There There - Tommy Orange Page 0,77
right,” you say, and put your arms up.
After he pats you down, he gestures for you to walk through again. This time when it beeps he just waves you through.
About ten feet away you’re looking down as you walk and you realize what it was. Your boots. Steel toe. You started wearing them when you got the job. Jim recommended it. You almost go back to tell the guy, but it doesn’t matter anymore.
* * *
—
You find Bobby Big Medicine under a canopy. He nods up, then tilts his head toward an open seat around the drum. There’s no small talk.
“Grand Entry song,” Bobby says to you because he knows everyone else knows. You pick up your drumstick and wait for the others. You hear the sound but not the words the powwow emcee is saying, and you watch for Bobby’s stick to go up. When it does, your heart feels like it stops. You wait for the first hit. You pray a prayer in your head to no one in particular about nothing in particular. You clear a way for a prayer by thinking nothing. Your prayer will be the hit and the song and the keeping of time. Your prayer will begin and end with the song. Your heart starts to hurt from lack of breath when you see his drumstick go up and you know they’re coming, the dancers, and it’s time.
PART IV
Powwow
A man must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur, and dreaming is nursed in darkness.
—JEAN GENET
Orvil Red Feather
INSIDE THE COLISEUM, the field is already packed with people, with dancers, tables, and canopies. Packed to the stands. Camping chairs and lawn chairs are scattered across the field, with and without people sitting in them—saved spots. On top of the tables and hung on the backs and sides of canopy walls are powwow hats and T-shirts with slogans like Native Pride written in capital block letters gripped by eagle talons; there are dream catchers, flutes, tomahawks, and bows and arrows. Indian jewelry of every kind is splayed and hung everywhere, crazy amounts of turquoise and silver. Orvil and his brothers stop for a minute at the table with beaded A’s and Raiders beanies, but they really want to check out the line of food tables in the outfield.
They spend their fountain money and go up to the second deck to eat. The fry bread is wide and the meat and grease are deep.
“Man. That’s goot,” Orvil says.
“Pffft,” Loother says. “Quit trying to talk Indian.”
“Shut up. What am I supposed to sound like, a white boy?” Orvil says.
“Sometimes you sound like you wanna be Mexican,” Lony says. “Like when we’re at school.”
“Shut up,” Orvil says.
Loother elbows Lony and they both crack up at Orvil. Orvil takes off his hat and hits them both on the back of the head with it. Then Orvil takes the taco and steps over the row to sit behind them. After sitting in silence for a while, he hands the taco to Lony.
“How much you say you could win if you win?” Loother asks Orvil.
“I don’t wanna talk about it. It’s bad luck,” Orvil says.
“Yeah but you said it was like, five thou—” Loother says.
“I said I don’t wanna talk about it,” Orvil says.
“ ’Cuz you think it’ll jinx it, huh?”
“Loother, shut the fuck up.”
“All right,” Loother says.
“All right then,” Orvil says.
“But imagine how much cool shit we could get with that kinda money,” Loother says.
“Yeah,” Lony says, “we could get a PS4, a big TV, some J’s—”
“We would give it all to Grandma,” Orvil says.
“Aw man, that’s weak,” Loother says.
“C’mon, you know she likes to work,” Lony says, still chewing the last of the taco.
“There’s probably other stuff she’d rather do if she could,” Orvil says.
“Yeah, but we could just keep some of it,” Loother says.
“Shit,” Orvil says, looking down at the time on his phone. “I gotta get down to the locker room!”
“What you want us to do?” Loother asks.
“Stay up here,” Orvil says. “I’ll come get you after.”
“What? C’mon,” Lony says.
“I’ll come get you after, it won’t take that long,” Orvil says.
“But we can’t barely see shit from up here,” Loother says.
“Yeah,” Lony says.
Orvil walks away. He knows the more he argues, the more rebellious they’ll get.
* * *
—
The men’s locker room is loud with laughter. At first Orvil thinks they’re laughing at him, but then realizes someone had told a joke just before he got in, because more jokes come as he sits