The Only Good Indians(70)

“This is how bad you don’t want me with her?” Cassidy says, huffing a sort-of laugh out.

“No, wait, I don’t—” Gabriel says, depositing the ring carefully on the hood of his truck to show how little he wants it. How little he stole it.

“And then you kill my dogs on top of that?” Cassidy says. “Did you catch whatever crazy Lewis had? I don’t understand what’s happening with you, Gabriel fucking Cross Guns. Tell me why you’re doing this—no, no, don’t even try. Just tell me where the money is.”

“Listen, somebody’s … I don’t know what you’re—” Gabriel starts, but then Cassidy cuts him off by one-handing the black thermos off the hood, spinning it in his hand to get the hold he wants, and slamming it into the windshield of Gabriel’s truck, leaving a deep crater, the thermos in the white center like it’s something that blazed down out of the sky for this truck and this truck only. Gabriel looks from the windshield to Cassidy then back to the windshield, his eyes flaring up at last.

“Right?” he says, matching Cassidy’s rising tone, and steps in, wrenches his mirror the rest of the way off, holds it by the bracket and swings it into the rain gutter of the cab until the roof wedges in, making a deep, unfixable notch. “C’mon, man!” he urges. “Let’s beat it to hell, yeah? Stupid truck, stupid truck, always getting stuck right when, right when …”

When Cassidy doesn’t fall in, Gabriel slings the mirror out into the darkness, is facing Cassidy now, his chest heaving.

“But it’s not the only truck that was always getting stuck, right?” Gabriel says, and brushes hard past Cassidy, is picking up speed by the time he pushes off from his own taillight, is already running before Cassidy can catch him.

“No!” Cassidy screams, diving, his fingers just hooking into Gabriel’s right rear pocket.

For a moment Gabriel slows, but then the pocket rips away, shows ass.

“Gabe, Gabriel, no!” Cassidy screams from the ground, but it’s too late.

If either of them looked just six feet into the darkness to the right, they’d see the white slash of your smile.

This is it. They’re doing it.

Gabriel curls around to come at the old truck from the side and drives his shoulder into it with everything he’s got.

He doesn’t weigh much, but he weighs enough.

Cassidy is up and running already, but his pants aren’t buttoned and are too long without boots and he doesn’t get there in time, could never have gotten there in time.

The truck sways to the side, sways back, and Gabriel catches it in rhythm, pushes back hard enough that one of the cinder blocks under the front axle housing explodes, the driver’s-side front lurching down like a horse taking a knee. No: like an elk that just got shot, doesn’t understand, is crumbling down.

“No!” Cassidy screams, and hooks his fingers into the wheel well on the passenger side right as that cinder block comes down in stages as well, taking the two blocks under the rear axle with it.

For an impossible moment Cassidy holds the truck up, screaming, his mouth open as wide as he’s ever had to open it, wide enough Gabriel even panics, wedges into Cassidy’s foot space, hooks his hands in the wheel well like keeping this truck up is suddenly the most important thing in the whole world.

The truck doesn’t know that, though. It hitches down farther through the cinder block, crushes down all at once.

Cassidy falls with it and goes lower, his face sideways to the snow in an instant, to look under, but there are no tires anymore, no wheels, even the brake drums are gone. The truck’s sitting down on its frame. There’s no seeing under it.

He hits the side of his fist into the ground over and over, and Gabriel’s just standing there watching him.

“Hey, man, I got a good enough jack in the truck, we can—” Gabriel says, but Cassidy stands right into him, shoves him away.

Gabriel falls down, watches Cassidy from there.

Now Cassidy is … trying to force the hood open?

“Here,” Gabriel says, pulling himself up and stepping in, but Cassidy elbows him away hard again.

“What’s got into you?” Gabriel says.

Cassidy is crying now, sputtering, can’t catch his breath.

Gabriel goes back, drives his elbow down into the mismatched hood once, twice, trying to remind the springs how they work.

The ancient catch releases and the hood pops up a few inches.

Cassidy pushes his hand in, forces the rust-frozen hook over to the right, and, with his other hand, lifts the hood in a screech of metal. He collapses back, covering his face from whatever’s in there.

Gabriel looks from the ball of pain Cassidy is to the truck.

There’s no engine, so he can see straight through to the ground.

It’s the Crow. Part of her, anyway—her hair, matted deep in blood and brains, all of it soaking into a nice Hudson’s Bay blanket. The crossmember at the back of the engine bay, right about where the front of the transmission would be, looks to have come down on her face, crushed her forehead in. And back out.

She was trying to ball up in the safety of the engine compartment, Gabriel can tell. She knew the truck was falling, she was scrambling ahead, pulling with anything she could grab on to.

It would have worked, too. It should have worked.