Free Truth and Bright Water by Thomas King Page B

out of the cups. They were large and white and soft, and the nipples were dimpled with tiny creases and tucks, like golf balls.
    “That’s better,” she said, scratching under each breast as if it really itched.
    On the next hand, I wound up with three sevens. “I call,” I said.
    “Two pair,” said the Swedish woman, and she laid her cards on the table. “Kings and nines.” She looked at me and hooked a thumb in the waistband of her panties. I could see she was hoping to take them off.
    “Beats me,” I said quickly, and I threw my hand in.
    “Maybe you should go back to the house,” said auntie Cassie.
    “Let him stay,” said the Swedish woman. “I’ll be great.”
    “Good,” said auntie Cassie. “You’ll be good. If my mother knew he was out here, she would kill me.”
    “Do you have your teeth yet, young Indian boy?”
    “What?”
    “Have you seen a woman naked before?”
    “No.”
    “Refreshing,” said the Swedish woman. “Deal the cards.”
    It’s really dark out and I’m sorry we didn’t bring Soldier because I’d have someone to talk to. I can hear the chickens behind the wire, and I think about shaking the coop just to see what they will do.
    The chicken coop is a wooden lean-to with a larger open area that is penned off with wire. My grandmother told me she never knows exactly how many chickens she has because it always changes around suppertime. I counted them once and there were thirty-seven. According to my grandmother, there are only three kinds of chickens in the world: layers, fancies, and meat birds. “The layers aren’t worth smoke,” she’d say. “And the fancies are four feet short of a yard.”
    At the side of the coop there is a long hook that my grandmother uses for catching the birds. I’m always amazed at the ease with which she snakes the hook around the pen, catching a chicken and draggingit flapping through the dirt. Or the quickness with which she can snatch it up by its feet and break its neck.
    I walk to the side of the coop, push my lips through the wire, and make soft coyote noises. Nothing. I growl a little. Nothing. I bark and rattle the wire and some of the chickens come alive, but they’re too stupid to be much fun. So, I go back to the house and stand next to the window. My mother and auntie Cassie and my grandmother haven’t moved from their chairs. I lean against the window frame so my ear is right at the opening just as round three begins.
    “What about him?” auntie Cassie says. “Why is it always just me?”
    My mother is trying to talk at the same time, but I can’t hear what she is saying. Monroe’s name gets mentioned once, and my grandmother says a few not-so-nice things about my father, but mostly there are long breaks when no one talks, and I wonder if my grandmother knows that I’m listening and is aiming her voice low so only her daughters can hear her.
    My mother raises her voice to say that “not everyone gets what they want,” but who the everyone is and what it is they don’t get is not mentioned. I stay by the window and throw rocks at the eggplants in the garden, and then I throw a few at the trailer. When I hear the front door of the house open, I get up and head for the coop. I hang on the wire, my back to the house, as if I’ve been watching the chickens sleep the whole time.
    I glance over my shoulder just in time to see my mother come into the garden. In the moonlight, she looks pale and thin, and she’s limping as if she’s been injured or has a cramp from sitting too long. And it is only when she turns and walks towards the trailer that I realize I’ve made a mistake.
    “Don’t blame me.” Auntie Cassie smiles and opens the trailer door. “Everyone was alive when I left.”
    I played cards with the Swedish woman and auntie Cassie, but nobody took off any more clothes. Around one o’clock, auntie Cassie sent me back to the house, which was okay with me because I was tired. I was halfway through the garden