"LOLITA LAST STAR"

(In real life Lolita Last Star is the daughter of Irene Blood Many Hides Last Star who just died recently. She may not be amused that Micaela Marie Young used her name. In the Blackfeet way, names are serious business and require permission.)


PHONE RINGS:

“Hey, you’re in some babe’s master’s thesis!”

“Huh?”

>Yeah, does ‘Lolita Last Star’ ring a bell?"

“Nope.”

“Check it out. It’s on the Internet. I’ll say this: clearly, she didn’t have you for her high school English teacher! Her spell checker doesn’t help her out a whole lot. There are some real howlers in there, even though it was approved by SIX MSU professors who declared it ‘satisfactory regarding content, English usage, format, citation, bibliographics style and consistency.’ I’ll say this much: it’s consistently lurid and sensational, if not inflammatory. The punctuation is consistently, um, creative."


PHONE RINGS:

“Is this thesis author the same woman who made up that tale about Bob Scriver raping Indian women?”

“Possible. She cited my blog post about that tale in her bibliography, though her bib sure wouldn’t pass at the University of Chicago or even at BCC!”


PHONE RINGS:

“Hey, isn’t that the smart mouth Bambi-as-social-worker who wanted to get laid by Browning hotshot firefighter Indians but was afraid of going on the rez so wanted to come sit all cozy in your kitchen for some coffee and comforting?”

“I refuse to answer.”


EMAIL ARRIVES:

“I remember this one. You blogged about her last spring. She’s the one who was a fire-fighter for two weeks and then washed out, ruining her love life. The one who was the head of Amnesty International at Bozeman but has a real fascination with violence. The one who can’t decide whether she wants to be Native American or Buddhist. The one who wanted to research the Flood of ‘64 but wouldn’t interview actual survivors. The one who can’t keep the names of the highways straight, maybe because she tried to interview you on her cell phone while driving?”

“Explains a lot, doesn’t it?”


PHONE RINGS:

“Isn’t this the one who claimed she already has an agent? Book to come out soon?”

“Yup. Now all she needs is a plot for her wandering narrative and a good editor with a sharp pencil. It’s high energy writing but she has a tin ear. Sometimes she’s channeling Gary J. Cook’s wild Vietnam stuff and other times it’s pure bodice-ripper or misery lit. The theory could be left out: it’s only name-dropping. She never integrates it.”

“What did you do?”

“Called her prof and told him to tell her that she’d better not be hanging around Ick’s or they’d find her face down in a creek somewhere.”

“What did she do?”

“Threatened to sue me.”

____________________

QUOTES from “Lolita Last Star”:

“This project started a fight. Well, to take ownership, I inadvertently started a fight through a poorly planned interview with an old windsock flagging around on the plains, south of the Blackfeet Reservation. In her evaluation of me, she chided 'you are an alien, digging around in what you don’t know.' I hung up the phone feeling terrified, mostly of myself, as the ultimate freak and outsider.”


“The novel Lolita Last Star, that I view as a collectively owned and created work, due to its inclusive, collaborative nature, serves as a careful, yet creative response to shared criticisms of the pitfalls, grave omissions, and false representations common to the works of many nonnative writers.”


“Mary Scriver is an old white lady, and a missionary with a background in Speech Education and Religious Studies—a granny with a punch, and a library card.”


“I pulled off of Highway 44 in a turnout, taking a moment to compose myself, when I saw a freshly smashed pigeon on the side of the road—all dry, blue gray feathers covering the shame of purple entrails and red death. 'That’s me,' I told Debbie, 'A smashed pigeon on the side of the road.' She laughed lovingly at my naiveté and said, for one, 'I should have gone with you,' and 'well, don’t give up.' Smashed pigeons aside, the reason I linger about my new prairie dwelling friend, is that despite my desire to instantly dismiss her as a bit on the 'unique' side, like many old shut-ins scattered about in rural landscapes, her criticism and claims pertaining to credibility are common.”


“In a recent conversation with my mother to do some fact checking, she said 'Well, there are rumors that a Cherokee or two married into the family.' Even though I groaned a bit, she meant well, and her desire to patchwork our family identity came mostly out of a place of empathy. My maternal grandparents are Romani holocaust survivors who in their words, settled in Tennessee, Illinois, and Texas to make a fortune in oil.”


“Charlene cleared three cement steps without effort, and blast [sic] through the screen door, gasping for air as her parents sat looking out the window at the rain. The orchestra of chaos and truncated time delivered a hot, impatient rust brown Chevy to the driveway, and she scuttled their bodies out the door and into the cab of the truck with the slam of a heavy door.”


“Miles away, Frank fought a war of his own, comforted only by the thought that his new wife lived safely and comfortably in a small home paid for by his enlistment advance, and a loan from each of their parents. During the apex of the flood, Frank’s dizzy head lay in the lap of a naked Vietnamese woman. He visited the small hut when he felt lonely for Charlene, or left out by the other GI’s. The woman’s thin arms framed his face and he studied the soft black hair on the woman’s arm. She giggled and squirmed, occasionally tickled him, and whispered closely into his ear. The steam of her breath turned his inner ear damp and her words, indiscernible, soothed him into a rare state of relaxation. The structure of her body resembled Charlene’s in its thin, yet healthy composition.”


“For such a supposed stupid man, his artful displays with a strand of fly fishing line must have been an anomalistic skill. In the morning and evening sun, the free floating, delicate thread gently flagged towards the surface of the water, and drifted whisper like until he pulled the swaying ‘S’ back the same way a beautiful young woman throws back her hair. Despite his secret grace, dog-like, he gazed dumbly at the water, and if the line bonked a few times before his final reel in, he slunk in late to work without a lunch. Many suspected that fishing, in actuality, afforded Larry a rare opportunity away from his pious and angry wife, to drink his secret stash of peach Schnapps. The reel, rod, and ample alone time provided the perfect diversion for Larry to drink and sing happily by the water. Around town, people awarded Larry’s behavior with a nickname, Too-Drunk-To-Fish-Larry. A few kids had seen him attempting to load his hook with a worm, but he dumped his rod in the water instead.”

http://etd.lib.montana.edu/etd/2010/young/YoungM0510.pdf


PHONE RINGS:

“So is all forgiven now? Should Micaela Marie Young drop by for coffee with Old Windsock?”

“No.”


Old Windsock