The Only Good Indians(45)

“Lewis had been gone a long time already.”

Gabe’s dad looks out the kitchen window, at the wall of the house right beside his, maybe. Who knows what old men look at?

“Do mice even come out in winter?” Gabe asks.

“It was my uncle Gerry’s rifle,” his dad says back.

“He’s not coming back for it, Dad.”

“He used to shoot prairie dogs with it,” his dad goes on, a smile ghosting his lips up. “But only the ones who were wearing those German helmets.”

Gabe has to spin away from this.

“His wife is dead, too,” Gabe says. “Lewis’s, I mean.”

“Field-dressed her,” his dad adds in.

So. The headlines are even circulating over here on Death Row, then. Great. Wonderful. Perfect.

“They don’t know what happened yet,” Gabe says.

“Meriwether …” his dad says then, casing the refrigerator himself now, probably taking inventory for whatever Gabe might have palmed. “He was selling that raccoon meat that one time, wasn’t he?”

“I don’t even know why I come over here,” Gabe says, brushing past his dad, pushing through the front door he’d hung himself one many-beers day. It’s not his fault it’s crooked, though. Whoever framed the doorway must not have had a square. Or maybe it’s whoever poured the foundation’s fault. Or whoever came up with the whole idea of “doors.”

He roars his truck to life and backs out without looking, finds the three unbroken teeth in his transmission that still allow first gear, and touches two fingers to his eyebrow, saluting his dad bye, if he’s even watching.

Two houses later he pats the Mauser nosed down into the floorboard on the passenger side. His dad didn’t even see him snag it when Gabe had brushed past. In court-mandated substance-abuse counseling once—completely unnecessary, but slightly better than ninety days in lockup—Neesh had explained to the ten little Indians in group about counting coup. How that’s what all of them were sort of already doing, did they know that?

Twenty bored eyes looked back at him.

Counting coup, he explained, using his ancient-old hands to form each word, act out what he was saying, counting coup was running up to the baddest enemy and just tapping them, then getting clear before that enemy could bash you with anything.

That, he claimed all reverentially, was what each person there in group had already done: rushed up to overdoses, to freezing while doped up, to crashing a car because of impaired reflexes, to vomiting in their sleep and drowning—addictive behavior was the big-time enemy, couldn’t they see? And the fact that they were all here meant they’d already ran up to it, had already counted coup on it, and gotten away with their lives. The question now was whether they would come back to the tribe proud of how close they’d got, or if they’d go back again and again, until the enemy got its hook into them all the way, left them in a ditch somewhere.

Gabe has always remembered that. “Counting coup.” It’s kind of what he lives by, isn’t it? With wives and girlfriends, with jobs, with the law, with how much gas is left in the tank, and now with this: he’d counted coup on his dad, had actually been brushing right past him while his other hand snaked the rifle, swinging it forward with his left leg until the butt could catch on the steel toe of Gabe’s boot, just like Denorah’s foot had back when he’d taught her cowboy dancing.

But he knows better than to think about her.

Not because he doesn’t want to, but because he won’t stop, will have to go out and find something to stop his thinking. Either that or show up at Trina’s front door again, apologizing, begging, asking her to give Den something from him. Maybe just a bottle of Sprite with a chance to win under the cap.

At which point the lecture comes, about how he can’t keep showing up like this, about how she’s at practice but don’t go back there, about how don’t call her that, it’s Denorah, not Den, okay?

Better yet, don’t call her at all.

Gabe pats the rifle, rolls it over so the hand-carved checkering won’t rub away against the seat.

Snow swirls across the blacktop and, screw it, Trina can’t tell him what to do. D’s his daughter, too, isn’t she?

Gabe hauls the steering wheel over, takes the turn that leads down to the school. Just to drive by. She knows his truck. Everybody knows his truck. They should invite him to drive it slow in the parade, let him rain candy out the window.

On the way down to the school, though, his mind churning through who might even have cartridges for a rifle this old and weird, he sees a girl walking on the opposite side of the street, away from school.

“D?” he says, letting his foot off the gas.

She’s wearing a scrimmage jersey and shorts, probably for the game tomorrow, but has her hair down, like Denorah never wears it since she got all serious about ball.

That can’t be her, can it?

Gabe coasts past and just glances over. In case it’s not her, the last thing he needs is word getting out that Gabriel Cross Guns is creeping on the junior high set.

Is it her, though? And, shouldn’t she be cold?

Right when he’s cranking his window down to see better, you raise your face, level your eyes at him through your black hair blowing everywhere, and this is the first time you’ve seen him since that day, the air full of sound, your nose breathing in just blood, your calf gasping inside you, your legs gone.