There There

Part 2 opens on Bill, a janitor at the Oakland Coliseum. He is dating Karen, Edwin’s mother. Karen keeps calling Bill to ask him to drive Edwin places, which Bill resents. To Bill, Edwin is a symbol of the young, politically correct world of social media. However, he agrees to drive Edwin because he believes the young man’s new job is a step in the right direction. As Bill cleans the stadium, he reflects on his relationship with Karen and Edwin, as well as his time in jail, during which he read a lot. Then, just before him, Bill sees a drone plane. He wants to destroy it with his trash-grabber but only gets one hit in before it flies away.

The next section focuses on Calvin Johnson, living with his sister Maggie, who takes medication for bipolar disorder, and her daughter, Sonny. The three are eating dinner when Charles Johnson, their brother, shows up with “his shadow, his twin,” Carlos. Both men hold 40 oz bottles of malt liquor and have the “cool and cruel indifference of guys who know you owe them something” (89). Maggie goes to Sonny’s room. Carlos and Charles have arrived because Calvin owes Octavio money and has not paid. Calvin was selling drugs on behalf of Octavio when a group of men—whom Calvin suspects were hired by Octavio—stole a pound of drugs from him.

The men argue briefly, and then take Calvin for a drive. In the car, the three men smoke something more than just marijuana: It “could have been fucking angel dust sprinkled on” (92). Calvin is much higher than he expected to be. They wind up in someone’s kitchen, and Calvin guesses that they are going to see Octavio. Octavio enters the room, angry, and pulls “out an all-white magnum [gun] from the front of his belt” (93). After a short altercation, Octavio calms down and explains a scheme he wants Calvin, Carlos, and Charles to help him with: a robbery at the big upcoming powwow. The three agree, but Calvin thinks it is a “doomed-ass plan” (97).

Next, Jacquie’s story expands to include her adult life as a recently sober addiction counselor attending a conference in Phoenix for work. Jacquie arrives at her motel and reflects on a childhood memory of a pool where she once swam. As Jacquie settles into her room, she texts her sister to check in on her grandchildren, whom she has never met, but gets a surprising response: “Orvil found spider legs in his leg,” followed by: “the boys think it means something ndn” (101)—“ndn” is text-shorthand for “Indian.” Jacquie thinks about drinking from the minifridge but resists the temptation.

The next day, Jacquie surmises that almost everyone at the conference, including her, is attending just to keep their jobs, an idea she dislikes. A presenter recounts his experience getting out of juvenile hall and speaking at a conference like this one on the same day that his brother died by suicide; the man says, “Kids are jumping out the windows […] falling to their deaths” and calls for a better approach to the problem (104). Jacquie has an emotional response and runs out of the room, thinking about her second daughter Jamie, who used intravenous drugs and died by suicide after shooting herself (105).

Jacquie continues to avoid drinking and thinks about her three grandsons—Jamie’s children—being raised by Opal. Later that day, Jacquie goes to an AA meeting and realizes that Harvey is there. She texts Opal: “Harvey, as in: father of the daughter I gave up” (108). Jacquie reflects on her first interaction with Harvey, when he raped her. After the meeting, Harvey initiates a conversation about their daughter, whom Jacquie gave up for adoption, and brings up his own son Edwin whom he just learned about. Jacquie says, “I don’t give a shit about your son, or your life” (113). Harvey invites her to come with him to the powwow, and Jacquie says she will think about it. That evening, she texts Opal, “If i come to Oakland can i stay?” (117).

In Oakland, Orvil is trying on regalia in Opal’s bedroom, worrying about “what she would do if she caught him” (118). He thinks about her explanation that “learning about your heritage is a privilege. A privilege we don’t have” (119). Opal has also told all three boys—Lony, Loother, and Orvil—why their names are spelled in funny ways: Their mom Jamie, who died by suicide when Orvil was six, chose those names so that the boys could be “different” (120). Orvil thinks about dancing in the regalia at the powwow, which he has been dreaming of for years.

Orvil and his brothers go to the Indian Center to earn a $200 gift card to tell their stories for Dene’s documentary project. Dene interviews Orvil briefly, and Orvil tells a story about how he and his brothers came to be raised by Opal. The brothers use the money to buy Lony a bike. After leaving the interview, Orvil tells his brothers he “felt something poking out of” the lump on his leg (125). He pulls at it and finds spider legs, which he saves in a folded-up piece of toilet paper and shows his brothers. They are skeptical, but after looking at the legs they are convinced. As the boys continue riding around town, Orvil listens to powwow music; Loother likes listening to three rappers: Chance the Rapper, Eminem, and Earl Sweatshirt. Lony, on the other hand, listens to Beethoven. When they stop at the Wendy’s parking lot, the brothers discuss the spider legs again, confirming that it is “definitely Indian” and that Orvil should tell their grandma (128). He leaves her a message. The boys then pedal to the Coliseum BART station. Before reaching the stadium, Lony stops the brothers to ask, “[W]hat’s a powwow?” (130). The brothers make fun of him. Orvil realizes that Loother has forgotten the bike lock, so he conceals the bikes in the bushes near the stadium.

In an interlude, Orange continues using the first-person plural narrative voice from the Prologue to discuss several ideas: powwows in general, the Big Oakland Powwow, race and blood, Indigenous last names, and violent death. Orange describes powwows as a coming together of people across the country. He then explains that the Big Oakland Powwow is attended by a wide range of Indigenous Americans: “full-blood, half-breed, quadroon, eights, sixteenths, thirty-seconds. Undoable math. Insignificant remainders” (136).

In a short section titled “Blood,” Orange discusses the complications of measuring a person’s blood in order to deny or allow them rights. He writes, “The wound that was made when white people came and took all that they took has never healed” (137). At the end of the “Blood” section, the narrator asks for people who “were fortunate enough to be born into a family whose ancestors directly benefited from genocide and/or slavery” to look at their last names (138).

Orange also presents an extended metaphor about America involving yachts and lifeboats. The underprivileged people cling to the lifeboats in the sea as they cling to their history, unable to forget it for risk of dying. The privileged people on the yachts do not need to remember history to survive. Worse still, the people on the yachts believe the people struggling on lifeboats are where they are because they are lazy, even though the privileged ones inherited their yachts from their parents.

The penultimate section, “Last Names,” discusses how “last names were given to” Indians, which is “how we are Blacks and Browns, Greens, Whites, and Oranges” (139). In the final section, “Apparent Death,” the narrator predicts a mass shooter coming and “shots […] from everywhere, inside, outside, past, future, now” (140). Orange believes that a mass shooting involving Indigenous Americans as victims would receive far less attention than most shootings.

Tony’s narration follows the interlude and picks up this thread, beginning: “The bullets will come from the Black Hills Ammunition plant” (142). Tony brings the bullets Octavio requested to the Coliseum and throws them “one at a time against the wall behind the bushes past the metal detectors” (142). He wonders “how he had wound up here” (143).

Calvin arrives at work for a planning committee meeting five months before the powwow. He recalls telling Blue, the woman who got him the job, to call it "the Big Oakland Powwow” (145). As the meeting starts, Blue asks Edwin, who is new on the job, to introduce himself. Then, Dene walks in and begins speaking about storytelling, and Calvin stops paying attention. Calvin is worried because he was supposed to find “younger vendors, to support young Native artists and entrepreneurs. But he hadn’t done shit” (146).

Dene convinces Calvin to participate in the storytelling. In Dene’s mind, too many stories about Indigenous Americans are set on reservations. He prefers to document the experience of Indigenous Americans in urban settings. As Calvin shares a string of conflicted thoughts about his identity, Dene wonders how he can elicit a story from Calvin that will be usable in the documentary. The two men discuss what “being Native is about” (149), and Calvin says, “I just don’t know about this blood shit” (150), implying that he is not proud of his Indigenous heritage.

As Jacquie and Harvey drive toward Oakland, Jacquie tries to maintain “long silences […] by ignoring Harvey’s questions” (151). Meanwhile, Harvey tells stories, and Jacquie thinks about how “funny, or not funny but annoying actually” it is that “people in recovery like to tell old drinking stories” (152). Harvey concludes his story by explaining that he saw two tall white men who seemed like aliens in the desert. Jacquie checks her phone to see a text message from Opal about the spider legs: “I found spider legs in my leg right before everything happened with Ronald” (154). Jacquie goes to sleep.