Sacred Smokes Page 6

  Central Michigan means Bay City, Essexville, the Quanicassee, Munger, Saginaw, Midland, Fairfield, Hampton Township, and Frankenmuth. Not because Frankenmuth is handy, but because I always remember one of my great-uncles had an icebox full of Black Label, and they make it in Frankenmuth. And because one time one of my other uncles came and picked us up and we drove in the middle of the night and he was like, Hey, let’s stop in Frankenmuth, I know this shortcut, but we all had been drinking a lot and so we only saw some deer and our breath hanging over a fallow cornfield as we pissed in the night on the side of the road and wondered how we ever got so lost.

  I’d like to talk about how one day we were driving with one of my other uncles, the weatherman there from earlier, down the Quanicassee, when he slams on the fuckin’ brakes and tells me, Quick! get out of the pickup and help him with this fuckin’ thing, and he takes a baseball bat and him and my cousin lower it down and clamp! they pull up the biggest snapping turtle this city boy’s ever seen and they throw him in the back and we drive to this other guy’s house and he hits him with the bat and then he rips off the shell and says, Did you know there’s seven kinds of meat on a turtle and we’re gonna eat good. But I won’t, ’cause we’ve got some other shit to talk about.

  What were we talking about? Oh yeah. Bumblebees. And Cherokee harelips.

  Can we talk about one without the other? I don’t think so. Not now, at least. Both have roots in Michigan, Central Michigan that is, a place I think that is or should be separate from the rest of the state. We have to talk about Cherokee harelips so we can talk about my ma. She’s Cherokee, but she’s not a harelip. And she’s not from Michigan, Central or otherwise. She’s one of those Cherokee-hillbillys from East Tennessee—Blount County. She told me one time that she went back to see the old places. And she told me the saddest story about how the houses are gone, along with our genealogy, which got stole by some Yankee fuck tourist out of one of the houses that the Feds turned into some kind of living museum or human zoo exhibit in the national park that sits where our land used to be, but the flowers remain, rectangular plots of flowers that still grow around the perimeters of long-ago houses that have burned into ashy pages of lost history. But she didn’t laugh during that one.

  Remind me to talk about the picture of my ma’s grandma—she looked like Esther Rolle—and how my ma put that picture away, for reasons we’ll discuss later.

  I have to talk about cousins for a second. Talktalktalk, I know. We have a pile of cousins up there. I have like twenty-seven first cousins of my own on that side of the family. We also have some Sag Chips, redheads, and Mexicans. And some Van S(Z)oomerings, and dude don’t you know, we’re driving around in this maroon, well okay NDN Red (question—do they make that color in the Crayola box anymore, maybe in Europe? ’Cause one day in an undergrad Native lit class I took I was like, Hey, everybody—hold up them books. What color are all the covers? And they were like, Uh, maroon, and I said, No. They’re Indian Red. Do they even make that color in the Crayola box anymore? Hahaha. That’s some OldManNDN talk right there, son) 1968 Chrysler Newport drinking out of pint bottles with my dad’s cousin Ronnie Van S(Z)oomering and on the radio is the Zombies’ “Time of the Season” and that smelly drunk cousin of ours with adult cradle crap in his hair and the weird smell and the shy eyes behind the birth-control specs and the funny laugh pops in my head whenever I hear that song and I always think of him as Ronnie Van Zombie, even when I heard a cover of the tune by a hair metal band at the Whiskey when I lived in LA—whoa that was fucked up. It works out, because like us, half of the cousins are Indians and the other half ain’t. Or something.

  So now you’re going what the fuck and you’re like that French trapper from the 1600s who wrote back to that europissoir known as Paris in his journal something along the lines of, “These people (yeah, even back then, “these people”) are the most circumlocutory individuals one would ever want to meet. I find myself again and again, as we discuss first the state of my family, and then the varying states of their families and relations, wondering if we will ever get down to business, and usually after the space of three or four days, we do,” or some such thing. Well plus ça change people. We’re gettin’ there. Besides, I write fast, don’t I?

  So my ma, who would dress me and my brother in the latest little-kid-hippie-dork fashions, much to the horror and dismay of my grandma, and the grating, sighing, and studied indifference of my dad, who could find any number of reasons to begin drinking after lunch and didn’t need the indignity of his oddly dressed sons to provoke a pre-twilight bender, would sit at the table and beat barbs and brows with Grandma, each blowing smoke in the other’s face, Lucky Strike versus Old Gold in a titanic death dance, matching cup for cup of coffee chugged from melamine cups in turquoise and pumpkin, oleo tubs of lunches—whoops, “dinners,” we’re in Michigan, not Chicago—of leftover potatoes and pot roast crusting over under the searing weight of their combined contempt for one another.

  Dad and Grandpa, taking their cues and their keys, head out to Phil’s, small-town precursor to Cheers, where everybody knew everybody’s name and business and thanked God or whoever they chose to thank that Grandpa’s son is the county sheriff and that he can pull him out of the ditch later on when they’ve all gone home, beneficiaries of those two legendary barmen’s largesse and goodwill, qualities they always chose to spend on their fellow patrons rather than their fellow family members.

  But dude—don’t think the bar thing is completely a bad thing—Grandma used it to pay for Christmas. Hey, Grandma. Is that Maxwell House can really full of money? Oh ho, she’d say, it is. Where’d ya get all that money, Grandma? From Grandpa’s pockets. I do the wash. And Grandpa thinks he has a good time every night. At least that’s what his empty pockets tell him. Jesus Christ I miss my grandma.

  Are you doing this thing now, where you’re going, “Hey, is Phil’s the place where we learn more about the harelip?” or, “I wonder if his grandma is going to tell him to stay away from harelips, and that’s where it’s going to come in,” or, “I bet you he tells us some other shit, like how he’s singing along with Ibrahim Ferrer on ‘Todavía Me Queda Voz’ while he’s writing this, instead of what we want to hear, which is about the harelip.”

  Dick.

  It’s not going to come from my grandma, because she didn’t know about the girl harelip, though she knew about the boy harelip, but he comes in later, and none of her kids were harelips. Grandma had eight kids, and it was like a genetics class. She had two dark ones with black hair and black eyes, two dark ones with black hair and blue eyes, two light ones with dark hair and blue eyes, and two lighter ones with dark hair and dark eyes. When my daughter was born after my grandma had passed my aunties did the variation of what I heard our Spanish neighbors do when a light-skinned baby was born, except our family would say, “Oh, she would have loved your daughter. She always liked the light ones with the dark hair and blue eyes.”

  You have to understand that this was something of no small import for them. I remember once my ma telling me this story about my Aunt Jessie. She was out working on her tan—ha! She was dark like a walnut!—at the edge of one of the fields that her husband’s family owned. Kicked back, relaxing, with maybe a radio (but probably not originally sinning with INXS, probably more like hearing from Ronnie Milsap about how we ain’t gettin’ over him) and some lemonade, when this white foreman runs over hollerin’ and swearin’, something like, Hay tambien muchas mas ojas, hija de puta, get to work, ondele, trabajar bitch, etc. And she’s like, What the fuck is this cracker talking about, except she said, Hey—my husband’s family owns this property, mister, and so he had to quick like turn around and try not to swallow his Skoal on the spot and instead goob it up in the field there. So, yeah. It was important.

  And though there were a lot of us kids, I like to think that we were important. And of course we all like to think we are important, especially in the eyes of our family.

  A couple of years a
go, I gave a presentation on Sherman Alexie’s film The Business of Fancydancing. It was at the Saginaw Chippewa’s Soaring Eagle Casino. Wait. Shit. I hate when this happens.

  I was talking to some colleagues the other day. We were talking about . . . you know, honestly I don’t remember what the lead up was, but somehow it was related to counterfeiting. And I was like, Hey, I remember . . .

  Well what I remembered was this.

  I told them about this roommate of mine I had a long time ago. We shared an apartment up on the North Side of Chicago, all the way up in Rogers Park. It was off of Devon Avenue. A decent area, I guess. One of those buildings that when I was a kid I used to hit the laundry machines in the basement with a crowbar and clean out all the quarters. And steal the pop bottles off the back porches so I could go to the movies with my friends on Friday. But I didn’t tell them that. Or about how the main dude, who was taking correspondence courses to become a private dick, hocked my Gibson EG to pay the rent one day.

  Anyway, I lived in this apartment with a couple of other guys, Nubby and Foos. Nubby was the pawn shop aficionado and Foos was . . . something else. An electrician, dealer, and counterfeiter.

  One day there was a knock on the door.

  Who is it?

  US Secret Service.

  Hilarious. Who is it?

  Secret Service.

  Ha. Like James West and Artemis Gordon?

  You’re hilarious. Open the fucking door.

  Dude. Seriously. It was the Secret Service.

  And I know you’re thinking, What about a warrant? Warrant? This is fucking Chicago we’re talking about. Warrants. This is the place where one day I was running down the alley from the cops and this GI (Gang Intelligence) pops out of the side of a building and says, C’mere, Injun; grabs me by the hair and throws me over the hood of a car. And then . . . Never mind. We’ve already got enough threads to hang on to right now.

  Do you know where Foos is?

  I just live here, man. And mostly only in the back, anyways. See that pile of laundry with the sheet on top? That’s my bed. I never see him.

  What do you got going on in here? They peek around the corner.

  Nothing. Seriously. It’s dull. We don’t even have a TV.

  Where do you think he is?

  Fannie May?

  The mortgage office?

  I don’t know.

  You’re funny. You got any money, any C-notes on you?

  No, I thought. I only deal in twenties and fifties.

  Nope.

  Do you know where this big fat fuck Bill is at?

  Dude. I don’t really like fat people.

  Go back to bed. If Foos shows up, tell him to call us.

  Uh, yeah. I’ll get right on it. 1-800-WildWildWest, right?

  Hilarious.

  Holy shit. Thumpthumpthump. Our apartment was full of shit. Everywhere. There were enough crumbs of shit on the floor to start a full-scale Columbian riot. Long story, and not one for here, but, yeah. If those guys wanted to be dicks and call the narcs, well, shit.

  So I had this talk with Foos. Turns out it’s hard to pass hundred dollar bills. But one of the best places to do it is at candy stores. You know, the high-end ones. And that’s what they were doing.

  Man, I was pissed. Not that they were counterfeiting and shit. Who gives a fuck about that, right? No. The Secret Service showing up at the door is not cool. How to express my displeasure?

  Remember, Foos is a dealer. And it’s the ’80s. Dude, I used to page him three or four times a day. I’d leave numbers to the Chicago field office of the FBI. Regional DEA. CPD Gang Intel. We’d run into each other in the kitchen. Two eggs and six ketchup packets in the fridge. Suppertime.

  You think that’s fuckin’ funny, asshole?

  What?

  The pages to the man.

  I couldn’t help myself.

  How fuckin’ stupid are you? Ain’t you got no retention, man? You can’t recognize a number after calling it three times, your ass deserves to get locked up.

  Wanna get high?

  Yeah. Whatever.

  So yeah. The conference. I gave a paper on Alexie’s film The Business of Fancydancing. My aunties show up, and . . .

  I’d like to talk about these things, but I can’t. So I’ll write ’em.

  So the aunties come to the conference.

  Will they let us in?

  Do ya think it’ll be okay?

  You should ask them . . .

  Thanks, Gwen. Two aunties and a cousin come over to the casino. And we’re listening to one of my co-presenters . . .

  Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

  Aunt Janey, out like a dog in a patch of sun.

  I can’t wake her up, right? But she keeps goin’, ya know? So I give her the nudge.

  Mmmmmm hmmmmmmm.

  God almighty, she sounds just like Grandma.

  We get through that presentation, and I’m up.

  I’m going to read:

  “Talking Circle”: Speaking With and Without Reservation(s) in The Business of Fancydancing.

  I say, I’d like to briefly let you know that there’s some salty language in this paper and the clip from the film. And since I have some aunties in the audience—. . . , . . . , . . . Aunt Janey, all the swear words are Sherman Alexie’s and not mine . . .

  Afterward, they laugh and say, Holy crap. All that talking you did when you were a kid . . . and now you get paid to run your mouth. And they look at me in my sport coat with my name tag and they say, Geez. We’re proud of you.

  I wanna friggin’ melt.

  Then Aunt Janey says, I’m taking you to lunch. When she says anything, you don’t mess. She actually got my son to finish his supper one time. And for a couple of years all I had to do was mention her name and that plate would be clean. So off we go to lunch.

  I think I’ve got a discount ticket or something here, she says.

  We get to the buffet and she daintily takes out this black card and hands it to the dude.

  He says, Right this way, Mrs. Howard.

  Come here often, Aunt Janey?

  Mmmmmm hmmmmmmmm.

  . . .

  Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit. We paid off two cars outta this place. Monthly payments. They’ve been trying to get their money back ever since.

  . . .

  Mmmmmm hmmmmmmmm.

  Jesus. The harelip already.

  Fine.

  My dad told me that his best friend growing up was this dude with a harelip. They went everywhere together, did all kinds of shit and generally got in trouble together. Best buddies and all that. My dad also told me about his first girlfriend down in the city, back home now.

  Jesus, Speedy. She was beautiful. But nobody would ever hit on her because they couldn’t understand her. I took one look at her and I was like, Wow. So I talked to her. Mnhay. Mnhow nya ndoin? ’Cause that was Pop. And that’s how he told me the story. He told me other stuff she said, and he said, but like “Hey baby” stuff, and I don’t want to talk about that here.

  Anyway, they move in together, right away. He allowed things were great. He says, She could’ve been your mother. Shiiiiiiiiiiit.

  And then he met my mother.

  There used to be a diner on the corner of Montrose, Sheridan, and Broadway in the little triangle there. My ma was a waitress there. My dad used to bartend down the street. I know how the bartending thing works in Chicago; you’re not supposed to drink while you’re on duty, but you basically are getting paid to host a party. And you drink. And my dad would drink at a kid’s birthday party, or a funeral, or at breakfast. So, whatever. He was drinking.

  One night he goes into the diner, shit-faced. And he passes out. In a bowl of chili. Face down, he starts to drown. Remember that story about on the rez, guy dies in a two-inch puddle of water? Well you can do the same thing in four fingers of chili in the middle of the city.

  My mom grabs him by that luscious black hair that he used to wear an onion bag on like some frea
ky Indian do-rag and saves his ass from drowning. It was love, or a semblance thereof, at first blurry sight.

  They hit it off great, I guess. Or at least my ma thinks they do, ’cause at the time she’s living in the Horseshoe Projects, the Lathrope Homes at Diversey and Damen. And guess what? Yeah. She wants to get the fuck out of there.

  There’s only one problem. She can’t move in with Ted Sr. ’cause there’s already someone living there. So Eastern versus Western, my ma goes to my dad’s house and whirlwinds old girl’s shit out the window, down the stairs, and into the street. My dad would laugh like he was getting paid to do it every time he told me the story.

  Speedy, he says, she walked into my apartment and was like, Bitch, you won’t need this shit no more, and just started wingin’ her stuff out the windows and into the hallway. Shiiiiiit. She was in love.

  And she was, too, bwai. Like I said, she talked about him twenty years after they split up like they still lived together. Crazy.

  Alright. So that’s the harelip story. But where’s the bumblebee?

  Ahh, yes. My fierce mother.

  So one day she’s pushing me in the stroller. On the grass, in the front of Grandma and Grandpa’s house. I know. A stroller. On the grass. Hey, we’re from the city. Whadda ya want?

  She’s walking along, hippy clothes, black beehivey do, and I’m sure Grandma’s glaring out the window somewhere inside the house. My ma says to me, This big fucking bumblebee, like the size of a tennis ball (and of course I always thought that’s how big they were—to this day when I hear the word “bumblebee” I think of a big yellow-and-black-striped ball with a little head on top) comes out of nowhere. And . . . what could I do? I sort of pushed you by this tree and I took off running.

  Imagine my mother, twenty years old, freaky striped pants, cat’s-eye glasses, and crazy-ass jet-black beehive hairdo, abandoning her baby and running, running through the grass, going God knows where. Just running.

  Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.

  JUST MARQUEE

  Choochie says, C’mon, Teddy. Let’s get these fuckers.