whole way. Well, I laughed until we were about halfway home, and then I fell asleep.
Snap, just like that.
Things had gotten so intense, so painful, that my body just checked out. Yep, my mind
and soul and heart had a quick meeting and voted to shut down for a few repairs.
And guess what? I dreamed about cantaloupe!
Well, I dreamed about a school picnic I went to way back when I was seven years old.
There were hot dogs and ham burgers and soda pop and potato chips and watermelon and
cantaloupe.
I ate, like, seven pieces of cantaloupe.
My hands and face were way sticky and sweet.
I'd eaten so much cantaloupe that I'd turned into a cantaloupe.
Well, I finished my lunch and I ran around the playground, laughing and screaming,
when I felt this tickle on my cheek. I reached up to scratch my face and squished the wasp that had been sucking sugar off my cheek.
Have you ever been stung in the face? Well, I have, and that's why I hate cantaloupe.
So, I woke up from this dream, this nightmare, just as my dad drove the car up to our
house.
"We're here," he said.
"My sister is dead," I said.
"Yes."
"I was hoping I dreamed that," I said.
"Me, too."
"I dreamed about that time I got stung by the wasp," I said.
"I remember that," Dad said. "We had to take you to the hospital."
"I thought I was going to die."
"We were scared, too."
My dad started to cry. Not big tears. Just little ones. He breathed deep and tried to stop them. I guess he wanted to be strong in front of his son. But it didn't work. He kept crying.
I didn't cry.
I reached out, wiped the tears off my father's face, and tasted them.
Salty.
"I love you," he said.
Wow.
He hardly ever said that to me.
"I love you, too," I said.
I never said that to him.
We walked into the house.
My mom was curled into a ball on the couch. There were, like, twenty-five or thirty
cousins there, eating all of our food.
Somebody dies and people eat your food. Funny how that works.
"Mom," I said.
"Oh, Junior," she said and pulled me onto the couch with her.
"I'm sorry, Mom. I'm so sorry."
"Don't leave me," she said. "Don't ever leave me."
She was freaking out. But who could blame her? She'd lost her mother and her daughter
in just a few months. Who ever recovers from a thing like that? Who ever gets better? I knew that my mother was now broken and that she'd always be broken.
"Don't you ever drink," my mother said to me. She slapped me. Once, twice, three times.
She slapped me HARD. "Promise me you'll never drink."
"Okay, okay, I promise," I said. I couldn't believe it. My sister killed herself with booze and I was the one getting slapped.
Where was Leo Tolstoy when I needed him? I kept wishing he'd show up so my mother
could slap him instead.
Well, my mother quit slapping me, thank God, but she held on to me for hours. Held on
to me like I was a baby. And she kept crying. So many tears. My clothes and hair were soaked with her tears.
It was, like, my mother had given me a grief shower, you know?
Like she'd baptized me with her pain.
Of course, it was way too weird to watch. So all of my cousins left. My dad went in his bedroom.
It was just my mother and me. Just her tears and me.
But I didn't cry. I just hugged my mother back and wanted all of it to be over. I wanted to fall asleep again and dream about killer wasps. Yeah, I figured any nightmare would be better than my reality.
And then it was over.
My mother fell asleep and let me go.
I stood and walked into the kitchen. I was way hungry but my cousins had eaten most of
our food. So all I had for dinner were saltine crackers and water.
Like I was in jail.
Man.
Two days later, we buried my sister in the Catholic graveyard down near the powwow
ground.
I barely remember the wake. I barely remember the funeral service. I barely remember
the burial.
I was in this weird fog.
No.
It was more like I was in this small room, the smallest room in the world. I could reach out and touch the walls, which were made out of greasy glass. I could see shadows but I couldn't see details, you know?
And I was cold.
Just freezing.
Like there was a snowstorm blowing inside of my chest.
But all of that fog and greasy glass and snow disappeared when they lowered my sister's coffin into the grave. And let me tell you, it had taken them forever to dig that grave in the frozen ground. As the coffin settled into the dirt, it made this noise, almost like a breath, you know?
Like a sigh.
Like the coffin was settling down for a long, long nap, for a forever nap.
That was it.
I had to get out of there.
I turned and ran out of the graveyard and into the woods across the road. I planned on
running deep into the woods. So deep that I'd never be found.
But guess what?
I ran full-speed into Rowdy and sent us both sprawling.
Yep, Rowdy had been hiding in the woods while he watched the burial.
Wow.
Rowdy sat up. I sat up, too.
We sat there together.
Rowdy was crying. His face was shiny with tears.
"Rowdy," I said. "You're crying."
"I ain't crying," he said. "You're crying."
I touched my face. It was dry. No tears yet.
"I can't remember how to cry," I said.
That made Rowdy sort of choke. He gasped a little. And more tears rolled down his face.
"You're crying," I said.
"No, I'm not."
"It's okay; I miss my sister, too. I love her."
"I said I'm not crying."
"It's okay."
I reached out and touched Rowdy's shoulder. Big mistake. He punched me. Well, he
almost punched me. He threw a punch but he MISSED!
ROWDY MISSED A PUNCH!
His fist went sailing over my head.
"Wow," I said. "You missed."
"I missed on purpose."
"No, you didn't. You missed because your eyes are FILLED WITH TEARS!"
That made me laugh.
Yep, I started laughing like a crazy man again.
I rolled around on the cold, frozen ground and laughed and laughed and laughed.
I didn't want to laugh. I wanted to stop laughing. I wanted to grab Rowdy and hang on to him.
He was my best friend and I needed him.
But I couldn't stop laughing.
I looked at Rowdy and he was crying hard now.
He thought I was laughing at him.
Normally, Rowdy would have absolutely murdered anybody who dared to laugh at him.
But this was not a normal day.
"It's all your fault," he said.
"What's my fault?" I asked.
"Your sister is dead because you left us. You killed her."
That made me stop laughing. I suddenly felt like I might never laugh again.
Rowdy was right.
I had killed my sister.
Well, I didn't kill her.
But she only got married so quickly and left the rez because I had left the rez first. She was only living in Montana in a cheap trailer house because I had gone to school in Reardan. She had burned to death because I had decided that I wanted to spend my life with white people.
It was all my fault.
"I hate you!" Rowdy screamed. "I hate you! I hate you!"
And then he jumped up and ran away.
Rowdy ran!
He'd never run away from anything or anybody. But now he was running.
I watched him disappear into the woods.
I wondered if I'd ever see him again.