The Atlas

THE BEST WAY TO DRINK BEER

Outside the hotel window an Indian girl was saying: Pay me, and a white man said: It's in the car. I'll get it, I promise. No, don't come with me, bitch, you just stand there and wait. I'm going around the corner. I said you just stand there and wait! — Inside, an Indian girl — an Ojibway, this one — threw herself down on the bed, groaning. She'd been hit by a car when she was drunk. When they took her to the hospital she waited almost as long as the Indian girl outside the window, and then she said to the doctor: Excuse me! — What? said the doctor. — When are you gonna see me? — When I'm not busy, said the doctor shortly. — You're not busy now; you're just pokin' your nose in a bunch of goddamned papers! she shouted. What would you care if I just left? — You're right, yawned the doctor. I wouldn't care one bit. — So she got up and hobbled out and got drunk, permitting her leg to solve itself, which was why she'd staggered the dozen blocks to the hotel room so slowly, almost giving up; which was why she'd limped up the two flights of steps above the poolroom, squeezing the handrail until it groaned like her. Her face was yellow with pain, which was why she fell down on his bed while he bolted the door, and then she said: Turn out the fuckin' light.

As he neared her, she grabbed him with a thick arm that was all muscle and ground his mouth against hers so that she could breathe into him her life of gin and beer and bad food, and she locked the crook of her elbow around his neck to pull him more irrevocably under her tongue while her other hand snatched one of his and put it on the crotch of her jeans. — Make love to me, she begged. Fuck me good. Just don't touch my leg.

He was hers now and she inhaled sharply so that her breasts became as the upturned crescents of a buffalo's horns, and then she said: I broke up with my boyfriend. 'Cause he's jealous.

You lonely? he said.

Right now I'm having fun.

After that she was moaning: Please make me come.

Three hours later she sighed happily and said: You know what? I like your attitude. I like your goddamn attitude! I like the way you make love.

I like the way you make love, too, he said. I like you.

She kissed him. — If there was more guys like you I'd stay in town. It's so fuckin' depressing on the reserve. I didn't even go to my sister's funeral. Everybody cryin' and stuff. She died 'cause she drank too much.

They lay there for awhile. She was naked from the knees up but she'd never taken off her bluejeans or shoes because of her leg. Her skin was not truly red except on her face and hands where she'd been changed by the sunlight. The rest of her was a pale yellow ocher. She pulled his face down and kissed him.

I gotta go, she said.

How soon will you forget me?

I always remember everyone, she said.

Then she said: You want to come with me now? Come walk with me?

At that he felt a sudden uprush and was ready to go anywhere with her, but then his caution became the wise hard old yellow skull behind his face and his caution said: Where do you want to walk to?

To get a bottle.

He remembered how she'd been when he first picked her up on the sidewalk, stumbling, stinking-breathed, scarcely able to talk or listen, and for a moment he still wanted to go because if he drank with her he wouldn't care that she didn't care, but then the thought of it began to make him so tired and he said: How about if I buy you breakfast tomorrow and then we walk?

She said: OK. I come tomorrow morning. I promise. I'll stand outside. I'll wait eight-o'-clock, nine-o'-clock, ten-o'-clock, eleven-o'-clock. I promise.

You don't want to come up?

No.

OK. I'll come look for you at nine.

She kissed him once more on the mouth, holding him so tight. Then he unlocked the door.

How's your leg? he said.

Better, she said. Better from all the exercise.

And she smiled.

She kissed his face one more time. Then she limped down the stairs.

At nine-o'-clock the next morning she wasn't there, and at ten-o'-clock she wasn't there. At eleven-o'-clock he had to go. He thought: What does that say about her promises, and especially what does that say about the promise she made when she spread her legs without a rubber and I said: Do you have AIDS? and she shook her head very quickly without saying anything (she had my face mashed desperately against her neck) and I said: Do you promise? and she nodded. .?

He was looking for the key to the toilet down the hall when an Indian knocked on his door for rolling papers. The Indian said: What do you think of this hotel?

Not much, he said.

Everybody wants a decent washroom, a kitchen. ., the Indian said. I guess I'm here to punish myself. See, I'm from Alberta. I moved here to be with my wife. She was the most beautiful lady I've ever known. A fullblood, aye? Said she loved me. Then she left me, moved back to the reserve.

I'm sorry to hear that, he replied. Somebody left me, too. Said she was coming back and she didn't.

You got papers or not? said the Indian.

Nope.

Fuck it. Let's have a quick one downstairs.

I need to catch a train out of this town.

Fuck your train, the Indian said. There'll be another train tomorrow. Get a round with me, aye?

Wide Indian girls were playing pool downstairs, some well, some poorly, some completely drunkenly, and the cue ball glistened like the whites of their eyes. — Fuck your train! his companion kept muttering with a scornful smile. They drank together steadily. His companion's cheeks glowed red like molten copper. Slowly his lips began to slide and melt and slobber into a smile. — Fuck my wife, he said happily. If you want you can fuck my wife.

That bitterish liquid, the color of stale pond water, connected him to the Indian girls sitting in a dim nook by a pillar on that drizzly Saturday afternoon. A smiling Indian man with long braids approached the bar and someone said: C'mere, my friend, and led him out. Another Indian came in, with his head lowered, and the security man with his shaggy shoulder-length hair who paced with his hands clasped behind his back immediately went to him also and said: This way. — The Indian dropped his head still further. Then he went out the way he had come.

His companion was drunk now. It surely wouldn't be long before the bartender or the security man got him.

I'm Scottish, his companion said. Well, a little bit Scottish. Mainly I'm Ojibway. There's a lot of us Ojibways in Winnipeg. That's us, and I don't give a fuck about the others. Those Cree. If they call me brother I'll drink their bottle if they're payin'. I don't give a fuck about them. See that cocksucker over there? He's Cree. He went after my wife once, so that's how he got that scar. See that cunt over there? That's his wife. I fucked her. She's Cree. She's just a slut.

Indian girls with mountainous shoulders, a tiny firefly of cigarette in each immense round face, kept drinking beers, the greenish bottles flashing like jewels against their blue-black bangs. A fat woman was snoring in the corner like a gray jay hiding under the snow, her head curled down on her back. The security man lifted her under the armpits and dragged her slowly, determinedly, out into the rain.

His companion drank another beer and burped and laughed and said: I'm fifty-seven years old, so I outlived my mother's age. I drink a twelve-pack a day, so if I make it past sixty it'll be a miracle, aye? So what is what I say. I been in Winnipeg eleven years, and I've fucked every hooker in this town. A little pokey-pokey, you know. Too much love!

The beer was blondish-brown like the roots of a crested wheatgrass, frizzy filaments spilling down into the dirt deeper than a tall man's height, bitter happiness foaming down into his balls. His companion was hunting hookers now like a Métis with his long rifle and red headband riding close on his pony, aiming at a wide-eyed buffalo. He stood up, began to stalk two women playing pool, and fell on his face. By the time he'd discovered how to plant his feet beneath him again, the bartender was beside him, pointing grimly to the doorway. The man began to walk out. Suddenly he turned and spread his swollen grayish cheeks like an Atlantic wolf-fish whose jaws sometimes open to show in faint anticipatory chewing motions its sharp yellow teeth, and the man's gold-ridged black pupils glared and bulged forward as he shouted: You gonna try an' fuck my wife again? That's my wife you fucked last night!

Then the rain fell on him.

Left thus to himself, the John drank another beer. He saw a tipsy woman with many parallel scan across her wrists (her face like one of those squarish bark baskets with rounded corners for winnowing rice) and he remembered how last night his companion's wife had said: Funny things happen in this town. Like my cousin Maisie. She kept tryin' to kill herself. Gash her wrist so many times with a knife, try to jump off a bridge, all that stuff. Well, she wanted to commit suicide, but she didn't have to. She died in her sleep.

Did you love her very much?

Her? I hate her guts! she'd laughed.

Now finishing the bottle, he went to the woman and said: What's your name?

Maisie.

I thought you died in your sleep.

I did, she muttered. Then the security man came and pushed her out.

It was night now, and he was alone. One tubby girl went up for another beer, and he saw the bartender take her lovingly by the shoulders, kiss her neck, and begin to push. He pushed her down the corridor that led past the hotel desk to outside, and then he came back. The lonely man went out to see what had become of her. She was on the street trying to hail a cab but forgetting in mid-gesture what she was about. — Everyone's hassling me tonight, she wept. And now I can't get a cab. I need a fucking cab. Call me a fucking cab! I need to eat! I wanna pee! Find my shoes for me, please.

Her asymmetrical purple mouth imploded, slobbered and kissed him.

The late darkness of summer had begun to dim the hot gray night. On Main Street sat a drunken Indian panhandler, and when he gave him change the panhandler stared at the coins adding up on his palm without comprehending; and he walked past three staggering Indian boys in baseball caps, and came to the old Indian hooker who had to hold onto a lamppost to keep from falling down, her tongue the brown, black-banded furry ovoid of a queen bee hibernating in the dirt under the snow of men's mouths, and after her he kept passing Indians leaning in front of hotels that served beer downstairs and a piece of thistledown blew against his face from a vacant lot full of puddles and frostcracked mud and beer bottles and planks and dandelions and camomile and horsetails, and it began to rain again. The vacant lot was a slice of muskeg, and muskeg was an Ojibway word. Across the street, an Indian in a blue cap walked head down, kicking something, and then he turned and kicked it back the way he had come. An Indian in a fringed leather jacket strode energetically, swinging his arms. Three Indian boys came. One said: Why you fellas fuckin' whinin'? It's time for another fuckin' round, so let's fuckin' go.

He remembered how his companion's wife (who was on probation for assault) had said to him: We have our traditions, aye? We have our power. Like, suppose it's stormy outside in the morning and we want it to be calm weather. All we got to do is say: I want it to be a nice day, and then smoke a pipe, and pretty quick it calms down.

He saw the woman who had died in her sleep and said to her: Can you stop the rain?

Sure, she said. Anytime. As long as it's not raining beer. A Mountie came to shove her along and she said: Did you notice there's a red stripe on your leg?

Oh, fuck off, the Mountie said.

Did you notice that you're wearing a bulletproof vest?

Yeah, I noticed that all right, Maisie.

Are you wearing bulletproof trousers, too? Ah, hah, hah, hah!