by Gwen Florio
“You took this one on.” Charlotte pointed at Tina. Lola had worked on the reservation just long enough to find it rude when people pointed with their fingers, instead of discreetly with their lips or chin. “This . . . this . . . Miss Priss.” Charlotte fairly spat the words. Tina edged closer to Lola. “Those other ones. Nobody was surprised when they went missing. Nobody cared. But this one. Here. I printed this out at home. Take a look.” She slapped a piece of paper onto the table. Lola craned her neck. It was a story from the Missoulian, the largest newspaper in the western part of the state. “Missing,” read the headline over a three-column photo of Tina holding the basketball team’s championship trophy. “Near as I can tell, this photo ran in every single newspaper in the state.”
“So?” Thor lifted a shoulder. He took another bite. Chewed for a long time. “Needs more salt. No one knows she’s here. It’s not like she’s done any work yet. I don’t see the problem.”
“That’s because you’re an idiot.”
There it was again, Lola thought. The inevitable resentment of the girl who married the best-looking boy in the class, only to watch herself go to bloat over the years while he stayed fine as ever. It had to have nagged at Charlotte, especially when she considered the fact that she’d gotten them both into a business where no doubt Thor sampled the goods.
“She’s not going to be able to do any work. Not now, not ever. We can’t risk anybody seeing her.”
By the way Tina stiffened beside her, Lola could tell that she’d grasped the deadly significance of Charlotte’s words.
“What about the special customer? He paid in advance,” Thor said. “Real money.”
The hope leaping within Tina was practically palpable. Thor had found the only way, Lola thought, of making the prospect of the special customer seem, if not actually desirable, at least tolerable. Considering the alternative.
Thor’s hand flicked. The thigh bone sailed over the counter and landed in the sink. He licked his fingers and wiped them on the uniform Charlotte had laundered and ironed with such care. The skin around Charlotte’s eyes tightened. “It’s not like he’s going to tell anybody,” Thor added.
Charlotte hesitated. “Fine,” she said. “But after that—we can’t risk any more of their little escape tricks. We got lucky with that other one who got away.” The air went out of Tina.
“That’s not the only problem,” Charlotte said. “These two were calling out for help. Dawg caught them both at the window and Lola here was trying to talk to someone. She needs to be taught a lesson. Let her know she’s no better than the others. You know what I mean. Do it.”
Thor pushed his chair back, stood, and hooked his fingers through his belt loops. He went into the kitchen and turned one of the knobs on the stove. There was the smell of gas. It whispered and caught. Thor cranked the knob until the flame burned high. He extracted something long and straight from the tight space between the refrigerator and the wall. Tina gasped. Lola looked to her for an explanation, but Tina stared at the object in Thor’s hand. He held a metal rod with an oval handle at one end. He poked the other end into the fire, turning it this way and that, until the metal turned scarlet then glowed orange. He turned to Lola.
“It’s . . . it’s—” Tina’s whisper defined terror.
Her mouth opened and closed, fishlike.
“It’s—”
She tried again.
“It’s a branding iron.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Dawg grabbed Lola from the couch and wrestled her into a straight chair, twisting one arm behind her back and extending the other before her. Thor approached. He slid up her sleeve, exposing the tender flesh of her forearm. The brand hovered a few inches above it, so close Lola could feel the glow, though not yet close enough to carry the blistering heat of her nightly candle-snuffing. She forced herself to look away, into Thor’s face. He smiled, open-mouthed. Lupine, she thought.
Thor turned the iron to display the white-hot heart shape. He moved it closer.
Lola willed herself still, even as her skin began to warm. One thousand one, she counted silently. One thousand two. “This is just stupid,” she said.
“How so?”
“That’s how you marked Judith.”
“So?”
“Whatever you do with me, someday I’m going to be found. And unless it’s years and years from now—and maybe even then—that brand’s going to be on my arm, the same as it was on Judith’s. Except that, unlike with Judith, a lot of people will know that I’d been staying with you and Charlotte. Put that heart on my arm and you might as well tie a tag to my toe that says ‘Thor Brevik did it.’ ”
“She’s right.”
I am? Lola bit back the words. The speaker was the girl who’d taken Tina in her arms when Dawg snatched Lola away. Lola put her at sixteen, maybe younger. Lola wondered if she were Josephine’s niece. This girl’s voice, when she spoke yet again, held the same fine contempt Lola had heard Josephine turn on tribal council members who dared to present her with budgets whose details did not meet her exacting standards.
“Goddammit.” Thor looked at the iron. “It’s cooling off.”
Dawg’s grip loosened. So did Lola’s gut, so suddenly she feared she’d be sick again. She choked back bile. But it rose insistently as Charlotte fiddled with the stove knob until the burner caught again. “Forget the heart and lay the rod up against her, Thor. I don’t care what you do. Just mark her. She needs to learn her lesson.”
Thor crossed the room. The brand went back into the flame with a hiss. Thor held it immobile, then withdrew it. The glowing heart preceded him as he walked back toward Lola. Dawg squeezed Lola’s arms tighter. She heard his panting breaths behind her.
Which were drowned out by a pounding on the door that shook the entire trailer, along with the most welcome words Lola thought she had ever heard.
“Open up!”
“CHARLIE!” LOLA screamed his name.
“Shut the fuck up.” Dawg loosed his grip. Thor’s backhand knocked her from the chair. She lay on the floor, watching blood soak into the carpet. She probed at her nose, just a second’s touch, enough to confirm it was broken. It didn’t matter, she thought. Charlie had come. Their ordeal was almost over. She pulled her sleeve down over her arm and held it beneath her nose to stanch the blood.
The pounding resumed. It hurt her head. Everyone else in the room seemed frozen.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
“Goddammit, open up. I know you’re in there. We’ve got fifteen guys here heading out on an extended shift.” Lola swallowed blood. Whoever was out there, it wasn’t Charlie.
Thor dropped the branding iron. The acrid scent of singed carpet filled the air. Thor looked to Charlotte. She nodded. Thor reached for the door and opened it a crack. Lola rolled to one side. She could just see through the opening. A man stood on the steps, bundled mightily against the cold, wool watch cap pulled down low over his brow, a scarf wrapping the lower part of his face. Maybe, she thought crazily. Maybe. But even though her eyes had swollen almost shut and her head spun with every motion, she could tell the man there was too short to be Charlie. Behind him, a van idled.
“Come on, man.” The man’s voice took on a wheedling tone. “We’re talking three weeks out there with no trips to town. This is our last chance. Unless Mama starts doing take-out!” A laugh leaked through the scarf. “We’ll pay extra.”
Again, the glance to Charlotte, the nod in response.
“Fine,” said Thor. Charlotte held up both hands and spread her fingers. Closed them, spread them again. “Twenty percent extra,” said Thor.
“Hell,” said the man. “We’d have paid twenty-five. Lemme tell the boys.”
“Give us a few minutes,” said Thor. “The girls were taking a break. They’ll need to get themselves set up.”
The man paused on his way back to the van. “They don’t need to be settin’ up. We’ll take ’em lying down.”
Thor clos
ed the door and pointed to Lola and Tina. “Get them out of here,” he told Dawg. Charlotte swept into the room with a wet rag and attacked the blood on the floor. “Girls,” she said, scrubbing hard at the rug. “You know what to do. Thor, pop some of that chicken in the oven and heat it up. The ones waiting will be hungry.”
“Shouldn’t I nuke it?”
“The microwave takes all the crispiness out. Ruins it, in my opinion.” She stood, the bloody rag in her hand. “Hurry up, before they change their minds. Lola, don’t you drip more blood on my clean floor.”
Dawg wrestled her and Tina into their bedroom with a final warning. “Now you know what can happen. No trouble. And stay away from that goddamn window.” He slammed the door.
Lola lowered her arm.
“Sweet Jesus!” Tina’s eyes went wide.
“That bad? I don’t think I’ve ever heard so much as a damn from you.”
Tina steered her to the bathroom mirror. Lola steeled herself. Looked. Her eyes were purple and puffy, the bruises running into ones from the pistol-whipping, her nose swollen and skewed to one side. Blood sluiced over her lips and down her chin. Tina pulled wads of toilet paper from the roll and held them beneath the faucet. “Here.”
Lola dabbed at her face until the toilet paper came away clean. It wasn’t much of an improvement. “I thought it was Charlie. But it wasn’t.”
“I did, too. I thought I recognized the voice.” Tina squeezed past Lola out of the bathroom. Lola heard the chair creak as Tina climbed up on it. “Come here. Quick, before he catches us.”
Lola joined her, pressing her face to the window. Exhaust wrapped the waiting van, nearly obscuring it. Still, there was something familiar about it. “Is that—?” She looked at Tina, then back to the van. Its door opened. One man after another emerged, waddling in layers of clothing. The driver came last, carrying something.
A drum.
The others lined out along the trailer’s length. Shed their coats, their hats. Shook out long, long hair, let down voluminous skirts sewn with hundreds of tiny tin bells. The air came alive with color, with sound. With women. The only man among them, Roy deRoche, reached back into the van and came out with a folding stool and a tarp. Shook out the tarp on the snow. Placed the drum upon it. Settled himself upon the stool. Took up the stick made of a flexible section of fiberglass fishing pole and tapped the drum’s surface. Made an adjustment. Tapped again. Nodded, satisfied. Struck the drum again, four real beats this time. Threw his head back and let loose with the falsetto quaver that began the song.
Feet moved. Bells jingled in the glassy frozen air as the women of the Blackfeet Nation began the dance of life to save their daughters.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
“Mommy! Mommy!” Tina worked at the window crank, turning it the wrong way in her confusion. “Mommy! I’m here!”
Lola turned, expecting Dawg to burst into the room. But the only explosion of activity was beyond the door—Thor shouting, Charlotte yelling back, while up and down the hallway, a chorus of voices joined Tina’s, young women turned little girls again. “Mommy! Mommy!”
“Hell with it,” Lola said. “Let’s get out of here.” She took Tina’s hand and jumped down from the chair, the landing sending a fresh gush of blood from her nose. They ran from the room and crashed into the other girls, a collective headlong rush of flesh and chiffon toward the trailer door.
Where Thor stood facing them, gun drawn.
“I don’t know where you girls think you’re going, but nobody leaves this trailer.” Beside him, Dawg crossed his arms over the mound of his muscled chest. The girls moved as one toward the window. Pulled back the drapes. Men emerged from the rows of prefabs, phones held high, videoing the spectacle of women doing a jingle dance in the snow. The women stepped high in dresses of turquoise, gold, jade green, royal blue. Bright beaded leggings flashed beneath the skirts, moccasins trod the snow. The women held heads high and cocked one hand on their hips; with the other, they raised eagle-feather fans in time with the drum’s beats.
Josephine’s niece hammered at the window with the heel of her hand, the other girls crowding around her. Thor swung his gun toward them. “Knock that shit off.”
Lola pulled Nancy’s hand from the glass. “It’s okay. She knows you’re here. They know we’re all here. We’re going to be all right.”
“How?” Tina spoke up. “He’s got a gun.”
Lola swiped a hand beneath her nose and studied the bloody smear on her fingers. She rubbed her hand on her pants. “So? What’s he going to do? Shoot us? Shoot them? All that would do is make a big mess. We know Charlotte doesn’t like that. They have to let us go now.”
“Like hell we do.” Charlotte emerged from the kitchen, breathing hard.
Lola pointed toward the window. “But you’re busted.”
Charlotte actually smiled. She dug in her pocket and came out with a tube of lip gloss and ran it across her mouth. Thor had his gun. Charlotte girded herself for battle in her own way. She pressed her lips together, parting them with an audible smack. “I don’t think so.”
Lola’s head throbbed, confusion adding to the pain of Thor’s blow. “Yes, you are. There’s a dozen women out there who know who you are. Who know what this is.”
Charlotte’s smile, appropriately outlined now, widened. “Who are they going to tell? The sheriff?” Even as she spoke, Thor’s cellphone buzzed. He took it from its case on his belt and hit a key.
“I’m on it,” he said. “Some sort of demonstration. Looks like environmentalists protesting the oil patch. Same old, same old. This bunch isn’t any too bright. You’d think they’d wait ’til summer. Nothing to worry about.” He clicked off the phone and gestured with his gun. “I’m the only law in a hundred miles. If I say there’s no problem here, there’s no problem.”
The watching men began to filter back into their warm trailers. The women danced on, circling the unit. Lola noted their blueing skin, their slowing, stiffening movements.
“They can dance until they turn into popsicles for all I care,” Thor said. “They’re going away empty-handed.”
“But,” said Lola. Surely it wasn’t that simple. “They can call someone else. Another sheriff.” Charlie, she thought. Was it remotely possible the women had come without contacting him?
Thor seemed to have read her thoughts. He opened the door. The women and Roy were alone outside the trailer, the only ones to hear the words he shouted. “I’ve got your daughters. By the time your sheriff—or anyone else you think you might want to call—gets here, each and every one of these girls can be dead. Is it worth it?”
“Best y’all go on home,” Dawg called over his shoulder. Thor stepped aside and Dawg took his place, his massive frame filling the doorway. Thickets of golden hair raised up on his goose-pimpled arms.
The women lifted their left feet. Tapped the ground twice, lightly, with their moccasins. Slid a step sideways.
“He’s right,” said Thor. “Forget you ever came here.”
The right feet went up. Tap, tap. Sideways slide.
“What would you rather have? Your daughters dead? Because that’s what’s going to happen if you don’t get the hell out of here and pretend you never came. Or would you rather have them whoring, but alive?”
The compelling drumbeat grew louder. One-two, two-two, three-two, four-two. The sound pierced the air and bumped against a sky heavy and low with snow. Roy raised his voice, his song lifting above Thor’s pitiless words. The tune pierced Lola’s heart with its mixture of purpose and hopelessness. She thought she had never seen anything so brave as these mothers dancing for daughters they apparently were not going to be able to reclaim. She wished she could understand the words to Roy’s song. His haunting falsetto rose and fell, not unlike the wail of a siren, signaling danger, promising rescue.
Lola frowned. It wasn’t just that she couldn’t understand the words. She couldn’t hear them anymore. She looked at Roy. His hand hovered motionless over the
drum. He craned his neck, looking at something beyond her field of vision. The women, too, paused, frozen as though the cold had caught them in midstep. But the sound continued, rising and falling, a real siren this time, growing louder as Charlie’s cruiser rounded the corner and slid sideways to a stop amid a backwash of flashing lights and snow.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Dawg was in the doorway and then he wasn’t, caught in the crush of the girls who simply shoved in a single mass past him. Lola took a step after them and collapsed onto her knees, felled by an attack of vertigo. The branding iron lay nearby, a heart shape scorched into the carpet. She grabbed it and used it to lever herself to her feet. She leaned on it, swaying, watching through the window as the girls rushed headlong through the snow in their fluttery lingerie, seeking the warmth of their mothers’ arms. Shrieks dissolved into sobs. Women hugged their daughters close, pulled back to stare hard and ensure the vision was real, before once again crushing the girls to their breasts. Dawg picked himself up out of the snowbank where he’d landed and shook himself off, looking to the sheriff as though for instructions. Bub appeared from somewhere and circled him, stiff-legged, growling. Charlie stepped from the cruiser, gun raised. Bub dashed to him, touched nose to pant leg, and then raced back to resume his patrol of Dawg. Lola’s cheeks burned, some new torment atop her injuries. She touched a hand to her face and felt tears. She ducked her head, wiped her face, and cleared her throat. “Charlie,” she called, “you’re just in time.”
“Maybe not.” Despair tightened his voice. Lola followed his gaze to the group of women. One stood alone, arms dangling empty at her sides, her face a mask of anguish. Tina’s mother.
A woman emerged from the van. Until that moment, Lola had thought it empty. “Where’s Tina?” asked Jan.
“Jan! You came!”
“Mary Alice, you mean.” So Lola’s phone call had worked. “Slick move,” Jan said. She tried a grin. It wobbled and disappeared entirely. “Where’s Tina?”
