Son of a Trickster

For two weeks Jared has been staying with various friends, and he goes to the All Native Basketball Tournament with Dylan. Jared wakes up from a black-out in a motel and remembers he was conceived here when Maggie met Phil as a player on one of the teams. Jared decides to hitchhike home, wondering how long his mom will resent him. An old Native woman pulls over for him, and “beneath her face, Jared could see something twisting [...] something in her that was as dark as cedar bark, with large yellowed fangs and knobby, twisted knuckles” (148). Convinced he has taken psychedelics, and while his “inner voice” tells him to run, he makes up excuses not to drive with her. When he returns to the motel, he decides to go home with Dylan, but he drives the truck because Dylan is still drinking.

Jared notices the Native woman’s car at a rest stop, but it is empty when he checks on it. He momentarily leaves his body and sees himself “from the vantage point of someone in the bush, seeing himself lit by the headlights, staring back” (152). He returns home, exhausted and confused, but notices someone cleaned his room.