THE FIRST TIME YOU met the girl, it was while wearing a red flannel shirt, tight blue jeans, and an olive-green hat with a walleye with a hook in its mouth embroidered on the front. She walked right up to you at the bar and said, “Hey, lumberjack.”
At first you thought she wasn’t local. Most girls are used to the sight of guys like you, and rarely do they prance over so confidently and demand attention.
She called herself Jeanie, short for Jeanette, and from the first moment she spoke her eyes couldn’t stop falling to your beard and below. Just like Marion. All he ever does is stare at your beard while rubbing your chest hair and waiting for another kiss.
So, you decided that this girl was the one. Right when she looked into your eyes and giggled at something dumb you said. That’s when you knew it was right.
There was no waiting, no long courtship or dates. She fed you shots of tequila while she nursed a Guinness and eventually a tall glass called a Gets-Me-Naked was brought out with two straws. It tasted like a watermelon got fucked by acetone but it delivered what it promised.
Somehow, you two ended up back at her place. You don’t remember the how but that wasn’t important, only what happened next.
Kissing. Lots of it, and moans. Hers.
A belt unbuckled, a skirt unzipped, and then your face tickling her thighs as she held your head between her trembling hands.
Because you’re a man’s man. You’re not some faggot who likes to kiss men with prickly beards or big muscles. You love pussy. You love women.
Marion would hate me if he knew.
That was all you could think about as you fucked her. Or she fucked you. The Gets-Me-Naked got right on top of you, so she took control while you laid back and waited for the big finish.
She got hers and you pretended you got yours, and then you passed out with your arms wrapped around her. She was either asleep or pretending to be when you whispered, “Marion,” because the next day she didn’t kick you out. The night did not end.
The girl who called you lumberjack keeps in contact with you, and these messages you don’t erase right away. You keep them sacred instead of erasing them like his. Finally, a person you don’t hide from. A body you don’t feel disgusted by when you’re done.
A person your family would be proud to know.
Hey, lumberjack, maybe you finally found a wife.
MARION HASN’T TEXTED SINCE the day down at the Quarry Way cemetery, but you don’t care. You’ve moved on, he’s moved on, it’s over.
The girl is planning a dinner. She wants the meeting with the parents to go well, and it apparently involves switching between several cookbooks, setting the table just right, and keeping her apartment in top shape, not one knickknack or decorative pillow out of place.
She’s a perfectionist, not like him.
His bedroom was a pigsty, and his house wasn’t much better. It smelled like dog hair and shit, and a cheap attempt to cover it with a eucalyptus-oil diffuser that always made your nose feel funny when you woke up.
The girl knows how to keep a clean house. She knows how to cook, and most importantly, how to order you around. Table setting, measuring out food, pouring just the right amount of red wine and not a drop more. All things you do at her behest, and not in a commanding way.
Like a grandmother, she has a soft voice as she says, “Shannon, could you bring me the colander?” for her boiled potatoes, hand-peeled. The lines she traces on your shoulder when you complete the task, you could live for this. You’d give up everything to live for this.
The doorbell rings and the parents arrive, her mother and father.
They are everything you expect to have raised this angel from the bar. God-fearing and folksy, like a couple straight out of Fargo, almost like your own parents. The type who could raise a girl that drinks dark beers and hard liquor, rough and tumble in the streets, a picturesque woman in the kitchen. This is what it’s all about.
Marion wouldn’t know how to talk to this couple. He’d make it political, mention something about them living on stolen land or their white privilege or something else soapboxy. He’s a stubborn man, but she’s the perfect girl.
You pass the evening with flying colors, answer every question her father has about your job, your retirement plans, the type of truck you drive and the teams you root for, and you glow for the mother who has always wanted a son. She would be doting on you if the girl wasn’t already doing that.
Hey, lumberjack, you’ve found the perfect family.
You don’t even know anything about Marion’s family.
THE DOORBELL RINGS ON a day when your roommate isn’t home and standing on the porch with a rolled-up towel in hand is a wiry, older Ojibwe woman with raspberry-chocolate hair and a smile like a romance novel ending. Something about her just screams gorgeous to you, as if you met your soul mate but thirty years too late.
“Shannon? You look so handsome.” That novel smile has a secret, some kind of twist ending that you don’t like.
“Do I know you, ma’am?”
“You used to come over when you were just a boy, so maybe. My name is Hazel. You and my son Marion used to be friends.”
Life freezes for what feels like ten long, painful, torturous seconds. Bezhig, niizh, niswi . . .
“What did he tell you?” The words can barely squeeze through your clenched teeth.
“What world do you live in where Native boys talk to their mothers?” Her smile is coy, and you lose your temper.
“You got three seconds to tell me what you’re doing here, lady, or I slam the door in your face.”
“I know what he sees in you now.” She laughs, a deep smoky kind of laughter. “If you’re scared, we can take this inside. I would like to talk to you about something.”
“That’s not what I asked for.”
“I can tell you why it’s not working between you two. Why it may never work.”
You feel the urge to fill with hot anger and scream at this bitch’s face. Nothing ever needs to “work” because you don’t do shit with guys, you’re not a faggot. You’re going to tell that to this woman’s face and then shut the door.
“Okay . . . Come in.”
In the living room, you bring her a cup of dark coffee and then pace around. How long until the roommate comes home? Is it an early day at work for him? What if he walks in, what do you say?
“Has my son told you anything about our family?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Probably not. Little brat likes to pretend we don’t exist. He gets that from me though.” She turns the bundled towel over in her hands. “Before I show you this, I just want to tell you a bit about my family.”
As she tells the story, some of it comes back to you from when Marion talked about it on the way to the cemetery.
“I always thought it was just one of my aunt’s ghost stories. They talked about it more than my mother did, but all of them were convinced it was real. I grew up afraid of being with any man because they talked about a curse so much, but eventually I grew out of that. And then, back into it. Marion’s father went off to war, just like mine did. He came back, but he never once tried to speak to me again. Or meet his son. I believe this thing is why.”
The towel comes unwrapped and in Hazel’s lap is a glossy, black statue of a half ring of teeth.
“My grandmother Bullhead cut her husband’s throat and then took out his jawbone. Then she used what she knew of her tribe’s teachings to keep its spirit at bay, but she couldn’t live forever . . . I suspect she wanted to spare her children from having to be attached to this thing so she had Tomas bury it with her ashes. But we are still dealing with it.”
The jawbone is cold when she puts it in your hands, and rock solid.
“What do you want me to do with it?”
“I don’t know. Burn sage in it. Break it. Use it as an ashtray. Whatever you want, but I’ve had a husband for years now, one spiritually strong enough to resist the kind of bad medicine this thing has on our family. But Marion isn’t, so I fear that you’re either in danger, or just your relationship is in danger.” Hazel stands up and walks to the front door. “If you truly want to be with my son, I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” She leaves without another word.
Hey, lumberjack, if what she says is true you have two choices. Leave well enough alone, and Marion will continue to leave you alone.
Or break it. Smash it to pieces. And prove to both him and his mother that this thing is just a fake. There’s no curse, no bad medicine. Just paranoid Indian shit.
You take it outside, stand on the sidewalk, and slam it into the concrete like a football after a touchdown.
Under the sooty black layers white teeth shatter and spread across the road.
HEY, LUMBERJACK, YOU’RE GOING to come out one day.
You’re going to go out fishing and say everything that you’ve never wanted to say.
To your father. His reaction is key. If it doesn’t go well with him, your world will end and you will kill yourself.
To your mother. Her reaction will be easier, you think. She used to speak fondly of her gay friend in college, and she watches Ellen every day.
You wonder what will change. Family is one thing, work is another.
Hey, lumberjack, what’s working worth if you’re not happy with the life it’s paying for?
THE PHONE RINGS TWICE before Marion answers.
“Hello?”
“Hey, babe,” you say. It feels unnatural to say this to a man, yet it’s exactly what feels right. There’s a lightness in your chest as soon as the words come out, and you know now. It’s him. “I miss you.”
“Shannon . . .”
“Just listen . . .” Hey, lumberjack, it’s now or never. Bezhig, niizh, niswi . . . “I can’t be the man you want overnight, Marion. But I will be one day. I’ll be ready for you . . . I think I love you, and I don’t know if you’ll understand this, but that isn’t a good feeling right now. But I want it to be. I feel so wrong every day when I think about you, but I also feel more complete than I’ve ever felt. I don’t know how to deal with this, but I know that I want to deal with it with you. If you’ll let me.”
“Shannon, I’m moving to Minneapolis.”
Hey, lumberjack.
You waited too long.