Indian Country Noir (Akashic Noir) (5 page)

I took off the cap, put down the paint can and brush, and
stepped through the door.

He was standing by the window, looking down toward the
street below.

Put it on my desk, he said.

Whatever it is, I don't have it, I replied.

He turned around faster than I had expected. But whatever he had in mind left him when I pulled my right hand out
of my shirt and showed him the bone-handled skinning knife
I'd just pulled from the sheath under my left arm. He froze.

You? he said.

Only one word, but it was as good as an entire book. No
doubt about it now. My Helper felt like a burning coal.

Me, I agreed.

Where? he asked. I had to hand it to him. He was really
good at one-word questions that spoke volumes.

You mean Mutt and Jeff? They're not coming. They got
tied up elsewhere.

You should be dead.

Disappointing. Now that he was speaking in longer sentences he was telling me things I already knew, though he
was still talking about himself when I gave his words a second
thought.

You'd think with the current state of the market, I observed, that you would have left the Bull at the start of your
name, Mr. Weathers. Then you might have given your investors some confidence.

My second attempt at humorous banter fell as flat as the
first. No response other than opening his mouth a little wider.
Time to get serious

I'm not going to kill you here, I said. Even though you
deserve it for what you and your family did back then. How
old were you? Eighteen, right? But you took part just as much
as they did. A coward too. You just watched without trying to
save them from me? Where were you?

Up on the hill, he said. His lips tight. There was sweat on
his forehead now.

So, aside from investments, what have you been doing
since then? Keeping up the family hobbies?

I looked over at the safe against the wall. You have a souvenir or two in there? No, don't open it to show me. People
keep guns in safes. Sit. Not at the desk. Right there on the
windowsill.

What are you going to do?

Deliver you to the police. I took a pad and a pen off the
desk. Along with a confession. Write it now, starting with
what you and your family did at your farm and including anyone else you've hurt since then.

There was an almost eager look on his weaselly face as
he took the paper and pen from my hands. That look grew
calmer and more superior as he wrote. Clearly, he knew he
was a being of a different order than common humans. As far
above us as those self-centered scientists say modern men are
above the chimpanzees. Like the politicians who sent in the
federal troops against the army of veterans who'd camped in Washington, D.C. this past summer asking that the bonuses
they'd been promised for their service be paid to them. Men
I knew who'd survived the trenches of Belgium and France
dying on American soil at the hands of General MacArthur's
troops.

The light outside faded as the sun went down while he
wrote. By the time he was done he'd filled twenty pages, each
one numbered at the bottom, several of them with intricate
explicatory drawings.

I took his confession and the pen. I placed the pad on the
desk, kept one eye on him as I flipped the pages with the tip
of the pen. He'd been busy. Though he'd moved on beyond
Indian kids, his tastes were still for the young, the weak, those
powerless enough to not be missed or mourned by the powers
that be. Not like the Lindbergh baby whose abduction and
death had made world news this past spring. No children
of the famous or even the moderately well off. Just those no
one writes about. Indians, migrant workers, Negro children,
immigrants ...

He tried not to smirk as I looked up from the words that
made me sick to my stomach.

Ready to take me in now?

I knew what he was thinking. A confession like this, forced
at the point of a knife by a ... person ... who was nothing
more than an insane, ignorant Indian. Him a man of money
and standing, afraid for his life, ready to write anything no
matter how ridiculous. When we went to any police station,
all he had to do was shout for help and I'd be the one who'd
end up in custody.

One more thing, I said.

You have the knife. His voice rational, agreeable.

I handed him back the pad and pen.

On the last page, print I'm sorry in big letters and then
sign it.

Of course he wasn't and of course he did.

Thank you, I said, taking the pad. I glanced over his shoulder out the window at the empty sidewalk far below.

There, I said, pointing into the darkness.

He turned his head to look. Then I pushed him.

I didn't lie, I said, even though I doubt he could hear me
with the wind whistling past his face as he hurtled down past
floor after floor. I didn't kill you. The ground did.

And I'd delivered him to the police, who would be scraping him up off the sidewalk.

Cap back on my head, brush and paint can in hand, I descended all the way to the basement, then walked up the back
stairs to leave the building from the side away from where the
first police cars would soon arrive.

I slept that night in the park and caught the first trolley north in the morning. It was mid-afternoon by the time I
reached the top of the trail.

Only one rock and its human companion stood at the edge
of the cliff. Luth had stayed hard, I guessed. Too hard to have
the common sense to sit still. But not as hard as those rocks
he'd gotten acquainted with two hundred feet below. I'd decide
in the morning whether to climb down there, so far off any trail,
and bury him. Or just leave the remains for the crows.

I rested my hand on the rock to which the fat man's inert body was still fastened. I let my gaze wander out over the
forested slope below, the open fields, the meandering S of the
river, the town where the few streetlights would soon be coming on. There was a cloud floating in the western sky, almost
the shape of an arrowhead. The setting sun was turning its
lower edge crimson. I took a deep breath.

Then I untied Braddie. Even though he was limp and
smelled bad, he was still breathing. Spilled some water on his
cracked lips. Then let him drink a little.

Don't kill me, he croaked. Please. I didn't want to. I never
hurt no one. Never. Luth made me help him. I hated him.

I saw how young he was then.

Okay, I said. We're going back downhill. Your truck is
there. You get in it. Far as I know it's yours to keep. You just
drive south and don't look back.

I will. I won't never look back. I swear to God.

I took him at his word. There's a time for that, just as
there's a time when words end.

Eastern Woodlands, Canada

frosty halo circled the moon. It was going to snow.
Eight inches by morning, the 6 o'clock forecast had
predicted. Heather hoped it would hold off until they
got wherever they were going. So far, the roads were bare.

"Turn right at the crossroads," Don said.

She touched the brake. Signs nailed to a tall post pointed
to cottages east, west, and straight ahead. Some signs were too
faded to read, but on others Heather could make out the lettering: Brad & Judy Smith, The MacTeers, Bide-a-wee, The Pitts.

"Are we going to one of those?"

"No. Our sign fell off years ago. I know the way."

The ruts were four inches deep. Frozen mud as hard as
granite. Wilderness crowded the road. The bare twig ends of
birch and maple trees and the swishing boughs of spruce, fir,
and balsam brushed the Mustang's sides.

The track was getting worse. Heather leaned forward,
high beams on, studying the ruts. "Are we nearly there?"

Don's lighter flared. "Ten minutes."

"There hasn't been a turnoff for half a mile."

"That's right. We've passed Mud Fish Lake. That's as far
as they've brought the hydro. Osprey Lake is next."

"Does anybody live there?"

"There used to be Ojibwas, but we cleared them out years
ago. Now it's just cottagers in summer."

"What about winter?"

"There's a permanent village at the far end of Osprey
Lake. Maybe fifty people. What's left of the Ojibwas."

The car jolted in and out of the ruts. She pulled the wheel
to the right to miss a rock outcrop twenty feet high. Just in
time, she saw a tree with a two-foot-diameter trunk lying
across the track. Heather braked hard.

"Shit!" Don said.

"What now?"

"We walk." He picked up the gym bag and opened the car
door.

She wasn't dressed for this. Pant boots with three-inch
heels, jeans, and a leather bomber jacket. Walking bent over,
hugging herself for warmth, Heather couldn't see any path.
Don walked purposefully. She stumbled after him.

Heather tripped. Don didn't notice; he kept on moving.
She struggled to her feet, tripped again. The heel of one boot
had snapped off. On her knees, she fumbled amidst the pine
needles lying on the frozen ground. When she found the heel,
she shoved it into her jacket pocket and lurched after Don.

The cottage's tall windows were what she saw first, a dull
gleam of glass facing the lake. Trees and shadow obscured the
rest of the structure. Behind it rose a wooded hill.

"Here we are," Don said.

"How do we get in?"

"There's a key."

He disappeared into a grove of evergreens and emerged
with a key in his hand. He unlocked the door and stepped
inside, motioning her to follow.

"It's colder in here than it was outside," she said.

"That's because you expected it to be warmer."

Don set down the gym bag and pulled out his lighter. Its brief flare revealed a massive stone fireplace. He stepped
across the room, lit a candle that stood on the mantel.

The room came more clearly into view. Open rafters. Walls
paneled with wide boards. Pictures on the walls. A plank table
and half a dozen wooden chairs. A cluster of tubular furniture
with loose cushions.

"Hasn't changed," he said.

"Since when?"

"Eight years ago. The last time I was here."

"Who owns it?"

"My grandfather's estate."

So that was the connection. A loser like Don had summered here as a child. It didn't fit.

"This way," he said. She hobbled after him into a room at
the back. He closed the door. "If we stay here in the bedroom,
nobody out on the ice can see a light."

"Who's out there to see anything?"

"You never can tell."

"At 4 in the morning when it's ten below?"

A squall of wind rattled the windows.

She looked around. There was a double bed with an iron
bedstead, a chest of drawers, and an open closet with wire
hangers on a rod.

He set down the candle. Pulling two sleeping bags from
the closet shelf, he thrust one at her. The fabric was riddled
with tiny holes.

"You take the inside," he said.

"Okay." Why the inside? Because it would be harder for
her to escape? But she wasn't going anywhere. Not tonight.