Brown Dog: Novellas Read online

  It just now occurred to me that Bob was right when he yelled at me during a recess in the trial. He said that if I had acted like a real partner we wouldn’t be in this mess. The afternoon I found the Chief I was off by myself in the rubber tender dinghy near the Harbor of Refuge at Little Lake. Bob was farther down west in the main skiff with a metal detector where the Phineas Marsh went down in 1896. Mind you, everything we do is against the law as all sunken ship artifacts are the sole ownership of the state of Michigan. When I made it up to the surface and to the dinghy I rigged the smallest buoy I had so it wouldn’t be noticed, then thought better of it. Any diver will check out a stray buoy and I didn’t want the straight arrows over at the Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point to find my prize redskin. I sat in the dinghy for a long time making triangulation points on the shore about a mile distant.

  When I joined up with Bob an hour later at the Little Lake dock I had good reasons, or so I thought, for not telling him about my find. I was still sore over my arrest in the Soo (Sault Sainte Marie) a few weeks before. Bob had sent me over to sell a brass ship’s whistle to a nautical antiques dealer. Most of the time we work through a dealer in Chicago to escape detection, but we needed some quick cash as the lower unit of our Evinrude was in bad shape. I dropped off the ship’s whistle and got the cash in a sealed envelope which was an insult in itself. I said, How’s a man to count the money? The dealer said he was just told to give a sealed envelope to a messenger.

  The downfall in this situation was that I only had gas money to get back to Grand Marais and I was hungry and thirsty. I went into the bathroom of a bar down the street, opened the envelope and took out a well-deserved twenty. I had a few shots and beers and went over to a cathouse for a quick poke with a black girl I knew there. This girl has three years of college yet works in a whorehouse, which shows that blacks don’t get a fair shake. Maybe I just liked her because she reminded me of long-lost Beatrice, though like Beatrice she wasn’t especially fond of me. Anyway, it was slow time in the afternoon and I worked up an appetite doing “around the world” instead of the usual half-and-half. It cost me an extra twenty bucks but I was still within my share of the take on the brass ship’s whistle. Then I figured Bob wouldn’t want me to drive home hungry so I went out to the Antlers and had the Deluxe Surf ’n’ Turf for the Heavy Eater, which was a porterhouse and a lobster tail, and a few more beers to fight the heat of the evening. I had every intention of leaving town, but was struck by the notion I could get some money back by going to the Chippewa casino and playing a little blackjack. Wrong again. I was out another hundred bucks when I walked over to the bar at the Ojibway Hotel for a nightcap to help on the lonely ride home. This turned out to be the key mistake of the many I made that cursed day.

  The seafood had given me a tingle of horniness which it is famous for and I asked a real fancy woman to dance. She and her girlfriends were all dressed up from their bowling league banquet, and her pink dress was open-necked like a peck basket. She said, “Get out of here, you nasty man.” I went back to the bar feeling my face was hot and red. I admit I wasn’t looking too good in my jeans and Deep Diver T-shirt. I hardly ever get turned down when I’m in fresh, clean clothes. Sad to say, the weight of failure of the day was pissing me off so I went back over to the table and asked her to dance again. She said the same thing and all the women at the table laughed, so I poured a full mug of cold beer down that big open neck of her pink dress, then I said something impolite and stupid like “That should cool off your tits, you stupid bitch.” I was not prepared for what happened next. All five of these women jumped me as if they were one giant lady. They held me down with the help of the bartender until the cops came and hauled me off.

  The upshot was that the next morning in jail when I called my partner Bob to come bail me out he wouldn’t do it. He said, “Use the money from the ship’s whistle and bail yourself out.” I had to explain over half of it was gone which left me fifteen bucks short of bail. He yelled “Then fuck you, sit there” into the phone and let me cool my heels for three full days. A lesser man might have sat there and moped, and I could have called Shelley down in Ann Arbor, but I decided to guts it out. Grandpa used to say “Don’t Doggett,” meaning don’t act like his second cousin with the truly awful name of Lester Doggett from Peshtigo, Wisconsin. Lester used to stop by for a visit and piss and moan about the likelihood of a forest fire. That’s about all he talked about, and true, his grandparents had died in the great Peshtigo fire which killed thousands, but that was over seventy years before. “Don’t Doggett” was what Grandpa said to me when I whined, complained or expressed any self-pity. It still means to stand up and take your medicine, though it doesn’t mean you can’t get even, and that’s what I was doing two weeks later when I didn’t tell Bob about finding the Chief.

  One afternoon it was wet and windy and we were almost done with our probing when Shelley’s cousin Tarah and her boyfriend Brad showed up at Shelley’s cabin. I had heard about this Tarah and was curious to meet her. Tarah is not her real name but was given to her during a ceremony of “empowerment” in a place called Taos in New Mexico. That’s what Shelley told me anyway. I could believe it as this Tarah had green eyes that could almost hypnotize you. She was a bit thin for my taste but her satin gym shorts pulled up her butt in a pretty way. She was brown as tobacco and had a clear musical voice. The minute they arrived this fellow Brad unloaded a thick-tired bicycle from his van and dressed up a bit goofy in black, shiny stretch shorts, a helmet, goggles and special shoes. He was a real ox and I asked him what the bike set him back and he said a thousand dollars. I was not inclined to believe the figure and I said for that amount they should throw in a motor. He said “Ha-ha,” asked directions and rode off at top speed on the dirt road, farting like a bucking horse.

  Back inside Tarah made us some tea out of secret Indian herbs and we sat before the fire. I can’t say I felt anything different from the tea but I had high hopes, sobriety being a tough row to hoe. Then Tarah spread out a velvet cloth and put this rock which she said was crystal in the middle of the cloth. She stared at Shelley and me and said in a soft, whispery voice, “You are more than you think you are.” I didn’t exactly take this as good news because what I already was had gotten my ass in enough of a sling. Then Tarah said a whole bunch of what sounded like nonsense symbols as if she were trying to make a rabbit jump out of a top hat, though maybe it was another language. I wasn’t concentrating too well as Tarah was sitting cross-legged like an Oriental and you could see up her crotch past her shorts to where we all come from. I already said she was a bit thin but she was also smooth and healthy. She had Shelley and me put our hands on the crystal. “We all go back many, many eons. We started when time started and we end when time ends. We have been many things. We have been stones, moons, flowers, creatures and many other people. The source of all beingness is available to us every day.”

  I admit I was a bit swept away, at least for the time being, by this mystical stuff. We had to sit there in complete silence for a half hour just like you do for long periods when you deer hunt. It sounded good because since I was a kid I wanted to be a bear or a sharp-shinned hawk or even a skunk. If someone gives you a hard time you just piss in their direction and they run for it. At one point Shelley frowned at me, thinking I was looking up under Tarah’s shorts when I was supposed to keep my eyes squinted almost shut. “Seeing but not seeing,” Tarah called it. I was wishing my old buddy David Four Feet were here. We used to spend money we earned hoeing at a raspberry farm to send away for books we saw advertised in Argosy or Stag or True magazine that would give us what they called secret powers. If you’re hoeing raspberries for thirty cents an hour in the hot sun what you want is secret powers. We never got back anything we could understand but neither of us was good at school. The toughest book was about the Rosy Cross put out by the Rosicrucians. It mostly reminded me of David’s sister Rose, the one who knocked me down and also threw pig slop on me.

  Tarah r
ang a little chime to end the period of silence. I remembered when the bell rang that what I was supposed to be doing was getting in touch with a past life. Shelley went off to start supper because Tarah wanted a private time with me. Tarah moved closer to me and held my wrists. She was sitting in what she called a “full locust” and you couldn’t help but wonder what was possible with a woman with that much stretch in her limbs. She fixed her green eyes on me.

  “What did you become? I could see your trance state was very deep.”

  “I became a big condor from olden times. I was feeding on a dead buffalo I scared off a cliff.” I fibbed, remembering a trip to the Field Museum when I was on the bum in Chicago. If you’re in Chicago you should go see these ancient stuffed animals.

  “That’s truly wonderful, B.D. It means your spirit wishes to soar far above your current problems. Your spirit wishes to use your condor being and blood to help you. In order to do this you must not deny the proud heritage of your people. You must let us help you rediscover your heritage.”

  I dropped my head as if lost in thought. Despite how many times I’ve told Shelley I don’t have a drop of Chippewa blood in me she refuses to believe it. She feels I am ashamed of my roots and how do I know anyway since I’m not all that sure who my parents were? I’ve said I’m just as likely to be an Arab or a Polack, but she won’t hear of it. All of her anthropology friends think I’m at least half Chippewa but she’s told them I won’t talk about it. I’ve been tempted a few times but then was worried about being caught out. After all, these people know more about Indians than any Indian I ever met, except what it is like to be one. I never saw David Four Feet’s family having all that much fun.

  “It would be nice if you’d give me a hand during these troubled times,” I said. “Sometimes this probing I do with Shelley just wears me out.”

  “There are many ways rather than a single Way. Shelley is dealing with your past and I’m trying to reach into the past before your past. Do you understand?”

  I nodded as she stood up stretching a few inches from my nose. I breathed deeply so as to catch a general whiff. It was somewhere between watercress and a rock you pick out of a river, way up near the top along with wild violets and muskmelon.

  “I sense that you are responding to my womanness,” she said, twisting at the waist to loosen up. “But you are not responding to me, Tarah, but to the female porpoise that has been my other mode for the last month or so. Porpoises are deeply sexual.”

  Then Brad came in from his bike ride. It turned out he had ridden all the way to the Hurricane River and back on a dirt road in less than two hours. That happens to be about thirty miles which I found amazing. I got out my topo maps and he was thrilled to see that there were hundreds and hundreds of miles of small dirt roads in Alger County. I was brought up short when I asked him if he had seen the moose that had been hanging around the Hurricane. “I see nothing but the road,” he said. Then he grabbed a towel to go swim in the bay even though the temperature was only in the midforties and the foghorn was going full blast. I watched him through binoculars and he swam all the way out to Lonesome Point and back which was three miles. I didn’t bother asking him if he had seen any fish.

  It was during my after-dinner nap that I got a real eye-opener. Tarah and Shelley had fixed the food of far-off India which didn’t sit real well in my stomach, mostly because there was no meat, chicken or fish, just rice and vegetables. Old Brad really tied on the feedbag. It was the most quantity I had seen anyone eat since I watched a friend of mine eat twenty-three whitefish fillets. It was all-you-can-eat for a fixed price and he wanted to get a deal. Tarah said Brad needed ten thousand calories a day while he was in training. Brad didn’t talk while he ate or after he ate. Anyway, while I was napping and trying to digest the food I heard my name mentioned through the thin wall by Shelley and Tarah who were in the kitchen cleaning up. I pretended I was snoring to urge them on. I just heard bits and snatches but it was a plot for me to take Tarah out to my secret burial mound and for her to try to remember the route. Shelley knew I’d never take her back there and here she was trying to rig it for her cousin to do the job. My feelings were so hurt I eased out the window and walked down to the Dunes Saloon.

  Morning dawned bright and clear for me, if a little late. Shelley couldn’t very well say anything about my getting drunk when she was busy hatching a plot. She sat at her desk surrounded by a pile of books, writing a semester paper on how Indians preserved their medicine herbs for use in winter (they hung them out to dry after they picked them). Tarah was in the kitchen packing a knapsack of food for Brad’s all-day ride. While I poured my coffee I saw her stick in twelve apples, a sack of carrots, a head of cabbage and a jar of honey. She wondered if I could catch some fresh fish for dinner and I said yes. She was all dressed up in the Patagonia clothes that Shelley wears, including green shorts that did a good job on her rump. She had on great big hiking boots that looked funny at the end of her brown legs. Meanwhile, out the window I could see Brad stretching with a leg so far up a tree you’d think he’d split himself. Two old Finns I knew were standing out on the road on their way for the morning opening of the bar. They were watching Brad with polite interest.

  Finnish people don’t judge other folks too harshly. My partner Bob says no one knows where their language comes from and that they migrated to the U.P. because they liked pine trees and cold weather just like me. Grandpa said I liked cold weather because of the sunstroke I had once when hoeing. Also, when I was a baby I had been left in this closed-up cabin for two days and when he found me I was about dying of thirst. Ever since those two experiences I can’t handle hot weather. I like to dive to the bottom of Lake Superior and be cold, and in the winter I keep my cabin about fifty degrees which also means you don’t have to cut so much wood. Sometimes in winter I’ll stand outside in shirtsleeves just for the fun of getting cold.

  I turned from the window where Tarah was giving Brad his ten-pound bag of lunch. I was wondering what he was going to do with that whole cabbage when Shelley came into the kitchen. She asked me to take Tarah out to the burial mound, not to try to fuck her if you please, and perhaps she could go along though she already knew the answer was a “negativo” as Bob says. He had picked up a lot of Spanish in the tropics and owns a bunch of treasure coins from diving on the Atocha wreck off Key West. I tried to act stunned at the idea that I’d make a pass at Tarah, but Shelley just crossed her eyes which is what she does when she knows I’m bullshitting.

  “Take my car. It’s more comfortable,” she said.

  “Nope. You got a compass on the dashboard. I’m wise to your tricks.”

  “Do you think Tarah is sexier than me?”

  “Of course not. She needs some more meat on the bones. You might catch a splinter with that girl.”

  That seemed to satisfy Shelley. Then Tarah came in and when they were standing next to each other the idea came to me how nice they’d look naked in bed with me in the middle. I mean for the contrast, like autumn leaves, brown grass and white melting snow. Something like that. I did it with two big ole girls over in Munising once but I didn’t write home about it. One of them fell down in the motel shower and we had a deuce of a time getting her out until I turned on the cold water to sober her up. I had met them at the Corktown Bar with Frank my bartender friend, but he backed out. “B.D., you better go it alone,” he said. I went ahead so they wouldn’t feel bad, also I was curious. On the way out of the house with Tarah I saw her slip one of those flat compasses out of her knapsack and into her pocket, so driving out of town I asked her for it. I slowed down and tossed it out by a hemlock where I could find it on the way back.

  “I’m getting the vibes you don’t trust me,” she said.

  “I don’t want anyone digging up my grandparents,” I said, remembering that’s what Claude said when he saw the mounds.

  “How can they be your grandparents when Shelley said the burial site was from the Hopewell Period? That’s why it’s so impo
rtant to her. It would be the northernmost Hopewell site. She’d be famous.”

  “Fuck famous. Everyone who came before is my grandparents.” I was getting on thin ice here and wanted to change the subject. Once when she went for groceries I tried to read one of Shelley’s books on the Chippewa but it was slow going. I either needed some pointers or had to keep my mouth shut.

  “I don’t want to dig up graves. I just want to communicate with the Ancient Ones.” She twisted in the van seat and put a hand on my leg. I was already noticing how sharply she looked at the landscape. I was sure I could confuse her, though, because she was used to out west and in the U.P. you don’t have the elevation for landmarks. It’s just woods beat up by logging, or bare gullied areas where the soil is too weak to grow a tree, or just plain bogs and swamps. She put her feet up on the dashboard and squinted her eyes. I could see pretty far down the underside of her shorts but wasn’t going to let myself lose caution. I was willing to bet that within her “seeing but not seeing,” Tarah was trying to remember all my turns.