The Second Chance of Benjamin Waterfalls Page 3

  I can tough it out. This ride may feel like weeks and smell like months, but it’s only a few hours, and like my mom said, I’m many things, but I am not weak. I’m as strong as this smell.

  CHAPTER 4

  IMBAABAA (MY DAD)

  I wake up to the sound of shuffling feet exiting the bus. I never wait in lines, so I sit and wait until I’m the last person off the bus. I do this because sometimes people forget things in their seat when traveling, so I eye-sweep every row as I make my way forward, looking for something to take. But other than a few crackers, a couple empty pop cans, and a magazine, there’s nothing to grab. Oh, and the consensus was that the velociraptor was the coolest dinosaur ever.

  Through the windows, the bus terminal in Grand Portage doesn’t look too different from Duluth’s. But as soon as I step off the bus, I can see, smell, hear, and feel the difference. Duluth is a city. Buildings everywhere, steel bridges, people bustling about, and cars racing by in all directions. But this place is filled with other things. The concrete and high-rises are replaced by large trees, and the steady flow of city cars and traffic is replaced by pickup trucks and motorcycles. This place is so green. Even the people walking around are in shades of green. I’ve never seen so many camouflage pants. And what’s with all the plaid? A three-hour trip has taken me to another planet. A lush planet where people try to blend in with their surroundings. There must only be one store here, where the first floor is all plaid shirts and the second floor is all camouflage pants.

  At least it smells good here, like trees and flowers. It’s nice to not be smelling cheese anymore.

  In between the breaks of green, I see blue. I even hear blue. I collect my suitcase and walk up a small, dirt-paved hill toward the bus station pickup zone and see the ocean. Technically, I know it’s not an ocean, but this body of water stretches past the horizon and looks like it goes on forever. Lake Superior. I never really thought about how huge this lake is. It actually touches Duluth. I used to play in it when I was a kid. I guess someone could walk along the shore from Duluth to Grand Portage if they really wanted to. Good to know. If this place sucks major balls, I’ll know how to get home. It may take a while, but—

  “Benny?” a voice snaps me from my thoughts.

  I turn around and see a tall man wearing a red plaid shirt, jeans, and a black newsboy cap staring at me. I recognize his eyes immediately. I knew those eyes when I was young, before depression glazed them over. I don’t know what to say, so I smile. Obviously, he doesn’t deserve a smile, but I have to do something.

  He looks younger than I remember, even though he’s seven years older now. His hair is much longer and darker than I imagined it would be. I don’t know why I’d imagined him being a mostly bald, wrinkled up, bloated man now. I was way off. In fact, he looks fit and healthy. But he also looks nervous. He keeps rubbing his hands together and nodding his head.

  “It’s like she goes on forever, right?” he says, and slowly approaches me.

  “Who?” I ask.

  “Gichigami,” he says, and points behind me.

  I turn back to Lake Superior. With the sun’s reflection, it’s difficult to know which is the lake and which is the sky. Where one ends and one begins. The blues blend together blue-tifully.

  “It’s just a lake. I’ve seen it a million times,” I say, and look down at my feet.

  I stare at my shoes and try to remember how awful he is. My shoes are dirty. Dirty is bad. Bad rhymes with dad. Dad is bad. Right foot, left foot. Oh, that’s right. Left. Dad left us. Now I remember. He threw his family away. I hate him.

  “Yeah, but still, I’m in awe every time I see her,” he says and is now inches away from me. Even our shadows are touching. I step back to separate them. I don’t want us to touch at all.

  “I remember taking you down to her. You’d play in the water for hours,” he says. “You called the water Sun Blue. I’ve always liked that. Do you remember?”

  “I was a kid. I’m not a kid anymore,” I say.

  “Yeah, I’ve heard.”

  “What did you hear?” I ask.

  “Your mother said enough. But let’s get you home. It’s cold out here,” he says.

  “It’s your home, not mine. And just so you know, I chose juvie, fines, and community service over coming here. This is all Mom’s doing,” I say, and walk off toward the parking lot.

  I can’t tell if he responds. The wind is picking up, drowning out most sounds. But I do hear his footsteps behind me. Following me. I slow down so he passes me up. I don’t know where he parked or what car he drives. When he left, my mom kept the only car we had. He took the bus here back then, just as I took the bus here now.

  As he passes me, he takes my suitcase from my hands. It happens so quickly that I don’t have a chance to fight it. I hope he doesn’t think I appreciate it, because I don’t. It’s just too late to get it back because we’ve reached his car. It’s an old Jeep. The kind that used to pass us as we took our walks and he’d hit me on the arm and say, “Beep Beep Jeep!”

  And now he owns one. I wonder if he bought it because he missed playing the game with me. I wonder where he got the money for it. It’s old and beat up a bit, so I’m sure he bought it used, but still, Jeeps were our thing. Beep Beep Jeep was ours. Now it’s his.

  He tosses my suitcase in the back and opens my door.

  “Stop trying to be nice. I know how to open doors,” I say, which makes him laugh, which makes me more upset.

  And I’m not saying thank you. He could carry a million suitcases and open a million doors, but I’ll never thank this guy. Not in a million years.

  “How have you been?” he asks as he enters the driver’s side.

  “Obviously not very good,” I snap back.

  He laughs. “Okay … Well, how is your mother?” he says as he puts on his seat belt.

  “Let’s not go there,” I say, and keep my eyes fixed on the dream catcher that dangles from his rearview mirror. Can he be more of a cliché? I know we’re Native American, but we used to make fun of all the pretendians that hung dream catchers in their cars, and now he has one? Who is this guy? “You dream and drive now?” I say, pointing to it, hoping he remembers how we both laughed at this years ago.

  “Did you know that dream catchers are originally from us Ojibwe?”

  “No. And I don’t care.”

  “I made this one. I learned to do a lot of things up here,” he says, turning to me. “Put on your seat belt, please.”

  “Fine. Can we go now?” I say as I buckle up.

  “Okay. We got lots of time to get to know each other,” he says, and turns the key. The engine wakes up, coughs, then roars to life.

  I know it doesn’t really make sense, but I’m so mad at him for having this Jeep. When I was a kid, I thought that one day my mom and I’d get him a Jeep like this for his birthday or Christmas. Or maybe he’d get me this Jeep when I turned sixteen. But no, he took a crap on all of that and went and got the Jeep for himself. What a jerk.

  We pull onto the main street, which is lined by large towering trees on both sides of the road. The wind whistles loudly through the open top of the Jeep, but still my dad tries to talk over it. “I was afraid I wasn’t gonna recognize you, but you look almost exactly as I pictured in my head,” he says.

  “You look nothing like how I pictured,” I say. “You had red puffy cheeks and glassy eyes last time I saw you.”

  He nods. “I’m a different person now.” He keeps his eyes on the road, as if he was saying it more for himself to hear.

  “Whatever. So, is there a plan? Am I supposed to chop wood, rake leaves, and discover the true value of life through hard work and blistered fingers?” I ask.

  “Why don’t we just go with the flow, kiddo,” he says.

  “Only dead fish go with the flow,” I reply. “And don’t call me kiddo.”

  “That’s right. You’re a big tough guy now. Doing big things, I hear. Your mother told me about all the stuff she found under your bed.”

  Somehow him mentioning my bed makes me feel like he stumbled into my room. A room he used to tuck me into at night. A room he used to read stories to me in. A room he left. He has no right to enter my room. And definitely no right to judge me for what is under my bed.

  “Don’t try to parent me. That train sailed a long time ago. I’m only here because of Mom. And stop saying your mother. It’s weird. It makes it sound like you don’t know her. In fact, don’t talk about her at all. I don’t like it,” I say.

  “I’ll call her your mother because she is your mother. If you don’t like how it makes you feel, then maybe you should—”

  “Ugh. Just stop. No more talking about her. Just say okay, okay?”

  “Fine. Okay … And it’s ‘that ship sailed a long time ago.’ Not train. Although you can say ‘that train left the station a long time ago,’” he adds.

  “I was being ironic. Obviously if that train sailed a long time ago, that means it sank. It’s dead. Like this conversation should be,” I say.

  “Oh, you were being clever? You got that from me. Your mother is the smart one, but I was always the clever—”

  “Do you ever stop talking?” I ask.

  “Too much too soon. I get it.” He lets a breeze of silence pass by us before adding, “You still like music?” and before I can respond, he turns on his radio—and blasts it.

  An old R&B love song cracks on, which is the exact opposite of the vibe in this Jeep right now. But neither of us want to acknowledge that, so neither of us change the station. We both listen to the slow love ballad as we stare straight ahead. If I wasn’t so mad right now, I’d probably laugh. Ugh. The singer is talking about crawling like a sexy jaguar across the floor to her lover. This is so wrong … And hilarious … But I keep my face solid as stone. I will not laugh. I will not.

  We drive deeper into the woods, where the sun must not be permitted because as we roll down the road, it gets real dark real fast. The trees are now on my left, my right, behind me, in front of me, and even above me. It’s a dark wooden world decorated with leaves and absolutely no sunlight. Our headlights flood on, and I manage to catch the sign as we whip by. It reads GRAND PORTAGE INDIAN RESERVATION. Directly under it reads GICHI-ONIGAMING.

  Even though I’m Native American, I don’t know much about the culture. We moved away so my dad could work in Duluth, and in a big city, there’s a whole slew of cultures to adopt. In my neighborhood, it was mostly white people. So I learned to fit in with white stuff like skateboarding, baseball, and how to be an awful dancer.

  The only time I really explored my culture was when we played cowboys and Indians down by Enger Tower with our Super Soaker water cannons. I was always the only Indian taking on the entire US Cavalry. And I was always outnumbered and outgunned, but … I quickly made a name for myself. I once took out eleven pale-faced cowboys before I was taken down and soaked from head to toe. They called me the Chippe-Wa-Wa, short for Chippewa water warrior, but as we all got older, we put the water cannons down and picked up other things. Most of the kids picked up sports, some became nerds and picked up books, some became cool and picked up girls … but a small handful of us started getting into trouble. We picked up things that weren’t ours.

  I fell into that crowd because of everything that was happening in my life. I didn’t want to be at home, where my mom was stressed out and my dad’s chair was empty, so I chose to stick with the kids that stayed out the latest.

  “You live in a forest?” I ask.

  “Technically right outside of it. We have a house, a ranch, really.”

  “We? Who’s we?” I ask.

  He shifts uncomfortably in his bucket seat and avoids looking at me. “Wendy and I.”

  Wait. Who the heck is Wendy? Does he … Did he start a new family? I hate him so much. But this isn’t about me right now … How could he do this to my mom? “Hold on … Does mom know?” I ask more with my teeth than with my lips.

  “I don’t know how much your mother keeps you in the loop about these things, but yes, she’s well aware of Wendy,” he says.

  “Bullshit. She would have told me,” I snap.

  “Language!”

  “You’re not my dad!”

  “I am too your dad,” he says.

  “No. You’re not. You were, once. But a lot has changed since then.”

  “I’m still your father. Like it or not. And under my roof, you’ll respect me. No swearing. And absolutely no stealing.”

  “Oh, so you’re the law now? Well, guess what? I happen to be someone who breaks the law. So I’ll say what I want and take whatever I want,” I say.

  He holds up one finger. It immediately throws me back to my childhood. He’d always hold up one finger when people were arguing. It was weird then, and it’s weird now. He explained it by saying all it takes to win a fight was one finger. It still doesn’t make sense, but somehow it calms me down. I guess it still works. We’re no longer arguing.

  “Whatever,” I say, and roll my eyes away from him.

  “Wegodogwen,” he replies.

  “What?”

  “It means ‘whatever’ in Ojibwe. If you’re going to pout, at least learn something while doing it,” he says.

  “Whatever,” I repeat.

  I wonder if my mom told him about everything. I hope she didn’t tell him how I used to cry every day and night for an entire year after he left. But that doesn’t matter now. I don’t miss him anymore. I buried him in the backyard of my brain and tried to forget he ever existed. And it’s obvious he doesn’t miss me or my mom, now that he has a Wendy!

  Ugh. I hate her already. She sounds like a fast food hamburger. And why is my mom talking to him, anyway? She should move on, like I did.

  Do they talk about how disappointing a son I am?

  “You break the rules, I send you back. And your mother will definitely tell that handsome judge about it. And you know what he’ll do, right? Final chance, I think he called it?”

  My mom even told him about Judge Mason? “He’s not handsome. He’s average-looking,” I say.

  “That’s not what I heard. I also heard he keeps his word, so follow the rules.”

  “You want to play dad for a little while, fine. But I’m not calling this Wendy lady Mom. I already don’t like her.”

  “And why’s that?” he asks, his eyes still on the road.

  “Because she likes you.”

  “You’re still angry with me, Benny. But hopefully your time here will change that.”

  “I seriously doubt it.”

  “Well, doubting is halfway to believing, so I’ll take it,” he says, and turns left, off the road.

  We drive into an open field. Light rushes back to us and lights up everything around me. It’s almost as if the sun missed us and is now greeting us with a huge warm hug. The road we’re on now is made of mud, and he steps on the gas a little to kick it up. I see a side-eye smirk from him, and there’s a part of me that wants to shout, “Faster!” but I don’t want him to think there’s any chance for us bonding—because there isn’t. Not at all. I swear.

  We drive up a hill, tires sliding side to side, mud flying everywhere as we come to a large red-painted ranch. OMG, my dad lives on a farm. There are ducks, goats, and a flipping pig milling about. Is my dad a farmer? I hope he doesn’t expect me to milk a cow or a goat or a pig. Do people milk pigs? Well, even if they do, I don’t. I’m not milking anything. I need to come up with a few rules of my own. “I’m not a farmer, and I have no intentions of becoming one, ever,” I say.

  “Good to know. Random, but good to know,” he replies.

  “Not very random. We did just pull up to a farm,” I say, waving a hand in the direction of the goats.

  “Relax. They’re pets. Well, not pets, more like family, really,” he says. “It’s my rescue ranch.”

  “You rescue animals now?” I ask. “Who are you?”

  “You’ll see, animals are just like us, once you take the time to get to know them.”

  “You may be a pig, Wendy may be a cow, but I am not like some stupid farm animal.”

  He smiles. “Of horse you’re not,” he says, and laughs at his own joke.

  But I don’t laugh. It wasn’t that funny. “Your mother would have laughed at that one,” he adds.

  “Oh, yes, let’s talk about her again since it went so well the last time,” I say.

  “Okay … So, your mom, has she been dating anyone?” he asks.

  Did he really just ask me that? “I was being sarcastic,” I say.

  “You were being fantastic?”

  “Sarcastic!”

  “Snaptastic?”

  “That’s not even a word, and also shut up,” I say.

  He laughs. I almost feel a haha rising in my throat, so I focus on the farm. Ugh. Even these smelly animals almost make me want to smile. The goats are kind of cute.

  I need to remember why I hate him. Think. He left. Mama crying. Drunk. Wendy. Growing up with no dad. Shouting. Crying. Wendy. This stupid Beep Beep Jeep.

  Grand Portage. There’s nothing grand about it. It sucks. And everyone in it sucks, especially him. And Wendy.

  My anger rushes back. I’m too pissed to say anything. I want this Jeep to tip over, and I want him to drown in the muddy mess that he made of my life.

  “Well, if she’s not, it’s understandable. She has a lot on her plate,” he says.

  I’m not sure if he means that I’ve been too much of a heavy load in my mom’s life for her to have one of her own, or if he wants to twist the knife into my ribs by admitting she has a lot on her plate because she had to do everything on her own while he was out dating girls named Wendy and living with goats. Either way, he’s a jerk for saying it.

  I just want to stare at the ducks now. So I do. I stare at the stupid ducks near a muddy pond. Lucky ducks. They can fly away whenever they want.

  CHAPTER 5

  ANIMOSH-NOODIN (DOG WIND)

  We pull up to the house. It’s not very big, which is strange, because it’s surrounded by so much land. I guess they want to make room for more animals. Elephants, maybe? Giraffes? Lions? Tigers? Bears? Ugh … I’m here all because of that bear. If I had just walked away, none of this would be happening. I’d be home, with all my stuff. Making money.