The Only Good Indians(71)

But they couldn’t hold the truck up long enough. The truck that didn’t even need to be falling in the first place, except to make a dumb-ass point. Except to get Cassidy back for bashing a windshield in, for some money and dogs Gabriel hadn’t even had anything to do with it.

Still.

Gabriel covers his mouth with his hands, can’t get his lungs to suck air in the right way anymore.

Now Cassidy’s stalking back from the patrol car. With the Mauser.

Gabriel steps out into Cassidy’s path, drops to his knees, offering himself, but Cassidy goes right around him, for the truck now sitting on the Crow.

He hauls the passenger door open and leans in, a great cloud of dust billowing up into the cab.

“Cass, man, I didn’t—what was she—” Gabriel says.

And then he sees what his friend is doing. It’s what Cassidy said earlier—that he probably had a stray shell that would fit the old gun. One of the ones from Ricky’s foggy bag of stolen ammo.

Cassidy tries the first shell, and when it won’t load he drops it, moves on to the next.

“You knew this is where I keep my money,” he says to Gabriel like an explanation.

“Dude, dude,” Gabriel says, standing, holding his hands out like they can fend off accusations, like they can stop bullets, like they can make all of this make sense.

Cassidy rams another shell in, works it back out, tosses it.

“Shut up,” he says. “You’re always talking. You never shut up. If you’d just listen for once in your life—”

“I would never have hurt her!” Gabriel screams.

They both hear it when the next cartridge slides in perfect, like made for this moment. Cassidy slams the bolt into place and steps out of the truck, the gun at port arms, his head loose like he’s really getting ready to do this thing.

“We grew up together,” he says, sort of crying, lips firm as he can get them. “I loved you, man. You saved my life so many times, and I saved yours back. But—but it was her now, don’t you understand? I loved her now. She was saving my life. I was saving hers! Everything was working for once, don’t you get it? And now … now …”

With that he shoulders the rifle, backs up enough to level the barrel dead-center on Gabriel’s face.

Gabriel is breathing in spurts, shaking his head no, no.

When there’s nowhere to go that Cassidy can’t reach him with the rifle, he drops to his knees a second time. The rifle follows him, is tethered to the bridge of his nose.

“Do it, man,” he says. “Fucking do it already. I don’t deserve to— Just do it! Nobody will even know, nobody will even miss me, man! You’re the only one who would, even. If—if you’re … Just do it!”

To make it easy, he lifts his chin, stares straight up. A moment later he starts singing, kind of with the drums still bleeding out from the top of Victor’s patrol car but kind of more, too. Something else.

“Shut up!” Cassidy yells down at him, stepping back from this, stepping back from having to do this.

But he keeps seeing the Crow, too, you know, the Crow through that engine compartment, under the truck Gabriel knocked over.

“What are you even doing!” he yells to Gabriel.

“My death song,” Gabriel sputters. “Shh, this next verse is tricky.”

“You’re just making that up!” Cassidy tells him. “Everything that’s Indian, you just make it up!”

“Shit, somebody’s got to,” Gabriel says, and goes back to the song.

It’s not even words, is just that old-time sound, always rising higher and higher and then resetting, starting the climb again.

“I don’t … I don’t—” Cassidy says, lowering the gun, looking at his friend on his knees, tears coming down his traitor face, running down by his ears into his neck, into his shirt.

Cassidy is crying as well.

He wipes his tears away, raises the rifle back, can’t hold it steady enough, but he’s only ten feet away. It’s how far Lewis was from you when he shot you the second time, in the head. And the third time.

It’s the perfect distance. It’s the distance they’ve earned.

Except this one is losing his resolve, is losing his anger, is falling into a grief hole inside himself. But he’s on edge, too, the barrel of the rifle coming up like he means it, then dipping down again. His every nerve is frayed. What that means is that, when Cassidy sees a white flurry of motion directly behind Gabriel, he flinches back in response, startled, and tries to pull the rifle with him, ends up putting that jerking pull into a trigger he doesn’t really know.

The sound is thunder, deep and bass and ragged. It splits the night in two, both halves falling neatly away, leaving Gabriel standing in the silence between them.

He looks down to his chest for the hole that should be there. And then he feels his face gingerly. Finally he pats the side of his head, comes away with blood.

His ear. His ear has a new notch in it.

He smiles with wonder, says, “Coup,” and looks across to Cassidy, but Cassidy is dropping the rifle, is shaking his head no, his breath hitching in deep again. But this time it’s with fear.

“What?” Gabriel says, unable yet to even hear his own voice, and looks behind him, to whatever’s got Cassidy shaking his head no.