Beware of the Lights on Angler Road (Part 1 of 3)

“You’re going the wrong way,” a pleasant and judgmental voice said from behind me.

The voice had come from a tall, white man with dirty brown hair cut before it could hit his neck and who had hazel eyes and a cheery customer service smile on his face. He looked to be no more than in his late thirties and was dressed in the green and gold uniform of the gas station I’d stopped in to get my bearings with a nametag emblazoned with the phrase “I SERVE U,” as well as his name “NATHAN.” I hated him on sight.

“Excuse me,” I said, growling as I adjusted the road map in my hands.

“You’re wanting to head north, right?” he asked, and then pointed on the map. “That’s us right here. I saw you hovering your fingers over the interstate. No idea why you got off of it.”

I narrowed my eyes, wondering why he thought it was his business to correct me. “I’m trying to get back to Interstate 95. Need to get back home to the rez.”

“Oof, then you’re really off the beaten path. You’re practically halfway to Medford headed in the opposite direction. What made you get so far off course?”

“Buncha black dogs jumped in front of my truck. Mistook my exit and went off the wrong one when I saw more of them headed my way.”

“Strange things happening these days for sure with the new millennium on the way.”

I measured his response and didn’t know how to take it. I’d actually told him the truth just to mess with him, but he’d swatted it all off just for the sake of helping me out, it seemed. Weird guy. Not as weird as being attacked by a sudden scourge of black dogs all at once, though. They’d scared me to hell and back those devil dogs. Strays by the look of them. Mangy and malnourished, but sticking together to a pack. No idea why they thought jumping me in a truck on an interstate was a good idea, but I’d just barely managed to get away from them when I realized I was far off course. Worse still, my windows had been open because my AC had been down for the past five years, so when a sudden gust of wind came by and swooped my road map from me, I realized I needed a replacement and had been minding my own business when this Yankee yokel had dared to interrupt my thoughts.  

He was right about going the wrong way, but I didn’t want to admit it. I’d gotten on the wrong road somewhere down the way and ended up on a path I’d never been on before. If I’d been smarter I’d have recognized that I had lost my way from the moment I took that exit, but panic had overtaken me. I’d been shaking and gasping for breath and before I knew it I was miles off course. The gas station had been the only sign of civilization I’d seen for five miles after I’d calmed down some. Now I needed to get my bearings back, which reminded me of the days my squadmates had used GPS to get around while we were on deployment in Korea. I’d served in the military, so I knew what a GPS was, but since I was a civilian now that I was dishonorably discharged from the service I would never have the ability to use it again. So I was stuck with maps like everyone else. Wouldn’t trust any newfangled tech anyways, what, with Y2K coming up in about a month or two. Supposed to be the end of the world. I’d welcome it. Maybe if it happened before I went back home I wouldn’t have to prostrate myself on the ground before my wife and beg forgiveness for what I’d done.

“Now which reservation were you trying to back to?” Nathan asked, making me look towards him again. “If it’s the Passamaquoddy rez then you just need to turn around and head east. You’ll make it there easy enough.”

“Penobscot,” I offered.

“Easy enough to fix too. Same thing, but when you see signs for 95 again you just head north.”

“You seem to know a lot about the rezzes.”

“Sure do. I study everything in Maine from the animals, legends, politics, religion, roads, and people. Helps to know these things to help people out in my line of work. Lots of people get lost, but it’s easier to get back to where you need to go if there’s someone around who you’re willing to listen to when they’re trying to help you out. Besides, you don’t want that map. It’s the only one of its kind here. The better ones were right next to it, because they’ll take you where you need to go.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Don’t take this the wrong way, white boy, but given personal history, a man’s gotta ask what’s in it for you to make sure he ain’t gonna get lynched for being an Indian?”

He seemed confused by the sentiment I’d expressed. “I was given to believe that Native American was the preferred term now. And also, I’m not just white. I actually have Jewish and Arabic roots, alongside the English-Scotch-Irish-German parts.”

I sighed at him missing the point of my query. I’ve never really known what to call myself. I’m told by people I barely wish to talk to back on the rez that we’re supposed to be First Nations now, whatever that means. Supposedly the Canucks came up with it to describe the people in their reservations, so to hell with them. I may be a bastard, but I am an American bastard.

Anyways, I suppose I’ve always defaulted to Indian because that’s what I saw in the movies growing up where I’d watch them with my daddy as we cheered John Wayne or Clint Eastwood as they shot the Indians down. They were no kin of mine, so why would I care what happened to them? It’s not like I cared much about my kin either. I winced. No, that wasn’t true anymore. I was going to make things better.

“You all right, buddy?” Nathan asked, bringing me back to reality.

“Yes,” I said, grumbling and tired of his nonsense. “I’m gonna leave now.”

“You’re welcome, sir!”

I turned away and didn’t honor him with a thank you. I’d have figured it out soon enough. Didn’t need another liberal white guy deciding that he had a new Indian friend simply because we’d had a conversation. They were clingy and desperate to “make up for the actions of their ancestors.” I knew the type from a mile away. Four more words with him and he’d have invited himself onto the rez and dressed in native attire to prove how much he respected my culture.

I groaned and placed the map and the food and drinks I’d grabbed before being rudely talked to by someone I didn’t care about onto the front counter where the clerk was standing. The pimply-nosed and rotund teenager at the front offered me yet another customer service smile and I started to die inside.

“Is there anything else I can help you with today, sir?” she asked, smiling with poorly-grafted on braces omnipresent on her teeth.

“Yeah, I’d like to file a complaint about harassment,” I said, leaning forward to put my hand on the counter.

“Have—Have I done something wrong, sir?”

“No, not you, darling. Nathan. The chatterbox who doesn’t know how to shut up. I want a manager to drill into him that people will ask you for help if they want it. Otherwise shut the hell up and stop bothering people.”

The girl bit her lip and I could see confusion on her face. “Sir, I’m not supposed to say this, because the manager won’t like it, but since we’ve had so many people quit I’m the only person here. There isn’t an employee named Nathan that’s ever worked here that I know of.”

I grimaced and stared her down. Then I pointed behind me to where Nathan had just been standing like the slack-jawed idiot he was and choked on my spit when I saw no one there. Grabbing my stuff from the counter, I stomped over to where the man had been and was left with nothing but confusion as I looked down and saw a collection of silver-red rose petals strewn across the floor in the shape of an arrow that pointed to the display where one of the maps he’d mentioned was located.

“What the hell?” I asked to no one in particular.

Shaking my head, I decided I didn’t care for an explanation and rushed outside, ready to get the hell away from whatever was happening here. Black dogs and rosy floral arrangements weren’t my idea of fun or the kind of reality I wanted to deal with.

“Sir, you need to pay for those,” the clerk yelled out from behind the counter, as I threw the door closed behind me and got back into my car with my ill-gotten gains that I placed in the passenger seat.

Turning the truck on I went into reverse and headed east. That at least was correct. Now I was back in control of things. Nothing was getting in my way. I didn’t want to be in a foul mood when I got back home after almost a decade to see my wife.

Hurit, much like her name suggested, was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life. Pretty much everyone knows each other on the rez, so I had grown up around her and been friends with her practically since birth. I had married Hurit after I knocked her up at eighteen. Her family was very Catholic, which you might find surprising, but is actually far more common on certain rezzes than others. That’s why they were so insistent that the word abortion was never uttered and I ended up with a gimp son with a dumb brain. Down syndrome’s what the doctors preferred, but it was just a fancy name for something that afflicted someone who never should’ve been born. Now you may think I hate the boy with how I talk about him, but nothing could further from the truth; I’m just gonna keep it real, as the melodious John Lee and Jerry Brown introduced to us non-blacks in the seventies. My son Jack was a good boy, much better than his worthless father, and he loved with a pure love I ain’t ever felt anywhere else. But his mind wasn’t right and he had mood swings with temper tantrums that could destroy everything and anyone in his path. I loved him, but I was a terrible father. Maybe that was why it was so easy to just watch him at the end as he slipped beneath the ice at South Branch Lake while I was too drunk to do much of anything to help him out.

Jack had gotten away from me, as he was wont to do with whatever new hyperfocus had gotten into his addled brain, and I remember yelling at him to not get near the water, but it gets fuzzy after that. Most people love the snow and ice here in the north and I did too at one point, but all it ever does now is make me remember just how big of a screwup I am. Winter is especially harsh at times and the lake was almost covered in ice. Jack and I had gone on a walk together while his mother went to the tribal grocery store on the rez owned by one of our own. I had always enjoyed nature and animals and Jack had taken a liking to them too. He couldn’t say none of the names well or at all, but you knew he knew what a squirrel or deer was based on how he moved his lips and how excited he’d be as he tried to make one of them his friend. That’s why I do distinctly remember him trying to say the English word for snake as he ran into the water, trying to catch it, as he did to every animal he saw. Now you and I know winter is no place for a snake, especially in the middle of a lake almost covered in ice, but legend tells of a mighty horned serpent called the Gitaskog that dwells in every lake in the region, depending on who’s telling the story. I don’t know if it’s real or not, but I do remember the panic I felt when I looked down into the water to try and grab Jack only to see what looked like giant golden eyes staring back at me as they descended into the depths with my boy. I stared at the water, defeated. My mind was hazy from the ninth beer I’d drunk that day and I let out a cry of anguish that alerted those of my people nearby to my plight. They took me in and called for assistance to drudge up that part of the lake, but no one ever found Jack. The temperature at that time of the day was seven degrees Fahrenheit. Even if they had found him, I’m no fool; I know I would never have heard his voice again.

Hurit, for reasons I will never understand, didn’t blame me for what happened. I, on the other hand, raged against the heavens to a God or gods I didn’t believe in for daring to let this happen to my boy. For daring to allow me to be his father, because no sensible God would let that happen. Hurit did what she could to quiet and calm me. Throughout our whole marriage, she saw herself as the “suffering wife.” The one who prayed for years in the poorly-made closet of our bedroom where the light never works and the roaches reign supreme for me to come to my senses and then submit myself to the same Jesus that had led the charge to murder most of our ancestors. I know I said what I said earlier, but you’d still be surprised how many Indians fall for that Christian crap. Makes them feel better about themselves when they now serve the Conquering Christ instead of showing adoration and devotion to Klose-kur-beh, our first man and deliverer of culture, or Gici Niwaskw, who was our creator and supposedly (if you believe the quacks who pass as spiritual leaders in our community) had warned us about the coming of the white man and his greed, all the good it did us in the end.

I laughed at her and told her that her God was no God of mine and I wasn’t weak enough to serve Him if this is how our boy had left us. But Hurit was steadfast, telling me, “Lolon, let Him do as He pleases in our broken and fallen world. You aren’t God, you never will be, so stop applying for a position you’ll never be qualified for.”

I will not defend what I did next. You know by now that I am not a good man and never have been. I struck her once with my right knuckle, the rage not subsiding with the first blow, so I felt my hands move almost without my thoughts behind their actions as they pummeled her over and over again. She cried out to God and yelled my name to the point where I started to despise hearing it. I had never, even at my drunken worst, hit her before that moment. It’s a monstrous feeling, one that gnaws at you, laughs at you, and tells you that you’re just as bad as your father was.

My old man had lived by a code of working all day in the lumber mill and then drinking away his sorrows with the other low lives on the rez during the night. He treated my mother while she was alive like his personal punching bag like he was on his way to challenge Ali or Foreman for the title. But that’s when he was at home. There was one place where my father was a different man. On the weekends he and I might watch movies by going all the way down to Bangor to sit in his car at the Bangor Drive-in. It was a helluva drive with him swerving around every car he saw and slurring his words, but it was the only time I can think of where he wanted to include me in something he liked. He fancied himself a film buff and would talk about the different camera angles that were used or the behind the scenes information he’d read in some magazine that just heightened his love for the movies. Back when he’d been my age, he’d wanted to run from home and go to Hollywood to be a director, but his father had laughed at him and called him gay for wanting to be a “prancing Nancy” for the whole world to see on screen. He’d tried to go to school and get good enough grades to get into college so he could go to film school, but no one on the rez has money and even as cheap as it was back then, he couldn’t afford school, so he stayed, like everyone else always does eventually and became a family man providing for said family with a job he hated.

He died of liver failure right before Jack was born. I had sworn to myself to never be like my daddy and to never lay a hand on my wife or children. I succeeded at one of those things. His death heralded changing times in our life, as debtors came to us, claiming he owed them on loans and we were now culpable to pay them off. Let this be a lesson to you all: they’re damn liars. When a family member dies, most of the time, you ain’t on the hook to give them one single dime, but nobody had taught me that, so now on top of being a husband and a soon-to-be-father who now had to bury his father, I had to provide for them better.

As a result, I worked my ass off as a dealer and announcer in the Penobscot High Stakes Bingo establishment on the oh-so imaginatively-named Indian Island. At least I did until I got drunk one night and hit the boss’ wife in the face when I was trying to slug him instead when he thought I wouldn’t hear the crack he made about Jack’s retardation after his drowning. Eight years of my life I had given to them and one thing went wrong and now suddenly I was without a job. There were no heroes there, I know, but once again I was lost. Hurit, true to her nature, tried to help me, but what she didn’t know was that I’d been sleeping behind her back with her sister who’d offered to comfort me in the midst of my grief and I couldn’t stand to look at her, because all I saw while I was with her was the other woman and the wounds I had given my wife in our first and only physical confrontation.

That’s when I decided to run away and gave military service an audition of my skills instead, which shipped me off to Korea where I wasted my days at Camp Casey right next to the DMZ. I could have taken her with me, but why would I bother ruining the lovely time I had there getting to know all the prostitutes that plied their wares next to the base? They never asked for commitment, outside of a little cash flow, but I had plenty of that to use, especially since Hurit never bothered to ask for a divorce that would’ve led to alimony. But I felt so guilty, so I went after something that I had denied myself for years, hoping to break out and maybe support her from afar. I was never gonna follow through with it, but that’s the motivation I gave myself to finally give writing a try.

For years as a kid, I grew up on stories made up by rez locals like Molly Spotted Elk, ssipsis, and Sherri Mitchell where they would talk about our history and the need for change. They almost made you believe that we could do something about our current lot in life. I was dumb enough to think I could as a kid. I fancied myself a writer like them and even submitted to ssipsis’ Maine Indian Newsletter when that was still around in 1972. I never knew if they liked the story or not because it folded that same year. But I kept at it and felt some more hope when some Maine local by the name of Stephen King got his start as a writer a couple of years later. Then I forgot all about the stories of my people and all I wanted to do was write horror like him. But, much like my father and films, I wasn’t fated to be a part of that world. Potential agents would see the name Lolon Tomah on the manuscripts I sent and toss them away faster than a tomahawk. That’s part of why I had named my son Jack instead of a native name; I hoped it might give him a chance and maybe some sympathy from others. But just like that had failed, even the renewed vigor I had for the craft couldn’t stop a part of me always knowing I was doomed to failure. When my fellow soldiers learned what I was doing at night instead of always meeting the finest ladies of the night alongside them, they all laughed at me. I jumped at them all in a rage and beat the hell out of them, but unfortunately for me, my C.O. saw it all and I was offered a dishonorable discharge, even though this was my first offense of this kind. Sure, I had a history of being drunk and showing up for duty wasted, but did that all that really mean I was supposed to be done with military service permanently? Now I had to explain to potential bosses why I wasn’t in the service anymore, if anyone would be willing to hire me now that they had made me a pariah. It just wasn’t fair.

Now I was heading back to the rez to stand before my wife and beg her to take me back, because no one else wanted me.

As I drove down the road, I sighed deeply. My self-serving memory was my best ally, because it was the only one that believed in me. I think all of us have that inclination, but the good ones, the righteous ones, they learn how to deny themselves. I wasn’t good, but I was already preparing my sob story so that Hurit took me back into our home. Surely she would, since she’d never divorced me, right?

I looked at the map and gazed up from it every now and then to make sure I still had an idea of where I was. If I was right in reading it, then there was a shortcut coming up that led me down Angler Road, which Nathan had failed to mention, so screw him and his fake helpfulness. If I didn’t get stuck behind a dusty tractor that had no business being on the road I could get back home before it was too late. Maybe even get a chance to be intimate with Hurit if she was willing.

Turning to the left away from the road that would have led me back to the interstate, I grinned smugly as I ended up on Angler Road. Like most backroads in Maine, it was devoid of what any rational person would call civilization. Instead, I was surrounded by never-ending rows of balsam fir and red maple trees whose foliage was at the zenith of their green coloration. The cones of each tree lay at the base of the tall wooden towers that had birthed them, promising to develop into yet another tree that would be as uniform and identical as the last. After ten minutes of travel, I had yet to see a house, farm, or even another car, which suited me just fine. The map indicated that I would need to be on it for about twenty minutes before I ended up on a road that would bring me closer to the rez.

Placing a hand outside the window, I twirled my fingers and felt the wind go in-between them. It was oddly comforting to do something so simple and childlike, as I tried to recall the last time I had done something like that, which distracted me long enough to be taken by surprise as the world turned completely dark. I almost slammed on the brakes from the suddenness of the shift, but maintained my composure and place on the road, as I wildly looked around for an explanation. Looking up at the sky I saw no cloud cover or any sign that the sun had ever been there to begin with. Likewise, there were no stars or moon to offer light. Were it not for my broken headlights I wouldn’t have been able to see anything at all.

I scoffed. It was summer. The night wasn’t supposed to fall and get this dark for another two hours. I wasn’t a meteorologist, so I had no idea how to explain it. I simply chalked it up to God hating me, because who else could be responsible for the day I had endured?

At that moment a sense of dread chilled my bones, and I felt the hairs on my arms stand up and goosebumps became omnipresent over my body. Looking around wildly for any semblance of understanding, I looked off to my left and saw a dark red light hovering over a hill that looked like it had all of its trees cut down for lumber. It was still and lifeless, until the shadows started to move and I witnessed thirteen black dogs identical to the ones who had forced me off the road earlier in the day baring their fangs at me. In the center of them, right underneath the dark red light was a singular crimson light in the shape of an eye of a being so unholy it made me want to become a believer just so I never was under its gaze again. It resembled a human, but it was twisted and deformed, like someone had bent a human face in some bizarre accident yet had retained enough semblance of humanity as a mockery of what it had once been and any normal person who happened to look at it. It had two eyes, but the right eye was glowing crimson with an ethereal smokiness that erupted upwards to fuel the dark red sphere above it. Even though we were hundreds of feet from each other, I could hear its teeth grind as it opened its maw and I witnessed a second, lamprey-like set of teeth underneath the first set, all ready to gobble me up without a moment’s hesitation.

I have more to say about what happened next, but I'm tired, so I'll continue tomorrow.