Winter Loon(29)

The Hightower house was a rundown ramshackle, its blistered brown paint peeling like a sunburn. The front-door screen had a dog-shaped hole in the bottom. Mismatched lawn chairs and tires turned to flower gardens littered the side yard. I imagined it was that house where kids gathered to run through sprinklers on hot days, where kick the can games ended at night. I loved it the moment I saw it. I had never been in an Indian’s house before, and the conditioning I’d gotten my whole life—to be wary, suspect—put me on edge. I didn’t know whether I would be welcomed or turned out. I felt the white on my skin like dried paste.

“Ballot,” Lester said. He was holding the door open for me with his foot. I realized I’d stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “You going to stand there or you coming in?”

“Yeah. Yeah.” I loped up the steps, trying to assure myself it was no big deal that I was there.

Bull was sitting on the couch, a mixing bowl full of milk and cereal in his lap. Lester plopped down next to him. “You lazy, you know that, brother?”

“Watch it, man,” Bull said. “You’ll spill my milk.”

“Me and Ballot working our asses off out there. You sitting here watching cartoons. Makes me hungry. We brought burgers,” he said. The paper sack was almost soaked through.

“I told you, no more cows, man.”

“They’re for me and Ballot.”

The room was cramped with worn furniture. Cushioned love seats were arranged with little rhyme or reason, a long davenport was against the wall. Wooden chairs, some painted, others not, were wedged in anywhere they’d almost fit. One television was on, another right next to it was not. Random pictures hung loosely on plywood paneled walls—snowcapped peaks, rivers, glossy teepees surrounded by Indians on horseback next to framed school pictures, metal peacocks. I stood, surveying the whole room, imagining it filled with Indians, a council of sorts, old ones, young ones, headdresses, war paint.

“Ballot, would you sit down, please?” Bull gestured at any number of open seats. “The fuck are you looking at, anyway?”

Lester tossed one of the hamburgers to me, nearly grazing Bull’s crooked nose. Juice dripped down out the sides of his mouth as he taunted Bull with his relish-soaked hamburger. I was careful not to make too big of a mess of myself in case Jolene happened to make an appearance. Bull eyed the burgers but stuck with his cereal, telling us again what it felt like to have lightning in his body, about the smell of the cow’s sizzling hide.

Jolene walked into the room, and I jumped up. My hamburger slid out of the bun, toppling mustard over ketchup over relish down the front of my shirt and onto the floor. Behind Jolene, a floppy-eared hound lumbered into the room and headed straight for me. I took a step back and knocked a chair over. The dog devoured the burger in a gulp, then the bun I dropped trying to right the chair in another. Jolene whistled a high chirp through her teeth. The dog looked over his jutting shoulder at her, frisked my crotch for another burger, then returned to the girl, licking his dangling jowls. Jolene scratched his head like she was scouring a pan. “You big dumb nut, Sparky,” she said. Her voice. Bristly, but smooth and loose. She wore a short sundress with thin straps over the shoulders, muscular legs bare to her toes. Lester and Bull were practically in tears laughing at the whole scene. I was paralyzed. I thought of Bull’s lightning strike, whether it felt like what was coursing through my veins. The smile slid from her face. “You got something,” she said, dull as can be, tapping her own breastbone with her middle finger.

I looked down, shamed by the stoplight of condiments smearing my white T-shirt. When I looked up, she was gone.

The whole of me drooped and wilted, hope dead on a bent stem.

Bull and Lester, shoulder to shoulder now, moping eyes fawning at me with mock concern. “Oh, Ballot,” Lester said, his voice singsongy. “You poor, poor son of a bitch.”

Bull chimed in. “Yeah, Ballot, that shit is never ever gonna happen. You go back to your little blondie to get laid.”

I sat back down and grabbed the greasy bag from Lester. “Don’t know what you two assholes are talking about,” I said. “Dog ruined my fucking shirt, is all.”

“Sure, Ballot,” Bull said. He pushed the empty bowl of cereal away. “Fuck it. Give me one of those burgers. Smells too good.”



THE PLAYGROUND WAS IN THE center of town, across the street from the Elks Lodge where Kathryn’s father routinely stopped for a drink after work. I think she liked to meet me there in hopes he’d see us and she could get a rise out of him. She was late, so I stretched out on the splintered seesaw plank, lit a cigarette I’d bummed off Drew, traced the pattern the oak leaves made against the blue sky. I closed my eyes and thought about Jolene Oliver, the way my feet felt pinned to the ground when I saw her, like being in the same room with her somehow added to my atomic weight.

A shadow passed over the pink screen of my closed eyes. I sniffed the summer air for Kathryn’s baby powder perfume. When I opened my eyes, there was Jolene, looking at me like she was examining something left for dead.

“You can’t do that by yourself, you know,” she said to me.

I sat up, shielding my eyes with my hand, shifting so her head would block the sun.

“What?”

“Seesaw. Teeter-totter. It’s a two-person thing.” She nudged me with her foot. “Spin around. I’ll go to the other side. I want the one with the handle anyway.”