I Loved You More (26 page)

“I'm surprised you're not out there shaking your ass,” she says. “You love so much how people watch you when you shake your ass.”

Every word that Sis's lips speak, clear as a fucking bell. My chest jumps up to catch a breath and it comes out a little laugh. I'm surprised really and trying to figure out how to take this shit in.

What Margaret's just said is right on. Nothing's better than to be lost in a song and I'm dancing and maybe somewhere out there people are watching. But nobody knows that about me. Except her. Margaret's the only person.

The pain between my eyes again. Dizzy. Maybe the Return of the Cockless, Most Miserable of All. How well my big sis knows Little Ben, how predictable he is. I am amazed at how I am a child.

Shaking your ass
.

There's something mean in the way she's said it. And not just mean. Downright cruel. How her chin went up. Her empty face. In that tiny instant how her lip curled up. For a moment, I didn't even recognize her.

Her little brother, who's not at all like their father, would like nothing more than to be like their father, but has been banished from the world of men. My big sister Margaret knows this all too well. How when we were kids, that's how she got to me. I can't tell you how many times. And what this little brother does best is something their father would never fucking ever ever do. No real man, really, would ever do that with his hips. Just look at Hank.

Shake your ass
.

From over Frieda's shoulder, Hank looks down at me, gives me a wink. That guy can always make me smile. I down the margarita closest to me, set the empty glass aside, drag the next full one over the slippery wood and set it in the ring in front of me. I smash out the Marlboro. The ashtray is nasty ashes and smashed-out cigarette butts. Right next to my elbow, Margaret's
tanned elbow. Her perfect fingernails. She's pulling hard on her Virginia Slim. Her eyes are still looking right into mine.

My sister Margaret's auburn eyes. Inside in there, there it is.

Idaho.

This is what we do in Idaho.

We get drunk.

We go to truth-telling tequila land, the place in us where our dark mother dwells, and in the middle of a crowded loud bar, we set our target, we find the moment, we strike the blow.

I know I can hurt you and because I can, I will.

      
9.

Sweat lodge

THAT NEXT MORNING IN MY SISTER'S DOUBLE-WIDE, I
wake up early, get my stuff together. I don't try to be quiet. Make all the noise I have to make. Every step shakes the whole house. But Margaret doesn't wake up. My guess is that morning nothing's going to wake her up. I call a cab and by seven o'clock Hank and I are in a blue Chevy Citation,
Pocatello Taxi
on the side, black lettering curled over a red Bannock Rose, our backpacks, Hank's brown faux leather suitcase, my powder blue one in the trunk, headed for the rental car place. Hank, of course, thinks I'm fucking nuts.

“Trust me on this one, Hank,” I say. “I got to get out of here.”

HUNGOVER. A JUNE
morning in Idaho and it's already hot and way too bright. Hank and I, all the windows rolled down in our rented red-orange Ford Pinto, drive the old two-lane Highway 30 to my brother Ephraim's house in Fort Hall. Fort Hall's just a wide spot in the road on the Bannock Shoshone Indian reservation. A trading post on one side of the highway, and on the other, across the railroad tracks, low government buildings set in among the cottonwoods.

When I was a kid, my family traveled from Tyhee to Blackfoot every Sunday. Grandma and Grandpa and most all our relatives lived in Blackfoot. When we passed through Fort Hall, my mother made sure all the doors were locked. More often than not, too, we were praying the rosary. Any chance my mother
got, she prayed the rosary. Hell was such a terrible place. About the time Fort Hall rolled by outside the Buick's locked doors and rolled up windows, we were generally somewhere near the fifth and final mystery, whether it was glorious, joyful, or sorrowful – usually sorrowful, and all there was, was only ten more Hail Marys to get through and the damn thing would be over.

Turn left off the highway and a quarter of a mile on the dirt road is Ephraim's house. That morning, we could see the smoke from the fire as soon as we turned off the highway.

Ephraim lives in a beige HUD house with his granny and his mom and any other relatives who need a place to stay. He's always got the place looking good. New roof. New siding, and the addition to the back of the house for the new laundry room. The lawn mowed. A row of apple trees and a row of cherry. Raspberries and blackberries. Big weeping willow in the front yard. Birds all over the place.

Quite some drama when we drive into the yard. Clouds of dust and barking dogs chase the car, other dogs chase cats and the cats are running. I park between a dead pink Nash Rambler and a green Oldsmobile 88 on cinderblocks. Behind the Olds is the chicken coop. Behind the chicken coop, a ways out, in the middle of a bare field, is the fire pit and the fire. Ephraim's standing out there. Looks like a scarecrow with his big hat and floppy pants. When he sees us pull in, he waves, starts walking toward us.

When Hank and I open our doors, on Hank's side there's a yellow lab with three legs wanting him for lunch. On my side, two dogs, Border Collie and Austrian Shepherd mix. Between them they have two eyes. No way I'm going to move another inch.

One holler from Ephraim sends the dogs off under the Chinese Elm.

Ephraim's a big man. Got twenty pounds on me. Solid. He's wearing his straw hat he bought in Bermuda and an extra lovely blue and green flowered shirt and what looks like pajama bottoms. He's smoking his ever-present More Menthol. As he gets
closer, I notice he's wearing his Birkenstocks and socks, too, even though it's hot, because he has to be careful with his feet.

“Brother dear!” he calls out. “Welcome to the rez.”

Ephraim's nickname on the rez is Owlfeather. I'm just a little taller, not much, so we fit together well. Our arms go around each other. We turn our faces in and kiss. Ephraim's wearing his light-sensitive glasses, so I can't really see his eyes.

“You look tired,” he says. “You okay?”

“Margaritaville,” I say. “I need to sweat.”

Hank standing there looks like he doesn't know what to do. I think maybe he thinks he's supposed to kiss Ephraim, too.

“This is Hank,” I say.

Ephraim holds his hand out and Hank steps up and Ephraim takes Hank's hand, lays his other hand on top.

“Nice to meet you,” Ephraim says. “I liked your book.”

Never seen Hank blush before, but there he is in the high noon sun, Hank Christian as red as a beet.

Inside the house, the blinds are drawn and a fan's going in every room. The TV's on. Ephraim's mom, Rose, is on the sofa, a big Navaho rug with shades of gray and red spread over the sofa. She and Ephraim look so much alike. She's a nurse at the Fort Hall clinic and she's in her pink nurse's uniform on her lunch hour. On her plate is a bologna sandwich, one slice of bologna between two slices of white bread. She's drinking a Tab.

“Benny Grunewald!” she says. “We never get to see you anymore.”

“This is Hank,” I say.

“Make yourself a sandwich!” she says. “You guys must be hungry.”

In between the doorway to the bedrooms and the front door, Ephraim's grandmother's in her old rocking chair. Her hair in pin curls. On the dining room table next to her, a glass of water with her teeth in it. She's fanning herself with a paper fan, red Chinese letters and the name of a Chinese restaurant. On her shoulder's her pet monkey, Charlie Brown. He's eating a banana.

“Hi, Granny,” I say, “This is Hank.”

“You boys going to sweat today?” Granny says. “Boy it's sure going to be hot.”

In the middle of my chest, the lightbulb. Big Ben's always gung-ho for a sweat lodge. Then when it comes time, Little Ben's the one who's got to step into a hot dark hole in the afternoon. Ephraim knows how scared I can get, and when I look over at him, he takes a puff on his cigarette. His eyes look at my fear like it was just another part of the day.

THE REASON YOU
go into a sweat lodge is so you can go back to the womb. The dark, the heat, the water hissing on the rocks, the smoke; it all comes together to put you back in a place where you're naked and it's cramped and hard to breathe, so you can come out the other end with the feeling of a new beginning.

That afternoon, under the dome of cross-hatched willows covered by hides and canvas and heavy blankets, Hank and I sit, our skimpy white towels wrapped around our middles, knee to naked knee. When all the hot rocks are handed in and put in place into the fire pit, Ephraim reaches up and pulls the flap down. So sudden the pitch black. The pitch black, and then from out of the black, the sparkling pile of smoky red rocks only inches from my bare feet. An arm's length from my face.

The problem is I'm not in a womb. I'm in a pressure cooker.

At first I think the pressure cooker is my hangover, so I'm bearing down, the heat crackling down my back. I inhale deep and when I exhale, try and blow the shit out. But then it's my claustrophobia kicking in and panic starts and when panic starts, that's what it is, panic. The flickering lightbulb in the middle of my chest is a blaring fire alarm and I can't run and I'm totally fucked.

Between a rock and a hard place. We've been invited by Ephraim to participate in a Shoshone ritual and I'm trying hard to pray and be holy and respectful. I'm inside his sweat lodge, a place specifically designed to force you to confront the ghosts
inside you. And believe me, the afternoon after the morning I left my big sister's house, I have some old ghosts to confront.

Plus, I've brought Hank. Hank's never gone into a sweat lodge before and he's looking to me for what to expect. Just what I need. To be a fucking role model. And believe me, it's no consolation that Hank, his white towel now wrapped around his head, has his whole naked writhing body smashed up against mine. Both of us, our mouths eating dirt and grass, trying to get to the last bit of oxygen.

Lying there, the heat crashing down, in the dark, can't breathe, the terror. Just as I look, a big rock clunks down into the fire. A burst of heat against my face and shoulder and everything stops. Deep in my chest, my heart, an old rag doused with gas, is the fire. This time, it isn't a word
claustrophobia
, or some blind fear. This time it's an Idaho Shit Storm, and the guy without a dick at the bottom of hell is back. Little Ben The Most Miserable of All.

Terror like that, when you feel it, time can go on forever.

1972. MY FIRST
job was working as a counselor for Social Services at Idaho State University. Don't ask me why, but my boss made me advisor of the Indian Club.

Those first days on my job mostly I wanted to hide. So I gave myself the job of alphabetizing the books in the Indian Club's library. A big room in one of the oldest buildings on campus. The safest place I could find. Tall ceilings, big windows you could sit in, hardwood floors that creaked. Morning sunlight coming in. My morning cup of coffee. That's where I ran into a copy
of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
.

That particular morning, I was standing on a stepladder, putting books onto a high shelf alphabetically, my job, but the copy
of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
in my hands had taken me over. I was halfway through it, couldn't stop, and I was out of breath. There was nothing else in the world but me hunched over that book. The heartbreak of it.

A memory: on the yellow school bus number 24, when I was ten or eleven, I'd wanted to sit in a seat but the Indian woman in the seat behind was saving it for her friends. She was a big woman who always wore a long blue wool coat. Her hair in a page-boy. Big red lips. Both her hands were spread out wide across the top of the seat. She was in high school. No way in hell that woman was going to let me sit down.

“You big fat slob!”

That's what I called her, what my mother called them, Indians. Big Fat Slobs.

The woman didn't say anything back. Just gave me the evil-eye staredown.

Years later, there I am in the Indian Club Library, standing on a stepladder, lost in an old staredown,
big fat slob
on my lips, the heavy orange
book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
cuffed between my wrists and elbows – America's racism, my racism, the shock of recognition, going through my head, making my heart sore.

It took me a while to realize that a young Native American man, a big hefty guy, had walked into the room.

“Where'd you buy them pants?” the young man, Ephraim, had said.

Them pants. The famous green corduroy pants. Seventies' cut, high waist, sans-a-belt, bell bottoms. Tight at the top, loose at the bottom. No pockets on the ass.

Now when people ask me how I got so into Native American spirituality, I just tell them
green corduroy pants
.

Eight months later, it's Indian Days at Idaho State and Ephraim has his tipi set up on the quad. I am wearing my green corduroy pants. When I duck down and pass through the flap of canvas, when I stand up again, I'm in a whole different world. First time in my life in a tipi. Buckskin, beaded backrests, buffalo hides, stacks of Pendleton blankets. A fire in the fire pit. So much to look at I quit looking. The feeling I have is I am home with someone in their beautiful house.