to buy me the type of basketball shoes I had wanted in Fargo. He said I didn’t need new shoes, which was true. Cappy had the shoes I wanted. He had his hands in his pockets too, and he was looking at the floor, ducking his head back and forth. Strangely, he said what I had been thinking, though he lied.
You got the shoes I wanted.
No, I said, you got the shoes I wanted.
Okay, he said, let’s trade.
We traded shoes. As soon as I put his on, I realized that his feet were a size bigger. He walked away from me on pinched feet. He had heard what I’d said on the phone.
We went into Grandma’s and sure enough the meat was already frying, and with an onion. The smell had a wonderful power and my stomach jumped. I wanted to grab anything that I could put in my mouth. There was a stack of jam sandwiches on the table, to tide us over. I ate one. Her back was to the stove and on her table there was a bowl of sweet little dried apples. There was an apple tree behind the senior citizens and Grandma always harvested the apples. She picked every apple out of the tree and she pared the apples into thin slices and dried them out in her oven and sprinkled them with sugar and cinnamon. I ate another jam and white bread sandwich. She had set plates on the table and more paper towels on the plates to soak up the frybread grease.
Wiisinig, she said, without turning around.
I took some apple slices and put them on my tongue. I looked at Cappy. We ate another jam sandwich each and just stood there watching in mesmerized hunger until she started lifting out the frybreads. Then we each took a plate and stood beside her. She took the hot frybreads out of the bubbling lard with tongs and put the lumpy golden rounds on our plates. We said thank you. She salted and peppered the meat. She dumped in a can of tomatoes, a can of beans. We kept standing there, our plates out. She heaped spoons of the crumbled meat mix on top of the frybreads. On the table, there was a block of commodity cheese. The cheese was frozen so it was easy to grate on top of the meat. We were so hungry we sat down right at the table. Zack and Angus were outside, through her sliding doors, in the courtyard. She made their Indian tacos now like ours, called them in, and they sat on the couch and ate.
For a long time, nobody said anything. We just ate and ate. Grandma hummed as she cooked at the stove. She was short and skinny and she always wore a flowery pastel dress, flesh-colored stockings rolled down as if it were a fashion accent to do that, and moccasins that she made herself out of deerhide. Cappy’s two aunts tanned hides in their backyards. Their backyards stank, but the hides came out perfectly. Every summer they gave a soft buckskin to Grandma. Her moccasins were beaded with small pink flowers. She clipped her long, thin, white hair up in a barrette, and wore white shell earrings. Her face was gnarled and sly and her eyes were sharp little shining black marbles. Her eyes were never soft or affectionate, but always alert and cold. This seemed odd for someone who cooked for boys. But then, she had survived many deaths and other losses and had no sentiment left. As we filled up, we ate more slowly. We all wanted to finish at exactly the same time, to eat and run. But Grandma Thunder made us seconds, and we started all over again, eating even more slowly now, still not talking. When I finished, I thanked her and brought my plate to the sink. I was just about to tell her that I had to get home when Mrs. Bijiu came in without knocking. The worst of them all! A hefty, jiggling, loud woman, she took my chair at the table immediately and said, Oooohph!
Eyah, they ate good, said Grandma Thunder.
Top shelf, said Angus.
We must go now, Kookum, said Zack.
Apijigo miigwech, said Cappy. Minopogoziwag ingiw zaasakok waanag. He knew that to really make the old ladies happy, he should talk Indian, even if he wasn’t sure the words were right.
Just listen to that Anishinaabe! They were indeed pleased with him.