Give Me Some Truth

by Eric Gansworth

  I wished that I’d thought to bring a towel. I had an idea and asked Susan for a discreet favor. If we were going to be bandmates—and she did seem pretty cool—this could be a good loyalty test. But as I’d suspected, when I started to follow, she stopped me at the plate-glass door and told me she’d be right out.

  I suddenly felt like I was in Marvin’s Lost in Space universe, and I was an alien monster. Susan had flipped the switch on the force field, keeping me outside of the spaceship where her family lived. I’d have to tell him this when I got home. He’d be amused (maybe, or just more aware that these days, I had a social life he didn’t). The landing a few inches away was done in indoor/outdoor carpeting. We weren’t even trusted to stand in the mudroom. We were Less Than Mud, even to our bandmate.

  “Here you go,” she said a few minutes later. She’d changed into a fresh outfit, dropping a paper-towel-wrapped package into my opened bag. “The porta potty’s okay,” she said, squeezing out a wan sorry, you understand smile. We both knew she hadn’t been in the portapotty herself, but it was what I could use. Fortunately, I didn’t need the item for its intended purpose.

  I headed to where Lewis had gone, unwrapping the package. Susan had been generous. I’d be able to wipe my face down, and help Lewis. Our summer together had given us a new appreciation for the maxi pad, aside from Kenny’s gross joke habit of catching Skoal spit with them. We used them to clean hard-to-reach areas and to wax the superintendent’s car. You peeled the adhesive, slapped them across your palm, and—boom!—instant buffing cloth. You could even use these as disposable towels, as long as no one saw you.

  Though it was dark behind the garage, I could see Lewis’s silhouette. He stood with his shirt off, turning, like a living weather vane in the faint breeze. Each rib cast its own shadow on his torso in the rising moonlight. Susan left with a towel she’d offered him, and he checked her out, maybe memorizing the curve of her bare back with its dotted line of delicate bones.

  “Don’t be getting any funny ideas about that girl,” a new voice said in the dark, Jim’s. “Her old man wouldn’t take kindly to you sniffing around his little girl.”

  “Sniffing around?” Lewis said. “You’re so tacky.” It seemed like they had been talking already before Susan showed up. Lewis slipped his shirt on. “We’re just in a band together, and this was the first—”

  “Don’t tell me lies,” Jim said, holding his hand up. He tapped his temple, shiny with grease and sweat. “I know lots of things.” He poked Lewis on the breastbone, like he did at work sometimes, then turned and faced the garage and unzipped his cutoffs. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I gotta water some flowers.”

  “Least the garage’s big enough that you’ll hit your target this time,” Lewis said. “Think your buddy’d appreciate you pissing on his property?”

  “You man enough to find out?” Jim said, not moving. He seemed to change his mind and zipped his cutoffs back up. “Critcher Senior’s a buddy of mine. He won’t mind. Good to have friends,” he added, facing Lewis. Lewis did not back down.

  “Mind your own business anyway, Loser,” Jim continued. “Why don’t you go check out your microphone wire? I don’t lie.” I had no idea what Jim was talking about, but proximity was the real message here. He stepped up into Lewis’s space, a few inches away, daring him to swing. Lewis might have been stupid enough to think he wouldn’t be blamed for any questionable activity—he didn’t feel Jim’s natural charisma.

  I hated to admit it, but after Jim had hugged me in the garage entryway in June, I hadn’t stopped thinking about it. Even after our museum trip, and the fancy restaurant I’d never find again, I kept thinking about that embrace. Jim pressed against me, his slightest move giving me a shiver, his breath making my hair dance a little. Ever since, I’ve wondered what would have happened if I hadn’t punched out and left that day. I had to remind myself that when he hugged me, he promised to be nicer to Lewis and that had clearly been a lie.

  Promised to try being nicer, a surprising voice inside my head whispered. He didn’t say he’d succeed. Whose voice was that?

  I wanted to step out, do something. But then Lewis stepped back a few inches.

  “Good dog, Lassie,” Jim said. “Good you know your place.”

  “Already used that joke once today,” Lewis said. “It wasn’t funny the first time.”

  “Who’s counting?” Jim said, stepping close again, inches from Lewis.

  “We’re not at work,” Lewis said. “You can’t get me fired from this party if I respond to your bullshit.” Lewis was sober, but even buzzed and a little unsteady, Jim was a groundsman who worked all of his muscles every day. He had a hundred pounds on Lewis.

  “Funny boy,” Jim said, reaching up to pat Lewis’s cheeks. At the last slap, he used more juice. It sounded like kindling cracking. “Oops,” he said. “You know why they asked you to be in that band, Lassie?” he asked. (I wondered what that meant, and if I should even ask either.)

  “Gloomis!” Carson shouted, suddenly appearing. Like that, it was over. Jim casually took one step back, and to Carson, this would have looked like a normal conversation. “We’re down to the last couple nights of summer. Don’t want to waste—” He studied Jim. “Do I know you?”

  “Don’t think so,” Jim said. “Nice show.” He headed back out into the party.

  “What was going on there?” Carson asked Lewis as soon as Jim was out of earshot.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Lewis said, tucking his T-shirt in as they wandered back to the party. If I showed up from where I was, Lewis would know I’d seen that exchange. The party was breaking up.

  “You seen Maggi?” Carson asked. Lewis shook his head.

  “I think she’s …” Susan said, discreetly gesturing to the sani john (had to give her credit for doing that with discretion!).

  “All right,” Carson said. Just then, Jim stepped into the sani john, showing them all I was not in there (apparently Lewis’s criticism had made some impression).

  “She got here before we did,” Lewis suggested. “Maybe she got the same ride?”

  “Maybe she went for a walk,” Artie said, walking up with his arm around Tami. “You know, to clear her head.” (Code for vomiting.) “She can ride home with Tami,” he said, kissing her lightly, then adding, “later.” She slapped his arm and laughed, kissing him back.

  There was no easy way for me to merge back into the party unnoticed, so I just decided to head out and try my luck getting a ride home. I left the sounds of my bandmates and the party behind and squeezed into a neighbor’s yard to add distance. A few minutes later, I emerged down the road just in time to watch Carson’s car leaving.

  It was going to be a long, dark walk home.

  Behind me, a roaring car revved through the night and raced toward me. I screamed a tiny bit. It wasn’t Ben-Yaw-Mean’s dumb farting car. This was a black T-top Trans Am, something even Carson would ditch his Chevelle for. It rumbled around the corner, showing off gold striping, like the Smokey and the Bandit car (including the giant bird decal and the air scoop tags). That Pontiac’s sleek beauty did not change my dread as it slowed, though. This wasteland wasn’t like when trouble found you in the city. There was nowhere to run in these acres of fields.

  The Trans Am’s windows were tinted deep. The driver revved hard again. Suddenly, an orange glow inside allowed me to see the occupant. I could feel my face bloom into a wide smile I couldn’t help. Jim Morgan’s grin grew bright in his cigar ember, his mustache framing it in harsh contrast. He rolled down the window and let out a plume of pungent smoke.

  “Scare ya?” he said, laughing the dirty-old-man laugh he used about half the time.

  “Jerk!” I said, slapping his forearm, giving a giggle in return. I walked around to the other side. “So whose car is this?” I asked, climbing in.

  “Who d’ya think?” he said, laughing, driving away. “Nobody lends someone else a Trans Am, no matter how good friends you might be.” He patted the dash
board, like it was a dog.

  “What happened to your red truck? The official vehicle of the Bee Gees.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to be like all the Bee Gees in the district anymore. Particularly after you called it, what was it? Old-Man Wheels?” I’d said something like that over the summer, but no one finances a new car just because some girl said your car was lame.

  “How long you had it?”

  “Just a week. You’re my first passenger. Feel special?”

  “Special?” I thought for a minute. “No, I don’t feel special. Now, if you were giving me this car,” I said, laughing myself, “then I’d feel special.”

  “Fat chance, kiddo. Do you even have your license?”

  “Not yet,” I said. I left out that I wasn’t quite old enough to get my permit. He didn’t need to know that I was fifteen. Why don’t you want him to know that? the voice in my head said. I recognized it this time: Marvin, when he mimicked Dark Deanna. I didn’t know when that started happening, but I wished it would quit. Because fifteen is a problem, Marvin. Go away! I said back. Only a problem if you’re thinking about one thing, he said back, before leaving me to my own decisions.

  “Could teach you how to drive this baby,” Jim said. “Would you like that? Just me and you, cruising around. Me showing you what to do.” Marie told me kids as young as ten drove cars on the Rez, even by themselves. You just couldn’t go near the borders. But if I was driving Jim’s car, it would not be on the Rez. Getting caught would be deadly. Getting caught driving? Is that what you’re worried about getting caught at? Ghost Marvin said, one last shot.

  “I’m in no hurry,” I said.

  “So, um … listen. You in a hurry to get home?” Carson hadn’t gone back to the Rez, and I was supposedly with the band. I had time. Particularly since Marie couldn’t report when the party broke up. I wondered why she hadn’t shown toward the end at least, particularly with Ben-Yaw-Mean there.

  “I probably have a little while. Why?”

  “You’ll see,” he said as we drove past the Rez, eventually turning by the Sanborn Field Day grounds, overgrown. He parked in front of a closed diner. “Sit tight,” he said, and ran to a door next to the diner entrance. A light went on upstairs, and shortly off again. He came out with a backpack. He still had on his shorty-shorts but a different T-shirt draped over his bare shoulder.

  “Check this out,” he said, tossing the bag to me. We headed farther away from the Rez. I dug in and saw a Polaroid OneStep. “You can borrow it on open-ended loan. I’ll only ask for it back when I need it.” I’d seen commercials for these. You pressed the button and the picture kicked out the front like a tongue, developing before your eyes. The bag also held a few cartridges of film and several boxes of flashcube bars, and a magazine called Avant Garde.

  “What’s this magazine?” I asked, starting to pull it out. So much more to say. Like: Open-ended loan of an expensive camera?

  “That mag’s for you to check out later. When you get home. But the camera, it could be good for your art. That guy you like so much? The one painting soup cans? He takes Polaroids all the time. Mostly movie stars. Maybe you’ll be like him. And maybe you’ll make something I’d buy,” he said. He’d remembered that I liked Andy Warhol. And he must have looked that Polaroid info up himself. (Jim hadn’t really struck me as someone with that level of an interest in contemporary art, but maybe I was wrong about him. Going to museums, a lot of people did, but studying Andy Warhol took effort, and the magazine here looked pricey and like it might actually be about art.)

  “I know your family doesn’t get what you do,” he said, suddenly looking directly into my eyes. “But I do. Not all art is made for tourists to like. I get that.”

  “You got a lot of art in your apartment above the Sunrise Skillet?”

  “You could come and find out for yourself,” he said, turning his head shyly, grinning.

  “Yeah, we’ll see.” I said. “So how do you use this?”

  “It’s a OneStep! Look in the viewfinder and press the button. I thought you could take pictures of your stuff and your sister could put them out at the trinket table.” (Trinket table?)

  “Someone might be interested enough to buy it,” he added. “But they won’t know if they never get to see it. Liz at the garage buys all kinds of turquoise shit on vacation in New Mexico. Comes back with a little suitcase full and charges people double.”

  Liz, figured. I knew the type. Wear down the Indian jewelry maker, argue you’re buying in quantity, then go sell it at jacked-up prices to people the silversmith would never have the chance to meet.

  “You can practice now,” he added, pulling into a closed fruit stand parking lot. “Take a picture of me and my Bandit.” He tossed his shirt on his seat and went to the car’s front end, leaning against the hood. He rested his hands behind him and crossed one ankle over the other, a total pose, trying to look casual. All he had on were those corduroy cutoffs, short white tube socks with the stripes at the top, and sneakers. He stretched back so his belly didn’t hang over his belt, making himself look more fit than he really was (not that he was super paunchy). “How’s ’at?”

  “You might want to either tug your shorts up, or stuff your undershorts down,” I said. “Waistband’s showing.”

  “Good catch,” he said. He undid the belt, the button, and slid the fly down, cramming the elastic waistband down all the way around. “Better?” he said, spreading his arms.

  “Probably should buckle back up before I take the picture,” I said.

  “You and me are the only ones who’re gonna see it. Nice thing about Polaroids. No lab. No one else has to see it except the person taking the picture and the person in the picture.” I lowered the camera until he made himself more presentable. He caved and leaned back again when he was ready. I looked into the viewfinder and took the picture. The flash popped, and the camera made a grinding sound, spitting out the photo down front, which was a hazy, milky color.

  “I don’t think it worked,” I said.

  “Got to give it time,” he said. “Come here, lean on the hood with me. It’s still warm, and the air’s getting a little sharper.” The hood did feel good on the backs of my bare thighs as we watched Jim emerge in the developing film, like he was walking out of a fog. When it finally finished, it wasn’t as clear as a regular photo, but it was an okay picture of him. The flash really picked up how fair his skin was. It made his bushy chest hair stand out even more than normal. I handed the photo to him, but he held up his hands, as if he could stop me.

  “For you. If you ever want to be reminded of me when we’re not in the same place. And,” he said, digging back in the Trans Am’s glove compartment and coming back with a pen, “here’s my number. If you ever need a ride or anything, you call me. I don’t care what time, I’ll come.” He’d written it and JM next to it in the white surface below the image. “I’m serious. You never know.”

  “Okay,” I said. I slid the photo, the camera, and all the accessories into my own backpack. I couldn’t stop thinking about the possibilities. Since I rarely worked the Vendor Table, I’d gotten to love beadworking fully again, especially since I kept getting all kinds of new ideas for album cover variations. I’d started to work on a sweetgrass braided matt, to be the background for a corn-husk version of John Lennon’s Rock ’n’ Roll. I wondered if I might be able to incorporate the Polaroids into what I do, if there might be some way of combining photos with my other recent projects: sassy versions of our family canoes (that I’d started calling Broken-Heart Canoes). It was exciting to wander into new areas with a totally new tool.

  “You gonna return the favor?” he asked, lifting the camera from my hands.

  “Really?” I said, sarcastic.

  “No, no,” he said, pausing just long enough to confirm his secret hope. “I just meant, you know, leaning against the hood. Not, you know, not—”

  “I believe ‘topless’ is the word you’re looking for, Uncle Pervy,” I said, laughin
g, to let him off the hook. I didn’t like what he was suggesting, but it had been nice of him to give me a ride, and unbelievably nice with the camera.

  I wanted to ask him why he was always such a jerk to Lewis, but I felt like somehow that would screw this up, whatever this was. He was the first person to really see me. Even Lewis, for all his sensitivity, never wanted to talk about me with me. It was always Marie Marie Marie and/or Beatles Beatles Beatles. Even earlier at the party, one of the first things he said to me was asking if my sister was coming. I’d mentioned my art ideas to him a few times when we first started working together, but he never asked me more about them. Not once. And his mom did beadwork. He knew how important it was to us. And here was Jim, totally on the outside, trying to help me. Even though he was calling beadwork “trinkets,” he was still trying.

  “I wasn’t suggesting that at all. You’re pretty enough you don’t need to resort to those gimmicks. Guys’d line up if you opened a Kissing Booth at the Sanborn Field Day.” Kissing Booth? What a Bizarro! “Do me the honors?” he asked, raising the camera.

  “Sure,” I said. What harm could a photo do? Everybody had pictures of their friends.

  I leaned on the hood like the calendar cheesecake girls our mechanics had up in the break room, but I had no tools to sell. The flashbulb blinded me while Jim watched the picture develop. “Okay?” He held it out, a decent photo. I looked like me. I nodded, and he held out the pen.

  “Jim. It’s my mom and dad’s house. Their phone. If I get a call—”

  “Does that loser Lewis have your number?”

  “Don’t call him that.” I couldn’t turn away from it now. “What’s your problem with him anyway? Why are you always hassling him? He’s totally not big enough to have ever caused you trouble. And besides, it’s different when he calls, because—”