The Only Good Indians(48)

He probably never would have sung, either, if there’d been a woman there. Yeah, sweats shouldn’t be like the bar, he figures.

But now that it was built, they could heat up the rocks whenever they wanted, get clean, screw whatever book Gabe had. What, were the Indian police going to thunder down from the sky on lightning bolts, write Cassidy up for letting a woman into the sacred sweat lodge?

If they did, he’d ask them about their dogs, maybe. And also what they did for water for the sweat, back in the pre-bucket days.

In town, Cassidy could just run a hose over, snake it under a blanket, spray the rocks when they needed more steam. This far from town, though, all high and lonely, water was in the five-hundred-gallon tank behind the pens, and cost a tank of gas to drag all the way here.

What did the old Indians use?

Probably they built their sweat lodges by creeks, Cassidy figures, or where the snow was melting downhill. His solution is … that old green and white cooler that doesn’t have a lid anymore, that he’s been using for the dogs to drink from.

“Sorry,” he says to them, tumping it over.

Miss Lefty bats her tail once against the dirt in response. Her name is Miss Lefty because that’s a funny name for a dog.

Cassidy scoops the cooler into the tall snow living in the shade behind the horses’ lean-to. Their ears are all directed right at him.

After working the cooler into the sweat, all that’s left is a shovel for Victor, tonight’s designated rock handler. Cassidy jogs around back of the camper, not sure where he last saw the shovel but sure he can’t use the wide flat one they muck out the stalls with. He’s not a hundred percent on board with keeping every part of a ritual intact, but he is against the shitty end of that shovel being anywhere near him.

Jo’s around back of the camper, it turns out, wetting the air needle with her lips to push it into the basketball, shoot a few thousand on the little court maybe a camper’s length past the outhouse. Really it’s just the foundation left over from a house that used to be here, that blew away. All Cass had to do was grind down all the water pipes level with the concrete and screw an old backboard to the utility pole the tribe left behind, that he spent a whole day digging the hole for, and another day getting to stand up straight.

Jo’s sitting on the little weight bench Cassidy liberated from one of his kid cousins, her foot stepping on the bicycle pump’s base to keep it from tipping over into the dirt.

She jabs the needle in, tries to hold the ball between her knees while she works the air pump’s squeaky plunger. Cassidy wants to step over, help with either the ball or the pump, but one thing about Jo is that she’ll either do it herself or she’ll go down trying.

“Couldn’t sleep,” she says, checking the pressure.

“Who needs sleep when there’s basketball?” Cassidy says.

“Macaroni’s cooking,” Jo says, tilting her head inside.

“Hot dogs?” Cassidy asks.

“Once you cut them in,” she says back, then, about the lodge: “Who for?”

“Lewis,” Cassidy says. “You know—that guy. One I grew up with, got himself shot yesterday?”

“That how y’all do it up here, throw a sweat? This a Blackfeet wake or something?”

“Just a remembering. It was Gabe’s idea.”

“Gabe,” Jo says, flat as it’s possible to say a name.

“Also there’s this kid,” Cassidy adds.

Jo nods, meaning he doesn’t need to take her through it again: Victor Yellow Tail’s kid needing something traditional to maybe ground him, keep him from burning out on dope and 90 proof.

“Almost forgot,” Cassidy says, “payday,” pulling the cash up from his pocket enough to show some thick green.

“My man.”

Soon enough Jo’s involved trying to grease the bicycle pump’s plunger, so Cassidy steps into the camper to cut hot dogs into the macaroni, cube some Velveeta in—smaller the better, so they’ll melt. He walks a bowl out to her, spoon already in, the cheese thick enough that the spoon isn’t even tapping into the side of the bowl.

“Needs ketchup,” she says after her first bite.

They’re sitting by the fire now, away from the smoke.

The dogs still haven’t moved, know this lunch isn’t for them. The horses are lined up against the fence, their jaws on the top rail, tails swishing like cats.

“We should run them guys tomorrow,” Cassidy says about her paint and the sorrel. The mouse-colored gelding isn’t broke enough yet, maybe never will be.

Jo looks over, waits until Cassidy’s chewing a big bite before saying, “Aren’t you not eating today or something?”

Cassidy chews, swallows, says like a question, “I did skip breakfast, yeah?”

“You never eat breakfast.”

“But especially not today.”

Jo shakes her head, spoons another bite in, says, “Where you gonna stash that drug-dealer roll?”

“The safe, I figure,” Cassidy says, and as one they look over at the truck he dragged up a few months ago. It wasn’t stealing, he assured Jo, it wasn’t even salvaging—it was his truck. Just, he’d walked away from it for a few years. But it had been a good pony once upon a time, deserved to rust into the ground close to people instead of out by itself.