by Ron Levitsky
“You know how to hold it?”
“Yes, Grandfather.”
“Then go.”
The boy ran down the ridge toward the house. Ike went to his van and returned with a stack of towels, a ladle, and a bucket filled with bundles of grass, sage, and cedar bark. He put everything down near the lodge’s entrance, then emptied the bucket, which he handed to Will.
“Fill it at the stream. Make sure it’s clear running water.”
As Will angled to his left down the ridge, Rosen hurried after him.
“Can I ask you a few questions?”
“About what happened the night Gates was killed?”
“According to the police report, you found the body after coming home from work. That was about eleven o’clock.”
“More like eleven fifteen. I went down to the house right away and called Gracie at the police station.”
“Gates died around ten o’clock. Where were you at that time?”
They reached a brook that meandered snakelike down the ridge. Will filled the bucket with cold water.
“I usually close the station at ten, but not that night. Car came in with a busted hose, just as I was closing, and I stayed to fix it. There was a problem with the water pump, so I had to replace that as well. By the time I finished everything and washed up, it was about eleven.”
“Not many people would find a mechanic willing to do so much work at closing time.”
“Not many people whose car breaks down are Judge Whistler.” When Rosen arched his eyebrows, Will laughed. “That’s right. My alibi’s a judge. Not that I had any reason to kill Albert Gates.”
“The police found a bill of sale on his body. It had your signature on it and—”
“I already talked to Tom Cross Dog. So what if my old man wasn’t going to honor the agreement and give Gates the wotawe?”
“You took the man’s money. It might’ve been considered fraud.”
Will snickered. “Listen, Gates’s wife and my mother were real close. Bella woulda never let her husband get me in trouble. Besides, why would I want Gates dead? Wouldn’t I want him to have his wotawe, so I could get the rest of my $500?”
“While working on the judge’s car, did you see anyone drive down the highway from the ridge?”
“Nah. I was working on the car inside the garage, and my head was under the hood most of the time. Judge Whistler stood right next to me, making sure he wasn’t getting cheated.”
The two men started back. Halfway up the ridge, Rosen asked, “Could Stevie have seen anything that night?”
“You mean the murder? No way. The boy was in bed the whole time. He slept through everything—even the police sirens.”
“He doesn’t seem like the kind of boy who would sleep through anything.”
“Well, he did. You just leave him alone. In fact . . .” Will looked away for a moment. “You could do us a favor—Gracie and me. She’ll really flip out if Stevie does this inipi.”
“Why? It’s just a sweat bath.”
“Your mind starts playing games with itself. You start babbling all sorts of junk. With Stevie already edgy, I’d like to get him out of here. My old man won’t listen to me, but maybe you can talk some sense into him. How about it?”
They were nearing the top of the ridge. Will had slowed his pace, as if giving Rosen time to answer. Maybe he should talk to True Sky, especially if the boy’s condition was really that precarious. Yet, this might be the only way Stevie would speak about what happened the night of the murder. Rosen decided to trust True Sky—or was it just simpler that way?
The others were waiting for them. Stevie stood beside his grandfather, who held a ceremonial pipe with a long stem.
“This is my chanunpa,” True Sky said. “You see the pipe bowl. It’s made of bloodstone. My grandfather went east where the buffalo began and cut this from the ground. It was made from the buffalo’s blood that seeped into the earth. Today you will smoke it with us.”
“The fire’s ready,” Ike said.
Everyone placed the stones in the fire. Rosen watched as the moss—the spirit-writing—disappeared with the rising smoke and the stones turned white-hot. True Sky was right; none of them cracked.
Ike pulled off his T-shirt to reveal a chest brittle as a chicken’s. “Come on, boys. You too, lawyer.”
Rosen shook his head.
True Sky unbuttoned his shirt. “It will be good for you.”
Rosen looked at the ground, feeling his cheeks grow warm and sensing that everyone was watching him. Wasn’t this what he wanted—a chance to hear Stevie talk about what was troubling him? Yet to participate in such a ceremony—what would his rabbi and grandfather have said, let alone his father? It was apostasy, like the word bamot one shouldn’t have spoken. Then he suddenly looked up and felt the trace of a smile. Wasn’t he already an apostate in the eyes of his father? What would one more bit of backsliding matter? After all, it was for the case. There was always the case.
He removed his jacket and slowly unbuttoned his shirt.
Andi grinned. “Can I play too?”
Ike dropped his trousers. “The more the merrier.”
“No!” Rosen swallowed hard. He couldn’t undress in front of a woman, let alone sit naked with her.
“That’s all right,” Andi said, fishing a cigarette from her purse. “This sounds like one of those male-bonding things anyway. You’ll all probably start hugging each other.”
True Sky continued taking off his clothes, neatly folding and placing them in a pile. “Last year, a group of men came here from New York. They wanted to do an inipi. We took them into the sweat lodge, and they started to recite poetry and cry and say how good it was to be together. But as soon as the steam started to rise, they said it was too hot and ran outside.”
“I think they were sissy boys,” Ike said, also naked. “I saw them the next day in the hills, shooting each other with paint pellets. Do you want to get your camera, Andi, and take my picture? Maybe Playgirl will want it.”
“I think you’re more National Geographic material, but maybe another time.”
“How about me?” Will asked, as he stripped down to his briefs.
Andi kept her eyes on Ike. “Give Nate a ride back to his motel afterwards.” To Rosen, “Don’t catch a chill. I’ll see you tonight.”
Walking quickly to her Mercury, Andi sped down the ridge. The broken muffler’s rumbling stayed with them long after the car had disappeared into the distance.
When it was finally quiet, Ike said to Rosen, “We’re waiting.”
Everyone else stood naked. Taking a deep breath, he removed his clothes and put them in a pile next to True Sky’s. Shivering, he scanned the horizon, half-expecting Andi to be taking pictures with a telephoto lens.
Ike handed out Holiday Inn towels. “I only use these on special occasions.”
“Son,” True Sky said, “pass the stones in to me.”
As Will took the antler, Rosen lined up behind True Sky, Ike, and Stevie. Following their lead, he dropped to his knees. Holding his pipe in one hand, True Sky took the bundles of grass and cedar in the other, then crawled through a flap into the sweat lodge, ahead of Ike and Stevie. Rosen heard chanting and followed the others inside.
While groping in the darkness for a place against the wall, he smelled the aroma of cedar. Only when the flap was pulled aside and Will handed his father the antler holding five white-hot stones, did Rosen see the pit dug in the middle of the tipi. True Sky rolled one stone after the other into the pit.
“The first goes in the center for grandmother earth. Then west, north, east, and south.” Handing back the antler, he waited for Will to return with more stones. “One on top for our grandfather the sky. Now we add the others.” As Will left and the flap closed, True Sky asked, “Grandson, do you know why we carry the stones with an antler?”
Stevie’s words floated through the darkness. “To remind us of our brothers, the four-leggeds.” The boy spoke clearly, witho
ut any hesitation, the same way that Rosen, as the youngest in the family, had answered the Four Questions on Passover.
Again the flap opened, admitting Will and the antler filled with heated stones.
“That’s enough,” his father said, placing the stones in the pit.
Will brought in the ladle and pail of cold water. The flap closed, and, in the darkness, True. Sky and Ike chanted in a singsong manner. Rosen remembered the men and boys swaying together in synagogue, their voices lifted to praise the Lord.
Suddenly he heard an angry sizzling, just before a blast of steam struck his face and filled his lungs. Coughing, he cupped his hands and sipped the warm air.
True Sky said, “This is the grandfather’s breath. He’s telling us the earth will listen to our problems and make us pure again. Take his breath in your hands and rub it on yourself. It’s good medicine.”
“The best,” Ike agreed. “We open the flap four times, once after each time we smoke. If you can’t take the heat, just call out, ‘Mitakuye oyasin!’—‘All my relatives!’ Then I’ll let in some cool air.”
“Here,” Will said, handing Rosen something.
It was the chanunpa, True Sky’s pipe. Rosen inhaled, coughed, and passed it to Stevie. He smelled the rich tobacco aroma and felt lightheaded. Someone opened the flap just enough for the light to crawl halfway into the tipi. With it came a wisp of cool breeze, but, as suddenly, both were gone and the tipi again was plunged into darkness.
“I have a heavy heart,” Ike said. “Like my prison counselor once said, I never lived up to my potential. I wanted to be an actor. If I had stuck with it, I might’ve been another Jay Silverheels, maybe even president. My friend Saul has said it’s never too late, so I call on the spirits for help. I’m opening my heart to them. I’m sober now. I ask them to teach me to stay sober.”
Ike continued to call on the spirits, as True Sky ladled water onto the heated rocks so that the steam engulfed them, and, as the sweat poured from Rosen’s body, he inhaled the grandfather’s breath. First it was searing, but gradually he grew accustomed to the heat, even welcomed it. After Ike, True Sky talked about the spirits’ power—that they could do anything. Will said something about the need to get his life together, something boys always said to their fathers, lies before the words even left their lips. Did True Sky know his son was lying?
Only Stevie wouldn’t speak. He did sing with the older men, his young voice as earnest as theirs. The chanting buzzing in his ears, Rosen remembered as a boy praying with his family, calling out to the God of Israel, the God of justice.
Rosen inhaled the chanunpa, watched the air grow ashen from the smoke and brief haze of light so that it resembled the skin of an old man . . . grandfather . . . his grandfather. Slowly the Indians’ chanting grew intelligible; they sang in Hebrew. What Rosen was hearing had been his thoughts ever since his father had sent him away. But now they had become words, as the voices spoke to his grandfather.
“Why did you let him send me away—for asking questions? For not obeying blindly what he said I must do? Every Passover I had to answer the Four Questions, but they were easy. What about the questions I really wanted to ask—the ones he refused to hear? If we’re in God’s image, was the face my father showed me that day the true face of God?”
He didn’t know if he was crying or if only more sweat was dripping from his face, but he felt good. When the flap was opened the fourth and final time, he smiled while, on his hands and knees, he followed the others outside.
He stood with them naked in the sun and rubbed his body dry with sage leaves. For the first time since childhood, he felt at peace. He knew the feeling would last only a little while, for all his fears and doubts still circled warily like coyotes in the distance. But for now they wouldn’t dare come close, not as long as the tipi’s fire blazed within him.
Chapter Eight – THURSDAY EVENING
“You’re really not gonna tell me, are you?” Andi glanced at Rosen from the driver’s seat. “Well?”
He didn’t feel like talking. The road ran smooth, the breeze pattered against his face, and day slowly dissolved into a twilight of clouds forming fantastic shapes across the sky. For the longest time he saw the face of an old Indian, like the head of a buffalo nickel, serenely watching the moon grow over the horizon. It might have been Saul True Sky, flying with his brothers the elk on a vision quest.
The breeze blew harder, as the face broke into pieces. Clouds drifted away, suddenly shifted, and merged once again, this time into an eagle. It grew nearly as big as the sky, descending toward him with wings outstretched and talons spread. Like its prey, Rosen sat frozen in place, hands gripping the car door, his eyes fixed on the eagle swooping closer and closer, its scream filling his ears.
“Jeez,” Andi said, “are you gonna be like this all the way to Deadwood?”
He shut his eyes tightly, and when he looked back at the sky, the eagle had broken apart. Clouds hunched over him like curious bystanders, before slowly moving on.
“It’s okay,” she continued. “You were probably into all that man talk, like on those reruns of My Three Sons. Mike, Robbie, Uncle Charley—you know.”
“No, I don’t. I’d rather not talk about it.”
“Maybe I should’ve insisted on joining you guys, though it probably was about as exciting as an American Legion square dance.”
“You’re forgetting Will was there.”
As she gripped the steering wheel, her knuckles whitened. “That was a shit thing to say.”
Rosen didn’t reply. He knew she couldn’t leave it alone.
“You’ve got no business messing into my personal life.”
“I didn’t realize your relationship with Will True Sky was so personal.”
“Well, it’s not.”
“But you said . . .”
“Not anymore!”
“Oh.” He looked out the window.
“We had something going, but that’s over. Will’s not the kind to be a one-woman man. There’ve been plenty others.”
“Like Wendy, the dispatcher? Last night, in the station, you two were arguing over some man.”
“Yeah. The problem with Wendy is that she just can’t let go. She thinks I stole Will from her.” Andi flashed a smile. “Well maybe so, but that’s all ancient history.”
“Did Will have anything to do with Albert Gates?”
“Ever since Will and Gracie were kids, they hung around the Gates’s ranch—their mom and Belle were real tight. Will was always picking up a few bucks doing odd jobs for Albert—mowing hay, mucking out stables, running errands, even helping with the museum.”
“Gates had a museum?”
“He had quite a collection of old Indian artifacts—arrowheads, clothing, even a few skeletons. It all started years ago, when he found some Indian remains on his ranch, just like the one you saw up on the ridge.”
“White Bear.”
Andi chuckled. “Yeah, that’s what Saul calls his pile of bones. He and Gates sure didn’t see eye to eye.”
“And Will?”
“You mean about the bones and stuff like that? He could care less. He just likes to party.”
“That document found on Gates’s body—Will selling the wotawe to him. Would Gates have caused him trouble, because Saul refused to go through with the deal?”
“Albert Gates had a mean streak all right, but the hot air inside him could’ve filled the Goodyear blimp. Besides, Belle wouldn’t have let him hurt Will. She cared too much about the family.”
Rosen nodded; that was what Will had told him. “What about Judge Whistler? Will said he was with the judge, working on his car, when the murder took place.”
“That’s a good one—Will and the judge. They don’t exactly go round in the same circles. Calvin Whistler’s used to seeing folks like Will at the back door. But Will couldn’t have a much better alibi, if that’s what you’re getting at. The judge is straight as an arrow.”
“So I hear. How
about his wife?”
“I know what you’re thinking—the judge’s money and the difference in their age. Maybe she does run around, though in a town this small you’d think folks’d know. I’ll tell you one thing—Pearl’s got a brain among all those red curls. She’s the biggest promoter of making Bear Coat the new Deadwood.”
Rosen stretched his legs. “Speaking of Deadwood, how much longer?”
“Maybe ten minutes.”
It was almost eight o’clock. Everything from Cadillacs to broken-down pickup trucks moved steadily toward town. It was the first time since his arrival that Rosen had experienced anything even resembling a traffic jam. Fast-food restaurants and motels grew thick as mushrooms along the side of the highway, which became Historic Main Street and continued into downtown Deadwood.
“How do you like it?” Andi asked.
On either side of the cobblestone street, illuminated by old-fashioned lights, were a series of buildings, all renovated to resemble a Wild West town. Filling the sidewalks, people kept moving from one spot to the next—old men leaning on their canes, women in straw hats and shapeless print dresses, families with little children trailing along like the tail of a kite. Rosen had been to hundreds of towns, but he’d never seen this type of restlessness.
There were bars and gaming halls like Calamity Jane’s, Gold Dust, Midnight Star, Hickok’s, and Silverado, but he glimpsed slot machines inside the burger joints as well.
Andi said, “The editor of one of the town papers calls this a bowler’s Las Vegas. Everything’s pretty much nickel-and-dime. And clean, just like Disneyland.”
Rosen remembered, after being sent to live with an uncle, going with his cousins to Riverview, Chicago’s old amusement park. It was dirty, smelled of sweat and vomit, and the rides clattered awkwardly along their tracks. The sideshows displayed bearded ladies, snake charmers, and others only slightly more bizarre than many of the customers. He’d been frightened by the whole experience but also excited, so much that, besides Wrigley Field, it had been his favorite place to go.
They’d torn Riverview down years ago, and now people drove to a new amusement park in the suburbs, with Bugs Bunny characters waving hello and an army of squeaky-clean teenagers picking up trash before it hit the ground. He’d taken Sarah and one of her friends there the previous summer, and it had seemed their fun was distributed in sterilized plastic bags. Looking up and down the street, he had the same sense about Deadwood.
