Winter Loon(60)

“Well, I wanted to apologize to you about last night. And to thank you. I also thought maybe I should talk to Jolene. Guess I kind of forgot it was a weekday. My head’s not on straight.”

He cinched his clay-colored canvas coat together and snapped it shut. “Come around back with me. Let’s you and me talk.”



THE BRONCO WAS BACKED INTO the garage, the hood propped up with a stick, an oily red rag lying over the edge of the fender. Troy pulled the stick out and let the hood slam down. He hopped up and sat, his long legs dangling near to the ground. He motioned to the spot next to him and we sat there together, watching the road go nowhere. He chewed on a larch twig he pulled from the gully between the hood and the windshield. I could tell he was trying to figure out what to say to me, so I tried to be patient. Birds were chirping all around us, preparing for migration. Their general cheeriness made me more aware of the unpleasant pounding in my head. I waited there for my punishment, not saying a word.

Finally he looked at me. “What the hell got into you, Wes?”

What could I say to him? It seemed impossible I’d been so stupid, yet that was exactly what I was. I also wanted to answer with something about my father, about Topeka, but still I couldn’t see what one had to do with the other. I wanted to maybe tell him about what Ruby had said, about my knife, about Gip, but all that was salt in the wound. Maybe I could tell him I was about to become a bum along with my grandparents because my recklessness had lost them their home. Maybe he would feel sorry for me then. I felt sorry and pitiful.

“Got drunk, I guess.”

“Don’t much explain it, you ask me. I’ve seen lots of good people slip down the neck of that bottle until they’re no better than the worm. It’s poison. You don’t want that in your blood.”

I thought then about all of them, my whole family, and the poison they’d deposited in my blood that stained the person I was. It was like anyone looking at me could see what I’d amount to, and none of it was any good at all.

“Do you think I’m like them, my grandparents?” I asked.

He spat a plug of stick onto the ground. “I don’t know them all that well, Wes, so it’s not for me to say how you might be like them. But I know you. And I think you’re better than what I’ve been seeing.”

“Sometimes I feel like . . . I don’t know. Like something ugly is growing inside me.”

“Something inside you?” He grunted, bobbing his head, sizing me up. “No,” he repeated, patting my leg. He took the twig out of his mouth. “I ever tell you I’m proud of you, Wes? All the grief with your mom going under the ice? Your dad taking off on you? Plus, you got those grandparents of yours? That’s a lot for one person to take. But you’ve been nothing but decent here with my family and me.”

“I’m not sure I can handle much more, you know?” I shook my head, turned away. “Feels like everything is closing in around me. Like I need to run or something.”

“I know what you mean. Restlessness. Fear. Sometimes both. Make you crazy,” he said, tapping his temple. “You need to think of it this way. Each new day is like a new life. More chances to make good and be honorable. That sun goes down, it can take sorrow with it, leave it on the other side if we let it. But you, you hold onto things.” Troy clutched nothing in his big hand as he gently tapped his belly. “You keep looking for someone else to make you whole, make it better. So much yearning. So much fight.”

I put my elbows on my knees, rested my stacked fists on my forehead, felt the throbbing hangover in my thumbs, heard it thumping on my eardrums.

Troy whistled, puffed breath into his cupped hands. “Getting to be winter for sure.”

I sat back up. How long would this stalling go on? “Yup.”

“Good time for a story. I got one for you.”

I let out a pained sigh. Nothing Troy liked better on a Sunday morning than telling old stories about some poor guy shitting himself or getting a stick shoved into his butt. “Please tell me it’s not another one of your rectum stories.”

Troy laughed, slapped my back. “I do like a good snake-climbing-out-the-butt story, but no. This one is about an epic struggle for the heart of a woman. Listen now and I’ll tell it to you.”

His voice turned soft and he set his eyes on a spot down the road. “Ah-ah. So back in the beginning, before things were decided, a girl blossoms into a woman and her father knows, before long, the young men would come for her. He is right. All the boys in the village come to his lodge, tell the father how great they are. But none would do. Soon enough the village is overrun with hunters and warriors from the horizon and beyond, all of them come to prove themselves worthy. ‘Gaawiin. Gaawiin. Gaawiin. No. No. No,’ the father would say.

“Then along comes this young man called Ziigwan. He doesn’t come with feathers in his war bonnet, he has no weapons. He is gentle, handsome. Fistful of flowers of all colors in one hand, a basketful of fresh berries in the other. The girl falls for him right away. Everyone does. A date is set for the couple to wed, sew their garments together in unity. So, it’s good, right? Everyone’s happy, right? Not so fast.

“Along comes another man, a strong warrior with an impressive war bonnet. He’d heard about this clever, beautiful girl and traveled to see her even though she’d already made her match. Biboon, that was his name. He sees her and is in love, just like that.” Troy snapped his fingers and, for a moment, the spell lifted.