This Town Sleeps

by Dennis E. Staples

  Kayla pulled the boys apart by their arms and held them in place by their shirt sleeves. “That’s enough. It’s just a game, kids.”

  From across the park, another woman saw the scuffle and jogged over to Kayla. Oh shit, Kayla thought. It was Brenda Haltstorm, Jared’s mother. Kayla prepared herself for a confrontation; the Indian women of Geshig were famously vicious when it came to their children and men.

  But Brenda did not look angry. In fact, she looked sad, embarrassed, and unquestionably drunk. Kayla softened her grip on Jared’s shirt and placed it lightly over his shoulder.

  “I’m sorry,” Brenda said, trying to cover the slur. “He can get out of hand.”

  Kayla blinked and had no idea what to say to the drunken woman. It was noon on a Wednesday at a public park. Not uncommon to see day drinkers around, but rarely were they mothers out with their children. Behind her, Hazel approached with her toddler close behind her skirt.

  “Hello, Brenda,” Hazel said in a calm, almost detached voice. “Looks like the boys got a little carried away.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ve told him he has to play nice.”

  Kayla glanced at Hazel for a moment, long enough to see there was no worry in her eyes. Pity, but no worry. She patted Jared’s shoulder and urged him toward his mother. The boy stomped past her and went over to the far side of the park. He sat in the grass and began ripping up dandelions. Kayden and the other kids ran in the other direction.

  “He’s difficult,” Brenda said, her tongue tripping over the word. “I don’t know why but he’ll be fine around other kids for like an hour and then just . . .”

  “Don’t even worry about it,” Kayla said. “Mine could use a whooping or two sometimes.” She chuckled awkwardly, but still could not wrap her head around the woman’s state.

  To break the tension, Hazel picked up her son and held him out to Brenda. “Mine’s not quite a troublemaker yet.”

  “Oh for cute! He looks just like you,” Brenda said. She accepted the boy into her arms and rocked him. He didn’t cry but the unfamiliar person seemed to scare him into a wide-eyed silence. “What’s your name, little guy? How come I’ve never seen you around?” It only took the sound of her voice, despite the slur, to unfreeze his stare.

  “This is Marion. I’m sorry you haven’t met him yet. I don’t really do much outside of work,” Hazel said.

  It was then Kayla remembered that Hazel was related to the Haltstorms, the bloodline her grandfather called the disgraces of Geshig. They were no worse than other troubled families, Kayla knew from her job at the Languille Lake Human Services Department. She handled lots of welfare cases, and enough with prosecutable fraud to know there were plenty of other families that could be described as disgraceful.

  Still, sometimes they did live up to their reputation.

  Hazel put her arm around Brenda and began to walk her away from the loose gravel of the park and toward another bench. Kayla had no idea how she could be so calm with her child being held by someone who had been drinking, but some other Lafourniers weren’t beyond reservation gossip either. Not Hazel, but certainly her mother, Eunice, had—

  No, Kayla thought. That’s Grandpa talking.

  She walked over to Kayden and pulled him away from the other children. They had already begun another game of football, the previous fight forgotten easily.

  “You okay, honey?” She brushed the dirt and grass off his clothes and hair.

  “Yeah. Jared’s weak. I can take him.”

  “Stop it. You don’t need to be taking anyone. You’re lucky I don’t take you home right now.”

  “He started it.”

  “He didn’t. I saw what happened. You start playing nice.”

  “I will.” He glanced at the group waiting for him. “With them.”

  “With everyone, or you’ll never get to play ball again.”

  She sent him on his way and the game resumed. Near the edge of the park, Hazel watched Brenda and Jared leave, hopefully toward their home or somewhere safe.

  On the grass, Kayden was tackled by another boy but this time they laughed.

  The Junkman

  BRENDA HALTSTORM HAD LITTLE trouble finding someone to watch her children when she needed a break. Being a mother of three was hard work, especially with the youngest barely out of diapers and the oldest with so much energy.

  Jared had just turned ten, Natalie was six, and Tasha four. Each of their fathers had failed at the minimum job requirement: attendance. So, she raised them herself, with the occasional help from her many cousins and other family.

  Today she brought them to the home of her cousin Bert, just a couple of short blocks from their town house by the railroad. The four walked into the yard and as soon as they saw him, Jared and Natalie yelled “Bert the junkman!”

  He gave his usual nicotine-coated laugh and took them into his arms. His blue overalls had faded oil stains and his shirt was looking rather greasy and yellow instead of the original white, but the kids never minded how he looked. They loved everything about the place, from the rows of broken cars and appliances to the cheap swing set near the back door. It was always an adventure to them.

  “I’ll be back before dark,” Brenda said. “Behave for your uncle!”

  Bert brought the three children inside and the first thing he did was give them each a Tootsie Pop. Jared carefully inspected each one but couldn’t find the Indian guy on the wrappers.

  Unlike the outside of Bert’s house, inside was neat and orderly. Jared sat down on the couch and the girls sat in front of the TV. Bert changed the channel from racing cars to a cartoon. But it was a girlie show with horses and rainbows, so neither Jared nor Natalie was interested. Tasha couldn’t look away.

  “Can we play outside?” Jared asked Bert.

  “Only if you promise to stay away from the King,” Bert said. “And don’t leave the yard.”

  “Okay.”

  Jared grabbed Natalie’s hand and led her outside. First they went to the swing set, but Jared hated having to always push his sister. She wouldn’t listen to him when he tried to teach her how to swing herself so his arms got tired and it wasn’t much fun for him.

  He grabbed the rusty brown chains just above her fingers, stopped the swing, and whispered into her ear. “Let’s play under the cars!”

  She giggled but shook her head. “Mommy says we can’t.”

  “You don’t need to listen to her,” Jared said. He gripped the chains harder. “She doesn’t care what we do when she leaves.”

  He urged her off the swing and then ran for a blue-and-white truck that had concrete blocks instead of wheels. “Can’t catch me!”

  Her little footsteps followed but he was crawling underneath the truck and out from under on the other side before she reached it. Jared turned back before he crawled under the next car and saw she was still following.

  They crawled under the cars, in and out and under, but never on top so the junkman wouldn’t see them. Jared had to let her catch him sometimes otherwise she would cry and stop playing.

  After a while, he grew bored and looked to the far corner of the yard. He felt her catch up to him under a big green van and grab his ankle. “Got you!”

  “Let’s go see the King,” he whispered. He stared at the chain-link fence and smiled.

  “No! Uncle said don’t!”

  “You don’t have to listen to him either,” Jared said. “Grown-ups don’t know what they’re talking about.”

  “I don’t want to . . .”

  “I’ll protect you.” He looked around the yard and found a short and thin stick of metal. “He can’t touch us.”

  Natalie hid behind him as they walked toward the fence. Inside was a big doghouse made of plywood with red paint and a bunch of old straw. On the roof of the house was a thick black rope, and at the end of the rope was the King.

  His fur was dark gray like a storm cloud and his ears, once floppy, were cropped to look like little points. On his neck was a gold ch
oke collar that sank into the gray folds of his skin. His eyes were droopy and bright pink.

  At first the King didn’t see them but when they got within a few feet he leaped to his feet and crashed into the edge of the fence, barking and snarling right into their faces.

  Natalie screamed and ran back. Jared just laughed. He ran back and forth and the King followed him. His kennel was not large, but to Jared’s short legs the distance he ran and taunted was miles. He began to run the metal tube against the fence and further annoy the dog.

  His barks became louder, angrier. He wasn’t just a dog. He was like a werewolf. The wolf wants to kill me! Jared thought.

  In the corner of his eye he saw Bert come running around the rows of cars. In his hand was his belt, folded in half and hungry for skin. Jared ran farther to the corner of the yard, jumped onto a truck, and then over the fence.

  Bert reached the truck and screamed through the chains. “You stay away too, you little shit!”

  Jared ran toward the woods behind the train tracks. He hid behind a big oak tree and watched until he was certain the junkman wasn’t following him. He walked farther back in the woods until he found a mossy stump, wet and rotted.

  He hacked at the stump with the metal tube until it was nothing but squishy splinters, laughing, coughing, and then, finally, crying.

  Ikwe (Woman)

  KAYDEN FIRST LEARNED ABOUT papier-mâché in fourth grade, and soon began to waste his mother’s frybread flour. He mixed it with water just like his teacher told him to, and it worked. Kayla walked into the basement and saw white-powdered footsteps on the concrete and prepared to yell.

  “Play with me!” Kayden said.

  On the table was what looked to be the lid of a shoebox with a paper pillar on each end. Strips of newspaper held the pillars to the lid with the flour paste. At the top of the pillars were loops made from red construction paper, like the paper he used for the Christmas calendar he made every year.

  “What is it?” Kayla asked, less angry and more intrigued.

  “It’s a basketball court,” Kayden said. “And these are my basketballs!” In the bottom half of the shoebox were several pale orange lumps with black dots in sinuous patterns. She could still smell the Sharpie in the air.

  “What did you make these out of?”

  “I found some cotton balls in the bathroom. Then I papier-mâchéd them and colored them with this.” Kayden held up an orange highlighter.

  Kayla’s anger was nullified by the swelling of pride and amusement. For the next half hour, she and her son threw crusted highlighter basketballs across the table. She could not make a single toss into the construction-paper hoop, but Kayden made almost every one. Or perhaps she only thought they were going through.

  She had spent long hours watching Kayden throw his mini-basketball into the Fisher-Price hoop in the driveway. He had a great eye for accuracy. Already a basketball star, she thought, as her first papier-mâché ball landed her a point.

  “You need to ask Mommy’s permission next time, Kayden.” Her attempt at scolding was as soft as the cotton balls he hadn’t covered in flour. “You made a real mess down here.” She brushed a strand of his hair away from his face. He gave her his big smile and made a promise that he would forget by the time he came up for dinner.

  “I’ll clean up my messes from now on.”

  When he sat at the kitchen table, his hair was full of flour and he wore a papier-mâché mask with pointy ears.

  “Are you a puppy?” Kayla asked.

  “No! I’m Anubis! I’m the Egyptian god of mummies!”

  “I think you’d be cuter as a puppy.”

  “I am not cute, woman! I will harvest your soul!”

  Kayla stared at her son in shock. Not because of the mortality threat—by now she was used to the weird things boys said—but because of the way he’d said woman.

  It was a quick snap of the word, like it was one syllable. Wum’n. She had heard it said many times growing up, her grandpa Vin always ordering around his wife, Georgina.

  Make my dinner, woman! Hurry up and get ready, woman!

  “Kayden Vincent Kelliher.” She grabbed his mask from off his face and put it on the table. “You don’t take that tone with me. You behave. Wolf masks aren’t allowed at the dinner table.”

  “But he’s not a wolf. He’s a jackal.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You learn some respect while we eat.”

  She decided against specifically telling him not to say the word woman, so he wouldn’t think of it like a swear word. Maybe he was too young to know why she didn’t want him talking like that. Maybe there was a different way to teach him.

  When they were done eating, an idea came to her.

  “Kayden, would you like to learn how to sing and dance, like at the powwow?”

  He put on the jackal mask. “Kayden doesn’t want to dance, woman! But Anubis does!”

  “Okay. We’re going to teach you how to dance.”

  In the basement, she made him clean every inch of flour without helping him.

  SuperAmerica

  WHEN JARED WAS TWELVE, most of Brenda’s cousins could no longer stand to watch him. He was disrespectful, wild, and had no self-control. At first Brenda thought she could handle it but once while she was hungover Jared screamed in her face and she felt actual fear.

  It was so revolting and hurtful to feel scared of her own child, but it instantly gave her the idea that she knew would fix him.

  Every weekend Jared would stay with his grandmother Clara. She was a typical Indian grandmother, more tomahawk than battle-ax, and she didn’t take anyone’s shit, especially a grandson’s. The only problem was that Clara was Jared’s paternal grandmother and by default she hated Brenda.

  Asking the woman for help was justification for her attitude. But oddly enough, it improved their relationship since Clara now knew she held the moral high ground.

  So, every Friday, Brenda would now drive Jared fifteen minutes west of Geshig into Half Lake. Clara lived right behind a SuperAmerica gas station on the south end of town.

  The first time she dropped him off, she did not even stop to see if Clara was home. Jared got out of the car, slammed the door hard as he could, and glared at the back of the house.

  Clara walked out just as Brenda drove off. She was wearing pale pink shorts and a pink T-shirt with darker pink stripes. She was a tall, stout woman with a drawn face, like an English bulldog. She refused to accept her age by getting the old-lady haircut, so her salt-and-pepper strands fell just above her breasts.

  “Get inside, boy. You have dishes to do.”

  Jared smiled and walked inside. He dropped his backpack of clothes in the entryway and refused to take off his shoes. At first he tried walking straight to the couch in the living room, but he felt her hand crush his shoulder and hold him back.

  “I said dishes.”

  “I don’t give a fuck what you said, bitch.”

  She whipped him around, slapped him on the cheek, and grabbed his lower jaw. “I’m not your mom. You listen in this house. No or else. You just listen.”

  Jared took a swing at her. She caught him by the wrist, dragged him to the kitchen sink, and held him there until his face was burning and wet with tears.

  The first weekend passed without further incident. Jared struggled with what he thought about Clara. Did he respect her or fear her? Was he angry and silently plotting revenge or was he learning to behave? The next weekend, he still had no answer, but he did not feel changed. He was just glad to not be home where the girls were always screaming and his mom was always drinking.

  It was the third weekend when Jared saw Lonnie by random chance.

  After asking politely for permission to walk to the gas station and buy some candy, Jared saw his older cousin pass behind the store.

  “Hey, little man! What are you doing here?”

  Lonnie was a cousin that Jared had always liked seeing at family gatherings, but rarely did he see him anywher
e else. He looked the same as ever, with loose-fitting clothes and a black beanie.

  “I’m living with my gramma now. It’s bullshit but better than being with my bitch-ass mom.”

  Lonnie laughed. “Look at you, talking all grown-up. Pretty soon you’ll start smoking and drinking.”

  “I smoke!” Jared insisted.

  “No, you don’t. What are you, like ten?”

  “I’m twelve! Go buy me a pack of Camels and I’ll prove it to you.”

  “Ha. You’re funny, kid. I gotta go, but I’ll see you around, kay?”

  Lonnie left and Jared was tempted to follow, but instead he just bought his candy and went back to Clara’s house.

  On the fourth weekend, he found Lonnie behind the gas station again, this time with some friends. They were all Indians just like Lonnie, and they wore the same black sweaters and hats. Jared knew enough from the talk and assemblies at school to know what was going on.

  “Let me join,” he said, walking right into the crowd of much-older boys. “I wanna join.” There was laughter all around. “Whatever. I don’t need to. I’ll kick all your asses.” He had only heard rumors about how gangs initiated new members, and he wanted to impress Lonnie, so he took a chance.

  There was more laughter and a few oohs around, but Lonnie now looked serious. “You may not like her, but I got mad respect for your ma, little man, and I can’t do that to her . . . But shit, if you want to, don’t let me stop you.”

  The other boys looked at each other, then at Lonnie, and when he gave a nod of approval, they threw Jared down and began kicking him. Right away his breath was gone, his tears were flowing, and his body bruised. All but his face.

  When he finally stopped crying and was focused, only Lonnie was there. He walked Jared to his apartment, just a few blocks away.

  “You know those guys weren’t actually fighting you.” He brought him an ice pack and a cold can of beer. “They were taking it easy.” Jared drank it down easily, just like when Brenda was passed out and the fridge was his to raid.

  “I’m weak.”

  “Kids are weak. You’re too young.”

  “Lots of kids my age are in gangs.”