The Only Good Indians(38)

Except both of these are the same.

He gets some carb cleaner, sprays them down because there’s got to be ivory in there somewhere. When there’s not, he closes his eyes, falls to his knees on the sleeping bags.

Next he’s laughing to himself, and sort of crying.

Work didn’t have to be so short-staffed, did it?

NATIVE AMERICAN MAN SINGLEHANDEDLY TAKES DOWN USPS.

He’s trying to work a grin up about that headline when he finds his eyes fixed on the stomach of Shaney’s flannel shirt. Because that’s not where the blood and damage is, it’s as safe a place as any to concentrate on, maybe even better than most. But … no. No no no.

He can untuck that shirt if he wants, can’t he? He can untuck it, pull it up to check if she’s got that long vertical knot of scar tissue. If she does, if she was field-dressed, then—then she was definitely Elk Head Woman.

Unless she got butchered on an operating table. Unless some drunk IHS doctor scarred her for life, made her into a woman always trying to get eyes to focus on her chest, not below that.

Lewis shakes his head no, doesn’t want to have to do this, doesn’t want to have to know either way. What if she doesn’t have that scar at all, right?

Still, he owes it to her, even has his hand to her stomach, his fingers bunching the flannel up into his palm, is going to look around, face this truth. On the count of three. Now on this next count of three.

What saves him—who, who always saves him—it’s Peta.

The front door opens, then closes.

Shit.

Fast, fast, he gets Shaney buried again. He can still make this work. Peta doesn’t have to know. That’s hydraulic fluid splashed all over the ceiling and walls. It smells like opened body because of Harley.

It takes thirty seconds to stop hyperventilating, and then another full minute to clear his eyes.

Nodding to himself for strength or something like it, Lewis walks into the kitchen, ready to jerk his head up like surprised by Peta being here, unloading her lunch box. She’s not at the counter like always, though. To find her he has to look up, and up.

She’s … now she’s on the ladder?

“You figured it out!” she says, her whole face a smile, like the last two or three back-to-back shifts don’t even matter, suddenly.

“What?”

“The whole thing’s loose,” she says, and wiggles the knife jammed in alongside the light.

The bulb flickers on, goes back off.

A warm smile crosses Lewis’s face.

He did fix it. This is the perfect gift, the best surprise. He is a good husband.

Smiling like it was nothing, he walks past the table, into the living room, and only slows when he catches the way Peta’s looking him up and down, slow and unsure.

“What?” he says, and only then does he look down to his hands, wrist-deep in Shaney’s blood. It’s probably splashed onto his chest and face, too, from the tooth extraction, and it’s not hydraulic fluid—the Road King doesn’t have this much hydraulic fluid.

The red against the white of the towel is unmistakable.

“Are you ok—?” Peta says, eyes fixed on him, stepping down the ladder without looking, probably concerned that he’s hurt himself bad enough to go into shock, and that’s how it happens, that’s why it happens: because she’s worried he might be cut somewhere. The left toe of her work boot that she’s no longer paying attention to, thick for safety, misses the next rung, and her other foot was already shifting, and she knows better than to clutch onto the sides of the ladder because that just means bringing it down with her, and there’s already one gouge in the wall.

Just from instinct, probably, her hands slash up, to try to find something to hold her.

What she finds is the handle of the knife jammed in alongside the spotlight’s can. She brings it down with her, and, instead of bursting across the room to tackle her into the wall like a good husband would, Lewis stands there clutching his towel, watching this happen in what feels like the slowest motion ever.

Anybody but Peta would fall down into the rungs, get tangled up, break their fall with their basic awkwardness.

She used to be a pole vaulter, though.

She knows to push off, to arc away.

It’s beautifully executed, and, being her, she even manages to fling the knife to the side so it won’t impale her on landing like Lewis guesses he was expecting, since everything else is already going wrong.

Peta’s used to falling onto huge mats, though. Not the sharp brick corner of the fireplace hearth, back-of-the-head first.

The cracking sound of her skull opening up is distinct, and permanent, and looking away doesn’t help Lewis process it, or accept it.

Just like with Harley, he doesn’t rush up to hold her in these last moments.

He just stares, shocked.

Her body spasms and her breath hitches for maybe ten seconds, her eyes locked on him like trying to communicate something, like … like trying to relive the last ten years with him? Like, now she can go back to sitting at that picnic bench in East Glacier and start the two of them all over again, live it right up until now. What was she drawing that day? Was she drawing her dream house, complete with fireplace and a little apron of brick before it, “hearth” labeled above it? Did she know all along this was what was going to happen, but then did it anyway, because these ten years were worth it?