Moccasin Square Gardens

by Richard Van Camp

  Hank shook his head and cried. I saw three of his toes poking out even farther. They were all beside themselves purple. The oxygen couldn’t reach them. I noticed how weathered and cracked his dad’s belt was. Hank wore it every single day, hoping his dad would come back—that fuckin’ cock knocker. My brother cried and cried.

  I felt horrible. I’d pulled a trigger. Worse, my mom was on her way home soon, and I’d be grounded if she saw what I’d done to Hank. The rule in our house was “No wrestling. None at all.” Not to mention illegal moves. Mom knew what was illegal because she had a crush on Ricky Steamboat.

  I got an idea.

  “Hank!” I yelled. “It’s your turn. You can do it to me. Do it. Do the Camel Clutch. Frickin’ snap my back, bro.”

  I’d said it, but I was puzzled. Why would I invite such a thing? Oh, yeah: so I wouldn’t get grounded. Plus, I was older and stronger than Hank. I’d just pretend to cry, like I’d done when I was seven and my mom broke a wooden spoon over my ass. She and I both started laughing afterwards.

  I went down Jesus Christ style. “Look! Look at me.”

  Hank wiped his eyes and looked at me.

  “Come on. Hurry! Give me the Camel Clutch, fuck dink!”

  Hank stood slowly, shakily, like Godzilla reborn. His eyes bugged. I could see the vein under his left eye, and he was still kind of purple. He started to shake. He made fists. It was only the third time I had ever seen him loaded like jack. “You want me to do it to you?” he roared. “You want me to do it to you?” His soul was a froth.

  “Fuck, yeah. Let’s see what you got, Donkey Balls.”

  He hated when I called him Donkey Balls. It dated back to a swimming lessons incident before kindergarten. I sealed my eyes shut to concentrate on what needed to happen. I had to make my reaction look Ace!

  Hank hopped on. He yanked my arm up. I heard a pop. That was my shoulder.

  I opened my eyes.

  He yanked my other arm back. Pop!

  Fuck, that hurt. Was he slapping handcuffs on me or what?

  Then he locked the move, grabbed my throat and sat down, and you know what? There is no resisting the Camel Clutch!

  I saw stars, and the pain was horrific. I could hear the snap, crackle and pop of my spine as gristle and sinew ripped. All that meat turned inside out in a blender of searing agony, with immediate bone chunks turned into blood slush. My back ribs were crunched and mangled. Hank war-ponied me and dry-humped my carcass. Out of the corner of my snake eyes, I watched my hands turn purple. My voice box froze under my tongue. It was an upside-down porno. All I could see was the bottom of his jaw as he yanked up as hard as he could. Then I saw the tunnel of light.

  Heaven is real.

  I saw pillars of fire and light.

  I saw my grandparents.

  I saw my cousin who drowned.

  I saw thousands of angels in a chorus, shaking their heads and sweeping their wings along pine-needled floors. They were giving me the ultimate northern tell-off: “Fuck, you guys are dumb. It was a Pro-D Day and you two Jabronies wasted it.”

  Classic RC stuff: nothing but judgment.

  * * *

  I came to just as my mom was dropping her work bag. She yelled, “Hank Jesse Sparrow, get off of my son! What are you two doing?”

  Oh sweet finger of Judas. Hank dropped me. I fell. He collapsed down beside me, and both of us lay there bawling our heads off. I cried out of gratitude. Cried out of relief. I couldn’t feel my left leg at first, but then the hottest, lumpiest blood-curdled meat slush start to rush back to all of the destroyed tissue.

  “You’re grounded!” Mom yelled. “Both of you! You’re not even allowed to look at each other for a month. You know the rule. No wrestling in this house, and was that an illegal move? That totally looked like an illegal move.”

  My fingers felt cold. Scary cold. Paralyzed cold. Shit! I thought about how I’d smashed Hank’s foot through the drywall after we finished watching WWF’s The Main Event one night. We got so fired up. Well, actually, I had. Now we just lay there and cried and cried and cried.

  Mom put on the water for tea and then called Hank’s mom and told her to get over here. “Listen to what your son did to my son!” She dragged the land-line phone over to my bawling mouth, and I hollered for extra effect. I was getting rug burn from all the cavorting.

  Hank was beside me, and our heads were touching. What would we do for a month without seeing each other? I let out some more sobs just thinking about it. I couldn’t talk yet, but I wanted to claw my way towards him and say, “I’m sorry, Dog Brother. I betrayed you!”

  Hank’s mom showed up and yanked him limping out the door with his jacket hanging off him. He left behind his canvas Edmonton Journal sidesack bag, the one his dad had got him from the city, and later that night I went through it. You know I did. He’d bought us a jumbo bag of Cheezies and two cans of root beer and some Pop Rocks, a.k.a. “Molar Exploders.” My second fave. There was also some Star Wars chewing gum with cards inside. Why the eff would he not have said he’d brought all the num-nums? I swore I wouldn’t dive into the stash until we were reunited, but my resolve only lasted a day, and then I went bananas.

  Shit, fuck and damn, that was a long month. We didn’t even talk at school. We did look at each other, but there was a force field we couldn’t penetrate. Hank was still so mad at me. I had a limp. For serious. My back was fucked. I could see that so was his. We were like two old geezers back from the war.

  “Hank!” I’d call.

  He’d look at me sideways and steer the long way around to his locker.

  It was a misery.

  Hank and I had bought each other Garfield calendars from the drugstore the Christmas before. I put a tiny X on mine for the day we could finally be buds again. I knew he was doing that too.

  So, a month to the day, he called me—or maybe I called him. Only the sands of time know for sure, but contact was made. Sweet Jesus. Contact was made.

  We were like two little turtles stranded on separate islands in the Pacific who looked up to see a Twin Otter flashing its brights to say it had spotted us. It was like that only better.

  Hank and I arranged to meet at the rusted elephant slide at the JBT playground. Before he got there, I was already sitting with a diamond willow switch. The clouds were pillowy white. Hank made his way through the bush out into the open. During the past month, I had filled his Edmonton Journal bag with replacement everythings. The pops were still cold from Liz’s.

  Hank, despite himself, smiled his father’s smile when he saw me. I smiled too. I diverted blood to my upper lip to amplify my admiration for the moment. It was my turn to look froggy.

  A truce.

  Fuck, did he have a limp. It was pronounced. Mine was bad, but his was so much worse.

  I pulled myself up and hobbled over to him. We hugged. “Frickin’ Camel Clutch,” he said. We snickered like I imagined horses would—we never had any up here, none that I had seen, anyways.

  I motioned that we should sit under the slide, like we always did, in the shade and the light of each other. Even in Heaven we’ll meet there, I bet.

  I gave him back his bag.

  “Sweet. You never touched it?”

  I swung my head. “Wouldn’t’ve dreamt of it.”

  He looked at me when he felt how cold the cans were.

  I shrugged.

  He popped one and handed it to me.

  I waited for him to open his, and then we chugged. We’d eat the Cheezies later, after the Star Wars cards were opened. He could have my gum.

  “Long month,” I said.

  He glanced at me and smiled. “Yeah.”

  We were like convicts just released, already scheming.

  “My grades picked up,” I offered.

  “Mine too.”

  I leaned sideways into him. “Sorry for everything.”

  He shook his head and tried to sound like his old man had. “Don’t mean nothin’.”

  “It’s f
uck all when you think about it,” I said.

  “You know,” he began, but stopped so we could listen to a grasshopper. A sweet hot summer wind enveloped us, womblike and kind.

  “Yeah?”

  “I been thinkin’,” he continued.

  “Yarp,” I said.

  “When we get older, let’s build two big log houses side by side.”

  “Mhh hmmm,” I said in my best Kermit the Frog voice.

  “We’ll build a bridge that joins the houses on the top floor, and there’ll be no doors, okay?”

  I looked at him. He was serious. Always working on plans. He was going to be an engineer. His dad had wanted to be one too, but never had the balls or the grades. I let Hank talk.

  “And what we could do is, we could have visitors whenever we wanted. Day or night.”

  I watched him. Sometimes he had nightmares, but this was good. This was a fine plan.

  “And we could have pizza parties, sleepovers, anything. Any old time. Just us.”

  I smiled. “Love it. Best plan ever.”

  I could feel the pride swell inside him. “And if we got married, our wives could move in, but they’d have to understand that what we have is more than being brothers. More than twins, even.”

  The night his dad walked out, his mom called my mom, and I was allowed to sleep over, even though it was a school night. We played Nintendo, and I pretended not to see the tears dripping down Hank’s face.

  “Go on,” I said now.

  “They’d have to understand that we were allowed to share them. We could go to the landslide, go skidooing, and we could all sleep together on one big bed.”

  Hank’s cousins were gorgeous. This could be magic. “We’ll have to get a king size,” I reasoned.

  He shrugged and smiled, proud of himself, my buddy who was so small for his age. My extra soul who had taught me how to tie my shoelaces and tell time. I put my arm around him before pushing him away. He held his pinky out. “Promise?”

  I nodded and wrapped my pinky around his. “Promise.”

  I poured half of the Pop Rocks into my mouth before handing him the box. I gurgled all robotic-like and then opened my mouth so he could hear the ocean of science and strawberry fizz. “Seal it.”

  He did the same. I could smell the chemicals roaring through the orifice of his skull. “Sealed.”

  * * *

  So, long story short, I explained all of this to Carly when she came back to the head table. She leaned in and listened. It was like the time we bought a car together and had a finance meeting after the big “We’ll take it” moment. The money guy explained things as Carly and I huddled, the heat of her scalp ruminating with mine. She’d had to break things down for me, since I did not understand the terms and conditions. This time, it was the reverse.

  I looked at Hank across the dance floor, and he smiled like a wish. He raised a glass. I turtled back in with my wife.

  Carly, bless her, let out her deepest breath, and we huddled.

  “And this is the promise you made?” she asked at the end. She had the best teeth, the sweetest breath. I couldn’t wait to snuggle after.

  I nodded. “Sorry, Babe. We sealed it with Pop Rocks.”

  My wife was used to my antics. Nine years of hilarity and foibles. She shook her head. “But he’s single. You know that, right?”

  I shook my head too. “I know, Babe. For now. He likes redheads, though.”

  She got crushes sometimes. She even told me.

  I remembered lying on the carpet that day with Hank. All the times I’d tricked him. All the no-fair Academy Awards I’d won over the years.

  Carly periscoped and looked at him again. I winced and prayed. My soul hiccuped.

  “Jesus,” she said.

  My palms hummed, like they do after you’ve fired a gun that outclassed and outreasoned you.

  “I have considered it,” she said finally, squeezing my shoulders in the rented tux with the pockets that were just for show. “This simply is not going to happen.”

  I nodded, sighed and took it like a soldier for all of us.

  I limped across the dance floor towards Hank. He raised his arms. I orangutaned Hank, and Hank do-si-doed me.

  His mom was talking to my mom.

  People started dinging their glasses.

  He was dressed in one of his fancy engineer suits, but he was still wearing the belt I’d got him when we graduated.

  “And?” he whispered.

  “No dice, fuck dink,” I said.

  “Dammmmmn,” he said. He gripped me tighter. “She thought about it, though?”

  “Maybe in the next life,” I said.

  He held the back of my neck, wrestling stance, ape stance, brother stance, and kissed the top of my head. “You know it.”

  Man Babies

  Oy! If you’re forty-five and you’re still living at home, you’re a little man baby, and shame on you! You should be cutting wood and hauling water and hunting and shovelling snow for your family and Elders. That’s the only reason you should be home. You should be cooking for your parents every single night.

  Am I the only one who’s noticed that we have an epidemic of little man babies running around? I can’t be. I refuse to be. Look at all the track pant- and hoodie-wearing Bong Generation scruffians out there. Most dads look like ex-cons now. What happened?

  I’ll tell you a good story, but, boy, I’m mad now. As soon as I said the MB words I got mad.

  Well, a friend of mine in Fort Smith—he’s a wildlife officer—he met the most beautiful woman—oh! This was it, he said: she was the reason he’d been waiting, right? He hunts, he traps, he’s a wildlife officer, right? He goes after the poachers. Anyone who wastes meat—holy man, good luck. You’ll wake up with a pillow over your face at four in the morning with a shotgun pressing your nose. No, it’s not that bad, but he’s as tough as they come.

  First time Steve saw Karen, she had just moved back to town and was out trapping with her dad. Her cheeks were flushed, she had snow frost in her hair, she was wearing beaver-lined gauntlets and had a Ski-Doo suit on. Karen’s smile just blew him away, and he asked her out for coffee in front of her father, surprising them all.

  “Go for it,” her dad said. “Steve’s a good man.”

  Steve blushed, he told me.

  Fast-forward to five dates later. Steve is just so happy now. The wait is over. Here they’re wining and dining each other, doing the grinder on the dance floor to “Love Hurts” by Nazareth at closing time at JJ’s. Everything is great, right? Even when they two-step, the crowd stops to watch, hey.

  Karen was up for anything, Steve said: always happy, a great cook, the perfect bush buddy, and so in touch with herself and straight-up sexy. She was all kinds of woman, I guess.

  The one thing, though, was her son was still staying with Karen at her house. She called him Baby. That was her boy. Dude, if your mom’s still calling you Baby at twenty-eight and you’re still living at home being an Xbox champion, looking for the fire axe in World of Warcraft, rocking your little hockey socks and your little track pants—if you’re too busy playing Nintendo to work and earn, right, we may have a situation of learned helplessness.

  And that is what the government is counting on: that our warriors will remain couch potatoes. That our languages and customs will die. That we will fade out.

  So, you know, everything was going good for Steve and his lady, but it was already on his radar about Baby and he said to Karen, “So, you know … when we move in together, you know, I hope Baby gets his own pl—”

  “Oh yeah,” she cut in. “We talked about it. Baby said he’s gonna move out. He has plans.”

  But Steve felt a worry ’cause Karen was still paying for her son’s Telus bill every month: six hundred bucks, hey! His phone bill was six hundred bucks every month. And how many times did Steve hear, “Oh, Baby needs a bit more money. Baby’s Ski-Doo went through the ice. Maybe I should get him a ne
w one.”

  “Didn’t he have insurance?”

  “He forgot to get it,” I guess Karen said.

  Steve felt fear curl up cold inside of him. But he bided his time, and then one day he said, “Okay, it’s only three weeks until we’re moving in together. How’s it going with Baby?”

  “Oh, Baby’s got it all lined up,” she said. “Everything is going okay. Don’t you worry.”

  “Okay,” Steve says.

  But then I guess Karen said something else.

  “Where is this coming from?” she asked Steve point-blank.

  “What?”

  “I’m feeling pressure from you to kick my own son out of the life I want to build with you. I really don’t like this,” she said.

  “Sorry,” Steve said. He felt himself backsliding, but he had to make his point.

  “Come on,” she said to him. “If we’re going to move in together, we need to be honest. You’re a proud Dene man. I get it. Baby never had that. You’re his first positive role model. My dream is your dream: to have him learn from you, and then we’ll send him on his way. Or, even better, once he’s learned all he can from you, he’ll get bored with coming home to us, and he’ll move out all happy and fulfilled.”

  Steve made himself nod.

  “So,” Karen said to him, “what is your greatest fear with me? Be honest.”

  Steve was scared, but he summoned up his courage. “I, uh, I don’t want to invest years of my life with someone if this isn’t forever. I may have missed the window for my own kids, but I want a life partner. I want a wife. I want to be the best husband and father for a family I can be proud of.”

  “But?”

  Shit! She was too good.

  “But I can’t be proud of a son who’ll mooch and be in the way of my dream.”

  There. He’d said it. He tiptoed his eyes in her direction. She was looking down, as if struck.

  “Well,” she said. “I need time to think about this, because me and Baby, we’re a package deal.”

  Maybe it’s a bad deal, Steve thought, but he pushed the worry away. “What is your worst fear with me?” he asked her, even though he already knew.