Indian Country Noir (Akashic Noir) (12 page)

With Shana by my side, I feel my anger start to drain and I
can talk to my boys again. "Skennen means peace. And she:kon
means still. So it means `Do you still have the Great Peace?'
Are you all right? Are we still friends?" It means more than
that. It's asking if they're still part of the tribe, if they're okay
not just in their bodies, but in their minds and spirits, but I'm
trying to keep it simple. Shana's right. It's the perfect way to
greet my boys, instead of calling them Thing One and Thing
Two and beating up their grandmother. Thank God Shana's
here.

Something flickers in Jake's eyes before he says, "We don't
do any of that Indian stuff." He looks to his grandmother for
approval.

Somehow, it hurts even more that I thought I was getting
through to him. It's like a meat hook in my chest.

Tom stares from me to his brother to his grandmother. He
doesn't know what to do.

Mrs. Saunders does. "That's right, Jake. You know that
if your mother hadn't gotten mixed up with any of that stuff,
she'd be alive and taking care of you today."

That stuff, That Indian stuff is me. Their father.

So that's what she's been doing. Poisoning them against
me and making them hate themselves and their weak, dead
mother.

I know this. I know this like I know which way is east
even when I wake up after a bender. I'm a sorry excuse for an Indian and maybe even for a human being, but I know people.
I know evil.

"Tohsa sasa'nikon:hren," says Shana. Don't forget, she is saying. And I know what she means. Don't forget yourself. Don't
forget you are on probation. Don't let the woman rile you up
even as she's stealing your children away.

But I am riled. I've spent most of my twenty-five years
hating myself and I don't want my boys sucked into the same
rigged game. I stand up straight. I keep my gaze on Jake and
Tom. "I'm Indian. You guys are Indian too." Mrs. Saunders
makes a noise, but I talk over her. "You may not think that's a
good thing, and maybe it's not. People either think you want
a handout or they want you to teach them some great big
secret New Age woo-woo bull-" I catch myself just in time
"-pucky, and they think you get everything for free. But we
founded this place and we're not going anywhere. We're Mohawks." This time Shana makes a noise. She calls its Kanien-
kehaka, which means People of the Flint, cause Mohawk
means "man-eater," but I don't have time to explain that to
the boys. "We're tough. Some people say we're the most stubborn tribe around."

Tom's got his forehead puckered like he can't figure out
what I'm saying, but he wants to. And I feel a flicker of interest, or at least not hostility, from Jake, my big boy. I smile at
him until he says, "Is that why you've got hair like Anne of
Green Gables?"

Mrs. Saunders smothers a laugh, but this time I'm ready
for it. I may not be the sharpest tool in the box, but you can't
hit me the same way twice. Not even if you're my son. "Yeah,
pretty much, only mine's nicer. I use better conditioner."

The corners of Jake's mouth twitch. "Do you really use
conditioner?"

"Only the best." I toss my braids and make a serious face,
my Indian chief statue pose. Shana giggles and Jake starts
laughing. Even Mrs. Saunders defrosts a bit. She can let me
have this role, the Indian clown part. That's the part I used to
play with Noelle too.

Tom titters. He's checking his brother and grandmother,
but he wants to join in the fun. I ache to scoop him up and
kiss his chubby little cheeks. But I keep smiling through my
pain. "Now. Why don't you all come out with me and Shana?
Tell me what you want to do. You want burgers?"

"Yeah!" Jake slaps his hands together before he remembers to look at the killjoy.

"I don't allow the boys processed meat. We have organic
beef or chicken once in a while, but we try to eat legumes and
tofu instead."

Is she for real? My eyes bug out a bit, and I see the spark
in Jake's eyes before he hides it again.

Shana says, "Well, they have salads now at McDonald's.
Would you like to come along?"

I steel myself, but after a long moment Mrs. Saunders
gives its the fish-eye and says, "Oh no. This is supposed to be
your time." She smiles a little. "Indian time."

Jake grinds his toes in the floor. He knows it's an insult,
but he doesn't know why. Just that he's ashamed.

"Right on," I say, too loud. "Indian time." And I usher the
boys into my black Buick, trying not to think about the rust
around the wheels or the cracked taillight and the bumper
held on with a rigged-up coat hook. I was proud of that coat
hook when I thought it up. Auto mechanics will hose you
when all you need are elbow grease and quick thinking. But
seeing my car through Mrs. Saunders's eyes, I feel the same
thing as Jake. Shame.

"Can we do the drive-through?" Jake asks after I pull up
to the McDonald's parking lot.

Shana and I exchange a look. I thought for sure they'd
want to play inside. "Don't you want to jump on the balls and
stuff?"

"Well, yeah, but-" He glances at my braids, and my heart
just about stops. He doesn't want to be seen with the Indian.

Shana puts her hand on mine. "We can do whatever you
want," she says. Jake relaxes in his booster seat and my throat
closes against the pain.

"Your hair is almost as long as hers."

I turn to see Jake trudging behind me. His foot slips, but he
catches himself on one knee and glares at me like it's my fault
he's wearing sneakers on a hike in October. Shana thought
fresh air would be better than McD's this time around.

Jake and I've got such a love-hate thing going on. I just
stop and say, "Yeah, it's probably longer than Shana's."

Tommy's easier. I can chase him around and he shows
me his big baby belly and I make giant raspberry kisses on it.
Shana's carrying him on her hip right now and he's looking at
the leaves, trying to touch one.

I drag my eyes away from Tommy. "Why not? What's the
big deal about my hair?"

"It looks dumb! You look like a cartoon! You should at
least, like, have a Mohawk!"

I sigh. I don't want to fight with him right now.

Shana catches up to its and sets Tommy on the ground.
He toddles over to a puddle and tries to stamp in it.

"Hey, Jake. Did you know your dad does have a Mohawk?"

He scrunches up his face. "He does not!"

"What do you think a Mohawk haircut looks like?"

He rolls his eyes. "Are you gonna tell me it's a Mohawk
because he's a Mohawk? That's lame."

She shakes her head. "For Indians, long hair is sacred.
Men and women have long hair because that's what our Creator gave to us."

"It looks okay on you." Always the poison saved for me.
"But everyone knows a Mohawk is that punk thing, you
know, where you shave the sides and the middle sticks up in
spikes."

Tommy slips and lands in the puddle on his butt. Man.
We're going to have to change him on the trail. I pick him up
and spin him around to get him to stop crying before I tackle
his change. I can still hear Shana explaining.

"That haircut was like the army haircut. Going to war
and taking someone's life was against everything the Creator,
Shonkwaiatison, taught its. So if the people had to take a life,
they'd cut off their hair. When they returned from war, they'd
let their hair grow back."

I don't look at them. I pull a clean diaper and a pair of
pants out of the diaper bag, even though Shana is way better
at changing Tommy. I don't want to break the spell.

Then Jake bursts out, "I don't care! I'd rather have the
army haircut!"

Shana laughs, and I do too. Laughing over the hurt.
Laughing while I try to pull off Tommy's play pants with him
wiggling like a minnow.

Shana says, "At least you're thinking about getting an Indian haircut now. So you wanna figure out what a puffball
mushroom is? I can see one from here!"

She's so good with him. Jake's bouncing around now. He
finds this giant puffball. It's as big as a bear paw, if a bear had a white Ontario Place dome mushroom kind of foot. And she's
explaining how it's good to eat, but you want to eat the smaller
kind because the big ones get yellow and mushy inside.

"You should only get mushrooms with me or your dad, because you could get mixed up with other ones, like the Death
Cap or Destroying Angel."

"Destroying Angel! I want that one! I'd bring it to
school!"

"No, you wouldn't. It would make you throw up and then
it would kill you."

Tommy's pants aren't so bad under his play pants. I pull the
play pants back up and let him splash in the puddles again.

I touch my hair. I don't know why I grew my hair after I
got out of jail. It just seemed like the most rebellious thing I
could do when the rest of me was heading mainstream. I've
lost jobs because of it. But I never thought it might make me
lose my son. I don't know why things are so hard between its.
I don't know how far I would go to keep him.

While I'm thinking this, Tom yelps. He's wandered away
from me to the edge of the trail and he's skidding on a fallen
branch.

I dive. Yank up on his arm. He screams like I've ripped it
out of its socket and falls in another mud puddle anyway.

Shana sprints to our side with Jake behind her yelling,
"What is it?"

Tom is bawling and trying to fight me off. I'm doing my
best, but he is damn strong for a two-year-old and it's all I
can do to hold onto him when he's muddy and slippery and
screaming.

Finally, he calms down and lets me hold him, but he's not
using his left arm. It's just hanging there.

We take him to the emergency room. Wait there for three hours. Jake gets bored. He keeps asking for stuff, so Shana
brings him magazines and candy bars and answers his nonstop questions, everything from "Why is your nose so big?"
to "You think there are any of those destroyer mushrooms
around here?"

Jake sure talks a lot for an Indian. I didn't say a word until
I was two and neither did my brothers. Maybe that's his mother's side coming out. He always talks to Shana, though. It's
like he doesn't know what to say to me, or maybe his grandma
has his head turned too far against me.

I keep holding Tom. He drinks some 7-Up and wanders
a bit, touching magazines and toys with his right arm, but he
mostly just wants to sit in my lap. I'm okay with that.

When we finally get to see the doctor, a pretty Asian woman
in glasses, she talks way too fast and I don t get most of it. She
pulls on Tommy's arm and twists it at the elbow and he gasps,
but then she's like, "Can you use it, Tommy? Wanna touch my
stethoscope?" After a minute, he reaches for Jake's toy motorcycle with his left arm. She says something about how one of
Tom's arm bones isn't grown and something about a ligament
slipping, but I don't care what except Tommy's arm is okay.

He turns to me and says, "Burger?"

When the phone rings and it's my lawyer, I know it's a problem. He sighs down the line. "What happened to your son
Thomas?"

I explain about the fall and the emergency room and how
he was fine and ate two kid's burgers afterward. But my stomach has more knots than my old golden retriever's tail.

"You have to tell me about this kind of thing."

"Why? He was okay." My heart is pounding even as I
say it.

"Because your ex's mother already has her lawyer organized on charges of physical abuse-"

"Abuse?" My parents were so screwed up after being beaten
up at residential schools, I would let my boys run me over with
a truck before I raised a hand to them.

He says more stuff, like the boys were dirty when they
came home and we feed them junk.

I can hardly talk. Shana takes the phone away from me
and scribbles notes. She's good at stuff like that.

Dumb old Fred. Dumb old Indian. Suckered by the system
again.

Before we can figure it out, Mrs. Saunders has it rigged so we
have to have "supervised visits" with my boys. We're even supposed to pay for some chaperone. We don't have the money.

"So I can't see my boys?" I ask my lawyer.

He sighs and says, "I know some supervision visitation
providers who don't charge that much. Maybe your band
council can help you out."

I press the phone against my jaw. The construction season's almost over and Shana's saving up her waitress tips for
school. I wouldn't ask her to spend more on my boys anyway.
We could hardly afford the Happy Meals, but we did it because the toys made them smile and maybe think of its a little
before they broke. I can hardly get the words out. "I don't
think so. Can't you fight this?"

"I've got a lot of cases on the go, Fred, but I'll try and
make this a priority. At least get you down to nonprofessional
supervision provider so you don't have to pay for it."

Great. I start squeezing the phone receiver so hard I imagine the plastic splintering in my fist. "How 'bout the fact that
I didn't do nothin'!"

More sighing. "I know, Fred."

Sure you will, white man. It's a real "priority" for you. I got
to do my own thing.

Shana puts up with me for the next week while I try to figure out what to do. I'm not eating, I can't sleep, I'm walking
around in the middle of the night and getting up at 6 to work.
I even try to split up a tree that fell down two years ago in
Shana's backyard. It's a messy job. I break the chain saw. I'm
pretty useless with an axe. But I'm not drinking. And I'm not
using.

"Sorry," I tell Shana when, for the first time, she wants to
have sex and I just want to crash.

"It's okay." She kisses my cheek. "Just do the dishes for the
next week and I'll forgive you."

That makes my eyes pop open. But she simply laughs and
drags the covers over me. The quilt is soft. I sleep. And Saturday morning, when I should be seeing my boys, I know what
to do instead. Go see Phil.