Fools. Desperate fools. She ran across the wheat field where they had dumped Tony O and—at a steady pace—ran south towards Halstad. Flames from the shack were lighting up the night sky. Halfway to town, she met the volunteer fire department truck on its way to put out the fire. They slowed when they saw her but she shouted, “Go put it out! I’m ok!” and kept running. Damn cigarettes, she thought, her lungs burning. When she hit the pavement of the first street, she ran past the church, onto Main Street, then down to Mickey’s.
“Gimme the phone, gimme the phone,” she shouted at the bartender, the front door of the bar slamming behind her.
He took one look at her, pulled the black rotary phone from behind the counter and set it up on the bar between two drinkers. Cash grabbed it and dialed the county jail. No damn answer. Next she called Wheaton’s house. He answered on the fifth ring.
Without preamble, Cash said, “They’re going to the county hospital. One of them’s burnt bad. I’m on my way there.” And she hung up, shoved the phone back across the bar and took a big swig of the guy’s beer to her right. She pushed back from the bar and ran to the side door.
Behind her she heard, “She must have been at the fire.”
“She looks like she’s been in a fight.”
“You ok, Cash?” someone hollered after her.
She waved a hand in the air, pushed out through the screen door, digging her keys out of her pocket as she ran.
The first thing she did when she opened the truck door was to pull the .22 out from behind the truck seat, take the safety off and make sure it was loaded. She put the rifle on the seat beside her, barrel pointed towards the bottom passenger side. She spun on gravel backing out of the parking spot, bouncing over the railroad tracks before she shifted gears and grabbed the sliding rifle all at the same time as she took off for Ada.
The Ranchero was in high gear and the gas pedal pushed to the floor. She whipped past one car and flashed her high beams at another one that threatened to pull out on to the main road from a side country road. Halfway to Ada, she calmed enough to punch in the cigarette lighter and then realized that her cigarettes were still in the jean jacket she had wrapped around Dick’s head. Shit! She leaned over and rummaged through the glove box searching for an extra pack. No dice. Without letting up on the gas, she reached under the truck seat. Sometimes she threw a pack under there. Nothing. She dug through the ashtray to find the longest butt she could, straightened it out to all of one inch and lit up.
Ada was up ahead. She could see the lights. How many times had she been in this town today? She’d lost track. She didn’t slow until she hit the outskirts of town. Then she only slowed to sixty and headed straight to the county hospital.
She pulled in next to Wheaton’s cruiser and jumped out of the truck, grabbed the rifle and headed around the hospital to the back door. She walked down the linoleum hallway, listening for voices, feeling the adrenalin, sensing the air for Wheaton. She saw a couple nurses going in and out of doors at the end of the hallway and headed that way. As she got closer she smelled burnt hair and heard moaning, another male voice and Wheaton’s deeper one. She could also hear Doc Felix saying, “Toasted marshmallow. You look like a toasted marshmallow, son.”
Cash shook her head back and forth. She was going to have to remember to not shoot the doc. She reminded herself of that as she reached the doorway and looked in.
Wheaton turned his head around to see her. He wasn’t in uniform, but he had his gun belt on and handcuffs stuffed in his pockets. The smaller guy, the one whose name she never got, was standing on the opposite side of the bed, Wheaton blocking his view of the doorway.
Wheaton asked, “How’d this happen, boy? You fall in a bonfire?”
Moaning followed. Doc said, “I’ve shot him full of morphine so I don’t think he’s going to answer any questions, Wheaton.”
“Who you need to question is that damn Indian bitch who lit him on fire,” said the other guy.
“And why would that be?” asked Wheaton.
“We were going north of town a bit to have a few beers, enjoy the stars and she followed us out there.”
“How’d this fire happen?” Wheaton asked.
“I don’t know. She had a Coleman lantern or maybe one of those old kerosene lanterns. We were in one of those migrant shacks.”
“Kinda hard to see the stars from in there,” commented Wheaton.
“We had just gone in to look around, curious, you know. Then she came up on us. Started accusing us of killing that Indian a week ago. And of killing that kid you all found dumped in the ditch out that way. She was screaming and threatening us. Dick here walked towards her to try and quiet her down and that’s when she threw the kerosene lamp on him and took off running. All I could do was roll him on the ground to put out the flames and throw him in the truck and get over this way to the doc.”
Doc Felix started to stand up from leaning over Dick. Cash stepped back and over so that she was hidden from his view. Doc Felix said, “I’m going to have to call one of the ambulance drivers in to take him to St. Luke’s in Fargo. He might have some fourth degree burns and they have better equipment.”
“How long you think it’s going to take?” asked Wheaton.
“About a half hour to get ’em up and rolling,” answered Doc Felix.
“And what’s your name, son?” Wheaton asked the weasel-faced guy.
“Clyde, Clyde Svenson.”
“What else can you tell me about all this, Clyde?” asked Wheaton.
“Nothing. You should be out looking for that wild Indian. Last I saw she was hightailing down the riverbank. The other night she was spying on us too. Made us think she was a bear. Damn lucky she didn’t get shot. We thought she was a bear until we went back down there earlier today and saw her footprints. Then she was down in the ditch where that young kid was found. Tried to tell us she was trapping gophers.”
Cash leaned against the wall. What is Wheaton doing letting this guy talk on and on? But right then, the two feds, dressed in identical suits to the ones they were wearing every other time she had seen them, came walking around a corner down by the main hospital door. Cash moved the rifle as best she could back behind her leg that was farthest from them. Their leather shoes clacked on the linoleum floor.
Wheaton must have heard them too because he poked his head out around the doorway and waved them on down. At the same time, he said behind him, “You just wait there, son.”
Wheaton pointed at a leather-covered chair at the closest end of the hallway, indicating that Cash was to go there. As the two men passed Cash, they hesitated and looked at her suspiciously. Wheaton said, “She’s with me,” and motioned for them to go into the hospital room. Cash waited until the two men walked past, and then she moved and plopped down in the chair. She put the safety on the rifle and laid it on the floor under the chair, back against the wall. She put her elbows on her knees and her head on her hands and drifted into a meditative state. The dreams, the sensations, going to Josie’s house, getting tripped up by the Day Dodge kids, the sorrow in their eyes compared to the excitement in Kathy’s eyes and the eyes of her friend as they talked about sneaking out into the yard and getting caught by her dad, walking in the ditch, running along the hardened clay of the cow path with her braid whapping her on the back, Long Braids and pool shots—all this flitted through Cash’s consciousness until she saw the tips of scuffed work boots standing in front of her.
She looked up into Wheaton’s face, an evening stubble evident on his chin. She leaned around him and saw the weasel in handcuffs being led down the hall by one of the feds. The other fed was walking alongside a metal gurney an attendant was wheeling down the hall.
Dick’s body was draped under white sheets, his face sooty and his hair sticking up in weird directions. An IV ran down a metal pole attached to the gurney.
Wheaton pulled Cash to her feet, then reached behind the chair for her rifle and handed it to her. He put his arm around her
shoulder and said, “I have to take you over to the station and get a statement from you.”
As they passed the hospital room Dick and Clyde had been in, Doc Felix was standing in the doorway, leaning against the doorjamb. He shook his head like he didn’t believe what he was seeing. Cash glared at him until he turned back into the room. Wheaton walked her out to his cruiser and opened the back door for her to put her rifle in and then opened the front for her.
“Can we stop at the liquor store so I can get a pack of cigarettes?” she asked.
Wheaton drove to the liquor store, got out, went in and came back with a pack of Marlboros. He handed the pack to Cash. She whacked the filter end of the pack against the thumb edge of her left hand to tamp the tobacco tighter into the cigarettes. Then she zipped the gold plastic thread around the cellophane of the pack and folded open one end. She tapped the pack again against the thumb edge of her hand and got out a cigarette. She pushed in the cigarette lighter of the cruiser and when it popped out, lit up.
By that time they were back at the jail. Cash got out. Wheaton opened the back door and carried in her rifle. She walked into the open cell and grabbed one of the wool blankets off the bed, folded it and put it on one end of the wooden bench she had come to think of as hers. She pulled the tall round visitor ashtray over by the bench and lay down.
Wheaton was making a pot of coffee in the back room. When he came out, he opened a desk drawer and got a sheaf of papers and a flat box of carbon paper. He stacked paper, carbon, paper about five, six times, then put one set into the typewriter. He went and brought out two cups of steaming coffee. He set one in the round ashtray for Cash and put the other on the desk as he sat down in front of the typewriter. He looked at Cash.
Lying on her back, she blew a stream of cigarette smoke up towards the ceiling. Wheaton said, “Why don’t we start with the rope that’s still tied around your left wrist.”
Cash lifted her arm and goddamn, there was the twine they had used to tie her up, still wrapped around her wrist. So that’s where she started. She talked through the night’s story while Wheaton clacked away at the Underwood Five typewriter.
Three cups of coffee and seven cigarettes later, Wheaton unrolled the last page out of the typewriter. He asked her to sign and date the last page. He sorted the originals from the carbons, carefully putting the carbons back in the thin flat box he had taken them out of. Saving taxpayer dollars, Cash guessed. Then he stapled both the originals and the carbon copy. He put the carbon copy in a locked file behind the desk and the original in a manila envelope.
“I’ll give this to the feds tomorrow,” he said standing up. “I’m going to lock it in my cruiser so it doesn’t get misplaced between now and then. Come on. You ok to drive home, or you going to sleep on your bed there?”
Cash swung her feet off the bench and sat back up. “I’m good,” she answered. “I want to sleep in my own bed. And I think tomorrow—or maybe now it’s today—I have to go register for classes.”
“It’s not that late. Not even closing time. Which doesn’t mean you still have time to go to the bar.” Wheaton reached behind himself and pulled out Cash’s rifle. He checked the safety and then handed it to her. “Glad you’re alive, kid.”
“Me too.” She walked out of the jail to her Ranchero, climbed in, turned on the ignition, shifted into gear and drove into Fargo. At her apartment, she put the rifle under her bed, dropped all her clothes as was her fashion and soaked for about ten minutes in a steaming hot bathtub. She climbed out, washed her hair in the kitchen sink and crawled into bed. Just as she was dozing off, she remembered to reach out and set the alarm for seven am. She didn’t want to be late to register.
When the alarm went off in the morning after too few hours of sleep, she had a hard time adjusting to the sunlight streaming in the windows. She swung her feet out of bed and felt the soreness in her thighs and calves from the run into town the night before. She got dressed and thought damn, she would have to go by JCPenny’s and get a new jean jacket sometime today. She opened her top drawer and pulled out her money sock and got out a twenty and stuffed it into her jeans pocket, her driver’s license in her back pocket, and she was off.
At the college she couldn’t find a parking spot. All the lots seemed to require a parking permit. She ended up parking three blocks away.
There were long lines of young white kids walking to the administration building. Some were dressed as if they were ready to go to church. Others sported long hair, hip-hugger bell bottoms, and paisley shirts or blouses. There were jocks and cheerleader types. Cash’s chest tightened.
The room was crowded. You were supposed to stand in the line behind the first letter of your last name. Signs were taped up—A-E, F-J and on through the alphabet. She was surprised to see kids standing in the line for Zs. She had never met anyone whose last name started with a Z. Cash felt the adrenalin building in her body. She started to walk out, then thought of Wheaton driving over to the education building on the reservation, getting the paperwork and filling it out. All she had to do was stand in line and she would be in. She went back and stood behind the A-E sign.
The lines inched forward. Some of the kids sat on the floor, backpacks embroidered with peace signs. They scooted forward as the line moved, hefting their backpacks with them. Cash had picked up the papers with all the possible classes from a table as you entered the building. As she waited, she looked over the catalogue trying to figure out which classes she was going to take. While some kids had their forms all filled out, some were poring over the papers as hard as she was.
A short blond, blue-eyed girl was standing behind her. She was wearing the widest bell bottoms Cash had ever seen with flowers embroidered up and down the legs. She was also wearing a beaded headband. She caught Cash looking at her and said, “Do you know what you’re taking?”
Cash said, “No.”
“Are you a freshman?”
“Yes.”
Then the hippie girl proceeded to tell Cash how she could read the sheet to know which classes were for freshman, which were required classes for freshman and that it probably didn’t matter anyway, ’cause Cash would need to find an advisor and if the classes were full, she would need to add and drop classes which everyone did anyways the first two weeks, and how her boyfriend was a sophomore and he had told her which teachers were the easy teachers and how you wanted to set up your school schedule so you didn’t have any classes on Monday mornings or Friday afternoons, that way you always had a long weekend for partying, and did she smoke pot?
When Cash shook her head no, the girl said, “Not yet and my name is Sharon Bakkus. What’s your name?”
“Cash.”
“Cash? Like in money, Cash?”
“I guess.”
Before the girl could ask another question, the line had moved forward enough for Cash to hand in her paperwork. She got a handful of stamped papers back and was told that she would have to go meet with the Indian advisor, Mrs. Kills Horses, in Room 106 to make sure that her scholarship money came in and would pay for her classes.
Sharon, who had moved herself forward to stand by Cash as if they were best buddies said, “I know where that is. My boyfriend is from Turtle Mountain and we hung out there all last year. Wait and I’ll walk over with you.”
Cash didn’t know what else to do so she waited while Sharon registered for her classes.
When they got to Room 106, Sharon introduced her to Mrs. Kills Horses, a tall Lakota woman wearing a dress with a belt that had silver conches on it. She wore nylons, heels and the longest beaded earrings Cash had ever seen. While Mrs. Kills Horses seemed nice enough and explained how her money would come and be disbursed through the financial aid office, Sharon piped in and let her know she knew where that was.
Mrs. Kills Horses continued. Cash had to carry a twelve-course load and make at least a C average to keep her financial aid. While they were chattering at her, Cash felt again the tightening in her chest and a headache, the
worst kind of hangover headache, creep up the back of her head.
She interrupted and asked, “Am I done for today?”
“Well,” said Sharon, “you could go to the bookstore and get your books. Although if you wait a couple days until you get the syllabus from your teachers, you’ll know exactly which books to get, sometimes they change the syllabus at the last minute and if you wait you won’t have to return…”
“I gotta go,” interrupted Cash. She walked out of Room 106. She looked down the hall for an exit sign, saw one and headed for it. She pushed open the door and gulped fresh air. She bounced down two concrete stairs and walked out on to the green grass of the campus mall, surrounded on either side by thick stately oaks. She could tell each one had been strategically planted along the winding sidewalks between the red brick buildings. Even with groups of students sitting on the grass, leaning against their trunks, the trees seemed lonely. Nothing like the oaks along the river that grew where they wanted to grow and leaned in and touched each other with their middle branches, whose voices sang through their leaves like the hum of electric wires running alongside the country roads.
These campus trees were like Mrs. Kills Horses, dressed up in church clothes, their leaves saying, I am an oak, the same way Mrs. Kills Horses earrings and belt said, I am an Indian, but everything else said something else.
Cash walked quickly to her Ranchero. Lit up as soon as she got to the truck and stood there leaning against the cab, looking back towards the college and down at the papers in her hand. English 101. Psych 101. Science 101. And Judo. That would fulfill her physical education requirement.
She inhaled and blew smoke. Could she do this? Wheaton thought she could. She flicked the cigarette into the street, got into her truck and drove to Shari’s Kitchen for some breakfast.
Murder on the Red River Page 15
