“So what’s the story, now?” Marie asked. “How’s this supposed to play out?” Older Indians were gathering in the lot. They recognized us as Indians (even with Ben-Yaw-Mean).
“Carson says there’s a No Indians sign sitting right out on the counter. I didn’t see it when we came here. Not saying it wasn’t there, just … it was kind of an intense experience.”
“One way to find out if it’s still there,” Ben-Yaw-Mean said. “Back in a minute, ladies.”
“Couldn’t you get him to wear something less, um, teachery?” I said, looking at his trench coat and duck boots as he walked away. “I mean, it didn’t have to be a Carhartt, but jeez.”
“You could be a little nicer,” Marie said, shrugging. “At least less bratty anyway.”
“Not bratty. The idea was to be inconspicuous. You see another tan trench coat here?” Knowing I was right, she didn’t scan the crowd, instead laughing to end this Meow Mix between us. She did follow my eyes to the front of Custard’s Last Stand. Through the glass front, you could see that the place was full. Older men wore trucker caps with MIA/POW, NEVER FORGET with military bars, AIRBORNE, GREEN BERET, and that kind of thing. Most had on Carhartts, or hunting jackets, or leather jackets, a few shearlings, and some olive green.
“Inconspicuous?” She snapped her eyes back at me and at my bag. “Your giant purse screams Powwow bag, since you added all that beadwork. Thought you hate carrying a purse.”
“Your man’s coming,” I said. “And he looks pissed.”
“It’s there,” Ben-Yaw-Mean said, kicking up gravel. “ ‘No Indians.’ Damn! In this age?”
“Clearly you don’t teach social studies,” I said, and felt immediately bad. I’d hoped it wasn’t really there. It maybe confirmed all of the things I didn’t want to be true.
“Should have brought my camera,” he said. “That sign’ll be gone once the reporter shows.” Marie and I both bugged our eyes at him. “I did some homework and called in a favor,” he said, smiling. He so wanted to be Marie’s White Knight. “Be right back.”
Once he was talking to some guy in the distance, I shoved Marie’s arm. “So! He’s okay,” I said. “Nice, even. How long did you wait before you, you know? Did the Moon Road thing.”
“Who says we have? A lady doesn’t say,” she said, ducking her head. “And Rez girls even less.” She peeked, sly. “You know what Ma says about the Indian word for ‘love.’”
“We don’t even have one!” we said, dragging it out all Rezzy, imitating Dark Deanna. We pushed each other, laughing. Our parents loved each other, but like our allegedly nonexistent word, they never showed it. You wouldn’t hear anyone say that someone else was hot or that they were even interested. That silence was how you were supposed to know. If there was one person you never made dirty jokes about, that was the one. Sometimes I felt like I was in a foreign country without a handy Traveler’s Translations of Helpful Phrases for Reservation Love. It didn’t seem like shyness, exactly—more just the way our people were.
“Well, there’s the guy who wants you to go to Moon Road,” I said as Carson’s car pulled up near us. “If Ben-Yaw-Mean, you know, isn’t up to the job application.”
“Carson?” Marie laughed. “The guy who named me Stinkpot? Get real.”
“Not Carson,” I said as Lewis and his Uncle Juniper stepped out.
“Well, spot’s been filled,” Marie said. “Lewis is cute, cute enough, probably. But like I told you, he’s just a boy.” Her saying that made me realize how much she was shaping my ideas. She’d discovered actual men, first, of course, but now I better understood the difference between boys and men.
I knew how I felt around Jim Morgan, especially when we were alone, and I also knew that I was recognizing (from the inside) Marie’s dreamy looks whenever she came back from an encounter. It was a different kind of connection than hanging with the guys. Whenever I’d show Jim a new Polaroid, he’d study it (grinning, because the Polaroid was his) and ask about details I didn’t think he could see in such a tiny picture. And then lately, he’d hold me close and we’d do that deep kissing we’d started that night in the road. Sometimes, we didn’t even look at my art.
“What’s up?” Carson said, strolling to us, like he hadn’t orchestrated this whole thing.
“You tell me,” I said.
“Got your drum?”
I patted my bag and nodded.
“Okay, we’re going to get kicked out before we can do much, but that’s a public park across the road. They can’t do a damn thing about our being there. We’ll play a few songs, just me, you, and Lewis. Doobie doesn’t have a portable amp.” Carson had left Susan out because she was not fitting into his scenario, but it was shitty to not figure something out for Hubie.
“Got your shirts on?” he asked, and we nodded, flashing a peek. Carson delivered them around the Rez as he’d got confirmation from people that they’d come.
“You got another one?” Marie asked as Ben-Yaw-Mean came back toward us, with a guy carrying a satchel. “For … my friend. He’s on our side.” She glanced at Lewis, who was totally unaware of his approaching nemesis. (He didn’t even know Ben-Yaw-Mean existed.)
“Carson Mastick, I enjoyed your band’s performance at the Critchers’ Labor Day get-together,” Ben-Yaw-Mean said, sticking his hand out. “Benjamin Gaward.” (Weird, he pronounced it normally.) Carson waited a second, deciding, before he took the hand and shook it. “And this is my friend Steven Paulson, from the Cascade. I told him of the peaceful protest you’re planning.” Carson snapped his eyes at both Marie and me. Funny, I noted that he did it better than either Marie or me. “No, he can be trusted. I’d stake my name on it.”
“How do I know you can be trusted?” Carson said. “We don’t know each other.”
“Well, you know me!” Marie said, snapping her eyes right back.
“I know that name,” he added, to Paulson. “You’re the guy who did that article on Custard’s Columbus Day thing. Didn’t mention the fucked-up wigs and headbands and feathers.”
“True,” Paulson said, handing over a card. “I thought the photos’d speak for themselves.”
“Pictures never speak for themselves,” Carson said. “Know who Edward Curtis was?”
“I do, as a matter of fact. I had college elective. History of American Photography.”
“Is this really the moment for a pop quiz in the history of photography?” Lewis asked.
“You look around. Some of us look like Curtis’s Vanishing Indians, but we aren’t all the same, and now’s the day to stand up for ourselves and be recognized.” I was surprised Carson himself knew who Curtis was, but all kinds of people thought wrong things about me, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by anyone’s secrets. “Anyone look? Sign still there?”
“Still there,” Ben-Yaw-Mean said.
“If you can get a picture, I’ll run it,” Paulson said. “To go with the ones I take. I can report on it, but a story’s different if readers see the sign. Like when northerners saw civil rights coverage of Whites Only drinking fountains. Made them understand that segregation wasn’t, you know, all lynchings and lunatics in white sheets. It was everywhere.”
“So take a picture,” Lewis said. We weren’t easily convinced.
“If I walk in with my camera out, that sign’s gonna disappear before I can get a shot.”
“Lend us your camera,” Lewis added. Bold for him. “We won’t steal it.”
“Cascade employees only.” He scanned the lot, to see if anyone had brought cameras. “And I’d become part of your plans, which I can’t. My job’s reporting on action, not becoming a part of it.” All four of us pfft’d simultaneously, and Ben-Yaw-Mean looked crushed. “It’s true. If I don’t do objective journalism, my editor could kill the story.”
A few ChameleIndian guys came up, laughing. Through their open sweatshirts, Carson’s Dog Street Devils T-shirts peeked out, the little devil with a Mohawk and breechcloth.
“Got you
r caps?” Carson asked. Each revealed one stuffed into a jacket. Most were old, grease- and sweat-stained caps, John Deere giveaways or from “Cap Night” at the stock car races.
“All right, you guys go in, and tell those other Skinjuns to wait until I stand at that front window. Then they should come. I told them already, but remind them. It’ll be better this way.”
“Wait,” Marie said, and the guys turned to her. “Yeah, you guys. Come here.” Ben-Yaw-Mean unlocked the Trabant’s trunk. Inside, she had grocery bags filled with trucker caps. Each had PROPERTY OF THE INDIANS on the front. It had become a Rez fad to buy anything printed with PROPERTY OF THE INDIANS on it, even though the actual “Indians” was a baseball team from Cleveland with a ridiculous exaggerated Indian face as a mascot. Marie passed her caps out, a few each to deliver to others, and told them to keep the hats hidden until the right moment. They smiled, admiring the caps.
Each cap had beautiful beadwork around the brim, lovely waves of purple to lavender to white—the colors of our treaty wampum belts. As the beads neared the facing, they grew like vines, framing the silk-screen logo, connecting at the top, a beaded version of our Sky World image. The simple deep dome had a little plant sprout coming out of the center, each with a flourish I’d never seen before. It was only right. Those curls represented the tree of knowledge in the world we’d come from, tumbling into this less perfect place. (I totally thought I might steal that idea for when I did the finishing touches on matching Conceptual Pieces I was making for Jim as a Christmas present, featuring the back covers of Lennon’s Mind Games and Imagine.)
“These are gorgeous! Amazing!” I said, reaching into one of the bags. “Who did these?”
“I did, you little bitchlette,” Marie said, snapping her eyes at me this time.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” I said softly. “I meant … well, you always hated beadwork.”
“No, you and Ma always hated my beadwork. Once you ditched us, I could show what I was doing. Without Ma second-guessing my color and pattern choices.” Our mom had always praised my beadwork by slamming Marie’s. Hers wasn’t bad, just less adventurous.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I really didn’t mean that. I was just … shocked. I didn’t know you could do this. That’s all.” If we were on a TV show, we might hug here, but that was definitely not the Indian sister way of doing things. “I wanna put one of these on.” I looked into the bags, and they were all amazing. “Whose patterns are these? Yours?” I rubbed my fingers along the beaded brims, the work tight and even. It would hold up for years, never snagging or sagging.
“Mm-hmm. My own,” she said, a shy smile opening across her face, like the brides in TV movies. “Developed whenever Ma took breaks, at least in the beginning. If she said Dark Deanna things, I’d have a hard time coming up with the perfect designs.”
“Wait, have you taken pictures? Before these guys walk off with them?”
“I made sure of that,” Ben-Yaw-Mean said. “I have a pretty nice camera.”
“Who are you again?” Carson asked, admiring Marie’s work too. “You were at Artie’s?”
“He’s my friend,” Marie said. “And don’t even give me that look, Carson. You have older friends.” She was passing Ben-Yaw-Mean off as an older friend. Interesting. Maybe one day I’d be able to do the same with Jim. Yeah, Ghost Marvin said inside my skull.
“How’d you make so many?” I asked.
“I had a little help,” she said, smiling at Ben-Yaw-Mean, the least likely beadworker on earth. I was afraid to look, to see if I could tell the difference. My sister had made what all beadworkers hope for: her Signature Item. The guys taking the caps tucked them carefully into the hooded sweatshirts Carson had asked them to wear, clearly loving the Honor Gift.
“Carson?” She held one especially for him. She’d used tiny seed beads to make his Mohawk-wearing devil on the front, and she’d clipped little horns on the sides.
“Thanks. Nyah-wheh. I’m gonna put it in the Chevelle, okay?” He handed the cap to Lewis, who slid it gently into his jacket. “I feel like I have to wear this one.” He reached into his own hooded sweatshirt and pulled out the original cap, the one that was the reason we were here.
“Is that such a good idea?” I asked.
“Look at those people in the park, on that picnic bench?” Carson pointed with his lips, a Rez gesture I had yet to master. “See that blond guy with the bad haircut? That’s my brother. He chopped his hair off and bleached it to be here. He’s not going in. He’s done some seriously stupid things in the last six months, but he’s not an idiot. He said he wanted to see how I might try to finish what he’d started.”
“What he started?” Ben-Yaw-Mean said, straining his scrawny chicken neck. My eyes almost smacked Marie’s head, they popped so hard in disbelief, for just a second. She hadn’t told him, and somehow he hadn’t figured that we’d know the guy who tried to hold up Custard’s Last Stand. Everyone else was Cigar-Store Indian Faces all around.
“He’s the reason there’s a No Indians sign,” Carson said.
“Nope, that there’s bad intel,” Lewis’s uncle said. I’d forgotten he was even here. He had some strange ability to almost make himself invisible. “That owner there, he pretends that he just put up his No Indians sign after that numbnuts stunt. But it’s been there all along.” I’d never heard him speak so many words. “I knew about it. Long time ago. I just stayed away. Sometimes it’s better to just not go where you ain’t wanted. He said it’s ’cause he had trouble with drunk Indians before. Like white customers don’t come in drunk.” Juniper looked to me and to Carson. “He’s open late. It ain’t families coming in for a burger at two in the morning.”
In my head, I could still see Juniper (Albert, remember that, Magpie!) on the ground, bucking up like a horse at the Sanborn Field Day. Not exactly a graceful drunk person, but neither was that white woman rubbing up against him that night.
“You all ready?” Carson asked, and people stood up.
“Wait,” I said. “I have a camera.” I dug in my purse/beadwork bag and handed it over to Ben-Yaw-Mean. “That sign’ll disappear if I go in with it, but you can.” Marie eyed up Jim’s camera. Now you gotta tell her something about that, isn’t it? Ghost Marvin said. Where’s your head at? For not even being here, my twin sure was making his presence known. And why is it that I’m not there? he butted in. Because you didn’t bother to ask me?
“That’ll do,” Ben-Yaw-Mean said, taking it from me, as if any fifteen-year-old might be carrying around a hundred-dollar camera. He slid the strap on his shoulder under his giant trench coat, and strolled up to the building with Paulson, just two white guys out to get a burger.
“Remember,” Carson said, trailing them. “Wait until I stand up in the window, then come in. Not too fast, just like you’re here for lunch.” As he walked past ChameleIndians, they casually got out of their cars, right on cue. It looked like a normal lunch rush.
“Juniper! Lewis!” Carson’s dad came flying across the parking lot, alone. “What’s going on with this?” He held the newspaper article I’d unsuccessfully tried to hide from Lewis the night of the Turkey Swap. Carson was going to be pissed because of the subject, but if Lewis had studied it (really studied it), he’d have seen Jim in the crowd shots, sitting in a booth and yukking it up. I never asked Jim if he knew Custard, or just happened to be there. I didn’t want to know.
“Your boy’s got more balls than I thought,” Albert said, stepping up, effectively slowing him. “You can find out now, or in the papers tomorrow.” He wandered toward the building, though Carson hadn’t yet given us the signal. Others took Albert as a signal, leaving their cars.
Inside, Carson and the ChameleIndians were scattered at tables, or at the counter, waiting for their numbers to be called. They’d already ordered. The No Indians sign was still visible.
Just as we entered, the Polaroid’s flashbulb went off. Custard had been reaching for something under the counter, and sudden
ly jerked up in surprise. His stupid costume Cavalry hat popped off his head, its strap tightening against his Adam’s apple. Albert and Carson’s dad went to the counter together. Ben-Yaw-Mean watched to see if he’d gotten the picture.
“I’m a veteran,” Albert said, taking the beaded cap from his jacket and putting it on. He looked down at the No Indians sign. Custard knew something was going on but hadn’t figured out what. He hadn’t slid the sign off. All the Indians put their beaded caps on. “My friend here’s another veteran,” he said, gesturing to Carson’s dad. He also didn’t know what was going on, but Carson, suddenly, from behind him, slid the original beaded cap onto his dad’s head. Lewis passed the custom cap to Carson. “We appreciate your honoring us. I’d like a Big Bighorn.”
“That, um, offer,” Custard stuttered, “it was only good”—he glanced quickly at the clock above the exit—“until two. It was for lunch. Sorry about that.” He swiped the counter with a cleaning rag, knocking the sign from visibility.
“I don’t see that anywhere, General Custard,” Albert said calmly. Some guys who’d been eating and watching this unfold came up and stood close behind Albert.
“There some problem, sir?” one of them asked, looking at Custard.
“Just trying to accept the invitation of recognizing my service,” Albert said. The puffy olive-green jacket over his sweatshirt had his name on the chest, block letters, not the cursive on Jim’s shirt name patches. “Like you.” The veteran customers were silent, unsure if they should side with another actual veteran or the man in the ridiculous Cavalry costume.
“We’re done serving,” Custard said, emphatically, then shouted to his employees. “Shut the fryers and grill down! We’re closing early today in honor of our veterans!” He then turned back to Albert. “Sorry. See this sign?” he said, pointing to one permanently mounted on the wall. “I’ll read it, in case you can’t. We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone,” he said, pressing his finger hard on the counter. “This is a private business establishment. I have the right—”
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