Two Medicine (48 page)

“You look like you need a
drink,” he said, walking over to a cabinet and pulling out a bottle
of Jack Daniels. “And so do I.”
I watched him pour two large glasses halfway up and then drop a
couple of ice cubes in each. He sat down and put the glasses
between us.

We each took our glasses
and paused before sipping. He leaned his glass over to mine, and
clinked them together in a quite toast.

“Here’s to my last night
in Two Med,” he said gruffly. His eyes looked tear-filled – on the
brink of crying. It was a blotchy and wretched face that shown over
the whiskey glass. His eyes closed as he took a long gulp of
whiskey.

“What are you talking
about?” I asked him, sounding just as gruff. What a pair we made,
and what an image, I thought. One guy banded up like a patched-up,
bloody mummy, looking like he’d been in a war, and the other a
muddy, teary-eyed ogre – sipping drinks like two comrades in
arms.

Larry didn’t say anything
for a long time, and then cleared his throat. “I’m turning myself
in tomorrow, because I killed that girl, Alia.”

Thirty-Nine

I stared at him, mute, my
glass touching my lips. I felt my heart stop and turn to lead in my
chest.

“What?” I asked
him.

He nodded, tears beginning
to stream down his face. “I killed her, Will.
I
did it.” He said, his face
contorted into a hideous crying mess.

I was unable to make sense
of it as he cried silently for what seemed a few minutes; then he
reached back and drained his entire glass. He then grabbed my glass
and held it, as if for support. The ice cubes spun around and
settled in the whiskey.

“I ran her down,” he said,
“in my truck. That night I had been to see Nancy – she’s this woman
who has a place on the outskirts of Browning. She’s a… a
prostitute,” he said, blurting out the word like it was a
bullet.

I shook my head in
disbelief. “You ran her down?”

“I was driving back from
seeing Nancy; I been seeing her a lot lately... I do it on my runs
back from Kalispell for supplies. I was driving late and I must
have not seen her – Alia – on the road I mean, not before I knew
that I had ran straight over somebody and…” He stopped, and chocked
back a sob. He put a hand to his awkwardly to his mouth and then
wiped away new tears.

“
It sounded like I ran
over a log, Will. The ‘thumping – like I ran over a big
log.’”

A bitter taste filled my
mouth as tears now filled my own eyes as I pictured it.

“
You stupid, dirty
bastard,” I said quietly, viciously. “You killed her. And you
didn’t even do anything to help her, just left her out there? You
didn’t even tell anyone what happened?”

He looked shocked and
afraid. “How could I? I got out and saw she was dead. I mean I…
panicked… and.” He looked down at the glass and raised it to take a
sip, but then thought better of it and dropped it back to the
table.

“
I dragged her body into
the woods, as far as I could go in the dark. I left her there. She
was dead, though.” He nodded slowly at his glass. “She didn’t
suffer.”

“Were you drunk?” I
demanded.

He shook his head. “No. I
was sober. Been drinking a river since then though, yes sir. I’ve
barely eaten, barely slept, barely worked since I did it; but I’ve
been
drinking
.”

My mind flashed to the police photos Greg
had obtained. “How did you get her out there without leaving
footprints?”

Larry looked down at his glass. He wiped his
mouth with the back of his hand. “After I laid her body down in the
woods, I could see deep prints of my boots everywhere. I broke off
a branch and swirled it around in the mud and dirt until it was
unrecognizable.”

I shook my head and cursed
him under my breath bitterly. I couldn’t think of what to
say.

He suddenly looked back up
at me, took a deep breath, and drew himself up with resolve.
“Tomorrow morning I’m going to the BIA and confessing – no two ways
about it. My truck still probably has some evidence of her on it,
I’m sure. It was banged up in the front by the hit, but it was
banged up already before in the front so I don’t know what’s
there.”

He shook his head
mournfully. “I’m going away for life, and I don’t know what’s gonna
happen to Phyllis. But I gotta finally do what is right.” He choked
out the last words and then slowly sank his head onto his arms on
the table, crying in violent sobs, his shoulders
heaving.

I just sat there and
watched him. I felt cold and dead inside, and knowing who killed
her finally had changed nothing in me, not yet. I wished for a
moment that he had never come to get me. I imagined, one final
time, Alia’s little body smashed up in the woods, now seeing her
dragged by Larry into some dark recess in the trees. Her sweet face
pressed down in the dirt.

“I was sober twenty years
before all this,” Larry said quietly, looking up slowly staring off
into the dark corners of the kitchen, as if looking for something,
or someone, else to talk to.

“
Did you know I did a tour
in Vietnam when I was seventeen?” he asked me. “Lied about my
age.”

I said nothing but just
watched him through teary, stinging eyes.

“
Well, I had a brother,
Carl, who I was closer to than any man on earth. He was the best
man I’ve ever known. He was two years older than me; and he took
over for the family at thirteen years old – after my father died.
Carl was mature and a strong man, Will, even at that age. A man;
and he always took care of me and my sister. I looked up to him
like a father. He’d protect me from bullies, take care of me when I
had a stomach ache, and read to me and sissy at night.” Larry
sniffed back tears.

“
Years later he sat me
down and told me, the day I was to ship off to Vietnam, that if
anything ever happened to me over there, that he would go over
there and get me… Can you believe that? He said that.”

“
What happened to him?” I
asked.

“
Car accident,” Larry let
out a bitter laugh, or a cough, it was hard to tell which with his
voice so choked with emotion.

Larry stood up heavily,
and dumped his glass into the sink. He rinsed the glasses out and
placed them on a rack to dry. He turned to go, and on his way out I
heard him say, “I wish he was here now.” He said it in a tender,
child-like voice.

I got up and walked over
to the phone, walking very slowly as to not lose my balance. I
dialed Greg’s work number at the main station, which I knew no one
would answer at this time, and said into the voicemail: “This
message is for Greg. This is Will at Two Med. Greg, give me a call
in the morning first thing.”

I tried to
sleep that night but could not keep my eyes closed
– not even with the hospital meds still working their magic through
my system. I felt more in shock than anything else, not angry,
strangely, or bitter.

The sweat lodge, the
attack, Ronnie’s involvement, and, finally, Larry killing Alia, all
ran through my mind in a whirl of images. I was amazed that the man
who had killed Alia had been sleeping only yards from my room all
this time… had been only a few feet away from me each day, as I
wandered the Park and lurked around Browning, talking to neighbors
and tribe councilmen and everyone about Alia. I realized Jake must
have simply gotten Alia’s earrings from her room at Clayton’s, and
then sent them to me in a blunt attempt to scare me off.

Now two primary questions
haunted me the most: why then
did
Jake attack me? And how was Ronnie actually
involved? Then a third, new question floated up from the pain and
haze of my wounded head:
What was going to
happen to Larry?

By the time that daybreak
hinted its arrival in the greying sky outside my window, I had
resolved to tell Greg what happened, and the BIA as well.
Regardless of anything else, Greg should know, I reasoned.
Siegfried and Roy suddenly flew in through a crack near the window,
startling me; and then they clung to the roof, nestling into the
same exact spots they chose every morning.

I got up very sore and
stiff from the bed. I hobbled over to the window and witnessed, for
the first time, the rising sun lighting up the peaks of the
mountains visible from my window. Thin clouds were set vividly
aflame with red-orange and vivid gold. I pushed open the window
further and cold, crisp air flowed past my face; it smelled of
water and pine. Larry had always bitched that nobody else got up to
see the sunrises but him, that we all missed it, and he had finally
gotten me to see one – the worst way possible.

I showered as best I could
with my wounds and bandages over my neck and cheek. I looked at
myself in the mirror after the shower and found that I didn’t look
as bad as I expected, aside from the long dark bruises along my
back and legs and innumerable scratches and scrapes everywhere.
I
did
actually
look like a man who had fallen down a ravine.

Satisfied that I was
presentable enough, I walked quietly downstairs to the kitchen. I
found a pen and pulled out some paper from a notebook, and sat down
at the table. Nobody was up yet, not even Larry or Phyllis, and I
wanted to get my thoughts straight without distraction. I set out
two blank pieces of paper in front of me and put the notebook away.
Two letters to two men.

I wrote for a minute and
re-read my words. Satisfied with the wording, I folded up the first
page. I wrote “Larry” on the front and set it aside.

I wrote a paragraph on the
next paper, writing carefully and pausing frequently. Once
finished, I read over the words again. I walked upstairs and slid
the letter under Ronnie’s door. Then I walked across the dark,
empty store and left out of the front doors, near where Larry
parked his truck. I slid his letter under one of his windshield
wipers.

*The two letters are
printed at the end of this book, reader. It is best if you wait to
read them until you reach the end.

Forty

I got the canoe unlocked
and put the oar in the boat (the same one Larry had used, which I
found in the back of his truck) and shoved off alone onto the
glass-smooth lake. The valley around me was coming alive and I
could hear tiny Black-capped Chickadees chirping from all over
across the water. Ducks flew off in the distance across the
surface, which reflected Mount Sinopah at the farther end. A foggy
mist lay on the far bank below the summit, obscuring the feet of
the mountain. A moist coolness flowed across the surface and over
my face as I paddled over the dark and silent water. Skimming along
perfectly quietly, with hardly any effort, I breathed in the smell
of Two Medicine in the early morning, as if the lake was a sleeping
life form of its own.

I remembered Alia and I’s
day on the water, and how she had told me about her family, her
past. I remembered how closely she sat near me in the boat, how I
could smell her; I remembered her voice, how she talked. I played
the whole series of events with her and I meeting all over again as
I paddled.

I wished she was in the
canoe with me now and that we had the valley to ourselves, for
good.

As I got to the south end
of the lake I turned the nose of the canoe into the runoff area
where the little river began which connected the two lakes. I
scraped over some rocks in the shallow stream before getting to the
deeper part, where the river widened and the current
slowed.

I remember seeing the
meandering river on the maps when I first looked at Two Med, and
recollected the river had a name but I couldn’t remember what. It
was only about twenty feet across at its widest and very shallow in
most places – only a foot or two deep. I didn’t have to paddle as
the current slid me past the rocks and roots underwater, quickly
and silently. I passed some camp sites where tents sat encircled
with coolers, chairs, clothes hanging to dry and little tables had
been set up. A couple of the camps though were already busy with
activity, early-risers cooking on little propane stoves or over
newly-lit campfires; the raw aroma of bacon, eggs, toast, cinnamon
buns and coffee. A couple of other sites were packing up to leave.
No one saw me floating by.

After a while
I spied Greg’s house in the distance beyond the
small pines along the bank, and I paddled over to the edge. I
stepped out into the water and dragged the canoe up the bank to the
weeds beyond some trees. I walked through the trees over to Greg’s
lawn and then climbed up his back porch steps, resting on a bench
that ran the length of the house. I looked at my watch and it was
6:50. I didn’t want to wake them by knocking, and I figured Greg
would be up soon anyway so I settled back to wait. I wondered what
Larry would do when he got my letter.

I eventually heard someone
in the kitchen and carefully looked through the sliding glass door,
hoping I didn’t see anyone naked or anything like that. Greg was in
a bathrobe making coffee. I knocked softly on the glass door and he
looked up sharply, then recognized me and smiled with a curiosity
that grew into alarm when he saw my bandages. He motioned for me to
come in, giving me the “shhh” sign as I slid the door
open.