Fiction | Short Story

Skunk Cabbage

Kay had promised Louis that she would stop getting so angry. She agreed with him that it didn’t do any good. But what did?

Sam’s preschool teacher sent home a note of concern: Today during make-believe time all the girls were princesses and all the boys were knights, but Sam refused to choose. He said he was a pony. So Louis bought Sam a plastic pony from the Dollar General, pink with a sea-green mane, but of course it was Kay who had to keep track of it. The day would be ruined until she found the pony under the bed, behind the toilet, inexplicably pushed to the back of the silverware drawer. Kay knew it was dangerous for Sam to be that attached to something so easily lost, but at bedtime, Sam clasped his pony on his pillow and whispered to it.

What do you love so much about that pony, Kay asked, switching on his night-light.

What I love most about my pony, Sam said, is that it’s alive.

Sam’s preschool was in the basement of a Catholic church, but they assured Kay that they didn’t try to convert the children; they just taught them the Lord’s Prayer, which was always good to have in your back pocket. Louis had balked when Kay told him. He said, You know the history. We weren’t even legally allowed to have our ceremonies until 1978. Kay said, But all preschools seem to be in church basements. Anyway, we can get a subsidy. The tribe will pay for it. Louis said, I hope you see the irony there, but Kay knew he was unlikely to look into another option. She didn’t tell Louis that it took the teachers a week to remember that Sam wasn’t a girl because of his braids. She didn’t tell Louis that she sort of liked the church basement. The grainy light and apple juice bleach smell, Jesus and hell hovering around the edges of the room. It was good to keep your enemies close, to know who they were and how they thought, what they were doing each day in those underground rooms with track lighting, outdated gender norms, processed snacks. Sam’s preschool always had signs up by the cubbies that alerted parents to the latest scourge. Head lice was going around. The stomach flu was going around. Pinworms. A child had gone home with a high fever. Then the new virus arrived. For a week Sam sang “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” in an accusatory way whenever anyone washed their hands, and then the preschool was closed indefinitely.

*

Then Louis’s dad called and demanded to see his grandchild, so Louis put the new brake pads on the truck and Kay found their masks, even Sam’s, which had Superman on it and which Sam refused to wear. She dressed Sam, brushed and braided his hair, and talked to him about the day, but Sam said no.

“But you love to see Msho,” she said. “And Msho loves to see you.”

“I won’t go see Msho unless he can hold me,” Sam said. “I want him to hold me.”

“He can’t hold you,” she said. “Remember, Sam, a lot of people are getting sick right now. It’s worse for older people, and people who were sick already, like Msho.”

“I want to touch him,” Sam said.

“The way you show Msho you love him is by not touching him,” Kay said.

For a week Sam sang “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” in an accusatory way whenever anyone washed their hands, and then the preschool was closed indefinitely. 

Sam clamped his eyes shut and did that thing where he flexed every single one of his muscles. Kay thought fast. “You can bring him a gift,” she said.

“What gift?” Sam was suspicious, but he opened his eyes.

Louis came in with his machete and a canvas bag and said, “We’ll bring him some skunk cabbage.”

“I know that one. I saw it poking out of the snow,” Sam said.

“That’s the one,” Louis said. He bent down and tugged Sam’s foot, and Sam kicked back against his hand, their game. “Early spring is the time to harvest it. Two weeks from now it’ll be leafing out and the roots will be shooting all their energy up into the plant. But now the roots are full of medicine for people who’ve had problems with their lungs. Like Msho.”

“I’m going to touch Msho,” Sam said. “I’m going to hug him so bad. You can’t stop me.”

“Yes, we can,” Kay said, handing Sam his pony and a bag of peanut butter pretzels.

Louis took the turnoff to the lake, rolled past the sign that said Tribal Members and Their Families Only, Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted. Not even in fine print did it say tribal members might prosecute other tribal members for harvesting skunk cabbage without a permit, which Kay knew was also a possibility.

The parking area was empty of cars, and Kay felt relieved. She lifted Sam out of his booster and tied on his mask. He pulled it off. She tied it on. He pulled it off.

“It’s Superman,” she said. “He’s a hero. Don’t you want to be a hero?”

“I hate heroes,” Sam said.

“He’s five years old,” Louis said. “He’s eating pretzels. It’s unreasonable.”

“You’ll wear yours though,” she said, handing it to him. He waved it away.

“There’s no one else here,” he said. “Are you worried you’re going to catch it from the trees? From the skunk cabbage?”

“At least let’s take the hand sanitizer,” she said, going for the glove compartment.

“Bottle’s empty,” Louis said.

Sam pointed his pony at the lake. “I’ll carry your machete, Dad,” he said, munching pretzels.

“No, you won’t,” Kay said because she could see Louis considering it. She looked at the masks again, then left them on the passenger seat.

The sign at the trailhead reminded hikers to stay six feet apart, to refrain from gathering in large groups. The black mud pushed up crocuses, snowdrops, trout lily, trillium. It was trying to be a mild day, but it was too bright and the wind came from everywhere. Halfway to the footbridge, the creek, swollen with melted snow, washed over the trail. A great beech had fallen. They could see the trail pick up on the far side of it. Louis bounded up onto the trunk, crossed in two steps.

“Now you, Sam,” he called from the opposite bank.

“He could fall,” Kay said.

“So we’ll fish him out,” Louis said. Kay could see how happy he was, out in the springtime woods with his machete and his kid and nothing on his mind. Patiently, he rested against the downed beech tree and rolled a cigarette. As usual, it was up to Kay to work out any difficulties.

“Leave the pretzels and the pony, Sam,” Kay said. “You’ll need both hands.”

“I want my pony,” Sam said.

“We’ll get your pony on the way back,” Kay said. “I promise.”

“No,” Sam said, clamping his eyes shut.

“Yes,” Kay said.

“No,” Sam said. He began to flex. Kay had promised Louis that she would stop getting so angry. She agreed with him that it didn’t do any good. But what did?

“Goddammit, Louis,” Kay said, looking at Sam. Louis licked his rolling paper, spit tobacco.

“Sam,” Louis called. “I need you to do an important job for me. I need you to be our lookout.”

“Who am I looking out for?” Sam yelled back.

“DNR,” Louis said. “Tribal police. Whoever passes by.”

Sam raised his chin, considered. Then he held his pony up to eye level. “I have to be Lookout,” he told it. He cleared a place among the brown leaves. He set his pony carefully upright on top of the pretzel bag, patted down its mane. “You be Lookout, too, here by the trail.” He scrambled up the beech trunk, and Kay balanced behind him. Louis swung Sam down on the other side, kissed him on the top of his head. Pleasantly, Louis looked away from Kay.

They came to the footbridge and crossed it, then turned off the trail, pushed through undergrowth. Louis saw the first skunk cabbage. Sam saw the next one. Then they were everywhere, meaty and purple, speckled flowers throwing clods of sulfurous earth aside in their rush toward the weak sun. Each flower held a warty yellow pod to keep bees warm.

Louis knelt in the mud and introduced himself to the skunk cabbage. He handed his tobacco pouch to Sam.

Sam sighed and said, “Hello, skunk cabbage. I’m Sam. Things are hard in the world right now, people are getting sick, I really hope not my msho. My pony is on the pretzel bag being Lookout and I’m Lookout too.”

“Don’t touch the machete,” Kay said, and Sam stopped touching the machete. Louis knocked gently on Sam’s rubber boot. Sam sprinkled tobacco. He handed Kay the pouch. She held it. She looked at the skunk cabbage.

“Go ahead,” Louis said.

“Yeah,” she said.

“What is it?” he asked.

“It’s just.”

“Mom,” Sam said. “You can’t just go around digging up plants without telling them who you are and why you’re here.”

“I know,” she said.

Sam looked at Louis, shrugged. “She’s not Neshnabe,” he said.

“Sam,” Louis said. “She’s our family.”

Sam was only repeating what Kay had instilled in him. She didn’t want to be one of those married-ins who used it as an excuse to search online for evidence of Native DNA. Louis told her she talked to Sam about it too much; he suggested that maybe she was overthinking it, but it’s what the books said to do, to start early with your children, to not be afraid to talk about difference, the more complicated the better. Sam listened, asked questions. What’s a settler? Why would anyone ever want to be one? What’s a continent? What’s an ancestor? Am I one? Are you? Yet when she heard him repeating parts of their conversations later, it was somehow not what she’d intended. For Sam, it all seemed to come down to whether or not he personally had power. She could hear his deep relief when it was someone else who seemed to be the sorry sucker on the outside. Was every kid a proto-fascist? Or just her kid?

Sam listened, asked questions. What’s a settler? Why would anyone ever want to be one? What’s a continent? What’s an ancestor? Am I one? Are you? 

“I know she’s our family,” Sam said, sinking his boots deep in the mud. “But she’s not like you and me. I mean, just look at her.” He couldn’t look at himself, his light braids, his blue eyes and freckles. There were no mirrors around.

*

A month into the pandemic, after Louis lost his job, Kay had called the landlord and told him to fuck off. Louis stroked her ass while she yelled into the phone. Later he washed dishes and Kay dried them, and they listened to the public radio commentator solemnly predict that some tribes would be wiped out. The announcer’s voice was mournful, hushed. Flute music played in the background. Louis splashed soap suds, cracked a plate. Wouldn’t they just love that, he said. They’ve been angling for that since 1492. Kay pulled on his belt. Fuck everything, she said. Such fuckery. She loved Louis when they could be angry together. She loved him when he was in despair.

What was more difficult were times like this, here with the skunk cabbage, when Louis felt happy, clear, when he wanted her to do something plain and good. Didn’t he know that her people—white people—had stolen good plain things and turned them into hokey embarrassing things? Sam knew. Sam knew that she couldn’t participate, not even if invited.

*

Sam dropped to the ground, nearly falling out of his boots. “There are people coming,” he said in his capacity as Lookout.

On the upper trail across the creek, two children came into view, hollering to each other and tossing sticks in the air. Two adults followed, weighed down with belongings, a camp chair, a tote bag, a cooler.

Louis put down his machete and kicked some leaves over it.

“They’re stopping on the bridge,” Sam said, though all of them could see that. As Lookout, Sam used a sort of noble-sounding storybook voice, pitched deep and breathless at the edges.

On the narrow footbridge, the kids stripped down to trunks and a one-piece bathing suit. The boy balanced along the bridge railing. His sister lay on her back and threw mud up at him, shrieking. The woman shook out a blanket, handed out snacks. The man set up his camp chair in the center of the bridge and sat down heavily. He opened the cooler and cracked a can. He pulled on his beard. He looked around.

“Get down,” Sam said, pulling on Kay’s leg.

“We’re not criminals,” Kay said.

“Then why is Dad hiding his machete?” Sam asked.

“We don’t have a foraging permit,” Louis said.

“Why not?” Sam asked.

“We could get one, but I don’t want one,” Louis said. He bent down, keeping his eyes on the family, who hadn’t seen them. He slid his machete into the canvas bag, then straightened. “You two head back to the truck,” he said. “I’ll catch up.”

“I wish we had our masks,” Kay said.

“You’ll be fine,” Louis said. He strode into the woods, shoulders back, whistling. Kay watched him go. He never looked back. She took Sam’s hand.

The woman was smoothing the picnic blanket across the wooden planks as Kay and Sam came down the trail. She looked up, her smile a search light. Caught in it, Kay flinched.

“I was saying to Jeremy how happy I was to see another car in the parking lot,” the woman said. Curly yellow hair floated from beneath a pink cap, big sweatshirt, flared blue jeans. No mask. “Wasn’t I saying that, Jeremy?” she said. “I was, right? Tell them. I was.”

The man in the camp chair stared at Kay and Sam. He did not say whether or not his wife was glad to have seen another car in the parking lot. He did not say anything. Behind him, the two children stretched their bodies across the bridge. They used sticks to sweep water up at each other, cackling and cussing. None of them were wearing masks.

“What a time,” the woman said. “I’m not going to lie. I’m going to be honest. I’ll admit it, I’ve been lonely. There, I admitted it.” She laughed. “What about you? How are you holding up?”

“I’m all right, thanks,” Kay said. “We’re all right.” She tried to rev up a smile of her own, but the woman only broadened hers in response. There was no competing with it.

“It’s so hard on the kids though, right?” the woman said. “I mean, right?”

“Right,” Kay said.

“Oh my God thank you I know,” the woman said. “You hear that, Jeremy? Women understand. Women know.”

“We must now meet my Dad at the truck,” Sam the Lookout said, noble and deep. He stepped onto the bridge, but Kay pulled him back.

“Sam, we need to give people space right now, remember? Six feet at least.” She looked at the woman, who stood in the middle of the bridge, hands on hips, feet planted apart. Her children called each other names, did pull-ups on the bridge railing. One of them now had some kind of water gun. Kay could see no way around them.

Jeremy took a delicate sip of beer. “Was it you all who left your pretzels on the trail, then?” he asked, holding up a foil bag.

The woman snatched the bag from Jeremy. “Babe, I told you,” she said. Her smile steadied again. “He’s such a piece of work. Eats whatever he comes across. He’s always been that way. We call him the garbage disposal. Don’t worry, there’s still some left.” She held the pretzels out to Kay. Sam reached for them, but Kay pressed his hand down.

“Sorry,” Kay said. Why was she apologizing to these people? “About the masks, I mean. We left ours in the car. I guess we weren’t expecting to see anyone.” She waited for a response, reassurance, something to help her understand these jostling people, their aggressive sociability.

“Oh please,” the woman said, beaming friendliness like an alien probe. “We don’t care if you don’t care. I saw you and I knew you were reasonable.”

Jeremy belched and blew, combed his beard with his hand. “Isobel, get over here,” he called over his shoulder. “You got this kid’s toy.”

The splashing and name-calling stopped.

Isobel’s pink bathing suit was mud spattered. Blue veins stood out on her legs, white and red from the cold. She was bigger than Sam, but not by much. She glared at him through dripping strings of dishwater hair.

“I don’t have it,” she said. “I don’t know where it is.”

“It’s right here, idiot,” yelled her brother, and then Isobel was hit on the side of the head by the muddy pony, creek water streaming from its sea-green mane.

“Look, Sweetie,” her mom said. “We found the pony’s real mommy.”

Isobel scooped up the pony and clutched it against her chest, her knees squeezing together.

“My pony,” Sam said, full of wonder. He was no longer Lookout. His voice was small and plaintive, straining but failing to be powerful.

Isobel began to wail. “It’s mine,” she said. “It’s mine.”

“No bullshit now, Izzy,” Jeremy said. “Give it back.”

The wailing continued.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” the woman said. She yanked Isobel forward by her arm. Kay pulled Sam back. Isobel’s mother bent down into her daughter’s pale, miserable face. “Give. The nice girl. Her. Pony.”

“He’s actually a boy,” Kay said, hating the pony.

“I’m actually a pony,” Sam said, reaching for it. Kay pressed his arms to his sides. He twisted against her. Kay looked at the wetly blubbering Isobel, too close to them, way too close, spraying droplets with abandon, clutching the wretched pony. She looked at Isobel’s mother, who was no longer smiling, who was edging closer still, breathing forcefully at them. Kay felt her son struggling to free himself. Somewhere deep in the woods, Louis was digging skunk cabbage, perfectly, blissfully alone.

“You can keep the pony, Isobel,” Kay said. “You can have it. It’s a gift.”

“Mom,” Sam said. “You promised.”

“I promised what?” Kay said, and Sam wrenched free and lunged for the pony, and Kay caught him by his jacket and whirled him around and slapped him. She slapped him hard across his mouth and he went face-first into the mud.

Isobel and her mother stared. Isobel stopped blubbering. She held out the pony.

Kay turned on them, towering, enormous. “Get that disgusting thing away from me,” she said. “Give us some goddamn space.”

“Hey,” Jeremy said, half rising. “Hey now.”

“I said move your fucking chair,” she growled. “I said six feet.”

Isobel’s brother gawked, the water gun limp at his side. Isobel’s mother put an arm protectively around her daughter. Jeremy folded his chair, retrieved the picnic blanket.

Kay lifted Sam. He was quiet now. He wasn’t crying, but for the streaming from his nose and eyes. His lip was bloody. She tried to scrape some mud from it, but he winced and dodged. He wouldn’t look at her.

The family pressed themselves against the railing. Kay passed them with Sam in her arms. It wasn’t six feet. It probably wasn’t even three.

The woman’s voice followed her up the trail. “You know what I hate? I hate all the fear. I try to teach my kids, don’t be afraid of other people. The world is going to turn into a cruel and fearful place if we aren’t careful.”

Kay kept walking.

Louis waited at the truck, cleaning his machete. His canvas bag sat on the ground next to him, full of roots.

“I took the back side of the loop,” he said. “Came out by the lake. It’s a good thing we came today. One more week and it would have been too late.” Then he saw Sam’s face. “Shit, what happened?” he asked.

“What does it look like?” Kay said, pushing past him to open the truck door. “He fell. He fell balancing back across that beech log. I told you it wasn’t safe.” She settled Sam into his booster. She dabbed at his mouth, but he pushed her hand away.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“I don’t forgive you,” he said.

Louis got in on the driver’s side, frowned at them both. Then he shook his head. He closed his big hand around Sam’s small foot, tugging it gently. “Next stop, Msho’s,” Louis said. Sam closed his eyes. He didn’t kick back.

*

When the stay-at-home order came, Kay had made Louis sit down at the kitchen table and make a list. Elders, people just recovered from pneumonia, people with hep C, asthma, diabetes, high blood pressure. Louis’s dad, his aunts and uncles, the language teacher, the children’s librarian. Kay called everyone and asked for their grocery lists. If you’re thinking of going out, she said, just call us first. At first people called her sweetheart, said if she was going out anyway they could use some dog food, some of those Ritz Crackers, a frozen pizza or two but not with pineapple please. Kay said, No, no, no. You need onions. Potatoes. Flour. You need beans. And you need to spray everything down after we drop if off. And you need to spray your mail. People stopped picking up the phone. Finally, Louis’s aunt returned her call. I’m sorry Honey, she said. Don’t take this personal, but I can’t do that for you just now.

Do what for me? asked Kay.

Be the person you’re helping. Hug Sam for me, you hear? She hung up.

Kay’s own mother called from the city once a week to report the litany of transgressions she’d noted. Don’t tell me they needed to grocery shop with their children, she said. Ten people in the park, and do you think they were all part of the same family group? People having a barbecue in their yard, five or so of them, some teens just walking down the middle of the street, I nearly called the police. She recited the stirring hashtags; she described the woman who bagged her groceries, the home health care aide two doors down. It’s not lost on me that they’re—she whispered—African American. She raised her voice again. Angels, she said. Angels. She herself was sewing masks at an alarming rate. She herself was staying home. Everyone is going to look back later and ask themselves what they were doing during this time, she said. How did they rise to meet the historical moment? Kay’s mother ended each phone call by asking after Louis’s dad. I know George is one of those never-trust-the-government types, she said, but now is really not the time. And don’t give me your stock speech about broken treaties, she said. I’ve already heard it. I don’t need to hear the latest conspiracy theories. These are modern times and we’re all in this together.

He’s fine, Kay said. His health has actually been improving. Thank you for asking.

It’s not that Louis’s dad didn’t take the whole thing seriously. He knew he was high-risk. He agreed to stay home. He agreed to let them bring him groceries. But when they called to get his list, he’d say, Don’t worry about me, I just got back from Walmart. Stopped by social services on the way home to pick up commodities, got one of those massive hams. Too salty to eat so I rinsed it in the sink. You all should come over and eat it with me. Louis reminded him they couldn’t come over for dinner anymore, not now. Right, right, he said. How come I keep forgetting that? George was sad, Kay knew. He couldn’t go to his exercise class. He couldn’t go to bingo; he couldn’t go to meetings. Sometimes Louis would be on the phone with him half the night just listening to old stories, about the trees he’d known and loved, about his prison break, nuns who were cruel teachers, Louis’s mother baking bread in a dutch oven out in California and selling it to the Manson family, bootlegging in the 1930s, anything he remembered or remembered his own dad remembering. Only good thing about the pandemic, George said, is that the tribe’s laid off anyone they say’s nonessential, so those young landscaping guys don’t come around elders’ housing no more. You know last time I chased them off with my air rifle? I try to grow food and they tell me because it’s HUD housing you can’t have a garden. They want to put in geraniums? I hate goddamn geraniums. Folks on council, what do they know? It’s none of their business what I do. He would start out all tough like that but usually be crying by the end. Old men were like that, it was hormones, Kay had read it someplace. She knew that George seeing Sam, even from a distance, was important.

*

By the time they pulled into the housing complex, Sam had fallen asleep, chin on his chest, fat lip jutting out. Louis’s dad lived at the end of the row, and he stood on his porch in baggy jeans and an oversized T-shirt, old ball cap with a bent brim, mask around his neck, waving at them as they pulled in.

“Where’s my grandchild,” he said, coming out to meet them.

Louis said, “Hey, Dad, remember to keep distance. He’s asleep.”

They put on their masks, and Louis unfurled a tarp in the driveway. He laid out the skunk cabbage roots, long tubers with fleshy tendrils. He’d shaken off enough mud so that their potato color came through. Louis and George stood on opposite sides of the tarp. They pulled their masks down to smoke cigarettes. Kay lingered near the truck, smelling her own breath, not a smoker, not included.

“Let it sit out overnight, Pop,” Louis said. “They say the virus won’t survive more than twenty-four hours on this kind of surface. Then slice it up thin and spread it on baking sheets. Dry it in the oven. Grind it up for tea. You have to make sure it’s completely dry though or it could burn your throat.”

“Medicine that’s also poison,” George said. “You dig this out at the lake?”

Louis nodded, spit loose tobacco through his teeth.

“See anyone else out there?”

“We avoided them though,” Louis said.

“Actually,” Kay said, stepping close to Louis, welcoming her rising anger. She told them most of it. She left some parts out. “And I don’t think they were tribal members,” she finished.

“You don’t know,” Louis said.

“They were white,” Kay said.

“Better not to make assumptions,” Louis said.

“It says trespassers will be prosecuted,” Kay said.

“What were we going to do,” Louis said. “Ask for ID? Call tribal police on them?”

George chuckled.

“What?” Kay asked, looking between them. “Oh, because they would have turned us in for the skunk cabbage?”

“Five-hundred-dollar ticket, foraging without a permit,” George said.

“Either way, though,” Louis said. “People just hanging out with their kids in the woods.”

“Our woods,” Kay said. “Your woods. And they were weird jerks.”

“I wish it was a crime to be a weird jerk,” George sighed. “Then again, it’s probably better for me that it’s not.”

“I just don’t think they should have been there like that,” Kay said. “It’s not right.”

George patted his own heart because he couldn’t pat his son. “She sure expects a lot from people,” he said. “It’s like someone told her that things were going to be okay.”

“I wish it was a crime to be a weird jerk,” George sighed. “Then again, it’s probably better for me that it’s not.” 

The truck horn blared, and they turned to see Sam pressing his nose against the window. George’s whole face changed, smile so wide you could see his missing back tooth, eyes disappearing into wrinkles. He moved toward the truck, and Louis and Kay moved aside for him.

“There he is,” George said. “There’s my guy.” He pressed his nose against Sam’s nose, the glass between them. Then he stood back, examined his grandson as Sam licked the window.

“What happened to him?” George asked.

“Just an accident,” Kay said. “He’s all right.”

George rustled in his hip pocket. “I know I’ve got something for him,” he said. “Some candy here someplace.”

“Dad,” Louis said. “You can’t give him candy right now, remember?”

“Oh yes,” George said. “Right.” He sighed again. “I’ve never been very well behaved.”

Kay opened Sam’s door.

“I don’t want you,” Sam said. “I want Msho. I don’t forgive you, remember?”

“You don’t have to forgive me,” she said. “But Msho can’t hold you right now. He cannot. And you have to wear your mask. Don’t argue.” But when the mask touched Sam’s split lip, he reared back.

“It hurts,” he said.

“It’s not that bad,” Kay said. She lifted him out mask-less and put him in the truck bed. Sam looked sideways at his grandfather, suddenly shy.

“You look good, Sam,” George said. “You look like you’ve got a story. Where’s that pony of yours? Maybe your pony will tell me a story.”

“Don’t have my pony,” Sam said.

“I’ll get it for you,” Louis said, going to the cab.

“It’s not there,” Sam said. He looked at Kay.

“Shit,” Louis said. “Kay, did you forget it at the lake?”

“Why is it up to me to keep track of everything?” Kay said.

“We didn’t forget it,” Sam said, rubbing his lip. “She stole it.”

“Who stole it?” Louis asked.

“Not me,” Kay said. “That family.”

“Well now,” George said. “You didn’t tell us that.”

“Mom stole it,” Sam said. “She let them have my pony, which is the same as stealing. And when I said no she smashed me.”

“Sam, don’t tell stories,” Kay said.

“Kay,” Louis said slowly. “What happened to Sam’s lip?”

“What do you mean?” Kay said.

“My pony was a good Lookout, Msho,” Sam said. “And I was a good Lookout too.”

George frowned at Kay. “Tell me all about it, Sam,” he said. He beckoned to his grandson, walked around to the other side of the truck. “Don’t worry about those two,” he said. “You just talk to me.”

Louis shook his head as if to clear it. He searched Kay’s face. “I’m asking you,” he said.

“It wasn’t my fault,” Kay said. “You should have seen those people, Louis. The woman, you should have seen her dumb pink hat. Just walking all over tribal land like they owned the place. They thought Sam was a girl. You know the types. No masks.”

“I don’t care about those people,” Louis said. “I care about Sam. And you. This anger stuff, Kay. You promised.”

“You weren’t even there,” she said. “You were off by yourself. It was complicated.”

“Not everything’s complicated,” Louis said. “Some things are simple.”

“What’s simple?” Kay asked. She genuinely wanted to know.

“Sam,” Louis said. “Our son. His lip. He’s five. Look at you. Why don’t you take your mask off when you’re talking to me? What’s wrong with you?”

Kay took her mask off. Louis was getting angry. He worked his jaw, drummed his fingers on the hood. Was he going to cry? Kay looked at him and loved him. She felt so far from him when he was happy. She felt awkward then, embarrassed for both of them. Now, he looked at her like she was the enemy. She was the enemy. She loved him. His anguished face was perfect. What was wrong with her? What a good question.

“Watch this!” Sam crowed, and Kay and Louis looked up. Sam had climbed to the cab roof. He was barefoot, balancing. His toes curled over the edge. He stretched his arms wide. He was powerful again.

“Sam,” Kay said.

“Sam, wait,” Louis said. But Sam wasn’t looking at them. He was leaning forward. He was looking at his grandfather.

“Msho, watch me!” Sam said.

George dropped his cigarette and opened his arms.

Sam leapt.

He leapt because he knew who would catch him. George grunted with the impact from Sam’s body. He stepped back for balance. Sam’s arms went all the way around his msho, who rested his chin on Sam’s head and closed his eyes. Tears ran down his face. It was hormonal. It was his time of life. Before Sam’s parents pulled them apart for their own good, they held each other, and they didn’t talk.