There There(25)

“You remember when I told you about that Laney powwow, you said you wanted to go because there was that big one coming up at the Oakland Coliseum, and you were on the powwow committee for work. You remember that?” Charles said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“You remember what else you told me?”

“No,” I said.

“About the money,” Charles said.

“Money?” I said.

“You said there would be something like fifty thousand dollars in cash prizes there that day,” Charles said. “And how easy it would be to steal.”

“I was fucking joking, Charles. You think I would fucking rob the people I work with and then think I could get away with it? It was a fucking joke.”

    “That’s funny,” Octavio said.

Charles lifted his head toward Octavio like: Whatsup?

“That anyone would think you would rob the people you work with and think you could get away with it. That shit’s funny to me,” Octavio said.

“This is how we make it right,” Charles said. “You’ll get a cut too, then we’ll be good, right, Octavio?”

Octavio nodded his head. Then he picked up the tequila bottle. “Let’s drink,” he said.

So we drank. We went through half the bottle, shot after shot. Before the last shot there was a pause, and Octavio looked up at me, then lifted his shot glass toward me and gestured for me to get up. We took the shot, just me and him, then he gave me a hug I forgot to return. While he hugged me, I saw Charles look at Carlos like he didn’t like what was happening. After Octavio let me go he turned around and got another bottle of tequila from the top cupboard, then he sort of laughed at who knows what and stumbled across then left the kitchen.

Charles lifted his head up to me like: Let’s go. On the way to the car we saw a kid on his bike watching everyone from far off. I could tell Charles was almost gonna say something to him. Then Carlos tried to punk him by acting like he was gonna hit him. The kid didn’t flinch. Just kept staring at the house. His eyes were hella droopy but not just like he was high or drunk. I thought about Sloth from The Goonies. And then I thought about a movie I saw one Saturday morning when I was, like, five or six. It was about a kid who woke up blind one day. Before, I’d never thought about the idea that you could just wake up to some terrible shit, some fucked-up shift in what you thought life was. And that’s what it felt like then. Taking those shots. Octavio’s embrace. Agreeing to some doomed-ass plan. I wanted to say something to the kid on his bike. I don’t know why. There was nothing to say. We got in the car and rode home in silence, the low sound of the engine and road leading us toward some shit we’d never make our way back from.





Jacquie Red Feather





JACQUIE RED FEATHER FLEW to Phoenix from Albuquerque the evening before the conference started, landing after the hour-long flight in a smog-filled gradient between green and pink. When the plane slowed to a roll, she shut the window shade and stared at the back of the seat in front of her. “Keeping Them from Harm.” That was this year’s conference theme. She guessed they meant self-harm. But was the problem really suicide itself? She’d recently read an article that called the number of suicides in Native communities staggering. For how many years had there been federally funded programs trying to prevent suicide with billboards and hotlines? It was no wonder it was getting worse. You can’t sell life is okay when it’s not. This was yet another Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration conference her position as substance abuse counselor was grant-required to attend.

The woman who checked her in at the hotel had Florencia on her name tag. She smelled like beer, cigarettes, and perfume. That she was drinking on the job, or that she’d come to work drunk, made Jacquie like her. Jacquie was ten days sober. Florencia complimented Jacquie’s hair, which she’d recently dyed black to hide the gray and cut into a bob. Jacquie had never known what to do with a compliment.

    “So red,” she said of the poinsettias behind Florencia, which Jacquie didn’t even like because of how even the real ones look fake.

“We call them flores de noche beuna, flowers of the holy night, because they bloom around Christmas.”

“But it’s March,” Jacquie said to her.

“I think they’re the most beautiful flowers,” Florencia said.

Jacquie’s latest relapse had not left burn holes in her life. She didn’t lose her job, and she hadn’t wrecked her car. She was sober again, and ten days is the same as a year when you want to drink all the time.

Florencia told Jacquie, who was noticeably sweating, that the pool was open until ten. The sun had gone down, but it was still ninety degrees. On the way to her room Jacquie saw that no one was in the pool.

Long after Jacquie’s mom had left her dad for good, during one of the many times her mom had left her sister’s dad, when Opal was just a baby and Jacquie was six, they’d stayed in a hotel near the Oakland airport. Their mom told them stories about moving away for good. About getting back home to Oklahoma. But home for Jacquie and her sister was a locked station wagon in an empty parking lot. Home was a long ride on a bus. Home was the three of them anywhere safe for the night. And that night in the hotel, with the possibility of taking a trip, of getting away from the life her mom had been running down with her daughters in tow, that night was one of the best nights of Jacquie’s life. Her mom had fallen asleep. Earlier she’d seen the pool—a bright blue glowing rectangle—on the way to their room. It was cold out, but she’d seen a sign that read Heated Pool. Jacquie watched TV and waited for her mom to fall asleep with Opal, then she snuck down to the pool. There was no one around. Jacquie took her shoes and socks off and dipped a toe in, then looked back up at the door of their room. She looked at all the doors and windows of the rooms that faced the pool. The night air was cool but didn’t move. With all but her shoes and socks on she walked down the pool stairs. It was her first time in a pool. She didn’t know how to swim. Mostly she just wanted to be in the water. To go under and open her eyes, look at her hands, watch the bubbles rise in that bluest light.