The Boy Must Die

by Jon Redfern

  SUNDAY, JUNE 30

  Crossing the border into the U.S. at Chief Mountain customs wasn’t going as easy as Randy Mucklowe had hoped. At 8:10 on this warm morning, two U.S. officials wearing green short-sleeve shirts and brown flat-brimmed ranger hats were doing a thorough search of Mucklowe’s old, cream-coloured Chevy van. Everything seemed normal when they began the standard interview, a procedure Randy knew well from frequent crossings and one that usually took no more than a few minutes. Chief Mountain customs was an outpost on the world’s longest undefended border, in the middle of Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park. It was a summer crossing for tourist buses going from Waterton Lakes on the Canadian side to the U.S. parks of Glacier and East Glacier. Fir and pine forests lined the two-lane blacktop leading to the twin log cabin border stations that sat surrounded by the soaring peaks of the Rockies. The first U.S. border guard Randy spoke to, as he pulled his van in to the station, asked for his driver’s licence. In an automatic and bored voice, he wanted to know the purpose of Randy’s visit. Randy explained he was finalizing details for an archaeological dig on Indian land. The excavation was on shale scree below the northwest face of Chief Mountain. The guard immediately demanded to see Randy’s permission papers.

  “It was all arranged through the band council, officer,” Randy explained.

  But the guard hesitated. He broke into a nervous smile and signalled to another guard who was standing inside the border station office. The second guard strolled out, and the two of them spoke briefly in low voices, looking over Randy’s documents. Then they insisted on a vehicle search. “We need to see your dig tools, Professor,” one guard explained. “The Indian Act allows for certain kinds of shovels and picks but not others.”

  Randy sighed, then complied. Reluctantly he pulled out the spare tire in the back of the van and helped the guards unwrap the tarps around the steel spades and mesh sifting screens. Both men consulted a sheet with official numbers and diagrams. They looked closely at the mesh. They picked up and studied the blades of the shovels. Randy knew they were going through an act; neither could tell a shovel from a pick-axe. But federal U.S. law required them to cross-examine all Canadians coming into the States to do work on federal Indian land. Randy knew this, but sighed again. This would surely create complications later on, especially with his new plans. But he wouldn’t let himself think about that right now.

  “Thank you, sir,” a guard said. “We’ll need to run a check on the computer. It won’t take a moment.”

  Randy started loading his gear.

  “Morning, prof,” a voice said from behind.

  Randy turned to see a tall thin woman with blonde hair striding towards him. She wore a brown shirt and long pants. On her lapel glowed a red maple leaf pin. Her hat was the standard ranger model of the Canadian border guard. She came up to Randy from the station on the Canadian side, not twenty feet away.

  “Margie!”

  “The boys giving you a hard time?”

  “You know. How are you?”

  “Good. You on a new dig this summer?”

  “Up at the Chief. Working a vision quest site. Just a week. I hope my comings and goings won’t take this much time later on. I’ve got a crew of three students with me.”

  “What you looking for?”

  “Skulls, burial items, prayer gifts. Site’s been in use for over threehundred years. The Browning Museum is interested in the artifacts. If we find any. I’ve always wanted to do the Chief site, but for years the band in Browning wouldn’t authorize it.”

  “You’re looking fit, Randy. You and Connie still doing fine?”

  Randy paused. He decided not to tell the truth. Margie didn’t need to know about Connie and the divorce and. . . .

  “Fine. Good. How come this border crossing’s getting so sticky? Used to be so soft.”

  “Drugs, Randy. And some artifact smuggling. There was that Indian mask heist down at Missoula last fall. Looks like they may still be in the country. We’ve almost given up looking for them. Rumour was they might cross the border here or farther east. But lately, not much has been going through here but RVS and the gear jammer buses from Glacier.”

  “Well, you’ll be seeing me on and off for the next few days. What shifts do you do, by the way?”

  “Usually evenings. My supervisor put me on this morning as extra since they’re expecting a lot of traffic, being the first big summer weekend.”

  “Do you need me to give you a list of the names of my students? I have the forms.” Randy lifted his briefcase from the front seat of the van and snapped it open. He pulled out a sheet with the names of three students: Justin Moore, Cara Simonds, and David Home. Other papers included their passport numbers, student cards, and dig permit information.

  “I can take it now if you want, prof. But there’s no rush till we see you. You’ll find it a lot easier coming back to Canada since we know who you are and the work you’re doing.”

  “Thanks, Margie. I should be en route by now. I’ve got a meeting with Sam Heavy Hand from Browning in the next hour, and I also have to get back to the university to catch up on office duties.”

  Margie smiled, took the paper from Randy, and headed back towards the Canadian side of the border. Randy shut his briefcase and slid it onto the front seat just as the two U.S. border guards re-emerged. They approached and handed him his permission papers and told him he was free to proceed.

  “Thanks, officers,” Randy said, knowing that a polite and obedient face gave you credit with men such as these.

  Randy finished packing the van, folding the tarps over the shovels and mesh screens. He stood for a moment and ran over the words he would use to tell Sam about what happened. He wanted to make sure his partner understood the difficulty. He wanted to make sure Sam would trust him, especially since he now had plans that did not include Sam.

  By 8:32, Randy was on the road again, driving south to Babb, Montana. He felt weary. His mind kept harping on the incident at the border and what Margie had said about the heist of the Indian masks. He and Sam had been right — lying low for a year had been a good idea. Still, Randy was worried. Would the Canadians search him every time he crossed back into Waterton Lakes after a day’s digging? His plans were based on the crossing being hassle-free.

  As he drove into the morning sun, Randy tried to encourage positive thoughts. He’d been a respected archaeologist for eighteen years. Digging up the earth of the Porcupine Hills and the foothills near the Rockies had been his principal joy. A year ago he published his fifteenth article on the prehistory of the Kootenay peoples. Before that, he had been well known for excavating Blackfoot campsites and buffalo corrals, and interpreting tipi rings. He owned rare amulets and obsidian arrowheads, and he was one of the few men in his field who could locate the legendary Flathead Pass, a trail walked for thousands of years by local tribes long before Columbus sailed west.

  Yet the sight of the shimmering blacktop forced him to wonder if his reputation was worth anything now. Why was he staking his future on such a risky venture? Driving into Montana to cut a deal in a hole like Babb? It was nothing more than a cluster of rundown buildings huddling by highway 464 leading into the Logan Pass. Even thinking about Sheree Lynn and the good things they had together did not comfort him. At least she was loving enough to let him go his own way. Yet Randy knew he must be cautious. Never tell a woman everything. Sheree didn’t think his plan would work. Could she really be trusted? She’d done all right in the last twenty-four hours, but why had she hugged that supercilious detective? No way she could win him over. That bloody ethnic dick suspected her of criminal negligence. Go easy, easy. Randy hated it when his jealousy taunted him. It was true: Sheree could blow the plan if she got emotional. If all goes smoothly, we can move out of that smelly Satan House. Randy smirked. He was on the brink. Soon, he figured, his money worries would evaporate. And Darren Riegert? The image of his lifeless body in that dank basement rose in his mind, but he refused to look at it. “
To hell with him,” he said.

  He drove on. Catbirds and brown thrashers arose from the warm fallow grass. They flitted into groves of diamond willow that grew in the hollows between the landscape’s shallow rises. Randy had killed a couple of meadow mice, which had run faster than gunshot out from the deep scrub by the mountain highway. Sam Heavy Hand would’ve told him that killing them was a good thing. Sparrow hawks would feed the carcasses to their young.

  Turning south, Randy had a cold feeling, a sudden premonition of doom. Then Babb appeared in the distance. Eventually Randy pulled into a parking lot, shut off the engine, and locked up. The air was warm and fragrant with pine as he walked into the smoky Horseshoe Bar. He looked at his watch: 8:55. He ordered a Coors Light, grabbed a stool, and took a deep haul on the cool liquid, debating whether he should bum a Marlboro from the bartender, a three-hundred-pound man called Babe. Sam Heavy Hand was late, as usual. Did he have them with him? Was there going to be an argument like last time? On the brink. And nowhere to go but on a student dig and maybe, if Randy played his cards right, well. . . . Maybe was all he would dare think. He remembered what his grandmother used to say: “Don’t write your history ’til it’s happened. Then change what you want to suit yourself.” More than once he’d rewritten his history, and where had it got him? He’d lost his wife, his house. He’d been caught with “miscatalogued” artifacts from the dig on the Belly River two years back, screwing up forever his contacts with the prestigious Glenbow Museum in Calgary, a place where his reputation had been platinum-plated. He’d worked hard. He’d gambled hard. Life had made him some enemies. But he sure didn’t want to spend the next twenty years paying loan interest and bickering with his ex-wife.

  Leaning back from the bar, he recognized Sam Heavy Hand’s huge frame coming towards him through the smoky air. Greed and anger were Sam’s middle names. He’d been a good friend years ago. Randy had liked Sam’s love of the outdoors, his belief in his people and their lost past. But ever since Sam had been in the Montana state pen for arson and robbery, ever since he’d started in on booze again and gone to work for his sister, Rita, he had turned against his old ways. All he wanted these days was cash. The only things Sam cared about now were new rifles, the half-ton he wanted to buy, and going to Las Vegas to win at blackjack.

  “You ready?”

  Sam’s voice lay low in his throat. He was wearing a new Stetson, a jean jacket, and a pair of torn Levis. Randy paid for his Coors, nodded to Babe, then followed Sam out the side door of the bar and up a shale bank into a low grove of aspens. By the side road, he saw Sam’s blue Ford half-ton. A tarp was thrown over the bed, and Sam’s old hound, Crow, was sleeping on it. At the cab, Sam unlocked the door and hauled out a large canvas suitcase. He shut the door and signalled to Randy to follow. Randy waited a moment before going along behind, like they had arranged. Just in case anyone — a kid, Babe, a state police officer — might be watching from the distance.

  Randy walked alone, scanning his mind for the words. His eyes squinted in the morning light as he followed Sam up the hill into a woodlot of cottonwoods and birches, then down into a gully cut by a creek running over blue-streaked boulders.

  Sam sat under a birch. He pulled out a key from his jean pocket and unlocked the suitcase. Carefully and slowly he lifted the lid. Randy became nervous. He leaned in close.

  Out of the suitcase’s gloom shone the golden eyes, the thin pearl mouths. Each mask was no larger than a man’s hand. They were flat, like plates, the features embossed and emblematic as if they had been made not to be worn but to be displayed in some kind of ritual. Randy picked one up. It was as light as a piece of paper. And as beautiful as he remembered from last October.

  “You satisfied? I’ll bring ’em up to Chief Mountain. To your dig. Just like we agreed. Meet you at the site after lunch. Then we’ll take ’em over the border that same evening in your van. With you and your crew of students. It’s such a perfect cover, right? Who’d suspect a famous professor? So clean and innocent. No one’ll bother to check. I’ll come behind, in the truck. You still agree?”

  “I went through that crossing this morning. Your fed boys searched the van top to bottom. Made me unwrap all the tools.”

  “Good for them. Doing their job for once. So what?”

  Randy sighed and gathered his patience.

  “We should wait a couple of days so they can get to know us.”

  “Fuck, no. That won’t make no difference. Chief Mountain’s a soft crossing. Always has been. You keep puttin’ this off. You keep wantin’. . . .”

  “I want it to go right, that’s all. We agreed we’d be careful. You’re the one, Sam, who said we should lie low. We could’ve taken them over last fall.”

  “With every state trooper chasing our ass? You and your fuckin’ dealer held us up. You went and talked to him, and he said we gotta wait till he gets the cash. What kind of dealer is that?”

  “Sam, you don’t know anything about that end, so shut up. Robert Lau is reliable, trust me.”

  “Trust is a big word, Randy.” Sam stood up. He lit a cigarette.

  Randy didn’t like it when Sam stood to smoke. The last two times they got together, Sam always wanted to change things. At first, he wanted a bigger share of the money. Then he wanted to sell the masks to a local rancher for a third of the price Robert Lau was offering. Randy knew he had to change his own plan. Why trust Sam? Possession is nine-tenths of the law after all. Sam stubbed out his half-smoked cigarette and sat down again. Randy could tell Sam was ready to make an announcement. “I’m coming over with you. I decided I wanna come out to the coast with you, too. To make sure I get my share.”

  “What?”

  “Forty, sixty. Sixty percent for me for stealin’ ’em. Forty percent for you for settin’ up the dealer.”

  “Yes, and I go to the dealer alone, as we agreed. Alone!”

  “Old Sam not so slow, Randy. Me and you both want the cash. I gotta make sure I get my cut.”

  “No way, Sam.” Randy walked into the grove of trees and stood alone, silent, with his hands on his hips. “Listen,” he said, turning back. “I trusted you for six months to hold on to those masks. Now you have to let me sell them and carry back the cash. If you come, Lau will get spooked. He’s a fussy man, doesn’t like people breathing down his neck.”

  “Fuck what he likes. I’m comin’. I can sleep in my truck at your place in Waterton. I can pretend to guide you and your crew while you do the dig. I know the site. My people love the site, and I wanna protect it. We’ll hide the masks in your cabin. On Saturday we fly out to the coast, get our cash, kiss Lau goodbye, and come home rich people.”

  “Either I go alone, or the whole deal’s off.”

  Sam broke into a belly laugh. “Don’t fuck with me, Randy. You’re pantin’ to get your hands on these little gold buggers. Look, we go, you meet him in the lobby of the hotel or somethin’, say you need to feel out in the open. I watch you two, make sure no shit goes down, what’s the big fuckin’ deal?”

  Randy was about to insist again when Sam slapped his thigh, stood, and closed the suitcase.

  “I’ll take these now. I stole ’em, I’m the one gets caught, I go to the state pen. You get to write your article on the dig. I gotta appreciate that. I gotta figure, too, that maybe you run off with my money.”

  Randy knew he was cornered. “Fine. Okay. So explain to me how we’re going to get these over the border, when you’ve got them glued to your hip day and night?”

  “Simple. I bring ’em to the site, here in Montana, just like we said.”

  “Okay. But for Christ’s sake don’t do what you did last time. Say you’re coming, then you don’t show up for a day or two. I am still responsible for three students, so this dig goes right to rule. I don’t want any excuses about how you got drunk or how you’re on Indian time.”

  “That’s Native time, old friend. We’re Natives now, Randy. And don’t you fuckin’ forget it.”

  Randy coul
d see his partner’s face flushing red with anger.

  “Let’s go over what we have to do one more time. Please.”

  “I come, like I said. To the site. You dig. Remember, we will be on sacred earth, so no shitting, no smoking. Understand? I drink some beer. I work on your van, but really what I do is hide the masks. I bring along some black garbage bags. I wrap up the masks in the plastic, see? I stuff ’em around the rim of your spare tire. Your students think, hey, what a nice guy. Good worker. He likes Randy. We drive to the border crossing. We shoot the shit with the guards. A guard takes a quick peek, what does he see? A spare tire, some plastic. Nothin’ else. We cross the border into Canada, out of Montana, we get to your cabin, we got ourselves a fortune.”

  “I’m not happy, Sam.”

  “You will be.”

  Billy woke at 6:30 and took a walk. He heard the phone ringing as he crossed the yard through the wild spear grass, and he had to sprint to the porch, slapping open the screen door in front of him.

  “It’s me, buddy.”

  “Butch?”

  “Yeah. I need to see you. How ’bout I take my Sunday drive out to your spread, and we can shoot the breeze?”

  “Sounds fine. I get the feeling something’s happened.”

  “Yeah. Something in the shape of an asshole with a need to smash up property.”

  “How long will you be? I can whip up some waffles.”

  “As fast as my cruiser can go at the speed limit.”

  Billy was setting coffee mugs on the porch table when Butch’s cruiser turned into the yard. A meadowlark sang overhead as the dust settled. After breakfast, Butch told Billy the whole story as the sun played shadow tag on the butte beyond.

  “We’re not sure who it was. Snuck in through a back window. Smashed up Sheree’s bedroom and stole some of her things. I think it was Mr. Ponytail, Woody. He’s got a big chip on his shoulder, and he doesn’t have a lot of polite things to say about Sheree Lynn.”