In the City of Shy Hunters (57 page)

These people were Ruby's family. If we don't bury him proper, he'll end up in the city dump.

Bury him? I said. Where?

Where he lived, True Shot said. Under his arborvitae. We about got the hole dug.

Then: I didn't know you had a pipe, I said.

Inherited it, True Shot said, From an old friend.

WHEN I CRAWLED
through the hole in the arborvitae, next to the cement thing, at the base the elm tree, I couldn't see anything at first, just shadows and the noise of someone digging.

Can I spell you? I said.

Hell, yes, a woman's voice said.

She held up a shiny thing which was a short-handled shovel.

Karolyn, the woman said. With a K.

Hi, I said. My name's Will.

Ain't much farther to go, Will, Karolyn said. Throw your dirt to the south on the piece of plastic.

When her body passed by me in the dark and out the hole in the arborvitae, the smell of her sweat was heavy and sweet.

Wasn't long till my eyes got used to the dark. The hole was maybe four feet deep and probably four feet across, too. I started digging. The dirt was dry and caked hard. You had to use the shovel like a pick and pierce the earth and then scoop out what you'd pierced.

The smell of the earth, and being in the earth, made the time go by fast. Plus I was thinking about Ruby, me and Ruby Prestigiacomo spending the night in that very same place together.

How long ago was that?

Every time I struck the shovel into the earth, it was Sergeant Richard White's body I was striking.

Maybe the Riders would attack Dog Shit Park again tonight.

SEVEN PEOPLE ALTOGETHER
, including me and True Shot, made a circle around Ruby's washed body. Ruby shined like a glow-in-the-dark statue. All around us, dark. The wind in the elm trees blew against my ears. There was Black Plastic Woman, tall and lanky Karolyn with a K, the two gray-bearded men who had turned Ruby over, and a young kid, a skinny boy about fourteen or fifteen with a bad complexion, wearing a T-shirt that said
CUSTER DIED FOR YOUR SINS
.

True Shot stepped up to Ruby, bent down, and lifted Ruby onto his shoulder again—no body bag, just Ruby naked. I crawled in the hole under the arborvitae first and True Shot laid Ruby down and I pulled Ruby through the hole.

Ruby smelled like Irish Spring and something else not so much like spring. True Shot stuck his head in and told me to put Ruby's head pointing east and then to curl his body around clockwise.

I was knocking dirt in the hole because there wasn't a lot of room. Finally I just squatted down.

In a dark tiny space wrestling with a dead body.

Ruby's arms and legs, Ruby's cock, his head—soft, heavy things against me. I got Ruby's head as east as I could and then folded the rest of him around on his side clockwise. Tucked Ruby's right hand under his left armpit, pulled his left arm down so his right hand couldn't move, then put his left hand in his right armpit. That way Ruby had his arms crossed. Pulled his legs up to his chest.

True Shot handed me a lit candle, the votive kind like in church when you put a quarter in a slot and light a candle in front of a saint. I
put the candle in the center of Ruby's curl, between Ruby's hands and his head. The light was soft on his face.

I climbed out of Home Sweet Home. The gray-bearded men, Black Plastic Woman, Karolyn, and the kid with the Custer T-shirt stood in line to see Ruby.

On the green bench, I sat down hard, the sigh and scratch of the English elms all around me. The leaves were yellow in the dust-storm mercury-vapor light.

Black Plastic Woman made the high loud ululation in her throat. I heard the others, too.

People in the next room saying their prayers.

The kid wearing the
CUSTER DIED FOR YOUR SINS
T-shirt came over to where I was sitting and said, OK, man, he said, It's your turn.

The whole time I walked I was thinking, Last call. I was walking up to Ruby Prestigiacomo's grave and this was it.

Inside, under the arborvitae, there was Ruby. Looked like somebody had thrown a pint of blackberries in on his skin. Ruby Prestigiacomo in the light brown dirt hole, Home Sweet Home, curled up around the little votive fire.

Not sleeping.

I said Hail Mary Full of Grace the Lord is with thee and Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners—and then I stopped. Somebody else's Catholic words. Pharisee words.

I didn't know any others.

So I just knelt there, looking in, my folded hands pointed down at my friend.

I tried to sing “Fools Rush In.” But I couldn't sing.

Ruby Prestigiacomo, what am I going to do with you?

TRUE SHOT KNELT
down next to the cement thing, his extra-lovely butt sticking out of the hole in the arborvitae. True Shot took off his mirrors. His shoulders moved up and down, up and down, and the muscles in his back shook.

True Shot's voice was a child's whispering in a culvert.

When he stood up, True Shot brushed the dirt off his Levi's knees, brushed off his butt, put his mirrors on.

True Shot bent over and, from underneath the arborvitae, pulled an old suitcase covered in buckskin with beadwork on the handle around where the locks flapped up.

* * *

THE CHANDELABRA ELM
tree limbs and leaves were darker above us than the rest of the night. Hard bits of stars. True Shot was sitting west facing east. He had washed himself and put on a clean red shirt. Two small fires on the surface of his mirrors. I sat on True Shot's right. Next to me, the kid with the Custer T-shirt. Next to him, a graybeard, next to the graybeard the other graybeard. Across from me, Black Plastic Woman, and, to the left of True Shot, Karolyn on the drum.

Seven people in a circle around the fire.

Between me and True Shot's boots was one of those Catholic candles with a saint on it—Saint George killing the dragon—a big eagle feather with a piece of red flannel tied to it, and a white bowl full of water. An earthen bowl the size of one of True Shot's hands was directly in front of him.

From out of a buckskin bag, True Shot poured sand through his fingers into the bowl, and out of another buckskin bag, True Shot poured dirt—not the tan-colored hard pan dirt we buried Ruby in, but dark loamy earth I could smell over where I was sitting. True Shot mixed the earth and the sand together with his fingers.

When True Shot told me, I lit a Fish Bar match and put the match to the bottom of the piece of charcoal and the charcoal started fizzing, and I put the charcoal on the mixed earth and sand in the bowl, and the edges of the charcoal started turning white.

All at once, a high wind blasted through the elm trees. For a moment, they sounded like cottonwoods.

True Shot's old suitcase covered in buckskin sat on the grass. The suitcase was open. Inside was animal fur, beaded bags, and little boxes and paper sacks tied with ribbon. On the inside of the suitcase lid, where the cloth pocket with the elastic trim usually is, was the same painting that Charlie 2Moons used to have of an Indian on his horse, tired and beaten, the sun setting in the distance.

True Shot took a square piece of polished wood out of the suitcase. There was a circle of brass tacks on the wood. Then out of the suitcase, he pulled out bags: leather bags, plastic bags, paper bags.

Karolyn was on the drum, heartbeat, heartbeat, heartbeat.

True Shot took off his mirrors, folded them, put his mirrors inside the Armani case. He stuck the case in his shirt pocket. From out of the suitcase, True Shot took a spotted piece of fur. It looked like the collar to an old fur coat, mountain lion or bobcat.

But it's not the truth.

The spotted fur was ocelot.

True Shot unrolled the ocelot skin, and behold, just like that, lying there next to the Saint George and the dragon candle, right in front of me, was the pipe.

The moment that, after, you're different.

The dark blue beads, the feathers, the pipe bowl black around the hole, the carved buffalo, the pipe stem as long as your arm, the male and female of the pipe put together.

The pipe was Grandfather Alessandro's pipe. Charlie's pipe.

Voici la pipe
.

What scared me was the pipe was alive.

My hand on the end of my arm reached out, and when I touched the pipe—just like that—I'd touched Charlie 2Moons again.

My eyes turned slow, like a rattlesnake in the sun, its eyes following the horizon, taking everything in, and when my eyes landed they landed on True Shot.

True Shot laid the pipe on the ocelot skin pointing out from him. Then from the buckskin bags, he pinched herbs and sage onto the charcoal, took the pipe, and moved the pipe in a circle through the lick of smoke.

Then he spoke. I couldn't believe my ears.

It is this way, True Shot said. I heard this story once. In Russia there was a famous rabbi. Whenever he saw misfortune threatening his people, this rabbi would go to a special place in the forest and meditate. Then he would light a fire, say a special prayer, and a miracle would happen and the rabbi's people would be safe. Things went on like that and the rabbi died, and later, another rabbi, whenever there was a misfortune threatening his people, this rabbi would go to the same place in the forest and say to the Great Mystery, I'm sorry but I do not know how to light the fire, but I still know the prayer, and here's the prayer, and this rabbi would say the prayer, and the miracle would happen. Then that rabbi died, and another rabbi, his disciple, whenever a misfortune threatened his people, he would go to the place in the forest and say, I do not know how to light the fire, and I do not know the prayer, but I know the place and this must be sufficient, and the miracle would happen. So then that rabbi died, and his disciple, another rabbi, whenever a misfortune threatened his people, would sit in his chair at home with his head in his hands, speak to the Great Mystery, and say, I don't know how to light the fire, I don't know the prayer, and I don't know the place in the forest, or even the forest.
All I can do is tell you about it, and this must be sufficient. And the miracle would happen.

It is this way, True Shot said. The moral of this tale is that God made man because he loves to hear stories.

True Shot? I said.

True Shot blew on the embers in the pipe bowl, the embers in the bowl inside glowing, a thin line of smoke trailing up around True Shot's head. The light from the Catholic saint candle back and forth, side to side in his eyes, on his face, his face like rocks and cliffs.

That's a good one, huh? There's lots of stories, True Shot said. Each one of us has one.

The locomotive, I said. Tell us the one about the locomotive.

Only the drum heartbeat, the wind in the English elms.

True Shot's gap-toothed smile. His hand went up to his throat, his open palm on the beaded blue horizontal and the red vertical of the buckskin bag around his neck.

It is this way, True Shot said. When you're lost on the blue road, when you're in the west and cannot see, remember that the bright light coming toward you first appears to be a charging iron horse, a locomotive train that will run over you, that will crush you.

But that bright light, I said.

But that bright light, True Shot said, Only appears to be an iron horse, we said together. What the light really is, we said, Is the light at the end of the tunnel.

MY HANDS REACHED
out for the medicine pipe, past the Saint George candle, and I put my hands under the ocelot skin, around the wooden stem as long as my forearm, put my hands around the pipe bowl. The eagle fluff and the blue trader beads and mother-of-pearl shells. I held the pipe to my heart, to my head, to my belly, to my penis. Held the universe, known and unknown.

Held Charlie.

When I turned my head and looked up at True Shot, his lips had turned to rubber.

True Shot's chin was on his chest, and he had his thumb and index on the bridge of his nose. His extra-lovely shoulders started shaking up and down.

Who knows how long True Shot wept?

True Shot is still weeping.

When True Shot lifted his chin up, what was in his eyes I wanted covered with his mirrors.

Then: My friends, True Shot said, True Shot is not my real name.

THE MOMENT THAT
, after, you're different.

The mystery. The true mystery.

Everything is there all along and you just don't realize it.

Then, just like in Agatha Christie, a twig snapped, or wind, the fire popped—something. True Shot's hummingbird eyes stared at something straight ahead. The light from the flame back and forth, back and forth, onto True Shot's face.

My eyes looked where True Shot was looking.

Black Plastic Woman screamed.

We were surrounded by Indians. In all four directions. Indian people stood just outside the light of the fire.

From where I sat, the line of the tops of their heads made the horizon. Rolling dark black shadows. The fire gold on their faces.

The man who stepped out seemed so big standing above us.

We seven on the ground seemed so small, so broken open.

My left hand on the bowl, my right on the stem, I pulled the pipe inside my arms, the ocelot skin smooth against my forearms.

Heartbeat.

The man took off his camouflage cap and shook his head so the long black shiny hair moved from his face. He wore dark aviator glasses and a Levi's jacket with an eagle beaded on the pocket.

True Shot's hummingbird eyes stared at the space in between. It is this way, True Shot said. You have arrived just in time, True Shot said. Welcome!

My name is Peter Morales, True Shot said.

The heartbeat stopped.

Yellow leaves, wind, a campfire in the night. The fire on Beaded Eagle's skin, his aviators, his shiny black hair.

We know, Beaded Eagle said. That's why we're here.

The Indians we were surrounded by all made low sounds, moved their weight from side to side. The line of horizon lifted and fell, waves in a lake or ocean.