The sacred silent watcher can be a statue made by drunken lumberjacks or a simple wall erected around the community garden with handprints frozen in concrete. The watcher houses the spirit of the town. Not a ghostly spirit, but the idea of one place in time that declares itself important. A meaningless object that reassures the citizens: It’s here, therefore we are.
The Geshig Elementary School takes a field trip every fall, and this one is half literal. In single-file lines that eventually morph into a group, the children are led from the back door of the school, past the playground, across a small field of grass, past the rusty merry-go-round, and to Jack’s Lumberjack Shack, a museum sustained by field trip revenue.
Jeanie walks alone with downcast eyes. Only in fourth grade and already branded the weird girl by classmates. No friends yet, and maybe not ever, she fears. She walks into the lobby of the museum last and hates every moment.
The year of Jeanie’s field trip doesn’t matter. Jeanie could be a grandmother by now. Or she could have died young, buried behind the Episcopalian church. Likewise, the year that the log cabins behind the lumberjack museum were built doesn’t truly matter. They look authentic enough to anyone born well after Geshig’s last great lumber boom. No one is going to grade the authenticity.
Still, it does bring disappointment to some when they learn the dusty old wooden shacks were actually built in the late sixties by Jack Kressenbach, who worked in one of the last lumber camps when he was a boy. These sacred relics have been here for only half of Geshig’s life.
The knowledge does not disappoint Jeanie because by now everything about school has disappointed her. She only gives the tour guide her attention because it’s something new to the typical day and she does not have to feel singled out since none of the children are allowed to talk.
The guide leads them into the first cabin. Though just revealed as replicas, there is an authentic feel to them in the eyes of Jeanie and all the children. Every inch is covered in dust, or rather a dustlike coating has been layered over the wax fruit, wooden furniture, and clothes.
Hanging on a clothesline above the woodstove is a pair of pale, dirty long johns. The kind with the jockey lines and small checkered pattern, but with a hooked end for the feet, like a child’s pajamas. Jeanie looked at the dirty pair of undergarments and felt a strange excitement and embarrassment.
Her face flushed and she ducked her head into her neck and shoulders. She wondered why none of the other kids were as embarrassed to see a man’s underclothes just hanging above for all the world to see. There was something not right here, something moving.
Through the rest of the tour, Jeanie kept her head low and tried to focus but couldn’t take her mind off those long johns. Were the dark stains real? What did the cloth feel like? What did they smell like? Each time the questions raced in her mind, she felt shame rush across her face again, but had an urge to giggle.
When she arrived home, she had an idea. A compulsion, really. She went to the laundry room in the basement and began to search through the dirty hamper. Inside she found socks, shirts, pants, her mother’s panties, her brother’s boxer shorts, her father’s briefs, and one pair of pale gray long johns, also her father’s.
She held them up to the basement light but didn’t know what she was supposed to do. They were her father’s so it felt wrong, but she wanted to take a whiff. She held them in front of her until she heard footsteps pound down the basement stairs.
“What the heck are you doing?” her older sister asked.
Jeanie dropped the pair back into the basket. “I’m trying to do laundry. I don’t have any clothes for tomorrow.”
Her older sister began to laugh. “You sure? You looked like you were playing with Dad’s long underwear.”
“Ick, not even!” Jeanie shouted. “I thought they were my pajamas.”
“Mmmhmm. Sure, little sis.” Her older sister laughed. “Just make sure to fold my stuff when you’re done.”
Immediately after getting caught, Jeanie ran into her room and hid under her covers. Scared that her sister somehow knew what she was doing. But slightly regretful that she hadn’t brought the pair with her.
The fear of getting caught prevented her from exploring her newfound passion for months, until her mother surprised her at the beginning of summer with a trip to a local Bible camp.
Jeanie was not particularly fascinated with the idea of a religious summer camp, but it would be better than sitting at home bored until school started again. And perhaps in a different setting she could make some new friends.
The first night, when the other girls in the cabin were putting on their pajamas, she had another burst of inspiration and since none of these other girls were in her school, she would have nothing to lose if they laughed at her.
“We should sneak into the boys’ cabin,” she announced just before lights out.
“Why?” one of the other girls asked.
“I’ve seen it on movies. The boys are gonna try and steal our underwear,” Jeanie said, holding back a smile. “We should do it to them first.”
Not a single girl joined her, but for the first time Jeanie did not feel uncomfortable with the stares of other children. Before, she was Jeanie the Weird Girl and the eyes were mean, but now she was looked on in admiration. Her cabinmates watched her step out into the night like a heroine taking flight.
Not fifty feet away from the cabin, Jeanie was caught by a young camp counselor, whose name she never learned, but whose face she would remember for a long time.
“Whoa there, little camper,” he said, while scooping her into his arms. “It’s past your bedtime.”
Jeanie said nothing as he walked her back to the cabin. She stared into his patchy scruff, his smile, and the red flannel arms that held her, and suddenly the long johns weren’t important.
As she got back into her bunk, her mind raced with thoughts of a man in red, carrying her home from the dark of the woods.
A Sandman in the Shadows
IF YOU LIVE IN this town, you’ve seen him.
He is the nightmare of the hyperactive mind that cannot stop imagining the worst, and waking does nothing to stop it. He will find those in Geshig with dreams, if he were a spider and the web, the town.
On a normal evening, a young woman, black hair, bronze skin, beautiful beyond this town’s beliefs, walks home. She has just finished an average shift at the Misi-Ziibi Pizzeria and is walking home from Main Street toward the east end. She is an ambitious woman, a dreamer who is saving up her waitressing tips to move to Fargo and attend NDSU. She will be a Bison, take courses, and play rugby.
The first step is making it home.
As soon as she passes the openness of the town’s only busy section, trees become shrouds in every yard and the robin’s-egg-blue evening sky becomes a smoky dusk from the foliage.
That’s when he lays the trap.
“Hey, do you have a cigarette?”
The voice comes from behind her, and the young woman casually turns and smiles as if nothing is wrong. There are no strangers in Geshig. Except him. No one truly knows who he is.
“I’m sorry, I . . . don’t.” As soon as the young woman sees the figure, her mood turns into the fear that all women have experienced.
The man she sees is wearing a long brown trench coat, appropriate for autumn weather, but not exactly a popular style around town. He also wears a gray plaid beret and has his hands in his coat pockets.
“Thanks anyway, miss.”
The man does not murder or rape her. The man does not steal her money. The man does nothing but walk by and pat her on the shoulder. She is too frightened to pull away and prevent him from making contact, though she wanted to.
The fear that prevented her from pulling away is her undoing. She meets a fate worse than death for people with ambition.
She is sentenced to life in Geshig. She will never make the connection, but he has taken her ambition. He has sucked it from her heart like a ring of smok
e looping back into a mouth and into tar-coated lungs.
Elsewhere in town, on another night, another year perhaps, a young and virile man is anxious for relief. He needs to empty himself in or on someone, and the first man who agrees gets into his car with no hesitation.
The riled-up man brings the other to a trail at a desolate end of town. They fuck. They do not make love, or hook up, service, mess around, or cuddle. They fuck until they are both satisfied. One is emptied and he is filled.
The man has sapped another resident of ambition, and the satisfied young man will never know why he cannot leave this silent town.
The Painted Silo
SOME SACRED SILENT GUARDIANS are true relics of the past, not replicas. The true guardian of Geshig has been romanticized only by paint. It stands higher than the replica log cabins nearby, and unlike the falseness of Jack’s Lumberjack Shack, Geshig’s guardian once had a true purpose. Octagonal in shape and painted on the bottom of each panel, there is a wooden silo in between two fenced gardens.
The images are in bright colors. One depicts an eagle holding a rose over the world and the Americas are visible. To the left is an Ojibwe medicine wheel with an eagle head and feathers hanging below. Farther left, the artist has painted a lynx or a fox, and a large pink lady’s slipper. Another image depicts two traditional Ojibwe dancers. One is a shawl dancer with a feather in her hair. The other is a male fancy dancer who appears to be riding an eagle totem. In the very center of the silo’s boarded-up door is one large and lone feather with one small medicine wheel on either side of it, like an Indian phallus in disguise.
The paint is chipping and fading away, as is the rest of the structure. Windows nailed shut and painted over are on three sides and a fourth has a door that has been boarded shut.
The silo was where the community would store wild rice during ricing season. Manoomin is the Ojibwe word for it. Traditionally told, the Ojibwe’s presence in the Great Lakes area was because a vision of seven spiritual beings told them to follow where food grows on water. Just as the Ojibwe have fallen out of their traditional lifestyle, in the late seventies the silo fell into disrepair and became a blight on the community. In the mid-nineties there was a renewed interest in the relic and it was redecorated.
On either side of the silo is a garden. One is full of vegetables, lettuce, corn, tomatoes, and peppers. The garden on the other side appears to have fallen into obscurity. An aerial view of it shows a circular pattern of lines on a mound that could be a compass or a turtle’s shell. Inside the garden only grass and weeds grow. No garden is perfect. No sacred guardian is perfect.
The guardian, were it sentient, wouldn’t want its secret revealed. Whether it’s a sacred rock from outer space, the body of a missing child, a trove of silver and gold, or just a damp, moldy space where spiders, insects, and salamanders hold dominion, no one in Geshig will ever know until the structure is crushed by a felled tree during a summer storm or by a bulldozer when the land is turned into a development project for another unneeded building. No one will truly know.
Unless, of course, the secret of the sacred silent silo after so many years of neglect was awakened by the sound of a rusty merry-go-round, and brought new life to this sleeping town.
Eleven
White People’s Ghosts
HEY SEXY LITTLE BOY. I wanna scoop you in my arms and carry you to bed. ;)
The man on the screen calls himself TractorMan. I decide to ignore the cringe-worthy comment and give him a chance.
At forty, he is fourteen years older than me but age has not mattered to me in a long time. As usual for older men, he is married—to a woman—and wants to revisit an old passion.
Haven’t had it in so long, cutie, he writes.
Oh? How long?
Years. ;) You got a place we can do it?
I can host. I live in Half Lake.
Too far. I can’t drive there. :( :(
That should be the end of it. But Shannon has not messaged me for over a week. I have a feeling this time he is gone for good. And right now, it seems my hands work faster than my head.
I know a place in Geshig. If you don’t mind doing it in a car.
I prefer it!! ;) Love fucking boys in my truck.
Yet another warning sign. In theory.
I drive to a field in the south of Geshig right as the clock strikes two a.m. The leaves have already fallen, but the mix of the darkling night and densely packed trees shows nothing to anyone who might pass by. The trail is easy to miss from the road but I know this neighborhood better than any part of town.
Near the end of the trail, there is a small clearing that stops just before a steep drop and then the cold, gray shores of Lake Anders. Already parked is a big silver pickup and a dark figure, presumably my suitor and/or murderer.
When I get into the passenger seat, the overhead lights show me that he does look like the photo on his profile. Handsome, in a farmer kind of way. Black goatee and mustache littered with silver strands, beady eyes with crow’s-feet, and once he finally takes his hat off, hair thinning just above the temples.
TractorMan’s kiss is at first sloppy but slows down as he works his hands down my body.
He is taller and heavier than me, so my body is aching and possibly bruised when he stops riding me. We catch our breath for a few minutes and then he asks if I would like to join him in the bed of his truck.
“Sure?”
There are a few thick blankets in the bed that we lie on top of while we look at the late-autumn sky.
“How did you know about this place?” His breath tickles the back of my neck when he asks.
“I grew up like a mile from here. My house is still over there but we moved.”
“Did you know no one would be here?”
“No. But no one ever was before.”
“Let’s do this again. Here. Same time.”
“I really don’t mind you coming over. Don’t have to worry about anyone finding us. I mean, I’m not worried, but ya know, just in case.”
“No.” He pulls me tighter and breathes into my ear. “People know me in Half Lake. I can’t risk being seen.”
I hold in my laughter. Another man in my life afraid of being seen. It’s my curse. I used to joke that it was a curse, but now that I’ve brought a dog back to life I’m more inclined to believe in those kinds of things.
My first boyfriend, Gordon, was an older guy, just like TractorMan, but nothing held him back. He had all the confidence needed to walk in the world with another man’s hand in his and not care who saw. But it wasn’t my hand. I dated him for half a year, told no one about him, not even my mother, and eventually we broke up because of that. I didn’t want to but I did nothing to stop it from happening.
Now the only men who seem to want me are shadow men who can barely fuck with their eyes open.
Even though the night wind is cold on my exposed skin, I fall asleep wrapped in TractorMan’s arms, feeling his warm breath on my neck. There are no images in the dream, just the feeling of a man holding me. But it’s not the one in the truck. It’s Shannon. The only man I want, and he’s not even one of the four men I’ve slept with since he left me at the cabin.
TractorMan’s body shudders and we both wake up. “Fuck, what time is it?” He checks his phone and his mouth puffs out a sigh of relief. “I guess we should go.”
I leave the clearing without making any definitive plans with TractorMan. At home, I check the app. His profile has disappeared from the grid. I’m relieved, because I’m sick of finding older men who say they’re tops and then either deliver a poor, soft showing or prefer the bottom side of gay life. Good riddance, TractorMan, and good luck with your wife.
THE PHONE VIBRATES. A dead boy texts. Do you respond?
In the middle of the night, I wake to a text from the number 000-000-0000 that reads Marion. Come to the chapel.
When I wake in the morning the message is gone.
“Fine,” I groan. In the bed next to me, Ba
sil wakes, wags his tail, and puts his front paw right in my face. I cringe as his nails scrape just beneath my eyes. I need to get them trimmed.
“Do you wanna come with or no?” Basil jumps out of bed, circles around to my side, and taps his feet on the floor. Hunger. “Nah, probably not. Dogs are sacred or something. You better stay here, boy.”
The first companion to the Original Man of Ojibwe myth was a dog. Somehow that makes dogs too sacred to be at things like powwows, so I assume it’s the same for a half-Indian church.
I lay down a few of the pads I used to train him as a pup last summer and fill up his food and water dishes. I turn on the TV to some innocuous PBS show to keep some noise and images for him to focus on if he gets lonely, and then I leave.
The morning is dusted with encroaching November frost and my car takes about ten minutes to warm up and clear off. While I wait I pointlessly look at my texts and apps again for messages from him. He’s by now made it clear he doesn’t want to talk, and I’ve had the self-control for once to not blow up his phone, but the urge hasn’t gone away.
The Gizhay Manido Chapel is named after the Ojibwe phrase for the Christian God, gizhe-manidoo, instead of Gichi-Manidoo, the original Creator (or Creatrix) of our lore. When the white people arrived I assume whoever came up with gizhe-manidoo wanted to differentiate their version of God with an equivalent phrase. If I’m not mistaken it means kind or loving God, which is kind of ironic considering what the priests did to Ojibwe people.
The chapel happens to be just a block from the elementary school park where all this nonsense started. It’s a Saturday so the door is probably locked and I’m wasting my time. Still, I walk up to the front door, grab the faded gold handle, and turn.
Locked.
“Ah don’t make me break in, Kayden.” Luckily no one is around to see the exact moment I start to lose my mind. “Meet me halfway, here.”
Right after I say the words, the handle clicks and turns on its own. The door opens slowly, and at the end of the sanctuary I see a lit candle. “Thanks,” I say as I walk down between the pews. They are varnished with a wood-burned pattern of a simple leaf. Each armrest has an animal head carved into the end, and the entire vibe of the place feels like new-agey Indian ideas. A beaded floral blanket is spread above the front of the church with a large wooden crucifix hanging in the middle.
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