Notches

by Peter Bowen

  Du Pré closed his eyes.

  Old house was here. Had a well, must be there, where the water ran underground.

  The tracks of the tires come in here, ranchers, hunters, they go from the road off into the sagebrush past this old house that is gone, taken by the wind, to the place where there is a little saddle. Rock on either side of it is in shelves six feet high, so that is the way that you have to go to get on out into the prairie.

  High plains.

  Desert.

  All the prophets came from the desert.

  It is the place of clarity.

  I have spent too much time with that Bart and his books.

  This is all Red River.

  The road went west, the snaking ribbon of green that followed the fractured invisible rock beneath went north. They crossed right here.

  The two bodies crossed one on another were over there. Under the left arm of the cross.

  Christ’s right hand was on the left arm of the cross.

  Du Pré shook his head.

  He walked a spiraling path around the spot where the first body was found. The spiral was tight. He could see clearly ten feet or so on a side. Twenty feet wide, the ribbon of earth in his eyes unspooled.

  There.

  Du Pré saw some tiny leaves, little plants which had just taken root in the turned earth. Not very much turned earth. That much could be cut open here with a knife. A little trench scraped.

  Filled and patted and tamped.

  But the seeds knew the air and water there were enough.

  They sprouted, and then …

  There wasn’t enough water.

  The plant was dwarfed.

  Not dead, dormant. Take a few years here, where a single season would be enough if there was enough water.

  Du Pré pulled the folding tool from his belt and he opened it and selected a long file with a square tip and he locked it in place and he shut the handle.

  He dug at the earth beneath the little plant.

  Nothing anywhere here like that little plant.

  Du Pré felt it. He wiggled the tip of the file and clods of earth broke apart.

  Stainless steel gleamed.

  Du Pré dug the knife out.

  Short, triangular blade, black plastic handle with the brand marker scraped off.

  Gleam of metal.

  Gold.

  Du Pré lifted out an engagement ring. Small diamond, but the gold was good, probably eighteen-carat.

  Hopeful ring. We don’t got much money starting out here, but some time, I get you a better one.

  Du Pré pulled a plastic bag from his pocket and he dropped the knife and ring into it and snapped it shut, punched a little hole in the side of the bag with the file and squeezed out the air and put the bag in the pocket of his canvas jacket.

  He dug around the spot, as far as the earth was disturbed.

  Little piece of duct tape.

  Little agate ring, silver mounting.

  Two gold post earrings.

  Du Pré felt the root of the sagebrush. End of the little trench.

  Fucker might buy them damn knives by the gross, Du Pré thought. Hah. He buy one here, one there.

  But I bet that he got a lot of them to hand. Neatly laid out in nice rows.

  Duct tape.

  Right hand of Christ.

  I am getting something here.

  Du Pré turned and he looked back through the sagebrush to the place where the woman’s body had lain.

  Clear view.

  Knife blade pointing directly to the spot.

  Du Pré got up and he walked down the line of sight, looking to the left and right.

  Only place you can see this far in to where the body was.

  What is it?

  Old path?

  No sagebrush here.

  Why?

  Du Pré tried to remember if the other knife blade had been pointing at the body.

  Well, he thought, it would have been.

  Everything this guy does he has got a reason for doing. I do not know what them reasons are but they will be there.

  Tracks.

  This guy lines things up.

  He gets upset when something is out of place.

  He gets really upset when he has a plan and it don’t work out.

  He is thinking God’s plan is not doing well, women are fucking it up maybe.

  This guy is trying to fix things.

  Everything.

  Du Pré looked back up at the eagle. Now there were two.

  He walked over toward the spot where he had seen the magpie fly up so long ago. Less than a month but a long time ago.

  He looked left to right. He kept looking back.

  The two bodies under the right arm of Christ on the cross.

  Left arm of the cross.

  Everything depends on where you are standing.

  He came to the spot. There wasn’t so much evidence of scarring and turned earth here. They were not so thorough.

  The girls had those inky jailhouse tattoos. So who cared?

  Just trash in the brush.

  Du Pré wondered if they had been killed at the same time.

  He wondered if they were maybe sisters.

  They were now.

  Du Pré rolled a smoke and he lit it.

  No knife here.

  I know that there is no knife here.

  Him, he did not do this.

  These two were someone else.

  They know about each other.

  One of them kills north.

  Other one kills east.

  I am high above them looking down.

  If I can bring them together, then maybe …

  Where is Benetsee.

  Where is Benetsee.

  Du Pré began to whistle a tune that he realized he had never heard before. It was pretty and sad.

  Try it on the fiddle.

  Get it right.

  The Women are Lost in the Desert.

  Du Pré walked back to his old cruiser, whistling.

  CHAPTER 16

  “I DON’T PAY THAT much attention to that sort of thing,” said Father Van Den Heuvel. “I know that it exists and of course it probably does around here but I spend my time in pastoral duties and so forth. Why do you ask?”

  Du Pré shrugged.

  “I think maybe this guy have something to do with those people,” said Du Pré. “The guy who is killing these girls.”

  “Why do you think that?” said Father Van Den Heuvel. “I perhaps could help you if I knew your thoughts.”

  Du Pré sucked his teeth. He rolled a cigarette.

  They were sitting on the front porch of the little house Van Den Heuvel lived in. It had been willed to the church by an old woman of great faith who had pitied the priests stuck in one bare room with a tiny kitchen and bath.

  “It may be that I am wrong,” said Du Pré, “but that Agent Pidgeon said that this man probably felt he was doing the work of God. Killing these bad women. That he hates but he has to find a way to make his hating all right, you know. He hates because God wants him to.”

  “Ah,” said Father Van Den Heuvel, “yes. The primitive people who join such ignorant sects are good haters, all of them. I have seen advertisements in the Billings paper for evangelists who hate practically everyone. Especially those who practice and accept abortion. The Mother Church abhors the practice, of course, but we stop short of recommending that those who disagree with us be killed outright.”

  Lately you have, thought Du Pré. Lot of the history of the Church it was saying just that. Remember the Huguenots, lot of them fled here.

  “OK,” said Du Pré. “What would be at the right hand of Jesus, when He is on the Cross?”

  “Interesting question,” said Father Van Den Heuvel. “I will have to think about that.”

  “Um,” said Du Pré. “I am going down to that Miles City and go to one of those churches, I want to see the people in it.”

  Van Den Heuvel nodded.

&n
bsp; “Hmm,” said Van Den Heuvel. “I wish I could join you. The Devil’s work must be, to succeed, plausible enough.”

  “I don’t think that I go there with a Jesuit,” said Du Pré. “I do not want to hurt your feelings.”

  “Yes,” said the big priest.

  Du Pré rose and he left. He got in his cruiser and he went to town and gassed the car at the little grocery, laundromat, and service station, waving at the kid through the window.

  Write it down, whatever it is.

  Du Pré drove on. He saw the boy coming out to read the charge on the pumps.

  Wednesday night.

  Madelaine had said he was dumb enough to want to listen to some redneck preacher rant she would go, Mass, pray for him.

  “I got cousins got sent to school run by those people,” she said. “They did not do so well. Made them hate that they were Indians, those people, them evangelists, usually molested the kids, too. Pret’ sick bad people. I don’t like them so good.”

  Du Pré didn’t either, but, then he never had known very many.

  Me with my priests and old ones like Benetsee, like Mrs. High Back Bone, who come here and gathered herbs with my mother.

  Mrs. High Back Bone was maybe Assiniboine, funny old lady, had a laugh, very warm, round fat face. Medicine person, people come to her, she cure them, cure them of broken hearts even. Cure them, stomach cancer and bad lungs.

  Du Pré had been bitten by a rattlesnake and Mrs. High Back Bone had chewed some leaves and put it on the bites and Du Pré felt the poison leave his body. The paste of green leaves turned black. She washed it off and touched the wounds. The next morning Du Pré had two little white spots where the fangs had gone in. Never felt sick.

  The cruiser shot along at ninety. Du Pré had a little whiskey. Driving bored him and if he was a little drunk and relaxed sometimes he could think up songs as he crossed the far empty places that Montana was mostly made of.

  Some day some pissant cop is gonna bust me for drunk, Du Pré thought, damn social workers everywhere.

  Du Pré crested a long hill and he hit the brakes hard. There was a tractor and a hay baler behind it wallowing from side to side on the narrow ribbon of asphalt and another car coming as fast as Du Pré had been. The rancher on the tractor tossed a beer can over his shoulder and the can bounced out from under the hay baler and Du Pré’s right front tire crunched it.

  The car in the other lane shot past, wheels clear out on the verge, damn near over the edge. Young cowboy in an old Cadillac.

  Du Pré glanced round the baler, saw the road was clear, and in a minute he was doing eighty again and then ninety down a long perfectly clear road.

  He got to Miles City at five. He found a restaurant that had a lot of men in cowboy hats in it and he ate some prime rib and had a couple glasses of whiskey in coffee cups.

  “We don’t have a liquor license,” said the waitress. “S’pose we oughta get one?”

  Du Pré laughed. He sprayed a little whiskey into his moustache.

  I go there protected by the Demon Rum, there, he thought. I think that I know what I will find anyway.

  At a quarter to seven Du Pré drove off to an evangelical church which advertised by printing portions of its pastor’s sermons. Du Pré found the ad in the Miles City paper. The pastor thought the world’s ills were the work of “godless liberals.”

  Du Pré found the ratty building. The sign out front held cheap plastic letters and over the 7 PM it said “EVENING SERVICE.” Du Pré went in when people began to arrive. Fat women and sad-looking children, men skinny and bowed by hard work. They were dressed in cheap clothes. Du Pré took a seat in the back. The congregation, about forty people, constantly turned and looked at him.

  I am maybe a little dark in the skin, be here, Du Pré thought.

  The amounts of the last two collections were posted on a placard hanging in front of the pulpit.

  Someone started a tape of organ music. The congregation began to sing a hymn. It was awful.

  Du Pré got up and walked out.

  We got poor people, Toussaint, he thought, but these are poorer people yet. They don’t even got themselves.

  Du Pré felt sorry for them.

  But they could be plenty mean.

  Du Pré drove up to the downtown of Miles City. He liked the place. Still had old bars. Still had a lot of cattle people. The Bucking Horse Sale was some party. He had not been here for it for ten years. Too many people.

  But it was still the West. Not like the mountains, all yuppies and ski hills and homes built on winter range so it killed off the deer and elk. All of them drive those silly four-wheel drive things, denim seat covers. Funny boots.

  Du Pré went in a big old high-ceilinged saloon and he got a drink and he walked around it looking at the pictures on the walls. Signed pictures. Tom Mix and Art Acord and Hoot Gibson. Monty Montana and Yakima Canutt. Casey Tibbs the rodeo champion. Will James, who had been born … what? Nepthele Dumont, something like that, French-Canadian. Drank himself to death. Du Pré’s grandfather had known James, they spoke in Coyote French, though James was from Quebec.

  Du Pré stopped before a little watercolor in a heavy gilt frame that was bolted to the wall.

  Charley Russell. Him and Du Pré’s great-grandfather had been great friends, drank together till Charley quit. Charley had painted Du Pré’s great-grandfather many times, the Métis with the carbine with the stock all full of brass tacks. Métis moccasins and Red River hat, sash. Charley wore a Métis sash every day of his life, even wore it with a tuxedo.

  That Red River, she reach far.

  Du Pré had another drink.

  He went out to his cruiser and he headed back home.

  I guess I just want to be with myself and think.

  It was still light and Du Pré was within a hundred miles of Toussaint before it got dark enough to bother with the headlights.

  He shot along.

  A coyote ran in front of him and disappeared in the shadows.

  Du Pré laughed.

  Couple miles farther on, another.

  Du Pré laughed.

  Du Pré wound up a long rise that ended on a bench of stone that once must have been a tall butte.

  There was a turnout at the top and Du Pré pulled over and he got out and he fished the whiskey bottle out from under the seat and he rolled a cigarette and he sat on the warm hood of his car. The night air was chilling down fast.

  The coyotes suddenly started to sing. First one, then more, then a whole chorus.

  Gettin’ ready to hunt.

  Just like Du Pré.

  Du Pré howled once.

  A coyote howled back.

  Benetsee?

  CHAPTER 17

  THE NIGHT WAS BLACK except for the silver starlight which made soft ghosts of the sage and Siberian elms that crept up to Benetsee’s cabin. Du Pré turned off in the driveway and he could smell woodsmoke.

  Ah, the old bastard is back. Never know where he goes, Canada, the moon, China, maybe. The fucking North Pole.

  Du Pré parked by the falling-down front porch. He went to the door and he knocked.

  Nothing.

  He looked in the window. A kerosene lamp was burning low.

  The old dogs had all finally died. Du Pré missed them, woofing and wheezing and trying to do dog work to the last, even when they could barely get up anymore.

  Du Pré had tried to give Benetsee a blue heeler pup, but the old man said no, he would not live long enough and so the dog would be sad because its master would be gone.

  The smell of smoke was pretty thick. Du Pré knocked again.

  Nothing. He went around back to where Benetsee’s sweat lodge was.

  Big fire gone down to coals now, the pit where the stones were heated before being carried to the steam pit in the sweat lodge. The flaps were down on the lodge and tendrils of steam rose from the seams and curled in the night air.

  In there, he is praying.

  Or fucking a goat, maybe.<
br />
  So I wait.

  Du Pré went back to his car and he opened the trunk and rummaged around and found a bottle of the cheap awful screwtop wine that Benetsee liked so much. He carried that and his whiskey and tobacco back to the sweat lodge and he sat on a stump smoking and drinking whiskey and looking up at the stars. A green streak of fire shot across the black and it bloomed and faded in seconds.

  Meteor.

  Another.

  Another.

  Du Pré wondered why they burned with green fire, little yellow, but mostly green.

  He had a slug of whiskey.

  Du Pré heard some singing coming from the sweat lodge.

  The lodge would be cooling and soon the old man would crawl out, wearing only his loincloth, and he would dance in the cool night air while the sweat rolled off him in streams.

  Du Pré rolled a cigarette for the old fart.

  I got plenty question for him, thought Du Pré.

  The flap of canvas over the door shook and then a hand poked a stick up into it and opened the door all the way. Steam rose in the night air.

  A young man emerged, naked, carrying a dipper.

  He stopped when he saw Du Pré, reached back in the lodge and brought out a towel which he wrapped around his waist.

  Du Pré waited for Benetsee.

  He didn’t come.

  The young man stood with his arms raised to heaven, his lips moving but making no sound.

  Then he went around behind the lodge and he pulled his clothes from the branches of the blue spruces and he dressed.

  Du Pré smoked.

  That old fucker, he thought, he is not even here.

  “Good evening,” said the young man, coming toward Du Pré. He was dressed in jeans and boots and a worn Western shirt. He had a belt buckle made of black metal and bear claws. A turquoise and buffalo-bone choker around his neck.

  “I come to see Benetsee,” said Du Pré. “Would you like some wine?”

  “I don’t drink anymore,” said the young man. “Thank you, though.”

  Du Pré nodded. Res Indian here.

  “Where is Benetsee?” said Du Pré.

  “He gone to North Dakota,” said the young man. “You are Du Pré.”

  “Yes,” said Du Pré.

  “He say you catch these guys he come back then.”

  “WHAT?!” said Du Pré.

  “Don’t yell,” said the young man, “the spirits are still here, they do not like yelling. You know that.”