From the Hilltop

Butter

The man with the achy-breaky hair has a gun tucked in the side of his short shorts, is standing close to the young, blond policeman, who rides his horse like he’s from the city. It’s the Minnesota State Fair, and everyone is here to see the dairy princesses. I am here to see everyone seeing them. I was almost a dairy princess,was runner-up in my county, which borders Canada.The whole county has only 1,882 residents , 978 of them female, 143 who are between the ages of fifteen and twenty-one, the proper dairy princess age range. Of those 143,all are white,except me; I’m an Indian,Blackfoot, the only one in the county.Of those 143,only six applied to be a dairy princess,including me.I’m interested in statistics,will major in it next year at the U. I’m interested in laws of probability . I’m interested in seeing the other girls’ heads carved in butter, their real-life pictures on the Plexiglas display case above the butter ones, the case swiveling round and round for everyone to get a look. Butter Butter 12 There are crowds here, always are—people from all over, sometimes even people who look like me—Indians, like me, only they’re Indians who grew up Indian,who know how to be Indian. Mom says I was not adopted from a Minnesota tribe, that only Minnesotans come to the fair, that none of these Indians are Blackfoot,are related to me.She pulls me close to her when she says it,pats down her blond hair,which she still wears all teased up,then smoothes my hair like she’s trying to make us the same. This year, I’ve left Mom at home. I haven’t seen any Indians yet today, though. Mostly there are just white women with strollers,sweat dripping down their babies’fat arms; teenagers wearing long,baggy shorts and eating greasy cheese curds, which come in forty-two varieties at our fair; and grown men, too, lined up to look at girls’heads carved in butter, including Mr. Achy Breaky and his gun. No one else sees the gun, not even the policeman, who is approximately 2.4 feet from the doorway. His horse keeps turning until it stops,its rear facing us,its tail haplessly swatting at flies.The policeman is here because the dairy princess display is in a Quonset hut, near the big, open, double-door exit,and sometimes the exits get clogged,all jammed with men on their way to the beer tent or women on their way to the quilting raffle. Or maybe I’ve got that backwards. Maybe the women are chasing down the beer, and the men are holding quilt raffle tickets, tight and secret in their sweaty hands. My guidance counselor, Mr. Melner, says I have too many stereotypical ideas about gender,that I’m not going to become a fully developed person until I let some of these clichés loose. Never mind that I love math, am one of only two girls in my advanced statistics class. Never mind that I grew up in Mom Butter 13 and Dad’s hotel, that I have been making beds and running credit cards through the machine since I was twelve. What Mr. Melner really means is that I should overlook how he can’t throw a softball across home plate or how bright and sweaty his face gets when he mows his lawn. Mr. Melner lives across the street from me and is twenty-three.Mom says only twenty-three every time, right before she says,And wouldn’t he make a good catch? I say he’s the kind you throw back into the water, preferably with a good, strong arm. He’s the kind you want to land very far from the boat. I haven’t figured out what kind the man with the gun is. He’s tall, has nice muscles. The hair, of course, is a problem, and he’s wearing a T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, which is how I can tell he has nice muscles. But the T-shirt is problem number two. Even so, I have to admit he’s watching the dairy princesses in a way I approve of. His eyes are following them round and round, and...