JEREMY
STONE
Lesley Choyce
Dedicated to the memory of Rita Joe
Contents
When I Learned to Talk Again
Let Me Take You Back First
Jeremy Stone, Me
Oh Yeah, My Father
I Had a Grandfather Once
My Grandfather’s School
Who I Am
The New Kid
Hope
Walking
Sitting Still Through Math Class is Hard
Somewhere in the Back of the Class
When My Father Talked
The Girl
Getting Lost in the Halls
I had Forgotten about Geronimo
The Fish in the River
Caitlan Speaks
The Difference Between Me and Jenson Hayes
What Happened to Jenson Hayes
Jenson’s Poem
Forever
How Jenson Died
Caitlan Cried
The End of the Day
My Mother Knows
Cooking
The First Time He Walked Up to Me
Yeah, We Needed to Talk
What Love Is
Just Standing Around in the Drizzle Talking to a Dead Dude
Back With the Living
Thomas Heaney in French Class
The Troof
The Troof Versus Paper Clip Heaney
What Happened After That
What the Water Said Next
The Evening Meal
Normal
What the Raven Said
The Phone That Never Rings
Coffee Coffee
Caffeine
Scars
What Caitlan Said to That
The List
Conference with Jenson
Another Sleeping Story
The French Revolution
What Happened Next
Caitlan in the Hall
Waiting for Paper Clip
Mud and Mom
God in the Bathtub
My Mom in the Kitchen Staring at an Unopened Pack of Smokes
Awkward Moments in the Kitchen
Back to the List, the Plan
Suicide for Amateurs
The World According to Jeremy Stone
Crazy Horse
The Bird
Saturday: Caitlan Day
What the Sparrow Saw
Jenson Speaks
Language
Far Away
Fred the Janitor
When I Learned to Talk Again
The first words were
leave me alone.
Said it like I meant it
to that person
some idiot
who examined me.
My mom was determined I should go
back to school.
Think about it.
School.
Yeah, as soon as I told the shrink or
whatever, whoever that pisser was,
to kiss my ass (guess I said that too)
he said, then my mom said, and the school said
I was ready
to go back to school.
Let Me Take You Back First
Shut up.
Just shut up.
Everyone
kept saying it to me.
Shut
the hell
up.
So I
did.
And I fell in love with silence.
Head
over
heels.
The words just stopped flowing,
stopped jumping
out of my
mouth.
The great god of silence took me on
as a disciple.
I found a new wilderness
inside me.
A beautiful place
to camp,
place to hang out with spirits
place to live alone with just
me.
Jeremy Stone, Me
No, don’t stone me.
Me, Stone.
Like a rock.
You know, you can throw me but
you can’t break me
or crack me open
easily.
I’m that hard.
Stone hard.
Stoner, some said.
Well, yeah, maybe sometimes
but not often.
Stoney stuck, though
as a nickname
sometimes.
I am (or was, not sure) a sink-to-the-bottom
stone,
language heavy inside me
but not always getting out to breathe.
Had this hard outer shell—
plain-looking, I know, gray, dull.
But inside.
Yes, inside.
All hard jagged crystal.
Beautiful in sunlight but if kept in the dark,
damn
just a little too weird.
To get me
to understand me,
you have to know what
a geode
is.
My father
gave me one
this gray nothing-looking rock
when I was little.
Break it open, he said.
But I couldn’t.
So he did
and inside
it was all hollow
with tiny glittering crystals.
Pointed, shiny.
God, look at that
my father said.
Gotta love that rock.
Oh Yeah, My Father
My missing father
going
going
gone.
I was ten and he kept getting
older
thinner
farther
away.
Did I tell you that my people,
his people,
go back 10,000 years here?
Maybe more. Who knows?
Maybe my ancestors were flint and obsidian and coal and
amethyst.
We go back to the Stone Age.
Hah.
Get it.
My father’s humor.
He had humor once when he had a big belly
but
he
thinned
down.
He lost
a lot of things.
I saw the lights going out
in his eyes
as he
got more hollow
more hurt.
So he shared that hurt sometimes.
No humor in that. Nope.
He shared it by hitting me.
He hit me some.
Not too much.
(It’s okay, Dad. I forgive you.)
He stopped hitting
when he
disappeared.
I missed him right away.
Better to be hit
than to not have him at all.
Damn.
I Had a Grandfather Once
I really
did
and he was filled with history
fed up with history, too
but he told stories
of the old times
before
you know.
He said his grandfather had handed all those stories
over to him.
When my grandfather wasn’t telling old-time stories
he was kinda quiet.
People made fun of him
when he went outside the community:
the long hair
the way he walked
the hesitation in his speech.
His stories were great
but he couldn’t shed the dark part of that damn history
and I don’t think he was good with understanding time.
He told me this:
One day our people are happy as clams
and hunting saber-toothed tigers and big hairy
mastodons.
The next thing you know
the Europeans
show up
and the fun is all over.
Everyone just called him Old Man
My Grandfather’s School
Old Man had gone to one of those places,
a residential school,
where you dressed like everyone else, slept in big rooms with everyone else,
ate the same food as everyone else, spoke English like
everyone else, got
punished like everyone else.
The cops brought you back if you tried to run away
and be yourself. Be different.
And if you got sick and threw up at mealtime
they made you eat
your own puke.
It’s called education,
Old Man said.
So you run away again
and they bring you back
so they can teach you
how to stop being
who you are
and learn to be
someone else.
Who I Am
At my new school,
at first
no one really knows who I am.
They think maybe I am Italian
or from South America.
No one knows me here not even me.
But I think I am becoming more like my grandfather.
Old Man.
I remember his stories
but not much about my own past.
So I need to find little Jeremy Stone.
I’m pretty sure he was never Italian.
My mother promised to help me find him.
Find me.
She’d been trying
to tug some words out of me for three years.
Before that she had lectured me for being
too loud
too rude
too curious.
And then she really lost it
and hit me. (Like my dad had done, only different.)
At least I think she hit me
or someone did anyway.
That’s when I stopped talking.
Went silent like a stone.
But I’m not gonna blame her
No.
Not my mother. She tried her best
but had wrestling matches with her own personal demons.
Ya know.
Drink.
Men (after my father evaporated).
Some kind of pills.
She said none of it would kill her.
Not even the men,
or the smokes. (Tobacco is sacred, she said.)
Changed her mind after the coughs.
Good thing too.
Me,
I never smoked.
Not tobacco anyway.
But my mom
she loved me
and thanked me when I found my tongue again
and words spilled out. But I only spoke to people who
really knew who I was
and that was
a pretty small group.
The New Kid
That’s me.
Like I said,
I’m fairly new at this school
and don’t say much
’cause
it’s easier to hide that way.
I guess word finally got out
on where I came from, who my parents were
so they started calling me
the Indian
since I am the only one in school
although some call me
the hermit. And there are other names.
Cruel names.
Here’s what the Indian does at school:
he keeps to himself,
he doesn’t give eye contact,
he drops his books a lot, and
he’s afraid to look at girls.
They say maybe he’s on drugs
this Indian Jeremy Hermit Stone.
He’s somewhere, man,
but he’s not here.
The teachers say:
at least he’s polite,
he’s not much trouble,
he always sits in the same seat,
he’s shy,
he’s doesn’t talk or text on a cell phone,
and he looks awfully sad.
One of them, Mr. Godwin, asks
Jeremy, are you there?
I say
No,
not really.
Hope
I’m hoping,
(yeah, I do that sometimes)
I hope
that some not so distant day
I will feel like a normal
person.
Don’t know when
or how.
But someday.
I
at
the water fountain the other day
and pretended I
was in the forest
drinking clear water
from
a
mountain
stream.
When I looked up there was
a girl
looking right at me.
I said, I’m sorry,
’cause I thought I was in her way
and maybe she was
thirsty.
Then I stood back
but kept my thumb
on the button.
I offered her
the stream
and the forest
and the mountain too.
Walking
I think the girl smiled.
Maybe she did,
or maybe I imagined it.
And then I got scared
and had to walk
away.
Walking was more my thing:
walking away from,
walking into,
walking out of.
I could walk until there was no more of me left.
Into the woods, along the creek bed.
I was never alone.
There was almost always my companion.
My grandfather.
Old Man would be there
even though he’s been dead and gone for a long while,
this very important someone from the past.
He didn’t actually speak but there was this:
sometimes I could hear his thoughts in my head.
He’d tell me, This is what you do
if you want to survive
in this ole world.
Don’t say too much.
Don’t feel too much.
Don’t reveal who you are.
Don’t stay in one place too long.
The trees are
there for you if you need them
and the birds.
Always trust the sky.
The wind will tell you what you need to know.
And the stars.
But don’t stare at the sun.
Or you’ll go blind.
Sitting Still Through Math Class is Hard
It was math and all about numbers
but it didn’t seem to add up to anything.
Zero + zero x zero = zero.
The teacher, Mr. Diamond,
knew I was a long-lost stone and didn’t usually call on me.
If he asked me, though,
if he asked me for an answer to anything,
I would have just said eleven.
That’s what the Old Man had told me to say
if someone asked me a question I couldn’t answer.
He never explained why, though.
Some of the other kids
stared at me
and I tried not to notice.
I tried very hard
not to notice
but when Diamond started talking to the equation on the blackboard
somebody flicked a paper clip at me.
Hit me on the cheek.
Fuck.
I looked over at him. The creep.
Shithead. Scumbag. No, I didn’t say it out loud.
Held it inside, instead.
His buddy was laughing
but his laughing sounded more like hiccups.
I studied Diamond’s back. He was now acting like he
was making out with those symbols and numbers on the board.
Adults. Go figure.
I wanted to run but told my legs
to stay put.
Told my ass
to stay seated.
Told my brain
to think about the trees—
white pines in the wind.
And then Old Man said
Just think about eleven.
If it gets real bad
say eleven eleven inside your skull.
If it gets real, real bad
I told myself
I’ll make myself invisible.
Somewhere in the Back of the Class
Way in the back, she must have been sitting—
the girl.
I couldn’t just turn around.
Trees can’t do that.
But someone tapped me on the shoulder,
handed me a note.
Little folded up piece of lined paper
that made no sense at first. On top it said this:
Loser
On the back it said: Welcome to Hell.
But when I opened it,
Someone with beautiful handwriting had written:
Don’t let the bastards get to you.
And then a name: