Winter Loon(52)

Over tuna fish sandwiches, Topeka told me that he had seen my father in Sioux Falls the previous winter, how he’d come to Topeka’s place there, crashed on the couch, the two of them getting shit-face drunk for days on end. “I knew something was wrong, but it wasn’t like me to pry. I mean, man’s got a right to his shit. Finally, one night, blotto drunk, he tells me about the accident, about . . .” He hesitated as if I didn’t know the whole story. “You and your mom. About the ice.”

Topeka looked away, took his hat off, and set it on the table. “Listen, now, I was pretty drunk, but I could have swore . . .” He licked his lips, huffed. “Swore Moss told me you both went into the lake. You both drowned. Hey, you want a cigarette?” He reached into his shirt pocket, drew out a pack, tapped twice against the table, then pointed the pack at me.

My stomach clenched, and I shook my head. I was on the lake, my mother reaching for me, pulling, clawing. Me backing away. The empty space. Dawn. My father in the hospital, accusing her of faking the whole thing. “No, it was only my mother who drowned.”

Topeka exaggerated a shrug. “My mistake. Obviously. I mean, you’re here, right?”

Had Topeka misunderstood, or was there something else? Something more grim. I glanced around the warehouse, at all the hiding places. I looked for a back door where my father could have snuck out unnoticed, gotten away from me like we were playing some sort of game. I looked again at Topeka, his cold eyes, the bony fingers on his neck. Had Topeka killed that man? Is that why he got that tattoo? I stood up, certain I couldn’t sit for a second longer. “I don’t believe you. You’re lying to me.”

“Believe me or don’t. It is what it is.”

I walked through the warehouse, opened the bathroom door. Empty. The welder stopped. Lifted his hood. It wasn’t him. I turned back to Topeka. He was still sitting at the table, eating his sandwich. I was probably twenty feet away from the picnic table, alone on the concrete floor like I’d been alone on the ice. Dread was the nearest thing to me. It was all I was. “Where is he? Where is he?” I yelled it over and over, until Topeka ran to me, grabbed me, walked me outside.

The sun was high in the sky, bright and burning. I shielded my eyes against it, though I would have had it burn everything out of me at that moment.

“Look. He told me he was going straight. No more carnival. No more life on the road. He mentioned Wyoming. Montana. I haven’t heard from him or seen him since.”

“So he’s dropped off the face of the earth, is that it? Or is that what he told you to say if I came looking for him? I don’t get why he’d say I was dead. Where would that get him?”

“Listen. I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but there was a woman by the name of Aveline Blue. I met her a couple of times some years back. I don’t know nothing about her. Don’t know if that’s who he’s with. Here’s what I know. Face of an angel. Giant ass.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“I don’t know. But that’s all I’ve got to tell you. I’m sorry you come all this way. If I see Moss . . .”

“Yeah, forget about it.”

He had told me to wait, and I had. I was the living dead. I drove back to Loma in a daze. I felt part of nothing, not the land or the road. Not my grandparents. I had no family at all. Even my memories seemed to belong to someone else now. Now that I’m dead, I remember thinking, like the words could turn me to dust. I arrived back in Loma with no recollection of the drive. Nothing was different than when I’d left that morning, yet everything was changed.



RUBY WAS SITTING IN FRONT of the television when I walked in. Gip was likely downtown, as usual.

“Don’t you track in mud!”

“Where would I pick up mud, Ruby? It’s bone dry outside.”

She ignored me and took a swill from her beer can, her crab-apple face flickering blue and red with the changing image on the television.

“Is there anything to eat?”

“What? The Indians run out of government cheese?”

“I’m hungry, Ruby,” I said. “I haven’t eaten since lunch.”

“Fend for yourself. You’re not a cripple.”

I got milk and leftover spaghetti, and Ruby hollered for me to grab her another beer. Some crime show was on the television, and instead of retreating to my room, I set Ruby’s beer on her TV tray and plopped down on the couch. Two detectives were standing over a body that had washed up on a beach somewhere.

“Drove down to Brookings today.”

“Turn up the volume for me, will you?”

I adjusted the volume and gave the side of the set a slap to stop the rolling picture. Ruby grunted, satisfied.

“Aren’t you even going to ask why or whose car I drove or anything?”

“Got something to do with your Indian friend, I suspect, so I couldn’t care less.”

“Told you I heard about a friend of my dad’s this summer. I went looking for him to see if he knew anything about where he is.” The coroner arrived in a black car and zipped the body into a bag.

Her lower lip twisted around her cigarette. “And? Let me guess. He didn’t know shit.”

“Not exactly nothing. But not much. He had heard about Mom, though. Funny thing was, he thought I’d . . .” The medics kicked the wheels of the gurney and folded it into the back of the black car.