Disgraced (6 page)

TEN

Lola's Wyoming map had
been unfolded and refolded incorrectly so often that it had begun to separate along the seams. She located the pieces that comprised central Wyoming and held them together, seeking anything that resembled a tourist attraction. It had been a morning of rejection, and more awaited in the form of Pal's inevitable surliness when she returned to the ranch. Margaret had been patient with her for most of the day. They were both ready for some time off.

The map was unwieldy, but she preferred it to the phone app that seemed unable to encompass the region's immensity and emptiness in any way that made sense, urging routes through high country that lay beneath snow until well into summer, or suggesting shortcuts over gravel roads so rough as to make the paved route, although fifty miles longer, the faster option.

Lola brought a square of map close to her face and peered at the tiny print within the shaded area that marked the Wind River Reservation. A familiar name caught her eye. Sacajawea Cemetery. “It has to be the same one,” she said to Margaret. “The woman who led Lewis and Clark.” Margaret turned a blank look upon her. She didn't know about Meriwether Lewis and William Clark yet, but she would the minute she started school. Montana was lousy with Lewis and Clark this and Lewis and Clark that, the famous—infamous, if you were tribal—explorers who'd led the way to white development. Or, again depending upon your point of view, to the destruction of the West.

“We're going to a cemetery,” she said. Margaret knew about cemeteries, already having visited the Blackfeet burial ground several times in her young life to pay homage to various elders. Lola had objected at first, falling back on her own memories of chilly Catholic ceremonies populated by stone-faced adults in black standing among regimented rows of granite. But she'd quickly learned that Indian cemeteries were far more intimate places, graves as likely to be defined by wooden markers as imposing stones, and decorated with personal mementoes. Lola's heart broke at the sight of toys on children's graves, and warmed again at the realization of the comfort it must have given those bereaved parents to know their children were surrounded by familiar, well-loved things.

She told Margaret a simplified version of the story of Sacajawea on the way to the cemetery, pointing out that Delbert, the man who visited Pal every day, was Shoshone, just like Sacajawea. “The same way you're Blackfeet,” she said.

“Pikanii,” Margaret reminded her, using the tribe's own name for itself.

“Right.” Lola experienced the familiar sensation of being on the other side of a door, looking into a room that Margaret and Charlie shared, but unable to enter. A sign caught her attention. “Here we are,” she said, a bit too brightly. With her first glance, she forgot about her status as a perennial outsider.

Scarlet paper flowers carpeted the hillside, making shushing noises as the wind moved across them. Lola eyeballed Bub so severely that he abandoned his raised-leg stance beside the cemetery gate and instead did his business by the truck. “You stay here,” she told him. She didn't mind him burning off energy in the deserted parking lot, but it seemed disrespectful to allow him to cavort among the graves.

Lola led Margaret through the gate and stooped to examine the first site. It was, like the others, covered in flowers made of red tissue paper with green wire stems. The flowers were going pink beneath the punishing sun, their petals tattered by the wind's daily assault. Lola and Margaret wandered among the graves that but for their crimson blankets, were much like those of the Blackfeet, simple wooden crosses or low, narrow stone markers adorned with carved feathers or horses. A single granite monument loomed above the others, announcing Someone of Significance. Lola wondered if white people had been responsible for Sacajewea's marker, and whether she lay unquiet beneath it, oppressed by its weight, longing for the airiness and simplicity of her tribespeople's resting places.

Tobacco, a gift denoting respect, speckled the ground beneath the headstone, along with coins and a few notes on pieces of scrap paper. Lola resisted the temptation to read them. Her phone buzzed. Lola checked on Margaret, who wandered among the rows, stopping to examine the offerings at various graves, and answered it. “Jan?”

“You texted me.”

“Right.” Lola had tried to call Jan after leaving Tommy McSpadden's house, but Jan hadn't answered. So Lola simply texted 9-1-1, their signal for important calls.

“What's so urgent?”

“Your cousin—”

“Oh, God. What's wrong? Do I need to come down there?”

“Whoa, whoa.” Lola held up her hand, a calming gesture that Jan couldn't see. “Take it easy. First of all, you can't leave until I get back. You'll get fired. And anyway, nothing's wrong. I just had a few questions for you.”

Jan's sigh was audible. “You're sure nothing's wrong?”

Lola was not sure; in fact, was certain something was very wrong. But she didn't want to alarm Jan until she knew what it was.

“She's fine. Just a little closed off. I thought if I could get a better sense of who she is, it'd help me talk to her.”

“Shoot.” Jan's voice was thick. Lola could picture her talking past the end of the long braid that she usually wore, chewing on it when she was upset or merely thinking hard.

“Well—” Lola wondered how many innocuous questions she'd have to ask before she could get around to the ones for which she really wanted answers. “Was she a good student? Into sports?”

“Yes to both. She pulled down A's without breaking a sweat. And if by sports you mean rodeo, we all did that growing up.”

“Why'd she go into the military instead of college?”

Jan's voice regained the sure footing of superiority. “You've been in this part of the world long enough now to know the answer to that one. No way that two-bit ranch ever brought in enough money for her parents to be able to afford a college fund. The military was a great way to make some money fast and still give her the option of college later. Half the kids graduating from any of these schools enlist. Afghanistan and Iraq are the best things to happen for them. Otherwise, they'd be juggling three shit jobs, trying to stay afloat.”

Lola bit back her knee-jerk response. Jan was right, she knew. But she couldn't help but think of the kids who came back in boxes. The wars hadn't been good for them at all. “What about her personal life? Did she have a boyfriend?”

“No. Why?”

Lola had veered more quickly toward the key question than she'd planned. From the sudden caution in Jan's voice, she knew Jan had realized it.

“Just wondering.” Tommy McSpadden's voice echoed in her head.
That little slut
.

“I'll bet you were. Why were you wondering?”

Lola sidestepped. “It seems like the whole bunch of them who went over there from Thirty were under some kind of strain. One guy, the friend you told me about, got killed there. Another killed himself at the airport—well. You know about that, too. And two more got arrested a day or two after coming home for beating the ever-loving shit out of somebody in a bar. That's a lot of trauma for just a few people.”

“Yeah.” Jan's voice rang clear. She'd spat out the braid, maybe was on her feet, pacing back and forth across the newsroom, voice rising as she spoke. “You know what it sounds like to me?”

Lola waited.

“Sounds like somebody sees a story for herself.”

Lola tried to summon up some righteous indignation. “That's ridiculous. You said it yourself. It's not my state. Not my story. Besides, I'm on vacation.”

“Bullshit.”

Lola glanced again toward Margaret, as though Jan's voice could have ridden the wind toward the far end of the cemetery. Margaret assessed quarters from whomever she could. Jan spoke even louder. “You've said it yourself, more than once: A reporter is never on vacation.”

Jan's end of the call went to garble. Lola heard the squawk of a police scanner in the background, followed by their editor's raised voice. Jan returned to the phone. “I gotta go. You're off the hook. For now. But fair warning, Wicks. This conversation will be continued.”

Lola blew out a breath and called to Margaret. The wind carried her own words back to her. She leaned into it, narrowing her eyes against the swirling dust it raised, and trekked to the cemetery's far corner.

“What are you doing all the way back here?”

The face Margaret lifted to her was somber. “This one's lonely, Mommy.”

Compared to the floral extravagance atop the other graves, the site seemed forlorn, its plain white marker free of mementoes or other adornment. Lola bent to read the name. Knew before she even saw it.

“Michael St. Clair.”

ELEVEN

Pal jabbed at a
hamburger with her fork. It scooted across her plate, coming to a halt against a mound of rice. This time, Lola had flattened the burgers and fried them to a crisp, rendering their interiors a uniform gray, even though their exteriors posed a danger to Margaret's young teeth.

“Guess you decided against chicken,” said Pal.

“At least the burgers are cooked through,” Lola retorted.

“Unlike the rice,” Pal pointed out.

The rice was a bit crunchy, Lola had to admit. Unlike the previous night, she'd started it in plenty of time, but hadn't paid attention to the final direction to let it sit and steam after she turned off the heat.

“I'm sorry about the chicken,” she said. “I forgot about stopping by the store when I was in town.” She'd been so rattled by her encounters with Tommy McSpadden and Tyson Graff that she hadn't given the groceries a second thought until she'd had to confront dinner again.

Pal tapped her knife experimentally against the burger's crust, whacking it a little harder each time, waiting to see when it would break through. “Didn't you go to town just to get groceries?”
Tap, tap
. “You were gone a long time. If you didn't buy food, what'd you do instead?”
Tap
.

It was the first time Pal had shown the slightest bit of interest in her. Lola wished she hadn't.

“We went to the library,” she said. Pal didn't need to know it was
the newspaper's library, and that they'd actually gone the day before.

Margaret turned to her. “
Mommy
—” Lola had long given her to understand that lying ranked right up there with cursing and junk food.

Pal's expression, usually so flat, came alive. Her blue eyes went to slits. Lola wondered if that's what she'd looked like as a soldier, rifle raised to her shoulder, sighting her target. “Where are your books?”

“We're not going to be in Wyoming long to make it worthwhile to get a library card and check out books. But it was nice there, in the air conditioning.” Thirty had to have a library. And every library she'd ever been in—with the exception of the one at Kabul's university—was air-conditioned.

“Where's your phone?”

“What?” Was Pal going to check out her story? Maybe call the library, see if an out-of-town white woman and her Indian child had been there that day? “Why do you want it?”

“You'll see.” Pal held out her hand. Her new scars were healing. She saw Lola looking. “Your phone.”

Lola gave it over. “Don't you have your own? What about a land line?”

Pal punched some numbers. “Who was I going to call in Afghanistan? As to the land line, I canceled that when I went overseas. Hey, Delbert.”

Lola heard Delbert's voice, his confusion clear, on the other end. Pal cut him off.

“This is Lola's phone. Listen, we've got ourselves a problem.” Lola braced herself. She couldn't think of a single good explanation of why she'd been in town, not one that wouldn't tip off Pal, anyway. Pal would probably ask them to leave. This time, they'd have to comply. Lola felt a tug of regret for the story she'd never be able to write. At least she hadn't tried to sell it to anyone yet.

“Yeah, Delbert. I'm fine with ravioli, but we've got a couple of picky eaters up here with us. Lola was going to get some chicken in town today, but she forgot. She forgot a few other things, too. What things? Normal things. Bread, stuff like that. From the supermarket down in town, not the rez store.” She paused. Delbert's voice remained unintelligible to Lola's ears. Pal nodded. “Could you? That would be great. Maybe some ice cream for Margaret, too.” She ignored Lola's vigorous head shake. “Be sure and keep the receipt so she can pay you back. Oh, and Delbert? If it were me, I'd tack on some kind of surcharge, for gas or delivery or whatever. Thanks.”

Lola forced her mouth closed. It was the longest speech she'd ever heard from Pal. The woman looked at Lola with something like triumph in her eyes. Lola nodded acknowledgment. Anything was better, she told herself, than that dead gaze. Besides, the exchange with Delbert had distracted Pal from any further quizzing on the reasons for Lola's trip to town.

Lola had learned to listen for the rattle and wheeze of Delbert's fossil of a car, which labored so slowly up the hill to Pal's house that she had time to throw on a T-shirt and jeans and be in the kitchen with Margaret and Pal by the time he arrived for breakfast each morning. But on this day, she somehow slept through its arrival, padding barefoot and late into the kitchen, only to be greeted by a counter crowded with grocery sacks, along with three pairs of eyes suspiciously full of mischief as they regarded her from their places at the table. Even Bub seemed friskier than usual, dashing from Lola to Margaret and back again, tail a blur.

Lola avoided the groceries and poured herself a cup of coffee.

“Delbert got eggs,” Pal offered.

Lola gulped coffee. Pal sounded less surly than usual. Whatever these three were up to, she wanted none of it.

“You could cook them,” Pal added.

As though you'd eat any, Lola thought.

“Eggs, Mommy. Eggs, eggs,” Margaret chanted.

“And bread, too,” Delbert chimed in. “For toast.”

Lola drained her coffee cup, silently apologized to her scalded throat, and poured another. They'd trapped her. She didn't trust Pal to make breakfast—the woman would probably poison them—and of course Margaret was too little. As for Delbert, custom demanded both that she cook for an elder and serve him first.

“Fine,” she said. She tried to remember if she'd ever cooked an egg. When she'd lived alone, if she'd eaten breakfast at all, she'd simply poured herself a bowl of cereal, which she consumed standing at the kitchen counter. But Charlie cooked eggs all the time. She was pretty sure she'd watched him at least once or twice.

“Frying pan?” she said.

Pal pointed to a low cupboard. Lola retrieved a cast-iron pan, set it upon the stove, and twisted the knob until the gas caught. She went through the bags and found the eggs and the bread, along with a wealth of vegetables and condiments and even more soy milk for Margaret. She calculated—no use wasting more than a single egg on Pal, who probably wouldn't eat it anyway—and broke a half-dozen eggs into the pan, recoiling as the white dripped from her fingers.

“Maybe you want a spatula,” Pal observed. “There's one in the drawer.”

Maybe you want to come over here and cook these damn eggs yourself, Lola thought. She found the spatula and prodded the eggs. The yolks broke and immediately adhered to the bottom of the pan in an immovable mass.

“There's butter in one of them bags,” Delbert offered, a little late. That would have kept the eggs from sticking, Lola realized. At least she could butter the toast. She found the bread and popped a couple of pieces in the toaster. By the time she turned back to the eggs, they'd begun to burn about the edges.

“Something stinks, Mommy.”

“I'm well aware of that.” Lola scraped the mess of eggs onto four plates, tiny amounts for Margaret and Pal, somewhat larger ones for Delbert and herself. A good portion of the eggs remained stuck to the bottom of the pan. The smell of burning bread warred with the eggs' sulfurous reek. Lola whacked the toaster and two carbonized pieces of bread popped up. She ran a knife across the surface, scattering black crumbs into the sink. “I'll take these pieces, if you don't mind, Delbert,” she said. She strove to keep her voice even. She wanted to scream. She managed a tight smile. “Let's see if I can do better with the next batch.”

“There's some Tabasco and ketchup in those bags,” Delbert said. “Might help with the eggs.”

It did. By the time Lola was done doctoring her own eggs into edibility, they were more sauce than egg. She gnawed at her pieces of toast, which had lost all resemblance to bread, tasting instead like wooden shingles. Not that she'd ever tasted shingles. The room had gone ominously silent. Even Bub sat frozen in some sort of expectation. Lola tried to come up with an adequate apology, one that would mask her own resentment at being forced into a role for which she was so obviously unsuited. She raised her eyes and opened her mouth to begin.

No one was looking at her. Instead, Margaret, Delbert and Pal all exchanged glances, obviously in some sort of cahoots. Margaret and Delbert shook with silent laughter, and even Pal's typically frosty mien had thawed a degree or two. Lola wondered what else they had planned.

“Jesus H. Christ on a crutch,” Lola said. “Whatever the hell you three are up to, out with it.” How much worse could this morning get?

“Quarter, Mommy,” Margaret said. “Two quarters.” She burst into giggles.

“Just for the record, I don't think hell is a particularly bad word.”

“Three quarters now, Mommy.” Lola told herself that Margaret's superior counting skills indicated her daughter was a math genius, and not just a mercenary little soul.

Pal put a single bite of eggs into her mouth and choked them down, making sure Delbert saw her. The minute he looked away, she put her plate on the floor. Bub heaved a martyred sigh and trudged to do his duty. “You might want to put the chicken away,” Pal said. “It could go bad fast in this heat.”

“Right.” Lola was grateful for any excuse to leave that dreadful table. She searched the bags on the counter. “I don't see any chicken. Did I miss it?”

Margaret had the whooping belly laugh of an adult, so forceful she slid from her chair and rolled onto the floor.

“Delbert,” Pal said, raising her voice above Margaret's laughter, “did you forget the chicken?”

“It's not in them sacks?” All three of his teeth showed.

Lola went through the groceries again. “I don't see it,” she said. Just as well, she thought. One less thing for her to ruin.

Delbert slapped his leg. “Must be in that bag out on the porch.” He left the room. Margaret climbed to her feet and jumped up and down. “He's going to get the chicken, Mommy.”

Damn the whole lot of you,
Lola thought
.
This time, she vowed, she'd go to her phone for recipes for chicken. She'd follow directions. She'd make an edible, nay, a delicious dinner, and shut them all the hell up. For just a moment, she thought of Charlie's ultimatum, and of the fact that, if she didn't accept his proposal, she'd be forced to learn to cook. A point in the “yes” column, for sure. The door opened and all thoughts of Charlie and his offer of marriage vanished.

Swinging upside-down from Delbert's hand, its legs bound with twine and its baleful yellow eyes fixed firmly upon her, was a very large, very angry, and very live chicken.