The Removed(31)

“Do you remember our conversation last night?” I asked Ernest as the TV cops drew their guns and chased a suspect down an alley.

“Of course,” he said. “My head doesn’t feel foggy. I’m feeling good.”

“Any other memories come to you?”

He thought a moment. “My moccasins,” he said.

“Yes, you mentioned that last night.”

“I mean the ones I wore as a kid. I remember those moccasins. My mother made them from buckskin. I remember the beadwork. The red beads.”

“A new memory,” I told him. “This is a good sign. This is what we’ve been hoping for. I think you’re feeling better.”

On TV, the suspect fell hard to the ground, and the cops were on him, restraining him with handcuffs.

“The red beads,” Ernest said again, trailing off.

Wyatt came into the room with a few notebooks. He sat down next to me and began flipping through them, pausing to show me his writings—all his poems, stories, and drawings. “I colored this when I was ten,” he said, pointing to a drawing of a big red house surrounded by trees. Most of his drawings were of houses, I realized. What did all the houses mean? I assumed he had been deprived of attention, moving from home to home, constantly thinking about what it means to live somewhere.

“I have a whole series of haiku poems in here,” he said. “All based on different rooms I stay in whenever I’m in a building or school or house. One of the reasons I’m glad to be here is so that I can write a poem about the rooms in this house.”

“I hope it’s a nice poem,” I said. “I like to write down my thoughts, too. It always makes me feel better.”

“Trippy,” he said, smiling.

“Trippy?”

“I’m full-body digging talking to you.”

I found his speech and mannerisms delightful. So animated and exaggerated, such a funny little guy. He pulled out an essay for school. He needed me to look over it for errors, he said; would I mind?

“Of course I’ll look over it,” I said.

“What’s she checking for, spelling?” Ernest asked.

“I’m looking more for development and ideas, not grammar or spelling,” he said.

I put on my reading glasses and moved in closer to the table lamp so I could read easier:

ESSAY FOR ENGLISH CLASS (IN PROGRESS)

Wyatt Eli Chair

This dazzling “prose fragment” poem from our illustrious textbook is about discernment. The poem tells about the reincarnation of a Cherokee boy (the poem is taken from the author’s first book, The Book of Levitation and a Thousand Deaths). The “prose fragment” is titled “The Owl and the Eagle” and is his masterpiece. My humble opinion, dearest and vitiated Reader, is that The Book of Levitation shows themes of spirituality. (At Sequoyah School some years back, I read and reviewed his other books of prose poems for the school paper. One book I read, Faces Reflected in a Spoon, is about spirits and reincarnation.) The eagle in the mirror is a reincarnation. How is this possible? Fondled Reader, allow me to illustrate: with a flickering of strange striated light, the figure floats in a circle before it disappears. Certainly, there is a yellow light, then blue light. Out of nowhere, the appearance of the exiguous Cherokee words: “Tawodi.” Its image remains in the mirror. What if the author is a Spirit or a messenger? Historically, Authochthonous Reader, Eagles are considered messengers in Cherokee mythology. Look for spirits here on Earth . . .

“Well,” I said, handing the essay to him. “Well. Hmm.”

“It needs work,” he said. “I can handle it, please correct what you see is wrong. I want it to be good.”

“I guess I haven’t read a book report in a long time. Who is the boy?”

“The boy in the poem appears in different forms, like as a hawk or an owl. Or an old man or even another boy.”

“In the poem?”

“The author is Cherokee, from here in town, my teacher told us.”

“I don’t know him. Ernest, do you know this author?”

Ernest came over and stood next to Wyatt, looking at the essay in his hands. “Did you say tawodi?” he asked.

“Tawodi means ‘hawk’ in Cherokee,” Wyatt said. “What did you think of me ending it with the ellipses?”

“The what?”

“The three dots at the end.”

Ernest felt at his jaw.

“Take a pencil to it,” Wyatt told me. “Can you fix it and make it good?”

“It looks good to me,” I told him.

Wyatt asked Ernest if they could play chess, so they went into the dining room to play while I stayed looking at Wyatt’s essay. I read slowly with a pen, circling exclamation points and parentheses, but I didn’t know what to do with them. I crossed out a few sentences. I read it over and over, but it was hard to concentrate because I heard Ernest laughing from the other room, so I got up and walked into the dining room, where I found them playing chess.

I didn’t say anything, but I knew Ernest would struggle to remember the rules. Chess had never been an easy game for any of us except for Ray-Ray. He was the only one who really loved it.

“I did what I could with your essay,” I told Wyatt and handed it to him. He looked at it, nodded.