The Only Good Indians(61)

“For Tre,” he says, a little water shaking out.

It’s the first words he’s volunteered in nearly an hour, by Cassidy’s reckoning.

The kid’s coming around. Breaking down. Playing along.

Good.

Tre is the high schooler the wake was for a couple of weeks ago—which, now that Cassidy thinks about it, is probably about when Nathan split town, ran away into the wilds of America. He only made it to some skunky trailer on the other side of Shelby, but that counts.

Tre, Tre, Tre. The wake was the first time Cassidy knew that was the way that name was spelled. He’d always assumed it had four letters, like what you carry food on in a cafeteria.

How had he died, even? Cassidy can’t dredge it up, not with the heat turning his thoughts to syrup. Was he Grease’s nephew, maybe? But that can’t be right, Grease isn’t old enough. Georgie, then? Somebody who was a senior when Cassidy was a freshman.

“Kill it,” Gabe says to Nathan about the last of the water, and, after confirming with Cassidy—just eyes, no energy to spare—Nathan tips the scoop up, cashes it, holds it back across.

Cassidy takes it. Good thing about aluminum is it doesn’t heat up in a sweat. What’d they use in the old days, wood? Horn? A bladder? The skullcap of a wolverine, because the old days were metal as hell?

Doesn’t matter. This isn’t the old days. Exhibit one establishing that: outside the lodge, Victor’s tape goes silent, to the end of itself again, and then there’s a few seconds of silence while the deck looks for the first song on the other side again.

“This one again?” Gabe musters the breath to say, because he thinks he’s hilarious.

“Try going on a trip with him,” Nathan says back, his chest shaking twice with what Cassidy thinks is a weak attempt at laughter. The weakest attempt at laughter.

Gabe is having to waver to stay sitting upright. But he can do it until sunup, too, Cassidy knows. Of the four of them, Gabe would always be the one still sitting on the toolbox in the bed of the truck after everybody else had slouched over, passed out. It was like he was waiting for something. Like he knew that if he gave in, shut his eyes, he was going to miss it, was going to get left behind.

Of the four of them—and Cassidy hates to say it—of the four of them, Gabe’s the least likely to still be aboveground, too. He’s always been the first to jump, whether it’s off a cliff into some big water or into the face of some cowboy outside a bar.

“Like this,” he’s telling Nathan now, lowering his own mouth right almost to the ground and sucking air in, making a show of swelling his chest out because the air down there is so much cooler, so refreshing.

“Where a hundred asses have sat,” Nathan’s saying back.

“Don’t forget the dog piss,” Gabe says, just giving in and lying on down.

Cassidy smiles, greys out for a second, maybe two.

This is for Lewis, he’s telling himself. Lewis, who was trying to come home.

It’s funny, almost: Lewis runs for home, dies on the way. Ricky runs away from home, dies on the way. Gabe and himself stay right here, are perfectly fine.

“Hey,” Cassidy says down to Gabe.

“Just resting my eyes,” Gabe mumbles back.

Nathan lowers his face again, his long hair a wet curtain, the rest of him mostly a silhouette in the ashy, humid darkness.

“About Lewis,” Cassidy says.

Gabe gets an arm under himself, cranks up to a sitting position, dirt sticking all to one side of him because he’s so sweaty, and because the ground is thawing under them.

“We really out of water?” he asks.

“They said he had an elk calf with him, right?” Cassidy says.

Gabe fixes his unsteady eyes on Nathan, but Nathan’s just still. Either not listening or listening and not caring.

“Serious,” Gabe says, about Victor’s tape. “I like drums as much as the next red-blooded, red-skinned, beer-drinking—”

“He was carrying an elk calf home,” Cassidy insists.

“Wrong season,” Gabe says, waving this off. “Must have been slow elk.”

“Wrong for them, too,” Cassidy says.

“Horse.”

“You don’t run with a foal. It’s too heavy.”

Gabe repositions himself, but even the air is hot.

“I never told you,” Cassidy says.

Gabe stills, looks to Nathan again, then back to Cassidy.

“That last hunt,” Cassidy says. “Thanksgiving Classic or whatever Ricky called it.”

“Thought that was me,” Gabe says.

“That little heifer elk Lewis shot,” Cassidy goes on. “She had one in the oven.”

“I thought I shot her …” Gabe says.

“Your brain’s melted,” Nathan tells him.

Gabe shrugs like the kid’s right, says to Cassidy, “It was—it was Thanksgiving, man. Maybe that little elk just had a turkey in the oven, yeah?” He pats his own belly to show what oven he’s trying to mean.

“It was the Saturday before Thanksgiving,” Cassidy corrects.

“Tomorrow,” Gabe says with a goofy grin, looking down to the watch he’s not wearing and also doesn’t wear, and wouldn’t be wearing in a sweat anyway.