Night of the Living Rez

NIGHT

OF THE

LIVING

REZ

MORGAN TALTY

CONTENTS

BURN

IN A JAR

GET ME SOME MEDICINE

FOOD FOR THE COMMON COLD

IN A FIELD OF STRAY CATERPILLARS

THE BLESSING TOBACCO

SAFE HARBOR

SMOKES LAST

HALF-LIFE

EARTH, SPEAK

NIGHT OF THE LIVING REZ

THE NAME MEANS THUNDER

A NOTE ON PENOBSCOT SPELLING

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For Mom (1959-2021)

And for all the women who raised me

BURN

Winter, and I walked the sidewalk at night along banks of hard snow. I’d come from Rab’s apartment off the reservation. Rab—this white guy with a wide mouth and eyes that closed up when he laughed—sold pot. He was all no-bullshit too. I had asked for a gram, and after he weighed it and put it in a plastic baggie and held it out to me, I reached into my pants and jacket pockets looking for the cash among the cigarette wrappers and pocketknife, and he didn’t believe me as I acted the part and kept saying, “Shit shit shit, it must’ve fell out on the walk over here.” He shook his head, took the weed out of the baggie, and put it back into his mason jar. “I ain’t smokin’ you up,” he said, and so then I said, “Fuck you, Rab, I really did lose the money, you’ll see, watch when I come back here in thirty minutes with the money I dropped, you’ll feel stupid then.” He shrugged a Sorry, man, and I slammed his door shut as I left.

At the bridge to the reservation, the river was still frozen, ice shining white-blue under a full moon. The sidewalk on the bridge hadn’t been shoveled since the last nor’easter crapped snow in November, and I walked in the boot prints everyone made who walked the walk to Overtown to get pot or catch the bus to wherever it was us skeejins had to go, which wasn’t anywhere because everything we needed—except pot—was on the rez. Well, except Best Buy or Bed Bath & Beyond, but those Natives who bought 4K Ultra DVDs or fresh white doilies had cars, wouldn’t be taking the bus like me or Fellis did each day to the methadone clinic. That was another thing the rez didn’t have: a methadone clinic. But we had sacred grounds where sweats and peyote ceremonies happened once a month, except since I had chosen to take methadone, I was ineligible to participate in Native spiritual practice, according to the doc on the rez.

Natives damning Natives.

The roads on the rez were quiet, trees bending under the weight of snow, and when I passed the frozen swamp a voice moaned out. I stopped walking. Nothing, so I kept on going on the sparkling road until I heard it again.

“Who’s that?” I yelled. The moan came again. It was a man, somewhere in the swamp. I got closer, listening. There it was: a low and breathy noise, and with my cold ear I followed it.