The Only Good Indians(60)
The horses tell him about you some more, their warnings so clear, so urgent, so simple and articulate.
He had his chance, right? This is on him. He shouldn’t have come out here.
Now his beam of light is disappearing behind the camper in hitches: walk two steps, shine the light all around, then jerk forward again, repeat.
When he’s around the corner you can finally step out into the flickering light from the fire. The white and brown horse, the most articulate of the three, stamps her feet, shakes her head back and forth.
You shake your head just the same back at her.
The two you want are just right there, in the lodge three steps away, naked and helpless. Gabriel Cross Guns, Cassidy Sees Elk. The only two left from that day in the snow.
But you don’t want to get shot in the back again, either. You can still feel the pain from last time, don’t need this dad to blow that hole open all over again before you’re finished.
When he walks around the side of the camper, you follow, right in the scent-path still swirling in the air so clear you could close your eyes and not lose him. You know to stay far from the camper, though, so he can’t pin you there in a sudden pool of yellow. A camper isn’t a train screaming past, trapping you, but it might as well be.
When he edges up to the outhouse he’s so sure you’re behind, your leg muscles bunch so you can—
He brings the light around, freezes you in its glare, your mind losing itself in that brightness.
“What—who?” he says, running his pistol back into its holster at his waist. “You trying to give me a heart attack, Jolene?”
It’s her shirt and pants you’ve stolen off the line.
“Jolene,” you say, your voice creaky because your throat is new. You start to clear it but there’s a sound intruding on this moment. You both look over to the road.
A truck grinding up the road?
“Wait, you’re not—” Victor says, then leans in to see better. “You’re that Crow from the newspaper, aren’t you?” he says. “The one who … who—?” Then he’s raising the fingertips of his left hand to his right forehead, to show what he’s saying: “But what happened to your eye?”
I got shot there, you don’t tell him. Twice.
He takes a step back all the same, says, “I thought you—that Lewis ki—didn’t he … What are you doing up here?”
In answer, you bring your face back around to him, eyes wild, hair lifting all around, and say, “This,” then rush forward, show him.
METAL AS HELL
Cassidy should have done this years ago. Sweats should be a regular thing. Just like Neesh told them back when, he guesses.
Back then, though, this would have been just one more thing to sit through, one more thing between the four of them and the weekend. A sweat was never a ritual, was always just an ordeal.
Cassidy nods to himself that, yes, he’s going to keep this sweat lodge going, maybe even dial it back from sleeping bags to layers of actual hide. And maybe he’ll petition Denny for hunting privileges again, right? Why not? Denny’s settled down and married these days, is at all the basketball games, even. And, ten years has got to be enough punishment for nine elk. It’s been a clean ten years, too. Well, come tomorrow it’ll have been a clean ten years. Cassidy has hardly even shot any animals, just a mulie or three out on the flats, that one moose that was asking for it, and the odd whitetail. But that’s more like herd management, he figures. Herd management and subsistence—that’s his right as a tribal member, isn’t it? How can slipping back into an elder section one time take that all away?
And if Denny says no, then, well. Once Cassidy and Jo are legal, she’ll have hunting privileges, he’s pretty sure. Or, if not from marrying in, then he’s pretty sure she can transfer her Crow hunting stuff up here, if she gives it up back home. Then, as long as she’s in the field with her tag whenever Cassidy pops an elk or whatever, Denny won’t be able to say a thing. Or maybe she’ll line up on a big bull herself.
Beside him, Gabe scooches back from the heat the rocks are throwing, shields his face for a moment with his forearm.
All you ever want this deep into a sweat, it’s a bit of reprieve. But you’ve got to push through that.
“Good?” Cassidy says across to Nathan.
Nathan’s sitting with his knees up, his head hanging down.
He sort of nods. Either that or a sluggish death rattle. A last spasm.
Cassidy angles the cooler up onto a corner and lays the scoop down flat, its nose in that corner, then tilts the cooler back the other way to get at the last bit of water.
“For Ricky,” he says, tipping a sip out onto the ground before taking a drink himself. It’s as hot as ten-minute-old coffee by now.
He offers it to Gabe, who takes it like each time, says, “For Lewis,” spilling a bit out, but passes it on around without drinking. Because, he said early on, isn’t that the dog food scoop?
Horses, Cassidy hadn’t corrected. And just oats at that, because Jo’s paint was raised to expect more than hay or cake. But Gabe doesn’t really know horses, doesn’t really know how inert oats are, that this scoop is probably as clean as any spoon at the diner in town.
Nathan takes the scoop, his hand trembling, his hair plastered to his face.