Full-Fledged Indian: A Novel BY Josh Hart M.F.A., University of Kansas 2010 Submitted to the Department of English and the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts Committee Members Laura Moriarty Chairperson Alice Lieberman Michael Butler Date defended April 19, 2010 2 The Thesis Committee for Josh Hart certifies that this is the approved version of the following thesis: Full-Fledged Indian: A Novel Committee Members Laura Moriarty Chairperson Alice Lieberman Michael Butler Date defended April 19, 2010 3 The first time that Rory Strasser and I really spoke, she was teaching me how to dive. It was still early that first summer. The campers would not arrive for a week still, and the directors filled our days with menial tasks to get the camp ready. I had just spent that entire morning combing through my long-jump pit, picking out any small rocks or animal turds that might give the impression of a mediocre instructional. If it were not that, then I would surely have been assigned to one of the crews tasked with repainting all the bunks, or made to line the fields or count plates in the Dining Hall. That of course was if there was no meetings on camper safety or resource management to attend. At the end of the nine-day Orientation, they could have hauled in the worst horde of monster- spawn children and we would have been glad. The swim test served as one of the dubious highlights of Orientation. Some state regulation required that every staff member needed to be able to swim a lap in our roped- off pool. The swimming was not the hard part. The problem lied in the fact that even my mid-June, the average lake temperature hovered barely above an Arctic level. Scuba instructors wore full-body wetsuits to the test. Directors suddenly had to be pulled away for important phone calls, or would discover new inventory checklists to thumb over. Veteran counselors bribed their friends on the swim staff to falsify their records. No ploy was too deplorable. I too would have begged out of it, if not for Rory. We had talked before, but never directly at each other. I had been her noticing for a week at that point, where she sat in the dining hall for those first few informal meals, or across the Fieldhouse as we underwent team building activities. I thought that she was shy and demure from the way she let escape a little squeal during the trust fall exercise. I spent a few days orbiting the veteran girls that took her in, and we talked in a roundabout way, which mostly consisted of me nodding along to something she said in response to someone else, or offering lame answers to the most basic questions. I couldn‟t imagine that this good-looking thing in soccer shorts would actually have an interest in me. I mean, I did okay back home, but that was without being surrounded by a cadre of Australian water-skiers and their nationally mandated five-percent body fat. She stood at the end of the dock, looking entirely comfortable in her red lifeguard suit. As the line formed to take the test, I did some quick math and placed myself in her rotation. When it came my turn, I attempted to walk casually down the dock while also keeping the muscles on my upper body tense. She greeted me with a smile, said my name. “Is there supposed to some goal I‟m shooting for?” I asked. She checked something off on her clipboard. “Don‟t drown.” “You are about to be so impressed,” I said. I lined my toes up with the end of the dock, gripping the edge of the wood- grained plastic. Without giving myself time to contemplate the serene, lunar-cold surface before me, I leapt forward. The shock of the water caused me to spring back to the surface as soon as my feet touched the soft clay of the lakebed. I held the dock with one hand. “Ready?” I asked. Rory put her free hand on her hip. The other instructors were already moving on to their next swimmer. 4 “What the hell was that?” she asked. “What? I dove?” “You did?” “I think so.” I was never strong in water sports. Early on in my life, I discovered that a swift doggy paddle would get you where you needed to go more often than not. Diving seemed too extravagant, I told myself. If I could keep my head above water, I was doing just fine. “That sucked, Lee.” She set down her clipboard and reached out for my hand. “I‟m not letting you take the test unless you can manage a dive.” I paddled out a few feet out of her reach. “That sounds abusive.” “Come here,” she said, trying to coax me in with her hand, as if I were a boat looking to dock. She got on her knees and extended her arm, displaying an ample chasm through the neck of her suit. A few strands of hair, drying from the lake water, swung between us. “You‟ll be so proud of yourself.” After briefly considering the effects of pulling her in after me, I accepted her hand and climbed back on the dock. I immediately regretted my decision. The slight morning breeze brought about a full-body shiver. I eyed with envy those on the opposite dock and the giant beach towels they had procured. “This is fun.” I tried to keep my teeth steady as I spoke. “Really really great.” Rory proceeded to tell me the proper way to bend my knees, and to lead with my arms and then my head. It all sounded so simple coming from her, and I almost believed that I could do it. My second attempt resulted in me smacking my midsection against the water, which led to the interesting combination of freezing and burning. I coughed out a lung‟s worth of lake water upon surfacing. “That felt better,” I managed to say after a minute. Rory regarded me with an expression that was equal parts charmed amusement and blinding frustration. I didn‟t think that flavor was possible until that moment, though I would come to know it quite well. Finally, she shook her head and picked up her clipboard. “Maybe if you just promise not to drown this summer.” She made a few marks with her pen. “Tell you what,” I said. “What if I buy you a drink tonight, and you‟ll pretend that I‟m not a liability at the waterfront?” I floated on my back and gave one good stroke with my arms, and returned to the dock. After my second jump the water no longer seemed so cold. “You guys sure you don‟t need some extra help down here?” I asked. “Looks like you still have a lot of work to do. Maybe I could test out those sail boats.” “Two drinks, and make sure you dance with me so that Fink kid can‟t.” “Three,” I said. “And you promise to leave him out of it.” I lifted myself out of the water, and flopped onto my back on the dock. I coughed again. “It‟s a deal,” Rory said, and then nudged my shoulder with her bare foot. “So get back in there and swim your lap. I have a job to do.” 1. In this corner 5 We called him the Jittering Jew. He was a young boxer that came to offer the camp a brief clinic in the finer points of punching. He appeared before the assembled camp with his fists already gloved, and his red satin robe appearing vaguely obscene in the late July heat. His manager announced him as “Dancin‟ Danny Rosen” and signaled to the DJ booth, where the AV guy pressed a digital button and a song heavy with synthesizers and guitar riffs rattled from the ceiling-mounted speakers. Rosen emerged from the side door, a sad New England Boxing Association belt – really a red, white and blue strap with a few shiny plates the size of coffee saucers – raised above his head. “If this leads to him telling me to drink my milk and say my prayers, I‟m leaving,” Adam said from over my shoulder. I looked back. We held our customary spot in the Fieldhouse, a corner of the bleachers that was up high enough where you could put a rafter between your eyes and whoever was down on the court expecting your attention. Adam and I were co- counselors, and our five campers sat around us. They were the oldest kids in camp, and saw some of these evening activities as little more than a required nuisance. From up there Adam and I kept a lid on them, for the most part. “That hypnotist from five summers ago, the Great Gangino, he was worse than this,” I said. “The volunteers ended up faking the whole thing because they felt so bad about it.” “They weren‟t faking,” said Ack, one of my campers. It was my seventh summer with him, the most of all my campers. I remember him throwing up when he was ten and took a bet to smell the swill bucket in the dining hall, and then I shuddered when I realize that he now has a driver‟s license. “They most definitely were faking,” I said.