Two Medicine (21 page)

That day Ronnie and I were
sharing kitchen duty. He was on the register this time and I did
the cooking. I enjoyed us teaming up in the kitchen because we had
always a good time joking around and talking. I had just wrapped up
a big order for a family that had just arrived to camp, and was
scraping down the grill, when Greg the ranger came walking in the
back screen door of the kitchen.

“Hey Will,” he said as he
closed the screen door behind him, “how’s business?” I noticed he
didn’t smile.

“Business is booming,” I
said, putting down the metal scraper and wiping my hands on my
apron. “I was wondering when you were gonna stop by.
Hungry?”

He shook his head and
walked over and leaned against the big kitchen table, glancing
through the door that separated the kitchen from the rest of the
store. He was wearing the park ranger uniform, and set his hat down
on the table. I noticed he carried a gun on his belt.

“Yea, Two Med’s campground
has been at capacity almost these last three weeks,” he said
casually, looking back at me after a moment. “Gonna be a busy
summer.”

I offered him a soft drink
and he shook his head. “I can’t stay long, thanks.”

He leaned against our
large kitchen table and folded his arms and looked at me. “Listen
Will, I actually came here to talk to you about something that
happened.”

“Really?” I took off my
apron and set it down at the table. I couldn’t image what possible
trouble I might have gotten into – the fireworks? “What’s up,
Greg?”

“I was told recently that
you have been seeing a girl named ‘Alia,’” Greg said, watching me
as if searching for some kind of reaction.

“
Do you know her?” he
asked.

I hesitated a moment, my
mind running through various reasons why a park ranger may want to
know about my involvement with Alia…
Did
she do something?

“Yeah, I met her, here at
the store. Is she ok?”

He waited a moment, and
then shook his head and said, “She’s dead.”

His words were
like a hard punch in the gut; I stood up from the
table and let out a quick breath. I felt a coldness creep over my
chest.

“
She’s dead?” I asked,
louder than I intended.

Greg looked behind him
into the store again and then back at me. “Yes, she’s dead Will.
That’s why I’m here. Sit down again,” he motioned to the bench.
“When was the last time you saw her?” He shifted his weight leaning
against the table and crossed his arms again.

My mind was frozen with
shock and I couldn’t answer. Dead... I couldn’t believe what he had
told me. I would never see her, or hear her voice again. I pictured
her, for some reason, lying on some dirty street in Browning, in a
small, crumpled heap. I pictured those eyes looking up at me from
my side as we lay in bed. I could feel her necklace, which I had
habitually worn ever since, around my neck as I stood there like a
statue.

“Will,” Greg said,
reaching out to me and gripping my shoulder lightly. He now seemed
to have an expression of honest concern in his eyes, “You ok
buddy?”

“Yea,” I sat back down
again. “What happened to her, Greg? What the hell happened? She was
just here yesterday.”

“She was found this
morning, very early in the woods but not far from the main road
that leads here – within the park’s territory. I can’t tell you
much more because it’s an ongoing investigation, but I wanted to
check with you, privately.”

The word ‘privately’
didn’t sound good. I looked back at Greg. “How did you even know I
knew her; I mean why even think of me?”

“I talked to her roommate
in Browning this morning, and she said she talked about a Will at
Two Medicine – had to be you, of course,” Greg said.

He cleared his throat.
“So, the last time you saw her was when?”

“Yesterday,” I said.
“How’d she die, Greg?”

“
Can’t tell you; not now.
What time did she come by yesterday.”

“
She came by and we
chatted while I was working,” I said.

“What time did she
leave?”

A subconscious flash of
concern told me that I needed to guard the details of Alia and I’s
relationship, as brief as it was. I looked at Greg’s uniform, his
gun, and even though I thought of him as a real friend, I felt some
primitive instinct to watch out.

“
Late,” I said.

Greg studied my face. I
was staring back at him and gripping the rolled-up apron in my
hands. A silence grew between us that was noticeable.

“
You can’t tell me what
happened?” I asked.

“
No, Will.”

I thought of Ronnie, and
how he had seen Alia and me later in the evening, heading up the
stairs to my room. I glanced out the middle kitchen door into the
rest of the store – I couldn’t see Katie and Ronnie
anywhere.

“Late, but I don’t know
exactly when.” I said again.

“
Did she seem upset, like
anything was bothering her?” Greg asked.

“No,” I shrugged, “on the
contrary she seemed pretty happy.”

Greg stared at me for a
second more, and then straightened up. “Did they know Alia? Ronnie
and Katie?” He nodded towards the store.

I shook my
head.

Greg sighed and then
nodded his head slowly. “People die up here every summer, Will, but
it’s from easily-determinable causes. Dying from exposure, mauled
by bears, you know – stuff like that. Nature is rough here, so it’s
nothing new to find a body. But,” he said slipping his ranger hat
back onto his head, “Alia’s death was not ‘easily
determinable.’”

“You can’t tell me how she
died, but where was she found?” I asked.

Greg shook his head and
got up to leave, “In the park, but near Browning.”

He nodded again towards
the store. “I’ll talk to the rest of the staff later; I’ve got to
go to Browning in person now, to contact her family if I can find
anyone.”

“She didn’t have any
family,” I said to him as he walked towards the screen
door.

Then it dawned on me, “You
came here just to talk to me about her, before you even tried to
find and talk to her family? Why was seeing me so
important?”

“Because your name came
up, and I felt like you needed a warning before the investigation
really begins, Will,” Greg said, looking at me with a sorry
expression. “Browning has jurisdiction over this, for now, so
you’re going to be questioned most likely. There’s no local police
in Browning, as you may know – we rely on Bureau of Indian Affairs
to police the area. But I wanted to talk to you personally before
things heated up and the BIA finds their way here.”

Greg handed me a card of
his, with his personal number scribbled on the back. “Like I told
you,” he said, “at Two Med we look after our own.”

The phrase “going to be
questioned” struck me. I followed Greg as he walked out of the
screen door and headed over the gravel pathway around the store to
his truck.

“What should I do, Greg?” I
asked. “If Indian Affairs comes around, what am I supposed to
do?”
Do I need to get a lawyer or
something?
The very idea of talking to a
lawyer was ludicrous and a gross shock in that wild and remote
outdoor landscape.

“Just be careful, buddy,”
he said, unhelpfully, as he got into the truck and slammed the
door. He rolled his window down. “Call me if you think of anything
else, and don’t hesitate to come visit us at the station.” Then he
drove off, leaving me standing there alone.

I watched some
campers walking down towards the lake, readying a
camera for a shot of Mount Sinopah across the water, resting like a
king with the world at his feet. The family was small: a husband,
wife, and a child. Their voices were a distant, happy, and
energetic as they stopped at the lake side and took shots of the
mountain and then the store, with me still standing there in front
of it dumbfounded like a wooden carving set there for
decor.

I looked back at Mount
Sinopah behind me and wished I was back on the summit, looking down
at the whole valley, untouchable.

I walked over to a log that
served as a bench near the store and sat down. Alia dead… I still
could not believe it. I could still
smell
her. I touched the little metal
arrowhead on her necklace. A thousand questions shot through my
head in a moment:
How did she die? Why did
she die? Did she suffer? Was she scared? Am I going to be a
suspect?

I looked out over the
water. I had to find out more; I couldn’t simply not know. Not
knowing was far worse that the truth. I resolved to go see Greg
later that night when I was off shift and demand to know what he
knew. I’d tell him in confidence every detail I knew about Alia,
with our time together in the proper place, in return.

I went back to my shift
that afternoon and worked like a zombie – burning the burgers on
the grill, dropping frozen lumps of French fries in the fryer
absentmindedly, causing an eruption of oil all over the stainless
steel fryer. I was a thousand miles from the Two Medicine Store,
staring off into the boiling fryer oil and turning over in my mind
the thousand possible scenarios of her death. I finally gave up
after an hour and went and found Phyllis and told her I was
sick.

I avoided everyone on my
way back to my room, and just lay in bed staring up at the ceiling.
How could something so grisly, so criminal, so ugly, happen out
here in this pristine land? It seemed like such an urban crime.
Just like Larry’s gross behavior, his Kansas mannerisms, the hokey
gift shop crap, Ronnie’s drugs, Katie’ aloof distrust, this
criminal
investigation
, with its companion words: murder, cops, lawyer – none of it
belonged in this world that I had believed in, that had sold me on
the move in Atlanta, a world that included Alia moving to
California, finding happiness, and maybe even being with me – the
both of us finally finding happiness, if only for a moment. But the
whole place looked different to me now: the mountains, the store,
the customers, my room.

This horrible slap in the
face caused me to feel like I barely knew the place now. Two
Medicine was just a remote spot on the map, and what was Browning?
A distant, dangerous, crazy neighbor – best to be avoided. Alia was
on her way to escaping from there – but did it catch up with her
again? Or did she die near Two Med? Was it from someone here that
she met her fate?

A girl I had slept with
and had somehow fallen in love with was dead, only a few hours
after leaving my bed. I lay in the same bed that evening and
watched the two bats cleaving to each other in a crevice in the
wall, motionless, dead to the world and caring nothing for its
concerns. It would be good to be motionless, tucked away in a
crevice and grasping Alia, far away from this place and both of us
dead to the world.

Eighteen

I worked the next day’s
shift in daze again – nothing was important. A thunderstorm came
and it rained heavily outside. Thunder boomed down the mountains
and bowled over us like a sonic tide, shaking the old windows each
time. The store was consequently slow, but whenever a visitor did
come, they would rush in drenched, covering their heads with hoods
and cardboard from the deluge. All day I kept looking at the front
doors to the store each time some person walked in, expecting to
see a badge and uniform of an office with the Bureau of Indian
Affairs – the big, bad, BIA from Browning. I had never met any of
them, but I heard they were a pretty aggressive police force from
some of the locals that came by the store. Yet, that day, no such
person came through the door.

After cooking my last meal
of the day for a final customer, we closed down the kitchen,
scraping over the grill, dumping the frying grease, and cleaning
all the pots and pans. Ronnie talked a lot, and he seemed
uncharacteristically edgy. I just grunted an agreement him here and
there, barely listening, with enough on my mind to not ask him what
was wrong; and as soon as we were done I headed up stairs to
change. I intended to be out the door towards the Two Med ranger
station as quickly as I could – I had an overwhelming compulsion to
find out more from Greg about Alia’s death. But I couldn’t shake
Ronnie. As I came out of my room, ready to go, he was standing in
the hallway, as if waiting for me.

“
Hey
Chiefy!” he said. We had begun to call each other ‘Chiefy’ on a
regular basis after watching
Jaws
together earlier in the week.
“Where ya going?” He seemed cheerful enough, but also overly
watchful, too interested.

“
Just heading down to
Greg’s – he invited me for dinner,” I said, inventing a plausible
explanation.

“
Oh yea? I’ll come along.”
Ronnie jogged back into his room and grabbed his wallet and put on
his watch, calling from his room. “I don’t suppose one more mouth
to feed is a problem for them.”

“
I thought you didn’t like
him,” I said to him down the hall, remembering Ronnie’s attitude at
the ranger orientation.