The Work of Wolves (32 page)

They'd thought it would be too obvious if they all drove to the lake and parked. If someone recognized their vehicles and connected it to the horses' disappearance, it would make, as Earl had said, "Greggy Longwell's job a bit too easy, you know?" But now they felt conspicuous, standing in a parking lot, two Indians and two white guys in a group, doing nothing. Luckily, no one was there to see them. So they were dismayed when Mrs. Germain's ancient Continental heaved off the street, shocks banging and springs creaking as it swung over the slope into the parking lot. It coughed past them, missing on one cylinder. They watched as the door swung slowly open and Mrs. Germain's immense form emerged, rising ponderously and blowing hard from the effort. She smoothed her dress and shut the door and walked toward the store, her skirt immediately hiking up her large butt, defying gravity and all the grasping efforts of her hands to control it. They watched as the automatic door hesitated when she reached it, as if deciding whether or not to allow her passage, and then jerked and hissed and opened. They saw her, through the plate glass windows, seek and find a cart, place her purse in the upper cage, and disappear into the lighted aisles.

From where they loitered they could see the last light glowing on the tan tops of the hills above Lostman's Lake, and they could see, in contrast, the deep shadows of draws angling down those hills. To the southwest the earth turned into what looked against the darkening sky like high and ancient pueblos sheared off and sharpened by wind and rain: the Badlands, where stone skeletons rose from the land year after year, a rebirth by erosion, an alphabet of bone that, read rightly, told a story stretching back to the endless water of the Bearpaw Sea. In the Badlands the earth became an organ moaning musically and incessantly when the wind was right, a music that Norm had told Earl was a music of spirits and of the earth singing to itself.

The shadows of the hills crept into the streets of Twisted Tree, into the parking lot, struck the toes of their boots, and the sun was gone. The streetlight at the edge of the parking lot began a hesitant, static flickering, buzzing with a sound like angry insects. Mrs. Germain reappeared in the windows of the store. Then again the doors started and struggled, and she emerged, pushing a grocery cart before her. The cart, like her skirt, had a mind of its own, breaking from her line of travel. She tacked her way back and forth to the rusted Continental, the cart shooting right or left every time she reached back a hand to pull her skirt down over her thick thighs. She talked quietly to herself and glanced up once at the group of young men standing near Carson's pickup, then immediately looked away, her eyes veering off to erase and cancel the vision. She whoaed the cart near the trunk of her car, hauling back on the red plastic bar with all her tremendous weight. Then she reached back with both hands to tug her skirt firmly and evenly down. She bent at the waist, and the skirt hiked back up. She inserted a key in the trunk lid, opened it, reached into the cart, and methodically, one by one, transposed the white plastic bags from it into the gaping maw of the trunk. Finished, she shut the lid and turned and stared at the cart corral with its red sign and white letters asking customers to please place their carts within it. Mrs. Germain read this request, then bowed her head toward it, repentant and respectful, and gave the cart a little shove in its direction. The cart careened and wobbled and stopped in the middle of a driving lane. Mrs. Germain gazed at it reproachfully, as if she would stare it into movement. Then she got in her car and drove away. The abandoned cart glowed palely blue in the new, artificial light, listing on a bad wheel.

"There's a sad thing," Carson said.

It was the first any of them had spoken since Ted and Carson had said hello.

"What's that?" Earl asked.

"A grocery cart like that sitting in the middle of a parking lot. 'Bout the saddest sight in the world."

Darkness deepened. The wires of the cart glowed more intensely in the bluish light until it seemed a cage of light, alone in emptiness, with no thing it could hold.

"When do we go, then?" Willi finally asked.

They all looked at him as if they didn't understand the question, as if they'd gathered here merely to watch the strange equation between light and dark work itself out.

But Carson replied, "Any time. It's dark enough."

Then they milled for a moment like baffled animals, or like dancers seeking the beat, hesitant in their first stepping.

"Who's driving?" Earl asked.

"I gotta take the pickup," Carson said.

"We're gonna end up at my place anyway," Ted said. "I might as well drive, too."

Then it was a matter of deciding who would go with whom, more shuffling and hesitancy, until Carson said, "I need someone to hook up the horse trailer for me. Earl, why 'n't you come with me?" It was a relief that the question of pairing could be decided on lines of competency, all of them assuming Willi knew nothing of trailers and ball hitches.

CARSON AND EARL LEFT
, and Willi followed Ted across the parking lot to his car. In spite of what he'd told Earl, he didn't actually know Ted very well and wasn't sure what to say to him. At the parties he'd attended, he'd heard things about Ted from various people but had spoken little with him personally. Ted seemed to regard Willi as he regarded most people, as an object of sardonic humor. Willi settled into the passenger seat of Ted's car, trying to think of something to break the silence. His seat belt was stuck. He jerked on it several times, then gave up. Ted didn't even reach for his. Ted started the engine and flicked on the headlights. A static sizzling, like an angry insect, came and went under the dashboard, and a flickering bluish light illuminated the upholstery and sculpted weird shadows out of the dark interior. Ted's car was a mess—an Italian's car, Willi thought, not a German's—full of cans and bottles, various tools and automotive belts, scraps of paper. Willi put his feet down carefully, guiding them by the intermittent flashes from under the dashboard.

"What is that flashing?" he asked as Ted pulled out of the parking lot.

Ted glanced down. "Oh, that," he said. "Got a bad connection."

"Is it something you can fix?"

"I suppose. The car runs."

As Ted left town and headed down the highway into the moonless prairie, Willi noticed that the headlights dimmed when the spark sizzled and brightened when it stopped, so that the car moved forward toward a darkness that would suddenly suck itself into the windshield, then be pushed weakly back again. The darkness was so thick it seemed to Willi as solid as a wall they were constantly on the verge of running into, but Ted never changed speed or seemed to notice. Glancing at him, Willi saw his face in profile, chiseled from shadow by the small arc and suspended against the black, opaque plane of the window. The car creaked and rattled, and the muffler banged. Willi thought of a comment an Indian friend had made outside the school one afternoon, when a student with a bad muffler had rent the air, gunning his engine. Willi had jumped, and the friend had laughed. "On the rez," he'd said, "even the mufflers are secondhand."

"You have your own personal lightning," he said to Ted.

Ted's face turned to him, eyes all dark hollowness, skin along his cheekbones glowing, his hair, in the faint electric light, a sheen of blue, like those odd birds with the odd names here, grackles, who strutted on lawns in the summer, stiff and jerky, bending their necks so that the sun changed the black there into green and blue.

"Lightning?" Ted asked.

"The Thunder Beings are in your car. The Wakinyan."

"The Wakinyan," Ted said. "In my car."

"Maybe."

"Hell. I thought I had a bad wire."

The connection sizzled, the headlights dimmed to almost nothing, the wall of darkness outside rushed toward them. Willi braced himself for a collision, even though he knew it was only darkness. Then the headlights sputtered, glowed, forced the darkness back again.

"Makes driving more interesting," Ted said.

Willi was a bit embarrassed by his reaction. He removed his hand from the dashboard, but he wished the car had a seat belt. "Yes," he said. "It is boring to always see where you are going."

Ted smiled, the first time that evening. "Ain't it, though," he said.

In front of them Carson signaled a left turn. He'd parked his horse trailer up the hill behind The Church of Cars, as Willi thought of it.

"Think we oughta follow him?" Ted asked.

"I think we should go on. They will meet us at the lake."

Ted drove past the gravel driveway to the church. Carson's taillights were weaving slowly up the hill. Then he shut his lights off and vanished. Willi craned his neck as Ted drove on, imagining Carson creeping up the road in the dark. They had chosen this night because there was no moon, and Willi could see nothing at all of Carson's pickup.

"So," Ted said, "what do you think of reservation life?"

Willi was surprised to find Ted initiating conversation. "I have learned a lot," he said. "It has been interesting."

"Lot a Germans interested in Indians." Ted made the comment as a statement, not a question.

"Yes. There are
Indianer
clubs."

Willi stopped, unsure how much he should say, but it was too late. Ted glanced at him, curious. "
Indianer
clubs? What's that?"

"People five like Indians. They get together and have powwows. They live in tipis. They sing Indian music. There are people who belong to drum groups. And do beadwork and tan hides. They try to live like Indians."

"That right? A bunch of Germans whose hobby is bein Indian?"

"Sort of. But it is not just a hobby. It is how they live, too. Even when they are not at a powwow, they try to live like the Indians lived. With respect for the earth and..." Willi stopped, unsure how Ted would take all this. "Even their religion," he finished.

"You belong to one a them clubs?"

Willi was uncertain about admitting that he did, but he couldn't lie. "Yes," he said. "I have learned to speak Lakota, and..."

He stopped again. Ted was gazing at him, a small smile on his face, the kind of smile Willi had seen him direct at people right before he made a sardonic comment. Willi's pride in his knowledge of Lakota culture dwindled under Ted's gaze. Ted finally turned back to the road without saying anything. The headlights dimmed and brightened, counterpoint to the blue and garish brightening and dimming inside the car. Ted pulled into the gravel drive to Antelope Park. Small stones cast long shadows down the headlights' beams, then sucked those shadows back into themselves as the car moved on. Ted parked the car under the cottonwoods, far back from the road. It was the middle of the week. The park was abandoned. They walked back up the track toward the highway and the lake on the other side of it.

"Those
Indianer
clubs," Ted said. "I never heard of them before. I belong to a secret Lakota society that is something like that."

Willi's curiosity was piqued. He knew of many Lakota societies and groups but couldn't think which one Ted was referring to. "You do? What is it?"

"Not many people know about it. It's one of the most secret and powerful societies on the rez."

"What do you do?"

Ted flipped hair out of his eyes. "I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't be tellin you this stuff."

Willi said nothing. He was intensely curious but knew better than to press. They started to climb the slope up to the highway. "Ah, hell," Ted said. "I guess you can know. We get together and dance polkas. We got accordions. We wear those leather pants and drink beer out've those big glasses, what're they called, steins? It's called the Germaner Society. We're hobby Germans."

He grinned at Willi. Willi was abashed and fell a few steps back, but Ted called back from the middle of the highway, "You oughta see what the Frencher Club does!"

CARSON'S PICKUP, PULLING THE HORSE TRAILER
, passed by on the highway. He parked it further down the road, pulling into a field approach and hiding it behind a hill. They would have to walk the horses down from the lake and across the highway and load them behind the hill. They couldn't be sure someone might not chance by if they loaded them on public land, either at the lake or in Antelope Park. Willi and Ted stood near the lake and waited, and five minutes later they heard footsteps, and then Carson and Earl appeared out of the darkness. Without a word all four of them turned up the hill toward Magnus Yarborough's land.

ORLANDO HAD TRIED TO ESCAPE
. He stood apart from the other two horses, his head bowed far down. In the darkness, it wasn't until they were right next to him that they saw the gashes across his neck and withers, the dark blood soaked into his hair, running down his legs, staining the ground. "Oh, shit," Carson said when he realized what had happened. "Goddamn. Goddamn." He knelt before the horse and reached out and touched the wounds. The other three were muted by his sorrow, and they stood in a close group, watching him.

"You've always been a stupid sonofabitch," he said quietly. "But I never thought you was this stupid and ornery. Jesus Christ, horse, just because you're starving don mean you got to be a idiot. That's barbwire you was tryin a go through. You know what barbwire is?"

The words were a quiet chant, while Carson's hands touched every wound and came away bloody. Earl had never heard a speech more full of grief.

Carson finally stood. "He's gonna be OK," he said. "He's cut pretty bad, but nothin to the bone. I swear, though, he'd kill himself. Let's get them out of here."

He reached into his back pocket, pulled out a pair of pliers, and opened and closed it once. The metallic sound was sharp as breaking ice. He strode to the fence, reached for the top wire, and put the cutting jaws of the pliers on it. At that moment Earl understood what Norm meant by the difference between stealing and robbing.

"Wait," he called. "Don't cut it yet."

Carson's shoulders slumped. He dropped the pliers to his side and turned slowly to face Earl. "You got somethin against cuttin wire?" he asked. "What is it this time?"