Two Medicine (30 page)

I felt her companionship
for a while on that road; and even if it was a fantasy it warmed my
heart – just the thought of her presence at my side.

I eventually got
a hold of Greg on the phone halfway to Two Med,
and he picked me up on the ranger truck. When I told him about what
Thunderbird had said at the strip club, and showed him the
necklace, he didn’t just laugh it away like it was ridiculous, as I
kind of expected him to; rather, he said, “I told you there’s more
to that guy than meets the eye.”

“
He knows more about Alia
than he’s telling me, though,” I said, “at least it feels that
way.” I was thinking of that person “Sky,” and what she may have
been doing out in the woods. Thunderbird probably knew, I figured,
and was protecting her.

Greg just nodded his head.
“We’ll keep looking, Will; we’ll keep talking, until we find
something.”

Twenty-Three

That evening, Ronnie, his
new girl Jamie and I stayed up late watching
Jaws
(again) and then when that was
done, Ronnie got up and popped
Rambo
right after that. We were in
Ronnie’s room, all of us lying on his bed. Ronnie smoked weed, as
usual, but this time through a glass “one-hitter” pipe, puffing
sporadically through both movies, and he and Jamie also sipped
Maker’s Mark whiskey straight, throughout the double feature. Jamie
said it was her favorite drink, and Ronnie said he would drink
anything, so they were set up fine for the night. Ronnie
perpetually drank and smoked, but this evening he seemed unusually
desperate to drown himself in chemicals and liquids.

For my part, I had about
five beers by the time Rambo started, and was feeling pretty buzzy
already, when Ronnie handed me his one-hitter. I was a casual
smoker at best, but I took a big drag, and held it in for as long
as I could, with Ronnie and Jamie watching me expectantly (Ronnie
must have told Jamie I was a lightweight with drugs). I blew out a
thick cloud of smoke like a dragon, sending the cloud up to the
wooden-plank roof of Ronnie’s room.

Jamie clapped and Ronnie
chucked, grabbing the one-hitter back from me and called me a
“degenerate drug addict,” and then refilled the pipe sloppily for
himself from his now-smaller Ziploc bag of drugs.

Just then we heard a knock
on the door, and Ronnie, thinking it was Larry or Phyllis, waved
his hand around in front of him to try to diffuse the cloud of
smoke, but I got up and asked who it was.

Katie, instead of
answering, just opened the door and came in, closing the door
quickly behind her. “Hey guys,” she said, a little sheepishly.
“Just wondering what you hooligans are up to.”

“
Just lonely, huh?” Ronnie
slurred, looking at her with half-closed eyes, scratching his
mustache. “Welcome aboard, we just started Rambo.” He hopped-up off
the bed and grabbed the remote, swaying on his feet as he punched
the buttons to rewind the movie to the beginning.

“
You don’t have to restart
it.” Katie said, walking over and sitting on the end of the
bed.

Ronnie’s room had come
with a king size bed – Katie’s bed and mine having only a little
twin. It was fitting though, I thought, given his libido and
prowess. He had no other furniture, so we moved over and made room
for Katie on the bed. Ronnie ripped off his white Def Leppard
t-shirt he had on, revealing his vivid, full-shoulder tattoo of a
Japanese coy fish that looked so out of place on him, and then he
hopped back into the bed, between Jamie and Katie, bouncing us all
on the mattress.

“
Whoa there, big boy,”
Katie said, moving over a bit and lying next to me, almost touching
my shoulder with hers. “This isn’t your fantasy of a foursome
finally coming true.”

“
Who said anything about a
foursome?” Ronnie said, winking at me, “Will, beat it why
doncha?”

I made like I was getting
up, as a joke, and Katie grabbed my arm and dragged me back down
again. My head was no swimming in a marijuana dizziness and beer
buzz.

“
Don’t
even think about it,” she said, and then looked around the bed.
“Now what’s a girl gotta do to get some whiskey around here?” She
reached over and grabbed the bottle of Maker’s Mark as we applauded
this new side of Katie. Jamie reached for a glass but Katie just
took a large swig from the bottle. Even in my haze I realized that
she was behaving strangely. I looked around the room.
Why were we all getting so stoned?

By the time Rambo finished
his bloody mayhem at the end of the movie, I was feeling very
drunk. Jamie and Ronnie had gotten under the covers during the
movie somehow, and I knew it was time to go and leave them to it. I
also figured I had better rescue Katie from any danger of assault;
although she seemed to be able to take care of herself. She had
drowned herself in whiskey and seemed a little crazy-eyed when I
looked at her as I was leaving.

I pulled her up by her arm
off Ronnie’s bed, and dragged her towards the door. As we walked
down the hall towards her room, she suddenly looked at me intently
and said, “Will, go to church with me Sunday.”

She swayed a bit and
grabbed my hands in hers, holding them both tightly. Her hands were
very warm.

I felt a stirring and
involuntarily thought of her and I together. Immediately I pushed
the thought away. “
Church
?” I asked, trying to pick up
the thread of the conversation.

“
It’s
not really
a
church,” she said lazily, shaking her head slowly. “It’s just
a church
service
held in the camp sites here every Sunday.”

She leaned in and gave me
a hug. “Just come with me this Sunday,” she said, giving my hands a
final squeeze and then left me out in the hall as she closed her
door loudly.

I stood there for a
moment, listening to her opening and shutting some drawers and then
landing onto her bed. I could also hear Ronnie and Jamie moving
under their covers. I turned and walked to my room and shut the
door behind me. Siegfried and Roy were gone too.

Twenty-Four

The next day I had a
viscous hangover – my head hurt and I felt like I had gotten no
sleep at all. I was unfortunately on gift shop duty and I stationed
myself at the register, readying my mind to deal with foul Larry. I
was leaning against the counter, trying to hold my body as still as
possible, just watching an old couple mill around the coffee mug
sections, when I noticed the side door open and a long-haired guy
walk in by himself. As he came further into the store, I saw that
it was Clayton Red Claw. My guard went up instantly and I felt a
cold sensation of nervousness grow in my gut.

He looked around the store
for a second as he walked, then he saw me and walked straight
towards where I was.

“
Here we go....” I said to
myself, wondering what was next. Clayton had on some kind of work
uniform, and upon closer inspection I saw it was a FedEx uniform.
He was a driver? That didn’t fit the image I had of him as a wild,
drug-dealing gangster.

“
You’re Will, right?” he
asked. He looked only irritated, like he was being inconvenienced
to be there, not deadly.

“
Yea.” I said, putting a
little force into my voice. “We met at the bonfire.” He walked up
to the counter, a little too close to me, and said, “I’m Clayton
Red Claw.” He had a mean look, a thin-lipped scowl and a furrowed
brow with eyes that looked a little burnt out, with red circles
around them. He had a thin, wiry build, with a hungry look. I
noticed with a start that he was wearing an identical leather
string as mine on his wrist.

He looked around the store
and then back at me. “Have you been asking questions about me and
Alia around town?”

“
No.”
Not yet,
I thought to myself.

“
I want to you to stop
asking around about me,” he said, as if not hearing me.

“
Did Thunderbird talk to
you?” I asked, my voice sounding a little weaker than I
intended.

“
You got something to say
about it, you want answers, you come to me – directly,” he said,
not blinking once. He had the right kind of voice, I figured, for
this kind of thing – gritty and harsh. He had a couple pens stuffed
into the front shirt pocket of his uniform, which contrasted with
his rough mannerism.

“
I just want to know what
happened to Alia, Clayton, that’s all.” I said. “I couldn’t care
less about what you or anyone else is doing.”

“
You come see me and we’ll
talk about it – I’ll write down my address.” He scribbled it onto a
postcard – one of those that were for sale – and flicked it over to
me when he was done. It hit me in the chest and fell spiraling down
to the floor.

He turned to leave. “And
leave Sky out of it too,” he said over his shoulder as he walked
out.

“
I don’t
even know her,” I called over to him as he walked.
But I’d like to…

I picked up the card and
shoved it into my pocket, wondering about who had talked to him.
Come and see him? To Hell with it, I decided that I would. Whatever
happened, it was a step in the right direction… more promising, if
not more dangerous, than Indian bars and strip clubs at
least.

Larry was gone
from work a lot more
during work hours these days, which was unusual, but he always
had some excuse like picking up “supplies in town” or that he had
park business “with the brass,” meaning the administration office
down at the main lodge. But I had asked Jamie before about all
these recent supply runs of his, and she said the managers of the
various locations like Two Med didn’t ever need to travel to the
main office for anything – it’s all trucked in.

“The park delivers
supplies to the various locations like Two Med.” She had
said.

So I didn’t know what he
was up to, but his being gone was a relief. Phyllis was filling in
for him more often, and I enjoyed her soft-spoken and grandmotherly
personality. But the other reason was because lately, when
Larry
was
at work,
he had become even more insufferably domineering, tyrannical and
unbearable. He and I had developed a strong antagonism lately, ever
since our standoff, and I wasn’t sure where it would end. I thought
about quitting a couple of times, but I wasn’t quite ready to be
unemployed in Glacier Park – I needed a backup plan.

Larry also yelled at Katie
for various reasons in a harsh way now. One thing I was sure about,
though, was that Larry was a confirmed and fervent racist, and he
was getting worse. His distrust of any Native Americans that were
unlucky enough to wander into our store when he was on duty had
increased tenfold lately for some reason.

The same day Clayton had
paid me that little visit, while I was still working at the gift
register, a young Blackfoot kid came in with a younger boy, clearly
his younger brother as they looked almost identical. The older boy
wanted to buy a poster using his paycheck from the ranch. This
nearby ranch was well known, and a big employer in that part of the
state. Even I had heard of it, and certainly Larry knew about it,
and had helped out ranch employees visiting the store
before.

But when the kid came to
the counter, Larry happened to be standing by me and he looked at
the boy with obvious distrust. With hard eyes and a scowl he
questioned the kid and his brother – unusually brusquely. The boys
looked scared and shy, and the older kid stiffly mumbled answers to
Larry’s pushy questions about his job the paycheck the boy was
trying to use to pay for his purchases. It was embarrassing to
watch, and I was disturbed at the scene and tried to intervene to
help, but Larry ignored me and continued his interrogation. In the
end I just interrupted Larry and told the boys, in the kindest
voice I could manage, that they should just go.

Larry watched them shuffle
off and then stormed away without looking at me, and I stood there
alone after the scene was finally over. I imagined the older boy
talking happily with his little brother on the way to the store,
excited to cash his small paycheck, and buying something for his
brother in the store. Just a stupid poster, nothing important, but
Larry treated them like criminals and ruined that day for those
kids. I never saw them in the store again.

Twenty-Five

Sunday morning came, and I
heard a soft knock on my door, and I knew by that fact alone that
it wasn’t Larry. I was half asleep when Katie stuck her face in the
door and announced, “Get up sleepy head, it’s churchin’ time!” She
looked at me with an amused smirk. I rolled over and pressed a
pillow over my head, but she just walked up to the bed and jerked
the blanket off, flinging it over to the wall.

“You
promised
!” she said, looking
worried.

“I did no such thing,” I
groaned, now lying bare before her in my underwear and socks, like
a sick fish exposed on a rock.

“When you were stoned the
other night you said you’d go, so let’s go.” She walked over to my
drawer and pulled out some clothes, throwing them on top of me and
then leaving the room. “You have five minutes,” she
ordered.