The Only Good Indians(34)

“Say what?” Shaney calls back, leaning in, it sounds like.

“In here!” Lewis says, louder, hopefully clearer.

She steps in timidly, like this might be a trap.

“What the hell are you doing up there?” she says from the edge of the living room.

“Stupid light,” Lewis says, and trying to speak around the screwdriver means losing grip on that screwdriver. It tumbles down behind him, bounces into the corner.

“Smooth move, Ex-Lax,” Shaney says with a smile.

“There’s the bracket,” Lewis says, nodding down to it, and then realizes that, without a screwdriver, why’s he up on the ladder anymore? Why isn’t he climbing down for the screwdriver?

But he can’t leave this step of the ladder—he has to look down through the fan, see Shaney’s real self.

His hand, moving on its own almost, rounds to his back pocket, comes back with the knife from the elk hide. He looks at it like just seeing it, doesn’t remember having grabbed it.

With this round-nosed skinning blade, though, it’s a putty knife, an art knife, the widest flathead. He swallows it into his hand, works it up into the space between the spotlight’s buried can and the crumbly ceiling.

“Need help?” Shaney asks, and Lewis looks to her, shakes his head, and finally sees her for the first time. She’s dressed for work, just normal clothes, same flannel as ever, but her hair’s still done from, he guesses, the night before. It’s spiral-curled but still forever long, over half her face.

No, Peta does not need to come home, find Shaney here looking like this.

But it’s fake, too, Lewis reminds himself. She’s showing him what he wants to see, she’s making herself up like this specifically to get to him.

“So when are you coming back?” Shaney asks. “There’s a pool at work, you know?”

“Tomorrow,” Lewis says, straining with the fake adjustment he’s doing on the light. “Day after.”

“Make it Friday and I’ll split the take,” Shaney says.

“What’s the pool up to?” Lewis asks, because he’s no dumb Indian.

Shaney just smiles, nods across to the headlight bracket, says, “Frankenface will know what this is?”

“His name is Silas,” Lewis says.

“Past tense,” Shaney says, and, stepping down into the living room at last, she reaches over to the bank of switches, turns the fan off, finding the control first try.

Lewis’s heart drops. His face goes numb.

She knows exactly what he’s doing.

“I’m saving your life,” she says, and is to the couch now, is squatting down, knees together, to collect the bracket.

Lewis zeroes in on her through the fan but the blades are already sagging, losing their speed, the rate of flicker slowing, slowing.

Through them like that, Shaney’s just Shaney.

“No, no, turn it on,” Lewis says, pleading, holding hard onto the ladder. “The—the switches. When the fan’s off, the power comes on for this light.”

“What kind of bullshit wiring job is that?” Shaney asks, looking from the fan to the light in disbelief. But, using up the rest of the wishes Lewis has left for his whole life, the bulb in the spotlight flickers the slightest bit. Just the filament glowing on for a moment, but it’s enough.

Lewis looks from it down to Shaney and she shrugs, cradles the bracket, careful of the bolts he intentionally left hanging, and crosses to the switches, turns the fan back on. It whirs back up like sad to have been turned off after such a long and constant run.

“Oh, hey,” Lewis says, pointing with the knife to the carpet in front of the couch. “That fall out?”

The fan pushes Shaney’s hair across her face but she clears it, looks down to the bracket, touches the three bolts in the outer ring, shrugs up to Lewis.

“There, there,” he says, still pointing, and she steps across, her legs coming into the tunnel of vision the spinning blades are carving, but then, her face just out of it, she looks up, says, “You trying to see down my shirt, Blackfeet?”

She looks down to her own chest and, instead of pinching the flannel together at her throat, she pops it out, lets it slap back, then looks up to Lewis with a little bit of devil to her eyes.

“No, no,” Lewis says, coming a step down the ladder to see her face through the blades, but, at this angle, at this getting-there speed, it’s just Shaney.

Shit.

Shit shit shit.

But still, that she knew not to step into that space? That she knew to turn the fan off?

“If it’s a loose connection,” she says, “you have to, like, jam something in right there.” She points with her free hand to the spotlight, and because he’s the one faking this repair job, Lewis has to play along.

She steps ahead, to see the light around the fan, and Lewis takes a step higher, high enough to work the blade of the knife up beside the can.

Just like she said, the little spotlight glows on, holds steady.

“Pay me later,” she says, already turning around, drawn by the elk hide on the table.

Lewis climbs down, follows her.

“What happened to it?” Shaney asks, still almost touching it but not quite.

“Neanderthals,” Lewis says, the funniest joke.