[4 of 5] There There, by Tommy Orange (2018), Part IV, pages 227-260

Author: Tommy Orange

Orange, Tommy. There There, Part IV. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, NY, 2018, pp. 227-260.

PART IV
Powwow

A man must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur, and dreaming is nursed in darkness.

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—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 vou want us to do?” Loother asks.

“Stay up here,” Orvil says. “I’ll come get you after.”

“What? C’mon.” Lony savs.

‘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 down. Mostly it’s older guys, but there are a few young men in there too. He puts his regalia on slow, carefully, and puts his earphones in, but before he can put a song on he sees a guy across from him gesturing for him to take them out. It’s this huge Indian guy. He stands up, he’s in full regalia, and he picks his feet up one at a time, which makes his feathers shake, which sort of scares Orvil. The guy clears his throat.

“Now you young men in here, listen up. Don’t get too excited out there. That dance is your prayer. So don’t rush it, and don’t dance how you practice. There’s only one way for an Indian man to express himself. It’s that dance that comes from all the way back there. All the way over there. You learn that dance to keep it, to use it. Whatever you got going on in your life, you don’t leave it all in here, like them players do when they go out on that field, you bring it with you, you dance it. Any other way you try to say what you really mean, it’s just gonna make you cry. Don’t act like you don’t cry. That’s what we do. Indian men. We’re crybabies. You know it. But not out there,” he says, and points to the door of the locker room.

A couple of the older guys make this low huh sound, then another couple of guys say aho in unison. Orvil looks around the room, and he sees all these men dressed up like him. They all needed to dress up to look Indian too. There’s something like the shaking of feathers he felt somewhere between his heart and his stomach. He knows what the guy said is true. To cry is to waste the feeling. He needs to dance with it. Crying is for when there’s nothing else left to do. This is a good day, this is a good feeling, something he needs, to dance the way he needs to dance to win the prize. But no. Not the money. To dance for the first time like he learned, from the screen but also from practice. From the dancing came the dancing.

There are hundreds of dancers in front of him. Behind him. To his left and right. He’s surrounded by the variegation of color and pattern specific to Indianness, gradients from one color to the next, geometrically sequenced sequined shapes on shiny and leathered fabrics, the quill, bead, ribbon, plume, feathers from magpies, hawks, crows, eagles. There are crowns and gourds and bells and drum-sticks, metal cones, sticked and arrowed flickers, shag anklets, and hairpipe bandoliers, barrettes and bracelets, and bustles that fan out in perfect circles. He watches people point out each other’s regalia. He is an old station wagon at a car show. He is a fraud. He tries to shake off the feeling of feeling like a fraud. He can’t allow himself to feel like a fraud because then he’ll probably act like one. To get to that feeling, to get to that prayer, you have to trick yourself out of thinking altogether. Out of acting. Out of everything. To dance as if time only mattered insofar as you could keep a beat to it, in order to dance in such a way that time itself discontinued, disappeared, ran out, or into the feeling of nothingness under your feet when you jumped, when you dipped your shoulders like you were trying to dodge the very air you were suspended in, your feathers a flutter of echoes centuries old, your whole being a kind of flight. To perform and win you have to dance true. But this is just Grand Entry. No judges. Orvil hops a little and dips his arms. He puts his arms out and tries to keep light on his feet. When he starts to feel embarrassed, he closes his eyes. He tells himself not to think. He thinks the thought Don’t think over and over. He opens his eyes and sees everyone around him. They’re all feathers and movement. They’re all one dance.

When Grand Entry is over, the dancers disperse, moving out in every direction in a ripple of chatter and bells, headed for the vendors, or to find family, or to walk around, giving and accepting compliments, acting normal, like they don’t look like what they look like. Indians dressed up as Indians.

Orvil’s stomach rumbles and shudders. He looks up to see if he can find his brothers.

Tony Loneman

TO GET TO THE POWWOW Tony Loneman catches a train. He gets dressed at home and wears his regalia all the way there. He’s used to being stared at, but this is different. He wants to laugh at them staring at him. It’s his joke to himself about them. Everyone has been staring at him his whole life. Never for any other reason than the Drome. Never for any other reason than that his face told you something bad happened to him a car wreck you should but can’t look away from.

No one on the train knows about the powwow. Tony’s just an Indian dressed like an Indian on the train for no apparent reason. But people love to see the pretty history.

Tony’s regalia is blue, red, orange, yellow, and black. The colors of a fire at night. Another image people love to think about. Indians around a fire. But this isn’t that. Tony is the fire and the dance and the night.

He’s standing in front of a BART map. An older white woman sitting across from him points to the map and asks him where to get off if she’s going to the airport. She knows the answer to this question. She would have already looked it up on her phone numerous times to be sure. She wants to see if the Indian speaks. It’s the next question she means to get to. The face behind the face she makes says it all. Tony doesn’t answer about the airport right away. He stares at her and waits for what she’ll say next.

“So you’re…a Native American?”

“We get off at the same exit,” Tony says. “Coliseum. There’s a powwow. You should come.” Tony walks to the door to look out the window.

“I would, but…

Tony hears that she’s responding, but he doesn’t listen. People don’t want any more than a little story they can bring back home with them, to tell their friends and family around the dinner table, to talk about how they saw a real Native American boy on a train, that they still exist.

Tony looks down and watches the tracks fly by. He feels the train pull him back as it slows. He grips the metal handle, shifts his weight to the left, then rocks back to his right when the train comes to a complete stop. The woman behind him is saying something, but it can’t matter what. He steps off the train and when he gets to the stairs he takes off, skipping two steps the whole way down.

Blue

BLUE IS DRIVING to pick up Edwin. It’s that weird night-morning color, that deep blue-orange-white. The day she’s been anticipating for almost a year is just starting.

It feels good to be back in Oakland. All the way back. She’s been back a year. On a regular paycheck now, in her own studio apartment, with her own car again for the first time in five years. Blue tilts the rearview down and looks at herself. She sees a version of herself she thought was long gone, someone she’d left behind, ditched for her real Indian life on the rez. Crystal. From Oakland. She’s not gone. She’s somewhere behind Blue’s eyes in the rearview.

Blue’s favorite place to smoke a cigarette is in the car. She likes how the smoke escapes when all the windows are down. She lights one. She tries to at least say a little prayer every time she smokes. It makes her feel less guilty for smoking. She takes in a deep drag and holds it. She says thank you as she blows out the smoke.

She’d gone all that way to Oklahoma to find out where she came from and all she’d gotten for it was a color for a name. No one had heard of any Red Feather family. She’d asked around plenty. She wonders if maybe her birth mom made it up–maybe she didn’t know her own tribe either. Maybe she had been adopted too. Maybe Blue would end up having to make up her own name and tribe too, pass that on to her possible children.

Blue throws her cigarette out the window as she passes the Grand Lake Theatre. The theater meant many things to her over the years. Right now she’s thinking of the awkward, clearly stated non-date date she recently went on with Edwin. Edwin’s her intern, her assistant for the powwow event coordination for this past year. The movie was sold out so they walked around the lake instead. The awkward silence that was the entire walk was intense. They both kept starting sentences and stopping them short, then saying “Never mind.” She liked Edwin. She likes him. There’s something about him that feels like family. Maybe because he has a similar background. In Edwin’s case, he hadn’t known his dad, who is Native, who happens to be the emcee at the powwow. So they had that in common, sort of, but not much else. She definitely does not like Edwin as anything more than a co-worker and possible future friend. She’d told him a thousand times with her eyes that there’s no way–in what her eyes didn’t do, in how they looked away when his tried to stay.

When Blue pulls up to his house, she calls him from her car. He doesn’t answer. She walks up and knocks on his door. She should have texted that she was outside the minute she left her house. The drive to West Oakland took about fifteen minutes without traffic. Why didn’t she make him take BART? Right, it’s too early. But the bus? No, he had a bad experience on the bus he won’t even tell her about. Does she baby him? Poor Edwin. He really does try. He really doesn’t know how he comes off to other people. He’s so painfully aware of his physical size. And he makes too many comments about himself, his weight. It makes people as uncomfortable as he appears to be most of the time.

Blue knocks again, hard to the point that it would have been rude except that Edwin was making her wait outside his door on this day they’d both been planning and working hard toward for so many months.

Blue looks at her phone for the time, then checks her email and texts. When nothing of interest comes up, she checks her Facebook. It’s a tired feed she’d read last night before going to bed. No new activity. Old comments and posts she’d already seen. She presses the Home button and for a second, just for a small moment, thinks she should open her other Facebook feed. On that other Facebook, she’d find the information and media she’d always been looking for. On that other Facebook feed, she’d find true connection. That is where she’d always wanted to be. Is what she’d always hoped Facebook would turn out to be. But there is nothing else to check, there is no other Facebook, so she clicks the screen off and puts the phone back in her pocket. Just as she’s about to knock again, Edwin’s big face appears before her. He’s holding two mugs.

“Coffee?” he says.

Dene Oxendene

DENE IS IN a makeshift storytelling booth he built to record stories. He aims the camera at his face and presses Record. He doesn’t smile or speak. He’s recording his face as if the image, the pattern of light and dark arranged there, might mean something on the other side of that lens. He’s using the camera his uncle gave to him before he died. The Bolex. One of Dene’s favorite directors, Darren Aronofsky, used a Bolex in his movies Pi and Requiem for a Dream–which Dene would say is one of his favorite movies, though it’s hard to call such a fucked-up movie a favorite. But that for Dene is what is so good about the movie, aesthetically it’s rich, so you enjoy the experience, but you don’t exactly come away from the film glad that you watched it, and yet you wouldn’t have it any other way. Dene believes this kind of realness is something his uncle would have appreciated. This unflinching stare into the void of addiction and depravity, this is the kind of thing only a camera can keep its eye wide open for.

Dene turns the camera off and sets it up on a tripod to point at the stool he has placed in the corner for the storytellers. He flips one switch on his cheap lighting gear for soft light behind the stool, then the other switch for the harder lighting he has behind him. He’ll ask everyone who comes into his booth why they’ve come to the powwow, what powwows mean to them. Where do they live? What does being Indian mean to them? He doesn’t need more stories for his project. He doesn’t even need to show a product at the end of the year for the grant money he’s received. This is about the powwow, the committee. It’s about documentation. For posterity. It might end up in his final production, whatever that might be- he still doesn’t know. He’s still letting the content direct the vision. Which is not just another way of saying he’s making it up as he goes along. Dene walks through the black curtains out into the powwow.

Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield

OPAL IS SITTING alone in plaza infield, second deck. She’s watching from up there so as to not be seen by her grandsons. By Orvil especially. It would mess with him if he saw her there.

She hasn’t been to an A’s game in years. Why did they stop going to games? Time only seems to have skipped, or to have sped by without you when you looked the other way. That’s what Opal had been doing. Closing her eyes and ears to the closing of her eyes and ears.

Lony was just starting to walk on his own the last time they were here. Opal is listening to the drum. She hasn’t heard a big drum like that since she was young. She scans the field for the boys. It’s a blur. She should probably get glasses. Probably should have gotten glasses a long time ago. She would never tell anyone this, but she enjoys the distance being a blur. She can’t tell how crowded it is. Certainly not the same crowd as at a baseball game.

She looks up at the sky, then at the empty third deck. That’s where they’d watched the game from with the boys. She sees something fly over the edge of the rim of the coliseum. Not a bird. Its movement is unnatural. She squints to try to see it better.

Edwin Black

EDWIN HANDS BLUE a coffee he made for her just minutes before she came and knocked at his door. French-pressed organic dark roast. He’d guessed a moderate dose of sugar and milk. He doesn’t smile or make small talk as they walk to her car together. Today means everything for them. The countless hours they put in. All the different drum groups and vendors and dancers they had to call and convince to come, that there was prize money to be had, money to be made. Edwin’s made more phone calls this year than he has in his whole life. People didn’t really want to sign on for a new powwow. Especially one in Oakland. If it doesn’t go well, the powwow won’t happen again next year. And they’ll be out of a job. But this means more than a job for Edwin at this point. This is a new life. Plus his dad will be there today. It’s almost too much to think about. Or maybe Edwin just drank too much coffee this morning.

The drive to the coliseum feels slow and tense. Every time he thinks to say something he takes a sip of coffee instead. This is only the second time they’re spending time together outside of work. She has NPR on so low it’s unintelligible.

“I started writing a story the other day,” Edwin says.

“Oh yeah?” Blue says.

“It’s about a Native guy, I’ll call him Victor-“

“Victor? Really?” Blue says, with comically half-closed eyelids.

“Fine, his name is Phil. You wanna hear it?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, so Phil lives in a nice apartment in downtown Oakland he got grandfathered into, it’s a big place with fixed rent. Phil works at Whole Foods. One day a white guy he works with, I’ll call him John, he asks Phil if he wants to hang out after work. They hang out, go to a bar, have a good time, then John ends up spending the night at Phil’s. The next day when Phil comes home from work, John’s still there, only he has a couple of friends over. They brought a bunch of their stuff too. Phil asks John what’s going on and John tells Phil he figured since there’s so much extra room that Phil wasn’t using, that it would be okay. Phil doesn’t like it, but he’s not one for confrontation so he lets it go. Over the next few weeks, and then months, the house fills up with squatters, hipsters, corporate tech nerds, and every kind of young white person imaginable. They’re either living in Phil’s apartment or just sort of hanging out indefinitely. Phil doesn’t understand how he let it get so out of control. Then just when he gets up the nerve to say something, to kick everyone out, he gets really sick. Someone had stolen his blanket, and when he asked John about it, John gave him a new blanket. Phil believes that blanket made him sick. He’s in bed for a week. By the time he comes out, things have changed. Progressed, you might say. Some of the rooms have been turned into offices. John’s running some kind of start-up out of Phil’s apartment. Phil tells John he has to go, everyone has to leave, and that Phil had never agreed to any of this. That’s when John provides some paperwork. Phil had signed something, apparently. Maybe in a fever dream. But John won’t show him the papers. Trust me, bro, John says. You don’t wanna go there. Oh and by the way, you know that spot under the stairs, John says. Spot? Phil says. That room? He means the closet under the stairs. Phil knows what’s coming next. Let me guess, you’re moving me to that spot under the stairs, that’s my new room, Phil says. You guessed it, John says. This is my apartment, my grandfather lived here, he passed it on to me to take care of, Phil says. It’s for my family, if anyone needs a place to stay, that’s what it’s supposed to be here for. And here John produces a gun. He points it at Phil’s face, then proceeds to walk Phil to the closet under the stairs. Told you, bro, John says. Told me what? Phil says. You should have just joined the company. We could have used someone like you, John says. You never asked me anything, you just came to my apartment and stayed here, then took over, Phil says. Whatever, bro, my record keepers have it going down differently, John says, and nods with his head at a couple of guys on a couch in the downstairs living room furiously typing on their Apple computers what Phil assumes is a different version of the events happening just then. Suddenly feeling very tired, and hungry, Phil retreats to his under-the-stairs closet-room. That’s it, that’s what I have so far.”

“That’s funny,” Blue says. Like she doesn’t think it’s funny, but feels like that’s what he wants her to say.

“It’s stupid. Sounded a lot better in my head,” Edwin says.

“So much is like that, right?” Blue says. “I feel like something like that actually happened to a friend of mine. I mean, not exactly like that, but like a warehouse in West Oakland she inherited from her uncle got taken over by squatters.”

“Really?”

“That’s their culture,” Blue says.

“What is?”

“Taking over.”

“I don’t know. My mom’s white-“

“You don’t have to defend all white people you think aren’t a part of the problem just because I said something negative about white culture,” Blue says. And Edwin’s heart rate goes up. He’d heard her get mad on the phone, at other people, but never at him.

“Sorry,” Edwin says.

“Don’t apologize,” Blue says.

“Sorry.”

---

Edwin and Blue set up the tables and canopies together in the early-morning light. They unpack folding tables and chairs. When everything is set, Blue looks at Edwin.

“Should we just leave the safe in the car until later?” she says.

It’s a small safe they got from Walmart. It wasn’t easy to convince the grantees to cut them a check they could cash. Cash was a problem when it came to grants and how nonprofits managed their money. But after the phone calls and emails, all the explanations and testimony about the people who come to powwows to compete, people who want to win cash because they preter cash, sometimes don’t have bank accounts, and don’t want to lose the three percent cash-checking services take, they finally agreed on Visa gift cards. A whole mess of them.

“There’s no reason not to get it now,” Edwin says. “I’m sure it’ll get crazy later and we won’t wanna go all the way out to the parking lot when it’s time to hand out the prizes.”

“True,” Blue says.

---

They pull the safe out of her trunk, then walk with it together, not because it’s so heavy but because it’s so wide.

“I’ve never held this much money,” Blue says.

“I know it’s not that heavy, but it feels super heavy, right?” Edwin says.

“Maybe we should’ve gotten money orders,” Blue says.

“But we advertised cash. That’s one of the ways to draw people. You said that.”

“I guess.”

“No, but I mean, you said that. It was your idea.”

“Just seems a little flashy,” Blue says as they approach the table.

“Powwows are all about flash, aren’t they?”

Calvin Johnson

THEY’RE ALMOST DONE with their breakfast before anyone says anything. They’re at the Denny’s next to the coliseum. Calvin got eggs over easy with sausage and toast. Charles and Carlos both got the Grand Slam. And Octavio ordered oatmeal, but he’s mostly just been drinking coffee. Shit had gotten more serious as the day drew closer, and as it got more serious, they all got quiet about it. But Calvin is more worried about making sure they steal the money sooner than later. He’s more worried about getting away with it than getting the money. He’s still pissed at Charles for involving him in this shit plan. That Charles had smoked up all his shit. That that’s why they’re here. He couldn’t get over it. But he couldn’t get out of it either.

Calvin cleans up his yolk with toast, washes it down with the last of his orange juice. It’s sour, sweet, salty, and that thick specifically yolk flavor all at once.

“But we all agree it needs to happen sooner than later, right?” Calvin says out of the blue.

“How’s she not gonna come around to ask about refills after this long?” Charles says, holding his empty coffee mug in the air.

“We just won’t tip, that’ll be like getting our coffee for free,” Carlos says.

“Fuck that,” Octavio savs.

“The tip is supposed to mean something. People have to be held fucking accountable,” Charles says.

“That’s right,” Carlos says.

“She already refilled you twice, motherfucker,” Octavio says. “Now shut the fuck up about the tip. You said they’re keeping it in a safe?”

“Yeah,” Calvin says.

“Big dude we’ll recognize ‘cuz he’s big,” Octavio says. “And like a forty-something-year-old woman with long black hair, kinda pretty but not, with bad skin?”

“Right,” Calvin says.

“I say we just take the safe and figure out how to open that shit later,” Charles says.

“We’re not gonna rush it,” Octavio says.

“It’s probably better to do it sooner than later, right?” Calvin says.

“There’s gonna be a lotta people with phones who could call the cops while we wait for some fat ass to cough up the combination. Charles is right,” Carlos says.

“We’re not gonna rush it if we don’t have to,” Octavio says. “If we can get the combination, we’re gonna get it and not fucking walk out of the place with a fucking safe.”

“Did I tell you guys it’s all in gift cards? Like a whole bunch of Visa gift cards,” Calvin says.

“Same as cash,” Octavio says.

“Why the fuck is it all in gift cards?” Charles says.

“Yeah, why the fuck is it-” Carlos says.

“Would you shut the fuck up already, Charlos? Just keep your mouth shut and think before you speak. It’s the exact same fucking thing as cash,” Octavio says.

“They needed receipts, for the grant,” Calvin says, then takes a last bite and looks to see how Charles is taking what Octavio just said. Charles is staring off, out the window. He’s pissed.

Daniel Gonzales

DANIEL BEGS to go. To see it happen. He never begs. Octavio says no. Says no again every time after. Up until the night before. It’s just the two of them in the basement.

“You know you have to let me go,” Daniel says from his computer. Octavio is on the couch staring at the table.

“What I have to do is make sure this shit goes right. So we get that money,” he says, and walks over to Daniel.

“I’m not even talking about going, I’ll be here. I can fly the drone over to the coliseum from here. Or let me go then-“

“Hell no, you’re not going,” Octavio says.

“So just let me fly the drone over.”

“Man, I don’t know,” Octavio says.

“C’mon. You owe me,” Daniel says.

“Don’t make this shit about__”

“I’m not making shit about shit,” Daniel says, and turns around. “It’s been about it. You fucked this family up.”

Octavio walks back to the couch. “Fuck!” he says, and kicks the table. Daniel goes back to mindlessly playing chess on his computer. He suicides a bishop for his opponent’s knight to mess up his formation.

“You gotta stay here. You gotta get that fucking thing outta there and not get caught up, they can trace that shit back if it falls.”

“I got it. I’ll stay here. So we good?” Daniel says.

“Are we good?” Octavio savs. Daniel gets up and walks over to him. Sticks his hand out.

“You wanna fucking shake on it?” Octavio savs. laughing a little. Daniel keeps his hand out.

“All right,” Octavio says, and shakes Daniel’s hand.

Jacquie Red Feather

JACQUIE AND HARVEY GET into Oakland the night before the powwow. Harvey offers his room to Jacquie, mentioning it having two queens.

“It doesn’t have to be any kinda way. The other bed is open, free of charge,” he says.

“I’m not poor,” Jacquie says.

“Have it your way,” Harvey says. That was the problem with men like Harvey. As much as he might have appeared to change for the better, vou can’t ever get the pig all the way out. Jacquie could care less if he thought it was gonna be one way and now it’s another. That’s his shit. She’d carried their child, given birth, and gave her away. Their baby. He can be uncomfortable. He should be.

---

When Jacquie wakes up it feels way too early, but she can’t get back to sleep. When she opens the curtains she sees the sun is just about to come up. It’s that dark and light blue gradient that meets somewhere in the middle. She’s always loved that blue. She should watch the sunrise. How long had it been since she’d done that? Instead she closes the curtains and turns on the TV.

At some point a couple of hours later a text comes in from Harvey about getting breakfast.

---

“You nervous?” Jacquie savs as she stabs a piece of link sausage and dips it into a puddle of syrup.

“I haven’t gotten nervous in a long time,” Harvey says, and takes a sip of coffee. “It’s where I do my best thinking. Out loud. I just talk out what I see and it comes easy because of how many powwows I done. It’s like all the sports announcers you hear filling the game with their nonsense, it’s the same thing, except there are times when I’m talking about what’s happening out there, as the dancers come in, sometimes it can feel like a praver. But vou can’t be too serious. A powwow emcee is supposed to be irreverent. It’s a big event for a lotta people trying to win mone. It’s a competition. So I have to try to keep it light like a sports announcer.” He mixes his whole plate up–eggs, biscuits, gravy, sausage. He stabs a forkful of the mix. When he’s done, he sops up what’s left with a piece of toast. Jacquie sips her coffee and watches Harvey eat his soaked toast.

---

At the powwow, Jacquie sits next to Harvey under a canvas canopy with the sound system and mixing board, the mic cord snaking out of it.

“Will you have all the names and dancers’ numbers somewhere, like on a piece of paper in front of you, or do you memorize?” Jacquie says.

“Memorize? Pssh. Here,” Harvey says, and hands her a clipboard with a long list of names and numbers on it. She absentlv looks down the list.

“We’re okay, Harvey,” Jacquie says.

“I know,” Harvey says.

“Well vou shouldn’t.” Jacquie savs.

“It was more than forty vears ago.” Harvey savs.

“Forty-two,” she says. “She’s forty-two years old. Our daughter.”

Jacquie’s about to hand the clipboard back to Harvey when she sees Orvil’s name on the list. She pulls the clipboard closer to her eves to be sure. She reads his name over and over. Orvil Red Feather. It’s there. Jacquie gets out her phone to text her sister.

Octavio Gomez

EVEN THOUGH the guns are plastic, going through the metal detectors still makes Octavio sweat. Nothing happens though. On the other side, Octavio looks around to see if anyone is paying attention to them. The security guard is reading a newspaper next to the detector. Octavio walks over to the bushes and sees the black socks. He reaches down for the pair.

In the bathroom, Octavio fishes around in one of the socks and grabs a handful of bullets, then passes the socks under the stall to Charles, who does the same then passes them under to Carlos, who passes them under the last stall to Calvin. As Octavio puts the bullets in his gun, he feels a dread move all the way from his toes to the top of his head. The dread keeps going, moves out of him, like he had his chance with what it was telling him but he missed it, because just as he feels it a bullet drops and rolls out in front of him, out of the stall. Hears the squeak of shoes. Must be Tony here to get his bullets. Everyone goes quiet at the sound of that bullet rolling.

Edwin Black

BLUE AND EDWIN SIT at the table and canopy they’d set up earlier. They watch the dancers come out for Grand Entry. Blue tilts her head up at them.

“You know anyone out there?” Blue says.

“Nah. But listen,” Edwin says, and points up, at the sound of the powwow emcee’s voice.

“Your dad,” Blue says, and they listen for a second.

“Weird, right?” Edwin says.

“Totally weird. But wait, did you find out before or after you got the internsh…I mean the job or-“

“No, I knew. I mean, part of taking the job had to do with finding out who he is.”

They watch the dancers enter. The veterans first, with their flags and staffs. Then a long line of bouncing dancers. Edwin had avoided watching powwow footage to preserve this moment. Let it be new, even after Blue insisted he watch some powwow footage on YouTube so he’d know what he was getting into.

“You know anyone out there?” Edwin says.

“A lotta the kids I knew when I used to work here are all grown up, but I haven’t seen any of them around,” Blue says. She looks at Edwin, who’s just stood up.

“Where you going?”

“Get a taco,” Edwin says. “You want one?”

“You’re gonna go walk past your dad again, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, but I’m really getting a taco this time.”

“And you got one last time.”

“Did I?” Edwin said.

“Just go talk to him.”

“It’s not that easy,” Edwin says, and smiles.

“I’ll go with you,” Blue says. “But you have to actually talk to him.”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” Blue says, and stands up. “Didn’t you guys plan to meet up here anyway?”

“Yeah, but then we didn’t talk after that,” Edwin says.

“So,” Blue says.

“It’s not on me. Imagine it. Your son gets ahold of you, your son who you didn’t know existed, then you just…stop communicating? You don’t just say, yeah, hey, let’s meet up, then not make plans.”

“Maybe he figured he’d wait until you could meet in person,” Blue says.

“We’re already walking over there, aren’t we?” Edwin says. “So let’s stop talking about it. Let’s act like we’re talking about something else.”

“We should probably not act like we’re talking about something else and just talk about something else,” Blue says. But this makes it impossible to think of anything else to talk about.

They walk in silence, past tables and canopies. As they get closer to Edwin’s dad’s canopy, Edwin turns to Blue. “So the dancers who win just take the cash, no taxes, no hidden fees?” he says, like they were in the middle of a conversation.

“Okay, so you’re acting like we’ve been talking,” Blue says. “Well then it doesn’t matter what I say.

This right here, what I’m saying now, is probably enough, right?” She’s not even looking at Edwin.

“Yes, perfect. But no more. Okay, you wait back here,” Edwin says.

“Okay,” Blue says in a robotically obedient voice.

Edwin approaches Harvey, who’s just put his mic down. Harvey turns to him and sees him right away for who he is. He shows this by taking off his hat. Edwin sticks out his hand for a shake, but Harvey grabs Edwin behind his head and brings him in for a hug. They hold the hug for longer than Edwin is comfortable with, but he doesn’t break it either. His dad smells like leather and bacon.

“When did you get here?” Harvey says.

“I was the first one, well, one of two of the first people here,” Edwin says.

“You pretty serious about powwows then?” Harvey says.

“I helped put this all together. Remember?”

“That’s right. Sorry. Oh, this here’s Jacquie Red Feather,” Harvey says, pointing to the woman sitting down next to where Harvey was sitting before he stood up to give Edwin a hug.

“Edwin,” Edwin says, and reaches his hand out to her.

“Jacquie,” she says.

“Blue,” Edwin says with a hand half cupped around his mouth like she’s far away, and like he’s yelling it.

Blue walks over. She looks stressed.

“Blue, meet my dad, Harvey, and this is his, his friend Jacquie, what was it?”

“Red Feather,” Jacquie says.

“Right, and this is Blue,” Edwin says.

Blue’s face goes white. She reaches out her hand and goes for a smile, but it looks more like she’s trying not to throw up.

“It’s so nice to meet you both, but, Edwin, we should get back-“

“C’mon, we just got here,” Edwin says, and looks at his dad like: Right?

“I know, and we can come back, we have the whole day, we’ll just be right over there,” Blue says, pointing to where they’d come from.

“All right,” Edwin says, and reaches out one more time for a shake with his dad. Then they both wave and walk away.

“Okay, two things,” Blue says as they walk back to their table.

“That was crazy,” Edwin says. He’s smiling a smile he can’t contain.

“I think that woman was my mom,” Blue says.

“What?”

“Jacquie.”

“Who?”

“The woman with vour dad just now?”

“Oh. Wait, what?”

“I know. I don’t know. I don’t know what the fuck is happening right now, Ed.” They walk back to the table. Edwin looks over to Blue and tries for a smile, but Blue, she’s ghost-white.

DMU Timestamp: March 11, 2023 09:24

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