The Only Good Indians(33)
Shaney’s coming over.
Lewis eats toast and a candy bar for breakfast, candy bar first because it makes the toast taste better.
Something definitely dug Harley up. That’s the only way it could have gone. Coyotes, probably, but a badger will scavenge as well. He doesn’t want to picture the long-headed shape of a woman out there on her knees at three in the morning pulling the ground open, but not wanting to have to see it just cleans the focus on that image up, pretty much.
Lewis is puking into the sink before he even realizes he’s gagging. It’s not from nerves about Shaney, he tells himself. It’s from thinking about what Harley must look like now.
When he’s done throwing up he turns the disposal on and a chunk spits back up at him and he falls down in the kitchen trying to get away.
“You’re doing great,” he tells himself from the floor. “You’re completely ready, Blackfeet.”
It’s the first time he’s ever called himself that.
He hand-over-hands his way back to the kitchen table, where at least he probably can’t fall down. Not as far down, anyway. Well, not from as high.
His fingers busy themselves smoothing down an unruly tuft of the elk hide.
It still doesn’t smell right, but it doesn’t smell like cheese anymore, so that’s some kind of progress, right?
10:40 already. If Shaney’s shift starts at noon, and for some reason stopping by here means leaving an hour early, which has to be a lie, then she should be here in the next ten, fifteen minutes, Lewis calculates.
Enough time to unroll that hide. Not for the nicks he knows he left all over and through it, so it would probably only be good for a few pairs of gloves, nothing of size, but because …
Maybe some elk are special, right?
What if it wasn’t that she was carrying a calf early? Or, what if she was carrying that calf early because she needed to get it birthed before … before some Gabe or Cass or Ricky or Lewis poached her in late spring, or some shed-hunter popped her with the handgun he only carries for bear?
What if she needed to get that calf out because she was already scheduled to die, so she could get skinned?
In the museum, behind glass, there’s an old winter count, drawn on … it’s probably buffalo, Lewis imagines. But why not elk?
And who’s to say it’s all drawn, either?
It could be that, back when, the people would bring any hides or skins that looked different in to the old-time version of a postal inspector. Because maybe some hides, some skins, right when they peel back from the meat, there’s already some markings there, right? A starting point, maybe. A story of things to come. Pictures of the winter yet to come.
That day in the snow, the Thanksgiving Classic, there’d been too much blood and hurry to wipe the skin clean.
But there’s time now.
Lewis clears the table and unrolls it delicately, like parchment.
The back side of the skin is black with freezer burn or something, Lewis isn’t sure. He tries to wipe it away with paper towels but it’s in the pores like ink, which he guesses either blows his big theory or proves it, only what this skin is tattooed with is a storm so bad it eats the world.
“Little late,” Lewis says down to the young elk. Could have used this kind of warning about 1491 or so.
There is something, though. In the last roll, which would have been the first when it was being rolled up, is that trading-post knife that he thought he’d lost.
He’d put it in here, really?
For what reason?
Lewis extracts the knife. The blade that’s on is the short skinning one with the curved nose. The handle still fits perfect in his hand, too, which is why he bought it in the first place. Oh, the adventures he thought they were going to have.
Instead, that was the last day he ever hunted.
He sits back in his chair, studies the ladder he’s already got set up half under the fan, already test-leaned over to see if it lines up with the dent in the wall. Thank you, Peta. Even when she’s not here, she’s saving him.
10:55. Shaney should be here by now.
Lewis stands, studies the living room all over again to see what he’s forgetting.
Nothing he can think of.
When things are simple, there’s not a lot to keep in mind.
He crosses to the front door, cocks it open, then comes back to the living room, looking from the Road King’s headlight bracket on the floor and up to the fan, confirming the angle one last time. It’s dead-on. The elk was right here.
And she’s about to be again.
Lewis puts one foot on the lowest step of the ladder and reaches up for the red-handled screwdriver on the fourth step, at eye level.
He can’t just be standing on a ladder for no reason, right?
It’s 11:05 before tires crunch up in front of the house.
“Okay, then,” Lewis says, and nods to himself, steps up the ladder until the spinning blades of the fan are at his hips again.
His angle down onto the headlight bracket on the floor is perfect.
Shaney doesn’t step on the beer can on the porch, just knocks on the door. It creaks in with her knocking, because Lewis left it slightly ajar.
“Blackfeet?” she calls.
“In here,” Lewis calls back, the screwdriver handle clamped between his lips muffling his words, the strain of keeping both hands busy at the little spotlight compressing his breath.