“You hate being back on the Rez that much?” I asked. Silence. Maybe I’d reached her with that jab. But maybe I’d jabbed because she was sort of right. I was treating her the way I’d seen white guys and girls going out. To test. To see if she might be even a little interested.
“A bit of advice?” she said, ignoring my question. “Guys don’t really call their cars by the model. Only on TV or movies. Like they don’t name their cars either. Some of these white girls at Niagara Falls High? When they sat at lunch coming up with names for the cars their parents were buying them for their Sweet Sixteen? I thought I’d vomit up the school turkey and gravy that already looked like vomit before you ate it.” I laughed. She mimicked high-pitched girl voices, cocking her head from side to side. “I’m going to name mine Vera! She looks like a Vera. Or maybe Gertie!” And then, back to her own voice, suddenly sharp and bitter. “And they’re always outdated old-lady names. Always!”
“Like Magpie?” I said, all quiet. She whipped her face toward me. I hoped what she saw was sincere sympathy. I had my weird name because my parents figured out I was conceived after my dad’s first raise. They got a TV and a pullout couch on layaway, stayed up late to watch The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and got some quiet time alone while my brother and sister were asleep in the one bedroom. A month later, my mom discovered she was pregnant.
“Yeah, like Magpie,” she said, her voice, even quieter. So quiet I barely heard it over the shouting, music, and the laughing of everyone around us having a blast on a beautiful June night. All the chrome and neon lights on the rides and attractions almost vibrated in their brilliance, and her hair gleamed with wild colors. If I touched it, would it send out beams like a prism? It was the perfect moment to reach out.
Suddenly, two guys burst through the crowd and almost plowed into us. One dragged the other by the elbow, grinning so wide I could see the fillings in his molars. Even over the crowd, I heard what the dragger said to the draggee.
“You got to see this drunk wahoo. Guys are coming with all kinds of shit for him to do for another beer. They got a couple pitchers he can see, and as soon as he does something they come up with, they pour him one that’s half foam and come up with something even crazier. One guy …” I couldn’t hear the rest. It blended in with all the other noises, which suddenly all sounded like my mom’s knitting needles stabbing into my ears.
Maggi’s eyes and mine were in sync. Even with all her years away, she still knew the complications of being who we were. She couldn’t think of us as out there anymore in this kind of situation. She also knew, but I was glad she didn’t say, that I was a ChameleIndian. I could “pass” easily. Even right now in late June, I was no darker than the farmers wandering past us.
When you looked at the Bokonis, though, particularly this close to the Rez, there was no escaping who they were. Lewis too. They couldn’t decide to not speak up if they encountered a situation like those assholes were describing. And yet, as we stood there, getting jostled by couples and families, we silently telegraphed two other facts: I probably knew the Indian who was being conned into acting like an ass for piss-warm keg beer, and Maggi probably did not.
“We have to go see,” she said.
“If it’s inside the Beer Tent, I might not be able to get in,” I said. I was glad I wouldn’t have to convince her to come with me or leave her behind if she said no. “But agreed, I have to go see if there’s anything I can do. Maybe Doobie’ll be working there.”
“I don’t know who Doobie is, but if you can’t get in, I can,” she said, dropping the Fried Dough into a trash can. She was no longer a city kid, dodging sticky hands with greasy Fair Food. Suddenly, the Rezzy part of her had been awakened, and she was as tough as any woman I knew that someone had crossed, who’d probably leave you with more scars than you had coming in. “They don’t ask pretty girls in summer clothes for ID,” Maggi said, grabbing my hand. “Nobody does. Anywhere.” She ran to catch up with those two guys before we lost sight of them, dragging me through the crowd even though I was trying to be fast.
Maggi’s hand was warm from the Fried Dough, or maybe the June air, or maybe with rage not too far from the surface. Whatever it was, I didn’t want to let go. We cut through congestion near the bathrooms and made it to the Beer Tent, where her hand slipped out the second we got a glimpse of what was going on inside. I wished the run had taken us longer—I missed gripping her hand in mine. And I absolutely did not want to see what I was seeing, as we parted the crowd to see how the good citizens of Sanborn had fun on a Friday night in June.
“Do you know him?” Maggi said, gripping my hand again. Even if I didn’t know the person on the ground in front us, crawling on his hands and knees, she knew that no one should be in this position. “I’ll go get the others.”
“Wait. No,” I said. I was thankful that Lewis was still in line at the rides. If I could help it, he’d never know what we witnessed here. “Tell Marie to keep Lewis busy and that you’ll explain later and then get back here. Can you do that?”
“She’s gonna think I’m—”
“Can you do that, yes or no?” She let go and disappeared back into the crowd, and I stepped between the sawhorses framing the Beer Tent entrance, pushing my way through witnesses at this end. The people supposedly in charge—checking IDs and breaking up Beer-Muscles episodes before they became fistfights—stood around laughing. They ignored the people surrounding Lewis’s Uncle Albert, who was now throwing his arms up and waving them in the air like the Lost in Space robot. I almost expected him to shout, “Danger! Danger! Will Robinson! Aliens Approaching!”
Instead, when he opened his mouth, he whinnied. He then blasted air through pursed lips. A middle-aged woman in a too-tight tank top and no bra stepped up and poured a third of a foamy beer into his mouth, spilling the rest down his chin. “Here you go, Juniper!” she said, through a checkerboard mouth of missing teeth.
“You wanna ride on the stallion?” he asked her, breathing hard, sweat drenching the back of his T-shirt and spiking the front of his long black hair, glistening like a mane.
“Settle down, now, Juniper,” a man in a summer plaid short-sleeved shirt said, stepping up. “My brother can always find other workers come harvest time. He don’t need to be worrying about Wanda and no stallions.” Plaid-Shirt Man smiled with his mouth, but even as drunk as Albert was, he must have seen that smile did not reach the man’s eyes. Albert shifted away from Wanda. “Get back there,” Plaid-Shirt Man grumbled, pinching the woman’s flabby upper arm.
“A cow now!” someone else shouted.
“Yeah, that’s good,” Plaid-Shirt Man agreed, putting his knee gently on Albert’s back until he was on all fours again. “A cow. Eat some grass, cow. Chew your cud if you want another beer to wash it down.” Albert dipped his head to the ground and pretended to eat some of the grass there, flattened from a couple hundred drunken stumbles tramping across it for the past three hours. “Lots of grass there to graze, Juniper,” Plaid-Shirt Man said, stepping back and resting his thick-muscled arm on Wanda’s shoulder. “Don’t seem like you’re doing it justice. Cows who don’t clean up get no drinkee to wash it down.” Some of the crowd blasted out beer laughs, slapping each other on their backs and shouting, “Do it! Do it! Do it!”
Where the hell was Maggi? She wasn’t going to have the muscle help I needed, but doing something alone in this crowd might get my ass kicked. Even drunk, these Farmer Johns weren’t likely to hit a girl, and she might be able to reach someone if I got in too deep. Was I really in the position of deciding for someone else how they financed their own pleasure? I kept hearing my dad. I wished he was there, or that I’d thought to call.
I saw a group of City Indians farther down the Beer Tent, all gathered together, paying no attention to what was happening here. Where the hell were all the other Rez Indians? As soon as I thought it, I remembered what Maggi said. The only other option on summer Friday nights was the stock car races down in Ransomville, whe
re most Rez men were. They’d be here tomorrow night. It didn’t matter. I was just about eighteen. Starting my senior year of high school in two months. I was a man. It was time to act like one.
I went up to the serving tables. “I’d like a pitcher and two cups,” I said to the two guys idly watching Albert do his one-man show: Barnyard Animals I Have Imitated for Beer.
“Hit the road, kid. You ain’t eighteen,” the clean-shaven one said.
“You’re proofing me, but you’re not stopping that?” I said, pointing at Albert, who was now raising his face to show green teeth and a streak of grass stains on his chin. I remembered the overwhelming chemical smell of the grass when we’d stepped in and wondered how much he’d gotten into his system, along with the unfortunate amount of beer.
“How a guy affords his beers here? Not my business. A man of legal age, that is.”
“Look,” I said, glancing at his name tag. “I know there are guys from the reservation in your company, Hubie Buckman for one. You suppose those guys’ll be happy when I tell them how cooperative you were?” This guy looked familiar, but maybe I’d just been hanging around Beer Tents for too many years already. But Mustache Guy, the other one, I’d never seen before.
“I don’t give a shit, kid. They know where they live. Someone out there knows who the Hamburglar is, and they’re keeping their mouth shut. Not too neighborly, you ask me. Maybe you’re even related? You Mayor McCheese? No, I know! Chief McCheese! That’s you.” He laughed, which meant he was guessing, making an asshole joke. To him, any young Indian might be related to the Hamburglar—he just happened to be right this time. I had to not make a scene, but I couldn’t leave Albert in the middle of this mess.
“Bryce K.?” I said, reading his name tag. “I’m guessing the K stands for Keanich.”
“Yeah, that’s right. And if you know that, you know how much we pay in taxes on all the property our farms take up.” Long stretches of Sanborn were made up of their family farms. They had been here a long time, but he was trying to shove into my face the biggest complaint of white people near the Rez: Indians didn’t pay property tax because of treaty agreements. They always conveniently forgot that this entire place had been our territory before those treaties.
“We’re well-liked.” He grinned and decided I should know something else. “We’re also one of the only companies with tankers. With no fire hydrants out there, you Indians would be out of luck when a house catches fire. The men of my company know that, even the ones from the Rez. Especially the ones from the Rez.” I hated when other people called it the Rez.
“Tell ’em whatever you want,” he added, leaning forward on meaty sunburned forearms. “Kind of Indian are you anyway?” He grabbed my arm, and held ours side by side. “My arms are tanner than yours.”
Maggi finally showed up in my sight lines, and gave me the thumbs-up. Bryce K. was still holding my arm, trying to get Mustache Guy’s attention, but that guy seemed distracted by something, or someone behind me, or was maybe just continuing to watch the Albert Animal Charades Show.
“How about an empty pitcher?” I suggested, yanking my arm back. Albert was drunk enough that he wouldn’t notice. I just needed to get him clear of this tent.
“How about I call my security here and have you escorted off the property?” he said. “This is technically a private event, on Fire Company property.” I had to play my last card.
“How about I tell those guys over there what’s going on here?” I said, pointing with my chin to the table of City Indians. I didn’t know a single one of them, but maybe Maggi did. Mustache Guy seemed to see something behind me again and whispered into Bryce K.’s ear. They went back and forth a couple times, and Mustache Guy patted Bryce K. on the back.
Just then, I heard several loud growls that sounded like only one thing in the world. The gasps of disgust that followed them confirmed. People spread apart, hoping not to get hit, and Albert, still on his hands and knees, arched his back like a cat trying to be intimidating. But this was not another animal performance. A long jet of vomit gushed from Albert’s mouth like that possessed girl in The Exorcist.
“Take it,” Bryce K. said, shoving a dirty plastic pitcher at me. “Just get him out of here! And make sure he doesn’t come back tomorrow night! Friggin’ wahoo! Banned!”
Maggi grabbed the pitcher as I hauled Albert up by his armpits. We didn’t need the prop after all. Albert seemed to have no more interest in beer, but Maggi kept it, fingers gripping tight in case she needed to clock someone. She was an Indian girl, no doubt. Triple Bonus Rez Points.
“Need a hand?” Mustache Guy asked. Albert was going to be a tough haul on Maggi’s side, but I gave him an Are You for Real? Look and he backed off, nudging people to clear a path. The crowd parted easily—Albert didn’t exactly look like a person you’d want to brush against just then. I got one arm around his shoulders and steadied his hip against mine, and Maggi, a couple steps ahead, took up where Mustache Guy left off, gently tapping people to step aside.
When we were close to the sidewalks, I made a motion toward the men’s room. Maggi seemed ready to come help, but that probably wasn’t the wisest idea. “Can you drive?” I asked.
“I don’t have my license,” she said. “I’m only fifteen.”
“That’s not what I asked,” I said. She reluctantly held out her hand and took the keys I passed. She said she’d meet us on the street just the other side of the restroom building.
Inside the john, a line of men three deep waited to use the trough urinal and pretended not to see us as I gave Albert a quick cleanup at one of the disgusting sinks.
“Mastick’s kid? That you?” Albert slurred as I washed his chin and Adam’s apple off with paper towels that disintegrated into slivers. When he was reasonably clean, I started us out. He was getting heavier, the less he walked of his own power. I was almost as happy to see the Chevelle idling just beyond the Midway as I was the day my dad handed over the keys.
“Take the keys and grab that cardboard from the trunk,” I said. Maggi understood her job immediately. She laid them out on the passenger’s seat, rolled down that window and got Albert in place on the cardboard, his mouth pointing out through the open window. She came back around, sliding in the front seat, between us.
I drove as fast as I could without breaking the law until I hit the Rez, and then wound the 454 out, the hood scoop popping up, all eight cylinders doing their thing. We glided down near Dead Man’s Road at an even sixty-five, about thirty miles an hour more than I should have. The Chevelle heaved and vibrated, scoop leaning and tires skidding on broken asphalt. Clearing the bend, I cranked it back up to eighty-five ’til we hit Lewis’s long driveway.
We settled Albert in on a metal lawn chair near the porch, chin down.
“It looks good,” Maggi said, inspecting the cardboard. “Still want it?”
“I guess,” I said, popping the trunk. She tossed the cardboard and slammed the trunk in one quick move. We flew back through the Rez, both windows down, eighty on the straightaways and down to fifty on the toughest curves, trying to blow out the lingering smell.
“Seems like you’ve had some practice at that,” Maggi said.
“The escort service?” I laughed. “You could say that. You too.”
“Could say that. Although ‘escort service’ means something else. Clearly, you’ve never watched late-night cable TV.” She sighed, looking out the window as the Rez rolled by. “Aren’t we young to be that coordinated in the transportation of drunk people?”
“Everything’s relative,” I said.
“All my relations,” she said, a formal greeting used at a lot of Indian gatherings. We both laughed a slightly evil laugh. I liked this girl.
“How about we get back to the Field Day, find Lewis and Marie, and maybe ride some rides. Be kids again for a little while.”
“Don’t you mean Gloomis and Stinkpot?” she said, a little knife in her voice.
“No, not tonight,” I sai
d. I couldn’t stop seeing Albert, his tongue and teeth green, with all those white people calling him a nickname that I thought was only known on the Rez.
“Maybe tomorrow,” she said.
“Yeah, maybe tomorrow, maybe not,” I said as we neared the border of our homeland, and headed back to the chrome and neon. She laughed the laugh again that I was already falling for. Hard.
The closer we got to the Field Day, the more this boy Carson’s mood soured.
“I can’t believe it!” he’d say, and punch his steering wheel. The car swerved when he did. “I had it all planned. Why did I have to hear those Farmer Johns talking shit about Indians?”
“Plan?” I asked. I should have figured.
“I need Lewis if I’m gonna win Battle of the Bands,” he said, grimacing. “He’s shy, but a decent player. Not as good as me,” he added, of course.
“Naturally,” I exaggerated, but he didn’t seem to hear I was teasing his cockiness. “Still not getting how that fits in with tonight, though,” I said. His plan had the sophistication of a ten-year-old playing with superhero dolls, I swear!
“I figured, first, you know these bands are gonna play Beatles songs. Guarantee, even if it’s just basic ones like ‘One After 909.’” I nodded, and I even knew that song. I always recognized the Beatles on the radio, hits anyway, but now anytime they came on, Lewis automatically made a point of noting it. “I figure, if Lewis saw these lame other local bands—playing Beatles songs and getting paid!—he’d grow a pair of balls to join when—sorry, didn’t mean to say balls.”
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