by James Welch
“Small breasts are best,” said second suit. “My wife has big breasts and they just get in the way. What you can’t get in your mouth is wasted anyway.”
“My wife has breasts that hang down to her knees and her nipples are too dark.”
“Pink nipples are easily the best,” I said.
“My wife is dead,” said the man who had torn up his airplane ticket.
The bartender brought us a round of drinks on the house and recited some baseball scores. The airplane man continued to name places, but the barmaid wasn’t there. Second suit fumbled with his camera. He had the insides out and the film was hanging down over the counter.
My leg had gone numb, as though waterlogged by the boilermakers. At least it didn’t ache.
When the barmaid returned, I looked at her breasts. They were not as large as I had thought; her white blouse was a little small, stretched tight across them, straining the button between them.
The airplane man jerked his thumb at me and said: “This man doesn’t believe there are goldeyes in the river.”
“Of course there are,” she said. “I caught seven of them just this morning.”
“You can’t mean it.”
“Positively.”
The airplane man glared at her. Suddenly he jerked upright and roared—I thought first suit had stuck a knife in his back—then rushed her, arms extended as if to hug or strangle her. At the last instant, he swerved and hit the door, plunging into the night.
The barmaid smiled at me. “It’s still raining.”
“You should have danced for him,” I said.
“No.” She shook her head sadly. “It wouldn’t be the same.”
16
I awoke the next morning with a hangover. I had slept fitfully, pursued by the ghosts of the night before and nights past. There were the wanted men with ape faces, cuffed sleeves and blue hands. They did not look directly into my eyes but at my mouth, which was dry and hollow of words. They seemed on the verge of performing an operation. Suddenly a girl loomed before my face, slit and gutted like a fat rainbow, and begged me to turn her loose, and I found my own guts spilling from my monstrous mouth. Teresa hung upside down from a wanted man’s belt, now my own belt, crying out a series of strange warnings to the man who had torn up his airplane ticket and who was now rolling in the manure of the corral, from time to time washing his great pecker in a tub of water. The gutted rainbow turned into the barmaid of last night screaming under the hands of the leering wanted men. Teresa raged at me in several voices, her tongue clicking against the roof of her mouth. The men in suits were feeling her, commenting on the texture of her breasts and the width of her hips. They spread her legs wider and wider until Amos waddled out, his feathers wet and shining, one orange leg cocked at the knee, and suddenly lifted, in a flash of white stunted wing, up and through a dull sun. The wanted men fell on the gutted rainbow and second suit clicked pictures of a woman beside a reservoir in brown light.
I climbed with Teresa’s voice still in my head. Although the words were not clear, they were accompanied by another image, that of a boy on horseback racing down a long hill, yelling and banging his hat against his thigh. Strung out before him, a herd of cattle, some tumbling, some flying, all laughing. The boy was bundled up against a high wind.
I didn’t know whether I was asleep or awake during this last scene, but the boy changed quickly into a pale ceiling. The room was stuffy and smelled of liquor. Sun streamed through the white curtains of a tall, narrow window. The curtains were hung about a foot below the top of the window and through this space I could see sky, without depth, as though the window itself were painted a flat blue.
I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, sat up and waited for my head to ache. A quick numbing throb made my eyes water, followed by a wild pounding that seemed to drive my head down between my shoulders. I closed my eyes, opened them, then closed them again—I couldn’t make up my mind whether to let the room in on my suffering or keep it to myself. I sat for what seemed like two or three nauseating hours until an overpowering thirst drove me to the sink. I drank a long sucking bellyful of water from the tap, my head pounding fiercely until I straightened up and wiped my mouth. I gripped the sink and waited. Gradually the pounding lessened and I was able to open my eyes again. I stared at my face. It didn’t look too bad—a little puffy, pale but lifelike. I soaked one of the towels in cold water and washed up. My pants were knotted down around my ankles. One shoe and one white sock stuck out beneath them. Above them, the vertical scars flanking my left kneecap and the larger bone-white slash running diagonally across the top. Keeping my head up, I reached down and slowly pulled up the pants.
Ah, there was the clean shirt—but then I remembered I had left my paper bag of possessions at Minough’s. And I had helped roll the big red-headed cowboy. He was probably out looking for me right now. I wondered if he could recognize me or if he had been too drunk. No, he couldn’t, I decided; he was passed out, after all. But somebody at the bar might have described me or given him my name. I couldn’t remember if anybody had been in the bar. Of course—the bartender. How could I explain that I had come to Malta only to find a girl who had stolen from me, and that it was only an odd circumstance that led me to steal from him, or at least try? No, he would not understand. The girl, the one item we had in common, would lead to my downfall sure as hell …
I cursed Dougie and his sister for bringing me to such a sorry pass, and I cursed the white man for being such a fool and my hotel room for being such a tiny sanctuary on a great earth of stalking white men. I cursed the loss of my possessions, for my teeth were mossy and my shirt lay wrinkled and stained across the sunlit bedspread.
A corner of the bed had been turned down. I must have tried to get into it before passing out. The sheets looked so clean and cool, so white, that I thought about taking off my clothes and slipping down between them. But it was too late, the sun too high.
I wet my hair and combed it with my fingers. Then I slipped my Levi jacket on over my T-shirt—the shirt was awful, I must have vomited—and left the room, walking down the hall first to the toilet, then to the carpeted stairs. The desk clerk didn’t look up. A group of old men sat on the orange-vinyl couches in the lobby. Two of them leaned forward on their canes, while the rest repeated the sagging curves of the furniture. They were watching baseball on the television. I walked quickly by them and out into the sunshine. A woman said excuse me.
17
It was Saturday. Children in blue jeans and striped T-shirts ran by me, their small shoes and boots clicking against the sidewalk. Their fathers, some with new haircuts, would be gathered in the bars and cafés to discuss the business they had discussed last Saturday and the Saturday before that, while their wives shopped, careful to avoid the stares of the young men in Levi’s and floral cowboy shirts who lounged on the corners or sat on car hoods, talking about girls and cars. The girls touched their hair.
Saturday, and I walked down the hot side of the street to the bar by the railroad station. A woolly-headed man stood beside the cash register picking lint from his black shirt. Except for him the place was deserted.
“What’s your pleasure?”
I ordered a Coke and a bag of potato chips, then removed my jacket. The man picked lint from his shirt. A dog wandered in, sniffed my pants cuffs and wandered out.
“It’s going to be a hot one, good for business,” the man said without looking up. He turned around. “How’s my back?”
“Worse than the front,” I said.
“I was afraid of that.” He looked at me. “You’re from up the valley, aren’t you?”
“Past Dodson a little ways.”
“Reservation?”
“Yep.”
“You’re Teresa First Raise’s boy.”
“I’m thirty-two.”
“She’s a good one, that gal—one of the livelie
st little gals I know of.”
“She’s bigger than you are, bigger than both of us put together.”
“Amen—you can say that again.” His eyes rolled. “And what is she doing for herself these days?”
“I guess the latest thing she did was marry Lame Bull.”
“No!” He slapped his hand on the bar and rolled his eyes again. “Lively little gal …”
“They got married a couple of weeks ago. Right here.”
“Not by me.” He laughed. “Not here.”
“No.” I laughed. “Down at the courthouse. But I’ll bet if they came here that day, you’d sure as hell know it.”
He stopped laughing. “Kind of a heavyset guy, bushy hair?”
“Let’s see …” I noticed that his eyes had gone hard. “No, he’s pretty tall, slick hair, kind of skinny.”
The bartender scratched his own woolly head. “Nope, nope … but I remember that bushy-haired fella. He tried to tune up one of my best customers.”
“Oh yes,” I said. “He’s mean—I know him, slightly—especially on wine.”
“I don’t mind a guy raising a little hell, but when he starts tuning up my customers … Well, I have to draw the line somewhere, don’t I?”
“I don’t know him hardly at all, just vaguely.”
A train started up over by the railroad station. The sudden jerk on the couplings loosed an explosion that shot through the late morning air, followed by the grinding squeal of steel against steel.
“Say, will you do me a favor?”
“Sure,” I said.
“I have to bleed my lizard—if anybody comes in, you just give a holler.”
“Sure,” I said. “Leave it to me.”
Leave it to me. But where was the airplane man—where did he take off to? What about his wife and daughters? Could he have thought the barmaid was his daughter? Deep inside, I felt uneasy about the barmaid, a feeling almost of shame. But why, what had I done? I hadn’t intruded on their relationship, that was sure, for there was nothing between them—he was from the east, and she from the west, they couldn’t have known each other. Or it had been a joke, they had played a trick on me—but for what purpose, I was nothing to anybody. Or—that’s it, I had imagined the whole thing in my drunken state. Neither of them existed, I couldn’t even remember—nice twitch—her hips or her breasts—the button of her blouse strained between them. It had been part of my dream—the whole business about the fish, the two suits, her dancing—but why the feeling, the feeling …
Then it was before the dream or the first part of the dream—the hotel room, the lamp, me laughing on the bed, her standing above me, me pulling her down, popping the button between her breasts, up again, standing, turning down the bed, pants down around my ankles, her pulling off a shoe, laughing, protesting, reaching for her …
I tried to clear my head, to empty it of these images, start again, but all I could see clearly was the moment alone on the bed, the lamplight in my eyes—but it must have happened, she must have come to the room with me.
A customer came in. I didn’t look around, but I heard the footsteps and the squeak of the barstool. The bartender had appeared as if by instinct the moment I opened my mouth. As he passed me, he picked a piece of lint from his sleeve. The sun came in the door and crossed my hand. I took a sip of Coke.
The toothbrush, the one I had bought in Dodson! I grabbed my jacket from the stool and patted the pocket. No, I must have dropped it in my sack of possessions that I no longer possessed. But something else … I opened the pocket and pulled out a crumpled letter—the letter to Teresa from the priest in Harlem.
Teresa First Raise. Box 85. Dodson, Montana. The handwriting was like a child’s, both timid and bold, the letters big, solid, unreal. T-E-R-E-S-A. The name did not belong to the woman who was my mother. It belonged to somebody I didn’t know, somebody so far away that the picture on the stamp of a man I didn’t recognize seemed familiar.
I wanted to read it, to see what a priest would have to say to a woman who was his friend. I had heard of priests having drinking partners, fishing partners, but never a woman partner. I wanted to read it because his woman partner was my mother. But I didn’t want to see my mother’s name inside the envelope, in a letter written by a white man who refused to bury Indians in their own plots, who refused to set foot on the reservation. I felt vaguely satisfied as I tore up the letter between my legs and let the pieces fall to the floor.
It was Saturday. I heard the clatter of children running on the sidewalk. The customer, a woman in fringed buckskin, walked to the jukebox. Her mouth, her thin nose glared in the light of the machine as she pondered her selections. The bartender had one leg raised, his foot resting on the beer cooler. He was reading Popular Science. I could have reached out and touched his woolly head.
PART TWO
18
First old Bird tried to bite me; then he tried a kick as I reached under his belly for the cinch. His leg came up like a shot turkey’s, throwing him off-balance, and he lurched away from me. He tried a second kick, this time more gingerly, and when his hoof struck the ground, I snaked the cinch up under his belly and tightened down. As soon as he felt the strap taut against his ribs, he puffed his belly up and stood like a bloated cow. He looked satisfied, chewing on the bit. He was very old. I rammed my elbow into his rib cage and the air came out with a whoosh, sending him skittering sideways in surprise. The calf stood tense and interested by the loading chute. Lame Bull cradled his chin on his arms on the top rail of the corral and smiled.
It was a hot morning and I was sweating as I grabbed the saddle horn, turned the stirrup forward and placed my foot in it to swing aboard. As soon as Bird felt my weight settle on his back, he backed up, stumbled and almost went down. Then we took off, crow-hopping around the corral, old Bird hunkering beneath me, jumping straight up and down, suddenly sunfishing, kicking his back legs straight out, and twisting, grunting. We circled the corral four times, each jolt jarring my teeth as I came down hard in the saddle. He started to run, racing stiff-legged at the corral posts, changing directions at the last instant to make another run. Each time we passed Lame Bull, I could see him out of the corner of my eye, head thrown back, roaring at the big white horse and the intent, terrified rider, both hands on the saddle horn, swaying in the wrong direction each time the horse swerved. The calf had started to run, staying just ahead of Bird, bucking and kicking and crapping and bawling for its mother, who was circling on the other side of the corral.
Finally Lame Bull opened the gate, ducking out of the way as calf, horse and rider shot by him out onto the sagebrush flat between the toolshed and slough. I gave Bird his head as we pounded clouds of dust from the Milk River valley. The escaped calf had peeled off and pulled up short, swinging its head from side to side, not sure whether to follow us or return to its mother. We were beyond the big irrigation ditch by the time Bird slowed down and settled into a nervous trot. He panted and rumbled inside, as though a thunderstorm were growing in his belly. We reached the first gate and he was walking, trying to graze the weeds on the side of the road. I got down and opened the gate, leading him through and shutting it. A garter snake slithered off through the long grass, but he didn’t see it.
We followed the fence line to the west between a field of alfalfa and another of bluejoint. Through the willows that lined the banks of the irrigation ditch I could see our small white house and the shack in front where Mose and I used to stretch muskrat pelts. The old root cellar where Teresa had seen a puff adder was now a tiny mound off to the side of the granary. A crane flapped above the slough, a gray arrow bound for some distant target.
Bird snorted. He had caught his breath and now walked cautiously with his head high and his dark eyes trained on the horizon in front of us. I slapped a horsefly from his neck but he didn’t shy, didn’t seem to notice.
“Tired already?” I said. �
��But you’re an old war pony, you’re supposed to go all day—at least that’s what you’d have us believe.”
He flicked his ears as if in irritation but lumbered ahead.
My bad leg had begun to ache from the tenseness with which I had to ride out Bird’s storm. I got down and loosened the cinch. He took a walking crap as I led him down the fence line toward the main irrigation ditch. The wooden bridge was rotten. There were holes in the planks and one could see the slow cloudy water filled with bugs and snaky weeds. Bird balked at crossing. I coaxed him with soft words and threats, at last talking him across and down the bank on the other side.
Before us stood a log-and-mud shack set into the ground. The logs were cracked and bleached but the mud was dark, as though it had been freshly applied. There were no windows, only a door dug out of the earth which banked its walls. The weeds and brush stopped a hundred feet away on all sides, leaving only a caked white earth floor that did not give under one’s feet. The river flowed through jagged banks some distance away. The old man stood at the edge. As we approached, he lifted his head with the dignity of an old dog sniffing the wind.
“Howdy,” I said. The sun flared off the skin of earth between us. “Hello there, Yellow Calf.”
He wore no shoes. His suit pants bagged at the knees and were stained on the thighs and crotch by dirt and meals, but his shirt, tan with pearl snaps, seemed clean, even ironed.
“How goes it?” I said.
He seemed confused.
“I’m First Raise’s son—I came with him once.”
“Ah, of course! You were just a squirt,” he said.
“It was during a winter,” I said.
“You were just a squirt.”
I tied Bird to the pump and pumped a little water into the enamel basin under the spout. “My father called you Yellow Calf …” The water was brown. I loosened the bridle and took the bit out of Bird’s mouth. It must have tasted strange after so many years. “And now Teresa says you are dead. I guess you died and didn’t know it.”
