Richard Whiteheart Beads, I’ve thought so often, foe or friend? I decided on the first because he cost me everything I had. I did manage to keep my life, but aside from that—my clothes, my savings, and even, yes, my wife, Sweetheart Calico. My Antelope Girl. Gone. Due to Whiteheart.
Now you’ll say to yourself there is no human on this earth with power of that magnitude. None. You wouldn’t believe it surely if you did meet him. He has a handsome, bland, forgettable face. Forgettable unless of course he has ripped out your heart. So me, I remember his face just fine.
SOME THINGS HAPPEN easy, and you feel like they were meant to be. And some things, oh god, they come so hard. The party we attended together, put on by the regional waste collection association, that was the easy part that led to the impossible.
I am standing before the salads and cheeses and deli meat with Richard Whiteheart Beads. We start loading our plates. While we are selecting food, he tells me about yet a newer truck he is thinking of buying—he’s always thinking of what he can acquire. This truck, it is just another example of Whiteheart’s imaginary surround. I know that. But I listen as though I believe in its pinstripes and refurbished engine, its Thirstbuster cup holders.
“Wish I could get an automatic sunroof, too,” Whiteheart Beads is saying. “Then you could travel with the wind in your hair.”
“What hair?”
I’m an Indian with a buzz cut now. I got it when she left the first time. I cut my hair for sorrow. She left again. More sorrow. And again. Yet shorter. Anyway, now that she’s back my hair says to her, I hope, what I have reformed myself to believe. Plain living. Hard work. The simple life, unadorned, ridding the world of waste. “People You Can Count On.” My new motto in garbage management. My belief.
“You should grow it out again. Long. Women love it.”
Whiteheart Beads is referring to his own ponytail, a serious thick rope reaching halfway down his suit-jacket back. We, the two of us, present a very different image and I must admit that his is probably the more selling look in terms of women. And for sure, since from our association raffle he has won two Appreciation Top Prize all-expense-paid tickets to Maui, a fact revealed shortly after the soda pop stops flowing at this lunch, his ponytail might bring good luck.
We mill around. We eat more. Used to be us Indians had nothing to throw away—we used it all up to the last scrap. Now we have a lot of casino trash, of course, and used diapers, disposable and yet eternal, like the rest of the country. Keep this up and we’ll all one day be a landfill of diapers, living as adults right on top of our own baby shit. Makes sense to me. Of course, our main business is that we deal with EPA staff. Richard aims to be the first Native-owned waste disposal company in the whole U.S. He’s already proud of it. Proud of our imaginary management expertise and good old-fashioned ability to haul shit. Not to mention stabilize it. Let’s not talk about carpet.
A cake is wheeled in and it is shaped like a collection vehicle with bright colors of thick frosting, the lard and sugar kind, heart-stopping artery paste.
“You want ’em?”
Whiteheart holds the tickets out casually in the lucky presentation envelope. I take the envelope: pictures of windsurfing Barbies and Kens, a couple of sea turtles winging through the gloom. Native Hawaiians dressed in flowers, holding torches, paddling a huge wooden canoe.
“Right,” I say, reluctant to hand the envelope back. I notice it’s not transferable, his name is filled in the blanks.
Whiteheart waves his hands at me, fanning out his fingers.
“Keep ’em. Keep. My wedding present.”
“Wedding?” My heart jumps.
“Or pretend wedding honeymoon only. It’s up to you.”
Whiteheart looks at me and shrugs, very modest, as though any gratitude will just embarrass him, as though it makes him very nervous, which I notice he has been all along, that day, through the cheese and crackers, fruit, cold meats, the cake. He’s been looking over his shoulder, staring into corners, behaving in this distracted and jumpy fashion I know so well. Woman trouble.
“Whiteheart, Whiteheart my friend.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “Who is she? You can tell me.”
His smile snaps across his face like a banner pulled tight.
“Not a woman. Not a woman. You take those tickets, Klaus. You can borrow my ID. You have a good time—hey, I mean it.”
Then, with surprisingly little fuss or bother, Whiteheart exits through a side door, disappears almost. Unlike him until the eleventh hour.
NEXT THING I KNOW, my sweetheart and me are getting ready for the trip. Maui. Glorious. Tropical. Hotel on the beach. We decide to go immediately in case Whiteheart’s mind changes or he comes along, a thing he is fond of doing on our dates. I was always the one who minded those lopsided occasions worse than Sweetheart. I think back on that now. I should have known from the beginning, but love blinded me the way it does. She probably would have rather been with Whiteheart even then! But no, no. Don’t get ahead of the next event.
It all happens bang right out of the gates. These guys. Two guys at the airport looking us over in that special way I am familiar with from getting kicked out of the army. Big guys. In suits. Four words to cause concern. Big guys in suits. I’ll never look at life the same.
We check in.
Apparently there is some sort of seating arrangement that goes with these tickets, and it involves my wife and I split up in separate seats. Not only that, but the middle row seats.
“Hey, this can’t be right. We’re together, on our honeymoon,” I tell the check-in personnel—exotic-looking woman, nails to here.
She chews her lip and fiddles with the keyboard, scowls at what blips up on the screen, and then looks at us with a blank, closed expression. Lots of purple eye shadow.
“I can’t do a thing about it.” Her declaration is such that I don’t even think to argue. She stamps our tickets, asks us if anyone had given us anything to carry on board the plane, waves us on.
“We’ll switch once we’re on the plane,” I say to my lady love, reassuring her. “Someone will be glad to change places with a couple newlyweds.”
I like your faith in human nature, her look tells me. I am proud of her pessimism, read it as an answer. And she is right about those guys. One of them sits next to each of us. I ask, politely, lying. “We’re newlyweds. Our seats got screwed up. Would one of you fellows mind switching?”
Like asking a favor of a set of bowling balls. These guys are muscle-bound and thick of neck, ponytailed like Whiteheart. One with a gold ring in the chunky lobe of his ear. The seatmate I address is the color of a Hereford, too, reddish and whitish. Dull eyes of a slab of meat. And you know what it’s like in the middle seat of an airplane anyway, that stuffed-in-a-cat-carrier feeling, claustrophobic. I am directly behind my love and to take my mind off my panic, I watch with longing the only part of her that I can see—top of her head and dark hair ponytailed in something I’ve heard called a scrunchie, a purple satin cloth band thing that bobs and slides up and down as she nervously mimics the flight attendant’s demonstration.
It concerns me, her sitting next to that guy.
Quite apart from the weirdness in the first place, she’s that sort of taut-bodied, fine-boned woman who arouses instant lust. From the back, especially, one of her most attractive angles. She has a sloping deer-haunch bottom. I am glad it is pressed against the seat. Her mouth now that her tooth is broken always looks as though she’s just bit into a sweet tart candy, pursed together like her scrunchie. When she smiles, though, it looks real witchy. I find her broken tooth something to adore, though I admit it is not to every man’s taste. Anyway, what I’m trying to say, politely, is that her front side, grinning, though lovely to me, is not her most attractive to the less discerning. I hoped she wouldn’t have to rise, say, to visit the bathroom, putting that lovely rear of hers within a handsbreadth of that ape.
No chance of that, I later find.
I was in perfect agon
y, she communicates, slumping against me once we have deplaned, and do you think they would so much as let me stir? Pretended to speak another sign language, or not understand me. I ended up pointing you know where and hissing. I wince. They didn’t get it. She shrugs. Pretended not to. What’s going on?
This is at the car rental place, in Maui herself, where we find ourselves waiting a mere ten hours after boarding that plane. We are standing in the patient headlights of those guys in suits.
“Something odd about those guys,” I mutter, tired, fed by a prescient insight. “Something that has to do with Whiteheart.”
Sweetheart always perks up when his name drops from my lips. She peers at me now through her tattered hair. Whiteheart. These burly types in suits. I keep not getting it even as we drive through the booming night air, light and sugary, blowing a pale salt through the windows of the car. They are going along the same road, it appears. I still don’t get it when they make the turnoff, directly behind us. When they park, next space. When they emerge just as we do and form an escort phalanx around us like Roman guards. Then, as we march into the huge waterfall-running Bird of Paradise lounge and check-in desk, I do get it. They’re going to kill us. They’re assassins.
ONCE I UNDERSTAND THAT, I’m okay. My mind is clear.
The hallways of this big elaborate jungle hotel lobby contrast with the long white light tunnels to the stacks of rooms. Walking toward our number we are of course accompanied off the elevator by the big guys in suits, whom I am tired of seeing at every turn. So tired of it all, in fact, so clear in my read, that without thinking or caring about the consequences I confront them.
I whirl, annoyed to the point where I do not have fear. I face them with stony resistance. They sweep right past, whereas I thought they’d halt, we’d speak, have words. No words. At least an exchange where I could ask who on earth they thought I was—a man worth pursuing and killing? How come?
“Hey”—I take on the smaller, bullnecked one—“what’s the rush?”
Both stop and look, eyes like marbles.
“You’re sent to kill, I know,” I say, amiable. “Obvious. So why not enjoy yourself first?”
“We’re not here to hurt you,” says the shorter one after a pause. “It’s nothing like that.”
The bigger one laughs. “Worse.”
My heart thumps. My voice comes out scratchy and small.
“IRS?”
“Not exactly. We’re here because of dumping practices. You’re part of a major sweep. It’s okay to tell you, we just got the word.”
“Might as well do the honors,” says the big guy.
“You’re under arrest.” It is the smaller one who shows his badge.
“You have to say his name,” the larger guy prompts, underneath his breath.
“Oh yeah,” says the newer cop, officer, whatever.
“Whiteheart. Richard Whiteheart.”
“Beads.”
“No! I’m not him!” A sudden wave of relief gushes through me. I start to laugh, to explain. “He gave these tickets to me for my honeymoon. He sent us here, made us a gift, changed our lives.”
“Oh, right.” They both grin little tight shark smiles and remind me that I’m on an island. We’ll leave in the morning. They’ll accompany me to the airport.
“Really, though. I’m not Whiteheart. Look.”
I take out my wallet, open it, slip my license from the interior of its pocket, and to my complete sincere suddenly remembering shock I find that I am carrying the ID pictures of Whiteheart—he gave them to me, of course, to present for the tickets. We look enough alike, I guess, being both the real thing Anishinaabe men.
“Wait,” I say, digging for the real me, which I can’t find. Where is it and where am I and worst of all who?
SO THAT IS ABOUT the extent of our honeymoon, me and Sweetheart. I decide, since we’ve got one night in paradise, to make the most of it. I purchase my babe mai tais in a big plastic cup. We go down in the elevator to the tile whirlpool hot tub, a hidden glade unit surrounded by flowers. Of course, the big guys follow.
We get in, her and me. She’s wearing a suit covered with blue hibiscus flowers. Something I bought her back in Gakaabikaang. And oh man, but is it ever good, this whirlpool bath of heat and chlorine. The hot jets rumble up and down my spine and the presence of my lady is all but too much for me. I’ll never forget this, never, I think, her face in the rushing blue lights. Her hair in smooth snakes and curlicues floating and drifting on the surface of the medicinal waters. The booze, which I suck down in order to enjoy the present moment, disremember the past, meet the stupid future, both knocks me down and buoys me up. The night progresses and the heat intensifies. Of course, there is a certain restraining factor in the presence of the gorilla.
“You have to sit there in that suit?” I say at last to the big boy in the shadows. “How come you don’t just hop in here?”
“Yeah, wish I could.”
“Why don’t you guys pretend not to catch me for a while and stay here, I mean, hang out and absorb some rays. Snorkel. Beachcomb. Hot tub. Swim.”
“Oh, shut the fuck up,” he says, but in a wistful tone.
MY DEAR ONE and me stay up all night, and I tell you it is a night to remember. A night I won’t forget. Sensations abound that haunt me even now in the underpasses and the park undergrowth and old abandoned boat shacks of Gakaabikaang. There is something very pure and old that happens when we’re on, together, moving like we’re running over distances, floating like swift clouds. The next morning, breakfast, and by nine o’clock we’re hustled off. We’re boarding. We’re gone. It’s like we dreamed the night. I can’t tell you with what a sense of desolation and purpose I look down on that green beauty and blue sea from on high.
Maybe I know then, and maybe I’m just starting to understand, that life will always be like this around Richard Whiteheart. One minute high in Maui and the next minute yanked from bliss. I’m heading back now to tell my story before the judge, and I don’t even know what my story is, though I’m certain it involves waste carpet. I decide, right then, as we pass into a cloud, whatever else happens I won’t take the blame I can sense waiting at the terminal. No, that will be Richard. I won’t pay. Will not be held responsible. I’ll rat. I’ll speak. Things get dumped, terrible poisons in deep old wells. Or barns. Nothing’s endless, though. Every place has limits. And everybody.
Chapter 9
The Deer Husband
The Autumn Rose Dress
The air is pink and golden, smelling of fresh rain. The girls’ canvas high-top shoes soak through as they run over wet grass to the time tunnels, the monkey bars, the fenced plain of deer. Early fall. The late roses are blooming, their petals flimsy, trembling, floppy silk and tight furled centers. They see a woman in an autumn rose dress just like their mother’s. She is walking across the rose garden with a man. With Frank, of course. The girls see that the woman is their mother. Rozin. They are with their father, Richard, because he has been bullied into taking them somewhere, anywhere. They grab him by the wrist, bring him to the rose beds. They point across the grass to make him understand that it is Rozin. He returns their excitement with a calm gaze, chin tipped down. His eyes clouded and hard.
“No, that isn’t her.”
“Look!” The girls pull on his sleeves.
“No”—he speaks indifferently—“that isn’t your mother. I know she looks like your mother.”
“She is! She does!”
“I know she does.”
“But Daddy”—they are together in this now, persuading him—“she has the same dress.”
“A lot of women bought that same dress.” He speaks with deliberate and now forceful gravity. “Like I said, that’s not her.”
It is only when the two walking people get close enough for the girls to clearly see her face, laughter fading in their mouths, that they decide, as she bends to the other man, touching his chest with the flat of her hand, that their father is right. They
are looking at some other woman whose face, alight and radiant and still with anticipation, they have never seen before.
CALLY AND DEANNA turn away from their father and away from that woman who looks like their mother. They begin to slap each other’s hands in a complex, nimble patty-cake.
I don’t wanna go to Hollywood
No more, more, more.
There’s a big fat Michael Jackson
At my door, door, door.
He grabbed me by the hips
And made me kiss his lips.
I don’t wanna go to Hollywood
No more, more, more.
Shame on you!
Then they laugh hysterically and do the rhyme over and over all the way home and keep it up until Richard thinks he’ll lose his mind.
Love and Relocation
Get them off that land! Away from one another. Split apart those families just getting to know one another after boarding school. Relocation is the main reason fewer Indians now live on reservations than in cities—like Klaus, like his cousin Frank, like Rozin, and like Richard Whiteheart Beads, whose mind is a bright rubber-band ball twisted of bewildered jealousy.
He keeps taking the colored bands off the ball, his emotions, and shooting them into space. Green fury, white disbelief, yellow hurt, purple rage, brown embarrassment. Also, he gets served with papers. Right after he returns from the park, two men come into the yard. The dog doesn’t even bark. It only laughs. The men are there to serve him with papers. Not divorce papers, yet at least! These papers are a court summons. If he does not appear in court he will be arrested. The legal paper servers wear gray suits. They always wear gray suits. No ties. Maybe they think the person who accepts the papers will reach out and grab them by the tie. Do they carry mace? Do they carry weapons? Do they carry tissues or handkerchiefs for people to cry into?