From the Hilltop

Song or Something Like It

Christmas Eve, two in the afternoon, three hours to go till church, when my brother Paul pulls out a snack-sized Ziploc of cocaine and a pen cap, the end removed. He spills it out onto the table between a tower of Bud Light cans and a plastic Christmas village, complete with skating rink. Our mother plugged in the village before she left to pick up our grandmother ,who no longer drives after dark.It will be dark in a few hours.It already is dark in the village.The lights in the houses have been turned on, and they glow behind the skaters who figure eight in fits and starts out front on the plastic pond. Here we go, Paul says. He’s leaning forward, looking at me like he wants to launch into something, the coke, maybe, or one of his stories. The ones he loves most involve holidays, and the top three involve me trying to kill him. I tell myself we’re not making Story Number Four; I tell myself there will be no Christmas tragedy,but Paul does the line anyway,shakes his head, makes a sound not unlike yee haw. Song or Something Like It Song or Something Like It 160 What is this, I say, A Very Hillbilly Christmas? We may have a few hillbilly relatives somewhere on our mother’s side, but mostly, we’re métis, Roubideaux—a mixture of French and Blackfoot, trappers and traders. Mostly, yee haw is inappropriate. Paul’s been out checking the traps he set yesterday and is wearing long underwear and overalls,one strap unhooked.He smells like raccoon bait—the warm piss and week-old armpit combo sweetened slightly by the pot cloud that hangs over his head like dense fog. I can smell the chocolate-chip brownies Mom has made, too—Paul’s favorites—and I’m focusing on that smell, its normalcy, trying to block out the others. You have a problem with yee haw? Paul says. His green eyes widen then narrow. He shakes his head, mock-frowns, and bursts into high-pitched giggles. Our mother has frosted the insides of the windows, and it’s hard to see in or out through the stippled snowmen and reindeer. They cast shadows on the table, or, in the tragedy, they do. In this false light, anything’s possible. Paul could be twelve or thirteen, still making all his money from the trap line.We’re returning from the river, the car trunk heavy with raccoons and coyotes. I’m letting him drive, though I know Dad won’t like it,and Paul is hunched over the steering wheel, hands tight, face serious. But that’s not how it is, of course. Paul shakes his head so that his cheeks flap.The giggles rise again through the rotating fan to the top of the twelve-foot,vaulted ceiling.Paul’s repeating it now like a chant—yee haw, yee haw, yee haw—trying to get me to smack him so he can smack me back. Paul, I say, do you want the guests to hear? Song or Something Like It 161 This sends him giggling again, but at least the yee hawing stops.Our mother manages the only hotel in Talbot and lives behind it in a back house. The hotel is really an overgrown house—eight bedrooms with small bathrooms, a common room downstairs and a kitchen—ordinary. We know that now, but we grew up behind it, in the shadow of it and that phrase—Do you want the guests to hear? We were not allowed to be seen or heard by the guests,especially Dad and me,with our dark eyes, hair, and skin. When Paul is four, once when Mom and Dad are fighting —Dad threatening quietly, Mom shouting—Paul sneaks up behind them, small fist on his hip, and in a perfect imitation of Mom, squeaks out, Do you want the guests to hear? Everyone laughs, a little louder than usual, even Mom, who shakes her head at Paul and tousles his light-brown hair like the moms do on television. During our real, grown-up lives, Paul and I reside four hours north in the greater Minneapolis/St.Paul metropolitan area. I write technical manuals for a mid-size construction company, tracking the equipment. Paul works in business, moving from one store to the next...