Give Me Some Truth

by Eric Gansworth

  “Treaty law. Every Indian’s job to remember. Most people would prefer that we didn’t.”

  “And what treaty would that be?” he asked, expecting me not to know.

  “Porter Agreement,” I said, which was the absolute truth. “Far as you’re concerned, quizzing me about treaty knowledge also isn’t the best use of your resources. You’ve only got a couple of minutes. Now, you want a history lesson or you want to hear my proposition?”

  “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt.”

  “Marie’s stuck here, like me, until our mom gives up. Might be an hour. Might be five hours. Daylight lasts a long time on the Fourth of July. One thing would speed up the process.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Will depend on how much money you have on you.”

  “I have a credit card. Will that do?”

  “Do you see a slider machine here?”

  “Oh, this money’s for you. A bribe?” I gave him an Oh, please, man look. “Okay, yes, I have some cash.” I figured that when he picked Marie up, they weren’t going to his place (his inept stealth here told me he was at least aware their relationship was a little complicated). That meant they were probably headed to one of the thousand rasty tourist motels here. And given the lengths they went to so that no one saw them meeting up, I didn’t think he’d use a traceable credit card to pay for those motel rooms.

  “These are beaded picture frames Marie’s made.” It wasn’t entirely true, but I suspected he’d be more inclined to buy something Marie made rather than her sketchy family. “Our mom has some totally cracked belief that if she waits long enough, someone will buy them.”

  “Why won’t someone buy them?”

  “Would you buy them?” I asked. He picked up one of the fireworks frames, rubbed the velvet a little, touched some beads, saw the fifty-dollar tag, and set it back down, shaking his head.

  “Wrong answer,” I continued. “Care to try again? Would you buy them?”

  When Marie and my mom got back, I was three whole frames lighter. I shot for five, but he was only willing to part with so much. I told my mom that I’d struck it lucky with some German tourists (our most faithful demographic after anthropologists, so she’d believe me). She seemed delighted that her persistence had paid off. As we sat there, eating our hot dogs (with requisite mustard and relish—free bonus condiments, of course), I put Stage Two into play and hoped I’d created more of a Scattered-Showers Deanna instead of full-on Dark.

  “Ma?”

  “Mm-hmm?”

  “While you guys were away, some city friends invited me and Marie to watch fireworks. Maybe since we sold well, you’d let us go? I told them if we could, we’d meet by the Turtle.” (A museum where most city Indians worked at some point. If you were a Traditional dancer or singer, you could do okay for tourists all summer. Others worked in service.)

  “Who?”

  “Markie and Davy Reynolds. They said their ma would drop us off at home after.” The Reynolds boys were City Indians from Six Nations, so I knew they were on the other side celebrating Canada Day and wouldn’t be back until Monday. I was safe claiming I’d seen them.

  Our mom studied our lockbox, maybe calculating the amount of our bail if we got caught illegally on a roof. “Only hundred and twenty new dollars here,” she said. “Should be one-fifty.”

  “I gave the Germans a bulk discount,” I said, which was just what our mom did, if business was slow. I’d given the Mystery Man the discount, in exchange for something our mom didn’t need to know about.

  “All right, get out of here. Marvin’s coming with our ride in an hour. He can help me pack up.” I thanked my mom, trying not to sound too excited. Marie didn’t even have to act subdued. She’d noticed that her man was gone and was clearly not looking forward to the Reynolds brothers. I felt bad that Marvin got stuck with the shit job at the end of the day, but he had all day free at home while we were here, chained to the Table. “No monkey business!” our mom shouted. I waved to acknowledge.

  “Turtle’s not this way,” Marie said, following me, wrapping herself in a big Sad Face.

  “Pick up your long lips,” I said (freshly learned Rez Slang for “Overt Sadness”). Joy was the only emotion you could express on the Rez without being made fun of. Tears of laughter were the only kind allowed. “We’re not going to the Turtle.”

  As we got to the State Park parking lot, Marie caught sight of her Mystery Man, leaning on his weird car. Maybe he’d parked in this spot right after he’d bought my frames so that he could surprise her in this stupid Romantic-Comedy way. Her Long Lips turned into a Dropped Jaw in two seconds flat. “Unless he’s a turtle.”

  “Benjamin’s the German tourists?” she screeched, smacking me and ran to him, all grinning. So the Mystery Man’s first name was Benjamin. Another puzzle piece acquired. (He did look as stuffy as you’d imagine someone using that full name, but it wasn’t going to do for me. Of the variants: Ben, Benji, Benny, only the first one was viable.) Again, this new piece ticked my memory but not enough to clear the haze. Marie almost tripped on those concrete parking barriers as she raced to him.

  Marie and Mystery Man (it was seriously going to take a while to think of him as Benjamin) stood stiff near each other, wanting to hug but fearing me as a witness (as if I hadn’t just arranged for this meeting myself!). As far as romance goes, this wasn’t all that exciting.

  “Mom’s still at the Table,” I said, gently shoving her closer. “And he paid a hundred and twenty bucks to see you. You should at least make it worth his while. Hug him!”

  “Shut up,” she said, but not mean. You can’t sound harsh when you can’t stop grinning.

  “All right,” I said. “Let’s get going. I’m already two hours late.”

  “What?” Marie said, suddenly alarmed, looking between us. She clearly did not like Benfriend and me in the same space. “You’re not going anywhere. Not with us anyway.”

  “Actually, she is,” he said. “Part of my discount on your beautiful frames was that I give her a ride to someplace near your house.” House. Nice try. I had to give him sincerity points there. He’d definitely never seen our house in daylight. Also, points for saying Marie’s frames were beautiful. Maybe he’d even come to believe it, but a lot of people dismissed our art as “crafts,” telling us that they’d done similar things at summer camp when they were kids.

  “I got a band to join,” I said, raising my bag that held one decent water drum and a rattle.

  He unlocked his weird little car with the strange hood emblem, and Marie hopped in. “You should ride in the trunk,” she said. We knew people who snuck into the Auto Vue Drive-In Movies that way, but I didn’t think Marie wanted her Dress-Shirt Benfriend to know the Indian world of pinching pennies. All the way to the Rez, neither said much. He put his hand on her knee, but she gently slid it back off. I tried to look out the window the whole way so they’d stop being so freaky.

  As the sun set, Benfriend pulled off the road near The Bug’s, and his little car almost fell into the ditch. I could hear music that might be Carson and Lewis. A lot of cars congested the roadside up to the packed driveway—it looked like they had a crowd. I hoped my little drum and voice would be powerful enough to carry.

  “Hey, Ben,” I asked, leaning in between their heads. Marie flashed annoyance at my lack of formality. “What kind of car is this anyway? I’ve never seen one like it, and I sure don’t recognize that little lightning bolt in a circle on your hood.”

  “No reason you would,” he said, delighted someone had noticed his Freakmobile. I’d had to tell Marie it was a strange one before she noticed. “It’s a Trabant. Made in East Germany.”

  “You went all the way to Germany for a car?” (In addition to looking like it was made of Legos, it was preposterously small and his stork legs barely fit in the driver’s side foot well.)

  “I went to great lengths! You can only import ones twenty-five years old or older and—”

  “You bought a t
wenty-five-year-old used car? Hope you got a great deal.”

  “Well, no,” Benfriend said, laughing like he had at the Vendor Table. I was no longer useful to him, now that Marie was in his car and I was getting out. “I’m a dedicated Teutophile.”

  “Toot-o-file?” I asked.

  “T-E-U-T-O-P-H-I-L-E. From Teutonic. German.”

  “Ha!” I laughed. “Our mom is a Toot-o-file too! She loves Germans because they’re crazy for our beadwork. What are the odds!”

  “Imagine that,” Benfriend said. “It’s my area of—”

  “We gotta go,” Marie said, suddenly cranking her window up. I waved as the Trabant putted off, and just then remembered that “Trabant” was the name of the first ride Marie picked at the Farmer John Dealie. Even squeezed into a little two-person carnival ride, thigh to thigh with Lewis, she was daydreaming about Benfriend and his Freakmobile (in truth, his car was almost as tight a squeeze as the ride, and it felt like it was made of the same flimsy fiberglass).

  I walked up the crushed-stone driveway and hoped to salvage my Fourth of July, while Marie and Benfriend headed out to make some fireworks of their own. I hoped he had enough cash left over for their motel room. No matter how much he loved German culture, only the Sideshow Contortionist was going to be able to hook up in the backseat of that East German car. By the time I rounded the house, the sound of the Trabant was drowned out by Carson’s and Lewis’s guitars. I felt like my little water drum was gonna get lost, but then I noticed someone who must’ve been Hubie next to them. Oddly, he was playing what looked like a traffic cone, and I thought: Well, things could be worse.

  Maggi appeared in The Bug’s backyard right as we were wrapping up a song, so I announced that we were gonna take a few minutes’ break. “Hey,” I said to her, trying to be cool but feeling a grin split my face. I’d slid my Casino around to my back, like all the rock stars did. It was pretty impractical—you ran the risk of accidentally kicking it, and you definitely couldn’t sit—but it looked totally badass. “You want something to eat?” I asked, walking her to the rickety porch we’d been using as a tiny stage.

  “Hey, Lewis,” Maggi said. He waved, chugging a Pepsi, sweat running down his face. She introduced herself to Doobie, and being the doofus he was, he said hi through the megaphone traffic cone, then set it down to shake her hand. Surprisingly, he could really blast sound from that stupid cone. “Line’s really long,” Maggi said, giving me the perfect chance.

  “The talent doesn’t have to wait in the line,” I said, stepping aside like a game-show host, maybe Wink Martindale or Monty Hall, ready to make you a deal. I revealed a TV tray with four Chinet plates, the good, heavy-duty ones, all covered in tinfoil. I’d held up a four to my dad while he was in line earlier, and he’d made them. “One for each member of my band. Got here just in time. Lewis was starting to eye up the Scon-Dogs I’d saved for you, since he scarfed his down like a Skee-wheh.”

  “I was not,” he said, pushing me, laughing.

  “A Skee-wheh?” she asked, frowning. An obscure word, so I wasn’t surprised. “A burnt black what?” Intriguing. Not only did she know the word, but she knew it was just a color and texture. Normally, you’d use it to describe something, like the planks left over after a house had gone up in flames. Where’d she pick that up?

  “Skee-wheh was a dog The Bug used to have,” Lewis said, narrowing his eyes at me. “He was the greediest thing.”

  “If you threw scraps down for the dogs,” I said, grinning, “Skee-wheh would come flying over and almost choke himself, trying to eat everything before the other dogs could nose in there.” I made this weird, disgusting sound, like gulping and inhaling at the same time, making it mushy too. Lewis hated that I could do it so accurate, since it was usually him I was calling a Skee-wheh. “That’s how he sounded!”

  “I wouldn’t want to be called a Skee-wheh either,” Maggi said to Lewis, folding back the foil to see what we’d saved for her. Some potato salad, baked beans, Jell-O with fruit suspended in it, and, most important, two of my mom’s amazing Scon-Dogs, perfectly brown and not even greasy looking after being here a few hours. “But I will share.”

  “Thanks, that’s okay,” Lewis said. “I got my own. Apparently an individual Chinet from the trays was in our, um, contract,” he said, laughing. “Like insisting on only red M&M’s. Our rock star demands. Nice of you, though.”

  “Well, it was nicer of me to get you the plate, not knowing if you’d even show,” I said. I tried on a smile. Shouldn’t she acknowledge that I’d been thoughtful?

  “I told you I’d try,” Maggi said. “Got my drum.” She reached into her bag and thumbed the skin. “Brought a horn rattle too, but I don’t think the sound’s gonna carry out here.”

  “What do you mean, you brought your drum?” Lewis said. He had a sharp ear for Eee-ogg in general, but if any of those shadowy conversations implied he was on the outside, his radar was even more narrowly tuned. His was like a high-end police scanner, instead of the ones from Radio Shack most people out here had.

  “So you really did it,” Doobie said, raising his eyebrows in that I’m impressed face. “A promise is a promise. I’ll be there.” He turned to Maggi. “You any good?”

  “Are you?” Maggi asked him. “Is there a scale of goodness for playing the traffic cone?”

  “Bass,” Doobie said. “But I didn’t bring it. I don’t have a stand-up bass, and an electric one’s a waste of time without an amp. I didn’t even know these fancy tiny portable jobbies existed,” he said, tapping my little Pignose that I’d just unplugged my Casino from to formally welcome her. “And you know,” Doobie added, “not all that critical. Most other places we’re gonna play are gonna have power. Although it is the Rez.…”

  “Wait,” Lewis said, scrunching his face up. “What the hell’s going on here, Carson?” He was trying to be patient, but I could hear irritation starting to creep in. “How did this go from me, to you and me, to now the four of us without me knowing anything about that?”

  “Hang on a sec,” I said, and walked over to The Bug and told him we needed to organize. He nodded, but looked down at his bare wrist, telling me even without a watch to hurry my ass up or I wasn’t getting paid.

  “Let’s go inside,” I said, returning to the uneasy situation I’d created. “The Bug says it’s okay that we wanna warm up some. But he saw that,” I said, pointing at Maggi’s bag, “and I had to promise no Traditional songs, so don’t even fool around with fills you normally do.” I held the door open for them.

  We walked in and set up at The Bug’s dining room table, which he always kept strangely neat. There was a tray of condiments covered by a dish towel centered on the table, like he was expecting picky guests to drop in, but I almost never saw guests here, picky or otherwise. For our part, Doobie was singing some Elvis Presley–type song into the caution cone, while Lewis simmered like a pot of piss pudding. Maggi was trying to read us, but good luck with that, girl.

  “Okay, the bad news?” I said, pulling the center chair up. “We’ve already blown through most of the Beatles songs Lewis knows how to play. Not sure why The Bug wanted us to lead with that,” I added, snapping my eyes at Lewis. He was silent—for now.

  “The good news?” I continued. “Most of the other songs they wanna hear are your basic singing cowboy songs.” I turned to Maggi. I’d never heard her play. This wasn’t ideal but it was what we had. “Mostly 2/4 and 4/4. Look to me for the changes and the count-off once we’re out there.”

  “Is it pretty much those old Hank Williams songs you mentioned before?” she asked, her face open, eager to join. When I nodded, those eyes narrowed down, and her mouth squeezed over to one side. “What is it with these old Indian men and their friggin’ singing cowboys?” she hissed like a leaking tire. She was still going back and forth in her Rez Points bank, add a few points, take away a few points. Doobie looked askance at me.

  “Anyway, I know all those songs,” she added, sighing. “If there�
�s an Indian man over fifty in your life, you know them.” We all laughed, agreeing. I was amazed at how easy she could raise tension and then bust it back down. It was like she had some secret energy thermostat.

  “Let’s make a quick dry run-through here anyway,” I said, trying super hard not to sound patronizing. “Before we go out to our adoring fans. You three have the easy part, so just keep steady. Doobie, don’t sing harmony into that cone. It’s too powerful, and there’s enough distraction here that it might throw me off. There’s only one driver for this bus.”

  “Unless The Bug decides to jump in,” Lewis said.

  “Wrong,” Maggi said. “Still only one driver, and in that case, it’s gonna suddenly be The Bug. Our job’s to keep the tires pointing straight on the road so he can clear the driver’s seat.”

  “Guess you will have the hardest job, then, Carson,” Doobie said.

  “How’s that?” I said. I knew he was going to bite me in the ass, but the bite might still pull us tighter together.

  “You’re gonna have to put your ego in check for a little while,” Lewis said, doing a one-two with Doobie. “Do you even know how to step out of the spotlight?”

  “Come on,” I said. “We’re wasting time. All right, let’s start with ‘Kaw-Liga.’”

  “In here, we can start that way, but not when we go out there,” Lewis said. “That one changes midsong from a minor key to a major. Let’s start simple. This might be our only time playing together. Shouldn’t we enjoy it?” That was a bit of a surprise, but an interesting one. It held more promise for the Battle of the Bands.

  “All right,” I said. “Let’s see.”

  “What’s The Bug’s favorite song?” Maggi asked. Nice. A savvy show person. We’d never done this before, but we recognized her sharpness. None of us had thought of it.

  “Yeahhh,” I said, dragging the word’s tail out into the air. “They all love ‘Your Cheatin’ Heart,’ and it’s as basic as can be and gets them crying in their beers every time. Maggi, count us off and, remember, no Social song fills!” I couldn’t risk even the smallest thing that might derail The Bug’s mood. It was gonna be a little touchy already when he saw her actually using a water drum.