Indian Country Noir (Akashic Noir) (34 page)

Beech gritted his teeth. "You were here. You know what
happened."

The Indian became desperate. "No! I don't know. Tell me.
Please, please, tell me."

"The cop got shot," Beech said shortly. "The other guy
saw what happened. Now let's go." He shoved the Pima away
and frog-marched him down the street.

Beech looked up and saw dawn beginning to peek out of
the sky. He had to get this guy back to the hotel and cleaned
up for the dog-and-pony show this morning.

As they passed a sewer grate, he shoved the Indian ahead
of him and dropped the gun down the hole.

Five blocks later, the Indian asked, "What happened to
the other guy?"

Beech didn't answer.

"Beech?"

"What?"

"What happened to the other guy?"

"What other guy?" He was stalling.

"There were two guys on the ground back there, and I'm
pretty sure they were both dead. Who was that other guy, and
how did he get that way?"

"Ira, you were there. I was there. There's nothing else to
say." He stopped walking and jerked the Indian around to face
him. "I mean it. You are never to mention this again. Do you
understand?"

"No. Why won't you tell me?"

Beech stared at him. "You kidding me? I don't know anything that you don't know. Now, you're to keep your mouth
shut about tonight or we're gonna have some real problems."
He grabbed the Indian below the collar of his shirt and shook
him. "Understand me?"

The Pima just looked at him for a long moment. Then he
nodded and said, "Yeah."

Beech let him go. "Good."

Outside the hotel, they passed a poster for the 7th War
Loan Bond Drive. It was fastened to a light pole and it danced
in the breeze. The Indian looked at the photograph of himself
and five others raising the flag on Mount Suribachi. He, Gagnon, and Bradley were the only survivors. The other three
were killed in the battle that raged on after they planted the
flag. Every time he saw the photo, another little part of his
heart withered and died. He missed his buddies from Easy
Company, most of whom were gone now.

"I wish Joe Rosenthal had never taken that picture," he
said. "Then I wouldn't have to be on this crummy tour."

"Yeah, well, he did and you are," Beech said sourly. "Now
you have to get in there and clean yourself up in time to go
raise the flag again at Soldier Field."

"I already raised the flag on Iwo. Why do I have to do it
again?"

"Because they built a replica of Suribachi, and you heroes have to reenact the flag-raising so people will buy more
war bonds, so the marines who are still fighting have a half a
chance of surviving. Get it?"

They entered the hotel in silence. Beech said, a little
friendlier now, "I'll take you up to your room, help you get
cleaned up."

"That's okay. You don't have to."

"I said I'll take you up."

The Indian didn't respond.

Beech checked his watch. "Never mind. We don't have
time anyway. Come on."

He led the Indian down to the staging area. Gagnon and
Bradley both shook their heads when they saw the shape he
was in. Bradley looked at Beech, exasperated. Wasn't Beech
supposed to keep an eye on Ira?

Gagnon stepped over to the catering area and came back
with a bucket of ice water. He poured it over Ira's head. "Maybe
this'll sober you up, you fuckin' drunk."

"Jesus, Rene. You didn't have to do that," Bradley said.

"Yes, I did. Look at him."

"Enough," Beech snapped. "The Cadillac that's going to
drive you around Soldier Field is here. Make sure Hayes sits in
the middle so he can't fall out. And Hayes-you drag your ass
up that papier-mache mountain and you plant that flag. And
don't fall down. Do you understand?"

The Pima marine shook the water off himself like a dog
and said nothing.

Beech had watched the whole dog-and-pony show, and unless you knew what a mess Hayes was, you couldn't tell he was
out of it. He always tended to be a little on the sloppy side
anyway.

And Beech would be the first one to catch any flak if the
brass was upset with the performance of any of the heroes. No
news was good news.

But that didn't prevent him from almost having a nervous
breakdown. He kept running down to the street to see if there
were any extra editions of the Chicago papers highlighting the
murder of a policeman and a civilian.

The copper was one thing. Hayes had grabbed for his gun,
and Beech had had no choice but to get involved. Too bad the
guy bought it, but Beech had to protect Hayes. And himself.

But that other fucking guy had seemed to come out of
nowhere. All of a sudden he was standing there, watching the
whole thing. It would definitely not be a good thing if the guy
shot off his mouth later about seeing two marines and a dead
policeman.

And that fucking Hayes, asking him what happened.
Hayes wasn't stupid. He was trying to play it coy, maybe setting the stage to shift all the blame to Beech if the shit ever
hit the fan.

Beech developed a splitting headache.

After a few days in Detroit and Indianapolis, the tour returned
to Chicago. Beech wanted to rip his fingernails out with his
teeth. He hadn't had a drink since their last night in Chicago.
He took Hayes out to bars every night but kept himself in
check so he could watch the Indian. He managed to make
sure the captain or the colonel saw Hayes in all his glory, returning to the hotels after his nights on the town.

At the Palmer Hotel in Chicago, Colonel Fordney told Beech to bring Hayes into his office. The colonel shoved a
United Airlines ticket to Hawai'i into Beech's hands. "He's
going back to Easy Company. The Fifth Division is training to
invade Japan. Hayes is going with them. Make sure he gets on
the plane without disgracing the Corps. Dismissed."

Later, as Beech was getting the Indian seated on the plane,
he said, "I'm real sorry it turned out this way, Ira. You're a good
man. Keep your chin up." He clapped him on the shoulder.

The Pima marine looked at Beech. "What did you do with
the gun?"

Beech cupped his hand behind his ear. "Can't hear you."

The Indian raised his voice. "The gun. What did you do
with it?"

Beech shrugged and waved his hand, indicating there was
too much noise for him to make out what his friend was saying. "Have a safe trip," he called.

The Indian didn't say anything.

Beech jogged back inside the terminal where he could
watch the plane, with Hayes inside, take off.

The war bond tour was raising money, that was true, but it
was also a fact that the United States government was broke.
That meant a lack of weapons, ammunition, tanks, food-a
shortage of everything. With diminishing supplies, there was
a hell of a good chance Hayes wouldn't make it back from
combat alive.

He scanned the morning editions of the Chicago papers.
There were follow-up stories on the dead policeman and
civilian, but all they amounted to were that there were no
witnesses and no leads. The only item of note was that the
policeman's gun was missing, but there were no clues and no
theories yet.

Beech rubbed his hands together. Now he could relax, have a drink, and get ready to move on to St. Louis and Tulsa
with the bond tour.

Alberta, Canada

oing home was the last thing he wanted to do.
In the darkness, Boon Lone Rider walked past Farm
Four, a mix of gravel and crusty snow crunching beneath his heavily worn runners. He wished it were summer.
He remembered shoes from the past, smaller pairs of canvass
ones with rubber soles, dust coating them thinly as it rose in
tiny clouds, his child feet dragging patterns like snakes in the
road. He thought about stopping at a cousin's place in Little
Chicago, but it had been a long time since he had been back
here, and not only was Boon unsure of circumstances-the
things that had transpired since his last visit, the details of life,
always changing, who was cool with what and with whom,
who had been caught with whose woman in the backseat of a
pow wow van, what shotguns and odd handguns had drifted
across the border into whose hands, whether his cousin was
even alive-he also knew he needed to do this.

He thought about visiting his mom and his grandma, but
he'd have to go by the cemetery soon enough, he figured. He
thought about visiting his dad, but that would necessitate
finding him, and Boon wasn't sure he was willing to spend the
last thing he had, his time. And he wasn't sure if he even had
the effort in him to do it. Boon thought about his grandpa and
what a good man he had been. He thought about Regina. He
guessed she was a woman now, but the girl was the one he held in his mind. He didn't want to wonder how many kids she had
now, who was brushing her skin softly as she slept, caught up
in the velvety wonder of it all, who was gently lifting her dark
hair away from her face and neck to kiss her tenderly ...

With a twitch like he'd seen in horses, Boon shoved his
scarred hands deeper into his jeans pockets. He needed more
than a hoodie out here in this cold, but at least tonight, the
spirits were dancing. He hadn't seen that in a long time. Boon
looked up, his breath rising white into the blackness of night.
He scanned the sky for the Lost Boys. This evening, their
names suited them a bit too well.

Boon looked up the road. A few houses still had lights
blooming softly into the blackness outside the windows. A few
more miles west and he would be there.

Boon had been fighting as long as he could remember.
The first time he hit someone back, it had been his father.
Four years old, Boon's smooth fists pummeled out, surprising
even himself, mad tears streaming down his face. The old man
should have never come back around, Boon thought. Boon
and his mother had been just fine at Grandma's. Grandpa had
come in later that morning from an all-night smoke, found
Boon curled up in the old quilt in his chair in the corner,
taken him into his arms, gently reminded him of the pipe in
the house, told him that fighting back would do nothing to
take away the black eye from his mother's face, smudged him
off, prayed for him. That's when Boon began walking, walking
these very roads when the hurt or the anger got too much,
when it had to come out of him somehow. Grandpa was right.
Even if the pipe hadn't been there, the world of men and the
wars they fought belonged outside of women's houses.

Faces he had hit flashed through his mind. Boon didn't
always start the fights, and he didn't always finish them. There had been plenty of times he had been left lying somewhere,
alone and beaten. Some fights he regretted. The guy who had
said one thing too much about his sister when Boon was sixteen and drunk. Fair warning, Boon thought, but at sixteen,
he hadn't realized one punch could break someone's face.
Sometimes he clenched back the fistfuls of rage and pain,
clenched them back, hugged them to himself, plunged them
through his own chest, and hit the person he was really aiming at, but usually it wasn't too hard to find another Indian as
mad at the world and himself as he was. Boon ran his tongue
over his top front teeth, tasting the scars they had left there.
The guy had been right about Boon's sister after all, though
Boon still missed her terribly.