The Second Chance of Benjamin Waterfalls, page 4
The Jeep stops, and I immediately jump out so I can get further away from this guy that used to be my dad. One step in, and my feet sink deep into the mud, swallowing my shoes. Why can’t he live in the city like a normal person? I grab my backpack and suitcase; the weight of it makes me stumble backward. I try to grab the Jeep, but I’m falling. I lose my balance, and my butt lands in the mud. Splash. My dad laughs. I try to get up. My hand sinks into the thick, slushy brown dirt, kind of locking me in place.
“That’s a good look on you,” he says, and makes his way around the Jeep, stopping in front of me.
“You could have warned me,” I say.
“Warned you of what? That mud could be … muddy?” he replies, and laughs again—this time offering me his hand.
I take it, not with my clean hand, but with the one covered in mud. He accepts it anyway and launches me out of my mud seat. I stand, covered in brown from the waist down. And now that I have a better look, I see he pulled up and lined the passenger door directly above the mud puddle. He did this on purpose. I’m 96 percent sure of it.
“Looks like we may have to hose you down,” he says, while wiping his muddy hand on his jeans.
“You’re not hosing me down,” I say, even though a part of me did imagine boot camp consisting of getting hosed down and stripped of all your confidence like they do in military movies. They have to break you down to build you up. That’s how they brainwash you.
But this isn’t the boot camp, right? My dad wouldn’t run it. The only running he’s capable of is running away. And running his mouth. And running up his tab at the bar. But being in charge of a boot camp? No way.
“Windy Wendy ain’t gonna let you waltz into the house covered in earth poop.”
“Windy Wendy?”
“That’s what I call her. But only sometimes, when she can’t hear me,” he says.
“Why?”
“She’s a gust of a gal. You’ll see,” he says.
“Okay. That makes no sense, but okay.”
As I fling the mud off my right hand, two dogs come galloping from around the house to meet us. They are large like wolves. My dad is tackled by them as soon as he kneels down to welcome them. He proceeds to roll around on the ground with them, covering himself in earth poop. I guess he’s getting the hose too. “Gimoodishkiiwinini,” my dad shouts from the ground and points at me.
“What does that mean?” I ask.
“Thief,” he says.
As soon as his words leave his lips, both dogs stop and turn their gaze to me. One is black. One is brown. Both are coated in mud. And both are growling.
“I wouldn’t move if I were you,” he says.
I freeze. I never had a dog. The only pet I had was a rat named Animosh, which means dog in Ojibwe. Rats are dogs for people who live in small apartments.
“What do I do?” I whisper.
“Slowly … run,” he replies in a loud whisper.
“I thought you said don’t move,” I snap back.
“Too late for that. They smell your goshi.”
“What’s a goshi?”
“They smell your fear. You need to run. Slowly.”
“How does someone run slowly?” I ask, feeling my heart beat faster as my eyes fix on their sharp white teeth as they continue to territorially growl.
“Like in slow motion?” he says. It sounds like a question.
“That’s ridiculous,” I say.
“Ridiculous, you say?” My dad narrows his eyes and smiles. “Sic him!” he shouts.
Both dogs launch themselves toward me. I immediately try to run, but my legs can’t keep up with my frightened rabbit feet. So I slip into the mud and my body splashes onto the thick and frothy ground—face-first.
The dogs charge through the mud, and I close my eyes, bracing for impact. I hope for whatever happens to be quick and painless. I imagine muddy blood and bloody mud everywhere. A crime scene that requires heavy boots and a steel stomach.
I was sent here to die. My parents conspired together to get rid of me. These dogs will eat me alive, even my bones, leaving no trace of me. I can hear it now. He got on the bus in Duluth, but never arrived in Grand Portage. It will be an unsolved mystery forever.
The two hounds draw nearer; I take a deep breath as their bodies collide into mine like two trains hitting a wall at once. Here it is. Death. Here come the teeth. The inevitable bite down. The dismemberment. But all I feel is … What is that? It’s slimy and wet … Are those tongues? Is one in my ear?
I open my eyes and find myself completely pinned to the ground, with both dogs licking, slobbering, and drooling all over my face. All of this happening while a loud, belly-filled laugh rolls through the air.
I pick my head up and see my dad beside himself, laughing hysterically, holding his gut, like if he were to let go, his intestines would be spilling onto his muddy boots.
I wrestle up, fending off the two canines as they do everything in their power to drench me. After a few failed attempts, I finally make it to my feet.
“I almost crapped my pants,” I shout at him, who has just now finally stopped laughing.
“Did you think I said ‘sic him’? I said ‘soak him,’” he manages to say, erupting in a second wave of laughter.
His face streams with tears, and his hair bounces with each chuckle. It almost sends a spark of anger through my body, seeing him so happy at my expense. I remind myself that he doesn’t deserve happiness. After all, he robbed me of mine.
His cheeks used to be puffy and red. Now they are sharp, and sunken in. They even cast small shadows under the bone. Being happy looks really good on him, but I doubt it will last. If he’s good at anything, it is letting people down. He taps his thigh, and both dogs rush back to him and sit at his feet, awaiting his next command.
“You didn’t run slow enough,” he says.
“That doesn’t make sense. And now I smell like dog. No. Now I smell like two dogs,” I say, wiping my wet hands onto my muddy jeans, which does nothing but add more mud to my everywhere.
“Well, introduce yourself.”
“You want me to introduce myself to your dogs?”
“They’re your roommates for the next however long we got, so yeah, you should introduce yourself, obviously,” he says, like it’s strange I even asked.
“Hi, dogs. I’m Benny. What are your names, Muddy and Muddier?”
“They’re dogs, kiddo. They don’t speak English,” my dad says in a tone suggesting I’m the strange one here.
“I know that, but you said … Never mind,” I say.
“This is Rolex.” He points to the brown dog.
“And this is Casio.” He points to the black dog.
“That’s their real names?” I ask.
“Of course. They’re my watch dogs,” he says.
“Hi, Rolex and Casio,” I say.
“We have a third dog, Apple, but she’s out on a hike with Wendy.”
“Let me guess, she’s white?” I say.
“Wendy or the dog?” he asks.
“Your dog. Not Wendy.”
“Both are white. Apple and Wendy.”
He snaps his fingers, and Casio and Rolex go running off into the enormous field. It takes a second for me to process his words. Wendy is white. He has a white girlfriend. I don’t care about her skin color, not really. I mean, there are plenty of good white people in the world, but I do care that he has a girlfriend that isn’t a Native American woman that I call Mom. And the way he just tosses it out there makes me mad all over again.
Before I can even get madder, my thoughts are washed away by a strong stream of water hitting me in the thighs. I look up at my dad, and he is firing his hose at me, at full strength, laughing while aiming. Soaking. Drenching. Engulfing me. While intermittently turning the hose on himself, dousing his entire body. I can’t help but laugh as the spray hits his face, sending him back stumbling, tripping over the coiled hose’s neck and falling back into the mud like he’s one of those funny comedians in those movies we used to watch when I was little. It’s a clown fighting a water snake. We’d laugh, rewind it, watch it again. Laugh again. He loved Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. Which made me love them. Now I avoid them.
But … at least the water is warm. Or maybe it’s not—maybe it just seems warm compared to the blistering cold air. I wonder if I’ll freeze and turn to ice if I stay out here long enough? I don’t want to find out. My fingers hurt.
“It’s called Dog Wind,” he says to me as he rises to his feet.
“What is?”
“The wind here. She starts barking, letting you know she’s here. Then, she licks your face, getting a feel for you, letting you get a feel for her … but if you stay out here any longer without a scarf, coat, and mittens, then that dog starts biting. And she’s got a nasty bite.”
“Down, girl!” I shout to the wind, grab my stuff, and run toward the front door.
“No shoes in the house!” he shouts as I reach the screen door.
He’s right. A pile of muddy shoes pyramids the front porch. My dad has very big feet. Wendy has small feet. I kick off my shoes, peel back the screen, open the front door, and step inside.
CHAPTER 6
AGASSI-AKI (IT’S A SMALL WORLD)
My dad tosses me a towel and points down the hallway. I guess it’s shower time. I open my suitcase and pull out an outfit; a new red long-sleeve hooded sweatshirt I stole last week from the mall and a pair of designer jeans that still have the tags on them. Good thing my mom didn’t rifle through my clothes too thoroughly, or I’d be wearing old threads for my new adventure here.
I take a look around the house, and I am immediately confused. It’s full of places … Sections of the house are broken up into various places on earth. It looks like a travel agent broke in and left their career here before they took the TV and split.
I’m currently standing in what appears to be the Hawaiian section, where the walls are painted orange and blue to resemble the island sky, with palm trees plastered over the paint. Coconuts litter the floor, which actually has small mounds of sand on the carpet. The wooden tiki shelves have those little Hawaiian hula dancers on each end. There’s a ukulele and a miniature surfboard propped up against the wall. And a large stuffed turtle lies at my feet.
And just a few steps over, the next section of the house is dedicated to Los Angeles. On that wall is painted the summer blue sky with puffy white clouds hanging over the iconic Hollywood sign. On the LA shelves are rows of books about movies, actors, and rock and roll bands. A camera is propped up on a tripod, and small movie posters and postcards are tacked on the walls, clouding parts of the California skyline. The floor even has three hand-drawn Hollywood stars plastered to it. They are made out of cardboard and duct taped onto the carpet. The names are written in gold glitter. One says Wendy. One says Tommy, which is my dad’s name, and the last one says George.
Who is George?
Behind me, on the adjacent wall, is a shrine to Tibet. Beautiful colorful photographs line the walls. A jolly, fat golden Buddha sits on the center of the shelf. Ceramic elephants, cows, and monkeys sit on its lower tiers. Thick red beads hang down, nearly touching the potted plants on the ground. And a string of multicolored Tibetan prayer flags is draped from one section to the other … but stops before the next section begins, which is Australia: crocodiles, kangaroos, a framed photo of the Hemsworth brothers, and a ceramic koala bear.
It’s like that one Disneyland ride; it’s a small world after all.
“I guess you’re wondering why we got our house set up like the aki?” my dad says.
“What’s aki mean?”
“Earth. Have you forgotten all Ojibwe?”
“I’ve been busy. And no, I’m not wondering why the house is like this, because I don’t care.”
I step away from the Australia installation. But a thought hits me, stinging like a sad bee trapped somewhere inside of me, attacking my ribs.
“Who’s George? Wait. You know what, I don’t care about that either,” I say, and walk toward the hall faster than my words can travel to my dad—so he doesn’t have time to respond.
I walk past the great white shark painted on the end of the Aussie wall and give a quick look at Japan’s decorations on the far side, before I enter the hallway and search for the shower.
There are three doors in front of me. Three rooms. I’m guessing the farthest one back is my dad’s room, which also means Wendy’s room. The thought revives the anger in me. What a home wrecker. He stumbles out of our apartment and ends up in this huge multicountried house. A house! I’ve never lived in a house, and this Wendy-haver gets one?
And now he’s sober? Where was my sober dad? Wendy gets to have the funny, good-looking version. This is not fair. He sucks. She sucks too. George sucks too, whoever he is … They can all skip these countries and go straight to my butt and kiss it.
I open the first door and loud gunshots fill my ears. It sends me back a step. For a split second, I look for a corner to hide behind, but the walls around me aren’t shot up and full of holes, so I open the door wider. The only light comes from the far side of the room. A large screen is mounted on the wall. And now all the gunfire makes sense. It’s a first-person-shooter video game.
The screen is taken up largely by a machine gun mowing down a dozen or so zombies. But who’s playing? I step in to see. Through the flashes of light in the mostly dark room, I see the silhouette of a kid lying in bed, with his headset on, staring fixedly at the screen.
“Hello?” I say, but he doesn’t hear me. He just keeps killing zombies.
He hasn’t noticed me because he’s wearing one of those fancy headsets. I stole a few of those before and sold each one for thirty bucks back in Duluth. He is speaking in loud whispers, just not to me. In between shots, he’s saying something into his headset. I stay still and listen. He repeats, “On your left,” “Nice shot,” and the occasional, “Cover me, I need to reload.” Now I get it. He’s playing with a bunch of gamers online. What a nerd.
I step back out of his room and slowly close the door before he mistakes me for a real zombie. I ain’t looking to get shot today. Game or no game, I don’t like guns pointed at me. I release his doorknob and go toward the next door. Then it clicks … That was George. What is a George doing here? Why does he have a room in my dad’s house?
Three steps later, anger erupts inside my gut like a sleeping volcano waking up. I’ve been replaced by a George! And worse, a nerdy gamer! My dad not only walked out on his wife and found a Wendy, but he walked out on his son and found a George. I hate him. I hate Wendy. I hate Grand Portage. But … I still really need to shower, so I’ll explore this hatred after I rinse all this mud off me. It has just occurred to me that on a ranch full of animals, some of this earth poop may very well be animal poop too.
I open the door and step into the bathroom. I try to calm my nerves by starting the water immediately. Hot water soothes, I tell myself. My dad is a deadbeat, but hot water soothes. Wendy is a home wrecker, but hot water soothes. George is my replacement, but hot water soothes. I test this theory as I strip naked and step into the shower. I’m so mad I could scream. But I don’t, because hot water soothes.
I scrub myself down and try my best to rinse away all my thoughts of my dad, my mom, Judge Mason, Wendy, George, those two mud hounds, and this in-the-middle-of-nowhere place called Grand Portage. It’s difficult to do, but the steam does its job. The madness subsides as I stand under the showerhead and soak in the heat. All the mad and all the mud fall off my body and travel down the drain.
I put on my clean clothes and exit the bathroom. George’s door is still shut. There must be quite the zombie epidemic in that room. I hope he runs out of ammo and gets eaten alive—slowly.
I walk down the hall, realizing I don’t yet know where I’ll be sleeping. Where’s my room? There are only two bedrooms in this house. So I return to the only place I know, the global living room.
Maybe it’s because I’m only one minute out of the shower, but I can’t help but feel that there’s a warmness to this place, or should I say to these places. Maybe that’s just how living in a house feels. It’s like the three little pigs story. When you’re homeless, it feels like wherever you sleep is made of straw. A slight breeze can cause your whole life to crash down around you. When you live in an apartment, it’s like your home is made of sticks. It’s not great, but it’s better than straw. It won’t keep you warm, but you aren’t going to freeze to death either. But living in a house like this, well, no huffing and puffing from any wolf is going to knock this place down. It’s like a giant brick oven. No drafts, no chills, just toasty air that hugs you as you enter each room. I wish my mom could feel this warmth. She always sleeps in doubled-up sweaters.
Life is unfair. The disappointing dad gets the big house, and the hardworking mom gets the tiny apartment with a family living above us, below us, to our left and to our right. And when one family plays music, we all gotta listen to that music. When one family vacuums, we might as well all vacuum, and sadly, when one family has a screaming match, then we all have to hear it.
My eyes sweep across the room, but no one’s here. Oh, I didn’t even notice that Jamaica was in that corner, and Scotland is in the other. But I don’t want to explore them yet; I’m too hungry to travel. I’d love to be able to stand in the Italy part of the room and have someone bring me a super cheesy pizza. That would be awesome.
I walk back down the hall to see if my dad is in his room. Even though I don’t like him, I know better than to enter another man’s kitchen and start eating his food.
I tap gently on his door, then knock harder, both getting no response. I check the handle. It’s unlocked. I open the door and step inside. The room is less of a bedroom and more of a workshop. And not just any workshop, but an animal workshop.
