It seemed to Ira that she knew where he lived, that she’d heard about him. Something more than that scar was familiar about his wife, too, but she couldn’t put the story together.
“I live just outside town here. I work at the electric plant. I got my own house through the housing board.” The man sounded dreamy now. “It’s a three bedroom and it came to us already half assembled. They drove it up to the lot in two pieces, wrapped in plastic. Then they took the plastic off and set the halves down and fit them together. When we walked inside, the rooms already had their cupboards, toilets, everything. It was a miracle.”
The man was solemn, remembering the day that the house arrived. Ira laughed. “Cheap miracle. A prefab. My father built our house by hand.”
“All they had to do was hook up the plumbing, the electric, the gas.”
“You might be contented,” said Ira. “I wouldn’t be. I’m looking for something else.”
The young man now laughed. “How long have you said that,” he asked, “how many times to a guy in a bar? I’m a little different because I can live with my habit, controlled drinking. You’re getting drunk though.”
“And you’re helping me.” Ira pointed at him and squinted along her finger. “You are an enabler. That is what I call you.”
“Why do we do this, oh why do we do this,” said the man, a false pathos in his voice at which the two of them laughed in a slightly overanimated way that made them both know they were attractive to each other, and that they were thinking about what might happen.
“I suppose your wife, with all of her medicines, she has a theory on why.”
“Yes she does, it’s an elegant theory. She’s a social worker and she sees all that people do. Her theory? It’s called sheer stupidity.”
“You met her in a bar?”
“No, at a ceremony.”
Ira slapped the table lightly.
“There you go again referring to spiritual things in a bar. You can either be a drunk or a spiritual person. Not both if you’re an Indian. I’m sorry. That’s the way it is.”
“Who said?”
“Oh, come on,” Ira looked around the bar, as though someone might be listening in, “the Shawnee prophet. You ever heard of the Shawnee prophet? That’s who said.”
The man looked down at his hands, at his beer, which he had drunk too quickly.
“I suppose I am no better than you.”
“That’s what I’m telling you,” said Ira. “If you’re here, you’ve made a choice. That choice is not to be spiritual. That choice is to be like me.”
The man now turned and looked at her for a long time. He was in his early thirties and she in her late twenties. Their hair was identical, a dull and wavy black, and his was longer, tied in a ponytail with a band of black elastic. Ira’s hair was springy and thick. She pushed it back behind her ears, but her ears were small and flat so the hair kept falling back in wiry tendrils around her face. She was lucky, she knew, to have the face she had. It could be worse. A round face with small, clever, up-slanting features. Someone had called her mouth passionate—not that she had big pouty zhaaginaash lips—her upper lip was straight across. But it curved in an arc as though a man had pushed against it with his teeth. Although she’d had three children, and ate cheap, starchy, greasy food, her body was still young and slender. Maybe her eyes, deep and smoky black, carried a wounded look in them. Maybe she was just confused because of the beers and the uncertainty about returning home. Her wants conflicted. She wanted this man to bring her home, but that was twenty miles, so she needed for him to have a working car and take her there. But first, she needed to buy food. She had already arranged for a delivery of fuel, but that would be tomorrow. At the same time, she wanted to stay here, suspended. Like one of those bugs trapped in plastic for a souvenir, she thought, looking at the light in the warm color of her beer. Halfway drunk forever. Not yet sloppy, but not back there, either, in the sober gray static. She supposed that she was desperate.
“Objectively speaking,” she whispered, knowing the man would bend closer to hear, “I shouldn’t have left them in this cold. But the only way I could get some money was if I came to town.”
“How,” said the man, “and where?”
“Here,” she said, calmly. “I came here to sell my body to the highest bidder. The truth is my kids need some food, the house needs heating oil. My oldest, she’s nine. They’re okay for a little while. So listen, niiji, if you don’t have the money, if you can’t pay, tell me now so I quit wasting my time on you.”
He stared at her with his mouth a little open.
“I’m just kidding,” said Ira. “Thanks for the beers.”
As she wasn’t kidding at all, she got up. She stuffed her gloves in her purse. She zipped up her thin black parka and put up the pointed hood. Her face was surrounded by bristles of cheap black fur.
“Wait,” said the man, “I can’t just let you go like that. We should walk down to the gas station, get some food. I have this much.” He took a ten-dollar bill from one pocket, fished a five from the other. “And I do not even have to see your naked gleaming body. We can get some milk and bread at the gas station. Peanut butter. If what you say is true, if your children are out there, then we get my brother to give you a ride to your place. Once there, you put your kids to bed and then deliver yourself to our lust.”
Ira looked at him and raised her eyebrows, two clean black arches.
“Just a joke,” said the young man.
“What’s your name?” said Ira.
“John,” he said.
“And your brother?”
“Morris.” Then in Ojibwe. “Ma’iingan izhinikaazo. He is named for the wolf.”
“Your brother shouldn’t have that name,” Ira said as she followed him out the door.
She watched him walk ahead of her. His hair hung long down his back and he adjusted a heavy skinning knife at his belt. He wore a heavier parka than she owned, and good leather boots. So maybe his story about the job, the house in two pieces, the wife, maybe all of that was true. She had persevered in the tribe’s social service agency all day filling applications for emergency heating oil. Before she left home that morning, she’d cooked up a pot of oatmeal. She thought of her daughter, who was named for the Shawnee prophet like her cousin and great-aunt, so many in her family. Ira thought what a practical girl her Shawnee was, how she’d take the younger two and put them to bed, and then would crawl in next to them for warmth. They’d be sleeping by now, underneath all of the quilts and blankets, curled in the skin of the bear her father had shot. She would be back with the food before they woke, and the delivery truck was on its way. So she followed the man with the ma’iingan brother.
3
Shawnee stared into the fire for a while, then suddenly she was so comfortable that she went directly into a sleeping dream where everything that just happened was a dream and her mother was shaking her and saying, “Wake up, wake up,” and when she did wake up she saw that the half-made baskets piled next to the makeshift fireplace were blazing. The fire had already spread over to the trash can just under the window. Shawnee blinked as the curtains burst into light. Then the fire licked here and there like a tongue. Alice woke up and the two girls tried to throw cups of water on the flames, but the water only trickled out of the tap, which was already blocked with ice. Still, the fire gave them time. They took all they could outdoors. The fire ate into the walls and then pulled itself under the roof until it found a way to push an arm of flame into the air. The children stepped back, and back again, then sank again into their blankets and huddled in the bearskin. There were blasts and balls of exploding shimmers and then the blaze attained a steady roar. It was warm in the blankets. I shouldn’t sleep, Shawnee thought, but she found herself curling around Alice, who held Apitchi tight against her, and then she closed her eyes.