Truth and Bright Water

Tecumseh explains that his mother and Cassie used to be inseparable when they were younger. He learns from his grandmother that his mother became a beautician because Cassie had also wanted to be one. When Tecumseh asks his grandmother questions about Cassie’s potential involvement in the American Indian Movement, his grandmother changes the subject.

Tecumseh remembers one story of his mother’s friendship with Cassie in particular. When the two were younger, they went on a double date with Elvin and Franklin to a fancy restaurant. Halfway through, the women decided to go to the restroom together and change their outfits. When they returned, Elvin and Franklin didn’t notice the switch.

Tecumseh recklessly drives his father’s truck into the encampment where Franklin, Lum’s father and the tribe’s chief, has set up a tent for the “Indian Days” festival. He accidentally tears the tent’s overhang off with the truck, and both Franklin and Elvin are outraged. While avoiding them, Tecumseh encounters a young woman named Rebecca who claims she is looking for a duck.

Later in the day, Elvin takes Tecumseh on a ride around the encampment on a motorcycle. Elvin’s wild, daredevil driving enrages Franklin, who purchased the motorcycles for the upcoming festival. The two men nearly come to blows, but Elvin diffuses the situation by making light of Franklin, calling him an “asshole.” Elvin and Tecumseh return to the truck, and Elvin reflects on the frustrations of life on a reservation and the reasons why tourists come to their part of the world.

Elvin drives Tecumseh home. Tecumseh worries that his mother will wonder where he’s been, but when he gets back, he finds that the house is empty except for Soldier. Tecumseh climbs into the rafters to check on the skull, and while he’s up there his mother returns to the house with Cassie. From the rafters, Tecumseh overhears a tense, oblique conversation between the two women in which his mother asks Cassie if she’s going to speak to an unspecified man. Cassie responds, “Sure as hell no point making the same mistake twice” (113). Tecumseh’s mother gives Cassie a suitcase full of Tecumseh’s old baby clothes, and Cassie accuses Tecumseh’s mother of carrying a 15-year grudge. There’s a brief reference to “Mia,” and the conversation shifts to Cassie asking for his mother to wash her hair.

This chapter is punctuated by Tecumseh’s memories of the tensions between his parents leading up to their separation. He remembers how absent his father was from their family life, whether he was literally gone from the house or simply cloistered in the garage late into the evenings. The final spoken interaction Tecumseh recalls between his parents is Elvin asking his wife if she was still mad at him and her not responding to his question directly.

Tecumseh recalls the variety of gifts that Cassie sent him from her travels abroad. Some of these he connected with, like a Swiss Army Knife, but he felt many were meant for a girl, like a doll, a pink box, and a copy of Anne of Green Gables. These gifts always come in July, which Tecumseh can’t make sense of because his birthday is in April.

In the morning, Tecumseh calls Lum, who wants to meet later at Happy Trails with the skull. Before leaving, Tecumseh has a conversation with Cassie about some baby photos she’s looking at. He asks both Cassie and his mother if he’s the child in the picture, but neither will confirm it.

Later that day, Tecumseh takes Soldier to visit Monroe. He finds the artist in a swimsuit sprawled out in the tall grass near the church. Monroe, no longer using the wheelchair, asks Tecumseh to play-act being a shark; this entire scenario causes Tecumseh to worry about Monroe’s mental health. The appearance of the Cousins interrupts their play-acting. The wild dogs lead Soldier into a bramble patch filled with barbed wire, wounding Soldier. As Monroe and Tecumseh tend to the wounds, they discuss Monroe’s past in painting restoration as well as the work Monroe has planned for the day: erecting sculptures of buffalo on the plain. After completing their work, Tecumseh muses that the fake buffalo look “sort of real” (135).

Tecumseh returns home to find his mother looking at pictures of herself and Cassie when they were young. There are two men in the photos: Franklin and a man Tecumseh can’t identify. Tecumseh decides to take Soldier for a walk, and he finds his father lurking outside. Elvin is reticent about coming inside, so the two stay out by his truck and discuss whether his mother is seeing anyone else. Tecumseh also asks his father to talk to Franklin about not abusing Lum, but this only angers Elvin. Tecumseh goes back inside, and his mother tells him that she’ll be gone for the next few days but will be back in time for “Indian Days.”

This chapter is interpolated with Tecumseh’s memories of the first months after his mother left Elvin and her growing desire to leave Bright Water. When Elvin found out that she was thinking of leaving, he purchased her a car as a present. Tecumseh’s mother, though, was not pleased with the gift; she looked at it, in Tecumseh’s reckoning, with the same look she had when “Soldier was a puppy and had done his business next to the couch” (144).