Indian Country Noir (Akashic Noir)

by Sarah Cortez;Liz Martinez

  Just the start, he'd told me, his voice calm despite it all, speaking Chippewa. They were going to do worse. I heard what they said they'd done before.

  I knew his people back home. Cousins of mine. Good people, canoe makers. A family peaceful at heart, that shared with everyone and that hoped their son who'd been forced away to that school would at least be taught things he could use to help the people. Like how to scrub someone else's kitchen floor.

  He'd broken out the small window of the building where they kept him locked up every night. It was a tiny window, but he was so skinny by then from malnourishment that he'd been able to worm his way free. Plus his family were Eel People and known to be able to slip through almost any narrow place.

  Two dogs, he said. Bad ones. Don't bark. Just come at you.

  But he'd planned his escape well. The bag he'd filled with black pepper from the kitchen and hidden in his pants was out and in his hand as soon as he hit the ground. He'd left the two bad dogs coughing and sneezing as he ran and kept running.

  As his closest relative, I was the one he had been running to before Morissey caught him.

  You'll do something, Tommy Goodwaters said. It was not a question. You will help.

  I was halfway down the hill and had just climbed over the barbed-wire fence when the dogs got to me. I'd heard them coming, their feet thudding the ground, their eager panting. Nowhere near as quiet as wolves-not that wolves will ever attack a man. So I was ready when the first one leaped and latched its long jaws around my right forearm. Its long canines didn't get through the football pads and tape I'd wrapped around both arms. The second one, snarling like a wolverine, was having just as hard a time with my equally well-protected left leg that it attacked from the back. They were big dogs, probably about eighty pounds each. But I was two hundred pounds bigger. I lifted up the first one as it held on to my arm like grim death and brought my other forearm down hard across the back of its neck. That broke its neck. The second one let go when I kicked it in the belly hard enough to make a fifty-yard field goal. Its heart stopped when I brought my knee and the full weight of my body down on its chest.

  Yeah, they were just dogs. But I showed no mercy. If they'd been eating what Tommy told me-and I had no reason to doubt him-there was no place for such animals to be walking this Earth with humans.

  Then I went to the place out behind the cow barn. I found a shovel leaned against the building. Convenient. Looked well used. It didn't take much searching. It wasn't just the softer ground, but what I felt in my mind. The call of a person's murdered spirit when their body has been hidden in such a place as this. A place they don't belong.

  It was more than one spirit calling for help. By the time the night was half over I'd found all of them. All that was left of five Carlisle boys and girls who'd never be seen alive again by grieving relatives. Mostly just bones. Clean enough to have had the flesh boiled off them. Some gnawed. Would have been no way to tell them apart if it hadn't been for what I found in each of those unmarked graves with them. I don't know why, but there was a large thick canvass bag for each of them. Each bag had a wooden tag tied to it with the name and, God love me, even the tribe of the child. Those people-if I can call them that-knew who they were dealing with. Five bags of clothing, meager possessions and bones. None of them were Chippewas, but they were all my little brothers and sisters. If I still drew breath after that night was over, their bones and possessions, at least, would go home. When I looked up at the moon, her face seemed red. I felt as if I was in an old, painful story.

  I won't say what I did after that. Just that when the dawn rose I was long gone and all that remained of the house and the buildings were charred timbers. I didn't think anyone saw me as I left that valley, carrying those five bags. But I was wrong. If I'd seen the newspapers from the nearby town the next day-and not been on my way west, to the Sac & Fox and Osage Agencies in Oklahoma, the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, the lands of the Crows and the Cheyennes in Montana, the Cahuilla of California-I would have read about the tragic death by fire of almost an entire family. Almost.

  I blinked away that memory and focused on the two men who paused only briefly at the top of the trail and then headed straight toward me where I was squatting down by the fire pit. As soon as I saw them clearly I didn't have to question the signal my Helper was giving me. I knew they were trouble.

  Funny how much you can think of in the space of an eyeblink. Back in the hospital after getting hit by the shrapnel. The tall, skinny masked doctor bending over me with a scalpel in one hand and some kind of shiny bent metal instrument in the other.

  My left hand grabbing the surgeon's wrist before the sca- pel touched my skin.

  It stays.

  The ether. A French accent. You are supposed to be out.

  I'm not.

  Oui. I see this. My wrist, you are hurting it.

  Pardon. But I didn't let go.

  Why?

  It says it's going to be my Helper. It's talking to me.

  They might have just given me more ether, but by then Gus Welch had pushed his way in the tent. He'd heard it all.

  He began talking French to the doctor, faster than I could follow. Whatever it was he said, it worked.

  The doctor turned back to me, no scalpel this time.

  You are Red Indian.

  Mais oui.

  A smile visible even under the mask. Head nodding. Bien. We just sew you up then.

  Another blink of an eye and I was back watching the two armed men come closer. The tall, lanky one was built a little like that doctor I'd last seen in 1918. No mask, though. I could see that he had one of those Abraham Lincoln faces, all angles and jutting jaw-but with none of that long-gone president's compassion. He was carrying a Remington .303. The fat one with the thick lips and small eyes, Heavy Foot for sure, had a lever-action Winchester 30-06. I'd heard him jack a shell into the chamber just before they came into view.

  Good guns, but not in the hands of good guys.

  Both of them were in full uniform. High-crowned hats, black boots, and all. Not the brown doughboy togs in which I had once looked so dapper. Their khaki duds had the words Game Warden sewed over their breast pockets.

  They stopped thirty feet away from me.

  Charley Bear, the Lincoln impersonator, said in a flat voice, We have a warrant for your arrest for trespassing. Stand up.

  I stayed crouching. It was clear to me they didn't know I owned the land I was on. Not that most people in the area knew. After all, it was registered under my official white name of Charles B. Island. If they were really serving a warrant from a judge, they'd know that. Plus there was one other thing wrong.

  Game wardens don't serve warrants, I said.

  They said he was a smart one, Luth, Heavy Foot growled.

  Too smart for his own good.

  My Helper sent a wave of fire through my whole leg and I rolled sideways just as Luth raised his gun and pulled the trigger. It was pretty good for a snap shot. The hot lead whizzed past most of my face with the exception of the flesh it tore off along my left cheekbone, leaving a two-inch wound like a claw mark from an eagle's talon.

  As I rolled, I hurled sidearm the first of the baseball-sized rocks I'd palmed from the outside of the firepit. Not as fast as when I struck out Jim Thorpe twice back at Indian school. But high and hard enough to hit the strike zone in the center of Luth's face. Bye-bye front teeth.

  Heavy Foot had hesitated before bringing his gun up to his shoulder. By then I'd shifted the second stone to my throwing hand. I came up to one knee and let it fly. It struck square in the soft spot just above the fat man's belly.

  Ooof!

  His gun went flying off to the side and he fell back clutching his gut.

  Luth had lost his .303 when the first rock struck him. He was curled up, his hands clasped over his face.

  I picked up both guns before I did anything else. Shucked out the shells and then, despite the fact that I hated to do it seeing as how gun
s themselves are innocent of evil intent, I tossed both weapons spinning over the edge of the cliff. By the time they hit the rocks below I had already rolled Heavy Foot over and yanked his belt out of his pants. I wrapped it around his elbows, which I'd pulled behind his back, cinched it tight enough for him to groan in protest.

  I pried Luth's hands from his bloody face, levered them behind his back, and did the same for him that I'd done for his fat buddy. Then I grabbed the two restraining belts, one in each hand, and dragged them over to the place where the cliff dropped off.

  By then Luth had recovered enough, despite the blood and the broken teeth, to glare at me. But Heavy Foot began weeping like a baby when I propped them both upright at the edge where it wouldn't take more than a push to send them over.

  Shut up, Braddie, Luth said through his bleeding lips, his voice still flat as stone. Then he stared at me. I've killed people worse than you.

  But not better, I replied.

  A sense of humor is wasted on some people. Luth merely intensified his stare.

  A hard case. But not Braddie.

  Miss your gun? I asked. You can join it.

  I lifted my foot.

  No, Braddie blubbered. Whaddaya want? Anything.

  A name.

  Braddie gave it to me.

  I left them on the cliff edge, each one fastened to his own big rock that I'd rolled over to them. The additional rope I'd gotten from my shack insured they wouldn't be freeing themselves.

  Stay still, boys. Wish me luck.

  Go to hell, Luth snarled. Tough as ever.

  But he looked a little less tough after I explained that he'd better hope I had good luck. Otherwise I wouldn't be likely to come back and set them loose. I also pointed out that if they struggled too much there was a good chance those delicately balanced big stones I'd lashed them to would roll over the edge. Them too.

  I took my time going down the mountain-and I didn't use the main trail. There was always the chance that Luth and Braddie had not been alone. But their truck, a new '34 Ford, was empty. An hour's quiet watch of it from the shelter of the pines made me fairly certain no one else was around. They'd thoughtfully left the keys in the ignition. It made me feel better about them that they were so trusting and willing to share.

  As I drove into town I had even more time to think. Not about what to do. But how to do it. And whether or not my hunch was right.

  I parked the car in a grove of maples half a mile this side of the edge of town. Indian Charley behind the wheel of a new truck would not have fit my image in the eyes of the good citizens of Corinth. Matter of fact, aside from Will, most of them would have been surprised to see I knew how to drive. Then I walked in to Will's office.

  Wyllis Dunham, Attorney at Law, read the sign on the modest door, which opened off the main street. I walked in without knocking and nodded to the petite stylishly dressed young woman who sat behind the desk with a magazine in her nicely manicured fingers.

  Maud, I said, touching my knuckles to my forehead in salute.

  Charles, she drawled, somehow making my name into a sardonic remark the way she said it. What kind of trouble you plan on getting us into today?

  Nothing we can't handle.

  Why does that not make me feel reassured?

  Then we both laughed and I thought again how if she wasn't Will's wife I'd probably be thinking of asking her to marry me.

  What happened to your cheek? Maud stood up, took a cloth from her purse, wetted it with her lips, and brushed at the place where the bullet had grazed me and the blood had dried. I stood patiently until she was done.

  Thanks, nurse.

  You'll get my bill.

  He in?

  For you. She gestured me past her and went back to reading Ladies' Home Journal.

  I walked into the back room where Will sat with his extremely long legs propped up on his desk, his head back against a couch pillow, his eyes closed.

  Before you ask, I am not asleep on the job. I am thinking. Being the town lawyer of a bustling metropolis such as this tends to wear a man out.

  Don't let Maud see you with your feet up on that desk.

  His eyes opened at that and as he quickly lowered his feet to the floor he looked toward the door, a little furtively, before recovering his composure. Though Will had the degree and was twice her size, it was Maud who laid down the law in their household.

  He placed his elbows on the desk and made a pyramid with his fingers. The univeral lawyer's sign of superior intellect and position, but done with a little conscious irony in Will's case. Ever since I had helped him and Maud with a little problem two years back, we'd had a special relationship that included Thursday night card games of cutthroat canasta.

  Wellll? he asked.

  Two questions.

  Do I plead the Fifth Amendment now?

  I held up my little finger. First question. Did George Good retire as game warden, has the Department of Conservation started using new brown uniforms that look like they came from a costume shop, and were two new men from downstate sent up here as his replacement?

  Technically, Charles, that's three questions. But they all have one answer.

  No?

  Bingo. He snapped his fingers.

  Which was what I had suspected. My two well-trussed friends on the mountaintop with their city accents were as phony as their warrant.

  Two. I held up my ring finger. Anybody been in town asking about me since that article in the Albany paper with my picture came out?

  Will couldn't keep the smile off his face. If there was such a thing as an information magnet for this town, Will Dunham was it. He prided himself on quietly knowing everything that was going on-public and private-before anyone else even knew he knew it. With another loud snap of his long fingers he plucked a business card from his breast pocket and handed it to me with a magician's flourish.

  Voila!

  The address was in the State Office Building. The name was not exactly the one I expected, but it still sent a shiver down my spine and the metal spearpoint in my hip muscle twinged. Unfinished business.

  I noticed that Will had been talking. I picked up his words in mid-sentence.

  ... so Avery figured that he should give the card to me, seeing as how he knew you were our regular helper what with you taking on odd jobs for its now and then. Repair work, cutting wood ... and so on. Of course, by the time he thought to pass it on to me Avery'd been holding onto it since two weeks ago which was when the man came into his filling station asking about you and wanting you to give him a call. So, did he get tired of waiting and decide to look you up himself?

  In a manner of speaking.

  Say again?

  See you later, Will.

  The beauty of America's trolley system is that a man could go all the way from New York City to Boston just by changing cars once you got to the end of town and one line ended where another picked up. So the time it took me to run the ten miles to where the line started in Middle Grove was longer than it took to travel the remaining forty miles to Albany and cost me no more than half the coins in my pocket.

  I hadn't bothered to go back home to change into the slightly better clothes I had. My nondescript well-worn apparel was just fine for what I had in mind. No one ever notices laborers. The white painter's cap, the brush, and the can of Putnam's bone-white that I borrowed from the hand truck in front of the building were all I needed to amble in unimpeded and take the elevator to the sixteenth floor.

  The name on the door matched the moniker on the card-just as fancy and in big gold letters, even bigger than the word INVESTMENTS below it. I turned the knob and pushed the door open with my shoulder, backed in diffidently, holding my paint can and brush as proof of identity and motive. Nobody said anything, and when I turned to look I saw that the receptionist's desk was empty as I'd hoped. Five o'clock. Quitting time. But the door was unlocked, the light still on in the boss's office.

  I took off the cap, put down the paint can
and brush, and stepped through the door.

  He was standing by the window, looking down toward the street below.

  Put it on my desk, he said.

  Whatever it is, I don't have it, I replied.

  He turned around faster than I had expected. But whatever he had in mind left him when I pulled my right hand out of my shirt and showed him the bone-handled skinning knife I'd just pulled from the sheath under my left arm. He froze.

  You? he said.

  Only one word, but it was as good as an entire book. No doubt about it now. My Helper felt like a burning coal.

  Me, I agreed.

  Where? he asked. I had to hand it to him. He was really good at one-word questions that spoke volumes.

  You mean Mutt and Jeff? They're not coming. They got tied up elsewhere.

  You should be dead.

  Disappointing. Now that he was speaking in longer sentences he was telling me things I already knew, though he was still talking about himself when I gave his words a second thought.

  You'd think with the current state of the market, I observed, that you would have left the Bull at the start of your name, Mr. Weathers. Then you might have given your investors some confidence.

  My second attempt at humorous banter fell as flat as the first. No response other than opening his mouth a little wider. Time to get serious

  I'm not going to kill you here, I said. Even though you deserve it for what you and your family did back then. How old were you? Eighteen, right? But you took part just as much as they did. A coward too. You just watched without trying to save them from me? Where were you?

  Up on the hill, he said. His lips tight. There was sweat on his forehead now.

  So, aside from investments, what have you been doing since then? Keeping up the family hobbies?

  I looked over at the safe against the wall. You have a souvenir or two in there? No, don't open it to show me. People keep guns in safes. Sit. Not at the desk. Right there on the windowsill.

  What are you going to do?

  Deliver you to the police. I took a pad and a pen off the desk. Along with a confession. Write it now, starting with what you and your family did at your farm and including anyone else you've hurt since then.