Wabanaki Blues (7 page)

He gently lifts my chin. “Look around you, Mona. All we've got up here is woods. Your grandfather made me realize the importance of this place. I'm on the fast track to finish college in one more year. Then, I can come back to Indian Stream for good.”

I squint my already squinty eyes, wondering if he's for real, loving the feel of his hand on my chin. “That's a pretty big sacrifice, to live here with a Yale degree. You could go anywhere.”

“Your grandparents taught me these woods would be long gone if people hadn't sacrificed to protect them.”

“You sound just like them.”

“That's because they practically raised me.” Del drops his head, as if he's said more than he meant to.

Grumps yells at the butcher. “Are you out of your mind?”

We snap our heads in his direction.

“It looks like your grandfather is getting into it with my boss over our recent price hike on bananas,” says Del. “Maybe you should distract him.”

“Hey Grumps, it's time to go!” I say, still feeling the touch of Del's hand on my chin.

Grumps breaks away from his quarrel and sidles up to the leprechaun like he's his favorite grandkid. “Morning, Del. I see you've met my big city granddaughter. As you may have noticed, Mona Lisa ain't the smiley type.”

I shrivel at hearing my middle name.

Del's eyebrows form that furry teepee shape, indicating keen fascination with this disclosure. “I was just telling Mona
Lisa
that I go to college in her home state.”

I concentrate hard on not sighing again. His voice is not only buttery; it's melted butter dripping over steamed corn on the cob. When he says “Mona Lisa,” it sounds luscious.

“We're proud of you attending Yale, Del,” says Grumps. “I know your father is glad to see you doing so well at his alma mater. Don't drop out like your ole dad.”

Grumps lowers his head exactly like Del did when he realized he'd said more than he meant to. What are they both hiding?

Del replies quickly. “You know I'll graduate, Mr. Elmwood.” He eyes Grumps admiringly, the way I'm sure I used to look at Bilki. Plus, it appears he actually
does
attend Yale.

Del's lichen-green eyes open wide, like one of Bilki's vortexes, pulling me in. Thousands of fire ants inflame my skin from head to toe. I've never been the object of anyone's stare—except when Beetle obsessed over my guitar-playing hands or my dumb cupcake-pink tee shirt. I don't know how to behave when I'm nervous, especially without Rosalita by my side. I try to remember the reactions of pretty girls like Rasima when guys checked them out. I recall her focusing on a page in
To Kill a Mockingbird
when Brick Rodman couldn't take his eyes off her. I pretend to examine my Indian legends book and continue to read a section of my bear story, subtitled “Animal Sacrifice.” Unfortunately, the subject matter reminds me of my parents' stupid bear sacrifice trip and why I'm stuck here in the first place. I slam the book shut and shove it back on the shelf.

Grumps speaks loudly enough to Del for me to overhear. “Did you know my granddaughter just finished high school? But college isn't her thing. She plans to go on tour with her music as soon as she turns eighteen, next month.

My tree bark hair falls over my cowering face. Why did Grumps tell Del I'm a musician? Why did he tell him I'm only seventeen? So much for me trying to impress my first admirer. Not only does this guy now know I'm underage and not headed for college, he can feel free to further disrespect me because I'm a musician chick.

Del's smile spreads wide, and I think I know why. I want to die of embarrassment.

I return to the register, and he punches my arm, lightly. “Hey, since you play guitar, you should hook up with my band, The Blond Bear. I could pick you up on Saturday afternoon for practice.”

Sometimes, it feels great to be wrong. His stupid red-lipsticked blond bear tee shirt finally makes sense. It's for his band. It's no stupider than my Dead Kittens tee shirt. The trouble is that I'm now mute. A smart guy, or leprechaun, or whatever he is, has invited me to his band practice. This is totally unexpected. It never occurred to me that I would run into another musician way up here, never mind one with a dream smile, teepee eyebrows, a buttery voice, and magnetic lichen eyes, who thinks I'm pretty. The trouble is that I can't squeak out a sound. What I'm feeling is a lot like what I felt on that Goliath hypercoaster in Montreal: somewhere between terrified and terrific.

Grumps rolls the grocery cart toward the exit. I have yet to reply to Del's invitation. We're leaving, and I've blown it because I'm too flustered to speak. My life can't possibly suck more.

“She'll see you Saturday afternoon,” Grumps calls back to Del, unexpectedly.

“Great!” he shouts.

I know I should be angry at Grumps for speaking
for
me. But I'm not. I'm grateful.

Once we're back in the truck, I whisper, “Thank you, Grumps.”

“My pleasure, City Gal. I know what you're going through. I had some awkward speechless moments myself, when I first met your grandmother.” His eyes drift away.

Whoa. I'm not sure what to think about his comparison of Del and me to him and Bilki. I only met this guy half an hour ago.

I start driving and try to stay focused on the road. A young moose leaps over the guardrail in front of me like a prize-winning filly, and I slow down to twenty miles an hour. A fluffy red fox skitters across the road, and I slow to fifteen. My mother's obsession with helping animal accident victims finally makes sense. Human roads are nothing more than intrusions into shared animal trails. All living creatures walked these trails together in the days before pavement. No human creature has earned a special lethal right-of-way in these woods, or anywhere.

A splash of canary-yellow sow thistles spills over the curb, as if someone has tossed a bucket of sunshine. Beside it lies a patch of wild strawberries wobbling their red heads in the wind. I hear Bilki whisper, “Strawberries are a natural love charm that Indian men give to the women they love.” I can't help noticing Grumps crank his head out the window to keep the strawberries in his rearview mirror as we pass. I find myself daydreaming about Del giving me those strawberries and swerve to avoid a ginger cottontail hopping in front of the truck. Now I'm down to ten miles per hour. We might as well be walking home.

I turn onto the still-mucky path to our cabin and stop for a moment to avoid a slinking tabby cat holding a squirming flaxen mouse between its teeth. I eye Grumps' pockets, looking for the bulging rocks he usually keeps to ward off cats. I fully expect him to toss one at the animal. But he doesn't budge. His face remains relaxed, almost devoid of wrinkles. I feel a warm rush as I realize he is content, and I have a band date for Saturday. Not to mention I just learned how to drive.

We unload our groceries, and I get busy boiling beans. They bake in the woodstove all afternoon and I'm grateful it's cool for a summer day. The beans come out of the oven candy-crunchy in their maple glaze. Grumps fries the fish outside over a fire in a cast-iron pan. It turns out crisp and delicious. This meal is a miracle, as I'm no cook. Sandwiches are usually all I make. I can't help wondering if my inveigling dead grandmother had a hand in all this.

Grumps thanks me, pats his impressive stomach, and settles into his rocking chair to read
Yankee
magazine. I bring Rosalita into my bedroom and happily bang away at James Taylor's
Steamroller Blues
. It's the most upbeat blues song I know. My world brightens with each verse.
Yes, I'm a steamroller now, baby, I'm bound to roll all over you.
I think of Del's teepee eyebrows, his lichen-green eyes, his spiked dark hair.
I'm surrounded by beauty in this room. The woodland wall mural, floor leaves, cornflower dresser, ivy covered bedposts, and ceiling dappled with constellations. This bedroom is gorgeous. Hell, my world is gorgeous. I sing my song louder.
Yes, I'm a cement mixer for you, baby, a churning urn of burning funk
. I try to simmer down, telling myself not to fall in love with a guy I've just met. But James Taylor's lyrics speak for me.
And if I can't have your love for my own, sweet child, won't be nothing left behind.

Perhaps I've fallen into one of Bilki's vortexes. Don't get me wrong; I miss Shandkaddy and the bluesy end of Hartford. But here in Indian Stream, I've found a musical guy who's perfect for me, and woods that make me feel like I'm part of them surround me. I feel closer to Bilki. The fact that one of us is living and the other dead doesn't matter.

Four

Blond Bear

I'm sporting the neon yellow George Harrison “Here Comes the Sun” tee shirt that Lizzy gave me. This shirt always seemed too loud and hopeful, until today, when it's sunny outside, eighty degrees, and I have a band date. Del steps out of a Saab as old as he is in his kick-ass black boots, wearing a tee shirt with an emerald-eyed leprechaun peering through a shower of glittering gold coins. It's a tour shirt for the band Leprechaun Gold. Seeing Del in that tee shirt is like seeing Grumps sporting a Bad Santa shirt or Mom with an Indian butter girl on her chest—redundant.

I glance back at Grumps' cabin door, painted with colorful fall leaves. I'm expecting him to burst through it, any second, to greet his favorite grandson, but the door remains shut. It's the middle of the day yet he's nowhere in sight. I wonder if he's visiting his bears.

Del lays Rosalita in the backseat atop a messy pile of papers beside an expensive-looking electric guitar with ghostly gray wings.

I step inside the vehicle and pat the dashboard. “Nice car. They don't make these anymore. Do they?”

“What you mean is that this is an
outdated
car.”

I want to tell him it's a nice car, period. But after hearing his melted butter voice again, nothing comes out.

“My dad is an amateur mechanic,” he explains. “I never know what sort of antique I'll be driving. Next time we hang out, I could be cruising a 1960s Volkswagen Beetle. So beware.”

My heart skips two beats. First, when he says, “next time we hang out,” and second, when he uses the “B” word. I wonder what Beetle and the cool kids on Lake Winnipesaukee are doing right now for fun.

He points to his guitar in the backseat. “This is Angel.”

I touch the feathery gray wings around the sound hole. “She's a work of art.” I open my guitar case and point to the mother of pearl letter “R” inlaid into the spruce body. “I call mine Rosalita.”

He touches the “R” reverently. His lichen eyes gleam. “She's a classic.”

I lean in to examine the papers in his backseat. They appear to be poetry or song lyrics.

Del catches me checking out his stuff. “As you can see, I write the words to songs but I can't read or write music. I never took lessons, and we didn't get Internet service up here for online lessons until this year.”

The haphazard guitar lessons I received from Mom's graduate students suddenly feel like a gift. I endeavor to say something positive. “Paul McCartney doesn't read music either. Did you know that?”

He makes that curious teepee expression with his eyebrows, only it's fiercer than usual, like he's transformed into a clurichaun—one of those nasty leprechauns that nobody talks about. Del grinds his teeth like there's something he can't chew through. “But I
should
have learned.” His voice turns from butter to gristle. “My dad knows how to read music, and he never taught me.” He slams the car into gear and we bounce along the bumpy road.

“Can't your mom talk to him about it?”

“She passed away.”

He forgets to slow down as we pass over a bump and my head hits the roof. “I'm sorry to hear that,” I say, realizing this may explain why my grandparents practically raised him. “I know what you mean about having a difficult dad. When mine thinks too hard, his eyeballs roll up into his head and turn white.” I lean into him and offer my best imitation of Dad's weird eye habit. It's something I've had years to perfect, trying it out on Lizzy.

Del closes his mouth super-tight, trying not to laugh. His face has relaxed. We pass the cluster of four birches, the one woodsy landmark I know around here.

“Speaking of bad dads,” I say. “The only reason my dad left me here this summer was so he could study bear sacrifice in Russia.”

“Bear sacrifice?” Del's expression becomes momentarily grave, but he recovers. “Does having crazy dads make us crazy too?”

“Maybe.” I revel in our shared drama and, especially, the word “us.”

“Here we are,” Del points at the building in front of us. “Home sweet home.”

We roll into a semicircular gravel driveway in front of a huge contemporary barn-style house with exterior boards stained in streaks of pumpkin, cherry, and golden custard—like fall pies. My stomach tumbles from skipping breakfast. But I don't care. I'm speechless over the colors and design of this place. It's hard to believe the owner is a troubled man.

An old motorcycle tire, studded with nailheads forming the word “Welcome,” serves as a wreath for the front door. Del drives into an attached garage that's twice the size of our Hartford apartment. There's nothing amateurish about his dad's car repair hobby. One of the three garage bays has a hydraulic lift. Racks of tires, engines, welding tanks, and hand tools line the back wall. I'm guessing I've found Grump's secret truck mechanic.

A trendy chandelier overhead seems to be made from discarded Harley-Davidson parts. This kind of biker chic would fetch big money in Hartford. Del is smiling again; he can tell I'm impressed. He throws open the door connecting the garage to the main barn-house. We enter a huge open room that echoes the fall palette of the exterior, only in brighter shades of tiger lily, goldenrod, and trillium red.

Del lays an arm across my shoulder and points overhead. “My dad painted these.”

The feel of his arm unsteadies me. I follow his finger to the ceiling and stare, gaga, at a series of giant photos, printed on canvas and overlaid with swirling painted designs, somewhat reminiscent of Bilki's vortexes, but with very different subject matter and a dissimilar style of paint application. These are painted photographs of cityscapes, not painted scenes of woodland animals and trees. Each apartment or townhouse door has a vortex over it, made of slashed swirled lines of color, applied with a paint-dipped scalpel, like the artist is trying to cut the doors open. His paintings don't draw you in. They push you away, like concertina wire.

“Did you know your grandmother was my dad's art teacher?” he asks.

“I figured as much.”

Some of the painted photos remind me of places in downtown Hartford. Others I don't recognize. There are no people walking these streets. There is only one portrait of a human being in this entire art display. It shows a close-up of a man's face with a cityscape superimposed on his putrid green eye. The face resembles Del, only it's older and more corroded-looking. This may be the artist's self-portrait. But if his eyes represent a window to his soul, then his soul is putrefied.

Del leads me past several electrical outlets. I can't believe I forgot to bring my phone to charge. We pass a normal bathroom, which I'm dying to use. But Del pulls me forward, pointing out a wall of industrial steel racks, loaded with a painter's arsenal of color tubes, brushes, powders, and canvases.

“These art supplies were a gift from your grandmother,” he explains.

“How is it they haven't run out by now? She's been dead for years.”

“She left my dad a lifetime gift certificate for some online company in her will. Your grandmother really believed in Dad and didn't want him to have any excuse to give up.”

I'm thinking Bilki was overly generous with her gift to Del's dad, considering my grandfather's lousy living conditions. I'm stewing over this when I notice three people about my age, hooking up a sound system in a far corner of the room.

“Time for you to meet the band, City Gal.” Del emphasizes my nickname from Grumps. He must have caught me ogling the cityscapes.

He points to each member of the group and their heads pivot my way. “Mona Lisa, this is Sponge, Bear, and Scales.”

I take a moment to connect the names with the faces. Scales is the only other female in the room. She acknowledges my presence with a glower. Her round head is pasted with short rippled bleached-blond hair that reminds me of a lemon. Irritating hair clips protrude from it that say things like “Mine,” “Yours,” Now” and “Never.” She wears big hoop earrings that make me think of the pretty graffiti girl with the LOVE earrings at school. When she bends over to adjust the speaker volume, I notice she's wearing the same distressed leather shorts as the lead singer of The Dead Kittens band. Apparently, we share some musical preferences.

Then there's Bear. He is a gigantic male version of me, with shoulder-length tree bark hair, mudwood eyes and all. He's definitely Abenaki. The more I look at him, the more I'm stunned by our resemblance—in everything but size.

He raises his fist in a “red power” sign and leans down to press his cheek into mine, so we can pose as twins for a selfie, which he immediately posts to some website. “We are a beautiful pair. Ain't we, Tribal Sista?” he whispers in my ear. “Just so you know, word is all around the tribe about you being here. My dad was psyched when I told him I'd be seeing ‘Lila Elmwood's daughter' today at band practice. Him and your mom used to be tight, back in the day.” He squeezes his palms together for emphasis.

I swallow hard. “His name wouldn't happen to be Will, would it?”

“Hell no. I'm Bear Junior, and my dad is Bear Senior.”

“Papa bear and baby bear? You must have had a rough childhood.”

“Tell me about it.”

Sponge leaps forward from behind a gorgeous Mini Moog keyboard and bounces toward me with his arms flopping like a rag doll. He is a way-too-skinny dude with long dirty-blond hair shaved off on one side of his head.

“Mona Lisa,
amore mio
.” He wraps himself around me, reeking of weed.

I'm glad I don't know what he called me in Italian. I dislike him knowing my middle name.

Del turns to me, leprechaun smug. “Sponge is okay. He can turn any melody into a wall of sound in seconds. You'll see.”

“Go ahead and test me, sweet thing,” says Sponge, flipping his half-head of hair. “Play one of your lil' tunes.”

He licks the electronic keyboard like a dog lapping its water bowl. I try to give him the benefit of the doubt that this action somehow enhances the quality of his music. Meanwhile, Scales darts over to the opposite corner of the room—as far away from me as possible. She settles into a couch made from the sawed-off back of an old Ford Mustang. It's the one piece of furniture in the room designed to cozily accommodate two people but nobody joins her. She and I have become instant adversaries, thanks to the way Del keeps staring at me. Bear winks, supportively, telling me to ignore her. Only I can't do that because I sense she's a qualified music critic.

“Go ahead. Mona Lisa,” says Del, in a voice that's butterier than ever. “Show us what you've got.”

Caressing Rosalita's scrawny neck, I whisper to her, “I need your magic more than ever now, girl.” A million riffs twang inside my throbbing head. Nothing seems good enough. I finger a few bars of Beatles music and notice Scales' mouth slip into a victorious smirk. She thinks I have nothing to play but the tired old standards. Yet her smirk is kismet. It reminds me of Beetle and sparks an idea. I decide to perform the song I wrote for him called “Thunder and Lighting.” It was good enough to make the finals of Swamp Toad's Songwriting Contest. I received word my song was in the running for their big prize, via email, right before I left home. That means it has to be decent.

I stumble into my quick four and nearly knock Scales out of her Mustang seat. “I'm ready, Sponge. After I run through the first verse, jump in and show me what you've got.”

He wags his tongue like an eager bloodhound.

After two more false starts, the song itself gets me going. I wail the first verse.

Thunder and lightning fall down from the sky.

Since time began no one has ever asked why.

The crashing cymbals the big brass drum,

Just like you, baby, they're big, loud, and dumb.

Scales' smirk turns into a chuckle. She gets that this pays homage to James Taylor's sarcastic “Steamroller Blues.” I knew she understood music. She is foot-tapping by the end of the chorus. The second time around, Sponge transforms my song into a Dixieland Blues rhapsody with droning horns, twanging strings, and pounding drums. Everybody claps, feeling the rhythm. We finish with an exchange of congratulatory fist bumps. Del and Bear clap rowdily. Sponge kisses Rosalita with slurp-dog lips, and I feel myself stiffen, wiping off his saliva with my sleeve.

He places his pinky on his jagged front tooth. “We are a magnificent team. No?”

I shudder at the thought of teaming up with him and can't respond. Luckily, Bear scoops Sponge out of the way like an extra dining room chair and muscles in to hug me.

“I'm impressed, Tribal Sista!” He wraps his tree trunk arms around me.

Somehow, Bear feels like family. Knowing him makes Indian Stream seem more like home.

Scales marches forward to formally shake my hand. “Serious guitar chops, Mona. Nice melody. Hot lyrics. Your voice is, um, fair.”

First-class megabitch or not, her familiar leather shorts and the fact that we both like the same sort of lyrics—not to mention the same guy—tell me we have plenty in common.

“Scales, I'm guessing there isn't a musical note you can't hit,” I say, trying on friendly.

“True.” She wiggles her well-manicured pink fingernails high in the air and sings the clearest, cleanest, Julie Andrews' high notes that I've ever heard.

“Serious pipes,” I say with genuine admiration.

Scales releases an odd hiccup-laugh that could be interpreted as snooty, sweet, sarcastic, or all three, depending.

“She goes to Baa-ston Conservatory,” Bear says in a fake Boston accent.

Del punches Scales like a kid sister. “She's okay.”

I catch the way she licks her lips at him.

“Bear has the real talent,” says Del, hugging his buddy and ignoring Scales. “He plays drums and writes amazing melodies. I generally stick to lyrics, as you know. Neither of us do both as well as you, Mona Lisa.”