Extra Indians

by Eric Gansworth

  I shut the television off and we lay there in the dark while the cooling electronics ticked for a few minutes. It had been like much of that type of programming, an abundance of hype, suggesting tremendous secrets would be revealed, when in fact what you had was the mundane, ridiculously unglamorous retelling of the moments leading up to a young woman’s death told by the only person who could have prevented it. So many things had come to be aligned for this young woman to die as she had, and it was obvious that, even if you had tried to orchestrate such a plan, you never could have pulled it off. The variables for that equation were so unlikely as to never be aligned again.

  Had she met someone else, or had the authorities been able to find someone who could speak Japanese fluently, this would have been a different story. They should have decided the obvious, that she was not right, that she was delusional and should have been held for observation. McMorsey wanted to clear his name by claiming the newspapers had gotten it wrong when they’d reported she took a cab to Detroit Lakes. In fact, he only showed his involvement in this private disaster all that more explicitly. Had he been even a little smarter, or a little more attentive, or cared a little more, she would not have had to go through the things she had. Her delusions were another matter, I understood that, but it seemed like the whole situation was mismanaged by everyone involved.

  We lay there, in our separate queen-size beds, both pretending to sleep, for about an hour, listening to the air conditioner engage and shut down, on and off, when I spoke, softly, assuming if he were asleep, he wouldn’t hear and my words would just disappear into the drop-ceiling tiles.

  “Do you see your mother, much?” I asked.

  “No, not really,” he said, immediately. “I had an idea when I came back to take care of my grams that maybe we could start something slowly. I found out where she was living and went over to see her. She poured me a cup of coffee, showed me pictures on the wall of my half siblings, then told me she had some wash to do. She asked me if I wanted to go to the Laundromat with her. I passed.”

  “That’s it? You live one road over and you never see her?”

  “Sometimes I see her, you know, grocery store, sometimes even at the Laundromat, but that’s about it. I guess I’ve helped her fold some clothes now and then, maybe. We just don’t have much to say. In a few minutes, we’re reduced to talking about whatever was on TV the week before. There’s just no connection. Maybe kind of like you and your daddy, before he died.”

  “I suppose,” I said and that was the end of the conversation for a while. The air conditioner continued to cycle in the dark. “You wanna just get going, move on?” I eventually suggested.

  “Sounds good,” T.J. readily said, throwing off the sheet and going into the bathroom to change. We decided to drive on ahead, switch off, and sleep when we felt the urge, figuring that if we timed it correctly, stopping to put up only when rest was a necessity, it would take another twenty-four hours to make West Texas, more or less. As T.J. checked out, I grabbed a large cup of coffee and settled into the driver’s seat. In the disc wallet, I found Imagine and put it on.

  “Those women he mentioned,” I started, a couple hours later, beyond Columbus and the complicated thruway system that ran through the center of Cincinnati. “The ones who frequent the truck stops,” I clarified, not sure what to call them.

  “What about them?”

  “They’re real?”

  “Oh yes, they are real, and some of them can be pretty dangerous. There was that crazy one down in Florida, one of the only female serial killers ever caught and convicted. She would act like all the others, but once she got you to drop your drawers in your sleeper, or wherever, she got out this straight razor, and you became a soprano in the boys’ choir,” he said, miming a quick movement with a blade and then held himself, rolling in the seat next to me.

  “You’re making that up,” I said, having never heard of this incident. It would have made national news, had it truly occurred. It sounded like all those crazy stories you hear on the reservation, just trucker style.

  “Oh no, I am dead serious. You can look it up, can’t remember her name, but you do a search when you get home. You’ll see. I hear someone has optioned the rights of her story for a screen-play. Maybe there was already a show on her on, you know, the same network we were just watching. Here, there’s a rest area up here, I saw a sign a few minutes ago, said twelve miles. You pull in there, shut off the lights and the Blazer, and you watch.” I wanted to stop anyway, stretch my legs a bit, so when the sign came up, I pulled over and into the lot, used the ladies’ room, and did notice the couple of women standing around the benches nearby, giving me surly glances and smoking cigarettes with serious arcs of their arms. I settled back in and closed my eyes while T.J. watched for something to show me. I didn’t know what it was going to be and wasn’t even sure how I felt about his knowledge of this particular subculture.

  “There,” he said a short while later and I opened my eyes. He pointed to a small car that had pulled into the truck parking section, stopped head-on in the actual lane rather than in a parking slot. The dome light was on, the woman driving it highly visible.

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” I said. “She’s probably looking for a map or a drink or something. It is the interstate.”

  “Just watch,” he said, confident he had called this right. “There she goes.” The woman stepped out of her car. While I grant it was over seventy-five degrees out, she wore a decidedly skimpy outfit, even for that temperature. I didn’t think they made tube tops anymore but this woman sported one along with cutoff jean shorts that looked more like a thong and high heels so absurdly steep that she skidded, stepping from her car. She walked slowly around the car clockwise three times, slowing each time she entered the scope of her headlight beams, her shadow undulating across tree branches swaying in the breeze.

  She got back into her car, pulled over to the standard parking spots, and shut her car off.

  “And what was that all about?” I asked.

  “Just wait, and keep watching the trucks,” he said. “There,” he pointed again, and three of the trucks turned running lights back on for a minute, and then shut them off, and each turned on cab lights. She left her car and walked toward one of the trucks, while the various cab lights went out. As she neared the passenger-side door of the truck, it opened for her from the inside and she crawled up the running boards and closed the door behind her.

  “Satisfied?” he asked, and I started the car in answer, getting us back on the road. We drove a while listening to Imagine straight through a couple of times, and then T.J. put on Double Fantasy.

  “Your turn,” he finally said.

  “For resting? No, I’m still good to drive.”

  “I answered about my momma. How does your momma wind up at your brother’s? And how did you and Dougie wind up living with his momma? I assume he’s still living in that trailer, even after you moved back to the city.”

  “Royal is a much easier story. After Suzy and he split, he was living alone on the reservation and my mother was living alone in that apartment we always had.”

  “Yeah, I remember that apartment.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was there. You were there, too, of course, but you probably don’t remember. You must have been about two or so.”

  “When was this?”

  “My real daddy’s funeral. We stayed with you. That was what your momma was talking about that first time you brought me over there. Remember? She said the last time she had seen me was with my daddy, my adopted one. We went to the drive-in movies and then stayed at your place.”

  “You remember that?”

  “Well, of course. You might have been too young to remember, but I wasn’t. It was, as far as I know, the last time they saw each other. They took us to the movies, I guess to make us tired enough to sleep through the night, but it backfired. We went to see The Legend of Boggy Creek, and man, that thing scared the shit
out of me. I was just so glad we weren’t staying on the reservation that night. You know, it was one of those Bigfoot movies, where the Bigfoot stayed in the woods and the swamps, and for sure, to a little kid’s eyes, those woods looked just like the reservation. Even Royal was scared shitless and he must have been a teenager. He and I stayed awake much of the night, listening for Bigfoot outside the window. It didn’t matter to us that we were in the middle of the city and on the second floor to boot.”

  “Did you know?” I asked, relieved that he seemed to have forgotten about his desire to hear my personal history.

  “What, that he loved her? Sure. I don’t think he’s loved anyone in his life as much as he loved your momma. My daddy thinks he’s a good liar, but he is as clear as rain. That was also how I knew my real daddy must have looked pretty bad when he was found. I could see it in my daddy’s face when he got home.”

  “Well, I mean, what they were up to. Wasn’t he married then?”

  “Yeah. Hey, check this out,” he said, flipping on the dome light and opening the map. “Fouke, Arkansas, is just the other side of Texarkana, which we have to go straight through.”

  “Okay, and why would I want to go to, what is it, Fouke?”

  “That’s where The Legend of Boggy Creek took place. I always wanted to stop there.”

  “For what?”

  “ You know, based on a true story. I think they filmed the whole thing right there in that little town. Maybe the same reason that woman went after the Fargo ransom, chasing a dream.”

  “Okay,” I said. After all, wasn’t that what I was doing on this trip, myself ? He calculated the distance and our time, and if we put up somewhere in Tennessee—he said Milan looked like a good enough place—we would get to Texarkana late the next day, and then it would be another day to Big Antler.

  “Unless of course you want to push through to Memphis and grab a quick tour of Graceland,” he said, grinning.

  “Milan it is,” I returned and watched the dark wilderness and the things hidden within roll by.

  “ What did I tell you? We are making great time. We’ll be in Texarkana long before dark, get some supper, relax, take it easy a bit,” T.J. said, as miles and miles of giant trees passed by our windows at seventy-five to eighty miles an hour.

  “We should find a place with a pool,” I said. I had known it would be warm down there, but the difference from New York still surprised me.

  “That should not be a problem down here. It’s almost required equipment. Now, we kind of got sidetracked, and you never did tell me how you arrived at the living arrangements you finally got sick enough of to move back to the city.”

  “ Well, let’s see. I started to tell you about Royal and my mother and—”

  “I was really more interested in your situation. Doug’s momma, from the few times I’ve met her, doesn’t seem like the easiest person to get along with.”

  “You picked up on that, eh? Let’s just say I don’t think I can go back. I mean, I’ll go back to the reservation, I imagine, at some point in the future, but not back to that trailer. I can’t live with her ever again.”

  “ You should not make such absolute statements. They can come back to bite you in the ass.”

  “Not this one.”

  “That is what everyone says at times like these. I’ve made them, and been unable to keep them,” he said as we pulled into the parking lot of a motel with the required pool, and we said little else for a long time, just enjoyed the water and the meal later. As T.J. got ready to doze, I told him that I was going for a little drive, that I wasn’t sleepy. He couldn’t believe I was willing to get back into the car after all those hours, but I wanted to do a couple things, and I wanted to do them alone.

  Fouke, Arkansas, was even smaller than I had imagined it, a virtually unnoticeable slow spot on US-71. Perhaps I was missing some of it, but I didn’t dare wander onto those nearly unmarked side roads, disappearing deep into the wood. The map was vague at best. Fouke was barely a period-sized dot. A small convenience store wall displayed a badly painted mural—Bigfoot riding on the back of a giant pig. Already closed for the night, it still offered just what I wanted, an outdoor phone booth and a lighted parking lot. In the building’s shadow, one of those cutout figures kept me company. Naturally, a Bigfoot, this one appeared to be made of metal, something more permanent than plywood. Did anyone slice his neck pushing through the Bigfoot face portal?

  I leaned against the Bigfoot mural, pressed zero, and waited for the digitized operator. I instructed the computer to dial my brother’s cell phone number and spoke my name into the receiver at the cue. My voice, inserted into the collect-call-request message, was transmitted to a tower at the reservation’s edge.

  “What time is it?” Royal asked, after telling the phone company computer that he would accept the charges.

  “After eleven, I think.”

  “Where are you?” he asked, the question I was most hoping for. When I told him, he was silent for a minute, then he said, “Are you outside?”

  “Yes, why, afraid Bigfoot is gonna get me?” I answered and laughed.

  “Hey, you never know. They didn’t ever find him.”

  “They never found him because he doesn’t exist, you idiot.”

  “Well, just be careful, there is a lot else to be on guard for besides Bigfoot. You shouldn’t be standing around outside late at night in a strange place. It ain’t the reservation, you know. Where’s T.J.? And what are you doing there anyway?”

  “He’s asleep probably, back at the hotel. We’re just on our way to West Texas. So you must remember going to the movies, then. He said you were scared of that movie, and I guess if you remember the name of the stupid town where this Bigfoot is supposed to be . . .”

  “ Well, sure, I remember it. I couldn’t sleep for weeks after that one, and forget about walking around the reservation at night from then on. Every sound I heard, shit, I was positive it was that Boggy Creek monster.”

  “So you remember Tommy Jack McMorsey then,” I said. He was silent for a couple minutes and then he admitted it.

  “You probably also were old enough to know he and Ma were not just friends, then, too,” I said and waited.

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “What do you remember?”

  “That she was a lot happier when he was around than she was when he wasn’t,” he eventually said. “That she was happier than when Dad was around.”

  “I wouldn’t have that comparison.”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “The truth.” He was silent for a while though I could hear him walking down the hall in the trailer and then the door opening and then the crickets as he stepped outside.

  “I’m not sure what that is. He didn’t come around for long, maybe a couple years or so, for a while, then nothing, and then that last time.”

  “So did you think I might, you know . . .?”

  “I never really thought about it.”

  “Liar.”

  “Okay, so I thought about it, yeah, and I guess I thought that was possible. But it didn’t matter to me, or to anyone else. Dad wasn’t ever there when we were growing up either, so what do you want, to be ditched by two fathers? Is that what you’re looking for?” I wasn’t sure how to answer that. I really didn’t know what I was looking for, or what I expected to find at the Big Antler exit off of Interstate 84, but it was coming fast in the next day.

  “What was he like?”

  “Just some guy, I never knew what she saw in him, but what did I care? I wasn’t the one in love with the guy. He used to play the guitar, shitty. I remember that. We were wishing he would leave it at home, but when he came, he almost always brought it.”

  “Was he nice?”

  “To us? Yeah, I guess. I don’t remember him being especially nice, but he didn’t treat us like shit, the way Dad used to. Between shitty and not shitty, I’ll take not shitty, any day.” While Royal was talking, a long-haul truck slowed d
own as it came toward the convenience store, and the driver, visible in the parking lot light, watched me. He pulled off to the side of the road across from where I stood, engaged his brake, turned on a light inside the cab, and began writing something down on a clipboard, glancing over at me every now and then. From what I could see, he looked like the typical driver type I had seen for years, dirty-billed cap propped back far on his head, short, slightly messy hair peeking out from below it, bushy mustache, couple day’s growth on his cheeks, and one of those short-sleeved, striped, button-down shirts that only truck drivers and car-parts salesmen seemed to wear. He kept trying to catch my eye. I pretended to examine the Bigfoot painting, keeping my hand inside my purse, on the trigger of my pepper spray. I had left my Blazer’s door open and the baseball bat that lay just behind the driver’s side seat would be easy to reach after I used the spray, if need be.

  “Anything else or do you just like hiking my phone bill up?” Royal asked from the other end of the line.

  “It’s after nine, your minutes are free,” I said.

  “No minutes are free.”

  “Why did you lie to me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yes, you do, or you wouldn’t have done it more than once.” Now it was his turn to be silent. We stood there, listening to crickets across eleven hundred miles filling in all the spaces where we didn’t tell each other things.

  “It wasn’t my place,” he said, finally. “I imagine if Ma thought you should know, she would tell you, or you would ask her. I don’t know. It wasn’t any of my business. The rest of us have a very specific history together, but yours is different, yours and hers is different. Like I said, it wasn’t my place. I don’t think I have anything more to say on that, except . . . be careful, okay? It can be dangerous, down there.”