after I was raped, we broke into the Boy Scout camp in Rock.
It was Cree’s idea. He wanted the night to be special, I think. All week I asked my mom to tell him I wasn’t home when he called, and I think he was worried he was losing me. Or maybe he just wanted to be with me someplace new.
All the way out there, I kept thinking, I should tell him now, I should get it over with. I practiced it over and over, but I couldn’t say it. The word rape wasn’t even in my mind because I thought I had brought everything on myself when I consented to go out with Keil Ward. If I had done what I was supposed to and stayed at home like a good and faithful girlfriend, nothing bad would have happened and I wouldn’t be sitting there with a raw and seeping vagina.
I knew I had to at least tell Cree about the infections. And yet I could not bring myself to say those words, either.
“Did you miss me this week?” he asked as we took the dirt road up to the cabins. The road twisted through the woods and the trees met overhead. The forest went for miles out there.
“I missed you,” I said.
“Thought you were still mad at me.”
“I was. But not anymore.” I didn’t say that it seemed like a long time ago that I was mad at him for disappearing, for not calling. It didn’t seem to matter anymore.
“Come here,” Cree said, and I slid beneath his arm. It was good to have him touching me, to be driving on the quiet black road.
At the camp all the cabins were padlocked but Cree used his knife to slip open the hook of a shutter on one of the windows. He climbed in easily, but I had to boost myself up on my hands first and then swing my leg up onto the sill. I waited there for a second for some of the burning to stop.
“Let’s find a bunk with a mattress,” Cree said when I got inside.
I could hear him moving in the cabin but couldn’t see him.
“Here. Here’s one.”
I followed his voice and then lay down with him on the narrow bunk. I tried to act like nothing was wrong, like things were the way they always were. I slipped my arms around him and let one hand rest at his hip, one on his back.
We kissed for a long time and it soothed me. The air in the cabin was damp and musty, but when the breeze came in through the opened shutter, I could smell the woods. The smell wasn’t just pine— it was the smell of all the trees and the leaves mixed together. A green smell. I wished I could just be there with nothing on my mind, just smelling the green and holding Cree.
I couldn’t, though. When he pulled away from me and reached for my jeans, I stopped him.
“I can’t,” I said.
“What, do you have your period?”
I could feel his hand resting on the soft part of
my belly, waiting. For a second I thought I might tell him. I got afraid of the words again, though, and could only nod. I knew he couldn’t see me in the darkness.
“It doesn’t matter if there’s blood,” he said. “You know that.”
He waited a second and then started to open my jeans again. That time I pushed his hand away. Even in the darkness I knew he was watching me.
I still didn’t say anything. But I moved away from him so that I was lying beside him rather than underneath, and then I moved again so I was the one on top. I moved down over his body and he pressed up against me, but I didn’t let him reach for me. Instead I unbuttoned his shirt and kissed his belly. Slipped down his jeans.
After Cree came in my mouth, we lay together. He kept touching my face, kept wrapping his hands in my hair. I listened to the wind outside in the trees and then stood up to get a tissue from my pocket.
“You all right?”
“I’m okay,” I said.
“You sure?”
“It just makes my nose run.”
If Cree thought anything was strange about my refusal to fuck, he never said. He was used to my moodiness, and maybe he thought it was that, or maybe he thought it was connected to my period, or maybe he was just content to come in my mouth.
“Did you get your dress yet?”
“I’m going to pick it up Friday,” I said. Our prom was a week away, and I was having someone make my dress because I didn’t want one of the frilly affairs the stores were selling. I wanted a black halter instead. “I have to wait to get my paycheck on Thursday,” I said.
“You need money?”
“I’ll have enough. Besides, you’re paying for everything else.”
“Well, let me know if you need it.”
He held my hand as we drove back to town. “Are you glad we came?” he asked.
I knew what he meant, but for a second I thought, Well, you’re the only one who came. It wasn’t his fault— I was to blame, and an orgasm was the last thing on my mind— but I still thought it. But instead I said, “You know I am.”
I moved over to sit close to him, and that’s when I decided I would never tell him what had happened or what I’d done. I knew I could take care of everything myself. It was easier to protect him by giving him blow jobs. That way he wouldn’t have to know, I wouldn’t have to tell, and everything could stay the same.
As it turned out, we broke up a few weeks after prom anyway. In spite of my oral skills and secrecy, nothing stayed the same.
14
THE CASINO was called the Northern Lights but the name was a misnomer: the only aurora came from the parking lot floodlights that turned the night sky gray. I arrived just as the band was climbing down from the stage in the big outdoor tent and going on a break, so even though I didn’t care to gamble, I joined the crush of people coming and going through the casino door. It felt odd to be in the woods and in a crowd at the same time, and the combination took me by surprise.
The jackpot slots near the door were crowded with nickel players and the bar was crowded, too. Despite that initial crush, though, farther back inside the casino, there was only a smattering of people, tourists mostly. I’d come out to hear music, be among people and have a drink, so I circled back to the front and found a Double Diamond slot kitty-corner from the bar. I hadn’t even bothered to get quarters when I came in— I was waiting for the band to start again and didn’t want to be stuck with a cup full of coins— but I had some in my wallet, leftover from doing laundry, and I began to play them. In a few minutes I flagged down a waiter.
“Vodka tonic. Absolut if you have it.”
“We have it.”
“Busy night?”
“Crazy. But it’s always crazy when there’s a band.”
“I like your shirt,” I said then. “Very Minnesotan. Very north woods.”
He laughed then because it was a tropical, Hawaiian-looking thing he was wearing.
“At least I don’t have to wear that,” he said, motioning to the blackjack dealers, who were all sporting purple tuxedo shirts and bow ties.
“Yeah, you got the better end of the deal,” I said, looking at the triangle of skin that showed in his open collar. It was smooth.
“I’ll be right back with your drink.”
In a couple minutes, I spent all the quarters I’d walked in with, but I’d also gotten thirty credits, which allowed me to go on playing.
“Here you go, miss.”
When I took the drink from the waiter’s hand, I said, “Want to hear a joke?”
“A joke? Sure.”
“I’m what you would call a social drinker. When someone says, ‘I think I’ll have a drink,’ I say, ‘Then so shall I.’ ”
He laughed then— genuinely, it seemed, or maybe it was also just part of his job.
I put two dollars on his serving tray. “I’m going outside and hear the music,” I said. “Thanks.”
“People are having a good time out there,” he said, and again I watched his throat, the smooth skin of his neck. I was older than he was. I wondered if it mattered.
It had been warm inside the casino, but it was even warmer outside— a moist Minnesota night. In spite of the heat, as soon as the band started playing again, people moved out onto the dance floor. I stood on the left side of the stage, listening and watching, but in a little while I was dancing, too. In my own spot, by myself, but swaying to the songs even if I wasn’t on the dance floor. I didn’t mind. I was in a throng, there were people’s faces to watch and music to hear, and that was all I really wanted.
When I saw a few people in leather vests work their way onto the floor from the opposite side of the tent, I didn’t think much of it— for all I knew, bikers liked Cajun music, too. But everyone on the floor seemed to clear a path for these particular dancers, and there was some kind of buzz about their presence that made me look again at them. When the bikers got close enough, I was able to read the patches on their vests, and then I understood the berth everyone was giving.
I hadn’t even known there were such people as Minnesota Free-men, but there they were on the dance floor, men and women, drinks in hand. It hadn’t been so long since the sieges at Ruby Ridge and Waco— I could see all of it registering on people’s faces as they read the jackets. Those who didn’t know were told by those who did, but no one said anything to the Freemen, who were laughing and drinking beers and dancing like everyone else. In a little while the crowd absorbed the Freemen, or at least closed around them, and we were all there together, sweating and dancing— white tourists and Anishinabe Indians, north woods longhairs, loggers, county workers, and now the militia. All yelling and laughing and drinking, along with the band up from Louisiana.
But there was a wariness among us. The Freemen had brought it out, and I could see it in people’s faces. For a while I got the feeling anything might happen: a knife pulled, a punch thrown, something worse. But nothing did happen, and the longer it went on not happening, the more people relaxed and accepted that it would not happen. People looked at the Freemen, but the Freemen chose not to notice or were so used to it they didn’t care. They kept to themselves, their men dancing with their women, only talking to each other. The longer I watched them, the more I felt like I understood what they were doing there. The tent with its music and its loudness and light on that moist night was irresistible, and even the militia needed to take a break once in a while.
“Why aren’t you out dancing? Why are you standing here?”
I didn’t even have to turn to know who it was.
“I might ask you the same thing,” I said to the waiter who’d brought me my vodka tonic. I saw he’d taken off his Hawaiian night-mare of a shirt and was now in a T-shirt and jeans. “I thought you were working,” I said.
“I’m off ,” he said, lighting a cigarette. “And I already pulled a double shift, so they can’t ask me to work again.” When he saw me watching him smoke, he offered me his pack.
“No, thanks,”
I told him. “I’ll take a dance instead.”
He shook his head no, but when I took his hand and led him out onto the dance floor, he came willingly enough.
“What’s your name?”
“Suzanne. What’s yours?”
“Dallas.”
“Like the old TV show or like the city?” I said, but he couldn’t hear me. It didn’t matter. It was easier not to talk, easier to jostle among the other dancers. And when the band played the next song, it was easier to stay on the dance floor, shuffling and swaying, than to make our way back to the edges of the standing crowd.
“That joke you told me,” the waiter said between songs, leaning in close to talk directly into my ear. “That was a good one. I liked it.”
“Did you?” I said. “I don’t tell too many jokes.”
“You told that one good.”
The band picked a slow song to play next, and the waiter wrapped both arms around me like boys did in high school, and we were close to each other, turning in a small circle.
“So why?” the waiter said then into my hair.
“Why what?”
“Why did you tell me a joke? If you don’t tell jokes?”
“You looked like you needed a joke just then.”
He held me a little tighter after I said that. I kept my arms up on his shoulders in the same place, but I felt him all the same.
“Suzanne,” he said at the end of the song. “Suzanne the social drinker. I need a beer. What about you?”
“Sure,” I said. “I think there’s a line, though.” But he was already walking away.
I stayed on the dance floor, watching the band’s lead singer in his white jeans, watching a couple of the Freemen as they danced with their long-haired women. Before I knew it, Dallas was back beside me, handing me a red plastic cup.
When I looked at him, I raised my eyebrows a little.
“I have connections,” he told me, and laughed.
We were drinking those beers and dancing, lightly holding each other’s free hand, when the band went into its final song of the set. It took us a moment to pick up on the lyrics, but when we did, the waiter downed his beer and set the cup on the ground to clap and holler. The lead singer in the band kept dropping all the dirty words— I guess that’s how they got away with singing a song like that— but we got the message all the same:
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