“Don’t worry about that,” I said, flipping a switch on the little amp. “Now try.”
The Bug strummed an open G. The crisp, quacky sound rang out from the little amp. It wasn’t as dramatic as Dylan going electric at the Newport Folk Festival where all kinds of liars claimed to have been at, but it was startling enough at The Bug’s electricity-lacking house. It sounded exactly like an amp should, but in the back, there was no electrical cord trailing out.
“It’s a Pignose,” I said, “’cause the only knob is this fat, round one out front. On, off, and volume.” I nodded, like I was telling myself. “Battery operated. Genius!” I added, like anyone with half a brain could have guessed. “My dad got it last week. Thought it’d be perfect for today. Speaking of Pignoses,” I said, turning to Lewis, “you got a date tonight for your own fireworks?”
“Do you?” Lewis said, up in my face. “Maybe Caesar the Dog can nose your nuts for you.” My lifelong wish might be coming true, if inconveniently. Lewis was growing some balls.
“Don’t like that one,” The Bug said, scrunching his face up at the pickup settings. “Sounds like I stepped on a duck with my bad leg.” Anyone listening mumbled a laugh at The Bug’s joke. You never mentioned his wooden leg in front of him, but if he made a joke, you were supposed to laugh to show you were comfortable.
“Try this one,” I said, flipping a toggle. When The Bug strummed that same open G, the sound was soft, like a sonic milk shake drooling down the steps.
“Say, now that’s a purty sound.” The Bug grinned and played a lazy run up the fret board and back. Every once in a while, he’d throw in a word in a goofy fake southern accent, like he was suddenly on Hee Haw. “Leave that,” he added, playing a few more riffs.
We were on our way.
July was the weirdest month for Indians in our part of the world— particularly if you weren’t sure where you fell on the What Kind of Indian Am I? Scale. You could be a Hang-Around-the-Fort Indian, a Gung-Ho-Righteous-Red-Power Indian, or the kind most of us were: a These-Boxes-Are-Too-Rigid-for-My-Real-Life Indian. Every kind played out in July, starting with two of the three stupidest holidays for Indians.
Since our Rez was outside Niagara Falls, the US-Canada border complicated everything. On top of that, we were here before this land was considered two separate countries, so most of us had relatives on both sides. And we had a treaty with both sides, acknowledging that fact. (Yes, it’s a little weird that I’m talking shit about history, national holidays, and international law.)
But if you’re Indian, it’s your job to know our treaties with the US and Canada. You ask any Indians from here about the Jay Treaty (free crossing between the US to Canada) or the Porter Agreement (granting our Vendor Tables inside the State Park), and they’ll give you the details. Our relatives died fighting for them. Not some My-Ancestors-Came-Over-on-the-Mayflower relatives. Real relatives, whose bodies have turned into fertilizer in our cemetery on the Torn Rock. When those names are connected to you in a straight line, you remember.
I saw sad immigrants taking citizenship tests on TV every year. All these panicking people with number-2 pencils, coloring in bubble tests, hoping to prove they’re up to citizenship. The kids in my class, who’ve been taking social studies for ten years, writing Who LUVS Whoever 4EVR instead of notes, couldn’t pass that test. None of them could tell you the Bill of Rights. Most of them only passed ninth-grade social studies (writing out the preamble to the Constitution) by singing the song from Schoolhouse Rock! to themselves. We ignored that dumb cartoon (where Indians were largely absent from the cartoon United States mapped out on our weekend TVs). For real, though, we weren’t as far removed from the United States or Canada as we’d like to pretend. Which was what made July so weird for us.
Our calendar skews, like the tilted globes in social studies classrooms. We had cousins celebrating Victoria Day the same time we had Memorial Day. They had Canada Day on July 1st while we went to fireworks on the Fourth, pretending to celebrate “Independence Day.”
I kept telling my mom that white America’s independence wasn’t the best day to sell Indian souvenirs, but Dark Deanna wasn’t a listening kind of mom on the best days. Her ideas were always right, no matter how wrong. During the Bicentennial, she’d made Independence Day–themed beadwork. She backlogged a bunch of 1776–1976 beaded picture frames, but instead of the raised flowers and birds we usually beaded onto them, she had us bead “fireworks” on them. She didn’t understand that fireworks, at their core, were about the way they vanished. Their lights, blazing across the sky, usually burning out before we even heard the sound.
Our beaded explosions—red, white, and blue beads shaped like fireworks—were epic failures. The red and blue ones were almost invisible against the black velvet, and the white ones looked like wilted daisies. We sold exactly one, to a vacationing anthropologist. We spent the next week snipping and collecting the beaded dates (each 1776 was red, each dash was blue, and each 1976 was white). And three years later, we were still trying to sell Fourth of July fireworks picture frames and they were moving about the way you’d expect. Every year, Marie and I offered to pull out the fireworks or make a new pattern, anything to avoid dragging that sad tote out every July 1st. But it had become a point of pride with our mom.
With these loser frames, I was going to be hard-pressed to get to Carson’s party gig.
I couldn’t even hope for rain, since that would torpedo the party before I could get there. I didn’t even know how we were getting home, and I couldn’t call Carson from a pay phone. He said The Bug had no running water, no electricity, and for sure no phone. Maybe I could show him my drumming skills another time. (Bonus! Water drums were way more portable than even the most basic rock drum kit.)
“Magpie,” my mom said as the five-thousandth tourist ignored us. “Get out your drum and sing us a song? Can you do ‘Stars and Stripes Forever’? I heard you practicing to the radio.”
“My throat’s dry?” I said, unable to keep the question mark out of my lie.
“You’re not sure?” she said, giving me her Dark Deanna X-Ray Eyes.
“Not sure if it would hold up,” I said (I’d recently developed a lead blanket to her X-ray vision, like at the dentist’s). “We’re out of anything to drink. Cooler’s just about empty.”
“I filled it this morning!” she said, stunned and outraged. Translation: I’d be damned if I’m giving up on those frames without an honest try.
“See for yourself,” I said. I’d snuck water, poured the cups into the grass, and refilled.
“I’ll take the cooler down to the snack bar fountain,” Marie said, the most helpful she’d been in years. I looked around and spotted her Mystery Man on the horizon instantly. Maybe she’d forgotten to let him know that I recognized him. Lately I’d even seen him boldly reading on a bench in front of us, not fifty yards away. I’d been studying him in the light and realized that he looked almost familiar, but just not enough for me to get it.
“Oh no you’re not,” our mom said, untrusting. “We can get it together. I might even buy some snack-bar hot dogs. Traditional American food!” she said, laughing. She offered lots of reasons I might wish to be an orphan, but she never played down her evil sense of humor around us, and I almost admired her commitment to her harsh brand of being a parent. “What you want on yours, Magpie?”
“Don’t go to any trouble just on my account,” I said, and she gave me a look I couldn’t quite interpret. Maybe disappointment, like I was supposed to love being her sweatshop worker.
The two of them walked away, the cooler between them. They were definitely going to get annoyed looks from the snack bar workers, though if my mom thought they treated her with less respect than the previous customer, she’d let them know. I always suggested she was inviting Snack-Bar Worker Spit, but she said we had to call attention if we weren’t treated with the respect anyone else got.
Mystery Man closed his book and put it in his leather shoulder bag. Eve
n beat up, it still looked like the oversized handbags Bingo Ladies lugged around, and I doubted most Niagara Falls men would use one. He got up fake casually, heading to the snack bar, following my sister.
“Hey,” I said when he was within Loud-Voice-This-Side-of-Shouting range. He pretended not to hear me. “Hey!” He looked, acting like he was just noticing me for the first time. “Purse Man. Come here!”
“Can I help you?” he asked, all innocent.
“I doubt it, but I can help you.”
“Really?” he said, and he couldn’t keep condescension out of his voice. Or maybe I just recognized the tone, since so many of our customers used it as a default to haggle.
“Don’t take that tone with me. I know who you are.” I was shocked to hear Dark Deanna’s voice coming out of my mouth, like storm clouds. She was possessing me—all those years being forced to speak her stupid scripts must have taken their toll.
“Look, I can—” he started to say.
“You’re Marie’s man. Her Mystery Man,” I said, interrupting him. What he would have said could have been useful, but wading through a performance was not a priority for me at the moment.
“Okay, Magpie,” he said, smiling easier, clearly understanding I didn’t know his name.
“So come on up here and let me show you what you’re interested in,” I said, digging in the dreaded bicentennial tote. No time for niceties. I was too concerned with getting my butt away from this Vendor Table and, ironically, back to the Rez.
“Let’s the three of us do one of those songs you like so much,” The Bug said, looking at Lewis. “Them Crickets.”
“Beatles,” Lewis said automatically. “The Crickets is Buddy Holly.”
“Crickets, Beatles. No bedbugs or crabs?” Again, laughs, but fewer people acknowledged they’d heard that joke. Any of them could be The Bug’s next target. When it was just us, he was patient— walking us through transitions, lifting one, then another finger. He called that the Slow-Motion Jump, having us move our left-hand positions as slowly as possible, then gradually speeding up—but on days like this, he was more like me, busting Lewis’s chops.
“Lewis ain’t familiar with crabs,” I added. Big mistake, and the grumped-up look on The Bug’s face showed it. He did not need a straight man, especially at his own house, where he was always the center of attention. Lewis just stepped back, as I tried a save by doubling down. “You gotta find some girl to actually want to sleep with you for—”
“Here,” The Bug said, flicking the amp off. “Put this away. We don’t need an electric. Lemme have my gee-tar.” Lewis lifted The Bug’s acoustic while The Bug passed my Casino back. As I cased it, Lewis gave The Bug his guitar.
“Where’s the Crow?” Lewis asked, pulling out his own guitar. I didn’t know the story, but like Old Man Gray’s Magpie that stayed in his living room, The Crow was tame, and lived in this enormous cage outside The Bug’s house. It often flew around on its own, but any time it was out, the cage door was left open for its return.
“Went back to its crow family,” The Bug said. There was more to that story than I was probably ever going to hear. “Now what you want to play?” he asked Lewis. “You choose the first song.” The more songs we racked up, the more often he asked what we wanted to play when we practiced with him, but neither of us had ever had the choice when we had an audience. “Hurry up, or I change my mind.”
“What’s this all about, Bugger?” my dad said, coming up to the porch. His eyes were red and watery, even though it was only three in the afternoon. That had been happening more lately. “You and me had a deal. My boy’s got a party to play later this summer, and this was gonna be his first run with a crowd. That other one’s Crhee-rhu-rhit. Can’t have him messing up in front of them.”
“Shoulda learned to keep his mouth shut here, then,” The Bug said. “Can’t jab your own band members and expect them to play decent. This here’s my band.”
Lewis and The Bug, standing together, didn’t look like much of a band, but I’d said enough.
“You remember this,” my dad hissed at The Bug, heading to the lawn chairs where I’d just sat down. “Get up, Carson,” he said, yanking me out of the chair and kicking it closed. I sprang up, pretending that hadn’t just happened, and hoping everyone else would do the same. My dad stomped away to his truck, taking my guitar and amp with him.
Were they smart enough to not cross my dad? Most were, with one exception.
“Bug?” Albert said, leaning in. “Don’t you think you might should rethink that?” He paused. “There’s no way me or Lewis can give you rides.” The Bug shook his head and asked Lewis again what song. Albert turned and followed my dad, but I stayed and couldn’t hear what they were saying.
The Bug started in on “Norwegian Wood,” one of Lewis’s favorite Beatles songs. It seemed just too obvious, since it was partly about a fleeing bird, but that was Lewis, all over. The Bug usually pushed him to join in harmony way up the fret board to sound like a sitar, but Lewis considered it a success if he sounded like a decent regular guitar, and he’d never even made it all the way through. Still, The Bug started with the melody today, and Lewis had no choice but to try picking the lines we’d been shown.
Over by the truck, my dad was still packing up the junk he lugged with him to almost any party—his own cooler, a cushion for his lawn chair, anything that set him just a little apart. After Lewis stumbled with the intro, I saw Albert reach into the pickup and grab the Casino and amp. He brought them back to the porch and handed them to me without a word. I flicked the pig’s nose, switched the toggle to the quacky sound, and did what I was supposed to. Lewis switched back to the steady rhythm, the part he was smooth as silk on.
We sounded like a stereo and people sang, remembering words, or singing wrong words, and by the end, that tension had passed. Lewis’s aunt peeled foil back from tins, and people grabbed plates. When we finished with “Norwegian Wood,” The Bug jumped right into “All Together Now,” alternating it with “Ten Little Indians,” which everyone laughed at, pretending they didn’t know the song’s origins.
With every new song after that, The Bug went solo, giving no warning on what he was jumping into next. It took me a bit to pick up what he was doing by recognizing chords, so I didn’t sound as polished as I wanted in the beginning of each. He was smacking my snout with a newspaper for being a wiseass. Sometimes he did this during lessons too—if I complained in asking about a tough song, he’d sigh and say, “Just like this.” Then he’d jam by himself for twenty minutes. When he finished, he’d ask if I had it any better.
Still, I was grateful for the opportunity. A thrown-together band and a bunch of hungry and mildly buzzed cousins and acquaintances weren’t what I had in mind, but it was a start. Carrying a show by myself was the goal.
A couple songs later, we moved into some Roy Orbison songs, because The Bug liked to show off his yodeling falsetto. I was glad most of those songs could be played stripped down using the same three or four chords, so I didn’t even have to wait for The Bug’s nod to switch. A few songs later, Albert started walking toward The Bug with a plate and a cold Bud, and before he was done crossing the lawn with the goods, The Bug had his guitar off and they made a swap. Perfect timing. I was starving and Scon-Dogs were on almost every plate. In a few minutes, an empty tin was all that would be left.
“Okay,” The Bug said, stopping me before I could unplug. “I’m eating. You guys are on. Half hour. Hope your calluses are tough enough.”
Lewis grinned at me and immediately started strumming and singing “We Can Work It Out,” leaving me to catch up. Normally, I’d have been pissed at him grandstanding, but I just jumped in with him. This was one of those Beatles songs that shouldn’t have made sense, totally ditching the verse/chorus/verse/chorus structure for something like two choruses jammed together, and yet, you couldn’t imagine it any other way. I took over on the Lennon half, and we sounded pretty good.
So far, Maggi and Marie ha
d been no-shows, so right now, Lewis was rhythm, period. But by the time we were closing the first song, Hubie Doobie arrived, minus his bass. When we finished that song, he grinned, holding up a bright orange caution cone someone had stolen. He lifted it to his mouth and nodded. He had a decent baritone and sang a few bars into the rubber megaphone, imitating a bass. It wasn’t perfect, but it would work. Some people even gave war whoops.
We kicked into the logical next song, “Day Tripper,” the flip side of the “We Can Work It Out” 45. You wouldn’t think that an acoustic guitar, a battery-powered electric guitar, and an injection-molded traffic cone could give a big enough sound, but Lewis had always insisted that was the Beatles’ magic in the first place—it worked any way you tried it. We were supposed to be background music, but people stopped standing in the food line to watch.
There would probably be nothing but picked-over scraps when those people were done in line, but I didn’t care. We were taking off, in ways I could have never imagined. If Maggi made it, we’d have a full rhythm section. I hoped we all knew “Jugband Blues” because we’d have to start taking requests pretty soon. Oddly enough, I wasn’t worried. I felt like we’d be up to it. We were becoming a band.
“Look,” I said to my sister’s Mystery Man, “you want out of here. I want out of here and most important to you, Marie wants out of here. Following her for a quickie kiss is not the best investment of your resources. Our mom usually sees almost everything. You shouldn’t even have been sitting where you were.” I didn’t have time or inclination for him to treat me like a kid.
“It’s a park. Everyone gets the same rights to use it,” he said, getting more cocky.
“Not entirely true. We, for example, have the right to use it to sell beadwork, and if you tried to use it to sell something, you would be slapped with a Cease and Desist.”
“You seem to know an awful lot about the law.”
Give Me Some Truth Page 15