Medicine River

by Thomas King

  Mom gave me a hard look, but I hadn’t done anything. It was James who wanted to go fishing.

  Later, when the two of them got back from the store, James and me helped with the groceries. Erleen sat down in the chair and took a package out of her purse and handed it to my mother. Mom gave it back, and Erleen gave it to her again.

  “Come on, Rose,” Erleen said. “We’re friends. Friends do things for each other.” But my mother laughed and shook her head, and Erleen said okay and put the package back in her purse. After Erleen left, I asked my mother what Erleen had given her.

  “Some nylons,” my mother said.

  “How come you gave them back?”

  “You shouldn’t be wasting your time watching everything people do.”

  “That was nice of her to get you nylons, wasn’t it? I’ll bet they were expensive.”

  “Friends don’t need to get each other presents.”

  “Erleen must be rich or something.”

  “Erleen’s poor, just like us.”

  The next Thursday, Erleen brought some photographs of her and Herb. She brought a package of cookies, too, the expensive kind that come in long, thin cartons with bright green-and-silver foil. We all sat at the kitchen table and looked at photographs of Herb and Erleen and a bunch of dead fish and ate cookies until they were all gone and it was too late to go shopping.

  * * *

  —

  I TALKED TO BIG JOHN for almost two hours. Rather, he talked to me. I came away knowing all about the trouble he and Eddie had been having ever since Big John became director. I learned all about the centre budget, all about the new basketball uniforms, all about Big John’s new car. I had to buy two tickets to the Friendship Centre annual party, and he walked me to my car so he could tell me about the new building the Friendship Centre was considering.

  “Cops arrived just in time.” Big John shut my door and squatted down on the curb so he could see my eyes. “Nobody calls me an apple.”

  Harlen came by my apartment that night.

  “You sure it isn’t a woman, Will?” Harlen shook his head. “A woman would be easier You know, we got to get Big John and Eddie back as friends again.”

  “They’ve never been friends, Harlen.”

  “Big John does a good job of running the centre and talking with the government and those folks at the DIA. Got us a lot of money this last year. And Eddie, he takes good care of the socials. Old people got respect for him now. He got the bingo games going and organized that bus that takes them to the hockey games twice a month. Centre needs the both of them. Can’t have them trying to kill each other. You got any ideas, Will?”

  Harlen sat there and let his eyes wander around the room like he was waiting for me to find a good idea somewhere. He wasn’t fooling me.

  “Can’t think of one,” I said. “How about you? You must have an idea.”

  “Have to think some more.” Harlen’s eyes were still gliding. “You doing anything Friday night? Having a social at my place. Hand game, too. Be lots of fun.”

  Almost anyone could come along to Harlen Bigbear’s once-every-so-often, pot-luck-eating, cash-and-other-valuables hand game. For a long time, I thought the hand games that Harlen ran were why Frankie Manyfingers and Louie Frank called Harlen Bingo. But they weren’t.

  “We went down to Green Bay across the line for one of them Indian conferences,” Frankie told me. “And the first thing we see when we get off the plane is this big sign that says, Indian Bingo! $25,000! Boy, you know, Harlen sees that sign, and he slaps Louie and says, ‘That’s for me.’

  “So, you know, the first night after those meetings, we got some dinner and a few beers, and we grabbed a cab out to the reserve with the big bingo game. Real nice place, too, you know, not like down in the basement of the Labour Club. Real plush. Soft-bottom folding chairs and 100 percent glass ashtrays. We played a couple of cards each, and pretty soon that $25,000 game started. Harlen bought himself eight cards. Me and Louie only took two. Blackout game and damn if one of Harlen’s cards didn’t start to fill up. Seemed like every time they called a number, Harlen would X it out.

  “Neither of us was even close, so we watched our cards with one eye and Harlen’s with the other. All of a sudden, there was only one number left: B5. Harlen begins wiping his hands on his pants and shifting around as the lady who’s calling the numbers sings out, ‘G48…O66…I20…I22…N37…’ Louie and me were sweating and waiting for the next number. And then that woman, she calls out, ‘B3.’ And Harlen leaps out of his chair, knocks it over and yells, ‘Bingo!’ He leaps up and waves his arms around and yells, ‘Bingo…Bingo…BINGO…BINGO!!!’

  “Well, you know he was real embarrassed. We left after that cause they never did call B5, and some fat guy from Tulsa, Oklahoma won. We went back to the hotel and stopped off at the café for some coffee and pie, and when the waitress came over, Louie says, ‘Coffee and pie all around. Bingo Bigbear is buying.’

  “We got back to Medicine River, and me and Louie went to that place in the mall and got one of them make-your-own T-shirts. Bought one says Bingo Bigbear printed across the chest.”

  I’d been to Harlen’s hand games before, and he always wore that T-shirt. Said it brought him luck. He had it on when I got there Friday, which wasn’t surprising. What was surprising was to see Big John standing in one corner of the room with his three-piece suit and duck tie and Eddie in another corner with his ribbon shirt and flashy choker.

  “This your idea?” I said to Harlen.

  “Sure, do it once a month if I have the time and money. Hope you brought some cash for the game,” and Harlen slapped me on the shoulder and disappeared in the kitchen.

  * * *

  —

  I NEVER SAW my mother and Erleen fight. They didn’t get angry with each other, either. Sometimes I’d get angry with James, and he was my brother. Erleen and my mother weren’t related. Whatever one of them wanted to do was always fine with the other. They were always playing games, you know, like kids. On the shopping trips, Erleen would dump a box of powder-sugar doughnuts into the shopping cart and my mother would fish them out.

  “You eat these, Erleen Gulley, and they’ll be hanging on your hips by morning.”

  Erleen would pat her stomach and run her hands down her thighs. “I don’t eat to please men.”

  “Men,” my mother would say, “aren’t worth the time or the trouble.”

  “They have no appreciation of a bountiful figure.”

  “They have no appreciation of anything.”

  “Two raisins and a noodle, and a cupcake for brains.”

  “There you go exaggerating again.” And the two of them would start to giggle until they had to park the cart at the side of the aisle and blow their noses.

  You could hear them all through the store, Erleen’s voice booming up and down the aisles.

  “Christ, Rose, if meat gets any higher, we’re going to have to start eating cat again.

  “What do you think, Rose, doesn’t this remind you of Missssster God Almighty Anderson down at work?

  “Rose, you ever in your entire life see a cucumber this ugly?” And all the time, there was the laughter.

  It was a little embarrassing, listening to the two of them going on like that. They talked as though no one else was in the store, as though they had the world all to themselves.

  One evening, I had just finished a Batman comic and was getting ready to read the new Superman, when I noticed that it was quiet. I mean, there were the usual noises, but I couldn’t hear Erleen’s voice. I read Superman, but I was listening at the same time. Then I got up and went looking.

  I walked through the store three times. They were gone. I remember thinking that they had left me, that they had got to the check-out stand, talking and laughing the way they did, and walked right out of the store and got in the car.

  I looked at the clock. The store was going to close in another fifteen minutes, and I could see I was going to have to walk ho
me. They had forgotten all about me.

  “Your name Will?” The guy was dressed in a suit, and he looked sweaty and uncomfortable. I didn’t answer right away.

  “Your mother asked me to find you.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Her and her friend drove off and left me. Now I got to walk home.”

  “Your mother and her friend are upstairs. You better come along with me.”

  We went through a couple of swinging doors and up a flight of stairs. My mother was sitting at a small table. A policeman was sitting on the edge of a desk. “This the kid?” he asked.

  My mother wasn’t smiling. I stood there in the middle of the room not knowing what to do.

  “You might as well sit down, son,” said the policeman. “This is going to take a while.”

  * * *

  —

  BIG JOHN AND EDDIE spent the first part of the evening in opposite corners. If Eddie moved around to the right to get some more salad, Big John would move to the left to get a beer or a soda. They bobbed and wove their way through the rest of the people, keeping the same distance between them—like fighters looking for an opening.

  I caught up with Harlen just as Louie and Frankie were warming up the drums for the hand game.

  “Big John and Eddie don’t look any friendlier.”

  “Give ’em a chance, Will. Things are going to be okay. Nothing like a hand game to get people together. You watch, pretty soon they’ll be singing and having a good time, and they won’t remember why they were angry with one another.”

  “How’d you get Big John and Eddie to come?”

  “That was the simple part. You know how those two love to gamble.”

  I couldn’t remember either one of them being a big gambler.

  “So I just told them that I had a new game to show everyone tonight. Northwest-coast game. Bone game. Told Big John that Eddie was going to head up one of the teams. Told him that Eddie fancied himself something of an expert on Indian gambling games. Said he could head up the other team, if he wanted.”

  “What’d you say to Eddie?”

  “Same thing. Big John said no at first, but I kept talking about how good Eddie figured he was, and pretty soon Big John said, sure, he’d come. Maybe he would head up the other team, make some easy money.”

  There were dangerous curves and corners in Harlen’s mind, and none of them was marked.

  “You check them for weapons?”

  Harlen laughed. “Will, you are a joker. Come on, whose team you want to be on?”

  “I just want to watch.”

  Harlen got everyone’s attention and announced that they were going to play a different game tonight. “Called a bone game. They play it on the coast. Got to play in one when I was out there last month. Lots of fun. You’ll like it. Pretty much like a hand game, but you use bones. Trick is to guess where the unmarked bone is.” And Harlen went on to explain the game.

  Everybody got their money down, and the game began. Big John and Eddie sat across from each other. Big John had taken off his jacket and loosened up the bottom button on his vest. Eddie got the bones first. He sat there straight up, moving his hands across his chest, looking right at Big John. Ray Little Buffalo had the other set of bones.

  Big John put his arm out, looked over at Eddie, and pointed to the floor, meaning he wanted to see the inside hands. Eddie kept on singing some more of the song and then opened his right hand just a crack so we could see the bone, but we couldn’t see if it was marked or not. Ray opened his left hand, and we saw that Big John had guessed one right. Then Eddie opened his hand up all the way, and there was that marked bone. Louie hit the drum and yelled, “Ho,” and picked up the beat, and Eddie’s team sang harder. Big John had to throw Eddie one of his counters and guess again. The next time, Big John guessed right, and the bones were passed to his team.

  This game was tight. Nobody could get ahead. First, Eddie lost three of his sticks, and then Big John lost five of his. Back and forth. There was a good pot of money, too. Somebody had thrown in a ring. There was a watch and maybe two hundred dollars. Everyone was sweating.

  “Hey, Will,” said Harlen, “getting hot in here. Maybe open the windows.”

  Big John’s team got the bones again, and he looked over at Eddie and loosened the top button of his shirt and pulled the tie down. Then he undid his sleeves and rolled them up, like he meant business. He picked up the bones and held them so Eddie could see them. Sort of a challenge. And he started singing and moving the bones from hand to hand.

  You could actually see what hand had the unmarked bone. But as Big John sang, he began to move the bones faster. By the time he stopped, I couldn’t tell where the bone was, and I was looking hard. Eddie called the right hand, and it was there.

  At two o’clock, the police stopped in to say the neighbours had complained about the drum and the singing, and could we finish up. No one was winning, and some of the folks had already left, so Harlen said we could do it again later and everyone should take their money and bring it back next time. Some of us grumbled, but most of us were tired. Everyone got up and stretched their legs. Big John and Eddie just sat there.

  Then Eddie got a real friendly smile on his face, and he said so the rest of us could hear, “What say we play one quick hand, one guess, winner take all?”

  Everybody had already taken up their bets, but Eddie didn’t want to play teams.

  “One on one,” he said, and he took out five twenties and fanned them out on the floor in front of him.

  Big John pulled out two fifties and laid them down. He took a twenty out too and held it up. “What say you throw in that plastic choker of yours,” said Big John, pointing the twenty at Eddie’s neck like it was a knife. “This should cover it. Couldn’t be worth more than a dollar or two.”

  Eddie snapped his teeth together and waved his hand like he was getting rid of flies. “Keep your money, cousin,” said Eddie. “You haven’t got enough to cover this bone choker. But maybe if you put in that white-man polyester duck tie of yours and another hundred, I could think about it.”

  Slow as you please, Big John started to take off that tie. Just slid it out of the knot and folded it up nice and neat and put it down in front of him. Eddie, he reached up behind his neck and undid the leather thong.

  “Give us a song, Louie. You take the bones,” said Big John, and he threw one of the sets to Eddie.

  Eddie took those bones and held them up so everyone could see. He waved them around in Big John’s face. He held them close to Big John, so he could see them. And he began to sing. And Big John started his own song, which surprised us because it wasn’t exactly the way Harlen told us a bone game was played.

  Eddie moved his hands back and forth. He put one on each knee; he held one up and the other down. He moved them across his chest. Those hands were always in motion. Louie had really got that drum going, and Big John and Eddie were singing and looking right at one another. I was a little afraid that the police would come back.

  Big John put his hand out like it was a divining rod looking for water, and Eddie smiled and kept on singing. Big John’s hand just stayed there, looking for that bone.

  “Ten dollars says the bone is in his right hand,” whispered Harlen, but I ignored him.

  Then, slow as you please, Big John turned his hand palm up and swept his arm to the left. Eddie stopped singing and held both hands out, stretched his hands out as far as he could reach and slowly uncurled his fingers, so we could see both bones at once. Eddie’s right hand held the marked bone.

  “I meant our right, his left,” said Harlen, whispering again. “Christ, Big John lost.”

  And he had. Big John looked at the bones and rocked back on his butt and shook his head. Then he smiled and leaned forward and pushed the hundred dollars and that silk duck tie to Eddie. Eddie was smiling pretty hard, and he let Big John push it all the way over.

  “Good game,” he said, and Big John nodded.

  Eddie picked up the tie
and his bone choker, and sort of weighed them in each hand.

  “Here,” says Eddie, and he tossed that bone choker in Big John’s lap. “Just so people won’t mistake you for a white man.”

  Oh hell, I knew we were going to get the cops back now. I heard Harlen suck in his breath, and everybody there in the room tensed up.

  Big John sat there looking at that bone choker in his lap and then back at Eddie. And then he started to smile. And then he started to laugh. And Eddie started to laugh. Those two were sitting on the floor, laughing their heads off. Even Harlen started to laugh, but it was probably out of relief that Big John and Eddie weren’t going to break his place up. Damnedest thing.

  Big John got to his feet and slipped the choker in his pocket. “We’ll play again some time, you know.” And he thanked Harlen for the hospitality and left.

  “See, Will,” Harlen said, after both Big John and Eddie had gone. “Blood’s thick around here. Good friends, those two now. Damn, I get some good ideas, don’t I?”

  I wasn’t sure what had happened, but I was sure Harlen didn’t have much to do with it.

  * * *

  —

  THEY HAD CAUGHT Erleen shoplifting. That’s what the policeman said. We stayed in that upstairs room for about two hours. The man in the suit and the policeman asked my mother a bunch of questions. They asked me some questions, too.

  “You ever see Mrs. Gulley take anything?”

  “No.”

  “You ever take anything?”

  “No.”

  “You know that stealing things is a crime?”

  “Sure.”

  “You know you could go to jail.”

  “I didn’t take anything.”

  Erleen was in another room with the police. You could hear her voice every so often. My mother sat there and didn’t say a word. The guy in the suit stood by the stairs, in case we tried to run, I guess. The policeman would get up every so often and look down the stairs as if he expected someone else to come along.

  You couldn’t hear the other people in the room with Erleen, but her voice came right through the walls. Later, the door opened, and Erleen came out. There was another man in a suit and another policeman in the room and one of the check-out clerks.