Winter Counts(4)
I spotted Tommy, who sometimes went by the nickname “Ik-Tommy,” after the trickster spider in Lakota children’s tales. He and I had been friends since high school, but had been out of contact while he did a two-year stint at the state prison in Sioux Falls for aggravated assault. Four years ago in Rapid City, a group of three college boys spotted Tommy drinking a beer in a park and thought they’d have some fun with a drunk Indian, but he wasn’t drunk and wouldn’t put up with any shit. He was a joker, but you didn’t want to mess with him. The college boys started pushing him around, but Tommy grabbed a can of Axe body spray from one of the guys’ pockets and smashed the kid in the face with it. Even though he pleaded self-defense, the prosecutor argued that the can of body spray was a dangerous weapon and Tommy got two years at the state max. In prison, he’d hooked up with some radical Native prisoners and started reading books by Vine Deloria and other Indian writers. He’d gotten out a year ago, and had been trying to convince me to join some activist groups, but I wanted no part of that.
“Yo, homes!” he said, walking over to me. His long black hair hung down over his skinny frame and his denim jacket, which had so many rips and tears that I doubted it gave any protection against the chill. His shoes were old skateboarding slip-on sneakers, with a black-and-white checkered canvas top. However, there was a hole in the left one, his big toe protruding through the gap.
“Hey Tommy.”
“Got some forties if you wanna go out back.” He smelled like he’d already downed a forty, maybe even an eighty.
“No, I’m good.” I grabbed an old plastic chair and sat down. I felt in my pockets for my cigarettes by habit. Tommy didn’t smoke, so there was no point in hitting him up.
“I tell you about this book I read? For Indigenous Eyes Only? Shit been blowing my mind. Turns out we all been colonized like a motherfucker. Before the white people came, we didn’t have no laws, yeah? Didn’t need ’em. Didn’t need no jobs either, because we hunted our own food! Am I right?”
“Dude, you haven’t had a job in years,” I said, scanning the crowd for someone who might let me bum a smoke.
“That’s not the point! Jobs are for suckers. I’m saying we don’t see the world the same way as the, uh, colonizers. They’re all about getting stuff, buying stuff. What happens when a white kid has a birthday party?” He looked at me, eyebrows raised.
“They eat cake?”
“No, dude! They get presents! Shitloads of presents!”
“We give our kids birthday presents.”
“Because we’re colonized. Exactly what I’m saying. What do Natives do at a naming ceremony?”
“Give the kid a Lakota name?”
“Yeah, but that’s not what I mean. The giveaway! The giveaway, man, before the spirit name is announced. That’s what I’m talking about. Indian kids give away presents to everyone there, they don’t get stuff for themselves. That’s the Native way.”
“Not every Indian gets a spirit name,” I said. “I never got one.”
“Well, it’s time! Time for you to walk that red road. You should come with me to the next AIM meeting, meet some peeps.”
“I’ll think about it.” I saw that people were starting to leave the gym.
“Or maybe you should come with me to the Sun Dance this summer. Get right with yourself. You down with that? Hoka!”
“You know how I feel about that bullshit. Dancing around a tree ain’t gonna do me no good.”
Tommy looked at me with a rueful expression. “Homeboy, someday you’re gonna hear the Creator. For real.”
I’d had enough of this. Time to take off, dig up some change and buy a pack of cigs. “Nathan said you had something to tell me. What’s up?”
“Yeah, so I ran into Ben Short Bear the other day. He wants to talk to you, right away. Says he been looking for you.”
“What does he want?”
“Don’t know. Said it’s important—sounds like he might have a job for you or something.”
Strange. Ben Short Bear was a tribal councilman and usually kept as far away from me as possible. Not to mention, the last time I’d spoken to him was when he kicked me out of his office, right after his daughter Marie broke up with me. She’d said that I was an asshole and she deserved better.
I didn’t disagree.
AS I LEFT THE COMMUNITY CENTER, I saw a man helping a little boy with his shirt, and my father’s face flashed into my head. My memories of him had faded over time, but certain things always brought him back. I remembered him teaching me how to tie my shoes when I was very small. How to throw a baseball, how to use a hammer and screwdriver, how to read a map. I remembered how I’d felt safe at night, knowing he was sleeping near me.
I remembered the bad year too. Nobody told me at the time he had cancer, but I knew he was sick. Later I learned he had pancreatic cancer. I guess that’s the worst kind, the kind that can spread in just a few months. He lost a lot of weight rapidly, so much that he didn’t even look like the same person. I remembered him throwing up a lot, and because I didn’t know how serious it was, I wondered if he’d been drinking. When I was older, my mom told me that the local doctors were so bad, they didn’t diagnose his illness until it was too late. Years later I looked up pancreatic cancer on the internet, and it sounded like there wasn’t much that could have been done. But my mother always held a grudge against the doctors.