Give Me Some Truth Page 7

  “You still talking about that? Just go!” he said. Indeed, I hadn’t yet gone to Custard’s Last Stand since I’d last suggested it. It would be safer if I went by myself, since I was way more of a ChameleIndian than Lewis. Standing among Indians, I look like another Indian, but I was also ambiguous enough looking to pass safely for most of the local white variants. “What’s the big deal?” Lewis asked, standing still, like he was frozen by the idea of making that phone call. I shrugged.

  “Fine!” he grumbled, grabbing the phone while Zach droned on about repairs.

  “They’re calling me back,” Lewis said, lugging his guitar to rescue me. “Let’s practice outside. I can hear the phone from the steps. We practicing for The Bug’s?” I nodded, a little guilty.

  “Well, you know the kind of lame stuff The Bug’s gonna want us to play,” I said, doing a quick run-through of “Jambalaya,” which everyone at The Bug’s place called “Goodbye Joe,” after its opening lyric. “But let’s try something. You know the song by heart, isn’t it?”

  “What do you think?” he said, giving a decent, slightly slower copy of what I’d played.

  “Okay, so how good are you at keeping time?”

  “Decent,” he said, tuning a couple strings by ear. “Be better if we had a drummer, and there’s no way I’m wasting money on a metronome. I don’t even have a capo yet.”

  “Here,” I said, tossing him mine from the case-candy pocket inside the case. “Keep it.”

  “What’s the catch?” he asked. It was a nice one, brass. It was gonna be hard to shoplift a second one as nice, but worth it. And I kind of liked sometimes using my ChameleIndian qualities to lift from a store. They never watched people they thought were white as close as they watched visible Indians shopping.

  “No catch. If you learn to use it, we’ll be better prepared.” He started to clip it in place at the third fret. “Put that away for now,” I said. “Remember? I want to try something.”

  “All right, what?” He really wanted to use it, but I wanted him to know who was driving.

  “Play ‘Jambalaya’ like you were just playing, maybe a little slower. It’s more important to get the timing and notes right than it is to play fast.” He gave me that no shit, Sherlock look. “But here’s where it gets tricky. I’m gonna play some leads on top, not just the same, and not harmony in the same rhythm. We’re gonna be playing two totally different parts.”

  “Yeah, all right,” he said, but his face said something different. The old doubting Gloomis was there. Usually, that face disappeared when he played, except for those few times The Bug’s juicehead friends barged in during our lessons.

  “If you get lost, watch my foot, and I’ll watch yours. We might have better luck if we both try to keep time with each other that way.” I didn’t know if that was really true, but it wasn’t like we were going to find a drummer in the next half hour.

  “Sometimes I just play along with a record to keep time,” he said.

  “And you got a copy of The Bug playing ‘Jambalaya’ lying around here?” He shook his head, like he even had to. “That’s what we’re gonna have to play. That, and ‘Your Cheatin’ Heart,’ and ‘Cold, Cold Heart’ and all the other Sad Indians Crying in Their Beer Songs.”

  “Don’t forget ‘Kaw-Liga,’ ” he said, slapping the body of his guitar with the same fake Indian drum rhythm Hank Williams used in his song about a lonely Cigar-Store Indian.

  “The only time you see middle-aged Indian men dancing,” I said, joining him. “All right, let’s try that first. I’m gonna play the fiddle part on top of your rhythm. But …”

  “What?”

  “I’m gonna need the capo for that.”

  “Indian Giver?”

  “Funny. Come on. I’ll give it back.”

  “Honest Injun?” he said, tossing it back. We were getting back to who we were best together, a place we hadn’t been in a long, long time. Indians making fun of Indian jokes—especially the kind white people didn’t think we knew about, the kind that only happens when you’re with someone you really know.

  “I promise. Don’t I always keep my promises?” He didn’t respond and just started the opening chords, keeping good time and waiting for me to jump in. I clipped the capo on and tried a few different places of the fretboard ’til I found a complementary key. Our first run-through was iffy, but mostly because of me. It was hard to play jamming leads and watch his foot at the same time. We both cracked up when I hit a whole bar of sour notes, losing my place. By the second run-through, I had a better sense and we got through most of it before the phone rang. We stopped and I gave him a look like, Answer it, you idiot!

  There was only one ring. “Okay, they’re interested,” he said, like I didn’t already know the Rez’s current version of smoke signals. There were no charges if your party didn’t pick up, so a lot of Rez phone calls made were purposefully never answered. One ring: Yes. Two: No. And three: Maybe. It was like a super-primitive Magic 8 Ball. Try Again Later sometimes came up.

  “Going out!” Lewis shouted into the screen door to no one in particular. Zach was in the living room, watching TV and practicing cradling, keeping up on his MVP status. “Won’t be home ’til late.” Good. He thought we were going to the movies. It was possible we might be late, but there was no guarantee. The time would be up to those sisters. Maybe we would be late.

  At Maggi’s shack, the girls piled in the backseat. They both had their hair up and used plain hair clips to do it. They also, by luck, weren’t wearing anything signifying Indians Here! No feathers on their T-shirts, no beadwork earrings, no big-ass turquoise rings. Turquoise wasn’t even part of Indian life up here, traditionally. But recently, a bunch of people had started wearing turquoise and silver rings or wristbands, or other stuff from Indians around the country. It was almost more common to see turquoise than beadwork barrettes.

  As we drove, Lewis and Maggi yacked about these people they worked with, about as uninteresting as someone telling you their dreams. When I’d catch Marie’s face in the rearview mirror, she looked blank and dreamy, like she was studying the far ends of the fields. I felt almost like a chauffeur, like I wasn’t even a part of this get-together, just hauling these three around. I might have been pissed if it wasn’t useful for them to not notice we were heading to Lockport. I’d been counting on Lewis thinking we were going to Lockport’s drive-in movies instead of the closer one and I figured these girls would just be glad to get out of their Shack.

  “What are we doing here?” Marie asked, suddenly aware that I was driving us somewhere specific. I pulled into the parking lot of Custard’s Last Stand, trying to find a spot. Business was booming.

  “You don’t like ice cream?” I asked, getting out. Lewis and I locked eyes through the open door. He knew now what was up.

  “You said we were going to the drive-in,” Marie said. I looked at Lewis again quickly. He realized, as I did, that these sisters were out of the Eee-ogg loop. They hadn’t shed their City-Skin Skins, so they had no way of knowing we were entering a crime scene.

  “This is a drive-in. A drive-in restaurant. You city girls don’t know what that is?”

  “Marie just had her heart set on the movies,” Maggi said. “We haven’t ever been.”

  “You haven’t ever been to the movies? Even Broke-Ass Gloomis here gets to the flicks occasionally, particularly if there’s a chance for some boob shots across the screen.”

  “Spare me,” Maggi said, ignoring the tease-bait. “Haven’t ever been to the drive-in movies. A little hard to do when your family hasn’t ever owned a car. When our folks borrow a car, the double feature isn’t exactly a priority.”

  “Well, let’s get ice cream,” I said. “If they got a paper here, we can see what’s playing.”

  “I already know, and it’s something I’ve been dying to see,” Marie said.

  “All right, whatever,” I said. “Ice cream first.” If she started campaigning about a specific movie, she was closer to
winning the negotiations, so I cut that out immediately.

  “Yeah, I could use a Slurpee,” Lewis said, finally opening the passenger door, tipping the scales to my preferences, but only at the last minute. He’d been letting me know that I might control whether we go to the movies or not, but I wasn’t entirely driving this car. He was probably still pissed too about the change of plans for the Fourth.

  “Those things are so gross,” Maggi said, getting out of the car. “They leave your tongue blue.”

  “Only matters if you’re doing something else with it after,” I said, joining them as they walked over. They hissed, the least encouraging version of a laugh, and only grudgingly. Noted. They still weren’t really among us. Even the prudiest Protestant Rez girls would laugh a little, a nervous signal that I’d gotten under their skins like a sliver. If you acted straight-up offended, you were inviting more comments.

  Walking through the doors, I scoped out the inside of Custard’s Last Stand. What had I expected? I couldn’t believe this sad-ass place had brought my brother down. My brother, the unstoppable force of my growing-up life, who slammed anyone from the Rez from bothering me because they’d have him to deal with. All I saw here was an old man with a bad haircut and waxed mustache behind the counter, grinning at customers and all the support of their business.

  We hung back inside the restaurant, deciding. An obnoxious group of kids wandered in, streaming past us like we were invisible. Not exactly what you saw in “teen movies,” but they strutted enough to suggest they were probably Lockport’s football team and cheerleader squad. They sat at a table near the counter and joked while a family gathered their order.

  I was here because I’d wanted to see if there was backlash to what the asshole in the Cavalry costume had said on TV. On this night, the place was packed. No loss at all. I’d seen all I needed—we could skip this and still make the first feature of whatever Marie was antsy about. And if we’d turned and left, things might have been different. But then one of the football player–cheerleader couples got up and placed their order.

  “Hey, General,” the guy said, “how about a chocolate dip vanilla frozen custard?”

  “And for the young lady?” General Custard asked, literally lifting his Cavalry hat in a courtesy greeting, twirling a corner of his waxy mustache, like a cartoon bad guy. Maybe Snidely Whiplash, that villain from “Dudley Do-Right.” The place had gotten quiet, like the room had been waiting. Even those who didn’t seem to know were suddenly aware that the noise level had dropped off.

  “She’ll have a cherry dip,” the guy said, dropping cash on the counter.

  “What is she, mute?” Maggi mumbled under her breath. A few people around us heard her, and Lewis nudged her subtly—we were deep out of our territory.

  “Now you know we don’t serve that right now,” the General said, with a wacky new swagger that being out of cherry ice cream dip didn’t seem to warrant.

  “Oh, and why’s that?” the football player said, saying the lines he was supposed to, hitting the beats so obvious like he was one of “the chorus” kids in high school plays. The ones too clumsy to be trusted with real lines. As he said it, grinning, I saw a poster on the wall featuring the real General Custer, outnumbered, but somehow killing all the Indians coming up to attack him. Mounted next to it, laminated, was the newspaper article about the General and his brave stand against the “alleged” Indian robber. Did newspapers think the word “alleged” really allowed doubt in anyone’s mind, or was it just one of those Cover-Your-Legal-Ass words?

  “Well, you know, can’t be too careful these days. They ain’t caught the guy who tried to rob me of my livelihood, so he’s still out there. ’Til they catch ’im, we don’t serve anything with a red skin. Not … even … ice cream,” the General said, tapping a finger on the counter with each word. A bunch of people laughed, on cue, like this had been staged for our benefit.

  “What if Joe Theismann came in here right now?” some family dad shouted, grinning, from a far booth. His wife patted his arm in a Take-It-Easy-Now way, but she was still smiling too. Who the hell was Joe Theismann?

  “He could come in,” the General said, “long’s he took his Washington jacket off first. Then he’s just an ordinary football legend, and not a Redskin.” Most of the room laughed again. A few puzzled faces dotted the crowd. Maybe tourists on their way to Niagara Falls?

  Other than the three friends who’d walked in with me, this was a room packed with people as vanilla as the ice cream being pumped into cones. If there were any more of us, we would have been noticed, since they were more obviously Indian, but we were a small enough group that we could have been mistaken for tan Italian kids. I told myself that, anyway. I was more relieved that we had each, on our own, decided to go ChameleIndians instead of sporting Full Rez gear. I was thankful for every beaded barrette, feather T-shirt, and chunk of turquoise left home, as around us kids smiled and laughed those crazy laughs you get when you can’t believe your luck. Somehow, your parents took you out again for ice cream. It was probably going to be known for years as the Summer of Ice Cream in some families. Just then, I realized why parents, almost in unison, were turning to look every time the bell above the door tinkled.

  “You wanna get out of here?” Lewis asked, always himself.

  “No,” I said, stepping closer to the counter. “I thought you wanted a Slushee, or whatever they’re called here. Looks like … a Brain Freeze?”

  “I don’t need it,” he said, but followed behind me, not leaving me up at the counter alone behind that group. The football guy ordered something else for the girl and the counter staff was working through the crowd at the three open registers. “Let’s just go.”

  “Help you?” a young woman asked from the second register.

  “Lewis?” I said, and cocked my head. I wanted the General to wait on me. I was going to ask for strawberry. There was no way he had cut out one-third of his Neapolitan for his Ass-Face idea of keeping all the redskins out. The brand he sold advertised “real chunks.”

  “I’m good,” Lewis said, turning and leaving, as if he’d come all this way only to decide at the last minute he hadn’t wanted anything after all.

  “Me too,” Maggi said. They had moved up next to us. “Saving my money. I’ll spend it somewhere else.” Marie didn’t even bother to comment as she turned and followed them out.

  “Whatever,” the counter girl said. “Just you, then? What’ll it be?” I heard the bell tinkle behind me. Out of nowhere, “Ten Little Indians” started playing in my head, and not the version most white people know, but the original, the one a lot of Indians know by heart. In the original, the ten little Indians: broke their necks, got Jesus, got drunk, got syphilis, caught fire, or were out-and-out shot. The last one hanged himself. Was that what I was doing here? Offering General Custard and this roomful of supporting customers the rope? No matter what I did, it wasn’t going to change the opinions of anyone in the room that moment.

  “Nothing, I guess,” I said, joining the others. We silently got in the Chevelle. My stomach felt like I’d been shot. Shot by my own inability to do anything when it counted. At the intersection that would take us to the Rez or up to the movie drive-in, Maggi spoke.

  “That was sooo screwed up.” She didn’t lay the blame at my feet for not doing anything, which was just fine, since my own brain was handling that. Maybe I could have used a Brain Freeze. “But we don’t have to let them ruin our night.” When the light turned green, I kept straight.

  Eventually we saw the neon of the Transit, announcing its double feature in letters hung over a white backlit sheet of plastic. A weird double bill of something I liked and something I didn’t. “I’m fine with this,” I said. “But I don’t picture you being all that interested in Fame.”

  “Doesn’t everyone want to live forever?” Marie said, and then added, “besides, better than sitting home, ain’t it?” She was trying hard to sound casual. She might as well have been wearing a perfume
called Desperation. I thought of my home, silently agreed with her, and pulled in.

  It was still light enough when we got through the gate that only a few cars were in place. In late June, the only time it was warm enough to choose the drive-in movies, the sun refused to go down at a reasonable hour. It was never below the horizon before nine.

  “Pull up there,” Marie said, pointing to the first row, near the Kiddie-Land playground, where a bunch of kids were dirtying up their pajamas.

  “You wanna go on the monkey bars?” I asked, watching a few boys push girls on the merry-go-round, spinning it faster. Their joy was seeing which girl might puke or get thrown off.

  “I don’t know,” Marie said, flicking the lever to get Lewis to move. He opened the door without saying anything. “Maybe. Maybe those boys will behave better if a grown-up steps up.”

  “Where are you gonna find a grown-up?” I asked. Marie stuck out her tongue. “Very grown-up of you,” I added, and all four of us laughed, one of those tension release bursts.

  “Any other grown-ups here?” she asked, heading toward the playground.

  “Sure,” Lewis said. “I’m out here anyway.” Always hedging his bets. He couldn’t admit that he wanted to go with her, even as he clung like a magnet.

  Maggi hopped up front as those two glided past the merry-go-round, where the boys did start to behave. Marie climbed smoothly to the top of the monkey bars, and Lewis followed, occasionally slipping in those no-tread Beatle boots he still wore though they were ten years out of date. Where did he even get them? Some Time-Machine Shop?

  “What d’you suppose they’re talking about?” I asked Maggi. Lewis was rambling. Marie looked toward the snack bar and bathrooms, in that same dreamy way she’d watched the fields.

  Maggi hesitated. She had something she’d wanted to say and changed her mind, before opening her mouth. “Probably going over what they should have said, just brave now that we’re away. You know, in the dark, no one can even tell we’re darker than most of the people here.”