The Only Good Indians(64)

Jo’s right there beside him already, holding his arm. Pulling him to her.

They hug in spite of his sweat, her loose hair matting on his chest.

“You’re going to need a shower now,” he tells her.

“I like it,” she says back.

“Let me get my coveralls,” Cassidy says.

“I’m not completely useless, you know,” Jo says. “I can get the money myself.”

“It was my friend who killed her.”

“Feed Cali?” Jo says, about the paint.

“I’m not going to call her that,” Cassidy says.

“In your head you will,” Jo says, and takes his face in her hands, pulls his mouth to hers, kisses him bye, and holds him there, her eyes shut.

“Careful,” Cassidy says. “I am naked here.”

She reaches down, doesn’t help matters any.

“Two days,” she says, backing away.

“Monday,” Cassidy says back.

“I’ll leave some towels by the fire,” she says. “Boys always forget there’s going to be an after.”

Cassidy turns to the lodge, has to shrug. She’s right. They were just going to drip-dry, maybe. In the freezing cold. Standing in the snow.

“You’re good to drive?” he calls across to Jo. She’s on the steps to the camper.

“It’s not even that far,” she calls back, then, about the drumming coming from Victor’s car: “One of your tapes?”

Cassidy shakes his head no and then she’s gone, inside, packing, the camper creaking and groaning, all the windows yellow now, which pretty much means their one light is on. But still, it looks alive in a way that pretty much makes all of everything worth it.

Out in the darkness the horses are stomping and blowing.

“Don’t worry,” Cassidy says to them. Then, more to himself: “I’ll bring your scoop back, sheesh.”

But where is Victor?

Cassidy studies the darkness for ten, twenty seconds, each colder than the one before, then whistles loud and hard to pull the dogs in.

Stupid dogs. Stupid horses. Stupid Victor.

On the way back to the lodge, walking faster the closer he gets, his breath chugging white before his face, he scoops up two dripping handfuls of snow then lifts the flap with his leg, slow-spins in, already holding those two cool handfuls of slush out.

“Coconut?” Gabe says, drunk on heat, taking his handful of cold and looking over to Nathan for the rest of the joke: “He knows I like coconut flavor for my Icee.”

Nathan takes his, crushes it into his face, holds his hands there to try to get this coolness to last.

“Coconuts,” Cassidy says, shaking his own before sitting back down, and Gabe considers his handful of slush, considers it some more, then dollops it down onto the rocks. Steam billows up, dialing the heat in the lodge up an impossible degree or two more.

“Ho!” he calls out to Victor, but there’s no Victor to say it to, just drums and darkness, horses and cars, and, standing right there, so close now, you.

Cassidy lets the flap shut them in again.





THIS IS HOW YOU LEARN TO BREAK-DANCE

The three things shuffling around for foot room in Gabe’s head are:



a drink

a pee

Jo being out there now



What her being out there means is that staggering up and out into the cool air for the pee he desperately, desperately needs, even though he’s drunk exactly nothing for this whole sweat, has to be deep in the negatives as far as fluids, really, what Jo being out there means is that … he needs a towel? A fig leaf? A Bible to cover himself with? Not one of the little green ones, but a big holy roller of a leatherbound book.

But—like there were never any naked dudes on the Crow rez?

Gabe chuckles to himself, slow-motions his fingertips up to feel his lips smiling, because his face isn’t telling him anything at the moment.

“What?” Cass says.

Gabe just wobbles side to side, his wet head tracing secret figure eights.

The kid has his mouth down right by the melting dirt, is sucking its vapory coolness.

Cass passes him the cooler. The kid tips it up like a giant cup, sluices the last-last memory of water down his gullet.

“Feel like I’ve heard this one somewhere before …” Gabe leans over to say to Cass about Victor’s stupid drums.

“Shh,” Cass says, his eyes closed like he’s trying to be inside himself, is trying to really get into this sweat.

Sure, great.

Gabe closes his eyes too, swims through that powdery hot blackness and feels his shoulders melt down, his ribs sighing in when he breathes everything in him out, his fingertips bulbous and heavy now, his legs and feet somewhere else altogether.

Maybe this is how it works, he tells himself, at the same time trying to be quiet in his head, because talking to yourself is exactly how it doesn’t work. The body slipping away is what allows the rest of you to float up, over, out. Maybe see some shit for once, yeah?

Except what Gabe settles on, it’s not real, he knows. It can’t be.

It’s his father sitting in his chair in his living room on Death Row.

He’s watching that same channel as always: that camera angled down onto the parking lot of the IGA.