As the Crow Flies

by Craig Johnson

  Vic stopped at the counter to buy some chewing gum and was having a conversation with Brandon White Buffalo—probably something to do with Katrina Walks Nice.

  Henry was rolling Lonnie out the door and into the stunningly mixed-up summer afternoon, the ozone hanging in the air like baskets. The Cheyenne Nation, thinking it might be wise to explore other avenues, looked back at me. “Would you like to go take a look at Painted Warrior?”

  I made a face, thinking about how I was going to break the news to Cady. “Well, I really don’t want to go over to the library and tangle with Arbutis Little Bird, I can tell you that much.”

  “It is possible I can do that later. Do you have your gun? I may have to borrow it.”

  I slapped the small of my back, where my duty sidearm rested simply from habit. “All I’ve got is my .45, and I don’t think that’d bring down Arbutis.” I pushed open the door and started toward Henry’s truck, which I truly despised. I’d loaned the Bullet to Vic so that she could go ahead to Billings, where she would be taking a flight to Omaha later that day for a training seminar on police public relations. That left me with Lonnie, Henry, and Rezdawg, the most pernicious vehicle on the North American continent.

  Vic made her way past, reading my mind. “You’re sure you don’t need your truck?”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  She placed a fist on her belt and stood there, hipshot.

  “I’m still trying to figure out why it is you volunteered to go to Omaha.”

  “Somebody’s gotta do it.”

  “Yep, but Saizarbitoria could’ve gone—Frymire or Double-Tough.”

  She shrugged and turned her head.

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with the upcoming nuptials, does it?”

  She stubbed the toe of a ballistic boot on the asphalt of the parking lot. “Mom’s going to be here the day after tomorrow.” She looked to the distance, at nothing particular. “I’m not good at this shit. I’ll be back right before the wedding, but I think I’ll just avoid the run-up to the three-ring circus—if you don’t mind.” She hit the button on my remote, and the lights blipped on my truck.

  “Okay, but I assume you’re not taking Dog.”

  She responded by opening the door, and we watched as more than a hundred and fifty pounds of assorted canine lineage vaulted from the front seat and circled around to the ’63 three-quarter-ton beast, first going to Lonnie. The Northern Cheyenne chief reached his wrinkled hands out the door and around Dog’s head, running a thumb over the bullet furrow and holding him as if giving a blessing. “Ha-ay, big rascal.”

  I went around the back and lowered Rezdawg’s tailgate, pinching my fingers in the chains in the process. I waited till Dog noticed me and came around. He looked at the derelict truck and promptly sat.

  “Vic needs the Bullet. Come on, we both get to suffer.”

  He jumped in the bed and I closed the tailgate twice because, of course, the first time it didn’t line up.

  Vic rolled down the driver’s-side window of my truck. “You’re going to be all right up here playing cowboy with the Indians?”

  I joined her at the door. “I think so.” We both watched as Henry put Lonnie’s blanket over his lap, folded up the chief’s wheelchair, and placed it in the bed with Dog. “I’ve got a good scout.”

  “Uh huh.” She hit the ignition and fired up the V-10 and then sat there, rumbling. “I’ll call you from Nebraska.” She thought about it and pulled the three-quarter-ton down into gear. “Fuck it, what else is there to do?”

  It was only a mile up the road to Lonnie’s place, which was good because that was about the distance that Rezdawg could make without breaking down.

  In the numerous conversations I’d had with Henry concerning his pickup, I’d asked him why, as meticulous as he was with every other aspect of his life—his house, his business, his car—why it was that he didn’t get his piece-of-crap truck really fixed. His answer, as we’d waited by the side of the road for another of Rezdawg’s rest periods to pass, was that the truck was a holy relic of his life and that replacing parts would alter its spirit. I retorted that it seemed to me that the junk pile’s spirit was in need of a little repair, but he’d ignored me like he always did.

  I’d also pointed out that the thing didn’t have its original gas, tires, or oil, but that hadn’t gotten me anywhere, either.

  I rolled the chief up the incline to his picture-perfect home. Lonnie had had some wilder days when he was younger and had played baseball and drunk on a professional level until losing his legs to diabetes. He was still under parole with a cadre of sisters, headed by the formidable Arbutis, and had to negotiate with his sisters for visitation rights whenever Melissa, the point guard, came home, but he complained that that was less and less.

  “She has lots of friends up there in Bozeman. I can see why it is she’d rather stay there than come home and watch stories with me.” The stories Lonnie referred to were the soap operas he watched religiously and reported on as if the characters were actual friends. “But it just makes me love her more when she does come home—um hmm, yes, it is so.”

  I paused on the porch so Lonnie could collect his mail from a box attached to the house; most residents on the Rez had post office boxes and didn’t get this kind of attention to delivery, but Lonnie was special.

  “They toy with our hearts, these daughters of ours—don’t they, lawman?”

  “Yes, they do.”

  He patted my hand in reassurance. “Don’t worry; we’ll get your daughter’s wedding sorted out.”

  “Thanks, Lonnie.”

  I started to roll him into the house, but his hands fastened around the chrome runners of his wheelchair. “I think I will stay out here and watch the rain; maybe listen to some baseball. The Rockies are at home and playing the Phillies this afternoon.”

  I looked at the sky with its patchwork of sun and storm clouds—the devil must be beating his wife indeed. I bet I was the only one who used that phrase anymore.

  I adjusted Lonnie’s chair so that he could look northwest and watch the rain come in or not, whatever its choice. The laden clouds were reflected in Lonnie’s thick glasses and joined with the tiny rainbows that had a tendency to magically appear there, confirming the impression that Lonnie was a pot of gold.

  “The devil must be beating his wife. Um hmm, yes, it is so.”

  A damp Dog joined us on the bench seat as we headed back toward town, and I continued to spin the ring on my finger as I aired an elbow out the passenger-side window that only partially rolled down. “It’s not your fault.”

  The Cheyenne Nation ignored me and stared out the cracked windshield.

  “Look, whatever happens, she’ll forgive you—just not me.”

  The Bear nodded and then moved on to one of our other myriad problems. “We have maxed out the Western 8 motel in Ashland.”

  There were no other motels for about fifty miles.

  He shifted gears, and I listened to them grind. “There is my home.”

  “I don’t want you to have to do that.”

  “It would be an honor.”

  If you hung around with the Cheyenne long enough, you learned when not to argue with their generosity. “Thank you.” I stretched my hand across Dog’s broad head and scratched behind both ears, something he enjoyed as though it was a religious experience. “Strange weather.”

  Henry didn’t say anything but glanced at the ring on my pinkie. I tried to change the subject. “Why do you suppose the old-timers used to say that the devil must be beating his wife?”

  He spoke over the aged engine as he made third, breezed through the stop sign at the corner of one of Lame Deer’s few intersections, and headed south on Bureau of Indian Affairs Route 4, the rumble strips sounding like war drums underneath us. “It is a universal folkloric phrase.” He threw Rezdawg into fourth, and we tooled back through the main part of town past the White Buffalo Sinclair Station, the Big Store IGA, which Henry says stands for India
ns Grab Anything, and the tribal government buildings. “The Italian version is the same as ours but the French one is Le diable se marie avec sa fille, or the devil becomes his daughter’s husband.”

  I stopped petting Dog, threw my arm over the back seat, and looked out the rear window. “Perverts.”

  “The German proverb is Wenn’s regnet und die Sonne scheint, so schlägt der Teufel seine Großmutter: er lacht und sie weint, which means that the devil is beating his grandmother: he laughs and she cries.”

  A black Yukon with a heavy grille guard and Montana plates had started following us in town and was a little close to Rezdawg’s back bumper, at which point I noticed that there was an understated halogen emergency light flashing red on the dash.

  “There are similar phrases in Hungary and Holland.”

  “Have you been hanging around Jules Beldon?” The emergency lights in the vehicle behind us were definitely signaling us to pull over. “Hey, Henry?”

  Unaware that some sort of official vehicle was dogging us, or more likely ignoring the summons, he continued to navigate our way out of town. “The Polish say that when the sun is shining and the rain is raining that the devil is making butter.”

  I fully turned in the seat to get a better look. “Henry…”

  The GMC made an aggressive move and started to pull up beside us; the Yukon’s engine surged, and the Bear finally noticed it.

  “The Russians call it a blind rain; somewhat depressing but still poetic.” He waited a moment for the SUV to go around and when it didn’t, he pulled Rezdawg over to the gravel between the reflector posts at the side of the road. “Either way, the devil gets the blame for everything.”

  I watched as the Yukon, in direct violation of standard police procedure, pulled slanted in front of us as if we might make a run for it, which, considering it was Rezdawg, made the situation that much funnier. There were no markings on the vehicle, and I watched as the driver’s-side door was jerked open and a very tall, athletic-looking woman with dark hair got out.

  Resting a hand on the roof of the GMC, she concentrated her Oakley reflective sunglasses on us. She stood there for a second, then slammed the door and, ignoring the few cars that swerved to avoid her, started around the rear of her vehicle. She had high, wide cheekbones and a strong jaw that balanced the features framed in the blue-black hair that was braided to her elbows. Late twenties, she was wearing black jeans, a Tribal Police uniform shirt, black ropers, and a matching gun belt with a very large caliber Smith & Wesson N-Frame revolver banging against her hip.

  She looked like one of those ultimate warriors who can step out on the sidewalk and run a marathon at the drop of a war bonnet.

  “License and registration.”

  Henry didn’t move, just continued to look at her. I didn’t blame him.

  She made the statement again, this time with a little more force, separating the words as she spoke. “License. And. Registration.”

  Henry glanced at me and then pulled the naked, cardboard sun visor down, the vinyl covering having disintegrated and shed like snakeskin long ago. The registration and insurance card fluttered onto his lap like a shot bird. He leaned up on one side and pulled his wallet from his back pocket and removed his license, adding it to the collection he handed her. “What is the problem, Officer?”

  She studied the collection of documents and then gestured toward the black Yukon. “Do you see that vehicle?”

  Henry made a production of lowering his Wayfarers and placing the flat palm of his hand above his eyes like some B-movie Indian spotting a wagon train. “Yes, I think I do.”

  The next statement had even more heat in it. “That is an official vehicle, and when it indicates for you to pull over—you pull over.” She glanced down at the license and studied it for a moment. “I know you, Mr. Henry Standing Bear.”

  He studied her in an indifferent manner. “And I have heard of you, Ms. Lolo Long.”

  I noticed that this time when he called her by name, he did not proffer the title of officer.

  Her chin came out as she locked eyes with him—something not too many people would or could do. “And what have you heard?”

  “I have heard that you are the tightest…”

  I interrupted, sensing that what the Cheyenne Nation was about to say wasn’t likely to help our situation. “Why didn’t you hit your siren?”

  A long moment passed as she shifted her gaze from Henry, past Dog, to me. She lowered her own sunglasses to get a better look into the gloom of the cab, and her jasper-colored eyes leveled on me like the twin-bore of a battleship turret. “Excuse me, but was I speaking to you?”

  I shrugged a shoulder and smiled inwardly at her resemblance to Vic. “Well, I guess it’s none of my business, but there are no markings on that vehicle and this thing sits awfully high and as close as you were I had to really look to see your emergency lights—if you’d have just hit your…”

  She threw an arm up on the door sill and interrupted me. “You know, Mister…?” She left the statement hanging there like her arm.

  “Longmire.”

  She shook her head ever so slightly, as if my name was an annoyance in itself. “That first part, the one about this not being any of your business?” She pointed a no-nonsense fingernail in the air, as if pinning my words, like bugs in a collection. “I liked that; let’s stick with that one.” The iridescent glasses came back up, and she turned to face Henry. “I know a lot of people around here consider you to be something kind of special, but that doesn’t exclude you from the rules of the road.” She raised a hand, gesturing back toward town. “That sign back there at the intersection says stop, not pause, not hesitate—stop is what it says, and whenever I’m around you better damn well stop.”

  I watched as she took his cards and disappeared back toward the Yukon, her wrist-thick braid held fast by a beaded barrette bobbing in counterpoint to her strut and the slap of the revolver.

  The Bear looked bored and supported his chin with a fist and placed an elbow out the window. “So, when did you start wearing a pinkie ring?”

  I stopped twirling it. “It belonged to my great-grandmother.”

  “The witch?”

  I sighed at the Bear’s knowledge of my family history. “She wasn’t a witch; she was just one of those herb doctors.” He nodded, but I could tell he didn’t agree. “Martha wore it but gave it back to me to give it to Cady when she got married. The problem is that Michael already got her an engagement ring so I don’t know what to do with it.”

  He mumbled into his fist. “Give it to her.”

  “People are weird about that kind of thing sometimes.”

  “Just give it to her.” He reached out and smoothed a piece of duct tape that held the instrument panel to the dash. “Is that why you are wearing it, to remind you?”

  “Kind of. I lost it a while back and then discovered it in a little cedar box I’ve got on my dresser. I thought maybe if I kept it on my finger I wouldn’t lose it again.”

  The Bear didn’t say anything but looked back at the Yukon. I could still see the adhesive where the sticker price had been on the inside of the window—and ventured a question. “Who’s Ms. Lolo Long?”

  “The new tribal police chief, an appointment from the last tribal chief.”

  I nodded. “The indicted one.”

  “Yes—the one whom Lonnie replaced.” He pursed his lips and pointed them toward the Yukon, where it looked as if Officer Long was in the act of writing a lengthy ticket. “Iraqi war vet; I do not know what she did over there, but she came back wired tight like a Montana-made mandolin. I guess the old chief was trying to make up for his tenure and thought he was doing everybody a favor by installing a by-the-book police chief, but so far as I can tell, all she has done is made the lives of everyone miserable.”

  I watched as she opened the door and approached, the hi-tech sunglasses now secured in her breast pocket. “Including yours?”

  He smiled the close-lipped smile.
“Lately.”

  Officer Long stopped at the door and handed Henry his papers along with an aluminum clipboard and pen. “I’ve cited you for failure to stop at the intersection, failure to respond to an official vehicle, and the fact that you have no brake lights.” She glanced down the dented, mottled-green length of Rezdawg and then back to the Bear. “I’m sure I could find plenty of other violations attached to this particular vehicle, but seeing as how this is our first official meeting, I thought I’d take it easy on you.”

  The Cheyenne Nation looked at me, but I didn’t say anything and continued to pet Dog. The beast looked at Lolo Long with expectation, all smiles and wagging tail.

  Traitor.

  “You have thirty days to respond in the mail or in person at the law enforcement and detention center—you know where that is?”

  “You mean the jail?” Henry smiled. “I do.”

  “I bet you do.”

  Henry signed the ticket and handed it back to her.

  “Do you understand the violations as they have been explained to you?”

  “Yes.”

  She pulled the space-age sunglasses from her pocket and dramatically placed them over the opaque chalcedony eyes, ripped his copy of the ticket from the clipboard, and handed it to him. “Have a nice day.”

  He continued to smile, pushed his old-school Ray-Bans over his eyes again in response, and handed me the $262 ticket as she started to turn and go. “Here, file this in the glove box—under chicken shit.”

  She paused for only an instant and slightly turned her head.

  I watched as she took a breath and tasted in her mouth the words she wanted to say. I half expected her to draw the big .44, but instead she hitched her thumbs in her gun belt, held that last look, and then walked off, punishing the roadway with the heels of her boots.

  It was the most professional thing she’d done during the entire interaction.

  She started the SUV, did a tire-smoking reentrance to BIA 4, and continued south with a full head of steam.

  Henry yawned, placed his license back in his wallet, and flipped it onto the dash. “I do not think that I ever have had brake lights.”