The Falling Away (6 page)

“Okay,” she said. “You got it.”

They walked to the restaurant in silence, Paul keeping his hands thrust into the pockets of his coat and Quinn struggling to keep pace. Dude walked fast, was all she could think.

At the restaurant, the man told her to order whatever she wanted. She figured she wanted a Grand Slam and some coffee. Paul ordered nothing. She felt guilty about that for about half a second.

“You graduated from high school this year,” Paul said, no more than ten seconds after the waitress left to put in Quinn's order.

Quinn shrugged, sipped at the glass of water in front of her. “Yeah.”

“You did well in school,” he said. “You're smart.”

She shrugged again.

“What are you going to do now?” he said.

“Eat breakfast,” she said. “That's all I promised.”

He smiled. “Yes, it is. But while you do that, I was hoping you might think a bit about your future.”

“Don't have one. In case you didn't notice, you woke me up inside a homeless shelter.”

“I don't think that's true.”

Quinn had to admit she was starting to get a bit torqued. This guy woke her up at the shelter, obviously knew more than a little bit about her, offered to buy her breakfast. Okay. She knew what all those signs pointed to—she'd learned that, if nothing else, from life on the streets. But something about this guy calling himself Paul seemed . . . different.

His eyes, maybe. Many times she'd peered into the eyes of people who were mentally imbalanced, people who'd lost touch with reality, people who'd left the launch pad with the help of crystal meth or cocaine. She could tell those people were dangerous because their eyes showed . . . well, nothingness. No soul. No humanity.

But this Paul character was different. His eyes seemed alive, and that was something that made her curious. Something that even made her hopeful, she had to admit. Because when you were out on the streets, passing an endless wave of dead, soulless eyes, you had to hope you'd see something different; if you didn't, your eyes became empty, soulless coals themselves.

So yeah, she'd maybe let herself hold on to some little flicker inside. It was the flicker of hope that told her she'd someday see her mother again, the flicker of hope that told her someday, somehow, some way, things would get better.

She'd seen all that in Paul's eyes, and now she was angry at herself. Because really, there had been nothing in Paul's eyes at all; it had been her own eyes that betrayed her. Even after four years, hope was a dirty thing that mocked her.

This Paul character was no different from any of the other whack jobs she'd met on the street, and she was mad that she'd fooled herself into believing otherwise.

She stared down at the table a moment, then met Paul's gaze. At least she could knock him down a notch before leaving. She'd find a place to be by herself, maybe curl up with her trusty penknife and relieve the pressure that was now pounding behind her eyes.

“Look. Paul. Let's cut to the chase. You're a dirtbag. I mean, cruising homeless shelters, looking for seventeen-year-old girls? Stalking them, finding out where they go and what they do before you move in and offer to buy them breakfast? What comes next? After my Grand Slam, you casually mention that you have a hotel room not too far away? You're pathetic.”

He showed no immediate reaction, so she continued. “I'm okay with that; I'm an expert on the subject, you might say. So here's what's going to make your story even more pathetic: I'm going to sit here and eat my breakfast when it comes, but there's no way I'm going anywhere with you when this is over. Think what that says about your life, when you can't even pick up a homeless teenager.”

The waitress picked that exact moment to put down a platter in front of her, so Quinn smiled, gave Paul a quick salute, and tucked into her pile of scrambled eggs.

Paul watched her in silence for a few minutes, and she was amazed at the glee she felt inside, thinking of what must be going through his mind.

“You've been cutting yourself,” Paul finally said, his voice low.

She stopped chewing, looked at him. “Come again?”

“To release the pressure,” he answered. “You've been cutting yourself. You're careful—you took a penknife and some of the razors from your art teacher at school this past year when you started, and you keep a stash of rubbing alcohol to sterilize the razors and wounds—but you've been cutting yourself all the same.”

Quinn felt a queasiness building inside her. The bit about releasing pressure was too . . . personal. It was a thought, a feeling, she'd never shared with anyone else. No counselor or therapist or caseworker. No one.

Paul had closed his eyes, but now he opened them again. “You think of it as deep-sea diving. You feel like you're sinking, every day, and you feel that pressure threatening to make you explode. Except it's a pressure
inside
you, and that's why you do the cutting.”

This wasn't the reaction she'd expected from Paul the Stalker. She'd expected him to cry, maybe even hoped he'd cry. She'd expected him to retreat, beg her not to turn him in.

She hadn't expected him to crawl inside her head.

Quinn started to slide out of the booth, but Paul's hand closed around her arm as she did so.

Immediately she felt her anger, her pain, her hate, draining from her body. It was replaced by a sense of . . . buoyancy. Like the deep-sea divers in that movie she'd sneaked into last year. What did they call it? Equalization depth. Where she was neither sinking nor rising. Only remaining quietly, blissfully still. Until now, only cutting had produced that feeling.

“What are you doing?” she said in a whisper as she gave up the effort to leave. Suddenly, she wanted to find out more about this man calling himself Paul.

His eyes had been closed, but now he opened them to look at her again. Living eyes, not dead ones. Yes, she still had to admit that.

“I'm praying for you,” he answered.

10

As Dylan approached Harlem, hitting the speed-limit signs that slowed him from sixty-five to twenty-five in a matter of a few hundred yards, he started planning his next moves. He was going to owe Andrew for this, which probably wasn't a Good Thing. But certainly a Better Thing than having Webb die in his front seat; he'd be happy to be in Andrew's debt if it meant Webb survived.

It's not like he and Webb were BFFs, but Webb was the closest thing he had to a friend. That was his whole reason for agreeing to this now ill-fated trip: to keep an eye on Webb, who approached everything with a certain mix of childlike glee and naïveté. Webb was the guy constantly dancing on the edge of a cliff, so immersed in the moment that he was unaware of the mile-deep drop right next to him.

Biiluke
, Joni said.

Dylan grunted. Yeah,
Biiluke
. The original name of the Apsáalooke, the Crow people, so-named after their ancestor chose to jump off a harrowing cliff to certain death. “I won't make many of him,” Original Creator said, referring to his recklessness. So maybe the bond he shared with Webb was that feeling of a kindred Biiluke. A kindred chosen, as Claussen might have said.

It's all of that
, Joni said.
Biiluke, chosen, Claussen, Webb
.

Right
.

You couldn't save Claussen. Webb's a second chance to do that
.

What about you? I could have saved you, Joni. Would that have kept me out of the army, out of EOD, out of—

Okay, I wasn't going to go there, but yeah: this is like your third chance. You couldn't save me, couldn't save Claussen, heck, couldn't save yourself, so you entered the army and EOD with this crude sort of death wish, didn't you? And when that didn't work out, when you didn't actually die, but only ended up crippled, you weren't any worse off. Because you were already crippled
.

Yeah, you're quite the psychoanalyst. I'll be sure to pass along your theories next time I talk to my therapist
.

And when will that be? Haven't you skipped out on your last few sessions
?

Why would I need them, with you in my head? Can you shut up for now and let me concentrate on getting some help for Webb? You can lecture me about what it means later
.

Shutting up. For now
.

Two blocks away he saw the Kwik Trip looming and flipped on his turn signal. No sense getting picked up by local tribal police. Especially, as Andrew might say, with a white man bleeding all over the front seat of his pickup. He glanced at Webb again, who had awakened from his stupor a bit and now had his head resting on the dash once more.

Webb didn't dabble in the painkillers, said they took the edge off his thinking. He thought alcohol was more social, and that's what Webb was all about. Not used to Percocets percolating in his system, Webb was quiet and compliant. And this, most definitely, was a Good Thing. Dylan could think, plan his next moves, without Webb's constant chatter in his ear.

The wind leaked through the windows, creating a shrill whistle as they idled through the parking lot. On the adjacent side street, someone flashed the lights on a new Dodge Ram, conspicuously clean in the middle of the grimy Montana winter.

Dylan peered through his windshield, saw the driver of the pickup.

Andrew gave him a quick wave, started his Ram with a rumble, and pulled away from his parking spot.

Dylan followed as Andrew left town and turned onto a gravel road. Exactly 3.2 miles outside of town, Andrew's Ram turned onto a different gravel road for another .7 miles, and finally into a driveway beside a battered old trailer house.

Dylan parked behind Andrew's pickup and shut off his own, watching as Andrew slid out of the Ram and approached. Dylan rolled down the window with a few painful creaks, sitting quietly as Andrew's dark gaze took in the scene.

“Dylan Runs Ahead, the Mighty Hunter,” Andrew said, smiling.

Dylan stared at the door of the trailer house, which looked abandoned. But then, many trailer houses on any rez looked abandoned. “This place a—”

“Heap Big Medicine,” Andrew said.

“Shut up. I mean—”

“Yeah, his name's Couture. One a them French Indians.”

“Doctor?”

Andrew smiled. “Close enough; he's a vet. Does great with horses, a regular Robert Redford.”

Dylan frowned, and Andrew must have caught his thoughts. “Relax. He does this kinda work on the side. Antibiotics, the whole deal—usually they're for cows and pigs. But all white men are just pigs, ain't that what we say on the rez?”

Dylan pushed open his door, forcing Andrew to take a few steps back. “Just help me get him inside.”

“Couture knows the drill. No worries.”

Dylan moved around the other side of the pickup, opened the door, slid Webb out of the seat, draping Webb's good arm over his shoulder. Webb mumbled something, but Dylan couldn't understand what he said.

Andrew watched, shuffling back and forth on his feet to stay warm.

“You gonna help?” Dylan asked, struggling to get Webb's feet under him as they moved toward the trailer house.

“You're doing fine. I'll get the door for you.”

Andrew ran up the rotting wooden stairs to the trailer house's door and knocked. A few seconds later it opened, and Andrew exchanged words with whoever was inside before disappearing into the trailer.

So much for his offer to hold the door. Not that Dylan had really expected it; Andrew was one of those guys who told you all about everything he could do or would do, but rarely actually did.

Dylan worked his way up the rotting wooden steps, last painted a muddy brown sometime in the nineteenth century, grabbed the door handle, and negotiated the narrow doorway as he half carried Webb's slumping form into the trailer.

Inside, Andrew stood with a fair-skinned Indian sporting long, braided hair and a C-shaped scar on his cheek. Both held cups of coffee, and the guy with a scar took a sip.

“Over on the couch,” the scarred man said with a phlegmy voice, and coughed.

Dylan struggled to the couch, noticing it was covered with a couple of black garbage bags to protect whatever thready upholstery might lie beneath. The carpet inside the trailer may have once been actual carpet, but now it was just something to collect mud. Everything smelled of stale tobacco.

Dylan put Webb down on the couch cushions slowly, letting him slump to a half-prone position before standing and turning again. His own shoulder felt a bit numb from carrying most of Webb's weight.

The scarred guy had produced a pack of Marlboros, and he offered one to Dylan. He seemed to be studying Dylan's forehead; did he have a spot of blood there without realizing it? Dylan resisted the urge to rub at it.

Andrew already had a cigarette in his mouth, unlit. Dylan paused, then decided to take one himself. He wasn't much of a smoker, but this wasn't any time to be turning down offered pleasantries.

Scarred Guy took out a Zippo, set flame to Andrew's and Dylan's cigarettes before lighting one of his own and breathing deeply. He coughed a bit of blue smoke as he cast his dark eyes at Dylan.

“Stephen Couture,” he said, extending his right hand.

“Dylan Runs Ahead.”

Andrew grinned. “Now we smoke the sacred tobacco, have Big Council.”

Couture ignored Andrew, speaking to Dylan. “You're not Assiniboine. Not Gros Ventres, either.”

“Apsáalooke,” Dylan said.

“Crow.”

Dylan nodded.
Crow
was a mistranslation of the Apsáalooke name that literally meant “People of the Big-Beaked Bird.” Couture undoubtedly knew this, as did Andrew. For that matter, the Assiniboine and Gros Ventres people had never called themselves that; those names were misnomers as well. Only difference was, their tribes had been labeled by the French instead of the English.