The Only Good Indians(68)

Example fifty-eight, about: Gabriel has sharpened his hand into a blade, is touching Cass’s shoulder with it, just enough to get a jolt of electricity from Cass, a jolt that can travel up his arm, cock his head over to the side in the stupidest, least robotic way.

“Shh, this is serious, man,” Cass hisses to Gabriel, and Nathan shakes his head about the two of them, one grooving while sitting on his bare ass, one ceremonially dipping the new scoop into the water, holding it up like you have to look hard at it before tipping a little out for the dead to drink.

But then he doesn’t tip any out.

He’s still studying this black, onetime-pricey thermos.

“What?” Gabriel says, stopping his slow-motion serpentine groove. “I mean, I know it’s not a dog food scoop, man, but some of us have higher—”

“Where’d you get this?” Cass asks, zero joking.

Gabriel shrugs, doesn’t answer, goes back to his stoned swaying, and only looks around slow when Cass is up and gone through the flap, taking the black thermos with him.

“This mean it’s over?” Nathan says to Gabe, and Gabe tunes back in, looks all around the lodge, finally settles on the cooler Cass let spill on his way out.

“Quick, kid,” he says to Nathan about the spilling water, “say the names of all the dead Indians you know, be right back,” and then he’s gone just the same, and Nathan knows this was the plan all along: To strand him here alone with his thoughts, with his demons. With his granddad.

He shakes his head at the stupidity of it all.

What would Crazy Horse do? he asks himself. Probably stay in here all night, then stare everybody down when he walked out naked, all the rocks cool, outlasted.

Either that or he’d count to one hundred, be done with this Indian bullshit.

Highlights are on at eleven, he reminds his dad, out there somewhere.

How about we make them?





AND THEN THERE WAS ONE


Ten years and now you’re here at last.

From the herd, you have the scent and the taste and the sound of Richard Boss Ribs getting beat to death in that parking lot in North Dakota, and you felt Lewis Clarke catching bullets with his chest, his body dancing against your own, his arms holding you like you were all that mattered, but this time you’re going to see it happen.

It’s going to be different. It’s going to better. It’s going to have been worth the wait.

Before, you were standing by the horse pens, close to the dogs. Now you’re on the other side of the driveway, from walking back from the outhouse, your chin and mouth black with blood.

Neither of these last two know you’re in the world at all. That day in the snow they shot you, to them it’s just another day, another hunt.

That’s why it has to be like this.

You could have taken them at any point over the last day, day and a half, but that’s not even close to what they deserve. They need to feel what you felt. Their whole world has to be torn from their belly, shoved into a shallow hole.

The first one out of the lodge is the Sees Elk one, Cassidy. The name already leaves a bad taste in your mouth. He’s standing in front of the lawn chair he left his clothes on. At first he’d grabbed the boy’s bright white shirt when it was right there by the lodge, but he put it back, even trying to get it folded again, patting it into place. His own shirt isn’t on the lawn chair anymore, but his pants are still there. He’s trying to put them on but he’s sweaty and they’re tight and it’s not working.

He grunts with frustration, sits in the chair and then straightens out in it, flattening his body to try to find less resistance. It’s not the angle, though, it’s the stickiness. The chair folds over, the left pair of hollow aluminum legs bending in.

He stands from the tangle, his pants halfway up, and slings the chair around and around, launches it as high and as far as he can, out past the horse pens.

It’s because he watches it fall that he sees his shirt, a smear in the darkness over to the left of the trucks.

“Gonna shoot those dogs,” he says, and takes up the black thermos, stalks out there.

A moment later the other one, Cross Guns—Gabriel, the first one to shoot his rifle into the herd that day in the snow—is standing naked in front of the lodge, watching his friend stalk off into the darkness.

For once he doesn’t say anything.

Slowly, he becomes aware again of the lights in the camper still on, and of his own nakedness. He covers himself with his hands, darts to his own fallen-down bent-over chair, does the pants dance just the same as the other one.

“Victor?” he says all around, his voice deep like that can balance out his nakedness.

He rolls his shirt on sleeve by sleeve and you remember what the boy said before, about one team being shirts, the other skins.

“Guess the ceremony’s over,” Gabriel says, still watching Cassidy.

He’s wrong. The ceremony’s just starting.

Look over to the other one now.

Cassidy yanks his shirt up from the ground, tries to shove his right arm through the sleeve, but … it’s wet, it’s soaked something up, something more than just snow.

He peels back out of it, studies the spreading stain.

Blood.

It’s then that he registers what he’s standing in the middle of.