The Lesser Blessed (7 page)

“What?” Jazz roared and turned around. Johnny stood there with a smoke in his mouth, looking right into Jazz.

“Fuck off,” Johnny said, “or I’ll kick a bone outta your ass.”

Nobody moved. Jazz looked at his friends for help but everybody looked away. Johnny shot out and smacked Jazz hard on the face. Jazz’s hair whipped around as he fell, and he stayed down.

“Come on, cocksucker,” Johnny growled, “get up.”

Jazz and his skinny little ass stayed down and Johnny watched him for a while. My face was burning. I started to walk away.

I could hear Johnny’s runners spitting up gravel as he ran up behind me.

“Hey, Lare,” he said. “Why do Canadian couples like to hump doggy-style?”

“I dunno.” I started to smile. “Why?”

“So they can both watch
Hockey Night in Canada
!” he yelled, and that was that. We laughed, and he slapped me on the back.

“It’s okay, man,” he said, looking back at Jazz. “A turd never gets too far from the toilet bowl.”

I smoked up a lot after that first night. Sometimes it was in the potato field, other times it was at Johnny’s apartment. We had to be careful of Donny. He was a bandit.

“Hey, chief,” he said as he walked into the kitchen. “I got a quarter that says you don’t have hair on your nuts.”

“What?” I asked in disbelief. Johnny was in the bathroom so it was just Donny and me. Van Haien was playing on the stereo and it was a Friday.

“You heard me, chief,” he said. “We on, or are you a baldy?”

“Hey, Donny,” I said, motioning towards the swear jar, “you better cool it. You’re headed for a burn out.”

“Whatever,” he sneered as he sat across from me. “Wanna play some cards? I know crib, rummy, crazy eights, crazy eight countdown. You know crazy eight countdown? Here, I’ll show you.”

Just as he was about to start dealing, I noticed a small hole in his left hand. It wasn’t big. It looked like a dent.

“Hey,” I asked and touched his hand. “What happened?”

“Oh,” he said.

“Scoop?”

Donny looked down and covered the hole. He said in a whisper, “A man at one of my mom’s parties put a cigarette out on my hand.”

“Oh, man, I’m sorry—”

Johnny came around the corner tucking in his shirt.

“Donny,” he pleaded, “I told you no more cards. Did you do your homework ? ”

“Awww, it’s stupid,” he answered. “As if I’m going to use that stuff anyway.”

“Come on, Donny,” he answered, “your report card said—”

“Dad said I didn’t have to if I didn’t want to. ”

Johnny stood over him and started pointing. He raised his voice. “You don’t listen to him, okay? You listen to me. The only thing you have to worry about right now is how you’re gonna raise those marks!”

Donny’s face started to darken and he folded his arms.

“Understand?” Johnny asked.

Donny didn’t answer, and I got embarrassed for him.

“Jeeeez,” Donny said. “Okay then ...”

“I know it sucks but you gotta do it,” Johnny said. “Dad’s coming soon. We’re almost out of this shit town. Now go in your room and do some homework, okay?”

“But I want to talk with Larry,” he answered.

I smiled.

“Larry’s gonna be here for a while. You do that homework and you can talk to him after.”

“Yeah?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I answered.

Donny got up and walked into his room. “Turn the music down,” he called over his shoulder.

Johnny got up and went into the living room. He turned the music down and came back. “Man, what am I gonna do about that kid? Did you see his teeth? They’re already yellow.”

I was still in shock over Donny’s hand. “How bad is it at school?” I asked.

“Pretty bad. I got his report card and he’s got a lot of C’s and a few
D’s. I went and talked to his teacher and she said he’s a wise guy in class who likes to fight.”

“Hmmm,” I said. “What does your mom think?”

“Mom doesn’t give a shit,” Johnny answered. I kept my mouth shut.

Johnny put his hands together like he was praying and exhaled loudly. He closed his eyes and I watched him.

“How’s your coffee?” he said after a minute.

“Donkey piss,” I said. “Weak.”

“Yeah, yeah, we’re running low.”

Johnny’s hair had fallen over his forehead. He was handsome, but in a lost sort of way. He could grow a beard if he wanted to and some days he didn’t shave. Sometimes when we were stoned I’d see him staring at me with those glittering blue eyes of his.

“If I could perform the autopsy on him,” I thought, “I’d steal his eyes.”

I got up and went to the stereo. “Hey! Let’s write a song. We’ll call it ‘Hickey Juice.’ ”

“Yeah,” he called back, “the first line will be, ‘She’s a little bitch with a capital B!’“

I shook my head and smiled. We were listening to Van Halen. The synthesizer and drums were pounding “I’ll Wait until Your Love Comes Down.” I turned it up just a bit while Johnny fired up the hot knives on the stove in the kitchen. He peeked around the corner and smiled. “Landlord’s gonna shit!”

“Piss on ’im!” I yelled. I was on the couch, having another coffee. I was downing coffee about five times a day. The cool thing about Johnny’s place was they drank coffee out of glass mugs. I always felt like a trucker on Highway 5, taking a break in some diner in South Dakota, taking sips from my glass mug, having a smoke, my rough scraggy beard on my face, my wallet thick with fifties.

I started thinking about Juliet. I really had this thing for her—I’m talking twelve cylinders of love! I mean, my nipples became fire ants
at the thought of her: red, hard and venomous. I could close my eyes and see her, and when I did it was like somebody pulled my heart a little. She got grounded for what happened at the party and tonight was her first night of freedom. I know. I marked it on my calendar.

Johnny told me tons about his past. He had a slew of pictures of pretty girls. Mostly he went for brunettes. In lots of the pictures, they had purple hickeys on their necks and bottles in their hands. I was always hoping that he’d open up about Juliet and tell me more about what she was like, what she did, how she did it. I had brought this best of Iron Maiden tape over that I had mixed. Man, the music felt good. “Wasted Years” was blaring now, and if it weren’t for Donny, we’d have had it cranked even higher. Johnny came around the corner from the kitchen and gave me thumbs-up. I joined him and inhaled the hash. No hooter this time. Just me and the smoke.

“Yeah,” I thought, “the day I saw Juliet Hope was the day I felt my pubic hair grow.” I could still close my eyes and see her on the bed. I looked at Johnny, who was at the table rolling a fatty.

“You know, Lare, I had this girl once, her name was Lisa Beatty. What a fuck doll. This one time we were fooling around and she gave me a hickey. I told her not to do it again, and she did. She gave me another one and I got her back. I gave her hickeys on her ass. I did a big J on one cheek and a big B on the other. She was a lifeguard at the swimming pool in Hay River, and she had this bathing suit that was green and white. When she dove into the water, you could see the J and B—and I wasn’t the only one who noticed!”

“Wow!” I said. “Now that’s a story!”

“Yeah,” he smiled, “that’s Hay River for you. She was smooth, brother, smooth.”

“Wasted Years” ended; “Power Slave” began. We paused to listen to the guitars. The glasses on the table were shaking as I inhaled some more.

I sat down next to Johnny and put my hand on his shoulder. He looked at me and I smiled. I had never really said anything to him
about helping me out, and now it seemed like I could say it without sounding like a pansy. “Thanks for taking care of Jazz, man.”

Johnny smiled back. “No prob.” He thought about it as he rolled. “Listen, Lare, I gotta teach you some new moves.”

“Yeah?” I asked. “Yeah, you better. I don’t know how to fight.”

“The next time you smoke someone it better be three hits: you hitting them, the shit hitting their shorts and the ambulance hitting ninety!”

I laughed.

“Stand up and put your arms on my shoulders.”

I did.

He whipped his arms over mine and slapped them around my back. He pulled up while he kneed me in the gut.

“Ugh,” I grunted and hit the floor.

“Lare,” he laughed, “you gotta block it.”

I struggled up and rested on bent knees. I guess he could see that I was mad because he sat down again and straightened his hair with his hands. I could smell the Right Guard in his scalp. He had showed me that if you sprayed your head with it for a long time, you could do cartwheels and your hair wouldn’t move. Rubbing my gut, I stared at him.

“So tell me about being fool blood,” he said.

I sat down. “Whattaya wanta know?”

He got up and handed me a cigarette. He was saving the joints till later.

“Well, what tribe are you? Chip? Cree?”

“Dogrib.”

“I thought they were from around Yellowknife.”

I got a little nervous. “Yeah.”

“What’s the scoop?”

“Well, Jed told me that our tribe came from a woman who gave birth to six puppies.” I eyed him while I said that because I knew some people would laugh. He didn’t, so I continued.

“Well, she had to live by herself in the woods so she could raise ru pups. One day she left her hut so she could check her snares, and when she came home she could see human footprints in the snow and ashes.”

“No shit,” Johnny said.

“Yeah ... so one day she went out like she was going to check her snares but she snuck back and watched her hut. She could hear her pups yapping like this: Yap! Yap ! Then she could hear them laughing like children. After a while she could hear kids running around the hut and choo! Out from the hut run six kids, all naked.”

“Whoah!” Johnny said.

“Yeah! So she watches them and they’re playing in the snow all laughing and having a great time. She runs out of the bush and chases them back into the hut. They all make a run for the bag she used to leave them in. Three make it and turn back to pups. A girl and two boys don’t. She catches them. They stay human and they’re the first Dogribs. She raised them to be beautiful hunters with strong medicine.”

“Hunh. Wait a minute,” Johnny interrupted. “What happened to the three that made it back to the bag?”

“Humph. I don’t know. Jed never told me that part.”

“Better find out.”

We were quiet for a bit. Then he spoke.

“Lare, that’s something. That’s really something. You’re a storyteller, man. Your voice even changed when you talked.”

“Yeah?” I asked, proud of the moment and the revelation. That was the first time I had told the story and I liked how it felt.

“Larry?” Johnny said. “Do you drink?”

“Oh,” I said, “I had a bet going with my dad that I wouldn’t touch a drop of liquor until I turned eighteen. He said he’d give me a hundred bucks if I make it.”

“Where is your dad?” he asked.

“Oh ... uh, I don’t know. He and my mom split up. It was a bad scene.”

“Yeah, ” he said, “I know what you mean. Shit city, hey?”

“Hunh,” I agreed. “How come you?”

“Long story, man. It sucks the cockaruski.”

“Aaah, come on.”

“I’ll say this,” he said. “I have a feeling if I picked up a bottle, I’d never put it down.”

I nodded. “Deep.”

“It’s casual, man. You only bet a hundred dollars with your old man?”

“I was nine when I made that bet. At the time, a hundred bucks was a hunk of a hunk.”

“Sounds good. I should get that deal going with Donny.”

Johnny lit a joint and handed it to me, looking at my lips. I got nervous, so I asked, “What do you think of Miss Sauvé’s tits?”

“Don’t matter to me,” he winked. “The kind of fucking I do, you don’t need tits.”

I started to laugh, and he pointed to my lips.

“Time for a shave.”

“What?”

“Time for a shave there, muskrat mouth. You look like Charles Manson.”

“You figure?”

“Yeah, look. Juliet’s coming over in a bit. You better shave before she gets here. Maybe she’ll bring a friend. Go in the bathroom and shave that fuzz off your lip.”

“I never shaved before.”

“Well, it ain’t that hard. Go on!”

I felt the whiskers on my lip and agreed. I walked to his bathroom. “Use my electric!” he yelled. I locked the door and saw dirty towels, toothpaste spitting out of the tube and yellowed Q-Tips lying on the counter.

The doors under the sink were hard to open so I yanked. They gave. It was the weirdest thing; behind some blue Tampax boxes and
rolls of toilet paper, I saw some bottles. I moved the boxes aside, and there were two big-ass bottles of Golden Wedding.

“Holy shit,” I whispered. What if Donny got a hold of these?

I thought of Johnny saying, “That’s one woman you’ll never want to meet” about his mom. Looking at those two bottles, I suddenly knew why.

“House of Pain” began on the stereo. I was a bit nervous because of what I had found. I shut the cupboard door and continued with my search. I couldn’t find an electric razor, so I used a pink one lying on the side of the tub. I could hear the buzzer go off in the hallway. That meant that someone was downstairs in the lobby and wanted to come up. I ran the water and squirted some shaving cream into my hand. I put the lather on my lips, under my nose, on my cheek and in my sideburns. I grabbed the razor. Resting it on my chin, I yanked up, just like in the movies, and sliced my nostril.

“Shit!” I hissed. I started bleeding in the cream. I pushed down on the blade the next time for traction and I screamed some more. Shit! What was I doing wrong? The next time, I pulled the razor down my lip. That seemed to be smoother. I shaved my sideburns too, and then I dried my face on a white towel, leaving a blur of blood behind. I looked into the mirror. My upper lip was red and blotchy, and it was swelling up like a worm about ready to burst. My sideburns itched and my face was starting to feel like it was on fire. I put some after-shave on. My face burned even more, and I whimpered like a puppy. The music stopped, and I heard Johnny start it up again. I looked at myself again in the mirror.