Winter Loon(44)

“Agnes is right. You need to finish high school,” Troy said.

Lester’s anger sharpened on me. “Why are you even here, Ballot? I mean, who the fuck invited you to this powwow, huh?” He pointed at Jolene, taking a step closer to her. “You’re an idiot, you know that?”

I made a move, too, thinking, I suppose, I would protect her honor, but Jolene put both her hands on Lester’s chest and shoved him away. “Don’t you dare,” she warned.

Troy stood. “Alright, knock it off.” He gripped Lester’s shoulder enough to make him wince. “Let’s you and me go outside and cool off.”

The back door slammed shut, and through the window we could see Troy and Lester on the browning grass, Lester’s hands gesturing wildly, Troy nodding, his hands raised in placation.

Mariah scrambled to the window, pressed her nose to the glass. “What’s Lester so sore about?”

Mona grabbed her lightly by the scruff of her blouse. “Out, you,” she said. “Leave them be now. Go play in the other room.”

Mariah huffed but obliged, shoving one last piece of jam-smeared fry bread into her mouth, chomping it a time or two before showing it to me on her tongue on her way out of the kitchen.

“What was that all about?” Mona asked.

Bull wiped grease off his lips with the palm of his hand. “I knew he was pissed about the Coast Guard thing. I mean, other than Agnes, we’re all he has. And now . . .” He waved his thumb at me like I was the turd in the pool.



MONA PACKED ME OFF WITH fry bread to give to my grandparents. I couldn’t tell her the truth, that I threw it away before I even got to the house. I’d brought home the grease-stained bag the first time Mona had given it to me, thinking my grandparents would appreciate something fresh-made like that. I’d set it on the kitchen table next to Gip, who sniffed the air.

“What’s that smell?”

Ruby stuck her nose into the bag. “Smells like doughnuts.”

“Fry bread. Friend’s aunt made it.” I hadn’t told them about Jolene, though I was pretty sure Gip had seen the two of us walking down Main Street together. “She thought maybe you’d like it. Mona Hightower. You know her?”

Ruby picked up the bag, holding it away from her. “The Indian?”

I nodded. “My friend Jolene. That’s her aunt. They live over there on Second Street.”

“That the little thing I saw you with in town, hands on her and all?”

“Yes, sir.”

“This Indian your girlfriend now?” Ruby asked.

“For a few weeks now, I guess. Yes, she is.”

“Oh, how the mighty fall,” Gip said. “Maybe you’re not so stupid after all. Least the Indian will put out. They always do.”

Ruby carried the bag between two fingers and dropped it in the trash. “You tell those Indians of yours they can keep their greasy bread and their greasy hair and their greasy ways. Mona Hightower. Mona High and Mighty, more like it. Sending us food like we need it. That girl is not welcome in this house, you hear?” She returned to tearing coupons at the kitchen table, to Green Stamps she would lick and paste into her little booklet. When I took out the trash days later, I saw the bag, crumpled and empty.



MONA AND TROY PUT BULL on a westbound Greyhound a week later. With Bull gone, Jolene moved into the room at the front of the house with a west-facing window looking out over the porch. The two of us spent hours on the roof, watching the sun cast long-legged shadows under the early autumn leaves. We tucked up there, using our feet as brakes against the shingles, and let ourselves get wistful the way you do when the sun goes down, when you get above things far enough that you don’t feel part of anything anymore. We talked and kissed until Jolene was called down for dinner or until our lips were sore and swollen plums. The slant of the roof made it so we couldn’t collapse on each other and grope and explore, which is probably why Mona let me up those back stairs in the first place. We’d climb back in through the window, onto the bed, Jolene first then me. She never lingered there, though I longed to crawl under the striped wool blanket with her, to feel her naked next to me.

She hounded me about writing a letter to send to Topeka since I’d made such a big deal about finding him in the first place. It bothered her that here I had a solid lead in my hand, the kind of information about a father she would never get, and still I hesitated. Her frustration with me grew, but all that September, I kept Nicky Barbie’s matchbook in my pocket. I did take it out once in front of Ruby, the first day of my junior year of high school, trying to bait her into yet another conversation on my father’s whereabouts. She’d broken the chain of cigarettes and was searching for a light for her next one. I gave them to her but told her I needed the book back, that it had an important address.

“Same outfit my dad worked for,” I said when she inspected the matchbook. “Same woman runs it, even.”

“That right.”

“She said a friend of my dad’s is still in the business. Said he’d be in Brookings mid-October and I could write him if I wanted.”

Gip’s snort ruffled the newspaper he hid behind.

She lit her cigarette, pulled hard, and shook out the flame, dropping the spent stick into the ashtray. She took another long drag, the bones in her shoulders rising with breath then collapsing with exertion. She flicked the matchbook back to me. “What did I tell you?” She took a step toward me and rapped on my skull with her swollen knuckles. “You listen at all? You got a brain between those ears? You keep making excuses for him. He’s not coming back. You want to think of him, you think of him as dead.”