Yesterday, she had brought home seeds and some tiny, droopy marigolds from the grocery store. They were in a bin marked FREE. This was her vision. There would be colorful bursts of flowers beside the door to their house instead of a junked bicycle and rusted scooter that could not be used by a kid on a gravel road. Those things, she had hauled back into the woods.
The dirt, though, was not like the dirt at Maggie’s house. It was filled with tiny rocks and the color was gray. The water just turned it to soup.
Dirt’s dirt, right?
Josette sat back on her heels.
She put the seeds in, gingerly pulled the marigolds from their sectioned plastic pot. She set each one gently into a hole and sifted the gray dust from beneath the eaves over the roots. She watered everything, nearly washing the plants away until she learned to trickle the water from the bucket. She leaned back on her heels again.
Grow, little flowers, grow.
She loved the scent of them, pungent and warm. She heard Hollis’s car from a long way off, struggling toward the house. The engine was plaintive, but patient with the slight hill. Soon he pulled up in the driveway, got out.
Hey, he said.
Hey, she said back.
What’s that?
Oh, just making a garden, said Josette. Thought I’d brighten things up.
He admired it from every angle. He praised the marigolds. He didn’t tell her that the first frost would kill them off and they wouldn’t come back the second year. Or that planting seeds was useless in the fall. But he wondered how it was she didn’t know that. Why hadn’t she picked up on these pieces of knowledge in her life? The air was warming, but the spindly plants with their leaves yellowing already were doomed.
So, he said when she brushed herself off and stood and looked at him.
So what’s there to eat?
Is there any soup left?
They walked inside and rifled through the refrigerator, lifted the tops off stove pots, found the hidden cookies, leftover bannock. Josette smelled intensely of something that made Hollis hungry. He tried to make a sandwich, but there wasn’t any mayonnaise. Josette toasted some bannock in the iron skillet. They sat down to eat.
Hollis sprinkled a spoon of sugar on his bannock. Josette tried to chat.
This old sugar bowl, you know? It belonged to this house from way back. My great-great-et-cetera-grandpa from olden times used to keep a key in it.
Although Hollis already knew about the no-handle sugar bowl, he said nothing. Josette kept talking.
It was something from the first LaRose. She lived here when it was still a cabin-shack. All we have of hers is this little sugar bowl, I guess, except some letters and records. Grandma’s got those.
Your family goes way back, huh.
Josette looked at Hollis and because of the way he said this, in a softened voice, staring at her with a peculiar serious regard, she remembered what Snow had said about Hollis liking her. Which was disturbing. A stormy sense of this moment’s weird potential gripped her and she screeched, making him jump.
Everybody’s family goes way back! Fuckin A. Back to the future, man.
She began to laugh with what she thought of as a dangerous sexy growl, and he looked at her in wonder.
Old Story 1
THE OLD PEOPLE were parked around the room in folding chairs and wheelchairs. LaRose’s namesake grandmother, the fourth LaRose, was frying frybread. She lifted each golden pillow of dough from fat and set it in a nest of paper towels. Emmaline put the squares on plates and handed them to each elder. The boy LaRose brought around the butter, the chokecherry jelly. He set out the coffee mugs: the Tribal College mug, the Up Shit Creek Without a Paddle mug, the scratched casino mug, and the brand-new casino mug with the slot-machine fruits. The coffee-machine coffee was still dripping into the glass pot. LaRose watched it. He was pudging out a little before he shot up another inch. Malvern Sangrait squinted at him and nodded each time he did something.
Oh that boy, oh that boy, she whispered. He’s made of good ingredients. Maybe, after all, your Emmaline stepped out on Landreaux.
Shut up, bad lady, said Mrs. Peace.
The last few pleasant years with Sam Eagleboy had taken none of the meanness out of Malvern. She watched Mrs. Peace tong the frybread out and tried not to say anything about her technique. Still, other words popped from her mouth.
Is that your jelly or your daughter’s jelly?
We put it up together, said Emmaline.
How come you ain’t living with your mother? Is it he, Landreaux, against it? How come your mother ain’t living in her own house?
You asked me that a hundred times, said Mrs. Peace, and I told you I like my habits. Like living here, alone except for you and your mean mouth.
Ignatia wheeled in with her tank of oxygen.
God save the queen, said Malvern.
Naanan, said Ignatia, holding up her tiny claw hand for LaRose to pretend to slap.
Ignatia’s face glowed like a young person’s when she decided to smile.
I got a good story for you, she said to LaRose. In the middle of the night I remembered all the pieces. This story came off my own grandmother, too, maybe when I was your age. That long ago. I forgot all about this story until the other night.
Let’s hear you say it then, said Malvern, pouting, jealous.
I can’t, said Ignatia with a proud little wag of her hand.
Why not? Malvern leaned close, eyed her narrowly.
Ignatia drew herself up, tucked her chin to deliver the teaching.
There is no snow on the earth. The legless beings do not yet sleep.
Ooooo, you sound like an old-time Indian, you, said Malvern. Her eyes lighted with malice. Nothing was worse than being called out on sacred tradition by another elder.
You know we do wait until snow’s deep on the ground, said Mrs. Webid.
I do know that, said Malvern, enraged now. It was me who originally remembered that rule and Ignatia who tried to break that rule. The beings who might bring our stories to the lowest levels of the earth, to the underwater lions and the giant snakes and other evil beings, they have to be froze in the ground, sleeping.
There’s one more piece of frybread left, said Emmaline.
Let her have it, the one who tells the stories out of season, said Ignatia, pursing her angry lips at Malvern.
Gawiin memwech, said Malvern. Let’s give it to the one who tried to steal my husbands, all six of them, one right after the other one. She tried to snatch away the fathers of my children by jiggling her stuffs at them! For shame!
They never saw nothing they didn’t want to see. Ignatia gave a choking snarl. You were so mean you scared them limp. They couldn’t take it. They swarmed after me.
Giiwanimo!
Don’t you call me liar. Your pants are smoking!
Emmaline cut the piece of frybread in half and slathered it with butter and jelly. She put a piece in each woman’s hand. The antagonists gnawed off bits, glowering and guttering, and for a moment it looked like they might soften. Then Malvern blurted.
Giiwanimo! Giin! Your underpants are burning! Hot pussy, you, at this age. For shame!
Ignatia threw her buttered bread at Malvern and it stuck to her breast, right at about her nipple. She looked down and snorted.
Here, let me help you, my darling, said Sam Eagleboy. He lifted the bit of bread off, then spit on his handkerchief and scrubbed slavishly at her bosom. Malvern pretended to bat his hands away.
Sam automatically popped the frybread in his mouth.
Sam ate the whiteman’s food! Mrs. Webid leaned excitedly toward Malvern. He must love you pretty bad, eh?
A man who will do that will do anything, said Ignatia. I should know. Her face screwed into a wink.
NIGHT SHIFT? YES, I believe . . . I am certain. I will be. Quite happy with those hours, said Romeo, nearly dumbstruck with excitement.
Sterling Chance had a round, worn, dignified face. His hands were calm betw
een the stacks of papers on his desk.
You are working out real good here, Romeo. Don’t always get to see that. We don’t just clean and repair stuff, you know, we are kind of the guiding force around here. If we don’t do our job, nobody can do a damn thing to fix people, right?
So far, Romeo had tinkered with and revved up an emergency generator. He had hot-wired the ambulance. He had gently broken into file cabinets and even an office when nurses had forgotten their keys. He had squeezed a breathing pump for a kid with asthma during a blackout. He had figured out stuck windows, coaxed fluorescence out of touchy bulbs, unclogged toilets, and dehairballed showers. All without uttering one single swear word that could be heard outside the sanctum of his head.
You’re polite, said Sterling Chance, with gravity. That also counts.
As Romeo walked out of the maintenance office, his prospects expanded.
Not only would he not be alone, at home, at night, which had gotten tedious, but certainly there would be only sleepy supervision at the hospital. Certainly the rules would relax. During the first week of work, he found that he was right. All around Romeo, over the upside-down hours, there was talk. Gossip ruled the night shift. Not mean gossip, like at the Elders Lodge, just valuable updates. You had to talk to stay awake. And you had to move around to stay awake, too, so Romeo might as well do some work. He continued to normalize servile behavior in order to get close to many conversations—any of them might be useful. He let himself be seen polishing the floor on his hands and knees.
You know, we’ve got a floor-polishing machine, someone said to him.
Thank you, but I have my standards, he replied.
The emergency team had a little picnic table set up outside their garage door. Of course, they had life-and-death matters on their minds, but really, what careless people! Romeo had to pick up the bits of paper they crumpled, the cigarette butts of course, the candy and sandwich wrappers that blew down off their lunch. He did this even after the sun went down, as they sat beneath the floodlights. Then he had to slowly, slowly, dispose of these items. He had to smooth out and stack each piece of trash before he lowered it reverently into the bin. Romeo placed himself near the emergency team, around the emergency room, anywhere he could get near the EMT on duty or the nurses who might have a bit of information to spare, or the doctors. He blended into the hospital furniture with his mineral-colored outfits. He wore a tan turtleneck to hide the blue-black skulls around his throat. His gray stretchy jeans were the color of dirty mop water. Probably, they were women’s jeans. He didn’t care. He didn’t tell his own stories, he just encouraged others. He didn’t make himself obvious in any way. He wore black rubber sneakers he’d found abandoned on the highway. Mornings, on the way home, head brimming, he entered his disability sanctum and emptied his pockets of papers—jottings on Post-it notes, papers drawn from the trash, even copies of a few files left out overnight. He kept his notes in piles. Pocketed another box of colored thumbtacks. Kept on tacking the pertinent scribblings up on the softened drywall of his rotting walls.
From these scraps of conversation Romeo learned: There was a kind of disease where you acted drunk, but it was just your own body making alcohol. Eating food off the edge of a sharp knife had resulted in an ambulance call for Puffy Shields. A baby was born with hair all over its body. Another baby was born holding a penny that the mother had swallowed. Old Man Payoose had a son on methamphetamine. That son had stolen the old man’s money and while that boy was high had shoved a carrot up his own ass, which was what brought him to the ER. A lady whose name he tried to catch used small round lake stones to exercise her vagina. A tribal member, a roofer, had breathed several nails into his lungs and wouldn’t let the doctors take them out. There was too much salt in everything, including the air. A little girl froze to death because she couldn’t get back into the house where her mother was passed out. Although she was pronounced dead at the scene, a doctor CPR’d and warmed her blood and brought her back from the spirit world. Now the girl knew things, like that other kid, LaRose. A teenager froze to death sleeping under the porch of his father’s house. They tried, in hope, but couldn’t get that boy back. An old woman got lost taking out the garbage but she didn’t quite freeze because she buried herself underneath the snow.
But wait. Romeo mopped his way up to the door of the dispatcher’s office, where the ambulance crew sometimes did paperwork or just talked. He heard Landreaux’s name. He strained, leaned closer, held his breath and tried to make out the words.
Not the femoral, said someone.
For sure?
Not that one either.
What day was it?
A Wednesday? A Tuesday?
You coulda fooled me.
Then they started talking about the carrot again.
Romeo strained his work-weakened mind. Tried to memorize. When he had to move on, he swiftly wrote down what he’d heard on pages torn from a waiting-room magazine. Into a file folder rescued from the trash, he slipped all that he found. Possibilities. Creative possibilities. He took pride in how he organized his own reality.
MAGGIE SNEAKS INTO LaRose’s room and curls up at the end of his bed.
I think it’s going good. I think she’s happier, says Maggie.
Me too. She’s not making the cakes.
And she might take a job with Dad at Cenex. I heard them.
You gotta stay nice to her.
Are you saying . . . Maggie’s voice is low . . . are you saying she wanted to hang herself because of how mean I was?
Course not. But you were.
I was a bitch. I am a bitch. That’s what they call girls like me. Not so far, I mean, at this school. There’s bitchier bitches here. But it will happen.
LaRose sits up. No, you’re just tough. You gotta be.
Lemme show you tough!
She jumps up, bounces the bed, and smacks him with his pillow. He lunges for her and they wrestle off the bed, onto the floor. They stop laughing when their bodies thump down hard. Nola calls out. Maggie is out the door into her own room quick as a shadow.
The parents’ door creaks. Nola’s voice floats from down the hall.
Some books fell, says LaRose from his bed. It’s all right, Mom. You can sleep now. I’ll be quiet.
Maggie?
Whaaaa? Mom? She answers from her own room, pretending she’s groggy and crabby. All is quiet. Falling asleep, Maggie thinks about LaRose. She thinks about him every night. He calms her down. He is her special, her treasure, she doesn’t really know what he is—hers to love.
Suddenly he is there, at her bedside, finger at her lips. He’s never done this before.
She turns toward him.
I wanna ask you something, he says.
Okay.
Who were those boys, you know, in the other school. Whenever. Those ones who held you down. Who did that stuff?
She looks over at LaRose’s skinny boy arms and hair so thick it won’t stay down. His question makes her sick. She thought she was over it, but turns out she’s been holding a pool of slime in her body. Now it seeps from her pores, a light film. Are there tears? She wipes her face. Damn. It still gets to her. And they remember, those guys. Last year Buggy said to her, fake innocent, Hey, Ravich, you still want it? You still want it like you did before? Another time, coming down the hall toward her, Buggy had grabbed his crotch. At least he flinched when she went in for the kick.
She tells: Tyler Veddar, Curtains Peace, Brad Morrissey, Jason “Buggy” Wildstrand.
I think I’ve seen those guys, says LaRose.
Plus there is this Wildstrand sister, Braelyn, just a year above me. She’s mean, pretends she’s hot, wears a ton of makeup. Plucks her eyebrows into half hoops. I hate her. I’m so glad we changed schools. She used to give me the stink eye. The finger. For nothing! I know Buggy said something to her, told Braelyn it was my fault.
I never forgot what you said that night, says LaRose.
You didn’t? The oozy snot dries off
her. Their prying fucky fingers fly off her skin. You remember? What’d I say?
Can a saint kill?
A saint?
You meant me. Even though I’m not a saint.
LaRose, oh shit. I didn’t mean you should kill them.
Don’t worry. I’m not gonna kill them exactly, but yeah, now I’m stronger.
No, you’re not, she says. Please!
Tyler is now a high school wrestler. Curtains is ungainly and slow but a hulk. Brad Morrissey plays football. Buggy is nerveless, cruel, and very smart.
It’s over. Over! It does not affect me. Besides, they’re kind of brutal. They’re mean assholes. Promise you’re going to leave them alone.
Don’t worry. LaRose holds his voice down, modest. You know I work out with Father Travis. I have my green belt now.
Oh my god, don’t you try anything!
Ssshhhhhh.
He disappears.
Material of Time
PETER BROUGHT NOLA to his Cenex job and she began to work beside him a few days a week. She ran the registers, stocked the shelves and refrigerator cases, kept the bathrooms fiercely spotless. Not an item was out of place, all labels visible. The coffee station glowed like an altar. As she worked, Nola’s daily ration of sorrow dissipated into thousands of small items—the creamer cups, wrapped straws, adjustable candy hooks, the slushie machine and donut display case. Sometimes she stared long at the hot dog broiler turning endlessly until gold beads of sweating fat glistened on the skins of the lethal wieners. Sometimes she read and pondered the ingredients on the flimsy snack packages. When she counted the ice scrapers or replaced a shoplifted tire pressure gauge or studied the placement of magazines, it seemed that in righting the tiny things of life she was gaining control of herself, perhaps at a molecular level, for she was made up of all this junk, wasn’t she? The beef sticks, which she chewed in the car ride home, the fluffy chemical cups of French vanilla latte from the automatic dispenser. She drew an extra-large cup for herself every morning and sipped all day—the taste growing harsher, the dry acid eating at her.