The Only Good Indians(44)

His hand had come up from that with a comic book, and he’d wondered if it was worth anything at the pawnshops in Kalispell, and thinking about pawning shit got him thinking about that old Mauser his dad always said he was going to sell if he needed some quick cash. It’s supposed to be a historical gun, from World War I or World War II, that he’d inherited from one of his uncles, who got it on the actual battlefield.

Gabe wonders if shooting years of bird shot through the barrel at mice has worn the rifling down. To find out, he jacks the breech open, holds the butt to the light coming in through the front window, and looks down the barrel from the front.

As if he can tell whether the rifling’s worn down or if it’s at factory specs, yeah. What was he thinking? It’s old anyway, right? Being wore down is what an eighty-or whatever-year-old rifle that’s maybe from an actual German in an actual war is supposed to be, right? Anyway, the crispness of the rifling won’t be what sells this rifle. What sells this rifle will be this goofy forestock that tapers up nearly to the end of the barrel and has what looks to be hand-carved checkering scratched in.

Gabe shoulders the rifle all at once, tracks an imaginary antelope bounding from right to left.

“Lead it, lead it …” he says, left eye closed, right sighting, then comes to a sudden stop on his dad’s bored-with-this face.

His dad palms the rifle away, runs the bolt back to be sure there’s no live round.

“Think I’m stupid?” Gabe says, turning sideways to get past his dad to the refrigerator.

“You can’t have my uncle’s war trophy,” his dad says.

“Don’t want it, it’s too old,” Gabe says back, twisting the top off a stubby bottle of V8. He doesn’t like the way it coats his mouth like cold spaghetti sauce or the way it clumps down his throat like throw-up he’s having to swallow, isn’t even that fond of the way it pools in his stomach and boils in his gut, but, technically, it’s not food, and he’s supposed to be fasting today, for tonight’s sweat. The rocks are already all heating up in the fire. By dusk they’ll be crawling with red heat, ready to shatter if the handler isn’t careful, and—Gabe hasn’t told Cass this yet, and he probably won’t tell Victor Yellow Tail, who’s laying down a cool hundred for the sweat—but these particular rocks, they’re from a scattering of old tipi rings he found way back in Del Bonito in August. Meaning they won’t be the first Blackfeet to use them, ha. Maybe it’ll make them better or hotter or someshit, right?

Anything helps.

It’s not the first sweat he’s thrown, but it’s the first one he’s thrown in honor of a friend just gunned down the day before.

As to what Lewis had been doing to get himself shot, that’s the big mystery. Going crazy from marrying a Custer-haired woman, Gabe figures but knows better than to say out loud—yet. Give it a few months. Give it a few months and that’ll be the joke going through the reservation.

The best jokes are the ones that have a kind of message to them. A warning. This one’s warning would be to stay home. To not go postal.

It’s what Gabe thinks he’s maybe going to do right now, with his dad following his every step like Gabe’s sixteen again, is only swinging by to thieve anything not bolted down.

“For recycling,” his dad says, about the plastic bottle Gabe just banked into the white trash can by the back door.

“Oh yeah,” Gabe says, casing the interior of the fridge some more, “Indians use every part of the V8, don’t we?”

His dad grunts, settles the Mauser into the corner by the door, and canes across the linoleum, reaches into the trash for the clear plastic bottle.

Gabe shuts the refrigerator in frustration.

“How long since you’ve even shot a mouse?” he says. “That rifle’s just sitting there. You know it.”

“What are you wearing that for?” his dad says back.

The black bandanna tied high on Gabe’s left arm, with the knot on the outside because that makes it look more like a headband, just, on his arm.

Gabe stands to his full height, always feels more traditional when his back’s straight like a ramrod—well, when it looks like he’s got a stick up his ass, anyway.

“You heard about Lewis?” he says to his dad. “You remember him, Lewis?”

His dad lowers his face as if rattling the right tape into some slot in his head, then comes up with an old-man smile, says, “Little Meriwether?”

“Still not funny,” Gabe drolls. “Highway patrol shot him yesterday, yeah? Here, here, here,” making up the bullet holes as he goes.

He watches his dad for a flicker of reaction but instead his dad says, “Didn’t he die already once?”

“What? No. That’s … you’re thinking of Ricky, Dad. Ricky Boss?”

“Boss Ribs Richard,” his dad says, putting faces with names.

“Lewis was trying to come home at last,” Gabe says.

“For Thanksgiving moose?” his dad says with a smile.

Oh yeah: Turkey Day’s not even a week out, is it?

“Is everybody wearing those on their arms?” his dad asks, circling his own left bicep with his hand.

“He was my friend, Dad. Cass is wearing it, too.”

“Just the two of you, then?”