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“Get this fucking car out of the road!” a man in a dirty red baseball cap yells as he continues to lean on the horn of his truck. “What the hell is this?”
“Just go,” Robert says. “We’re fine.”
They’re not, but there’s no point bandying words with them here.
“I’ll be back with someone to check them out,” I say and jog back to the car, apologizing to the people in the two cars.
The guy in the truck stopped glowering as soon as he saw me, and is now checking me out appreciatively. He’s alone in the car, while the sedan is jam-packed with people. I count at least six small children in the back seat and the middle aged woman behind the wheel looks chronically annoyed and dead tired.
“Sorry,” I mutter again, get in my pick-up and drive off.
I don’t know what I expected to find here, but it wasn’t this. And that’s pretty much all I know as I speed towards the checkpoint and the reservation proper.
* * *
The boom barrier is up and there’s no one in or near the cubicles at the entrance to the reservation. At the side, there’s a sign that reads Shallow Creek Reservation in black letters on a white background, but someone spray painted the words Concentration Camp over it in bright red paint. The paint bled and dried that way. It eerily reminds me of blood.
The man in the red baseball hat and rusty pickup starts honking angrily behind me, while yelling something, probably telling me to just drive on. I do.
And as soon as we’re clear of the checkpoint he overtakes me, tires squealing, and metal clanking. The jam-packed sedan overtakes me right after too, going much slower because of all the weight it’s carrying.
I continue on after them towards what must be the town center. None of the buildings look very familiar, while at the same time, I feel like I’ve seen it all before. My memories of this place are surfacing as if they’re just a dream. Or more like a nightmare.
The trash problem is even worse on these sidewalks than it was on the road here, and most of the buildings lining the town’s main street have boarded up windows, gaping wide open doors, missing and rotten siding, and smashed windows. Dogs of all shapes, size and colors are roaming the sidewalks, streets and lawns. Kids of all ages, some much too young to be out alone, are walking among them. The only two adults I see are a man lying slumped over at the side of a vacant building, and a grey-haired lady dragging two toddlers down the sidewalk, eyes fixed straight ahead.
The children all gawk at me as I drive past, their wide eyes huge in scrawny, sunken, dirt-smudged faces. The clothes they’re wearing—jeans, t-shirts, hoodies and tank tops—are either too small or too large on them, and so badly stained that no amount of washing will ever make them presentable again.
I never looked this shabby, my granny wouldn’t have it, but while my clothes were cleaner, they still weren’t much better than what they’re wearing. Most of the clothes I owned had gone through five or six owners before they came to me.
And I also remember the poorest kids wandering around like this. And the starving, mangy dogs too. But were there this many back then? I want to say no, but I’m just not sure.
There’s at least fifteen kids that I can see all along main street, some so small they barely know how to walk. It’s barely past noon. Why aren’t these kids in school?
I want to feed them, I want to clothe them, I want to pack them all up in my car and take them somewhere better. And it’s a very strong urge.
One of the larger structures just off main street has a big red cross against white on the door. The sign in the window reads Medical Center, but inside, the drapes are all drawn tight, the door is bolted from the outside and weeds have overgrown the sidewalk in front of it, making it look almost like a lawn. No one’s been here in a while.
So what does that mean? That there’s another medical center somewhere else?
Judging by the run-down, vacant state of the rest of the buildings around here, I know I shouldn’t get my hopes up about that. But how can these people live here without a doctor on site?
If it weren’t for the kids and the dogs, I’d be sure I entered a ghost town.
I drive off again, getting back on main street and concentrate hard on reading the signs and following the landmarks the woman I’m meeting to discuss the youth center gave me. The street signs are either missing or too dirty to read, but eventually I reach a statue of an Indian warrior on a horse, meticulously carved out of wood. She told me to make a left here, and then keep going straight for half a mile.
The road takes me to a slightly nicer part of town, and finally to the coffee shop Ariana runs. There’s less trash on the sidewalks here, fewer hopeless, parentless kids and dogs. And the coffee shop—Rising Star Cafe—is so modern and dolled-up it wouldn’t look out of place even in the fanciest part of Pleasantville. Here, among the vacant, decrepit houses, pot hole-ridden roads and just general dirt, it sticks out like a hobo at a ball. I feel like I’m about to walk straight into a mirage as I park beside the cafe, that’s how out of place it looks here.
The wooden deck, which serves as the cafe’s terrace, looks new and well-built. It’s large enough for over twenty tables, but there are only about ten of them—wrought iron adorned with swirls, the tables and chairs both—and only three are occupied. Probably because the wind is blowing hard and cold today. I know this wind, it’s one of the few things I actually clearly remember from the time that I lived here, because it almost never stopped blowing, no matter what time of year it was. But it was always worst in the fall and winter.
The eyes of all three of the patrons—two women my age and an older man—follow me as I enter the coffee shop through a glass door, the sides of which are painted a bright green. The interior looks just like any of the organic, hip coffee shops back home, with bright chalkboard signs in fancy multi-colored calligraphy listing the menus, brightly colored rugs on the tile floor and pretty pictures on the walls. Paintings it looks like, of the prairie, the grasses, the snowcapped mountains in the distance, and horses running wild. Gorgeous.
The room smells of freshly brewed coffee, glazed sweets and an overpowering scent of burgers. Mismatched wooden tables, some white, some brown, some painted green like the door fill the space, but here too only a few are taken by young men and women on laptops, their tables taken up by textbooks and notebooks.
“How can I help you?” a short-haired woman with sparkling black eyes asks from behind the counter as she smiles prettily. She’s wearing an apron, jeans and a t-shirt with the cafe’s logo across her chest.
“I’m Lily,” I says. “Are you Ariana?”
She smiles even wider and comes from behind the counter. “Welcome, Lily. I’m so glad you’re here.”
