I made my way down to Tias’s house and snuck in through his window. We were both masters at popping out window screens without breaking them. See, if you slide a butter knife in between the screen and the window frame and then wiggle it back and forth, you can pop out the bottom plugs that click it into place; from there on, you can push it in with your thumbs. In fact, NDNs have hacked a million tools out of everyday objects. You can use a coat hanger as a toaster if you bend it into a ‘V’ and place it on top of an element. It makes some damn good NDN toast.
I crawled in through the window and fell on top of Tias on the bed. “You awake?” I jokingly asked and he nudged me in the ribs. His skin was a dusky hue in the pale luminescent light. I saw he was reading some book by Charles Dickens.
“What’s that about?” I asked, rubbing the wrinkled spine of the book.
“You know that Christmas movie about Donald Duck and those three ghosts?”
I nodded.
“It’s that, but you know, not Disney. You wouldn’t like it.”
Feeling insulted, I dug around his room as he kept reading. There was a copy of Ariel on the floor, open to a story titled “Daddy.” I wondered if he had a fetish for older men? I turned my attention to his closet; there were crumpled-up jeans, a few shirts, these Redwall books with mice fighting other mice on the cover, and a bundle of fabric tied together with elastics. I untied it and found this old rabbit plush toy wrapped up inside it. It had a brown body with a white belly and blue eyes that were hot-glued onto its head. Its left ear had been torn off and was held in place with a pin.
“I’ve had him pretty much all my life,” Tias said. “Floppy Ears. My grandpa gave him to me when I was a boy, well, I mean, one of my foster grandpas, not my biological. He was this old Polish man, survived the war and everything, a real hard ass.”
“This guy is sure beat up, eh?” I laughed.
“Heck, that ain’t even half of it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Throw him here.”
I tossed it over to him and he pulled his neck tight. “See these stitches? He had his head ripped off from one of my first foster placements. I lived on this farm with a Ukrainian family just a few miles outside of the rez. They raised cattle and our neighbour had an ostrich farm. I used to play with them all the time and I’d bring Flop. We’d go up to their pens and feed them seeds. When I teased them they’d ruffle their feathers and start running in circles. Then one time one of those goddamn ostriches stretched his long-ass neck out and plucked Flop straight from my hands. He ran around the pen and all the other birds nipped at him. And I guess these two birds got into a fight over Flop—they ripped his head clean off. My foster mom later went and collected his head, body, and his gutted innards. She stitched him back up for me. I wasn’t allowed near the birds after that.”
I laughed. “That’s crazy. That’s some Looney Toons realness.” Tias sat quietly and cradled his plush.
“Sorry, Tias,” I said after a few moments of silence. “Shit’s rough. But hey, you still got this little guy.”
“Yeah,” he said, “little guy’s the toughest sonuva I’ve ever met. Been through hell and back and he’s still here. He’s a fucking mess.” He laughed. “But every mess on his body has a funny story behind it.”
I climbed into bed beside him, nuzzled my head between his armpit and pectoral. He wasn’t wearing deodorant, but I kind of liked his stink, it was one of his sexiest attributes. I laid my left arm and leg over his body and he rested his chin on my forehead.
“Oh yeah?” I said. “You gotta tell me sometime—”
“Little by little,” he interjected. “Little. By. Little.”
As we began to feel sleepy, I thought about the Dickens book he was reading. He was right, I didn’t care for it but that doesn’t mean I hadn’t read it. I think Ebenezer and I had a lot in common: we both liked money and to screw. And weren’t we both haunted by ghosts?
“Tell me one?” I whispered to Tias.
“Okay,” he yawned, “but I don’t know where to begin.”
“To begin with,” I suggested.
“Yeah?”
“You got an ass laden with wood.”
“Ekosi,” he laughed.
“You don’t say,” I replied, in between kisses knitted with girlish laughter.