by David Treuer
Out on the street, Billy and Van Winckle looked at each other. “Goddamn,” was all Van Winckle could manage. Billy said nothing. They had nowhere to go in their refurbished boots except back up the hill to the château, where Van Winckle couldn’t stop talking about his boots, describing in detail what the old cobbler had done and marveling that he didn’t want any money. Still Billy said nothing. He suddenly couldn’t stand the sound of Van Winckle’s voice, the metallic twang of it. He got up from his bedroll and wandered out of the château through the kitchen, past the carriage house, and up the hill to the spruce that grew straight and true behind it.
These trees were much bigger than the spruce back home, and straighter. A few hundred yards in, the trees opened up, and he saw a small cottage tucked between them. It was dark. He put his thumb on his shoulder under the sling of his M1, but it wasn’t there. He’d left it by his bedroll in the château. He panicked for a moment. He patted his pockets as if something in them would provide a secondary line of defense. He listened. The wind raked through the pines. One of the shutters of the cottage banged in the wind.
The cottage was small compared to the château, but it was bigger than all the shacks in Billy’s village. It was made out of the same dark slate as the rest of the buildings. The windows were framed with rough-hewn spruce logs, and the rafters were squared spruce as well. Billy could see adze marks on their faces. The door was secured by a strong iron hasp and padlock. He tried the shutters on the window to the right of the door, but they were barred from the inside. He moved off the steps and tried the window to the left. The wooden bar was rotted and he was able to open them. The leaded-glass window was filthy, and he rubbed his sleeve on the glass and cupped his hands and peered in.
The stone interior was plastered over and whitewashed above walnut wainscoting. Opposite the door was a massive split-stone fireplace with a metal grate on a swivel pulled to the side. There was a low table of dark wood in front of the fireplace, surrounded by wooden chairs with wickerwork seats and backs. The chimney was almost black with soot, and behind it, above empty pegs, Billy saw the outlines of three guns painted in soot, as though the ghosts of the guns rested there. On either side of the fireplace were deep bookshelves filled with leather-bound books. Both of the far walls were covered to the wainscoting with prints of stags, boars, and birds in flight.
A plane droned overhead. Billy rested his forehead against the glass. Frankie hadn’t listened to him. After Ernie saw them kissing, he’d said, “Goddamn Indians,” and stalked off into the woods, and Billy had run after him. He should have taken the Winchester from Frankie then, before anything could happen. He’d known they weren’t going to find any German out there. They weren’t going to find anything.
What if Frankie had listened to him? “Wait for me, Frankie. Wait.” And he did. He turned to face Billy, the Winchester drooping. “What is it?” “Just wait, okay?” And in two steps Billy was there, by his side. He took the gun out of Frankie’s hand and raised his own and held it against Frankie’s face. Frankie closed his eyes and his lashes brushed away Ernie’s incredulous sneer and Felix’s stoic, comprehending gaze. And they turned away from the deeper brush and blowdown because there was nothing to see there, nothing waiting for them there. Instead they turned back toward the Pines and walked up the steps to the stone cottage.
The door was unlocked and when Billy pushed it open and stepped in, still holding Frankie by the hand. A fire in the stone fireplace greeted them, radiating heat. They shucked their jackets and hung them from the rack next to the door. They removed their boots. Frankie dropped into one of the chairs near the fire while Billy hung the Winchester on the pegs and then sat down next to him. The books were funny in their old-fashioned way, so sure of their own authority. Frankie filled the teakettle from a pail of water, his gestures sure and precise, and Billy put it on the hob and swung it over the flames. After they had their tea they moved to the couch. Frankie wasn’t tired, not at all, but Billy was. And so he did something he’d never dared before. He stretched out with his head in Frankie’s lap. He closed his eyes against the bright glow of the fire. Frankie rested his elbow on the couch arm and read a book. His left hand rested on Billy’s forehead and he absentmindedly stroked his hair. They had nothing to hide, nothing to worry about. Occasionally Frankie lifted his hand to turn the pages of the book, and Billy’s forehead felt the heat of the fire until it returned. And then the hand drifted down to his chest, and his stomach, and lower still. Frankie lay down next to Billy. They had nothing to hide because no one could see. There was no rush. There was no rush this time, and it was Billy who was being held and Frankie who was doing the holding.
They had all the time in the world. So they stood and took off their clothes and lay back down again. Billy closed his eyes against the utter shock of having Frankie’s full length pressed against his legs, his back. How perfect, how acceptable, it was to feel Frankie’s skin against his, and what a surprise it was to feel how cold the front of Frankie’s thighs were, and how warm his groin. He felt Frankie’s erection pressing against him and he reached back and brought it between his legs so that it rested against his own, which was now in Frankie’s hand. They had all the time in the world, and they’d use every blessed minute of it. Frankie tasted him. And he tasted Frankie back. They had all the time in the world.
Billy’s mind’s eye retreated until the two of them were framed by the window. Then he moved farther back still, and up, until the boys inside the cottage and the window itself were framed by the trees. Higher and higher in the sky he went, until he lost sight of them, and the firelight was a glow, a smear, then gone altogether. The slate-shingled roof was lost among the branches. At last there was only a wisp of smoke, which might have been from the chimney or, from that height, might have been from the fires of war burning brighter all around them in the dark.
* * *
Billy fit his hands in the grooves of Prudence’s ribs and helped her move. His orgasm, which had felt a long way off—and was made even more notional by the whiskey and vodka—arrived suddenly, unannounced. He kept going on empty for another half minute, the way a heart-shot deer would keep running till it died. Prudence leaned back and looked at him, still galloping along on top of him, but then she slowed and stopped. His erection melted. Prudence coughed and his penis gushed out, along with a rush of semen.
“I came inside you,” said Billy apologetically.
“Don’t sweat it, Billy Cochran.”
“I mean—”
Prudence rolled her eyes and shook her head.
She cupped her mound with her left hand and dismounted. She found the door handle with her right hand and stepped out of the truck. She squatted down and peed on the ground, her upper arms resting on her knees.
“You’re a peach, Billy.”
She picked something out from between her teeth with her fingers, stood, and slid back into the truck. She bent forward and rummaged on the floor of the truck for her purse. Billy could see the knobs of her spine. She sat straight and put her feet back on the dash and lit a cigarette. She stared out the windshield across the river.
He reached down and pulled up his pants, lifted his hips off the slick seat and brought them all the way on, and buttoned them and renotched his belt. He couldn’t look at her.
“I didn’t do it.”
“Feels to me like you just did.”
“No, Prudy. I mean, I didn’t shoot her.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Billy Cochran.”
“I was there. I was standing there. Right next to him.”
“I know it. I was there, too.”
“Frankie’s the one who did it.”
Prudence didn’t look at him. She took another drag on her cigarette and looked at it as though it might tell her something before ashing out the window. He could feel her mind working.
“You were there.”
<
br /> “Yeah. Yeah, I was there.”
He still was. Still there. Forever there. Forever walking fast after Frankie after Ernie and David and Felix had seen them kiss. The branch slapping to a standstill like the ticking of a radiator. The goddamn heat bearing down on them. The lazy sound of deerflies. And Frankie just ahead of him. “Stop, Frankie. Wait, Frankie. Just wait.” He’d said that and Frankie had stopped. And he’d waited until Billy caught up. Very little sun came through the canopy. There was no wind, not a lick of it. Nothing. Frankie’s hair was damp at his temples and he bit his lip.
“Just calm down, Frankie. We can circle around the back.” That’s all they had to do. They could just take the long way around and avoid Ernie. Felix wouldn’t say anything. Davey Gardner was scared of his own shadow. And who would he tell? A mosquito landed on Billy’s arm and he pinched it between his finger and thumb. It was so dripping hot, even the mosquitoes were slowing down. He reached out for Frankie’s arm. Frankie waved his hand away. “Hear that?” He bent forward and peered into a blowdown in front of them. Something stirred deep in the branches. “Hear that?”
Frankie raised the gun. “Watch me,” he said. Just the way Billy used to when he shot at squirrels high in the trees. Just the way he had said it when he killed that duck that first day long ago. Billy reached out and said, “Stop,” but Frankie fired at the same time. Billy’s ears rang. He wasn’t ready for the sound. The forest absorbed it. But then, a second later, they heard something thrashing in the brush. Frankie turned toward Billy, smiling.
“You see? You see that? I got him! I got him! That’s what a man does, Billy. I can’t believe it. I got him.” Billy took the gun from him. Frankie’s hands were shaking and he fumbled for his cigarettes. “I can’t believe it,” he said. “Lucky or what, kid?” he said. But they’d never been lucky again.
“I was right next to him, Prudy. Next to Frankie, I mean. He’s the one who did it, Prudy. I’m telling you. He was the one who did it. He wanted to get the Kraut. He wouldn’t let anyone else carry the gun.” Billy was crying.
“I’m tired, Billy.”
“You didn’t know him. You were only around him for those two days.”
“You were the one holding the gun when Felix pulled me out of there.”
“I took it from him, Prudy. I took it. He couldn’t even hold it anymore.”
“So what? But it was you. You were holding it. I saw you holding it,” she said. “I saw you.”
She looked very small and lost, pressed against the door across the seat from him. She seemed miles away.
“But no one told me. No one told me that.”
“I’m telling you.”
“I want you to stop, Billy. I just want you to stop telling me.”
“You should know. It was him that did it. I’m telling you.”
“And I’m telling you I’m tired. And I’m telling you I want to go. I need to go home. Let’s go.”
“Prudy.”
“Just stop talking, Billy, and start driving. Please start driving.” She drummed her feet on the floor.
Billy slid behind the wheel and moved the packages back to the middle of the bench seat.
Prudence retracted her feet and hugged her knees.
He started the truck and the sound of it was loud in his ears.
When they reached the blacktop, Prudence dropped the rest of her cigarette out the window and curled up, facing away from Billy.
“Here,” said Billy, pushing the package across the seat. “You can put this on. It’s new. It’s brand new.”
Prudence reached behind her and felt around on the seat for the package. She found it and dragged it across her hips and clutched it to her chest. Billy couldn’t see her face. She stayed that way till they pulled up in front of the Wigwam. Then she gathered her things—dress, underwear, bra, purse, and the package containing the dress Billy had bought at J. C. Penney for Stella—and got out of the truck, clutching them to her chest. She turned and kicked the door shut with her bare foot, then leaned her face in the open window.
“You know what, Billy?” Her teeth were clenched and she hissed the words. “You know what? You ain’t my type. You ain’t even my type at all.”
With that she turned and walked around the side of the Wigwam and disappeared from view.
TWELVE
THE RESERVATION—AUGUST 3, 1952
The stranger knocked on the door just after noon, sweating into his black clothes. He held his black hat in one hand and a soda bottle in the other, and his lank hair stuck to his scalp. He was small, with narrow shoulders, and his suit was much too big. His eyes were dark and deep-set, framed by gold-rimmed glasses. His jaw was narrow and pointy, and his mouth was very small. He was nervous, even Mary could see that. She peered out past his shoulder to confirm that there was no car—she’d been out back hanging laundry and hadn’t heard one. He must have walked from town. She looked down at his shoes. They were like the black shoes the men wore to church, with leather soles. The tops were covered in road dust.
She used to walk all the way from her parents’ camp into the village and back, once a week. Six miles one way. What looked like easy walking could be hard if you weren’t dressed for the heat. And her short leg—the one they said would catch up to the other but never did—ground into her hip with each step and made walking painful and difficult. Even as a young girl, by the time she’d made it to town, she was tired, a slow coal burning in her hip. But she’d have to load up her pack with flour and soda and whatever else they needed and walk back. Later, when she was a teenager, she worked in the kitchen at the Pines, and that had been hard, too: a long walk from town, the river crossing, and then all that cleaning, scrubbing, sweeping.
Now she was married. No one thought she’d ever get a husband, and they said as much. At best you’ll find some drunk half-breed, they’d said, but most likely not even that. But she had found Gephardt, or he had found her. They found each other. Together they proved everyone wrong. How many times had she seen him at the camp without actually seeing him? How many times had she limped by on the other side of the fence? She searched her mind but had no recollection of him, not until after the war. He had decided to stay on when the rest of them were sent back to Germany. She first encountered him in the spring of 1946, when he saw her in the store and helped her carry her things back to her parents’ sugar bush. Mary liked to think that he stayed for her. He had chosen her, though. He had chosen her and she had chosen him when everyone in the village had nothing good to say about her, but she had succeeded.
Now that she was married, she made her shopping list at her table, and then she tied on her scarf to keep her hair down in the truck, and Gephardt drove her and she didn’t have to walk. Her husband. Hers. Her house. Her wash. Her kitchen. Her stove. It was all hers. She had proved them all wrong, and she was not above being a little prideful about it.
She was still shy. She hid her shopping list face-side against her aproned belly because only she understood her pencil marks, little symbols that weren’t real words, not like the ones the girls who had gone to boarding school knew how to make. Oh, you’re real old-time, the others would sneer. Why even use real paper, they’d ask. Why even use your hand or a pencil? You should just bite down on birch bark and make your list that way. Mary had wanted to go to school far away in the prairies in Flandreau like many of the other girls. But not even the missionaries or the agent or the superintendent at the school would have her. When she went to church as a girl, the priest didn’t seem to care one way or another about her salvation. And why? Because one leg was shorter than the other? Because she wasn’t pretty like the other girls? What kind of God had men like that working for him? The pastor at Trinity Lutheran in Deer River was always nice to her, almost as nice as Gephardt, whose arm she held as she climbed the steps to the church.
She wished she knew more English, though, mo
re than the little she had to do her shopping and trading. When the stranger stood at the door and said, “I have come,” his accent was so thick she couldn’t follow along, and she wished she understood more. “I have come for him,” he said again, and of course Mary knew that he was speaking of Gephardt. She smiled and motioned the stranger into the kitchen, and then motioned for him to sit. She held a jar under the pump and filled it with water and set it on the table. Once the stranger was seated, she went out to the shed to get Gephardt. Gephardt was so creative. He’d found a way to run a line in the house so she didn’t have to pump water in the yard, which was a terrible chore in the winter, with her leg the way it was. Hard work. But with him, the hard work wasn’t quite so hard as it used to be.
Gephardt was in the shed patching a canoe. She told him there was someone to see him, and he put his things down and walked past her. She turned and followed him. He opened the screen door and stopped just inside. The stranger sat at the table with the water in front of him, untouched. They stared at each other. Both afraid. Both tense. Mary wasn’t sure Gephardt wanted to sit down. It was so unlike him. Lots of people came to the house. Gephardt’s skills were in demand. He could make anything, really anything, out of metal. Rice threshers, saws, spuds. He had a still and made liquor out of potatoes. Who else knew how to do that? People were always coming by, especially for a jar of “Gephardt’s,” which is what they had come to call it. Since he couldn’t always understand them very well, he made big gestures with his hands and smiled at them a lot. He served them coffee and didn’t mind when they sat in the shed and watched him work, even when they drank. Once a couple of breeds from over across the line had fallen asleep while they were waiting for Gephardt to finish welding the seams of a syrup pan, and he didn’t even wake them. He threw some blankets over them and let them sleep in the shed. In the morning Mary came out with biscuits and yesterday’s coffee and set them on the packed earth of the shed floor. She stood over them until they stirred and since she knew the type—she knew they’d take whatever they could and wouldn’t think twice about it—she said: “Eat. And then out.” And she added: “Maajaayok akawe. Giishpin igo maajaasiweg giga-basidiyeshkooninim.” Just so they’d know she wasn’t joking. Gephardt was so kind, so generous, that he’d get taken advantage of if she wasn’t there. But that’s how it always was, wasn’t it?
