A Short History of Indians in Canada: Stories

The Garden Court Motor Motel

The Garden Court Motor Motel Sunday. And the train is late. Sonny stands at the edge of the pool at the GARDEN COURT MOTOR MOTEL scooping bugs out of the water with the long-handled net and waits for the train to come chug-chug-chugging along. So he can hear Uncle HOLIE blow the train’s horn. So he can wave to all the passengers on their way to the coast. Water in the pool is sure blue. Blue and cool. Maybe he’ll take his shirt off. But he isn’t going to get in. No, sir. No sky-blue water for him. Even if the clouds don’t come and cool things off, he isn’t fool enough for that. He’s the smart one. There are three bugs on the net. Dead. All the bugs he pulls out of the pool are dead. When DAD was a boy, there were fish in the pool. That’s what DAD says, and he knows everything. Sonny knows everything too. He knows all about skyblue pool water and dead bugs. You can’t swim in the pool. You can’t swim in the pool unless you rent a room. 190 Those are the rules, and ADAM and EVE and all their kids come by on vacation in a brand new Winnebago pull up to the office and say, pretty please, aren’t going to get in the water until there’s up-front money and the key deposit. That’s the way things are. Like it or hike it. Sonny steps on a crack. Step on a crack, break your mother’s back. Cracks in the concrete. Cracks in the white stucco. Cracks in the black asphalt. Cracks in the fifty-foot sign with the flashing neon-red ball that blinks “GARDEN COURT MOTOR MOTEL” and “Welcome.” And it’s new. Cracks in the windows. Cracks in the walls. Cracks hiding at the bottom of the pool where Sonny can’t get at them. Don’t worry about the cracks, DAD tells Sonny. After a while, you don’t even notice them. The GARDEN COURT MOTOR MOTEL. Parking for long-haul truckers. Pool. Ice-making machine. Laundromat . Vibrating beds. One day all this will be his. That’s what DAD says. The GARDEN COURT MOTOR MOTEL. Twentyfour rooms. Cable television. Telephone. Air conditioning . Video rentals. Breakfast coupons for the Heavenly Pie Pizza Palace. Sonny swings the net deep and catches some cloudshade on his shoulder. Here they come, he thinks to himself , and he forgets the bugs and looks up into the sky. The Garden Court Motor Motel 191 But it’s not a cloud. There are no clouds. Not even on the edges of the world, which he can see clearly from poolside, is there even the mention of a cloud. Now, what the DING-DONG is that, he says to the dead bugs in the net. It’s surely not a cloud. But now half of him is in the shade, and he’s standing in shadows with his net and the dead bugs, watching the pool water turn black and deep. Whatever it is, it’s coming fast. And he starts thinking fast, too. A meteor would be okay. Or a flying saucer. Or a dark-green garbage bag. One thing is for sure. It’s not the train. Okay. Okay. He looks up because he’s run out of things, and he’s sorry now he didn’t finish high school. “DING-DONG,” he says, even though he knows DAD doesn’t like that kind of language. “DING-DONG,” he says, because he’s excited. Not in a naughty, excited way, but in that excited way he gets when he watches someone get whistled with a phaser on Star Trek. “Clear the way!” Doesn’t sound like a meteor. “Look out below!” Doesn’t sound like a green garbage bag. “MOVE IT!” And that’s when Sonny thinks about running. Getting the DING-DONG out of there. And he knows now that this is the right answer, and that he would have thought of it all by himself if he had just had a little more time, but now it’s too late, and he knows that whatever it is 192 A Short History of Indians in Canada that is falling out of the sky and screaming at him is going to...