Paddle mug wastefulHe lived in a two-bedroom house on a small alfalfa farm east of town, not far from the golf course I used to sneak onto a few years earlier. We all expected cows and pigs, but all he had were three acres of alfalfa, a horse, and six chickens in a coop along the northern edge. The farm was more for personal use than business, although he did make some money off the hay and never had to pay for eggs. The horse, Genie, had been his wife’s. Reggie, he told us plainly, had never learned to ride. He punched me in the eye. You should have been a poet, says Yves once more. And Misia came back to me, stirring up the drama: Where we are is also out east, says Edda, with a nasty laugh. She shot him a peeved glance.“You know better than to speak in such terms.” I looked at my friend beside me, the one who stayed, and I knew what I had to do. I wanted to believe good men could do despicable things and remain good men. I wanted to believe this place was better for having him. That’s just a way of putting it, he said. “Have ye climbed the Cuillins then?” Two wrongs, they say, cannot make a right, but if you put enough negatives in the pot there’s a chance, I believe, that they might cancel one another out. I should thank my stars that the girl is home, but I’ve grown so hard-hearted that I’m no longer grateful for anything. As she lies there fully dressed on the living room floor, wearing thick-soled shoes and snoring so loudly that the walls rumble slightly, I view her as an object that has nothing to do with me. Her black leather vest leans upright in one corner, like the seared torso of a bull. So that I can get into a real prison with genuine criminals and not some fucking juvie-nursery. Of course I do. You just don’t notice it. Which hand do you want? asks Edda, turning around sharply, like a ninja. In just a few months she’s become an expert in taking her opponent by surprise, and her opponent’s become an expert in keeping a poker face while expecting anything. Indeed, anything could be in the clenched fist that she holds out. Even a hand grenade. Let’s check if she has a belly button. Wild Ones don’t have belly buttons. Your mother was colorful, that’s true, says Hei?ur, laughing at me. But I don’t always recognize her from your descriptions of her. He made two more trips to the guest bedroom in the night. I woke up each time he left but fell back to sleep almost immediately. Each time he returned he held me tighter, with more conviction. And each time I felt more and more centered in myself. The world ahead is a deep-brown cloud. Its limbs reach out to us and scratch the car. “The embers burn low, Duncan,” she had confessed to him, meaning the centuries-old Council fire that bound the tribes of the Iroquois confederation, “but as long as the spirits watch over us I will not fear.” The frail old woman, who more than anyone embodied the heart of the Haudensaunee, the Iroquois people, had asked Duncan to carry her into the sacred lodge, the structure at the town’s highest point where the masks of Iroquois ritual were kept. He had cradled her like a child in his arms, pausing at the doorway to let one of the protecting shamans cleanse them with fragrant cedar smoke before stepping inside. “Interesting,” my mom said, and Jean couldn’t help scooting forward on her seat. “Very interesting.”. |