Sacred Smokes Read online

  Lieutenant Hubbard wrote his report with all the emotion of a popcorn fart.

  Just like they taught him in the academy, just the facts:

  Training exercise for the day.

  Test firing of cannons.

  Drills proceeded without incident.

  Switched to live firing. All progressed as normal until rammer

  packed powder.

  Powder ignited. Reasons unknown.

  Cannon ruptured, killing all eight crew members and five

  additional soldiers.

  Review initiated.

  Findings forthcoming.

  Restate reasons unknown at this time.

  Distracted, bored. Nothing more to say. The report seemed thin. He sat at his desk and fiddled with his pen. Drip go the minutes. He touched the edges of the parchment in front of him, slid his fingers along the creamy pages. He detachedly gave himself paper cuts on the ends of all his fingers. Some bled. Some split callouses. Tick.

  Tock.

  Drip.

  Lieutenant Hubbard pulled his coat closer around his shoulders. It felt like cold lamp oil was seeping down his spine.

  Detail, halt!

  The men stopped and sighed. Breath blew from nostrils, horselike. Plumes of foggy silver dissipated in the night’s damp, and the troop awaited further orders. Corporal Sprouse appeared confused; the men watched his face closely. His eyes wandered to the tree line, then on up the hillside where there’d been a lightning strike. Lonegan was none too clear on where to begin the digging, and given the cedar and witch hazel growing here, this ground he sent the men to scout was like to be far too wet for proper burying.

  The corporal cut off a wad of tobacco and set to chewing.

  Lonegan knew what was coming, could sense this was going to be the end for him and most of the men here tonight. Protocols. Rules. Death has needs, too. The sergeant put down his pencil. Sealed up the letter. Pulled two brass upholstery tacks from the old, wine-colored velvet chair his last lieutenant gifted him, out of pity or respect he never could tell. He held one of the tacks in his teeth while he rolled up his trouser leg and then jammed the other long piece of shiny yellow metal through the letter and deep into his right leg, the one made of wood, a gift from a little trip to Mexico Lonegan took years ago, back when he had just made sergeant for the second time. May the missus get hold of this when they pull my body out of the shit pile, he thought. May the oldest boy have sense enough to look after her. May the Creator make my journey easy, and may He take my hearing here shortly. He thumbed the other tack, thinking. He knew he couldn’t bear to watch so much death again. What was one more glass eye on the off chance he didn’t die, if Death somehow spared him once again?

  He ruffed the head of the nearest hound, the big red. It growled softly in its throat, and smiled, just a little. He surveyed the camp at the bottom of the hill. Lights dimmed in tents as his gaze swept from right to left and back again. The hubbub of jokes and smokes and laughter and cussing stopped abruptly. An inky silence enveloped the encampment.

  Time to feed the dogs, he whispered.

  The screams began shortly thereafter and continued on through the long, long night.

  Jesusfuckinchrist, Teddy. What goes on inside that head of yours? someone says.

  Someone else goes, What the fuck does Christ-All-Pee-Ickly mean?

  Hahaha. I say it means like to turn something into gold.

  They say, Why the fuck do you know that? Why do you write shit like that?

  One of us has got to, I say.

  Gooch laughs.

  I love your stories, he says.

  Fuck, man. Try having ’em in your head, I say.

  Better you than me, little brother, he says.

  I clench, unclench.

  THE LORDSPRAYER

  MEMORY

  for Gordon Henry

  Truth in our stories

  while maybe not “true,” it is

  what makes us ourselves

  Truth, subjective sight

  what we hear and say at night

  salves rubbed on our souls

  Truth, whispered aloud

  stories told to sharp-eared friends

  they know what we say

  Truth, never quiet

  asks for a voice, to be heard

  persisting in us

  In remain

  there’s no main

  unless we think

  of ourselves

  that way.

  Our Father

  who art

  in the bar

  came home one Sunday

  I guess to watch the Cubs lose in the comfort of his own home. Maybe they were winning that year. It was ’69 or ’70—look it up.

  He’s home, and been drinking, so I want to go out and play.

  If he’s home, and it’s day, and been drinking, I always want to go out and play.

  Fake red and black Keds on—“base” and “ball”—one on each foot, shit in my pockets, check. Beer in one hand, Schlitz; smoke, Old Gold, in the other; something burning in the ashtray, check. Head down, cut through during commercial. “Nelson Brothers loves me, and they’ll love you too.”

  Sizzzzzzzle. The newly focused stare drills into the back of my head.

  Where ya goin’?

  Outtoplay.

  Really?

  Guess so.

  D’y’know the Lordsprayer?

  What?

  The Lordsprayer. Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowedbethyname.

  No. I guess not.

  Well, when you do, you can go out and play.

  Well. What the fuck is that? The Lordsprayer? I don’t know what that is. And I say so.

  The eyes focus. The Lordsprayer. Heathen. Little shit. It’s the Lordsprayer. Your mother can teach you to read, but not the Lordsprayer? Jeeezus. It’s in this book here, ever seen it?

  This was a little black leatherine book I had never seen before. I thought I had seen all the books in the house. Boccaccio’s Decameron on the bookshelf. Plato’s Republic by the old man’s chair. Plath’s Bell Jar by Ma’s stuff. But not this one. It was bendy and sweaty looking, as if it had only been perused in times of great stress, torn from a pocket and frantically searched for magic words.

  Nope. I never seed that one before.

  Well look right here. This is the Lordsprayer. You get that memorized, and you can go outside and play.

  What?

  That ain’t a big fancy word for ya is it? Memorized. Yeah, memorized. When you get it memorized, you can go out and play. Tell me the whole thing, the Lordsprayer, get it right, and you can go out.

  A photo from the ’30s sits on my shelf at home, near to hand at my desk. It’s my grandpa and his sister and their ma. Auntie looks like a big, wide, round-eyed Dorothy Dandridge, Grandpa looks a lot like a swanky Richard Gere as Dixie Dwyer in the Cotton Club, and Grandma Mary Josephine—well, she looks serene, but extra lively, and like she made both of them learn the Lordsprayer, with no small relish. This beautiful woman, white hair pulled back from her smooth and gorgeous face, sits between the two of them, dressed all in black, hands in her lap, gazing at unsuspecting viewers. Her own grandmother busted her ass to get her and her kids enrolled at Leech Lake, so you know she took zero shit, and it shows.

  This amazing woman produced a son, who produced a son, who was pissed when the Church made the switch from the Latinate mass; a Tridentine aficionado whose only visible use for a dead language in his life was to finish the crossword puzzle and win the occasional Jeopardy! round on the TV at the bar. But he was pissed. Remember when nuns were allowed to speak and the priests busted out the guitars and the kumbayas? Jeee-eee-eee-eeeee-zus Chrrrrrist.

  I’ve never seen anyone so glad to get divorced and excommunicated in all my life.

  So I know something about her, this Mary Josephine, ina and unci. Omaamaa and nookomis. Because I have her prayer book.

  When Pop died, and they stole his eyes—and fuck you to my Christian-piece
-of-shit uncle for letting them, I don’t want to get things twisted in a Philbert Bono I-get-all-my-knowledge-from-Gunsmoke way, but fuck you Uncle if that evil anthropologist John Wayne was right in The Searchers when he shot out that poor old Noyeka’s eyes and he had to wander forever between the winds, fuck you Uncle if my pop is out there wandering, but I don’t think he is ’cuz when I dropped bundles for him and your dad and his grandpa and his grandma at the funeral I could see them all, all the relatives big and smiling in the sky at me from behind the headstones, I was the one who had to go to the old homestead and figure out what to do with his stuff, and that’s right, by the way, fuck you too to the auntie for taking his dough out of the fridge and giving me a bucket of steel nickels with only one Indian Head that you missed, a bucket I still have and refuse to sell to good Ole Tom in East or West Hartford, ghouls all of you, you know his wanagi walks around your house at night looking for a plate and his stuff you took.

  His stuff. Man, there was a lot of stuff. He saved everything. He still had the fortune cookie slip that he filled out when he proposed to my stepma (“will you marry me? 2–14–81”). He had pictures he had drawn in school and a turtle he made when he was a little kid. Photos from when he went out west on a trip after high school to Arizona and New Mexico, and Old Mexico, places I think he wanted to move to but never did. His dad’s wallet and passport. An article from the newspaper when a storm blew off the top of the house—they asked my grandma,

  Didn’t you wake up? The storm ripped the roof right off.

  Mister, she says, I been sleepin’ next to this man for forty years. I didn’t hear nothin’.

  Ho-lay!

  There’s a picture of him on his bike that sits in my house somewhere and that picture of his auntie and pa and grandma that I mentioned earlier. Beer coasters and drink mixers and pictures of us kids. I couldn’t find the ever-dippin’ googly bird and the red drink he eternally drank from—it was the only thing I ever bought off eBay—that I got for him one birthday, because Grandpa always had one there at the front entrance and the beak rotted away, so I replaced it.

  Fuck you to whoever stole that.

  See, when he passed, there was like a raid on the house. So disrespectful. But in there was the prayer book. That got missed, or left. Wrapped in an old plastic bread bag with much love by my Uncle Theo, who was my pop’s uncle, and who he was named for. I’m a Theo Jr., so the name, like an itch, persists.

  The prayer book has notes in it—and a four-leaf clover!—but the notes give an impression like she wasn’t happy with the interpretations and devotions. This is a priest’s book, but it’s full of marginalia. Notes and dates with days when these things should be recited—very specific and structured. There’s a feeling here that reminds me of Sister Leopolda in Louise Erdrich’s Tracks, my favorite of hers, and that convert’s struggle to outdo and outshame her betters and be a better Christian than those to the manor/manner born, those who would never think to wear too-small shoes and burlap underwear to prove their love for God, or Jesus, or, even better, the Holy Ghost.

  So I wanna go out. You wanna go out? Every little kid wants to go out. Especially if it’s daytime and his Dad is drunk and the Cubs are losing again (I am a White Sox fan, by the way, just sayin’) and it’s too bright in the room and his eyes ain’t focusing just quite right.

  I take the sweaty little book.

  Our Father, who art in heaven.

  Our Father, who art in the tavern.

  NO. That ain’t it.

  Our Father, who art in heaven,

  some of you all are saying it. Well help out your neighbors there, and forgive them their trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. You know the drill.

  What seems like four hours later, but was probably more like forty minutes, sees me approach the old man.

  I got it.

  You sure?

  OurFatherwhoartinheaven,

  hallowedbethyname . . .

  You know the drill.

  I passed. My friggin’ head was killin’ me, but I did it. Little kid and all.

  But something weird happened. The way I did it was to just look at it in my head and read it all over again. I didn’t run the words together because I had crammed it all in there; I ran the words together because I was nervous.

  So to show him I could do it, I did it twice.

  And I told him the fucking page numbers, too.

  18 and 19. I can still see them.

  This lesson from my pop in memory, this exercise, a term I have heard again and again—“This prospectus is an exercise . . . These exams are an exercise”—is how I was able, at least as an undergrad in my late thirties when I still had that bear-trap ability, to tell my professor that Vizenor’s quote

  Postindian autobiographies, the averments of tribal descent, and the assertions of crossblood identities, are simulations in literature; that names, nicknames, and the shadows of ancestors are stories is an invitation to new theories of tribal interpretation . . .

  appeared on page 1983 of the 2001 edition of The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, whether I agreed with it or not, and was what made my eyes a little misty, when in my teens I first read a mention of our people, the Blackfoot Sioux, on page 423 of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, and how, just like in my grandpa’s stories he told me when I was eight, our people had to leave their chief because he no longer spoke for the people.

  That memory of my old man and our time together is something I never got to tell him about, or how I lost that memory because after I went to college I found out there were people called Native Americans, and I didn’t realize I was one, or knew any, or would become one, and that he was one too, because where we came from, folks were just Indians back then. And we did what we did, and that was good enough.

  Thanks, Pop.

  GREAT AMERICA

  Lenny and Squiggy pull up.

  They blurp the siren for a second. Maybe to startle me, but I already saw them coming. Maybe it’s because their dads never loved them, never played baseball in the park with them. Or maybe it’s because they’re just dicks.

  Whatcha readin’ now, perfessor? Lenny says over the narc car mic.

  I marched around with a stolen copy of God is Red stuffed in my pants most of that summer and part of the fall. It’s my favorite Deloria. Sorry, Ravenswood Used Books. I owe you one.

  I look at their greasy faces squinting over at me. They must’ve just come from lunch. Or they’re sweaty from beating up JD or someone and they’re hot because they never take off those cop leathers. Or they’re teaching each other how to put on Chap Stick and they’re not getting the hang of it quite yet.

  The Bible, I say.

  It shows me how to reach y’all’s deepest fears.

  Fuck you, you little shit, they say. Come over here.

  Nah, I say. I’m kinda tired. Come visit. Set a spell. (I love the Beverly Hillbillies.)

  They creak over my way. Gun holsters, big jackets, radios strapped to them. All that leather. Squeaking and snapping.

  Whatcha readin’ now, perfessor? Lenny says again, because it was so funny the first time, and makes like he’s gonna punch me in the face.

  Jackie Collins’s Hollywood Wives.

  I like the dialogue, I say.

  How’s yer ma? Squiggy says.

  I just look at him. I breathe out through my nose.

  I can’t say nothin’. I chew the inside of my cheek with two of my dog teeth.

  You know if we take you to jail right now and hold you until the end of our shift, she’ll have to come pick you up for a curfew violation.

  Fuck, man. Are you serious? It’s like five in the afternoon, I say.

  Yup. We’re serious.

  I pull a face like someone just crapped in the backseat. I make a sniff noise.

  Problem? they say.

  Something smell funny, asshole? says Squiggy.

  I go, Desperation is an acquired taste, I suppose.

  Lenny w
hacks me in the head.

  Shit. They both liked her. Fuckin’ weirdos. What am I supposed to do? I think.

  Um, yeah. She’s not around. She’s on vacation with her boyfriend, I say.

  Bullshit, says Lenny.

  She ain’t got no money for no vacation, he says.

  Her boyfriend does, I say.

  Lenny just looks at me for about a minute and then goes, Nah.

  Ain’t no money really in selling weed, says Squiggy.

  He sells blue and clears, too, I say.

  Tuinols.

  Reds.

  You lie, Squiggy says, grinning behind his aviators.

  But we’ll bust him later, they laugh.

  Whatever. Fuck that guy, I say.

  Oh, we will, they say.

  And now you’re going to jail.

  Yeah. Give you a chance to memorize that dialogue you like so much.

  Fuck, I say.

  Fuck you, too, they say, and stick me in the back of the car.

  We drive around for about an hour. They crack the window at least so I can smoke in the back. Don’t burn nothin’, dipshit, they say. It’s a pain in the ass lighting matches and cigarettes and reading with the cuffs, and after I relentlessly bitch for about twenty minutes, regretting my recent read of The Eighteenth Brumaire, though still yelling about intraclass violence to these two and wanting my voice to drip with the disillusionment one would expect when encountering such disappointment, but just sounding wounded and sad at the fucking cops and their willful ignorance, they tell me shutthefuckup, they’ll take ’em off in a little while. Shit. I hope so. I even pray a little.

  Some call they actually pay attention to comes in over the radio. They huddle their heads together (“kiss! kiss! kiss!” I whisper/yell with just the right amount of sibilance to make it weird and unfunny) and then they grunt at each other for a minute or two. Lenny, he looks back at me with that look, and I’m like ahshitwhatnow? They pull the car over and throw it in park. Hop out of the doors and look in at me through the windows. Alright, I think. I’m getting out of here. Squiggy yanks open the door and pulls me out by the links between the cuffs. That shit hurts. And I drop my book. Conan the Conqueror. With the royal purple lettering and the Frazetta cover. You fucker.