Jeremy Stone Read online

  JEREMY

  STONE

  Lesley Choyce

  Dedicated to the memory of Rita Joe

  Contents

  When I Learned to Talk Again

  Let Me Take You Back First

  Jeremy Stone, Me

  Oh Yeah, My Father

  I Had a Grandfather Once

  My Grandfather’s School

  Who I Am

  The New Kid

  Hope

  Walking

  Sitting Still Through Math Class is Hard

  Somewhere in the Back of the Class

  When My Father Talked

  The Girl

  Getting Lost in the Halls

  I had Forgotten about Geronimo

  The Fish in the River

  Caitlan Speaks

  The Difference Between Me and Jenson Hayes

  What Happened to Jenson Hayes

  Jenson’s Poem

  Forever

  How Jenson Died

  Caitlan Cried

  The End of the Day

  My Mother Knows

  Cooking

  The First Time He Walked Up to Me

  Yeah, We Needed to Talk

  What Love Is

  Just Standing Around in the Drizzle Talking to a Dead Dude

  Back With the Living

  Thomas Heaney in French Class

  The Troof

  The Troof Versus Paper Clip Heaney

  What Happened After That

  What the Water Said Next

  The Evening Meal

  Normal

  What the Raven Said

  The Phone That Never Rings

  Coffee Coffee

  Caffeine

  Scars

  What Caitlan Said to That

  The List

  Conference with Jenson

  Another Sleeping Story

  The French Revolution

  What Happened Next

  Caitlan in the Hall

  Waiting for Paper Clip

  Mud and Mom

  God in the Bathtub

  My Mom in the Kitchen Staring at an Unopened Pack of Smokes

  Awkward Moments in the Kitchen

  Back to the List, the Plan

  Suicide for Amateurs

  The World According to Jeremy Stone

  Crazy Horse

  The Bird

  Saturday: Caitlan Day

  What the Sparrow Saw

  Jenson Speaks

  Language

  Far Away

  Fred the Janitor

  When I Learned to Talk Again

  The first words were

  leave me alone.

  Said it like I meant it

  to that person

  some idiot

  who examined me.

  My mom was determined I should go

  back to school.

  Think about it.

  School.

  Yeah, as soon as I told the shrink or

  whatever, whoever that pisser was,

  to kiss my ass (guess I said that too)

  he said, then my mom said, and the school said

  I was ready

  to go back to school.

  Let Me Take You Back First

  Shut up.

  Just shut up.

  Everyone

  kept saying it to me.

  Shut

  the hell

  up.

  So I

  did.

  And I fell in love with silence.

  Head

  over

  heels.

  The words just stopped flowing,

  stopped jumping

  out of my

  mouth.

  The great god of silence took me on

  as a disciple.

  I found a new wilderness

  inside me.

  A beautiful place

  to camp,

  place to hang out with spirits

  place to live alone with just

  me.

  Jeremy Stone, Me

  No, don’t stone me.

  Me, Stone.

  Like a rock.

  You know, you can throw me but

  you can’t break me

  or crack me open

  easily.

  I’m that hard.

  Stone hard.

  Stoner, some said.

  Well, yeah, maybe sometimes

  but not often.

  Stoney stuck, though

  as a nickname

  sometimes.

  I am (or was, not sure) a sink-to-the-bottom

  stone,

  language heavy inside me

  but not always getting out to breathe.

  Had this hard outer shell—

  plain-looking, I know, gray, dull.

  But inside.

  Yes, inside.

  All hard jagged crystal.

  Beautiful in sunlight but if kept in the dark,

  damn

  just a little too weird.

  To get me

  to understand me,

  you have to know what

  a geode

  is.

  My father

  gave me one

  this gray nothing-looking rock

  when I was little.

  Break it open, he said.

  But I couldn’t.

  So he did

  and inside

  it was all hollow

  with tiny glittering crystals.

  Pointed, shiny.

  God, look at that

  my father said.

  Gotta love that rock.

  Oh Yeah, My Father

  My missing father

  going

  going

  gone.

  I was ten and he kept getting

  older

  thinner

  farther

  away.

  Did I tell you that my people,

  his people,

  go back 10,000 years here?

  Maybe more. Who knows?

  Maybe my ancestors were flint and obsidian and coal and

  amethyst.

  We go back to the Stone Age.

  Hah.

  Get it.

  My father’s humor.

  He had humor once when he had a big belly

  but

  he

  thinned

  down.

  He lost

  a lot of things.

  I saw the lights going out

  in his eyes

  as he

  got more hollow

  more hurt.

  So he shared that hurt sometimes.

  No humor in that. Nope.

  He shared it by hitting me.

  He hit me some.

  Not too much.

  (It’s okay, Dad. I forgive you.)

  He stopped hitting

  when he

  disappeared.

  I missed him right away.

  Better to be hit

  than to not have him at all.

  Damn.

  I Had a Grandfather Once

  I really

  did

  and he was filled with history

  fed up with history, too

  but he told stories
of the old times

  before

  you know.

  He said his grandfather had handed all those stories

  over to him.

  When my grandfather wasn’t telling old-time stories

  he was kinda quiet.

  People made fun of him

  when he went outside the community:

  the long hair

  the way he walked

  the hesitation in his speech.

  His stories were great

  but he couldn’t shed the dark part of that damn history

  and I don’t think he was good with understanding time.

  He told me this:

  One day our people are happy as clams

  and hunting saber-toothed tigers and big hairy

  mastodons.

  The next thing you know

  the Europeans

  show up

  and the fun is all over.

  Everyone just called him Old Man

  so I did too.

  My Grandfather’s School

  Old Man had gone to one of those places,

  a residential school,

  where you dressed like everyone else, slept in big rooms with everyone else,

  ate the same food as everyone else, spoke English like

  everyone else, got

  punished like everyone else.

  The cops brought you back if you tried to run away

  and be yourself. Be different.

  And if you got sick and threw up at mealtime

  they made you eat

  your own puke.

  It’s called education,

  Old Man said.

  So you run away again

  and they bring you back

  so they can teach you

  how to stop being

  who you are

  and learn to be

  someone else.

  Who I Am

  At my new school,

  at first

  no one really knows who I am.

  They think maybe I am Italian

  or from South America.

  No one knows me here not even me.

  But I think I am becoming more like my grandfather.

  Old Man.

  I remember his stories

  but not much about my own past.

  So I need to find little Jeremy Stone.

  I’m pretty sure he was never Italian.

  My mother promised to help me find him.

  Find me.

  She’d been trying

  to tug some words out of me for three years.

  Before that she had lectured me for being

  too loud

  too rude

  too curious.

  And then she really lost it

  and hit me. (Like my dad had done, only different.)

  At least I think she hit me

  or someone did anyway.

  That’s when I stopped talking.

  Went silent like a stone.

  But I’m not gonna blame her

  No.

  Not my mother. She tried her best

  but had wrestling matches with her own personal demons.

  Ya know.

  Drink.

  Men (after my father evaporated).

  Some kind of pills.

  She said none of it would kill her.

  Not even the men,

  or the smokes. (Tobacco is sacred, she said.)

  Changed her mind after the coughs.

  Good thing too.

  Me,

  I never smoked.

  Not tobacco anyway.

  But my mom

  she loved me

  and thanked me when I found my tongue again

  and words spilled out. But I only spoke to people who

  really knew who I was

  and that was

  a pretty small group.

  The New Kid

  That’s me.

  Like I said,

  I’m fairly new at this school

  and don’t say much

  ’cause

  it’s easier to hide that way.

  I guess word finally got out

  on where I came from, who my parents were

  so they started calling me

  the Indian

  since I am the only one in school

  although some call me

  the hermit. And there are other names.

  Cruel names.

  Here’s what the Indian does at school:

  he keeps to himself,

  he doesn’t give eye contact,

  he drops his books a lot, and

  he’s afraid to look at girls.

  They say maybe he’s on drugs

  this Indian Jeremy Hermit Stone.

  He’s somewhere, man,

  but he’s not here.

  The teachers say:

  at least he’s polite,

  he’s not much trouble,

  he always sits in the same seat,

  he’s shy,

  he’s doesn’t talk or text on a cell phone,

  and he looks awfully sad.

  One of them, Mr. Godwin, asks

  Jeremy, are you there?

  I say

  No,

  not really.

  Hope

  I’m hoping,

  (yeah, I do that sometimes)

  I hope

  that some not so distant day

  I will feel like a normal

  person.

  Don’t know when

  or how.

  But someday.

  I

  was

  at

  the water fountain the other day

  and pretended I

  was in the forest

  drinking clear water

  from

  a

  mountain

  stream.

  When I looked up there was

  a girl

  looking right at me.

  I said, I’m sorry,

  ’cause I thought I was in her way

  and maybe she was

  thirsty.

  Then I stood back

  but kept my thumb

  on the button.

  I offered her

  the stream

  and the forest

  and the mountain too.

  Walking

  I think the girl smiled.

  Maybe she did,

  or maybe I imagined it.

  And then I got scared

  and had to walk

  away.

  Walking was more my thing:

  walking away from,

  walking into,

  walking out of.

  I could walk until there was no more of me left.

  Into the woods, along the creek bed.

  I was never alone.

  There was almost always my companion.

  My grandfather.

  Old Man would be there

  even though he’s been dead and gone for a long while,

  this very important someone from the past.

  He didn’t actually speak but there was this:

  sometimes I could hear his thoughts in my head.

  He’d tell me, This is what you do

  if you want to survive

  in this ole world.

  Don’t say too much.

  Don’t feel too much.

  Don’t reveal who you are.

  Don’t stay in one place too long.

  The trees are
there for you if you need them

  and the birds.

  Always trust the sky.

  The wind will tell you what you need to know.

  And the stars.

  But don’t stare at the sun.

  Or you’ll go blind.

  Sitting Still Through Math Class is Hard

  It was math and all about numbers

  but it didn’t seem to add up to anything.

  Zero + zero x zero = zero.

  The teacher, Mr. Diamond,

  knew I was a long-lost stone and didn’t usually call on me.

  If he asked me, though,

  if he asked me for an answer to anything,

  I would have just said eleven.

  That’s what the Old Man had told me to say

  if someone asked me a question I couldn’t answer.

  He never explained why, though.

  Some of the other kids

  stared at me

  and I tried not to notice.

  I tried very hard

  not to notice

  but when Diamond started talking to the equation on the blackboard

  somebody flicked a paper clip at me.

  Hit me on the cheek.

  Fuck.

  I looked over at him. The creep.

  Shithead. Scumbag. No, I didn’t say it out loud.

  Held it inside, instead.

  His buddy was laughing

  but his laughing sounded more like hiccups.

  I studied Diamond’s back. He was now acting like he

  was making out with those symbols and numbers on the board.

  Adults. Go figure.

  I wanted to run but told my legs

  to stay put.

  Told my ass

  to stay seated.

  Told my brain

  to think about the trees—

  white pines in the wind.

  And then Old Man said

  Just think about eleven.

  If it gets real bad

  say eleven eleven inside your skull.

  If it gets real, real bad

  I told myself

  I’ll make myself invisible.

  Somewhere in the Back of the Class

  Way in the back, she must have been sitting—

  the girl.

  I couldn’t just turn around.

  Trees can’t do that.

  But someone tapped me on the shoulder,

  handed me a note.

  Little folded up piece of lined paper

  that made no sense at first. On top it said this:

  Loser

  On the back it said: Welcome to Hell.

  But when I opened it,

  Someone with beautiful handwriting had written:

  Don’t let the bastards get to you.

  And then a name: