Winter Counts(25)

I moved behind so I could force him down. Suddenly the world went gray as he hit me with a hard uppercut to my jaw. Hadn’t seen that coming. I reeled backward and tried to stay up, attempting to clear my head.

“Asshole!” Marie screamed at the guy, and I tried to place where she was. My vision was blurry and hazy, but I saw her start to pound the guy on his back.

This was bad. The guy turned his attention to her, and that bought me another moment. There was only one thing to do. The knife.

I pulled it out of my pocket and tried to open it. Because of its design, the Spyder was a bitch to get open, especially when you were half-unconscious. I saw the guy struggle with Marie and tried to keep my focus on unlocking the weapon.

Finally. I got the thing open, its curved blade shimmering like a deadly talon. It was super sharp, with a serrated hawkbill edge that would carve up flesh, tendons, muscles. If the guy wouldn’t back off, I’d do what I had to.

I thrust the knife forward, only to look up and see a handgun pointed straight at my chest.





11


Drop the knife. Now.”

The gun remained pointed at me. I dropped the knife. He kicked it away.

“Get on the ground! Facedown. Put your hands behind your head.”

I complied.

“Do you have any other weapons?” he asked.

It was beginning to dawn on me. “Are you a police officer?”

“Do you have any concealed weapons?” he asked again.

“No, just the knife. Look, I didn’t know you were—”

“Just be quiet and keep your hands on your head.” Then he turned to Marie, who was now standing back by the trash dumpster, her hands up in front of her. “Do you have any weapons?”

“No. Look, we’re just—”

“Get down on your knees,” he said to her. “Put your hands on your head and keep them there.” He put the gun back in his pocket and patted my legs, torso, and arms. Then he moved to Marie and did a quick pat-down on her. He seemed to relax a bit after he determined that we didn’t have any guns on us.

“Both of you can sit up, but keep your hands where I can see them.”

“Are you going to put handcuffs on us?” Marie said.

“No. Just want to ask a few questions.” He turned his attention to me. “Why’d you hit me? Did somebody send you?”

“You’re a police officer, right?” I said. He didn’t say anything. “Look, we didn’t know you’re a cop, we thought someone from the bar was coming after us. If you’d identified yourself, we—”

“What are you doing here?” he asked. “Why are you asking for Rick Crow?”

“You know him?” I said.

Before he could respond, Marie said, “We’re from the Rosebud Indian Reservation. In South Dakota. We’re looking for Rick because he might be bringing drugs to our community. We just want to speak to him, find out what’s happening.”

I looked over at Marie, trying to signal her that we should be cautious and not say too much until we knew more about what was going on. But, to my surprise, the guy pulled out a scrap of paper from his pocket and a pen and started writing.

“We need to talk,” he said, “about Rick Crow. But not here. Meet me there in two hours.”

I looked down at the paper. “Taco Mex, Colfax and Joliet,” it read.

TACO MEX TURNED OUT to be a little Mexican restaurant in a different part of the city, about an hour away from where we were. We had some time, so we looked at the menu. Tacos, no surprise there, but with fillings I hadn’t heard of. Buche, tripas, lengua, cabeza. Pork stomach, intestine, beef tongue, cow head. Anticuchos de corazón. Skewered beef heart.

My own heart had been skewered enough, so I tried some cow-head tacos. Greasy, but tender. I offered Marie a bite, but she declined with a grimace.

I glanced over at her. She was eating her rice and bean tacos after carefully removing all of the chili peppers and placing them on a napkin. That didn’t surprise me; she’d always had some strange eating habits, even though she loved to cook. She wouldn’t eat pork, because she claimed that pigs were as intelligent as humans, if not more so. She detested brussels sprouts, said they smelled like feet, but was crazy about roasted carrots. I remembered there’d been a period in elementary when she would only eat chocolate pudding and cold french fries, which she would mix together in a large bowl and eat with a wooden spoon. The other kids had teased her relentlessly about that, but she was used to it by then.

The mocking and bullying she’d endured had toughened Marie, and she became the kid who stood up for others. I guess her time as a pariah had made her sensitive to the plight of the tormented. I fell in love with her, as much as an eleven-year-old can, when she defended me one day.

I’d been walking home from school when the mean kids pressed their advantage—the fate I’d feared most then. A gang of cruel girls decided to taunt me mercilessly, calling me iyeska, insulting my family and our poverty, which was extreme even for the rez. I remember looking down at the ground during this jeremiad, trying to disappear into an anthill, when Marie wandered by. She immediately saw what was going on and dove into action. She teased one of the bullies about a birthmark on her face, another one’s ugly shoes, and a third’s outdated hairstyle. The mean girls were absolutely overwhelmed and quickly fled.