Wabanaki Blues (9 page)

My eyes follow his chili splatter from the kitchen corkboard to the floor, and my wooziness subsides. “I'll clean it up,” I offer, hustling toward the paper towels.

My eye catches several worn and faded snapshots tacked onto the kitchen corkboard splattered with chili. I wipe them clean. One shows Del as a baby with the same spiky hair. He's wearing a white pillowcase with holes cut out for his arms. It's a lousy ghost costume. Another photo depicts a much younger Will, wearing a cap and gown and holding a plaque. He's standing beside Mom, Bilki, and Grumps, in front of the yellow warehouse that is Indian Stream School. I remove the picture from the board to examine it more closely. A palette and paintbrush adorn the plaque, suggesting it's some kind of high school art award. My grandmother proudly beams beside her protégé. Mom hugs Will like a baby brother. What is it with my family and the Pynes? When Grumps is around Del, the old man acts perkier. It appears the whole Pyne family has a weird emotional lock on my mother and grandparents. Or maybe that was in the past, and whatever charm Will once held has been eaten away by alcoholism, leaving nothing behind but the foul-smelling slimeball that I now see.

The corner of another picture peeks out from underneath the graduation photo. I lift the top photo and the image underneath stops my heart. It's the dark curly-haired graffiti girl from school with the Rush band tee shirt and the LOVE hoop earrings. I turn it over, and it says, “Mia.”

Will snatches the photo from my hand before I can examine it closely.

He bends down and sniffs me. “You losers have been drinking beer again. Haven't you?”

Del steps up to shield me.

His dad fumes, “Big Lila wouldn't like to hear that I allowed my boy to get her little girl drunk. Now would she? Besides, Del, you know my rules about college guys and high school girlfriends.”

The word “girlfriend” is one I've never heard used in reference to me. I'm ashamed to admit I love hearing it, even coming from Will Pyne.

“She's already graduated, Pops,” says Del, clenching his knuckles as if he wants to hit his dad. Yet oddly, he pulls his own face back, as though he expects to be struck first.

Will snarls, “But she ain't old enough to drink, and neither are you.” He pounds the countertop and hollers, “That's it, kiddies! Band practice is over! Since you've all been drinking, you can all walk home.”

The band scatters like their anthill got stomped on. Will grabs a whiskey bottle from a cardboard box full of them, like it's a party case of soda. He fills a huge glass with whiskey and slugs half of it.

I clutch Rosalita and totter through a side door. My vision gets splotchy like I'm swimming in mud. My guts wriggle. My thoughts slosh in rolling waves, overlapping and crashing onto one another. I have so many questions. How does Will know the graffiti girl at school? Is he a pedophile? Is it a coincidence that her name is Mia and he has a photo of a green-flamed Harley? Either way, I have to find a way to warn this girl that she has a stalker, but I'm feeling sicker by the minute.

Once outside, I ask Bilki, “Can you please help me get home?”

“Where is home?” she responds.

Her response is as annoying as always. Nonetheless, I consider some appropriate answers to her question.
“My family rents an apartment in Hartford, Connecticut. The Mohegan Reservation is located forty-five miles southeast of that city, in Uncasville. Abenaki territory spreads all over the northeastern United States and into Canada. Grumps' cabin is situated in Indian Stream, New Hampshire, a three-minute drive from here and a fifteen-minute walk. So that's home for now. Home is where you feel safe—unless you live with someone like Will Pyne.”

I walk down the road we came on, and my head floods with images of other people's homes. Lizzy's apartment. Beetle's legendary mansion, even though I've never been there.

A new wave of nausea makes me wonder if perhaps this whole scene is taking place inside my head. Maybe I'm in a hospital bed, suffering from a concussion or a coma, thanks to that logging truck pushing Red Bully off the cliff. Maybe everything that's happened since that moment is a figment of my imagination.

Distracted by this thought, I trip over a pile of rocks and fall, scraping my elbow. The burning ache in my arm tells me I'm not imagining any of this. I'm somewhere real, somewhere I can be hurt. I panic and check Rosalita. She's fine.

Del catches up to me. “You can't walk home alone, like this.”

He tries to scoop me up. I briefly feel safe, supported by his thick solid arms, arms that chop wood and play heavy-duty guitar. But then I remember that green-flamed Harley and Will's picture of the graffiti girl, and I don't want to stick around.

He tries to cradle my bleeding elbow, but I yank my arm away. “I have to go!”

“Fine, then I'm tagging along for a while. It's easy to get lost in these woods.”

I hear Scales' nervous giggle, coming from somewhere nearby. After an uncertain minute, a lemon blur fades into the woods.

Bear steps into the clearing where I can see his large form, however fuzzy. “Should I stick around, Mona Lisa?”

Del responds for me, in a throatier voice than usual, “You don't need to do that, Bear.”

I clench my fists at my sides. “Will both of you please leave me alone?” I turn to Del “Your father is a maniac, and I don't feel well. Please go away.”

“You don't feel right because you guzzled your beer too quickly—probably on an empty stomach. ”

I ignore his logical deduction and keep trudging. A large shadow moves behind the pines. Another smaller shadow follows it. Then another. I thought the other members of the band were gone, but apparently not. We have an audience. Every direction I turn, I detect a moving shadow. These can't all be Del's bandmates. There are too many of them. This must be another hallucination, like the shadow of that girl I thought I saw at band practice. I need to shake this one away, too.

“I'm seeing things that can't be real.”

“Beer doesn't make you hallucinate,” says Bear, who hasn't left.

“No it doesn't,” echoes Del. “I don't like the idea of you being alone right now, Mona Lisa.”

“No!” I insist. “Get away from me!”

I hear Will's voice, whispering, not far away in the woods. “I can take Little Lila home.”

I picture the photo of the young graffiti girl on his bulletin board and run, more like stagger, away. My balance is off. I feel lousy, like water moccasins are slithering through my brain. I should never have come here. The last thing I want is a ride from Will Pyne.

I pick up the pace and make it about a quarter-mile down the road. My head is still sloshing, my stomach churning, my mind everywhere and nowhere at the same time. My legs buckle as I try to support myself on a tree trunk. I lose my balance, slide to my knees on the still-damp but no longer mucky ground and scrape my arm on the bark.

I put my hand to my arm and come away with blood. “Del. I could use some help.”

No answer. He must have done as I asked and left. I don't dare shout in case Will is out there, somewhere, stalking me, like he does the girl from school.

The next sound I hear is something between a growl and a snarl. I want to run. But I'm stuck on two immovable knees. The out of focus woods shimmer like sun-drenched water. If there's a bear lurking nearby, I don't expect to be lucky a second time. I manage to pull myself to my feet and stumble away.

A blur of yellow and red twirls before me, like a French impressionist painting. The image clears for a moment. I see it's the sow thistles and strawberries I saw on my drive with Grumps. This means I'm headed in the right direction. If I can just keep going a little further, I'll make it.

I stand but instantly fall back down onto my unreliable knees. An inky blob moves my way. My vision comes and goes. Something warm and moist bumps my face. I'm trembling, breathless. It smells like musky honey; I don't have to see clearly to know this is a bear. Its tongue laps my face, relishing me, licking my head like a lollipop. A dagger-sharp canine cuts my cheek. It licks the dripping blood with its long leathery tongue. This is it: my last moment of life.

The bear's broad haunch knocks into my shoulder. His paw and forearm swat at my leg like a baseball bat. I can imagine what that bruise will look like, if I live long enough for it to turn blue. The next swat may snap my neck or rip open my throat. Something pale catches my eye. It's a patch of blond fur. This is Marilynn! I don't know if this is good or bad. She shoves my shoulder again, pushing a haunch under my armpit for leverage. She's not trying to kill me. She only wants to get me up and on my feet. I don't kid myself that it's because she likes me. I'm guessing she feels obligated to Grumps, as her food source.

I prop an arm on Marilynn's enormous haunch. The haze before my eyes is clearing. I can see her expression of disgust. I look around and discover the worst: she's not alone. There are at least three more bears gathering nearby, circling. Could these be her cubs? That's a best-case scenario. I can also think of a worst case. What if some bears here got wind of my parents' trip to study bear sacrifice in Russia and decided to sacrifice me, as payback?

I hear yipping and squealing, along with a deep moan. Three cubs race in front of me. But that moan did not come from a cub. I see them scamper toward a gray lump. The lump rises to turn and face me. It's an ancient bear. I see its balding head and rows of sloppy loose flesh drooping beneath its chestnut brown eyes. There's a crack in its bulbous nose. Its haunches are saggy and its claws are broken and yellowed. The smell coming from this creature reminds me of the dying fall woods. If God is a Bear, he looks like this one. I think of the adorable bear charm on my bracelet. This creature looks nothing like it.

Bilki murmurs, “This is The Great Bear.”

So this is the creature Grumps mentioned with such foreboding. My arm is still propped on Marilynn for support as the gray withered titan lumbers my way. The little bears back off, clearing a path. The Great Bear drags himself over to Marilynn and me, huffing with weak shallow breath. The young bears lower their snouts to the ground and whimper submissively before The Great Bear. I don't smell musky honey coming from this creature; I smell rotting leaves. I'm frozen, not with fear but with amazement. This bear must be a thousand years old, maybe a million. He somehow remains on all fours, albeit unsteadily. I'm still on my knees.

We're close now, eye-to-eye. He taps my crown lightly, and the entire world illuminates, like I've been kissed by a falling star. The Great Bear bows his head, and then drags himself backwards, into a circle formed by Marilynn's cubs, the loose skin of his arms and legs slapping against the sides of his decrepit torso, until he collapses in the center.

I'm wired now. The path home appears laser clear. Marilynn continues to accompany me back to the cabin, growling cantankerously. We reach the cluster of four birch trees, and she dumps me onto my sore arm, exiting into the pines.

Grumps is fixing something in the kitchen. I cover my scraped arm and muddied knees with Rosalita, grunt a hello and head straight for my room.

“Just a minute, City Gal,” he calls through my closed door. “I did not see Del Pyne drive you home. Why is that?”

“His dad is messed up. I bolted.”

Grumps tsks. “Poor Del. You are like all the other gals that boy has lost to his father's bad manners.”

Other gals.
An unexpected rush of envy overtakes me. I start playing a blues riff I learned from Shankdaddy, hoping to free my mind of anything related to Del Pyne. But it's impossible. His world is a classic blues song. He's got a mean drunk daddy livin' at the bottom of a whiskey jug. Wait! That's a good line. I try writing more lyrics for a song I call “Big Bad No-good Daddy.” But whenever I think too hard about Will Pyne, it feels like someone is grinding broken glass into my skin. Then it hits me, the part of what happened today that truly merits a song. I let my fingers find the notes and chords. The lyrics follow. Tonight, I sing “The Great Bear Blues.”

Five

Otherworldly Relations

A daytime examination of my bedroom mural reveals a decrepit bear with saggy haunches, sloppy loose flesh, a cracked bulbous nose, and broken yellow claws. This painting—bolstered by Del's rotgut Grim Reaper beer—inspired my imaginary Great Bear from the woods. I can't believe I didn't put this together yesterday. I not only imagined the bear, I probably imagined that shadow-girl at Del's, as well.

In my mind, I hear Mom saying, “Reality check.”

Fine, so I imagined it all. But I came way from the experience with a decent blues song. Perhaps I need to view this summer sojourn in the woods as a musical retreat. I notice my duffel remains packed and decide to make my peace with moving in. Stuffing my clothes into Mom's maple dresser, I run across a shoebox full of her old pictures. The one on top is a black-and-white art photo of me as a frowning kid. Bilki must have hated this colorless picture. I turn it over. It says, “Bilki–1944.” Whoa, I've made a mistake; this is a photo of my grandmother as a child. What a stunning resemblance there is between us. People say she was pretty as a young woman, so this picture gives me hope. Without the notation on the back, I never would have guessed it was her because I never saw her frown. Everybody loved her smile. I wonder what turned her frown around. It certainly wasn't marrying Grumps.

The next photo in the pile is in color. It's a shot of two young women hugging one another. The one wearing the Yale sweatshirt is definitely Mom. She looks about twenty-five. There's no mistaking that perfect butter-girl face. Fringed leather hair-ties wrap around her twin braids à la late-twentieth-century Indian chic. I imagine what Beetle would say if I wore those leather hair things to school. He'd probably call me a hillbilly. I push that thought out of my mind because Beetle is gone from my life for good, now that we've graduated. Hair covers the other girl's face, but she has the same great curly hair as the girl in the photo at Will's house. I carry the picture into the main room to question Grumps about it.

Sunlight streaks through the smoke from the open woodstove door like heavenly rays. Grumps slouches in his mustard-colored rocking chair, caressing the arm of the empty strawberry rocker beside him. He's wearing another new shirt, still creased from the package. I wonder how many Christmas, birthday, and Father's Day gift shirts remain unopened behind his secret locked doors. He doesn't look half bad, now, considering the way he appeared when I arrived, with his hermit beard and filthy clothes. The cabin looks better, too. The floor is clean and the place smells all right. I almost hate to hinder his recovery with this blast from the past.

I shake his arm, which clenches a ring full of skeleton keys like it's the launch codes for America's nuclear arsenal.

“Can you tell me who this is?” I ask.

He half-opens one eye and hacks out a few coughs—not sick coughs—fake coughs, the kind you make when you want to avoid speaking. “I can't remember the gal's name,” he says, letting his chin fall to his chest, pretending to drift back to sleep.

I shake the picture at him. “I'm curious because she looks like somebody I know from school.”

“I doubt that.”

“Then you
do
know who this is.” I press the photo into his limp hand.

He wipes the sleep from his eyes and raises a firm hand signaling me to stop. “City Gal, I was up with the birds this morning while you slept in late, after playing your guitar all night. I've earned my nap. I'm guessing this rude wake-up of yours has something to do with whatever went on at that band practice yesterday.” He narrows his eyes, “Did something unsavory happen that I should know about?”

I assume by “unsavory” he means did I have sex or use drugs or alcohol? I ignore the part about the alcohol and answer honestly about the sex and drugs. “No Grumps, nothing unsavory
happened. Like I said before, I left because I wanted to get away from Will Pyne.”

He folds his arms tightly over his broad belly. “Poor Del. He dropped off my groceries this morning looking like a lost bear cub. He wanted to see you. He'll be back.”

I slap the photo on his chest. “Right now, I'm more concerned with this.”

He squints, fumbling his taped-together reading glasses, beckoning me to show him the picture again. I wonder when he last saw an eye doctor.

“I don't recall who took it.” He returns to fussing with the skeleton keys on his ring, as if pondering which secret door to open next.

“Who is the girl?” I flap the photo at him.

“Some old friend of Lila's. She's probably the one who talked your mom into leaving that nice local boy to marry that old Canuck professor.”

I recall my parents' conversation on the way up here.
Nobody up here ever leaves…Unless she's a beautiful young woman who cons an older man into helping her escape…

Fire surges through me. Mom wanted to escape Indian Stream at any cost. Yet she sent me here for a month—a real sign of affection on her part. From Grumps' droopy face, I can tell he realizes he shouldn't have said what he did.

He forces a fake-chipper expression. “Seeing how your parents' union gave me an artistic granddaughter, I guess everything turned out all right.”

“Please try and remember this girl's name,” I insist.

“It was a long time ago.” He turns away.

It dawns on me that I haven't turned this picture over, to look for inscriptions. So I flip it, and read the words, “Me & Mia.”

“Mia!” I burst out.

I support myself with an arm on the wall. My mind races to piece together the facts. This can't be my friend. But obviously Mom had a friend named Mia in the 1990s, when she went to Yale. Is it possible this could be the same Mia who was murdered at my high school?

“May I take this picture back to Hartford?” I ask Grumps.

“Why?” he grumbles.

“It says ‘Mia' on it. A girl name Mia died eighteen years ago at my school. Her killer was never caught. I know somebody who dated her. He's the father of a guy at school. I'd like to show it to Mom and see if there's any connection. So may I take it?”

Grumps snatches the picture from me. “No, you may not take it. A death in Hartford has got nothing to do with us folks, way up here.”

I snatch it back. “But what if it does?” I shake the picture. “Mom obviously knew a girl named Mia. That means her friend, Will Pyne, may have known her. What if this is
the same Mia as the one who died at my high school? I've seen a photo of a Harley with green flames at Will's house. That's the bike they say the killer rode. What if he picked her up on her last day of school and they took a ride on his bike and something went wrong? Maybe she told him she was in love with somebody else, like Worthy Dill. Worthy's son told me they had a thing. Maybe Will locked her in the school basement to die, as punishment.”

“Whoa now, City Gal. You got all that from some hazy old photos?” Grumps drops his jailor's keys. “Just because Will owns a bike that is similar…”

“So Will does own a Harley with green flames?

“Well sure, but that doesn't mean anything. There are no murderers around here.”

“C'mon Grumps! I'm sure there are plenty of murder cases that never get solved up here because nobody follows through or the killer slips the border to Canada. I'll bet Indian Stream doesn't even have a real police department. Besides, I've met Will Pyne. I know what he's like. Any decent cop would pin him as a suspect for something hideous.”

“The fact that Will's peculiar doesn't make him a murderer. Besides, you don't even know this girl's full name.” He flicks the photo in my hand with his fingernail. “She could be Mia Smith or Jones. Probably not the same gal at all.”

I'm almost inclined to agree with him, when a shadow crosses my feet. Only it's more than a shadow. It's a woman, and she appears in living color, with wide emerald eyes, heavy dark curls, and huge silver hoop earrings with the word “LOVE” carved across the center. Her Rush band tee shirt shows a rabbit coming out of a hat.

Not caring if Grumps overhears, I ask her, straight up, out loud, “Are you Mia Delaney?”

She points to her chest, then the photo of the girl with Mom, and nods.

I wonder why she doesn't speak to me like Bilki does. I'm curious because I believe all Indians can talk to the dead, even Grumps. They just need to remember how.

He holds his head with both hands and directs his stiff and imploring gaze upward, as if Bilki better weigh in on this sticky situation.

“Now you're talking to ghosts. You better get a grip, City Gal. Stop acting crazy like some of your northern relations.” He rubs his hands together like he's wringing someone's neck. “You've always had a dark side. It's the musician's curse. You need to get over it! Sometimes I imagine seeing your grandmother. Then I pull myself together. You should, too. Take a reality check.”

Now I know where Mom gets her favorite annoying expression. He slumps in his rocker, deflated. I've likewise discovered where I get my slumping habit.

Grumps isn't really with me anymore. Talking about my grandmother has made his eyes cloud over like the morning fog on Second Connecticut Lake.

Hoping to shift his focus away from Bilki, I return to Mia, “I saw the same dead girl at the Pyne house.”

“This was after you'd been partying, no doubt.”

“After two beers,” I admit.

Grumps snorts. “Are you claiming that it's reasonable to believe in what you see when you're drunk?”

“I had two beers. I wasn't drunk.” My face heats up. I can't hold back to protect his feelings, anymore. “You feed bananas to bears, and you think it's weird that I saw a dead girl?”

He rumbles like an earthquake. “Bears are real living creatures. They need to eat, just like you. They protect these woods, the whole planet, the universe in fact. You can't see the dead. You can't talk to the dead. Our people used to have those skills. But that was long ago.” Grumps thumps back down in his rocker and shoves his nose deep into
The
Farmer's Almanac
. The magazine is upside down.

I don't know what to say. For the first time it occurs to me that I haven't actually
seen
Bilki since she died. Sure, we chat inside my head. But, thanks to my Great Bear hallucination, my head is a less reliable place than I once thought. Still, it's got to be more reliable than the head of a man who feeds bananas to New Hampshire bears because he thinks they protect the universe.

I try to force him to take a reality check. “If I didn't see a dead girl then how do you explain the fact that I've seen a teenager who looks like the one in this photo from decades ago?”

He peeks over the top of his magazine. “Coincidence. Doppelganger. Dead people don't wander around as white wispy ghosts. That's Hollywood.”

“I didn't say I saw a ghost. I said…” The sound of a Harley interrupts our conversation. I pray it's not Will.

“Maybe that's your ghost,” Grumps grouses, still reading his magazine upside down.

Through the window, I can't see any bike but I do catch a dark tuft of leprechaun hair moving through the trees.

“It's nobody I want to see.”

“Then I guess we'll leave the door shut,” Grumps says with fake complacency.

Del's voice slips through the walls. “Mona Lisa, I know you're home. Please let me in.”

If only he had a different voice. If only I didn't suspect his father of murder.

He calls again, his voice cracking. “I need to see you. I have something important to tell you.”

It sounds like he hasn't moved on to those “other gals” or defaulted back to lemonhead. What if Sponge's joke about Del's serious romantic feelings for me was no joke at all? What if Del tried to jump off a tall building like City Place, right after I left his band practice? I know how it feels to consider such options, even though I never actually went there. Lucky for Del, there's nothing over two stories high within three hundred miles of this middle-of-nowhere hellhole.

“Please let me in,” he pleads. “I won't stay long. I promise. I have to get to work.”

I'm about to peek out the door to see his dad's Harley with green flames, when Grumps throws down his Almanac, leaps out of his rocking chair, and flings the front door open. A rush of cool pine-scented air clears out some of the wood smoke from the room.

The old man drags Del inside. “My granddaughter claims to have seen a ghost after drinking beer at your house yesterday.”

Del's lichen-green eyes glower, suggesting I'm a snitch, and a wackadoo one at that.

I realize I need to backpeddle. “I saw lots of crazy stuff yesterday. I wasn't feeling well. I even thought I saw an ancient bear in the woods.”

Del and Grumps exchange bizarre looks.

Grumps refolds his arms tightly over his great stomach, “You never know what you'll see when it comes to bears. They're complex. But ghosts! I'll bet you get your whacky notions about them from that Canuck father of yours. I read in the newspaper that twice as many Canadians believe in ghosts as Americans. They ain't got nothing to do up there in that big empty frozen wasteland but let their imaginations run wild.”

My head flies back in shock at how blind he is. “You're making fun of Canadians because they live in the northern boonies?”

“No, I'm saying they've got strange notions up there—like lower standards for maple syrup and believing in ghosts.”

“I know it's possible to talk to the dead because Bilki talks to me all the time!” As soon as I announce this, I wish I hadn't.

Grumps sinks, and Del eyes me coldly, like I've said something unforgivable.

So instead of shutting up, I babble. “She's not the only dead person who visits me. I've been visited by Mia, as well.” I hand Del the picture. “This is my mother, Lila, and Mia. I think it's the same Mia who was found dead at my high school back in the 1990s.”