Page 18 of Love Is a War Song

“It was a good try. Next time you’ll get it. I need another cup of coffee and then I believe everyone knows what they’re supposed to do? Avery, you’ll clean up the kitchen and when I come back, I’ll show you the attic and where to start.”

I nodded, biting my lip.

Everyone started clearing their plates and taking them to the kitchen, but Lucas lingered in the chair next to mine.

“It really wasn’t all that bad. You’re getting the hang of it,” he said.

“Careful, we still have lunch and dinner.”

“I saw a bunch of chicken in the freezer, that’s easy to cook.”

“Oh yeah? You like yours medium rare?” I asked him, keeping my face neutral.

It had the desired effect. Lucas looked absolutely horrified and dumbfounded.

I laughed, a real good belly laugh.

“I’m kidding! Of course I know you have to cook chicken all the way through. Give me some credit.”

We locked eyes and it felt like it was the first time Lucas actually saw me.

Beneath the Avery Fox image and the getting off on the wrong foot.

His mouth broke out into a slow, crooked smile.

He had a slightly hooked tooth that gave him a wolfish air.

It was devastating, because I did not need to be any more attracted to this man.

“You comin’, man?” Davey poked his head into the dining room.

Lucas shook his head, like he was shaking himself out of a stupor. He took his plate and left.

···

The sun filtered into the musty attic; beams of light illuminated dust motes dancing in the air.

It wasn’t like the tiny attics I’d come in contact with in crappy rentals in California, where you had to push a small rectangle of cottage cheese drywall up from the ceiling to shove Christmas decor out of the way.

This attic was different. It was huge. An unassuming wood door on the second floor that looked like it led to a closet actually hid a narrow set of stairs that went straight up to the unfinished attic.

Exposed wood beams crisscrossed above me and stacks of boxes and crates filled the space.

There was only a sliver of room to slip between the stacks to try to find anything.

“This is it,” Lottie said, squeezing through the tiny aisle ahead of me. I sucked in my stomach and turned sideways to follow.

“I tried to catalog this stuff years ago, but you know how it is, other things take priority and then next thing you know twenty years pass by and this has just been sitting here collecting dust,” Lottie continued.

She stopped to sneeze, and I felt my nose tickle in commiseration.

“If I reckon correctly, this back here is the oldest stuff that is likely worth the most for antique enthusiasts.”

I stopped to stand next to her and stood on my tippy-toes to look over the wall of boxes. Behind it was an old-ass spindle like in Sleeping Beauty .

“How the hell am I gonna get that out of here?” I asked, bewildered. No wonder this stuff just sat up here forgotten; it was overwhelming to see the amount of work. I was happy to do it, but I was limited with what I could physically carry down the staircase on my own.

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that. Focus on all the stuff in the boxes and crates first, make a wider pathway. Then you can take photos of these up here and if we get any takers, we can make moving it a requirement.”

I nodded and turned around to the other side of the attic. “Any idea what kind of stuff is over here?”

“No idea.” Lottie lifted the lid off the closest box and laughed. I craned my neck to see what could bring such delight to Lottie’s eyes.

A rainbow clown wig. She reached in and pulled out a single oversized shoe and a horn.

“Do we have a long history of clowns in the Fox family?” I asked, giggling behind my hand.

“I have no idea what secrets this place holds, but I can’t remember anyone wearing a clown costume. This looks like something my uncle Chet would have. He was always pulling pranks.”

“Which side of your family did Uncle Chet come from?” I asked in my smallest voice possible, afraid I’d spook her into clamming up again.

But if he was her uncle, then that made him my great-uncle.

It was another tether to this place, this history.

I was desperate for any kernel she would give me about where I came from.

“My daddy’s younger brother.” She smiled to herself, patting the wig down to put the lid back on. “He was a good man. He had some issues, but you’ll find that we all do.”

“Like health issues?” Did we have hereditary diseases I should be taking preventative measures for, like heart disease or cancer?

“He was an unsettled soul, always in and out of trouble, till trouble got him in the end.” Her mouth visibly zipped up and she rolled her shoulders back.

Curiosity got the better of me. “Did he kill someone?”

“What? Why on God’s green earth would you assume that?” Lottie put her hands on her hips like an angry teacher.

I huffed a breath and let out a laugh of exasperation. “You don’t tell me anything. I’m left to just let my brain fill in the blanks.” I shrugged, hands turned out as far as the small aisle could accommodate.

“Your brain went to murder?” She sounded genuinely shocked.

“I guess that is a messed-up assumption. I won’t pry if it hurts you to think about.” I looked down at the ground. Maybe our family history was full of pain, and she wasn’t purposefully hiding things from me but protecting herself from reliving difficult memories.

“Uncle Chet wasn’t a murderer, but he was a klepto. He couldn’t help himself. He never needed the things he stole, but he swiped a pack of cigarettes for the hell of it and when the shopkeeper caught him, Chet ran out into the road and was hit by a car.”

“Oh my goodness! That’s so tragic.” What a terrible story.

“It devastated my family. This happened back when I was a little girl, but my daddy was never the same. Do you have a compulsive urge to steal things?” She raised her eyebrow at me in question.

“No, though the internet does believe I stole a false identity and culture. People leave ‘culture thief’ in the comments of my Instagram.”

“Your what-a-gram?”

“Nothing.” I shook my head, ashamed I had said anything, even if it was a joke after learning about the tragic ending to my great-uncle Chet.

“I don’t know about the internet or grams, but you aren’t a ‘culture thief.’ I don’t even know what that means.”

“You saw the tabloids, Lottie. No one believes I’m Native American, and you mentioned it would be easy to enroll me, but I don’t even know if that would be enough to satisfy everyone I pissed off wearing that warbonnet on the cover of Rolling Stone .

” What Lucas said last night about using them for clout played through my mind.

That was not what I wanted to do. I wanted to have family, be a part of something.

Belong somewhere. But with how contentious the media was, would they warp my attempts at connection?

The last thing I wanted was to make things worse for everyone and keep this narrative in the tabloids going.

I didn’t want any of this vitriol directed at them—especially not as I was trying to get to know them.

I wanted them to like me…to love me. I wanted to belong to the Fox family by more than just my name.

That dream seemed impossible at the moment, but for Lottie to host me—it felt like there was an opening there.

“I don’t know what all the fuss is about.

For the week it came out all I heard was Lucas yelling and complaining about it.

I mean I get why the greater Indian Country would be up in arms, but for the rest of the country?

They were fine with it when Cher did it, or when Johnny Depp did it.

There are still so many schools with Indians as mascots, and teenagers wear feather bonnets all over Oklahoma.

I don’t think it’s good at all. But death threats?

The conversation needs to be had and everyone needs to respect Native imagery, but it was sad to see so much anger directed at you, when so many get away with it. ”

“If I could go back in time, I never would have agreed to wear it. It looked edgy and the statement was to reclaim the imagery, but it backfired.” I looked around in that dusty attic; it was a time capsule full of relics of our past. If only I could just as easily hide my regrets somewhere in an attic, forget, and move on.

“Can’t you tell these people on insta-whatever that you acknowledge you made a mistake and the intended message was lost in the inappropriateness of the medium? I heard one of the ladies in my Bible study say that and thought it was smart.”

“Your Bible study talked about me?”

“Well, yeah, it was the biggest news to shake Indian Country since the Redskins changed their name to the Washington Commanders. When our collective voice gets heard, it makes waves.”

“Do the ladies in your Bible study hate me?”

“No, sweetheart. No one here hates you.” Lottie’s tone was gentle.

“Not even you?”

Her honey eyes turned hard, and she clenched her jaw. “Especially not me.”

I sucked in a breath, unsure of what to say. It was a loaded moment and my eyes watered. She had no idea how much I needed that. She had not made a single moment of my time here easy, but this made it a little better.

Lottie clapped her hands together. “Now you got work to do. I would start by looking for the easiest boxes to move and you can stick them in one of the spare rooms to start cataloging.”

She tried to scoot by me, but there was no room for two grown women, so she got stuck.

We both mumbled “Sorry” and I tried to sidestep back toward the attic door so she could get out, but then she stepped on my foot.

“Don’t move, I’ll get by.” Lottie grabbed the tops of the boxes to use as leverage to climb out.

Stubborn woman.

Lottie made it to the door, but I realized I had no idea how I would catalog, take photos, or upload them online.

“Wait!” I called after her.

“What?”

“Do you have a camera and a computer?”

“Lucas has all that. He runs everything technology-related for me. You can ask him for what you need at lunch. Now I reckon you best get started, so you can make some headway before heading down to make food.”

“What time is it right now?”

She stepped back into the attic, dug through a crate by the door, and pulled out a round clock. Each hour had a different chicken picture and the twelve was a rooster. How fitting.

“This still works, use this.”

The hands were almost to the eight hour. Lottie nodded with a tight smile and left. I looked all around me at the mess and history of generations of Foxes. Then the clock started to cluck.