“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You need to make peace with Clayton Fire Bear,” Frank said, and then added that I still had something that didn’t belong to me, a big something, probably sacred to an Indian—the knife his father had made for him. And Clayton Fire Bear’s father was most likely dead now, which heightened the significance. Then Frank went on to say Fire Bear was still alive and living out west, but like I said before, I’m not saying where so that I can protect the innocent.
The investigators Frank had hired said that Fire Bear wasn’t exactly scalping people anymore. He was a successful lawyer who had started his own firm, now twenty or so attorneys strong. I have to admit that I was proud of Clayton Fire Bear for making something of his life in America, especially considering he was Indian on top of being all fucked up by the Vietnam War.
I don’t want to take anything away from the blacks who have survived slavery, but America has most definitely fucked the Indians too. Try to think of a black celebrity who has more money than you do. I bet you can think up a pretty long list. Now name a single Native American who is likely to have more money than you. The list gets a lot smaller, right? Our government tried to exterminate the Indians, and while the fucking scumbag Nazi party is no longer in power, the US government keeps rolling strong. I’m not rooting for America to fail anytime soon, don’t get me wrong here, but these sorts of thoughts keep this American patriot up at night.
Frank was pushing me pretty hard to give back the knife, but while I was sympathetic to the historic plight of Indians here in the USA, my taking Fire Bear’s prize possession had nothing to do with his being an Indian and everything to do with exerting dominance over an out-of-control motherfucker in the jungle. If you don’t establish absolute total control over out-of-control motherfuckers when you are at war, you risk being killed or even worse.
Also, being that I am considerate, I was actually concerned for Fire Bear’s current mental health. If I just showed up wearing camouflage one day, wanting to return the knife I took off him in the jungle fifty fucking years ago, I was definitely risking setting him off again, triggering all sorts of dark shit.
Frank didn’t understand PTSD triggers because he never really did any fighting in Vietnam. He was always building things and doing positive stuff that still makes him feel good to this day.
But there was one thing that had me interested in visiting Fire Bear that was hard to talk about. I tried to shield Jessica from a lot of the specific details I had experienced in Vietnam, because she already had enough horror-show shit playing between her ears, and so I never told her the worst parts, let alone names. I’m pretty sure I didn’t tell her that a huge motherfucking Indian had sworn to track me down and scalp me stateside. I wouldn’t have wanted Jessica to worry about that. And she absolutely would have, especially toward the end, when she really lost it.
You probably already know exactly what happened to Jessica because it was in all the papers and you surely have access to those, and I also know you sneaky motherfuckers have been spying and keeping a file on me for decades too. This is all surely in there, but just to set the record straight, I don’t think Jessica was ever cut out for motherhood.
After Hank was born, her depression worsened, even though I bought her a nice house and had the garage made into a studio for her and then stocked it with all of the best painting supplies money could buy.
When she was pregnant, we made love all the time. But once Hank came, that stopped completely. The doctors had told us that it takes some time to heal, and I was completely okay with that—willing to wait, taking Molly Palm and her five sisters out on private dates, if you know what I mean. But after eight or so months passed and it was clear that Jessica no longer wanted to have sex, I knew there was a big fucking problem.
She did her best to be a good mother. Tried hard not to let Hank see what she was feeling on the inside. Instead she wore a mask daily until I’d come home from work. She had to serve us dinner and then put Hank to bed, but just as soon as our son’s bedroom lights were out, the smile would vanish and the crying would begin.
The only thing that seemed to cure the sadness back then, in the early seventies, was the painting, so I would tell her to paint. I’d even wash and dry the dishes all by myself, even when the game was on TV, just so she could escape into her art.
That worked for a few years, until Hank started to walk and talk and look like his biological father. The boy was so eager to please his mother, you almost got to feeling like he was trying to atone for the evil that brought him into the world. Little Hank would keep his room neater than any child should, always putting away his toys without being told. Bathing and brushing his teeth on schedule. Constantly washing his hands. Never getting his clothes dirty, because he never wanted to roughhouse with the other boys in the neighborhood. Hank was the quintessential momma’s boy, within eyesight of Jessica all day and night, wanting to help her. People used to praise Hank for being good, but he was too good, and Jessica knew it.
They both loved art, and I used to love watching them sketch and paint together in Hank’s room or at the dining room table. But somewhere along the line, Jessica stopped wanting to share her escape with our son. I think it might have been when he started painting his mother obsessively. Hank might have been in the third or fourth grade. He painted more than a hundred or so portraits of her—none of them very good, and all of them depicting Jessica looking tired and sad and defeated. It was like the boy somehow knew what was coming, and it frightened my wife. She’d ask Hank why she never looked happy in his paintings, and he’d say he painted what he saw, just like she taught him to do. After a few months of this, Jessica forbid him to paint any more portraits of her, ripping the most recent one down from the refrigerator. Hank burst into tears, and Jessica locked herself in her studio for two days. I don’t even think she ate. When she finally emerged and rejoined our household, she was distant.