Mudville (6 page)

“Why does it rain, then?” asks Sturgis.

“Who knows? I'll let the other guys run around with their prayer books and candles, their balloons and charts. I just say, ‘When it rains, sell umbrellas.’” It's my dad's favorite saying, kind of like “When life throws you lemons, make
lemonade” and “Seize the day” wrapped into one slogan. It's not such a bad motto, if you sell umbrellas.

Steve calls me Saturday, wanting to play basketball. I'm sore all over from digging, but I decide to go anyway. For one thing, I said I would. For another, I miss hanging out with those guys.

“Want to shoot some hoops?” I ask Sturgis.

“I don't really know how.”

“We'll show you. We just mess around anyway.”

“I guess I'll come if you want me to.”

I lend him some of my gym clothes. Also, my old basketball shoes, which are at least a size too small.

“My feet hurt,” he says.

“Sorry.”

We put our raincoats on over our shorts. I usually just shower and dress when I get home. I'm not a big fan of the rec center locker rooms—they typically look like they've been used by a bunch of bears in a big hurry.

Nothing is very far from anything else in Moundville, so we walk to the rec center, which they put next to the school so the kids could use it for gym class. I point out the school to Sturgis.

“The school only goes through sixth grade,” I tell him. “What grade are you in anyway?”

“Not sure. I haven't been in a while.”

“What?”

He shrugs. “Just haven't.”

Steve and the other guys are already shooting baskets inside. The other guys are Miggy, Tim, and Ty. We hang out together pretty often. People at school might call us the jocks, but we're barely enough to make a basketball team, so it's not much of a clique.

“Hey, what happened to your face?” Tim asks when he sees Sturgis.

“Dude!” Steve shakes his head at Tim. “You don't just ask a guy something like that.”

“What?” Tim gestures at his own face. “I'm just asking.”

“I know you're just asking, and that's what I'm telling you a guy doesn't just do.”

“It was a wolf,” Sturgis says. Steve and Tim forget their argument and look at him in disbelief.

“Yeah, right!” says Ty.

“It's true,” I tell them, even though I only half believe it myself.

“Man, how did you get bit by a wolf?” asks Miggy.

“He was bringing a basket to his grandma,” I tell him. “What do you think?” They all crack up and don't bother asking any more questions. It helps the joke that Sturgis is still wearing his bright red raincoat with the hood.

We only have a part of the gym reserved. They cut it up into eighths on weekends, but there's a hoop in every section and enough room to play three-on-three.

Sturgis is a pretty good shot, sinking baskets from all over
the court. He doesn't know the rules, though, and the other guys keep calling him out for blocks and hand checks.

“Man, does this game have a lot of rules,” he complains, bouncing the ball, hard. The ball rebounds and smacks Ty in the face.

“No way!” says Tim.

“That's a T!” says Miggy.

“Sturgis, you can't do stuff like that,” I tell him. “Miggy's right. It's a technical foul.”

“It's a stupid game anyway,” says Sturgis. His face is red, making his scar stand out more. “I quit.” He grabs his rain-coat from the corner where he left it and heads for the door.

“Dude, come on,” I say, trying to keep up with him.

“My feet hurt anyway,” he says. “You have small feet.” He bangs out the front door and is gone.

After the game, Steve and I go get a pop in the vending area.

“So what's his deal anyway?” Steve wants to know, meaning Sturgis. I start to explain that he's a foster kid and who knows what he's been through, but I'm distracted by a couple of girls. One is kind of tall with brown hair—I think her name is Shannon—and she's with a shorter girl I've never seen before.

“Do you know her?” I ask Steve, subtly pointing out the shorter girl.

“What, do you assume I know every black girl in Mound County?”

“Yep.”

“Well, her name is Rita,” he says with a sigh. “She lives here but goes to school in Sutton. That's why you don't know her. I know her because my mom sold them their house.” Steve's mom is a real estate agent. She's one of the flippers my dad talks about. She buys up derelict houses in Moundville, fixes them up, and sells them to people from Sutton looking for cheaper places to live. I bet she makes a load of money, but Steve says she started doing it because she felt sorry for those houses.

“You've met her, then?”

“We had dinner with them one time.”

“You like her?”

“She's all right,” he says. “Kind of a book snob.” I want to ask him what this means, but the girls walk right by us, so I change the subject.

Sturgis wakes me up Sunday morning by flipping on the lights.

“Hey, a little warning next time!” I blink, trying to get used to the light.

He's being quite a jerk these days, I think. First he fights with my friends, then he sulks all night and barely talks to me. Now he's waking me up at the crack of dawn. Well, more like the crack of 9:00 a.m. Still, it's a weekend.

“Sorry,” he says. “I need to see myself.”

He's wearing a new pair of slacks and polo shirt. My dad took him shopping yesterday. You can still see the crease
mark across the middle of his shirt, so he tries to press it out with his thumb.

“Where you going?” I ask. “You got a date or something?”

“I'm going to go see my grandma.”

I half laugh, remembering the Red Riding Hood business from yesterday. “Seriously, what's up?”

“I am serious. My grandma is in a home, and I'm going to go see her.”

“Oh.”

“Don't you ever go see your grandma?”

As he combs his hair, I tell him how my dad's father passed away and his mom lives in Arizona, and how I never see my mom's parents anymore because I never see my mom anymore.

He finishes dressing and starts to put on his new sneakers with his slacks.

“I've got some nice dress shoes if you want,” I tell him.

“Another day with pinched feet? No thanks.”

“They're a little big for me, though.” I climb out of bed and find him the shoes.

“These aren't too bad,” he says, putting one on, then the other. “Yeah, I can deal with these.”

“You look pretty sharp,” I tell him.

“Just have to go get the basket of goodies ready,” he jokes.

By the time I've had my own shower and pop into the kitchen, he's gone, and so is my dad. There's a note on the marker board on the fridge—“Back this afternoon”—and that's it. There's also a marker drawing of a little smiley face
wearing a baseball cap. My dad has drawn those since I was a kid. I think it's supposed to be me.

I have toaster waffles and frozen sausage cooked in the microwave, then play on the computer until 1:30, when there's finally a baseball game on—an interleague game with the Cubs and White Sox. My official favorite team is the Tigers this year, but I always end up watching the Cubs because their games are all on cable.

The Cubs score seven runs in the bottom of the first inning, and for the rest of the game, any time the Sox mount a little comeback, the Cubs come right back and score a few runs themselves.

Dad and Sturgis get home around the seventh inning. They've been grocery shopping. Sturgis hauls a couple of bags into the kitchen.

“How was your grandmother?” I ask him.

“What big teeth she has,” Sturgis jokes before heading back to the bedroom to change.

“Who's playing?” my dad asks.

“Chicago and Chicago,” I tell him, even though he can see for himself.

“The old ‘city serious,’ as Ring Lardner used to call it.” He sees the score is thirteen to ten. “Pitchers’ duel, huh?”

“Yep. National League baseball at its finest.”

“Well, I guess I better think about dinner,” he says, heading off for the kitchen. “They had liverwurst on sale. I have something special planned!”

“Then I better
not
think about dinner,” I mutter.

We start on a new job on Monday. Peter is still working with us on ditch duty.

“Did you talk to your father about giving my son a job?” he asks me.

“No, I didn't think about it. Anyway, laws and stuff, you know.”

“I just wondered,” he mutters, but I feel like he's looking at me a little sideways, mad that I didn't do it, laws or no laws.

Sturgis and Peter work about twenty feet away from me, the two of them doing ten times as much work as me by myself. They're whispering like long-lost cousins, probably about curses and sacred land and totem animals and who knows what else. I don't know if it's because I'm obviously zero percent Native American or because I'm the boss's kid or because I've never been snacked on by a wild animal, but they don't bother to include me.

I'm a bit skeptical about all of it. I'm also feeling left out.

“Hey, something's been bugging me,” I holler over at them.

“Who, me?” asks Sturgis.

“No, Peter,” I say. I haul my shovel over to where they're digging.

“So this Tutankhamen guy,” I say.

Peter furrows his brow. “You mean Ptan Tanka?”

“Whatever his name is. Why did his curse take so long to kick in? If it's true, I mean, about his curse and the rain?”

“First of all, I never said it was a curse,” Peter says simply.
“People twist the story around and leave out the most important part.”

“What's that?”

“The fact that Ptan Tanka had a son. His name was Ptan Teca. Ptan Teca was a great athlete. He could run faster and jump higher than any other boy. He could swim further un-derwater, throw stones harder, and climb trees more nimbly. The boy was amazing.

“Ptan Teca was also a natural at the settlers’ game of base-ball. He could hit a ball a mile, then run out and catch it before it hit the ground. He pitched so fast the batter couldn't even see the ball. That became his best and favorite sport.

“When Ptan Teca found out he had to move to the Dakota Territory, he was furious. He was nearly as famous for his temper as he was for his athletic feats. ‘They can't make us leave,’ he said. ‘We were here first!’ He was also bitter about giving up baseball—he wouldn't have anyone to play with on the reservation. ‘They want me gone because I'm the best at their game,’ he said. His anger turned to hatred, and he swore that he would make the white settlers pay for their mistake.”

“It wasn't really their fault, though,” I protest. “The settlers in Moundville didn't make the laws.”

“Ptan Teca decided everyone was his enemy,” Peter explains. “He was mad at the white settlers for not opposing the law, and he was mad at his own tribe for not putting up a fight. He was also mad at the Dakota who did fight, because the new laws were a response to their rebellion. He was so mad he couldn't see straight.”

“So it was the kid who cursed the place?” I ask.

“I never said there was a curse,” Peter reminds us. “What happened was, Ptan Tanka woke up at dawn to discover his son was missing. Ptan Teca liked to go running or swimming early in the morning, but it was extremely cold that day and Ptan Tanka was worried.

“Ptan Tanka went out to look for his son and saw the boy's clothes lying in a pile by the bend in the river. He must have gone swimming, but there was no sign of him. Ptan Tanka stripped and entered the freezing cold water. He swam miles in either direction, searching underwater for any sign of his son. He would have searched until he drowned or froze to death if his wife and friends had not found him and dragged him to the fire to warm him. A group of natives and settlers formed a search party, but they never did find the body.”

“That's pretty sad,” says Sturgis.

“But what does it have to do with us?” I want to know. I don't know anybody stupid enough to swim in the Narrows River, even when it's warm. The river is flat-out dangerous.

Sturgis glowers at me.

“What?” I ask. “I was just wondering what it had to do with us, is all. Not that it wasn't an awful thing to happen to anyone. Did Ptan Tanka curse us because he was mad over losing his son?”