Crazy Horse's Girlfriend (9781940430447) (22 page)

You two are gonna listen good!

And I looked over at George whose eyes had gotten real big. Everyone was afraid of my uncle—I had been afraid of him for as long as I could remember.

Will stopped and took a drink, finishing it in one gulp.

“Then my uncle said,
Why don't you boys ever hang out with other boys?
and I looked over at George again and I shrugged 'cause I didn't want to say that it was because the other boys wouldn't hang out with us, not the other way around. All I could do was stutter,
I-I-I…
and then he yelled,
I don't want to see you two together ever again, you hear?
And he looked like he was gonna pick me up and shake me again. I wanted to say no but I was too scared. And then he said,
If I ever see you two winktes together again, I will knock the both of you out, do you understand?

‟
Then my uncle leaned in real close, his breath all nasty from that tobacco he was always chawing and he yelled,
And get girlfriends!
He turned around and walked away. George and I looked at each other. George got up and left. I watched him go down the driveway the whole way, until I couldn't see him any more. After that, I'd see him and he'd see me and we'd just look away. I thought about telling my mom… but I didn't.”

Will put his cigarette out, got up, walked through the crowd and over to the long, dark wooden bar. After he got the bartender's attention and ordered, I could see him downing a couple of shots, one after another, the short, clear glasses winking in the light, all neatly lined up on the bar.

Miguel was looking down at the table, a sad, defeated expression on his face. He pulled listlessly at his black t-shirt.

“You know, I thought he was such a nice guy when I met him,” he said and I nodded, though I wasn't sure he could see my nod with his eyes on the table. Poor bastard had really liked Will. Finally he looked up and I smiled.

“At least he opened up?” I said awkwardly.

“Girl, that shit's happened to all of us,” he said, slamming the last of his drink, the ice cubes hitting him in the mouth as he tipped the cup all the way up. He set his drink down and sighed. He looked over towards Will, who was making his way back towards us, a drink in his hand, a serious wobble in his step.

We sat there for another torturous hour, Miguel and me talking to each other about random shit, Will clearly shitfaced beyond belief. We'd tried to involve him in our conversation but it just resulted in short, angry grunts, eventually devolving into Will falling face-first on the table.

“Is he actually fucking snoring?” I asked Miguel, Will's black, greasy hair all that we could see of his head.

“Let's go,” I said, knowing that we were going to have to pull over on the way home. We tried waking Will up but it was impossible, and so we were forced to pick him up. We got him in between us and dragged him out, thin, hip white people outside looking on, one of them rolling his eyes. I could see the guy mouth, “Drunk Indian,” and another one nodding, laughing. I looked over at them with an angry-ass expression and they looked away.

“I hate when he's like this,” Miguel said. It surprised me because I didn't think they'd known each other for very long.

“When did you meet him?”

“About a month ago.”

We got him outside and I told Miguel that I'd go and get the car and he nodded and propped Will against the building as best as he could, one arm around his waist. Will moaned and Miguel pet his head reassuringly with his free hand, Will waking up just enough to slap at him.

I walked down the street, the bums holding their wilted cardboard signs up, the print running from the light rain that must have hit while we were in the bar, the cracked white and brown hands of the bums out, the neon lights shining from under the metal bars on the windows telling me about
the high life
, the buzz-hum sound of them making me feel like some kind of strange animal alive for no good reason at all walking in a city familiar and unfamiliar in the middle of the night. A white guy with a big, brambly grey beard and bloodshot eyes stumbled out of one of the liquor stores on my right and said, “Baby
please
.” I kept going, and tried not to pick my pace up, my heart hammering and my hand slipping into the pocket where I kept the little pocket knife Dad had given me for my last birthday. I shook my head and inhaled the deep, musty smell of rain soaked into city sidewalk. All I wanted was to get to the car and then home.

After what felt like an eternity, I got to the parking lot and it was wonderfully quiet and peaceful and drunk-free. I unlocked my junker, got in, pulled out and then around onto Broadway to the bar, which was only a few blocks from where we had started. I parked in front and helped Miguel get Will into the backseat. He woke up only to puke before we even got him in. I felt lucky he'd done it before we'd gotten moving. He slept most of the way, waking up occasionally to moan dramatically and mumble in Lakota. I shook my head. What a fucking waste.

Me and Miguel were quiet most of the way, each of us wrapped in our own thoughts, the rain starting and stopping again, the wipers making a quiet, rubbery rhythm. When I saw the exit sign for the Springs, I sighed with relief and thought about Julia, who'd always laughed at it, making it into
I-dah-Ho
Springs. I thought about her as we drove through town, the whole of it closed up and quiet.

I drove into the parking lot of Will's apartment and wondered if Megan was back and if she was going to give him hell, though I figured she'd see how fucking useless that was in his current state. I parked and asked Miguel if he needed help getting Will in, but Miguel said no. I told him that it was nice meeting him and he smiled sadly. He put Will's arm over his neck and Will slapped weakly at him with his free hand. They stumbled up and over to the steps that led to Will's apartment.As they were going, I thought about how cool Miguel was, and what a jerk Will was, and a shiver of anger came over me. It didn't matter.

As soon I could see that they were OK, I put the car in drive and pulled out of the parking lot. I picked up my pack of smokes that had been sitting in the passenger seat under Miguel and sighed and thought
fuck it
and lit one.

The streets on the way home were almost completely empty, though I passed a drunken walker here and there stumbling towards home and the last few Buds in the fridge until the final, pathetic, stinking collapse onto the bed. Again the feeling of anger and uselessness washed over me and I thought about Mike and about the baby and I rolled my window down and threw my cigarette forcefully out the window. I hit the steering wheel and started to cry, which only made me feel angrier and even more useless. Though I knew I wouldn't talk to him if he did, he hadn't called. I didn't know where he was and I wished that I didn't care. My appointment was coming up soon and I knew after that, I could start over if I wanted. And I did want to start over. I really did. Most of the time, though, it seemed like that was just something people said but nothing ever really changed. People were still the same fucked up, stupid, hypocritical assholes that they always were. I pulled into the driveway with my lights off, and opened and shut the car door as quietly as I could. The lights were off and I knew that I'd wake up to Mom wondering where my car had been, where I had been. I slid through the window and pulled my clothes off and got into bed, folding the covers over my body.

 

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The next week of school was a mess. Mike wasn't there, which should have been a relief of some kind, but it worried me like hell. Julia just kept avoiding me. Not that I was seeking Julia out, but she'd see me in the hallways and walk the other direction, her guilt folded over her shoulders like a powwow shawl from a dead relative. Treena would just roll her eyes and look away every time she saw me. God, Treena just did whatever Julia wanted her to do. Of course, she'd never liked me much in the first place. And Mom had glared at me and said nothing the next day after the whole Will incident, which was worse than her bitching me out. It was like she'd given up on me. And Dad was Dad, drinking and being grumpy and hiding in his office. What was ominous though was that he was being even more weird and reclusive than usual, and that generally signaled a blowout of the apocalyptic kind.

That weekend there was a powwow. I'd called Megan up to see if she was gonna go and she said yeah, and told me how much she hated Will, how she was ready to kick him out, as the money he'd given her was back, back rent and bills and when she'd asked him about whether he had any plans to pay more, he'd been a total bitch and left for two days. I told Mom that I was going up to Julia's to study and she told me that I was going to do whatever I wanted anyway.

I drove over to Megan's that Saturday, ready to try to forget everything. My appointment was in the back of my mind. And so was Jake's court date. There was so much happening that I wish wasn't happening at all.

I pulled up to Megan's apartment and when I'd made it up the stairs, I could see that she and Will had set chairs up outside and were sitting around smoking and laughing and drinking wine coolers. I wondered about what had gone down between my phone conversation and now to make them OK with one another again, but I wasn't going to ask. I sat down and grabbed a wine cooler. I figured if I just picked one up and had a few sips here and there, no one would start on questioning me. Megan was talking about being a kid on the rez in the eighties, about how had she dyed her hair pink with her dad's help.

“Girl, you'd look downright skeezy with pink hair,” Will said. I rolled my eyes and thought about what a fucking idiot Will was. Motherfucker didn't know how to quit when he was ahead.

So I said, “I don't know. Maybe she'd look cool as hell.”

“No,” Will said.

“Whatever. I looked good,” Megan said, looking at Will with her green-brown eyes slit. She took a long, hard drink of her Piña Colada wine cooler and set it down next to her on the cement. “And like I said, my dad helped me do it. He's a cool guy.”

“Sucker,” Will said.

We were quiet for a minute, drinking our wine coolers and appreciating the sun and temporary lack of responsibility, when Will turned to me and asked me if I'd ever been to a Sun Dance.

“No,” I said.

“You know, I used to do Sun Dance every year,” Will said, looking thoughtful. He ran his rough, long fingers through his greasy black hair and looked off for bit.

“I think you told me that once,” I said. “That's hard-core.”

“Yeah, it is. You're attached to that pole all day, and you can't eat. But I loved it. I waited for it every year. We even had guys from other tribes coming up and doing it with us,” he said.

“That's awesome,” I said.

“Pass me the cigs, girl,” he said and I tossed them and a hot pink lighter into his lap. “Thanks,” he said and lit one and then looked at it, rolled it slowly between his fingers, and took a long drag.

“Although… I have to admit, it isn't always so good sometimes. One summer all these whites came up. I don't know who invited them, but we let them hang out, though I don't think they would've done the full ceremony, even if we had let them. After the ceremony they wanted to crash at my mom's place. Guess my brother had been talking to them, all drunk, and wanted to help them out. They were real hippies, you know, with ponytails and that. And my mom, she just couldn't say no to any of us. She let them camp in our backyard. They had all this weird music going and smoked more pot than half the people on the rez, and danced around a bunch. Some of the chicks wanted to get naked, which was not a good idea. Me, I left pretty soon after Sun Dance, I had a job I had to get back to—I felt lucky they let me off for Sun Dance at all. But when I got back to Denver I found out they had given the job to somebody else, and so I decided to go back and visit with Mom for a while. She was sick that summer, real sick, had cancer. But when I got back they were still camped out in the backyard and they were eating her outta house and home. So I cleared them out, Crazy Horse style.”

I smiled and laughed. But even though I felt bad about it, all I could think was, you're no Crazy Horse. Maybe Crazy Horse's
girlfriend
.

“So, Will, how hungover were you the day after I dropped you off?” I asked. I couldn't help it.

He was silent for a bit and then said, “Oh, I wasn't that bad.”

“Huh,” I said, the image of Miguel propping him up against the building coming into my mind.

“Yeah.”

“Hmm,” I said, letting it go.

We sat around for a while, Will getting more than a little buzzed, tipping Caribbean-themed cooler after cooler down his throat. He began to brag about himself more and I could tell Megan was getting irritated with him, shifting her baby around in her lap almost roughly.

Around noon, we decided to pile into my car and hit the powwow. Will was next door to totally shithoused, nearly tripping on every step as he walked down the steps, talking loudly about some girl he'd seen a few days before who was wearing something he thought made her look trashy. I rolled my eyes as I unlocked the car door and got in, and I could see that Megan was doing the same, steam practically shooting out of her nose.

The drive into Denver was clear, and me and Megan listened to Will yammer on about the chick who dressed bad, other chicks who dressed bad and what a great grassdancer he'd been when he was a kid; Megan silently, totally, losing it. Her baby was asleep in the backseat and once in a while, I could see Will petting her full head of black hair tenderly, mouthing words I knew had to be in Lakota.

Pulling into the parking lot, we could see that there was a pretty decent sized line, and loads of Indians in regalia coming in and out of the main building. After standing in line and paying, we went straight for the auditorium and sat for a bit, watching the dancers move. Occasionally I would Fancy Shawl, though I was really becoming too old for it. If I was going to continue to dance, I knew I needed to move onto Jingle Dress. My auntie used to take me with the cousins before they became born again and I'd never lost interest, except for lately. Will was still talking up a storm, pointing out who he thought was good and who he thought stunk. Megan was clearly losing any good feeling she had had for him and wasn't really even talking. I was nodding at what he was saying, hoping to keep the tension low. Occasionally, the baby would cry and Megan would pick her up and bounce her on her knee, or give her a bottle. I looked over at the baby. She really was cute. It made me feel funny to even think about it and when the tiny tots came on to dance, I felt even weirder, my stomach twisting around my heart.

“Hey, you guys wanna get up and walk around for a bit?” I asked. I had to move. “We could check some of the vendors out?”

“Well, I ain't got shit to spend,” Megan said, looking at Will. He just gave her an
I'm so fucking innocent
look and then when she narrowed her eyes, he looked away.

“Hey, me either, but I love to look at stuff.”

Megan sighed, long and heavy. “What the hell,” she said, standing up. We got our shit together, and then got the blue mesh stroller into the right position and put the baby in it. The baby started clapping her hands and giggling.

I figured though I shouldn't spend, I had just made a bunch on sales, enough for a pair of earrings, maybe some long powwow style ones or some kick-ass Navajo turquoise ones. My Auntie used to trade her beadwork with silversmiths, so I know what to look for. I was elbowing my way through the crowd to get a good look at all the jewelry and I could hear the powwow MC laying his jokes on the crowd, the sound of it echoing throughout the hallway. “Ayyyyyyyyeee,” he was saying at the end of every cheesy joke.

“Ayyyyyyeee,” Will said in my ear, and I punched him in the arm.

“Ow!” He rubbed his arm.

“You big baby,” I said jokingly, and he rolled his eyes.

He was clearly about to respond with something witty, his mouth already open, his hands on his hips, when Megan turned around and glared at him. “Cut that shit out,” she said and Will tightened his lips and narrowed his eyes, but said nothing.

After that, Will went completely quiet. I was guessing he was starting to sober up and it had become more than obvious that whatever good feeling he had achieved with his cousin, it was already well on its way out. He looked restless and tired, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his torn-up blue jeans.

We walked around for a while, stopping at different vendors and looking at the native hip-hop, the jewelry, but Will didn't seem to want to do anything but follow us around like a tired little boy. It was like he had expended all of his energy talking in the car. He would stand behind us every time we'd stop to look at something, and sort of nod at what we were saying, not even making his usual bitchy comments about people's hair or clothes.

Megan was craning her neck to get a good look at all the cute longhairs. Every few feet she'd see one and elbow me hard and say, “Check him out,” and I'd laugh and tell her that she could snag him and she'd laugh and say, “Naw.” I looked over at her, her large, tired body. I couldn't imagine what it was like for her, all on her own, her man in jail. I was sure that even if one of these guys really did want to hook up with her, she probably wouldn't have the energy, or the heart for that matter, to do it. I wasn't sure exactly what the status was with her man or why he'd gone to prison. She never said and I knew enough not to ask. Will had started to tell me once, but she came back in the room when he was doing it, and looked at him hard and he'd shut up. I figured if she really wanted to tell me, she'd tell me when she was ready.

We'd stopped at a vendor that sold Pendletons and Megan was fingering a Nav Steering Wheel cover. The crowd was heavy and thick with lots of Indians of all tribes, and of course, a good amount of white people there looking around at all the Indians with goofy ass smiles on all of their faces, cheap-ass Indian jewelry and amulets around their necks, their children carrying fake little tomahawks in their sweaty little hands.

“I'm thirsty,” Will said. It was the first thing he'd said in thirty minutes.

“Well, let's go stand in line for a Pepsi,” I said.

“Jeez, then I'll see you in a year,” Megan said, shaking her head. “Those lines are long.”

“But I'm thirsty,” Will said, Megan narrowing her eyes at him. He lowered his gaze to his big, black sneaks.

“They charge a fuckload for drinks,” Megan said.

“I'll pay,” I said and started walking, turning around to see if Megan and Will were following me. They were.

On the way there, I found some sweetgrass and bought a strand. Then I saw an amazing green and white case for my Native American Church paraphernalia.

“It's beautiful,” I said, Megan and Will stopping with me. The vendor smiled and gave me a price. I thought about my last one. I'd given it to Julia. When I started going to the Indian Center in Denver, I went to a few NAC meetings and then Julia started coming with me. Then she got pretty serious about it, even going when I didn't, whenever she could, getting people to come and pick her up in Idaho Springs. Then her mom came for one of her rare visits and for some reason, she liked the case I'd given her and Julia gave it to her. I shook my head. I ran my hands over the front of the case.

“I'll go get the drinks,” Will said and I handed him some money.

“I gotta change the baby's diaper,” Megan said. I watched them both go and turned around back to the vendor.

“I'll take it,” I said and the guy put it in a plastic bag.

The vendor handed me the bag. Megan was coming from the bathroom so I went to meet her, and I spotted another vendor whose stuff I wanted to check out, an old lady selling jewelry. We stood there for a while, looking at all of the stuff, the silver sparkling in the fluorescent lights when we heard a rush of noise behind us. For a second, I ignored the noise. After all, we were in the middle of a crowd. But it got louder, and I realized that it was a group of male voices. And they sounded threatening.

I looked at Megan and she looked back, confused.

The vendor lady looked up and over our shoulders. “You get gone! Don't you make trouble!” We turned around. It was a group of guys, maybe five in all, staring at Will and yelling. Will was backed up against the wall, looking terrified, a cardboard tray of drinks in his hand. They came about two feet from him and stopped.

“Hey Will, you fucking faggot! How ya been? All your boyfriends up at Pine Ridge sure do miss ya!” a guy with short hair and a big belly said. All of his friends laughed.