by Peter Bowen
“You still tryin’ to find out who shot that fool Sheriff?” said Du Pré.
The agent nodded glumly. Interview everybody over and over, spread a lot of glue, maybe your fly steps in it. Maybe not even the right fly, but we always get our man, even if it’s the wrong one. Ask Leonard Peltier.
“You went out there after you were called on the radio,” said the agent. He was scribbling in his notebook.
“Yes,” said Du Pré, “they been calling me a long time by then.”
“Do you know why Fascelli wanted you?”
“Uh, he knew me some, I guess.” Drunken asshole Sheriff shows up without a warrant, for Chrissakes, arrest the man, someone outside shoots the Sheriff in the back of the head, the deputies go apeshit and blaze away, you sitting in there with a starter pistol to protect yourself with, you’d want someone you knew, too. Jesus. Shit.
Jotila tapped his gold pencil on the table. Nice pencil, heavy gold, kind you get you want someone to know you own a nice pencil.
“That old cowboy, Booger Tom, he shot the Sheriff, didn’t he?” said the agent.
Du Pré’s eyebrows shot up.
“I don’t know that,” said Du Pré. “I didn’t get there till it was all over. Long time.”
The agent looked wearily at Du Pré. He shut his notebook.
“I have been an agent for fifteen years,” he said, “and I have seen the police fuck up a lot, but this is world-class. When those asshole deputies opened up like they were storming a beach or something old Booger Tom must have blown them a kiss, walked away carrying a torch, mooning the dumb fuckers. Not a one of those nitwits looked behind them, for Chrissakes.”
“They wouldn’t,” said Du Pré. The deputies, they were scared. They had assault rifles, pump shotguns, bang bang bang.
“Why do you say that they wouldn’t?”
“Don’t think they had ever been shot at before,” said Du Pré. “Besides, when the Sheriff fell over backwards, they would have thought that the shot had to come from the house. They don’t know much. Head shot, the body falls toward where the shot came from, if that bullet goes through the skull.”
“How do you know that?”
“I shoot a lot of deer in the head,” said Du Pré. This guy, maybe he wants me to be the killer now. Well, I got six witnesses I was fifteen miles away, so screw him.
“I think I’ll ask Booger Tom to take a lie detector test,” said the agent.
“He won’t do it,” said Du Pré. I’ll tell him not to, Mr. FBI man. That asshole Sheriff killed his own self, far as I am concerned. You be dumb enough, you be dead. It’s the law.
“The Bureau is burning my ass to get something on this case,” said the agent Jotila. “I don’t want to stay in Butte, Montana, the rest of my life.”
Du Pré shrugged. Threaten Booger Tom to me, you prick, I got no use for you at all. I don’t know that he did it, mind you, and I do not care to find out if he did.
“Just one of those things,” said Du Pré.
The agent nodded glumly.
“I’ll go back to beautiful Butte, now,” he said.
He pulled on his socks.
CHAPTER 33
IT GOT TO BE Christmas. There was some heavy snow, a lot of wind. Du Pré heard the county road trucks going by. Raymond had got a job with them, the pay was good depending on how much it snowed. Du Pré slipped money to Jacqueline anyway, not in front of Raymond, few years he would have a handle on everything. Not that I ever have, Du Pré thought.
Jacqueline had been four months pregnant when she married her Raymond, girl in her position had to be sure that her man didn’t shoot no blanks, just bullets, thank you. Lucky Raymond. He loved her, looked at her like a sick calf. He give her babies, she love him back. Get his balls shot off, he have to find a new home.
Du Pré grinned. I got me some strong women, here. The old saying, that the strength of the Métis was the men’s humility, but the backbone of the tribe was the women, who gave life itself.
Jacqueline was pregnant again. She was set on having a baby every nine months and one day, as near as Du Pré could figure.
Du Pré heard a truck in his drive, looked out. It was Bart and Father Van Den Heuvel. Since Bart had taken on the task of splitting the priest’s wood while the priest had taken on the task of sticking Bart’s soul back together they had spent a lot of time together. Bart had his first chance at life and the priest wasn’t going to die over some kindling. Lucky folks, Du Pré thought.
Two of them, maybe they ought to get married.
Du Pré, opened the door and the two men came in, stamping the snow off as best they could.
Bart was looking much better. His face had lost watery flesh and now there were some lines that the weather had written, lines of age that had been there but stayed smooth because his body was so soaked in booze. Clear eyes, but very tired.
Can’t sleep much yet. I’ve heard about that, worst thing about the booze, you can’t even die at night a little, get some rest, stop things from running through your mind. Banging doors.
Du Pré caught himself. He was going to ask the priest if a hot toddy would go down good, cold day.
“Give the father a hot toddy,” said Bart, “I’m better now.”
The man needs you to do what he says, thought Du Pré. He made two stiff ones, a cup of strong tea for Bart. They sat, sipped, didn’t say anything.
“Cards?” said Du Pré, finally, eyes twinkling.
“No,” said Bart, “I have a favor to ask.”
Bring the priest to back you up, must be a favor too big for the telephone to carry.
I know what it is.
“I have to find out what happened to my brother,” said Bart. “I don’t know how to go about it, though, and I was talking to Father Van Den Heuvel and he said you were a smart man and knew this place and you could find out if anyone could.”
The priest was looking resolutely away. This was between Bart and Gabriel, he was just here for ballast.
“Why me?” said Du Pré. I know fucking well why me, fate, why me.
“You found the skull, which is probably Gianni’s. The teeth. You must want to know.”
I already know, I think, said Du Pré to himself, under his mustache. But this one, he’s right, I have to know for sure.
Du Pré finished his toddy. He got up, made another one, get this cold out of my bones. He poured Bart some more boiling water, there was still lots of good in his teabag. The priest was only half through with his hot whiskey. Du Pré gave him a little more whiskey, hot water, dollop of lemon.
“I am no detective,” said Du Pré.
“Please,” said Bart. “I can’t do it myself, I don’t know how. I need to stay here, work my ass off with Booger Tom, pray. Sweat at night, take five showers a day. I’m still nearer dead than alive.”
Du Pré looked at the priest. The big man was wiping his glasses so that he wouldn’t have to look at anybody.
“What you want me to do?” said Du Pré.
Bart pulled a manila envelope out of the game pouch at the back of his expensive English hunting coat. Good waxed cotton, breathes, thornproof, keeps out the cold winds. Thousand dollars, probably.
“This is what the private detectives my family hired found. It isn’t much. My brother flew to Denver. He stayed one night at the Brown Palace. The next morning he bought an emerald necklace. He rented a car. And that was the last that anybody ever saw of him. He must have paid cash for the gas, there were no credit card slips from after the day he picked the car up in Denver. He had a lot of money on him. And a necklace worth seventy-four thousand dollars, 1967 dollars.”
“Plenty people kill your brother for that,” said Du Pré.
“Whatever,” said Bart. His hands started to shake, he trembled. His eyes rolled up in his head, gaaaacking sounds came from his throat. He was stiff and shaking.
Father Van Den Heuvel jammed a folded napkin in Bart’s mouth. He grabbed Bart in his huge arms and held him ti
ll he quit convulsing. He helped him to the living room and laid him out on the couch.
Du Pré stood back, sipping his toddy.
“He’ll be all right in a minute,” said the priest.
Du Pré nodded: One sick man, this.
“Will you do it?” Father Van Den Heuvel asked, looking at Du Pré. “He’ll pay you, give you money for expenses. It might help him.”
Bart stirred weakly. His eyes opened.
“Seizure?” he whispered. He shook his head. “Sorry,” he said.
“Yes,” said the priest. “We don’t mind, Bart.”
“It’s fine,” said Du Pré, setting down his glass. “Even if you fuck up, get drunk or something it’s fine. You got friends here, Bart, you don’t know how to have them but you’ll learn.”
Bart stared up at the ceiling. His eyes filled with tears.
“I find out who killed your brother,” said Du Pré.
Bart slid a black leather envelope out of his coat pocket. He handed it to Du Pré. “There’s five thousand in there,” he said. “More, any more you might need, call Lawyer Foote at this number.” Little card, expensive paper.
“But when I find out,” said Du Pré, “you do what I tell you to do about it, you hear? Do what I say.”
“Yes,? Bart whispered, nodding. “I just want to know.”
CHAPTER 34
DU PRÉ WENT TO Raymond and Jacqueline’s little house for Christmas dinner. Madelaine’s people were in town and she didn’t want to upset them, someone notice Du Pré knows his way around her house too good, and she an abandoned wife but still married in the eyes of God, and especially her relatives’.
“We all got them aunts,” said Du Pré.“ ’Cept me, my aunt, she a hooker on a horse, got a lariat, fer Chrissakes.”
His third grandchild was so happy to see Grandpère Du Pré he pissed in Grandpère’s lap. Thank you, little Dominick.
“I’m sorry,” said Jacqueline, mopping Du Pré off. Lots of good that will do, thought Du Pré, sit through dinner now on my soaked nuts. This grandfather shit, well.
“You can wear some of Raymond’s underwear, pair of his jeans,” said Jacqueline. Raymond had one pair good pants, church pants, he was in them.
Du Pré changed in their bedroom. He rolled his soiled things together, stuck them in the game pouch of his old hunting coat. Benetsee’s deer. Blood on the sleeve. He’d forgotten the old man, been too busy. Benetsee, he hadn’t come round, either. Hadn’t seen him three, four weeks? Thanksgiving? Damn me. I got to go check. Cow asses, where these days go.
“Hey,” said Du Pré when he came out, “I better go see about Benetsee. I have forgot him.”
“We didn’t,” said Jacqueline. “Father Van Den Heuvel took him to that Bart’s. I would have them here, but … ”
This tiny house. Even with just Du Pré and Maria extra it was stuffed to bursting. The three little ones slept in a big closet off the tiny bedroom.
When they ate today it would be on a kitchen table made of a full four-by-eight sheet of plywood sitting on the little kitchen table, chairs for four. Raymond had made a bench, too, for the little ones. Plenty of room for the people, plenty of room for the food. Bart, now, he had never had a meal like this one here. Poor bastard.
Raymond carved the turkey. A huge bird, Du Pré had driven all the way to Great Falls for it. Bought stuffing mix, chestnuts, and fresh oysters.
The Métis people had lots of goiter, no iodine. Big throats, till the oysters came. Eat oyster stew one Friday time to time after that. In the old days, the Métis traded for salmon, but the whites they stole the fish, too.
Du Pré wondered who the first Métis to see the ocean was. Most likely they saw Hudson Bay.
Red River.
Tomorrow, Du Pré would drive east and then north, back up the trail of the returning buffalo hunters, the noisy Red River carts. Supposed to be no snow for two days. Hah. This country, it sat out there, breathing, waiting for the winter, like a big white cat and you the mouse.
They ate. Du Pré’s grandson added to his legend by throwing up over himself and much of the table. One glob stuck to the side of Du Pré’s wineglass. Du Pré stuck out a finger, wiped it off, looked at the lump, smeared it on his napkin.
“Oh, poor baby,” said Jacqueline, grabbing the boy.
“Good, strong Métis stomach,” said Du Pré. “He throw it far, that little one.”
“Papa!” said Jacqueline, laughing. She took her baby to the sink, put him in it, washed him while shushing his wails.
“So you go see Aunty Pauline,” said Jacqueline, returning. Little Dominick, damp and streaked, much subdued. The boy pecked at a fresh plate of food, eyeing distances, computing trajectories.
“Yes,” said Du Pré, “I haven’t seen her in a long time. Got some time, travel a little.” He’d given Jacqueline a thousand dollars, to keep against need. Hard-headed girl. Raymond wouldn’t even know until they were up against it. Just keep them shots coming, Raymond. Got to make them babies, regular-like.
Raymond looked around the table with pride. Jacqueline loved him enough to let him keep that.
Jacqueline had made a wild plum pie. Garnered the fruit from the bushes that hugged the little creek that ran behind the house. Baby in the little carrier on her back. Rum in the pie. Nutmeg.
I should have brought my fiddle with me, thought Du Pré. Well, I am going to take it with me, see those fiddlers up there know what they are about. Yes.
Du Pré poured whiskey in his coffee. Raymond had a little. The boy hardly drank. Boy, hell, man, got more kids man I do. I was that young once, but I drank lots more whiskey.
Maria sat very quietly, in her sister’s house. Jacqueline had the babies, had proved herself. Du Pré looked at Maria, felt a little sorry for the world, it didn’t lie down, do like she said. He laughed, shook his head My girls.
Tomorrow I go back up that trail, drive first to Pembina, over in North Dakota, then right up past the little Catholic churches every twenty miles on the prairie. Once the Church had railroad cars made up like chapels for weddings, baptisms, funerals. Park it on a siding of the Canadian Pacific, tend to business.
That night Du Pré slept badly, excited, things gnawing at his mind. He dreamed, bad confusing dreams.
He woke up choking, in this house he had been born and raised in.
He remembered being in the little bedroom, the one that Maria had now, one night a very long time ago.
His parents had been talking low, in bed.
His mother, she had been crying.
CHAPTER 35
JUST ONE MORE PIECE Métis trash headed north, Du Pré ought. Them English hate us Frenchies, hate the Indians, see what it is like to come from an island. Carry it with you in your soul.
North Dakota in winter. Bleak. Du Pré recalled the joke, the big North Dakota winter sport, get the neighbors to help push the house down the road, jump-start the furnace.
He stopped at a gas station for coffee.
Aunty Pauline was in the little Manitoba town of Boissevain, not so far over the border. Du Pré had called her. She had a wonderful voice, the voice you get from many years of cigarettes and whiskey and broken loves.
Du Pré couldn’t remember if she sang or not. He hoped so.
He wondered what she looked like now, sixty-some, he remembered her blond and beautiful and very strong. How his mother looked at her, not liking her. Too wild. Bring that out in Catfoot, she’d have trouble, threaten my house, my little Gabriel, I don’t like her.
Dangerous women, they scare women not so dangerous.
The border. The Canadian side, man leaned down, asked where Du Pré is going, how long he plans to stay. Du Pré said a week maybe. Then they toss the car, even took out the seats while Du Pré sat in the waiting room, looking at a bronze plaque which stated the stiff penalties for beating the shit out of a customs officer.
It took Du Pré two hours to put his car back together. They had left his fiddle case open on the hood
in the bitter cold. The fiddle’s varnish had begun to wrinkle.
Take that, you Frenchy Indian piece of shit, we don’t care you call yourself American.
The Scots were the worst. Live in the mountains on an island, invent haggis, you’d have a sour view of the world, too.
Fuck you, Du Pré thought.
Gabriel Dumont. If poor mad Louis Riel had let him, little Gabriel would have killed your precious General Wolseley, your redcoat troops, left you dead there. Spit in your faces.
Du Pré spat on the asphalt, all rimed with salt. So many people from the cities, never saw ice on the road. Come booming up here from Chicago, wherever, car set on cruise control, hit a patch of ice and that’s that.
But he liked the country. It felt like home. Very big sky, this. The Scandinavians broke under it, often enough. The North Dakota State Motto: I bain don’t tink dis luek like Norvay …
Manitoba. Good woodland Cree word, or was it Chippewa? No English word good enough to name this country, for sure. Red River, I piss here it goes to Hudson Bay.
The road went north, straight as a stretched string. Long, lone, and a little up, long, lone, and a little down.
Boissevain. Little Catholic town, Métis town, little white church, very big graveyard.
Du Pré went to the saloon. Remembered that in Canada, the bars were divided, men single in one end, couples in another. The Canadians, they didn’t like fights.
Du Pré called his Aunty Pauline. Man answered, seemed about to hang up, but he called her to the phone instead.
“I’ll come there,” she said, voice deep and smoky. “I look a lot different. Do you?”
Du Pré said yes.
He had a Molson beer, squat bottle with scratches on it. All Canadian beer bottles were the same, so they could take them back to any brewery.
Du Pré rolled a cigarette, smoked, thought his aunt would be a little while, put on a face, must take longer these days, try to sketch in what had fallen off.
But she came right away. Wearing crimson buckskins, cigarette in a long holder. She smiled at the barman, who smiled back.
