by John Hansen
He shrugged. “Like I told you before: don’t trust a cop. Partly why I came out here was to get away from all the crime and shit in Detroit – I had some troubles of my own, unfortunately. Like you said a while back, this place was a ‘reset’ button for me, too, and lately I feel like Detroit is bleeding into Two Med.”
“It’s not Detroit – it’s Browning,” I said. “What kind of trouble did you have back in Michigan?”
He shrugged vaguely. “Stupid shit. But nevertheless, I never trust a cop and neither should you – any kind of cop – even Greg. They stay away from us, and we stay away from them? Just like the grizzlies and us.”
Ronnie glanced over at me. “Whatever you and Alia had before, whatever you’re trying to do now, just watch out and make sure you don’t make things worse. And keep the cops out of it.”
Watch out for what? I wondered.
“Why do you care so much?” I asked him. “Nobody’s gonna find your precious stash.”
He didn’t respond. “It’s not even about me and her,” I said, my eyes now on the road. “Your right that we weren’t together very long – not long at all. But it’s about the fact that she had a shitty life, man, she never had a break her whole life, and she had plans to get out of this town – out of Browning. She was strong, Ronnie, she really was; and she was smart, and she was kind, beautiful… a person I wish I could have been with.
“She was beaten to death, and I couldn’t even go to her fucking funeral.” I reached forward into the console and grabbed his pack of Marlboros and pulled out a cigarette. Ronnie took no notice. I lit one and breathed the vapor deep, through my entire body it seemed, like it was a life-saving gas that could finally kill something bad inside.
“Maybe it doesn’t make any sense… but I got to find out who did it to her,” I said as I breathed out the smoke.
I looked out the passenger window and Ronnie turned up the music. Neither of us said a word the rest of the trip.
We eventually got to the diner, called “The Sunrise,” and parked out front. We walked in and were greeted by a long counter where customers could sit, and there were a few tables near the walls as well. The place was old, outdated, with old fridges and freezers and desert display cases – but I liked the classic and retro feel of the place. The afternoon sun poured in through the big window in front and created a nice glow.
We sat at a table near the door and looked over two laminated plastic menus that were shoved between a catsup bottle and mustard jar. An older woman was stocking things behind the counter, whose job it was to run the register as guests were leaving, it looked to me. A pretty girl probably in her twenties came over with two glasses of water and set them down. She had soft brown hair, falling in wavy streams, lit by the sun that clipped the side of her head as she stood in front of us. She had most of her hair pulled back with a leather string, and she had very large brown eyes that held the light. A thin figure was hidden by a t-shirt and jeans – no waitress uniforms for The Sunrise, apparently.
“Hey Ronnie and company,” she said, giving us a casual smile. “What can I get you?”
Ronnie looked up at her. “Sky! Well I’ll be damned…” He smiled broadly at her, but she regarded him with a strained smile.
She turned to me. “And you must be Will.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Are you the Sky that knows Clayton?” Ronnie looked at the two of us in turn as we spoke.
“Know him?” she asked, with an amused expression. “I live with him, so yea I’d say so.”
“Sky’s Clayton’s girlfriend,” Ronnie said.
Sky studied me for a moment. “Clayton told me you’ve been asking about Alia.”
I nodded slightly.
“What was she to you?” Sky asked.
“What do you mean?” I said, caught off guard by her direct manner with me.
Sky folded her arms, hugging the two menus she was going to drop on the table for us. Ronnie sipped his coffee and kept watching us both.
“I mean what I just said, what was she to you?”
I couldn’t read the expression on Sky’s face for any clues as to what she was getting at, or to whose side she was on – Clayton’s or mine – but it seemed she didn’t trust me for some reason, or that she was genuinely confused about me, one or the other. Of course, I considered, she may just be seeing me as some city boy tourist who had a fling with a local Indian and then went on clinging to the memory of that fling after the girl’s grisly death...
“She was what I was looking for,” I said, staring back at Sky.
As if that was a right answer, Sky reached down and placed a menu in front of Ronnie and I, and said, “Listen, you come by our place tonight, Will, for dinner. I want some time with you.”
Ronnie looked up at her as she said this, and then at me again.
“You know where we live?” She asked.
“Yea,” I said, reaching down to feel the crumpled post card that Clayton had scrawled on in my pocket. I got an invite from your drug dealer boyfriend. “But,” I said, hesitating, “is Clayton gonna play nice?”
“Don’t worry about him,” she said. “He’s harmless. He’s not the one you should worry about.”
As she walked away to place the orders Ronnie and I gave her, Ronnie swore under his breath. “You are gonna get yourself is a shitload of trouble, Chiefy. You just gonna show up at his place and walk in? Jake lives there too you know…”
Jake – a variable I had not really considered. He had this mysterious quality to me – a shadowy presence in my mind that I had not figured out in any specific terms yet.
I shrugged, trying to present an image of carelessness but probably not succeeding. “Sky found Alia in the woods, Thunderbird told me – it was the only thing helpful he did tell me. And Clayton dated her – she lived there. So his place was the center of her world, a hub of her last days. I want to be there and see it.” I thought about walking into that house and what I may encounter. “Or maybe I am just going crazy.”
“I think so,” Ronnie nodded said, nodding dolefully.
After we ate, I had Ronnie drive me over to the address that I found for “Gary and Susan.” I told him that he owed me one favor for the free breakfast I had provided him, and I promised to not involve him in any more “bullshit” as he put it, after one more lecture from him about “minding my own business.”
When we got to the address we saw that it was an empty, abandoned house – I wasn’t very surprised. Lots of houses were empty in Browning. And, anyway, nobody would have stuck around after something like that had happened – after “Gary” had done his work. Alia’s foster dad being charged with child molestation – it was too small a town. There was no “For Sale” sign in the yard, but you could tell that nobody was in the little white ranch house. The grass and weeds were grown high in the front and side yards, the dark windows didn’t have blinds or curtains in them, and there was just emptiness about the place that was distinctive.
Ronnie sat watching me sourly as I stood on the street next to the weedy driveway, just looking around. Across the street was a run-down old house with a small front porch; on it I saw a hugely fat woman sitting in an old, metal rocking chair. She sat there smoking, watching us, and had a small TV on the porch on a stand set in front of her. A black cat sat near her on the porch, watching me as well.
I walked over to the porch. The woman didn’t shift her gaze, but also didn’t seem surprised at the fact that I was walking up to her house.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi,” she said back, in a husky voice. She reached for her ashtray and flicked out the ash.
“I was looking for the people that may have lived in that house over there,” I said, pointing a thumb behind me.
Her eyes shifted past me to the house, and then back at me. “You lookin’ for Alia?” she asked, with a sideways grin showing around her fat, doughy jowls.
“No. I was looking for her foster parents actually, Gary and Susan?”
She wrinkled up her brow. “Hell, they ain’t lived there for two years. What you want with them?” She took a long drag from her cigarette.
I looked back at the house. “… just looking for them. Sorry to bother you.”
As I turned and stared to go, she said, “Did you know Alia?”
I stopped and looked back at her. “Yes.”
She reached down to ash her cigarette again. “Do you know she’s dead?”
“Yes.”
She looked past me at the house again. “If you know Gary and Susan you know what happened there, right?”
“Yes,” I said again, now watching her closely.
“I moved in here right before he got arrested; it was big news in town here of course... A high school teacher, foster parent, such a respected man…” She took a big drag from her cigarette. “Alia must have been ten, eleven then.”
She smiled. “I remember my first day here, after my son had moved in my stuff. I was out here on the porch, trying to hang a plant, and here comes this cute little black-haired girl, pony-tails swinging, coming over like she owned the place.”
She chuckled at the memory, and her big, flowery gown heaved a bit. “She came up and asked me if I needed help moving in, and said if I wanted to I could come over for dinner with them.”
She looked over at the house again, and her face became grim. “She was probably looking for help... Tryin’ to get some other adult over there.”
She shook her head slowly. “I didn’t trust that bastard Gary the first moment I saw him, and he had a sneaky, dirty look to him. But the whole town thought he was a saint.” She looked down at the black cat beside her. “But I knew something was up at that house.”
The big lady let out a big sign, then took another drag at the cigarette. “I wish I coulda helped her, goddammit I do. I shoulda run over Gary in my car. Alia was a real sweet girl, you know. She left pretty soon after that, but while she was here, whenever I saw her, she’d waive and smile. Went out and bought me cigarettes and pop sometimes too.”
I tried picturing Alia as a little girl, innocent, before the shaming of that house. “Did you keep in touch with her? Did you know her this last year?”
She shook her head and looked out over her yard. “No. She moved more into town and I never saw her again, except a couple of times just around. I don’t get out much.” She regarded me again. “So why are you here exactly?”
I sighed and shook my head and ran a hand though my hair. “I was hoping to find out what happened to her.”
“You’re not from Browning.” She looked at me, studying me a bit. “Where are you from?”
“Two Medicine.”
“Ha!” she snorted. “Then you don’t know anything about this here place.” She snubbed her cigarette out. “Where you from before that?”
“Georgia.”
She gave another “Ha!” to that, and then said, “If you were friends, you know she wanted nothing to do with that bastard over there. She never came around here.”
I looked back at the house and I couldn’t blame her. I thanked the woman and started walking towards Ronnie’s car.
“Come by again sometime if you want,” she called out to me as I walked. “We don’t get any visitors out here.”
Twenty-Eight
After Ronnie and I drove back to Two Med I immediately borrowed his car again, giving him thirty bucks for gas to avoid any protest, and drove off towards Clayton’s address. I rolled the driver’s window down and let the evening breeze blow through the car.
I settled back in the driver’s seat and I thought about what I had been doing and saying the last few days. I wondered if I was losing track of things, wasting time, and if and when I was going to “make things worse” as Ronnie warned. I didn’t feel worse though; I actually felt more a peace, especially at times that I was talking to someone about her death, like I was getting closer to something that would solve it all in my head.
I thought about Alia’s life some more as I drove – her small, reduced life of just surviving and escaping. I tried to piece together the parts of her world I had gathered, her foster families, the tribe, the reservation, Thunderbird, the diner, Clayton and Sky, visiting the store, then me. Me at the cash register, riding in the canoe, sitting on my bed, listening to me sing with a big grin on her face. I tried to picture me and the store in her mind, with her eyes, how she saw it. It was too foreign though, I couldn’t see the world like her. I didn’t grow up in this desolate place on the reservation.
I picture for the hundredth time her lifeless body trampled, bloody, battered in the dirt, although I had still never seen it. I wondered what Greg’s stolen photos actually showed. I tried to imagine her last moments, of… what? Fear? Terror? Pain? I hoped so greatly that she was somehow spared the pain. I shut that idea out of my mind immediately because it stung to think about, too painful for me to consider. Imagine a loved-one being tortured…
I reached down to Ronnie’s pack of Marlboros and got one out, lighting it and tossing the lighter back into the ashtray like he did. I needed to stop smoking soon or I’d never stop, I thought. I switched on Ronnie’s stereo and let the songs wash over my mind and a cover my thoughts – cloud over my worries as I drove through the evening sunset to meet Clayton Red Claw and God knows what else.
Clayton’s house was a small one-story, little box at the end of a street, not far from town. I had yet to see a large house in Browning, in fact – every building seemed small, old, forgotten. Houses were usually one-story ranch homes, but mobile homes and trailers were just as common as houses. I drove up to the house, checked the address on my postcard with the number on the mailbox, and parked.
I noticed music coming from the main room as I walked up to the door, and it sounded like Steppenwolf’s “Magic Carpet Ride.” I rang the doorbell and after a minute Sky came to the door. She was dressed in a very small top and jean shorts, which showed off her lithe, tan legs that ended in flip flops. It was the same thing Alia had worn. Tonight, Sky had her straight hair done up in a bun with chop sticks shoved into the mass of dark hair to keep it up.
“Welcome…” she said. She looked amused. “Come on in.”
I walked in and noticed the smell of incense. She led me into the main room, a living room, which had a couch and some chairs and a lot of wood carvings and glass decorations on shelves. Young people lived here though – you could tell from how much junk there was here and there: guitar, tennis racket tossed in a corner, a mountain bike in the foyer, old CDs piled on the coffee table – the detritus of a certain era in life.
“One of Clayton’s friends is a glass blower,” Sky said, watching my eyes. “He made this.” She walked over and picked up an elaborately shaped glass marijuana pipe fashioned like a dolphin jumping out of the water. I couldn’t begin to image how the thing worked to smoke through it.
As I politely admired it, she gestured over to the couch she sat me down. The house was old, and the furniture and stuff in the room looked like it came from Goodwill – all mismatched and thrown together. There were many Blackfoot-looking artifacts and decorations on the walls and shelves, however. I also noticed a large, plastic, white sign that read “Elect James Red Claw” in big block letters – one of those political signs people stick in their yards. I was shoved halfway behind a Lazy Boy lounge chair. I also noticed a huge glass bottle about three feet high with a large amount of coins in it – a note had been taped to it that read “Harley Fund.” My eye fell upon a gun resting on the coffee table in front of me – a black, automatic pistol. That made me nervous.
“Hi,” Clayton said curtly as he suddenly walked in, holding two Miller Genuine Draft bottled beers. He put one in my hand without asking me if I wanted one, and then he sat in one of the recliners. He reached over and turned down the Steppenwolf on the stereo. He seemed a little more casual, less stern now that he was in his home turf.
“Let me get right to the point,” he said after taking a swig of beer. “Look
, I know you care about what happened to Alia – you wouldn’t be here otherwise – but there’s a way of doing things in Browning and a way of not doing things.”
Sky sat in the other recliner and just watched us.
“And you talking to the rangers and the BIA about it all is not the right way of doing things.”
“How do you know I’ve talked to them?” I asked.
He sat back in the chair and smiled. He had a thin face that looked slightly malevolent when he smiled. His teeth were crooked. I noticed that he had an almost-Hispanic look when he smiled.
“You don’t think people talk in a town this small? He gestured a hand out the big window of the living room to indicate the town. “Especially if the tribe is involved?”
“Well,” I said, “as far as the BIA cop goes, he’s always been the one to seek me out – I didn’t invite him around – and he probably thinks I did it anyway. But I actually do want the cops involved, to find who killed her. Don’t you?” I asked him, and I looked to Sky too.
“Sure,” Clayton said. I noticed how she took a subservient posture with him in the room; her usual up-front demeanor was chilled – she was now watchful.
He took another sip of beer. “But the right way of doing things is letting the tribe solve it.”
“Are they solving it?” I asked him.
He ignored the question, and nodded over to the election sign. “My father was the council leader – the “chief” as you would call it in the old days – and before he died he had this town running its own way – perfectly.”
I noticed Sky looked down at the beer in her hand contemplatively.
“And,” he continued, “I’m moving up in the tribe and I’m going to pick up where he left off.”
“So your father ran things here?” I asked, and he looked over at the election sign I had seen and nodded.
