Night of the Living Rez

 

NIGHT OF THE LIVING REZ (2022)

By Morgan Talty

Tin House, 278 pages.

★★★

 

 

 

Night of the Living Rez is the debut work from Penobscot author Morgan Talty. It consists of 12 linked short stories narrated by David—nicknamed Dee–as a youth, an adolescent, and a young man. It is mostly set on a Penobscot reservation in Maine.

 

Before going further, let me say that indigenous writers should be free to tell their stories as they see fit. There are, however, disconnects for non-indigenous readers. Talty often uses non- or barely-translated Penobscot terms. Given that Talty opts for phonetic spellings, it is very difficult to find out more from online Penobscot dictionaries. Many readers, though, may experience more difficulty in making the links that Talty intends because of the book’s short-story format. Had it been a linear novel, the timeframes in which the stories unfold would be easier to locate. More importantly, we could more easily trace David’s evolution.

 

David’s mother left her non-Native husband and has taken up with Frick, who is a bundle of contradictions. He serves as a teacher of what he thinks of as the old ways, though it’s clear that reservation (“rez”) youth and a considerable part of its adult population are more modern (and troubled) than traditional. That includes Frick, who struggles with alcohol. When a strange container (“In a Jar”) shows up under the doorstep Frick declares it “bad medicine,” smudges the entire house, and pins “good” medicine bundles on David, his pregnant sister Paige, and his partner. They mostly think it itches and abandon them. He is often a good step-dad, but sometimes a bad one prone to taking off. When angry he calls David, “little white-boy,” a slam on his paternity. The overall image is that Frick would like to be a Native version of Superman, but he’s too flawed on a personal level and stuck in a bygone values system he can’t maintain even for himself. Traditional ways show up mainly in residual folk beliefs in sprites and spirits, but their mentions appear more reflexive than serious.

 

There is humor interspersed in the collection, especially in the opening tale “Burn.” David is an adolescent in this one who hangs out with his methadone center buddy Fellis. One winter’s night Fellis falls asleep on his way home and his hair is frozen to the ice. The only way to free him is for David to cut off his hair. He remarks, “I never thought I’d scalp a fellow tribe member.” Funny, but also emblematic of a rez filled with social problems of many varieties.

 

As we later learn, by the time he has left childhood—after quitting school—David lives with Fellis and his mother. David’s own mother has many problems of her own, including a seizure disorder, but from Talty’s telling, just about everyone struggles on the rez, be it from discrimination, lack of money, booze, or drugs. Especially the latter. This includes David, who joins Fellis and other mates JP (Jay Pitch) and Tyson in popping pills, including Ativan and “pins” (Klonopin). The drug of choice on the rez is tobacco. Smoking begins in childhood and most of it in the form of cigarettes rather than in rituals. David also engages in some adolescent hijinks such as breaking a bar window, but mostly avoids the serious transgressions of out-of-control Fellis such as serious assaults or a failed robbery of the reservation’s museum whose objective was to sell tribal artifacts to Antiques Roadshow.

 

It is not until near the end of the book that we learn of a deeper source of David’s pain, but he would have had a hard life even without that trauma. On the rez there’s not enough of anything except distress. Meals are often either fast food or scavenged foods such as fiddleheads and moose meat. It’s where people hunt porcupines to sell to a woman who harvests the quills for ceremonial costumes. How’s that for irony? Desperate people need the $20 that she uses to make vestments that honor Native life. In the moving story “Earth Speak” an older David writes, “this reservation was for the dead.”

 

Night of the Living Rez is probably funnier to insiders than me, but it’s hard not to note that the book’s title is a spinoff of the 1968 George Romero movie Night of the Living Dead. It’s often considered the first modern zombie movie. Make of that what you will.

 

Rob Weir