The Only Good Indians(63)

“Got … standards,” Gabe says.

“I’ll ask my dad,” Nathan says—any chance for escape—which is right when the flap pushes in the way it does when Victor is nudging it. Except, no Victor. Are the dogs back, then?

“Here,” Gabe says to Cassidy, and hauls the cooler into his lap.

Gabe lies back for the sacred golf club, aims it for the flap, and pushes.

Outside, instead of Victor’s thick legs, it’s a woman’s long, very nice ones.

Nathan, naked and fourteen, pushes back into the darkness with his heels.

“Holy shit,” Gabe says to Nate, impressed. “You really order pizza?” Then, to Cassidy, “Town Pump delivers out this far? Also, Town Pump delivers?”

“I got this,” Cassidy says, and sets the cooler to the side, stands up through the flap.



* * *



“How’s it going in there?” Jo asks.

“Hot,” Cassidy says, riffling his hair with his hand and looking down his front side. “Pretty naked, too, I guess.”

Jo cringes back from the droplets of sweat Cassidy’s hand is spraying from his head.

He stops, looks at his hand. It’s still wet, like the whole rest of him. Then he looks past his hand. Usually if he’s sweaty, the dogs are using him like a Popsicle. In this chill, though, the sweat won’t be sweat for long. Couple minutes and it’ll be pneumonia.

“See Victor when you pulled up?” he asks, looking around.

Jo turns to the darkness all around with him, says, “Thanks for bringing my clothes in.”

Cassidy considers this, can’t get it to track. Maybe he’s that great a boyfriend, and he just forgot?

“Everything good at the store?” he asks, meaning: Why are you here when you’re supposed to be there?

Jo gulps a swallow down, gathers her words in her mouth, is about to say whatever it is when Gabe calls a weak Ho! out from inside the lodge.

Cassidy keeps watching her face.

“This isn’t your fault,” she says at last. “I want to be clear on that. But—I called home on break, yeah?”

Cassidy nods, knows that that’s when she talks to her sister, because no one watches the break room phone.

“You know your friend who … who got shot?”

“Which one?”

“Out by Shelby. Yesterday.”

“Lewis.”

“He killed his wife and that woman he worked with?”

Cassidy nods, not much liking this lead-up.

Jo hooks her right elbow into her left palm so she can hold her hand over her mouth, look away again. “That was—that one he worked with at the post office, I guess, she was my cousin Shaney. Shaney Holds. My sister just found out.”

“Oh shit,” Cassidy says. “Oh, shit.”

Jo tries to shrug it off, can’t. Cassidy goes to hug her but remembers at the last inch how gross he is right now.

“So … so what does this mean?” he asks.

“It means she’s dead,” Jo says, maybe about to cry. “My aunt, her mom, she’s—Shaney was her last, yeah?”

“Of how many?”

“Last one to still be alive, I mean,” Jo says, threading her hair out of her face, peering around it to see Cassidy’s eyes for a moment.

“Shit,” Cassidy says again. It’s all he’s got.

“I talked to Ross,” Jo says. “He said I can have three days, starting an hour ago. One day to get there, one to be there, one to drive home.”

“Don’t worry about Ross,” Cassidy says. “Gabe’s been in the hole with him. Take all week if you need. Take two.”

“I know you can’t go—”

“I can—”

“Third week of a new job and you need some personal time?” Jo says, and lets that settle.

She’s right.

“I wanted to just go straight there,” she says. “When I didn’t show up in the morning, though, I thought you might—”

“Thank you,” Cassidy says. “I would have freaked out, kicked everybody in town’s ass.”

“Because that’s how you are,” Jo says with a smile.

“Gotta do what you gotta do,” Cassidy says, happy to have made her forget her cousin for a moment.

Jo steps away from the lodge, bringing Cassidy with her.

“How’s he doing in there?” she says.

“Nathan?”

“He’s the freshman?”

“Eighth grade, maybe?” Cassidy says. “It’s good, it’s good. I wish—back when, I wish I would have paid attention when his granddad was doing all this for me, though. So I could, like, pass it on better.”

“His granddad?”

“He was—don’t worry about it. You need to go. You need some money, though.”

“I can—”

“Take it,” Cassidy says, turning to the truck on blocks, the thermos of cash in the crumbly glasspack. “That’s why we’ve been saving it, right?”

He walks over, hooks his hands on the old grille guard to slide under but then stops at the last instant, remembering again how sweaty he is. And how naked. And how sharp all the hanging rust is down there.