Caitlan.
The girl had passed the note to me.
The other messages were just a couple of my
warm and fuzzy classmates
Adding their regards.
The bastards didn’t matter, though.
I finally turned and ignored the sea of ugly faces
and tuned in to her smile.
Would have just kept locked onto that smile too
but Old Man was reminding me
if I kept staring at the sun
well, you know.
When My Father Talked
When my father used to talk to just me and no one else
he sometimes talked about
the black dog
but the dog didn’t have a name not a dog name
anyway.
My mom had to later explain to me
that the black dog
was depression
and it would bite my father hard and deep
and not let go.
So I knew all about the black dog when it came up snarling at me
three years ago.
There I was
a thirteen-year-old boy just off the reserve
with his own ugly pet dog.
He didn’t bite
at first.
He was skinny and afraid
and needed to be taken care of
but he was the same kind of dog
that my father knew all too well.
And when he turned on me
there was nothing I could do.
At first I felt the pain, the teeth,
saw the meanness in his eyes.
At first I thought,
not his fault maybe,
probably couldn’t help it but he hung on
and after a while it stopped hurting.
I think the teeth
injected something into my blood
that made my mind go numb.
And I began to like the feeling—
like being dead
but still breathing.
The Girl
What about the girl?
When class was over, she had moved quickly
down
the
aisle
like
the
wind
right
past
me
and
she
was
gone.
Everyone left quickly like there was a fire or something
and I was left there with the teacher.
Mr. Diamond didn’t know what to say to me.
Maybe he’d never
spoken to a kid like me before,
someone off the reserve.
What was your name?
Jeremy Stone, I said.
That was my name
and still is.
He smiled, I think.
Hard to tell with white people
sometimes whether they are
smiling
or laughing at you or just awkward and pale like that
but I don’t think he was unkind,
just awkward and pale
and good with numbers
but not words
or people.
Getting Lost in the Halls
That’s never much fun
for someone like me.
And I didn’t ask anyone
where the gym was
so I showed up late
after Old Man finally said to me
just follow the smell of stinky socks.
And he was right as usual.
I was new of course and everyone else
knew what was going on.
Pretty weird, really.
Wrestling.
By the rules
but wrestling. Just like when I was little and
my cousins and me
wrestled in the living room
until someone got hurt.
It usually wasn’t me. Don’t know why.
But now we were paired off
and I ended up with the Paper Clip Creep.
Someone said to him
Thomas,
looks like
you get to wrestle
Geronimo.
Geronimo was me. (I guess now I had a new name.)
Thomas Heaney was him.
I didn’t understand the rules
but no one was explaining.
So he quickly slammed me on the mat
and that took me back
to the living room.
Only now I was bigger
and Old Man was yelling to me: Get up, Jeremy Stone
and fight like a warrior.
I had forgotten all about
the warrior.
Use your enemy’s strength,
against him, said the familiar voice of
Old Man.
I twisted out from under
Paper Clip’s armpits
like a snake
and stepped back,
waited for him
to lunge
and miss. Then I threw myself on him
and knelt on his back
like I was praying.
The gym teacher blew a whistle
and yelled at me to get up.
I got up
and Thomas
glared.
I said I’m sorry, Paper Clip
but didn’t mean it.
Now the others were laughing at him, not me.
But just then someone farted loudly
and that was the
end
of that.
I had Forgotten about Geronimo
Geronimo was a warrior
I read about in a book.
Old Man didn’t like Geronimo
but then he hated everything about
the history
of North America
after 1492
and the arrival of you know who.
But I read the book anyway
and could see that
if they had just left Geronimo and his people alone
he would
have been peaceful. But
it didn’t work out that way
so
he
fought
back.
Fought
hard.
Fought well.
But that is not what I liked about Geronimo.
They said
he could
walk
without
making
footprints.
He could
see far into the future.
And if he needed to,
he could tell the sun
not to come up
if he needed darkness
for protection.
Geronimo said:
“I was born on the prairies where the wind blew free
and there was nothing to break the light of the sun.”
In the past,
thinking about Geronimo
sometimes
made the black dog
run away.
And it helped me to pin
Paper Clip that day
although
Old Man wanted to take credit for that.
The Fish in the River
I think I have a problem understanding time.
Just like my grandfather.
I slip
into the past
and
don’t know why.
Old Man says it’s because sometimes
I just have my head up my ass and he’ll say,
how is the view
up there
today?
But that’s just because
he thinks it’s a bad thing
to spend too much time
in the past.
Anybody’s personal past
unless you can go way
way back to the old days
when it was always quiet
in the woods
and you could just reach into any stream
and lift out
a
big fish
to cook for dinner.
I have a hard time
hanging on to the present.
The present is like that big fish and I am trying to hold onto it
so I can
cook it for dinner.
But it keeps jumping back into the river
and swimming away
upstream (into the past)
or downstream (into the future).
It’s been a very long while
since my father went to the river
and caught a real fish
and my mother cooked it
and we ate it
with my cousins.
That’s some fish,
my mother kept saying.
And my father kept saying, It was like
that fish
wanted me to
catch him
and feed him to my family.
But my father left the next day
to go look for work on the oil rigs out West.
And I felt bad
because I didn’t eat all my fish,
didn’t like all the bones.
But I should have saved those bones
to remember my father by.
Even
fish bones
should not
be wasted.
Caitlan Speaks
You need me in your life,
she said.
Just like that. Out of the blue.
You don’t want to be alone
in this school
in this life
ever.
Do you know about Jenson Hayes?
she asked.
Who is Jenson Hayes? I asked.
Jenson Hayes was the one person I truly loved.
He was the one.
But I never told him.
And that was stupid of me.
And now he’s gone.
You remind me of him.
I do?
Yes.
Difference is you are here
and Jenson’s not.
Oh shit, I said.
Oh shit is right,
Caitlan said
and then kissed me hard on the mouth.
The Difference Between Me and Jenson Hayes
Follow me, Caitlan said.
She led me to a janitor’s closet.
Don’t worry about Fred. Fred is cool, she told me.
Fred is the janitor.
Fred lets me chill in the janitor’s
closet whenever I need to chill.
Which was often as it turned out.
There were two classroom chairs in there.
We sat.
She stared at me intently.
You’re quieter than Jenson, she said.
Taller and quieter. Darker skin.
But you’ve got his eyes.
And the deer in the headlights look.
Yeah, that was me. I liked this girl, the girl from the mountain stream
but she scared me a little.
Caitlan, what are we doing in here?
Talking, she said. Getting to know each other.
I know you’ve got issues, she said.
You don’t have to be a psychic to know that
I guess, I answered.
We’ve all got issues. I just want to make
sure you don’t get fucked over.
What do you mean?
Like Jenson. Fucked over and fucked up.
What happened?
What Happened to Jenson Hayes
He wasn’t strong enough well, sometimes he was
when we were together when I told him how much I cared for him
when I played with his hair when we did other stuff.
I had to ask. What happened to Jenson?
They got to him.
They?
You know. The bastards. The shitheads.
The cruel ugly fucks who think they run the world.
Oh them, I said,
pretending I knew who they were.
Thomas Heaney for one. The lout who hit you with a paper clip.
He was the worst.
I didn’t tell her that I had pinned him in wrestling.
That would have been bragging.
Paper Clip, I said.
Jenson didn’t deserve any of that crap.
But he needed to be stronger.
He was very sensitive.
Look,
here’s
a poem
he wrote
for
me.
Jenson’s Poem
Sunlight on water
spring
green leaves on all the trees
warm sweet air
birds singing
everywhere.
You beside me
on the green moss
stretched out
our bodies
touching
forever.
Forever
Yes. Forever. That was Jenson.
Sensitive, creative, romantic, idealistic
and easily hurt. A fatal combination.
I swallowed hard. Oh, I forgot to tell you,
we were sitting in those classroom chairs,
facing each other, Caitlan and me, and our knees
were touching
and I was holding Jenson’s poem that I just read
and I was thinking I really loved this girl,
this weird, hyper, intense, savagely beautiful girl
with long dark hair (Indian hair, I kept thinking).
And dark Indian eyes, too. This girl still hung up
on an old boyfriend
but that was okay because our knees were touching
and she had taken me into the
janitor’s closet alone.
This was so much better than being in class
but I didn’t know what would
happen after we walked out of that closet
and back into the real world of school.
But I didn’t have the whole story.
What happened to Jenson?
I asked again. Did he move away?
Did he stop talking to you?
No, she said.
It wasn’t like that.
Jenson is dead.
I sometimes think I still hear his voice. Sometimes I think I feel him touching me on the shoulder.
Sometimes …
I’m sorry if this is uncomfortable for you, she said.
I’m a little intense, I know. It scares people sometimes.
I’m not scared, I said.
But she could feel my knees shaking a little.
I have shaky knees when I get nervous
and sweaty hands.
I shouldn’t say this, Caitlan said.
Say what?
Well, you have the look.
What look?
The what?
You have this look that says you’ve been hurt, you are vulnerable, and if someone wants to get you, to pick on you, to harass you, to hurt you, they will target you and wear you down. People like Thomas Heaney know that look and will dog you. And he’s not the only one. People like him will find you all throughout your life.
That’s not fair, I said.
I’m stronger than that.
You don’t know me.
(No, I didn’t actually say that out loud.
I just thought that.)
I swallowed hard again.
Caitlan leaned forward until her forehead was touching mine.
But I won’t let that happen to you.
Not this time.
How Jenson Died
It was such a big story for such a small closet,
such a sad story for such an ordinary day,
such a dark and tragic tale from such a beautiful girl.
Caitlan said,
We had been going together for a couple of years. He wrote me poems. We went on long walks. We never ate meat, never used cell phones, only bought used clothes, refused to watch television. He taught me to meditate and to breathe properly. We read long old novels together. He taught me the names of birds and flowers. We knew for a fact we were living in the wrong century. The wrong time. The wrong place. But there was not much of anything we could do about it.
And then we broke up.
Why?
I don’t know exactly.
I think everything we did was just
too
intense.
I nodded.
It was almost a year ago. We didn’t talk for a week. My mom had often said we were too young to be so serious. His mom said it too. Maybe that had something to do with it. We were on a roller-coaster ride. Sometimes we were on top. But then we dropped to the bottom when we let the world get to us … when it really got to us. When it got to us so badly … do you understand?
Yes, I said. I understand.
When that happened.
It was bad.
There were black dogs in the room with us now.
Three of them. I could hear them breathing.
I could smell their breath.
While we were not speaking, Thomas and a couple of his friends had been dogging Jenson. And he was weak. I didn’t know this at the time. But he had no one to turn to.
And they said something, did something. I don’t know what.
He took his own life.
Pills.
Alone in his bedroom.
And there
was nothing
I could do
to bring him
back.
Caitlan Cried