The Only Good Indians(4)
Duck, Ricky told himself, and disappeared, ran at a crouch that felt military, like he was in a trench, like shells were flying. And they might as well be.
“There he is!” a roughneck bellowed, and his voice was far enough off that Ricky knew he was wrong, that they were about to pile onto somebody else for ten or twenty seconds, until they realized this was no Indian.
Ten trucks between him and them finally, Ricky stood to his full height to make sure it wasn’t that Dakota dude catching the heat.
“I’m right here,” Ricky said to the roughnecks, not really loud enough, then turned, stepped through the last line of trucks, out into the ditch of the narrow ribbon of blacktop that had brought him here, that ran between the bar’s parking lot and miles and miles of frozen grasslands.
So it was going to be a walking night, then. A hiding from every pair of headlights night. A cold night. Good thing I’m Indian, he told himself, sucking in to get the zipper on his jacket started. Cold doesn’t matter to Indians, does it?
He snorted a laugh, flipped the whole bar off without turning around, just an over-the-shoulder thing with his smoldering hand, then stepped up onto the faded asphalt right as a bottle burst beside his boot.
He flinched, drew in, looked behind him to the mass of shadows that were just arms and legs and crew cuts now, moving over the trucks.
They’d seen him, made his Indian silhouette out against all this pale frozen grass.
He hissed a pissed-off blast of air through his teeth, shook his head once side to side, and straight-legged it across the asphalt to see how committed they might be. They want an Indian bad enough tonight to run out into the open prairie in November, or would it be enough just to run him off?
Instead of trusting the gravel and ice of the opposite shoulder, Ricky took it at a slide, let his momentum stand him up once his boot heels caught grass, then transferred all that into a leaning-forward run that was going to have been a fall even if he hadn’t caught the top strand of fence in the gut. He flipped over easy as anything, the strand giving up its staples halfway through, just to be sure his face planted all the way into the crunchy grass on the other side.
Ricky rolled over, his face to the wash of stars spread against all the blackness, and considered that he maybe should have just stayed home, gone to Cheeto’s funeral, he maybe shouldn’t have stolen his family’s guns. He maybe should have never even left the rez at all.
He was right.
When he stood, there was a sea of green eyes staring back at him from right there, where there was just supposed to be frozen grass and distance.
It was a great herd of elk, waiting, blocking him in, and there was a great herd pressing in behind him, too, a herd of men already on the blacktop themselves, their voices rising, hands balled into fists, eyes flashing white.
INDIAN MAN KILLED IN DISPUTE OUTSIDE BAR.
That’s one way to say it.
THE HOUSE THAT RAN RED
FRIDAY
Lewis is standing in the vaulted living room of his and Peta’s new rent house, staring straight up at the spotlight over the mantel, daring it to flicker on now that he’s looking at it.
So far it only comes on with its thready glow at completely random times. Maybe in relation to some arcane and unlikely combination of light switches in the house, or maybe from the iron being plugged into a kitchen socket while the clock upstairs isn’t—or is?—plugged in. And don’t even get him started on all the possibilities between the garage door and the freezer and the floodlights aimed down at the driveway.
It’s a mystery, is what it is. But—more important—it’s a mystery he’s going to solve as a surprise for Peta, and in the time it takes her to drive down to the grocery store and back for dinner. Outside, Harley, Lewis’s malamutant, is barking steady and pitiful from being tied to the laundry line, but the barks are already getting hoarse. He’ll give it up soon enough, Lewis knows. Unhooking his collar now would be the dog training him, instead of the other way around. Not that Harley’s young enough to be trained anymore, but not like Lewis is, either. Really, Lewis imagines, he deserves some big Indian award for having made it to thirty-six without pulling into the drive-through for a burger and fries, easing away with diabetes and high blood pressure and leukemia. And he gets the rest of the trophies for having avoided all the car crashes and jail time and alcoholism on his cultural dance card. Or maybe the reward for lucking through all that—meth too, he guesses—is having been married ten years now to Peta, who doesn’t have to put up with motorcycle parts soaking in the sink, with the drips of Wolf-brand chili he always leaves between the coffee table and the couch, with the tribal junk he always tries to sneak up onto the walls of their next house.
Like he’s been doing for years, he imagines the headline on the Glacier Reporter back home: FORMER BASKETBALL STAR CAN’T EVEN HANG GRADUATION BLANKET IN OWN HOME. Never mind that it’s not because Peta draws the line at full-sized blankets, but more because he used it for padding around a free dishwasher he was bringing home a couple of years ago, and the dishwasher tumped over in the bed of the truck on the very last turn, spilled clotty rancid gunk directly into Hudson’s Bay.
Also never mind that he wasn’t exactly a basketball star, half a lifetime ago.
It’s not like anybody but him reads this mental newspaper.
And tomorrow’s headline?