The Only Good Indians(56)

“There used to be four of them,” the dad says.

The boy pops his door open, hangs a leg out, swings his hair back over his left shoulder.

“All of us’ll fit in that thing?” he says about the mound of sleeping bags the sweat lodge is.

“Just the three of you,” his dad says. “I’m handling the rocks, that’s my part of it.”

“How long?”

“Long enough.”

They stand together, their doors closing at the same time, an accident of sound that makes the boy straighten his back, like it’s bad luck.

Gabriel is already pushing up from his broken chair to greet them. His face is shiny with water from Cassidy’s mouth. “To Officer Victor goes the spoils …” he’s saying, wiping at his cheek with his sleeve.

“What does that even mean?” the boy says to his dad.

“He read it in some bullshit book,” Cassidy says from his chair. “Ignore his ass.”

“Gentlemen,” the dad says, shaking the hand Gabriel is offering.

“Victor-Vector sounds like a cop even when he’s off duty, man,” Gabriel says with a halfway smile.

“I’m never off duty,” the dad says back, nodding down to the cop car he’s driving.

The boy doesn’t look to the car with Gabriel and Cassidy, but to the camper. All the windows are dark.

“How long since you’ve sweated it out yourself?” Gabriel is saying to the dad.

“This is for him, not me,” the dad says, and all eyes settle on the boy. “Nathan,” he announces, the big introduction.

The boy keeps looking at the camper, like considering how to take it apart. Or—he can’t see your reflection in a window, can he? Just your shape, your silhouette, your shadow? Your true face?

If the boy were to tilt his chin out at you for his dad right now, this instant, and if his dad leaned forward, peered through the darkness at the wild-haired woman just past the light, then this could all be over in a rush, couldn’t it?

But it’s better nobody sees you. Yet.

The boy finally drags his eyes away from the camper.

“You play basketball, yeah?” Cassidy says to him, about the scrimmage jersey the boy’s wearing black side out.

“I played ball, I’d be skins,” the boy says.

“Got a little court right over there,” Cassidy says, hooking his chin to the left of the camper, back toward the road. “Maybe we could shoot to cool down later.”

“Got glow-in-the-dark balls?” the boy asks right back.

“Son,” his dad says.

“They call you Nate, right?” Gabriel says.

The boy shrugs one shoulder, says, “Gabe, right? Seen you around.”

Gabriel purses his lips about this for a fraction of an instant.

“You drug him back from Shelby or what?” Cassidy says to the dad.

“Farther than we ever got,” Gabriel says, making a show of turning to finally see what the boy had been staring at so hard. “He ever done a sweat?” he asks the dad, no eye contact.

“You can talk to me,” the boy says.

“You ever done this?” Gabriel says, making a production of talking to the boy.

The boy shrugs.

Gabriel says, “The idea is it’s a purification, like. Consider it a dishwasher, yeah? We’re the dishes. It steams us up spick-and-span, man.”

“That what your friend Lewis and Clark was coming back for?” the boy says. “Clean the spots off his soul?”

Gabriel smiles a tolerant smile, looks back to Cassidy, who wows his eyes out like what did they expect?

“This is about you,” the dad says. “Not all that. Got it?”

The boy stares across the dying fire at the paint horse.

“Y’all know Lewis was coming this way, though?” the dad says to Gabriel and Cassidy.

“Never off duty …” Gabriel singsongs, just generally. “Always trying to solve some crime, put another Indian behind bars.”

“Lewis left, he was a ghost,” Cassidy says.

“White woman,” Gabe adds, all the explanation necessary.

“And one postal worker,” the dad adds, looking around the place. “She was Crow, wasn’t she? Saw her picture in the paper. Bet the wife caught him creeping across to her tipi.”

“Lewis wouldn’t,” Cassidy says.

“Wouldn’t what?” the boy says. “Cheat on his wife, or kill two people?”

Gabriel touches a place on the side of his face, by his eye.

The dad’s still looking around.

“Where’s your dogs, Cass?” he finally says.

Cassidy looks around like just missing them.

“Cass’s dogs, they’re the criminal sort, I guess,” Gabriel says, unbuttoning his cowboy shirt. “They see tribal PD, pew, they’re gone for the hills, man. Anybody with a badge, I mean. Even that way with game wardens, right? They can’t tell Denny Pease from PD. Stupid dogs.”

Cassidy stands, is unbuttoning his shirt now as well.

“You haven’t eaten today?” he says to the boy, the cadence of his words old and Indian, and mostly fake.

“Just water,” his dad says for his son.

“Same,” Gabriel says.