Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead

Author:Joshua Whitehead
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781551527260
Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press
Published: 2018-05-10T16:00:00+00:00

XXX

When I awoke, Tias was gone. The smell of fried bologna and burnt toast wafted into the room. I rolled over onto the other side of the bed. His pillow smelled of his sweat and musk. I pressed my face against it and imagined my cheeks brushing against his fine chest hairs. I got hard. My fingers had memorized the musculature of his body—I could feel the cool prick of his hard nipple against my forearm. When I licked the back of my teeth, I could taste his tongue.

It was when I raised my face from the pillow that I saw the photo. Tucked neatly into the corner of Tias’s mirror was a photo of him kissing Jordan Blackhorse—the girl I’d come to love-hate. She was tall and beautiful, with long black hair and sultry, bedroom eyes. She was an intimidating soul wrapped up in a dainty frame; as cute as she looked, she was tough as nails—hell, one time she’d even given Logan a black eye when he called her a cheap slut. She was also blessed with the motherlode of all names. I abhorred her tenacity throughout school because of it; I always wondered if having a boy’s name made for a boy’s mind. That, and everyone knew she was NDN without having to ask. See, you know you’re a legit Nate when your surname combines a colour with an animal. She used to say that her NDN name was Tatanka, and everyone was always impressed at her soliloquies spoken in her Saulteaux tongue. I later learned that Tatanka meant buffalo in Lakota. My kokum taught me that one night while we were watching wrestling.

“Blackhorse? That family is a bunch of looneys, m’boy,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“I want to be like Jordan,” I said. “I love her NDN name.”

“And what is it? Great Black Angry Bear?” she roared over Steve Austin screaming on TV.

“Tatanka.”

“Tatanka?” She laughed. “Tatanka? She’s nothing but stories and lies, m’boy. That tongue of hers, it’s a smoke screen—them Blackhorses, they’re known for their tongues.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, for starters,” she proudly announced, “the girl’s Saulteaux and speaking Lakota. Tatanka means buffalo in Lakota. Rule number one, if you want to be an NDN, you might want to do your research first.”

I giggled and flung my feet into the air. My kokum caught them with her hands and placed them on her lap. Her hands were wrinkled but firm as she pressed her thumbs squarely into the balls of my feet and squeezed upwards towards my toes. Press, pull, slide, and release. She used to do this to me when I was a baby and later as a young boy. She’d pull my breath and sadness and jealousy and rage from me and expunge it through my feet.

“The feet hold in them all sorts of mysteries,” she said softly. “Our footprints, they carry with them all sorts of stories. You can burn my prints, cut my hair, salt my tongue, but these stories are etched into the hides of our soles.

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