“Apple Jacks.”
“Cool.”
Marie poured two bowls of cereal. As they ate that simple dinner, Marie smiled at the small tragedy of it all. The two smartest Spokane Indians in tribal history were forced to eat Apple Jacks cereal for dinner.
“Quite the feast, huh?” asked Marie and laughed.
“Well, at least it’s traditional,” said Reggie, fighting back a smile.
“Yeah, don’t mind us, we’re indigenous.”
They laughed together.
“So,” said Reggie, more friendly now. “How is school going?”
“Ah, you know,” said Marie. “It isn’t easy.”
Reggie knew.
“Are you working?” asked Marie.
“Mostly,” said Reggie, who’d been running through a series of minimum wage jobs since he’d been kicked out of college. He mostly played basketball, especially at the all-Indian tournaments held nearly every weekend on the local reservations.
“How’s your folks?” asked Marie.
“Mom’s okay. Bird’s got cancer.”
Bird had recently been diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer and spent a lot of time in hospitals. Once, when Martha had called to say that Bird had asked for him, Reggie had promised to come home to the hospital, but had traveled to a basketball tournament in Montana instead.
“Oh, shit,” Marie said. “I’m sorry. How is he? Really?”
“I don’t know. Don’t care much, either.”
They ate the rest of their dinner in silence, then settled in to watch a bad movie on Marie’s black-and-white television.
“Hey, cousin,” said Reggie after the movie was over. “I hate to ask. But do you got any money I could borrow?”
Marie knew that Reggie had been building up the courage to ask for money.
“Reggie,” she said. “If I had money, do you think we’d be eating Apple Jacks?”
Reggie smiled.
“Hey,” he asked. “Have you heard about the scalping of that white man?”
“Yeah.”
“What do you think?”
Marie shrugged her shoulders.
“Yeah, I agree,” said Reggie.
He slept on the couch that night, and when Marie woke up early the next morning, he was already gone.
12. Seattle’s Best Donuts
FOR THE FIRST TIME since he had started construction work, John asked for permission to leave early, and went straight home to sleep. He was tired and willing to admit it to the foreman. A little after ten that night, he woke from a nightmare he could not remember, but he felt its residual effects, the sweat, racing heart, tensed muscles. He rubbed his stomach, remembered how, when he was twenty years old, he thought he was pregnant. No one had believed him, so he had forced himself to throw up every morning to prove it. For nine months, he waited to give birth, surprised by how little his belly had grown.
“This is going to be the smallest baby ever,” John had told Olivia. “You’re going to be a huge grandmother. Gigantic. The biggest grandmother ever.”
John had decided to have his baby at home because he hated hospitals and doctors, though he loved the nurses with their white nylons and long eyelashes. Using his latest paycheck, John made a list and then bought all the items he’d written down:
towels, clean and hot
hammer and nails
baby blankets and toys
bottle
graham crackers and milk
needle and thread
radio
sharp knife
soup
brand-new tool belt
rent money
newspapers with all the want ads cut out
On his delivery date, John lay naked on his bed, waiting for the baby. He watched the digital clock. 7:51. 7:52. 7:53. But the baby would not come. John felt his stomach, wished for labor pains, and heard the music growing louder and louder.
“No!” he’d shouted. “Don’t cheat me! Don’t cheat me again!”
But the baby never arrived, and John realized he had never been pregnant. He felt foolish. He had told everybody that he was pregnant, his mother and father, the woman who worked at the supermarket, his landlord. John packed up all his birthing supplies, the toys and blankets, knife and newspapers, and packed them into a box. He shoved the box under his bed and never looked at it. No. He opened it sometimes to take inventory, to make sure everything was still there. Criminals were everywhere these days, especially in his neighborhood. A girl had been shot and killed outside Ballard High School, just a few blocks away from his apartment. He was not going to take any chances with his possessions.
John smiled at the memory of his failed pregnancy. He was awake. He had to work the next day and he always tried to get plenty of sleep on work nights. The foreman liked to start early, so they would be done before that late afternoon sun took over. John thought this a strange belief, especially during winter in Seattle, when the skies were gray and rain fell constantly. John had seen one of his co-workers fall over with heat exhaustion a few summers earlier, but had never known it to happen since. Still, the foreman knew that an unconscious worker was an unproductive worker and made sure his men drank lots of water. John worried about what might have been in the water, but he usually drank it anyway.
John could not fall back to sleep. He crawled from bed, dressed in his work clothes, and walked to the all-hours donut shop on the corner. Seattle’s Best Donuts. John liked their donuts well enough, but he was not sure if they were the best in Seattle. He had once asked if there had been some kind of contest, but the manager just laughed. The shop was small, simple, and passably clean, as if one wet rag had been used to clean the entire place. A large picture window fronted the store. A window display of donuts at the end of the counter and another display hanging on the wall behind the counter. The kitchen was dark and mysterious behind the swinging doors.
“Lookee here, lookee here,” said Paul, the graveyard shift worker at the donut shop, when John walked in. Paul was a twenty-year-old black man, an art major at the University. He was handsome, with clear eyes and a strong chin. His hair was shaved close to his head. He worked the shift with Paul Too, an old black man whose great-great-grandmother had escaped slavery by marrying into the Seminole tribe. Paul Too sat at the counter, smoking a cigarette and reading the newspaper. He had a face like an old map, stained with age and folded incorrectly one too many times.
“Good morning, John,” said Paul. “You having the usual?”
“Yeah,” John said and sat beside Paul Too, who looked up from his newspaper and nodded. Paul set a jelly-filled donut and a cup of coffee in front of John. Paul Too picked up John’s donut, took a bite, and set it back down. Then he sipped a little of John’s coffee. John watched Paul Too very carefully. One minute, two minutes went by. Paul Too had survived. The food had not been poisoned. John took a bite of his donut and washed it down with coffee.
“So, John,” said Paul. “You couldn’t sleep again?”
John shook his head.
“That’s horrible. I hate it when I can’t sleep. And I’ll tell you, this graveyard shift messes with my sleeping. I never know what time it is. Never. Ain’t that right, Paul Too?”
Paul Too sighed deeply and nodded his head in agreement, never lifting his eyes from the paper.
“How’s your health been?” asked Paul. “Been quiet?”
John shrugged his shoulders.
“Yeah, I know how that goes. I hate it when things get loud. I need peace and quiet myself. Time to paint well, to let the colors in my head be the colors on the canvas, you know what I’m saying? A man doesn’t need much in this world, does he, John? Just a little food, a little house, and a little peace and quiet. I once heard that a man needs a full stomach and a warm house before he’ll listen to anybody’s sermon.”