Jeremy Stone Read online

  Caitlan.

  The girl had passed the note to me.

  The other messages were just a couple of my

  warm and fuzzy classmates

  Adding their regards.

  The bastards didn’t matter, though.

  I finally turned and ignored the sea of ugly faces

  and tuned in to her smile.

  Would have just kept locked onto that smile too

  but Old Man was reminding me

  if I kept staring at the sun

  well, you know.

  When My Father Talked

  When my father used to talk to just me and no one else

  he sometimes talked about

  the black dog

  but the dog didn’t have a name not a dog name

  anyway.

  My mom had to later explain to me

  that the black dog

  was depression

  and it would bite my father hard and deep

  and not let go.

  So I knew all about the black dog when it came up snarling at me

  three years ago.

  There I was

  a thirteen-year-old boy just off the reserve

  with his own ugly pet dog.

  He didn’t bite

  at first.

  He was skinny and afraid

  and needed to be taken care of

  but he was the same kind of dog

  that my father knew all too well.

  And when he turned on me

  there was nothing I could do.

  At first I felt the pain, the teeth,

  saw the meanness in his eyes.

  At first I thought,

  not his fault maybe,

  probably couldn’t help it but he hung on

  and after a while it stopped hurting.

  I think the teeth

  injected something into my blood

  that made my mind go numb.

  And I began to like the feeling—

  like being dead

  but still breathing.

  The Girl

  What about the girl?

  When class was over, she had moved quickly

  down

  the

  aisle

  like

  the

  wind

  right

  past

  me

  and

  she

  was

  gone.

  Everyone left quickly like there was a fire or something

  and I was left there with the teacher.

  Mr. Diamond didn’t know what to say to me.

  Maybe he’d never

  spoken to a kid like me before,

  someone off the reserve.

  What was your name?

  Jeremy Stone, I said.

  That was my name

  and still is.

  He smiled, I think.

  Hard to tell with white people

  sometimes whether they are

  smiling

  or laughing at you or just awkward and pale like that

  but I don’t think he was unkind,

  just awkward and pale

  and good with numbers

  but not words

  or people.

  Getting Lost in the Halls

  That’s never much fun

  for someone like me.

  And I didn’t ask anyone

  where the gym was

  so I showed up late

  after Old Man finally said to me

  just follow the smell of stinky socks.

  And he was right as usual.

  I was new of course and everyone else

  knew what was going on.

  Pretty weird, really.

  Wrestling.

  By the rules

  but wrestling. Just like when I was little and

  my cousins and me

  wrestled in the living room

  until someone got hurt.

  It usually wasn’t me. Don’t know why.

  But now we were paired off

  and I ended up with the Paper Clip Creep.

  Someone said to him

  Thomas,

  looks like

  you get to wrestle

  Geronimo.

  Geronimo was me. (I guess now I had a new name.)

  Thomas Heaney was him.

  I didn’t understand the rules

  but no one was explaining.

  So he quickly slammed me on the mat

  and that took me back

  to the living room.

  Only now I was bigger

  and Old Man was yelling to me: Get up, Jeremy Stone

  and fight like a warrior.

  I had forgotten all about

  the warrior.

  Use your enemy’s strength,

  against him, said the familiar voice of

  Old Man.

  I twisted out from under

  Paper Clip’s armpits

  like a snake

  and stepped back,

  waited for him

  to lunge

  and miss. Then I threw myself on him

  and knelt on his back

  like I was praying.

  The gym teacher blew a whistle

  and yelled at me to get up.

  I got up

  and Thomas

  glared.

  I said I’m sorry, Paper Clip

  but didn’t mean it.

  Now the others were laughing at him, not me.

  But just then someone farted loudly

  and that was the

  end

  of that.

  I had Forgotten about Geronimo

  Geronimo was a warrior

  I read about in a book.

  Old Man didn’t like Geronimo

  but then he hated everything about

  the history

  of North America

  after 1492

  and the arrival of you know who.

  But I read the book anyway

  and could see that

  if they had just left Geronimo and his people alone

  he would

  have been peaceful. But

  it didn’t work out that way

  so

  he

  fought

  back.

  Fought

  hard.

  Fought well.

  But that is not what I liked about Geronimo.

  They said

  he could

  walk

  without

  making

  footprints.

  He could

  see far into the future.

  And if he needed to,

  he could tell the sun

  not to come up

  if he needed darkness

  for protection.

  Geronimo said:

  “I was born on the prairies where the wind blew free

  and there was nothing to break the light of the sun.”

  In the past,

  thinking about Geronimo

  sometimes

  made the black dog

  run away.

  And it helped me to pin

  Paper Clip that day

  although

  Old Man wanted to take credit for that.

  The Fish in the River

  I think I have a problem understanding time.

  Just like my grandfather.

  I slip

  into the past

  and
don’t know why.

  Old Man says it’s because sometimes

  I just have my head up my ass and he’ll say,

  how is the view

  up there

  today?

  But that’s just because

  he thinks it’s a bad thing

  to spend too much time

  in the past.

  Anybody’s personal past

  unless you can go way

  way back to the old days

  when it was always quiet

  in the woods

  and you could just reach into any stream

  and lift out

  a

  big fish

  to cook for dinner.

  I have a hard time

  hanging on to the present.

  The present is like that big fish and I am trying to hold onto it

  so I can

  cook it for dinner.

  But it keeps jumping back into the river

  and swimming away

  upstream (into the past)

  or downstream (into the future).

  It’s been a very long while

  since my father went to the river

  and caught a real fish

  and my mother cooked it

  and we ate it

  with my cousins.

  That’s some fish,

  my mother kept saying.

  And my father kept saying, It was like

  that fish

  wanted me to

  catch him

  and feed him to my family.

  But my father left the next day

  to go look for work on the oil rigs out West.

  And I felt bad

  because I didn’t eat all my fish,

  didn’t like all the bones.

  But I should have saved those bones

  to remember my father by.

  Even

  fish bones

  should not

  be wasted.

  Caitlan Speaks

  You need me in your life,

  she said.

  Just like that. Out of the blue.

  You don’t want to be alone

  in this school

  in this life

  ever.

  Do you know about Jenson Hayes?

  she asked.

  Who is Jenson Hayes? I asked.

  Jenson Hayes was the one person I truly loved.

  He was the one.

  But I never told him.

  And that was stupid of me.

  And now he’s gone.

  You remind me of him.

  I do?

  Yes.

  Difference is you are here

  and Jenson’s not.

  Oh shit, I said.

  Oh shit is right,

  Caitlan said

  and then kissed me hard on the mouth.

  The Difference Between Me and Jenson Hayes

  Follow me, Caitlan said.

  She led me to a janitor’s closet.

  Don’t worry about Fred. Fred is cool, she told me.

  Fred is the janitor.

  Fred lets me chill in the janitor’s

  closet whenever I need to chill.

  Which was often as it turned out.

  There were two classroom chairs in there.

  We sat.

  She stared at me intently.

  You’re quieter than Jenson, she said.

  Taller and quieter. Darker skin.

  But you’ve got his eyes.

  And the deer in the headlights look.

  Yeah, that was me. I liked this girl, the girl from the mountain stream

  but she scared me a little.

  Caitlan, what are we doing in here?

  Talking, she said. Getting to know each other.

  I know you’ve got issues, she said.

  You don’t have to be a psychic to know that

  I guess, I answered.

  We’ve all got issues. I just want to make

  sure you don’t get fucked over.

  What do you mean?

  Like Jenson. Fucked over and fucked up.

  What happened?

  What Happened to Jenson Hayes

  He wasn’t strong enough well, sometimes he was

  when we were together when I told him how much I cared for him

  when I played with his hair when we did other stuff.

  I had to ask. What happened to Jenson?

  They got to him.

  They?

  You know. The bastards. The shitheads.

  The cruel ugly fucks who think they run the world.

  Oh them, I said,

  pretending I knew who they were.

  Thomas Heaney for one. The lout who hit you with a paper clip.

  He was the worst.

  I didn’t tell her that I had pinned him in wrestling.

  That would have been bragging.

  Paper Clip, I said.

  Jenson didn’t deserve any of that crap.

  But he needed to be stronger.

  He was very sensitive.

  Look,

  here’s

  a poem

  he wrote

  for

  me.

  Jenson’s Poem

  Sunlight on water

  spring

  green leaves on all the trees

  warm sweet air

  birds singing

  everywhere.

  You beside me

  on the green moss

  stretched out

  our bodies

  touching

  forever.

  Forever

  Yes. Forever. That was Jenson.

  Sensitive, creative, romantic, idealistic

  and easily hurt. A fatal combination.

  I swallowed hard. Oh, I forgot to tell you,

  we were sitting in those classroom chairs,

  facing each other, Caitlan and me, and our knees

  were touching

  and I was holding Jenson’s poem that I just read

  and I was thinking I really loved this girl,

  this weird, hyper, intense, savagely beautiful girl

  with long dark hair (Indian hair, I kept thinking).

  And dark Indian eyes, too. This girl still hung up

  on an old boyfriend

  but that was okay because our knees were touching

  and she had taken me into the

  janitor’s closet alone.

  This was so much better than being in class

  but I didn’t know what would

  happen after we walked out of that closet

  and back into the real world of school.

  But I didn’t have the whole story.

  What happened to Jenson?

  I asked again. Did he move away?

  Did he stop talking to you?

  No, she said.

  It wasn’t like that.

  Jenson is dead.

  I sometimes think I still hear his voice. Sometimes I think I feel him touching me on the shoulder.

  Sometimes …

  I’m sorry if this is uncomfortable for you, she said.

  I’m a little intense, I know. It scares people sometimes.

  I’m not scared, I said.

  But she could feel my knees shaking a little.

  I have shaky knees when I get nervous

  and sweaty hands.

  I shouldn’t say this, Caitlan said.

  Say what?

  Well, you have the look.

  What look?
r />   The victim look.

  The what?

  You have this look that says you’ve been hurt, you are vulnerable, and if someone wants to get you, to pick on you, to harass you, to hurt you, they will target you and wear you down. People like Thomas Heaney know that look and will dog you. And he’s not the only one. People like him will find you all throughout your life.

  That’s not fair, I said.

  I’m stronger than that.

  You don’t know me.

  (No, I didn’t actually say that out loud.

  I just thought that.)

  I swallowed hard again.

  Caitlan leaned forward until her forehead was touching mine.

  But I won’t let that happen to you.

  Not this time.

  How Jenson Died

  It was such a big story for such a small closet,

  such a sad story for such an ordinary day,

  such a dark and tragic tale from such a beautiful girl.

  Caitlan said,

  We had been going together for a couple of years. He wrote me poems. We went on long walks. We never ate meat, never used cell phones, only bought used clothes, refused to watch television. He taught me to meditate and to breathe properly. We read long old novels together. He taught me the names of birds and flowers. We knew for a fact we were living in the wrong century. The wrong time. The wrong place. But there was not much of anything we could do about it.

  And then we broke up.

  Why?

  I don’t know exactly.

  I think everything we did was just

  too

  intense.

  I nodded.

  It was almost a year ago. We didn’t talk for a week. My mom had often said we were too young to be so serious. His mom said it too. Maybe that had something to do with it. We were on a roller-coaster ride. Sometimes we were on top. But then we dropped to the bottom when we let the world get to us … when it really got to us. When it got to us so badly … do you understand?

  Yes, I said. I understand.

  When that happened.

  It was bad.

  There were black dogs in the room with us now.

  Three of them. I could hear them breathing.

  I could smell their breath.

  While we were not speaking, Thomas and a couple of his friends had been dogging Jenson. And he was weak. I didn’t know this at the time. But he had no one to turn to.

  And they said something, did something. I don’t know what.

  He took his own life.

  Pills.

  Alone in his bedroom.

  And there

  was nothing

  I could do

  to bring him

  back.

  Caitlan Cried