My Good Man, page 28
“High school is just some shit you have to get through,” he said, opening the driver’s side door. I realized we were parked down the street from the Spithouse. I hadn’t been paying attention, so I still didn’t know how to get here. “Aren’t we going in? I could catch a brew.”
“Thought you didn’t like that place,” I said, getting out.
“Just said you shouldn’t be here.” We crossed the street, and walking in, he held out a five as I showed my ID.
“I can pay my own way,” I said, reaching into my pocket. “Appreciate it, thanks.”
“Sure thing,” he said, and we sat at the bar. I looked in the mirror behind the bar. We probably looked funny together. He was a middle-aged guy, catching a nightcap, and I was a punk, looking stoked in my new world. I didn’t mind, until I looked deeper into the reflection and saw Leonard with another buzzed-head guy at a far table, toasting their futures.
“That your friend?” Tim said, looking at my expression in the bar-back mirror.
“How’d you know?”
“Been on that receiving end myself. You had the need to come so urgently, hoping he was here and hoping he wasn’t here.” I nodded. “Gonna be a kick in the nuts, but be the bigger man and say hi. Don’t worry. I’ll be here.”
Nearing their table, I could see that the other guy looked Indian, too. “This Chatty Cathy?” he said to Leonard, who’d been watching me the whole time I walked over, expressionless.
“Yup. Chatty?” Leonard said to me, as if I’d always gone by this name. “Meet Chief. He’s from a reservation, too. Where was it, Chief?” I stuck out my hand, but Chief didn’t take it.
“I’m in a different tribe now,” Chief said, shouting “Oo-rah!” into Leonard’s face.
“Oo-rah!” Leonard echoed, drinking. A few people glanced, but this could be a rowdy place in general. “So who’s that you’re with, Chatty? Your dad?” he asked, flicking his buzzed head in Tim’s direction. “Finally something in common?” They’d noticed when we came in.
“Friend of mine,” I said. “How long you been here?”
“Few minutes,” Chief said, nodding at the tall stack of empty plastic cups in front of each. “Going to probably call it an early night.” He turned to Leonard. “Why don’t you do a Head Call before we split, so we don’t have to stop every five minutes?”
Leonard looked at the floor, neck veins pulsing as he sipped from his cup. He got up, faking a yawn and a stretch, then headed to the john. Chief turned to me once he was gone.
“I told him from the beginning you were gonna be trouble, that he’d let the wrong Indian latch on,” he said, once Leonard was out of earshot. “He thought he should take a chance. Said he wondered why someone from the Rez here wanted to hang with him. He figured you were too scrawny to be any danger. He don’t know scrawny Indians are more dangerous than big ones. We ain’t never met, but I know how my Rez works. There’s only room for one bruised apple in a basket, buddy, and this basket’s mine. You move your little ass along.” His fist quietly slammed on the table, shockwaves thrumming down the pedestal to the foot ring. I started to get up. What was there left to say? But he spoke again.
“You sure gave Crater there some miserable time in Boot.” He looked to the ceiling, maybe debating whether he had time to say what he wanted, then back at me. “He belongs to a new family now. And one of the deals in Boot? When you get a letter from home? You gotta read it out loud to everyone. DI had a fucking ball with your letters. Funny your voice ain’t nearly as high and girly as DI made it out to be. Usually it’s the come-home-and-satisfy-me letters everyone wants to hear the most, but yours were pretty hilarious.” I could imagine every supportive word I’d written, how easily they could be turned to make Leonard seem weak. Then I remembered how, the more I wrote, the less he responded.
“Thought I was helping him,” I said. “Why didn’t he just ask me to stop writing?”
“Any Marine did that? All our good letters stop too. Crater tells me the recruiter here’s trying to sign you up. You running from the Rez? To be in the Corps, you should only be running to, not away from. You won’t survive.”
Leonard drifted back and drained his beer. “Coming?” Chief asked, standing.
“Your turn for Head Call,” Leonard said. Apparently, it was code for: Give me a minute to humiliate someone. Leonard waited until his voice wouldn’t carry.
“Meeting with the recruiter? You’re gonna be a Marine now, Brian? You ain’t Marine material. Chief tells me guys try the Corps as a ticket off the reservation. Said they always wash out. Never make it. Those letters … you’re never gonna be tough enough to be like me.”
“I wrote those to help—”
“Shut up. Chief said Indians only make friends with white people when they get booted by their own.” He believed this bullshit made up by a stranger, knowing from me that everyone on the Rez was in some way connected to each other. It was one of the things he seemed mildly jealous of, when I told him the various stories from different times in my life, back when we shared things.
“I guess in your case, it was that Night shithead. I took a chance on you, knowing my own crazy world at home, but you’re exactly what Chief said.” He punctuated this rant, slamming his fist down quietly, too. They weren’t wide swings, but the shockwaves thrummed down the pedestal to the foot ring as Chief’s had, like they’d each become echoes of the other.
“You’re not one of us. You just try on other people’s clothes,” he continued. “You can’t just try on the Corps uniform ’cause there’s nothing better to do. You’re just like the rest of them.” Who were the rest of them? I thought to myself. Indians? Non-Marines? People who hadn’t jumped into the gorge? People without cars? People without scars? Nope. Couldn’t be that one. He stood up and leaned in, finishing: “Find your own damned clothes.”
“Don’t you worry about that,” I said. “If Boot Camp turns people into the kind of asshole you’ve become, then I definitely don’t need to go there. No shortage of assholes in my life these days.” I got up and walked to the men’s room, leaving Leonard. The last I saw of him, he passed by the bouncer, on his way out. Even as pumped as he was, the bouncer was bigger. Leonard was still a boy trying on a man’s body for size, waiting to grow into it.
“Where’d your buddies go?” Tim asked, as I walked up behind him, meeting his eyes in the bar-back mirror where the first dollar and all kinds of other shit was taped.
“They … they had to leave. Tired,” I said.
“Tired,” he repeated. “Just as well. Let’s go. You should have an early night tonight, anyway. You’ve got an appointment in the morning.” We left our still-full plastic cups. Bruno, the human wall who served as bouncer, nodded as we headed out the door.
“For what?”
“Not, for what … with who?” Tim unlocked my truck door.
“Okay, with whom?”
“Friend of mine,” he said. “I called him from the pay phone. He owes me for something a ways back, and he remembered, without my having to provide the due bill.”
“What kind of friend?”
“Different kind of recruiter. You didn’t sign on the dotted line yet, did you?” I shook my head. I’d done preliminary paperwork at the table, for more information, but hadn’t committed a signature to any piece of paper. “Good. When he comes to pick you up on Monday—”
“How do you know he’s picking me up?”
“They always pick you up. Harder to back out. Nothing personal. Bodies are a recruiter’s job, and you’re another body. When he comes, I’ll be there with you. We’re going to tell that recruiter you have other plans. You tell him you changed your mind, you’re going to say thank you for your time, and that you’re sorry you inconvenienced him. He’ll turn around, but you’ll hear from that Sergeant again. He’s gonna call you back and ask to meet you when I’m not around. But tomorrow, you and me, we’re getting you enrolled in classes over at the community college for fall. It’s what they call open admission. No tests can keep you out. Clean slate.”
“What makes you think I want to get out of signing up?”
“I don’t know where you’re headed, son, but it surely isn’t the Marines. The Corps draws a lot of hardheads like your friends there, people who need to belong to something, and who know how to fit into that thing. Know how to follow rules. How to toe the line. That last guy you were talking to? That other Indian guy?”
“I didn’t know him. He’s not from around here. He came home with Leonard because he didn’t want to go back to his own home.”
“Sounds familiar. Well, he decided, like your buddy, years before you ever met him, that you’re not one of them. Your buddy could afford to be friendly because he knew the Marines were his future and you were his past. Every once in a while, people like him need to remind themselves of that something they belong to. That it’s important for them. The right decision. You were the evidence of the other side, this time. You became everything that doesn’t fit his new life.”
“What makes you an expert on the Marines all of a sudden?”
“There is nothing all of a sudden about my life,” he said, rolling up his right sleeve at the next light. “I knew my buddy would do me that favor. I didn’t have to show him this as a reminder.” On his bicep, muddy and hazy, in fading ink like you see on butcher-shop meat, still legible, sat two words. Buried in the blond fur and blotchy skin was that Latin phrase Leonard was in love with. I’d seen Tim with his shirt off numerous times, even just a few hours before, and never noticed it. “The due bill.”
Good on his word, the following morning, we drove to the college and Tim introduced me to his friend who worked there, someone involved with admissions. We flipped through the register, listing the hundreds of courses being offered. I remembered my ma saying, years before, that we were so poor I’d qualify for something called Financial Aid, but that felt like too much to process, seeing all these potential futures flying by in small print. “I don’t really know what to pick,” I said. For the first time, I wasn’t being told what to do, and I froze. What if I made a mistake? “What do most people take?”
“A lot of people come here for nursing,” the counselor said. “We’ve got a great placement record. Or there’s related medical fields,” he added. “All two-year degrees.” That seemed more manageable. “The first semester courses are all the same, but even if you change, they still fit for science requirements.” None of that made sense to me, but I guessed it would soon enough. I agreed to let him register me in medical technology classes for fall. I didn’t see myself being a nurse, but the other options looked okay. Tim and I had never talked about Hillman, but maybe he knew enough about the deeper Rez cultures to grasp that I was connected to our side of medicine. Or maybe he just remembered all those Rez ladies who came here, signing up for nursing. “Some of these high school classes count as advanced placement,” the counselor said, looking at the list I’d written down. “You can get some credit for introductory courses for those.”
“I got your entrance fees waived,” Tim added. Maybe that was a tough thing to do. I knew nothing about this world at all. “And I can help you fill out the financial aid forms. I did it for Hayley.” He handed me some forms already partially completed, with pencil asterisks where he said my ma had to fill in the numbers. I already knew the numbers from the earlier forms she’d given me, but still put them away to finish at home.
“Those guys at the bar?” Tim said, as we walked out of the building. “They needed to be faithful to each other, to some idea that helps young men like them feel a part of something bigger. You’re already part of something bigger. You’ve got to be faithful to something inside here.” He tapped the side of my head, and then, my chest, and we got in his truck, heading to the Rez. “I don’t know what it is, and you’re probably too young just yet to know, yourself, but one thing I do know. What you are looking for? You’re surely not going to find it on Parris Island.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Open Admissions
(1985)
I looked my fetal pig in the eye. “I’m sorry, Algie, no disrespect intended,” I said. I’d named him after the floating pig Pink Floyd brought with them on tour. His tongue lolled out the side. The first major discovery I’d made about the difference between high school and college: If you didn’t do the work here, in college, you just failed. In high school, some teachers just let you pass so they didn’t have to see you again, but that was not happening here. I had to do something fundamentally different. “I’d make a face at me, too, if I’d given my life up for an idiot who’s gonna get a C, maybe a C+, if Dr. Freeland’s feeling generous. And what patient wants to be in the hands of someone who’s an average student at best?” Also, some teachers, professors, went by Doctor. Like Freeland. Since it was the first time most of us had encountered this title in a classroom, we were always screwing it up.
“Folks, when you’re done cleaning up your area,” Freeland said, “wrap your pigs and any extraneous scraps in plastic and put them in the medical disposal bin. Don’t toss them. It’s bad enough some of this formaldehyde aerosolizes in air. If you splash it, your mucous membranes will be exposed to more and the room will inevitably only smell worse. Remember, wash your hands with the provided Irish Spring. It is, we’ve discovered, the only soap that diminishes the odor some. Study hard for your finals next week. If you’ve been keeping up, you should do fine. If you haven’t, cramming isn’t going to help.”
“Thank you, Algie, for the key lesson,” I said, returning to my pig. My lab partner raised an eyebrow, but if there’s one thing about being Indian out in the broader world, it’s that people around you will buy that anything might be a ceremony. I shrouded Algie in the plastic wrap, as requested, and sprayed down the rubber-coated lab table, systematically removing all traces of my presence from participating in this process. Soon enough, all my molecules would be gone.
From my first day in class, I’d felt like maybe I’d made a mistake in my choice of major. By midterm deficiency warnings, I was starting to feel like maybe I needed an even bigger switch. I wasn’t excelling. Apparently, I needed more than just a chance. Apparently I wasn’t as smart as I thought.
My strong resistance to cutting into Algie also told me I was not meant for working on humans, at least with scalpels. “Dr. Freeland?” I asked, raising the little pig. “If you didn’t do much damage, can your pig be, um, recycled?” It felt wrong to heave him into the medical disposal bin, so much sacrifice wasted. A couple other low-mileage pigs seemed in similar shape.
“Every student deserves a fresh subject,” Freeland said. “Rather than revisiting someone’s earlier mistake. Into the bin.” Understood—I wouldn’t want someone else’s used pig.
The next week, Intro to Bio was the last final of my first semester, and I finished the exam early. I’d spent fifteen weeks in my pretend goal of being a medical technologist, because I’d signed up in a panic for one of the few reasons people from the Rez went to college. I wondered what my great uncle Hillman would think of fetal pig classes. Leaving the exam, I stopped in Admissions, where Tim’s friend, Ross-something, worked. I never did memorize his last name.
“Got a minute?” I asked, knocking on his open door. Ross invited me to sit, offering me a cup of coffee and asking how it was going. I launched right in, just to be done with it.
“I’m near the end of my first semester. To be truthful, I’m not sure this is for me, after all. If I can’t cut up a pickled pig fetus, how can I be responsible for medical events in people’s lives? I’m considering doing a Withdrawal and didn’t want you coming across papers without notice, thinking it was a mistake. I wanted to say, thanks for trying.” I stood, reaching for my bag.
“Dropping a class might jeopardize financial aid. Let me check before you do anything.” He went over to a file cabinet to grab my admissions folder.
“I mean withdrawing from school. I don’t feel like I should be here.”
“I told Sampson he was throwing his money away,” Ross answered, closing the cabinet door.
“Look, this is hard enough. You think I want to be a failure at eighteen? Besides, Tim told me he got the fees waived,” I said, annoyed. “Not technically his money.”
“Fees aren’t waived for anyone,” Ross said, not bothering to sound like a diplomatic school official. “Sampson paid them, and you had a lot of favors called in to get you into those classes too. There’s a waiting list for that writing class you’ve got lined up for spring. The anatomy ones you’ve got as well, for that matter. You wouldn’t have gotten in otherwise for another semester. Maybe two.”
“Well, who would do that? He doesn’t have any pull here, I’m sure.” Apparently, it wasn’t on the promise of my future. Was I irritated at this guy, or grateful? I had no idea what to feel about Tim. One part of me wanted to stay, another wanted to go to the pay phones by the snack bar. The Marine recruiter’s card was still in my wallet, with “Call any time, son” written on the back.
“I did it,” Ross the Counselor said. “For him, not for you. And now I owe somebody for force registering you. You have no idea what this creative writing course cost me. It’s got prerequisites, and it isn’t even in your major. Or even close to your major.”
“You owe Tim something big then,” I said. I remembered that, if Ross rolled up his sleeve, I’d see the same blurry tattoo Tim had, the kind likely scarring over on Leonard Stoneham’s arm. What had happened between them? Something major, clearly.
“That’s business between friends. You don’t ask why a friend wants something. You make a decision on whether the friend is worth it, and you act accordingly. I’m sad to see that Sampson was maybe wrong investing in you. He always was soft for head cases, even in Boot Camp.” He laughed to cushion what he’d said, but it still stung. “What else are you enrolled in for spring? In addition to Creative Writing and Anatomy?” I explained I hadn’t done too well in my major courses, even beyond Algie, and wasn’t really interested in hospital work after all.
