Wabanaki Blues Read Online Free PDF Page B

careening down a ski slope. This sensation tells me we must have crossed into mountainous Vermont. I pull myself up and notice a sign pointing east that says “Lake Winnipesaukee — 100 miles.” That’s not far. This must be fate. I’ve never hitchhiked but I’m willing to try it; people do it in old movies all the time. Only in modern films does it result in rape, robbery, or murder. Besides, we’re in Nowhere, Vermont. What could possibly happen here?
    The silver car-door handle gleams, beckoning me. I contemplate my odds of surviving a jump from a moving Volvo at seventy miles an hour. I picture Beetle by the lake. He’s tanned, shirtless, wrapped in a designer beach towel, surrounded by a harem of perfect hair. My fingertips wind around the warm door handle. I put a hand on my already sore head to protect it from impact with the road, and lean in.
    â€œLila! Do you know it’s already three o’clock?” booms Dad, tapping his vintage Soviet wristwatch.
    I jerk my hand back from the door and wilt into the corner of the backseat. In the rearview mirror, the road sign for Lake Winnipesaukee shrinks behind me, along with my hopes for the summer.
    â€œWe’ll make it on time, Bryer,” she says, while fiddling with the radio knob to locate a station with decent reception.
    Dad baritones, “We don’t have time to stop and chat with your father.”
    Mom holds up both palms, defensively. “Not to worry. None of us wants that.” She connects Dad’s phone to the car speakers. “Let’s listen to your Mongolian music medley.”
    The stampeding drumbeat sets Dad’s narrow shoulders bouncing up and down. Frankly, even this is better than endless talk shows on National Public Radio. None of us speak while the Native drums thunder. We all fall into it. Mom and I are accustomed to heavy drumming. We’ve heard it every summer since I can remember—at the Mohegan Wigwam Festival—her annual pilgrimage to Grumps’ traditional territory to remind me of my Native American roots. I’ve run into a few Abenakis there. But not as many as you might think. Mom says most of Bilki’s folks keep to the northern woods, thanks to the colonists offering bounties on Abenaki scalps in New Hampshire. Naturally, that made them wary of outsiders. Of course that was a long time ago. But Mom is a historian and often confuses the past with the present.
    Our mighty red Volvo—which I fondly call Red Bully because it either seems to have plenty of energy or refuses to budge—syncs to the beat, rising and falling as it winds around the mountain roads. I feel like I’ve entered one of Bilki’s painted portals, swirling through time and space. My stomach churns from all the swaying. Acid lurches into my throat. Mom pales. That’s when it hits me—a memory I’d rather forget. I try and push it out of my mind, hoping Mom and I aren’t thinking the same thing.
    She turns down the music. “Bryer, don’t these winding roads remind you of that awful Goliath hypercoaster we rode when we visited your parents in Montreal?”
    Oh, no. We’re thinking exactly the same thing. This nauseating drive reminds us both of the day I rode that amusement park ride and threw up all over my French-Canadian grandparents. I was four years old, and we haven’t received an invitation from Ma-mère and Pa-père since.
    Dad’s normally pasty skin turns the color of the evergreens that now line the roads. This is one of those times when I know he’s cursing his photographic memory, grimly envisioning every detail of that ill-fated family trip to Montreal. He opens his window. I do the same. The road straightens, and I’m relieved. Yet Dad’s nauseated look remains. In fact, it worsens.
    â€œLila, you should have told my parents the truth about everything, right from the beginning. They had a right to