The Ninth Metal

by Benjamin Percy

  “Put down the pistol,” Mickey says. “It’s okay.”

  “You sure?” Tina says. “He’s your friend?”

  “My boss.”

  Walter says, “You go on now, darling. Go home. Two of us have some important matters to discuss.”

  “I need to get paid,” she says and Walter says, “His wallet’s on the table. Take what you’re owed. Then we’ll all say so long.”

  She gathers up her things and zips herself into a calf-length jacket. “Call me anytime you want to watch TV or whatever,” she says and pulls the door closed behind her.

  Mickey remains slumped over on the couch. He can feel some whiskey spilling from the bottle, puddling on the cushion, but can’t bother himself to move.

  “Boy, you sure are a sight,” Walter says.

  “I know.”

  “You stink too. Smells like an unwiped ass in here.”

  “I know.”

  “So you just been sitting here in the dark, drinking and smoking and screwing and feeling sorry for yourself?”

  “Pretty much, yeah.” His mouth is muffled by the cushion his face is smushed into.

  “I don’t like the idea of you smoking that stuff. Makes people funny in the head.”

  He motions to his duct-taped forearm. “Yeah, well. Ibuprofen ain’t gonna cut it. I needed some help.”

  “Here I am.” Walter comes over to the couch and looms over Mickey a moment before swinging the trash bag into his stomach. Something heavy thumps him and he curls an arm around it. “What’s this?”

  “Take a look.”

  He struggles upright and moans at the dizziness he feels and delicately peels back the bag to see what’s inside. “Ah,” he says. “Was wondering what happened to him.” He pats the head of Hank Lippert.

  “Could’ve been you.”

  “Almost was.” He closes the bag and lobs it aside, and it rolls under the coffee table. “Frontiers are praying for keeps.”

  “They’re praying for what?”

  “They’re playing for keeps.”

  Walter paces back and forth, and as he does, the trailer shudders. “Not only is my best man down, I got four skid loaders and ten dump trucks that was slashed and scorched last night. And now a storehouse full of wizard blades has gone missing.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “Oh, shit is right.”

  “So what do we do? Parley?”

  “Parley?” Walter takes off his hat and looks into its hollow as if for an answer. “I don’t much like the sound of that.” He clucks his tongue. “But maybe it’s the right move. At least pretending interest in some sort of bargain.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means things have gotten out of control, and we need to change tactics. Now get your stinking ass off that couch and into the shower. I’m going to brew some coffee and sober you up.”

  Mickey edges forward, steadying himself with one arm against the coffee table. “I’m not doing so well ​—”

  “No. You’re not. I leave you in charge and everything goes to hell. You’re going to make it up to me, but first we’ve got to get your filthy, broken ass cleaned up.”

  “Talia’s not going to parley with you. Not unless you got something on her.”

  “Oh, I already thought of that.”

  “What?”

  “Not what,” Walter says. “Who.”

  29

  * * *

  Yesno wears a sports coat to hide the hunch in his spine, and he wears a small smile on his face to hide the pain that defines his days. Everyone always comments on how calm he is, how stable, the rock of the Frontier family. But his composure is a deception, carefully manufactured. He is screaming on the inside.

  His father went to prison. His mother ran off with another man. Then his nana died. Everyone in his childhood abandoned him. The Frontiers—out of loyalty to his grandmother, their longtime housekeeper—had taken him in, but he was convinced they too would tire of him, find him annoying, a nuisance, and toss him aside. This suspicion lingers to this very day, maybe because Ragnar never made the move to adopt him even when calling him a member of a family. Yesno was always like a son or like a brother without actually being one. That’s why he has given himself over to the Frontiers so fully. Everything he does is in service to them so that they will keep him close.

  He never complains, though he has every reason to. About his back, for instance. The kyphosis that warps his spine makes comfort impossible. He is always in pain, no matter if he’s sitting or standing or lying down. The only slight relief comes from floating in water. So late at night, when no one can see him, he sometimes walks down to the pond and sheds his bathrobe and steps delicately into the water and leans back. The cold makes his teeth chatter, but it also eases the throbbing ache in his spine. With the stars shining above and reflected all around him, he likes to pretend he is floating through space, a child in a cosmic womb, free of gravity and the many tasks that weigh him down.

  Ragnar is in a coma. Talia is warmongering. Nico has abandoned them for a drugged-out cult. John, impossibly, is the only person in the family who’s acting sane, but he’s somehow—also impossibly—a metal-skinned freak, a walking weapon. Yesno has enough to worry about with his phone and inbox blowing up: Political lobbying. Business queries. New tax laws. The legal black hole of terrestrial property laws, as Minnesota considers declaring omnimetal a natural resource it can claim. Bulk equipment orders. Industrial-size energy-storage patents. And on and on and on. He feels, on a daily basis, as if he is being whittled down to a nub.

  His one luxury—what someone else might call self-care—is that every Friday, he visits a physical therapist in town for massage, exercise, and traction. This is the only hour in his week he shuts off his phone. Timberwolf Rehab is located in a strip mall next to a Supercuts, a Chinese buffet, and a U.S. Armed Forces recruitment station. Today, the receptionist invites Yesno down the hallway and into the last of three rooms, where Brenda is waiting for him. She is a beefy, short-haired woman who always wears a white polo shirt. Her cheeks are bunched up by her smile. She squirts some oil into her huge hands and rubs them together and says, “There he is. Rip that shirt off, big boy, and get on the table.”

  The walls are painted eggplant purple. Framed anatomical posters hang throughout the room. Soft rock plays from the speakers. He puts his jacket on a hook and unbuttons his shirt. He has done so hundreds of times before but still feels a pang of shame and embarrassment. Brenda is the only one he undresses for. She is the only one who touches him with any regularity. Her hands are twice the size of his own and she uses them to mash and rub and grind his body into submission.

  The paper on the table crinkles beneath him as he settles his weight onto it. Brenda kneads her fingers and presses her palms and digs her elbows into his muscles, talking the whole time about her softball team and the new comedy show she’s streaming and nutritional supplements and essential oils he should consider taking, and he tries not to cry out in pain and ecstasy. After a fifteen-minute rubdown, she bullies him off the table and onto a foam mat on the floor for traction. She calls it the posture pump. And once his head is in place between the many clamps, she squeezes the inflation ball and the pressure ramps up, gently stretching his vertebrae, so that he can imagine the spinal nerves—like damp, colored strands of yarn—visible between them.

  “All right,” she says and squeezes his shoulder. “I’m leaving you. Stay put for a few minutes.”

  He keeps his eyes shut when she’s massaging him, when he’s in traction, because the intimacy and vulnerability make him uncomfortable. So many things make him uncomfortable. His body. His family. His sexuality. His race.

  Ojibwa culture includes a third gender. They are called the two-spirit people. This is a man who practices shamanism or a woman who takes on some male behaviors, like hunting. Someone who doesn’t fit. Someone who can’t be neatly categorized. He has always felt like something of a two-spirit. Even his
name, Yesno, feels like it can’t make up its mind. It’s not only because his role in the family has become almost maternal. He cleans up messes. He is expected to anticipate the trouble people will get into and then get them out of it. It’s also because he doesn’t fit. He doesn’t look like anyone. He is both a part of and apart from the Frontiers. He’s never not felt welcome, but he’s clearly never belonged.

  He has a shelf of books on Ojibwa myths and history and culture, but other than that, he feels completely disconnected from his people. He tried to go to a rice harvest once, but no one would partner with him. At a land-use meeting where he presented on behalf of the Frontiers, some Chippewa protesters called him an Uncle Tom. How long do you need to live with people to become their family? How long do you need to separate yourself from a culture before it’s no longer yours? He felt like he was floating in the middle of these questions the same way he floated listlessly in the pond every night.

  There is a curious sound in the hallway, something like a heavy cabinet falling over. Another minute passes and then the door opens and footsteps scuff across the carpet. Normally Brenda comes in halfway through his ten minutes in traction to check on him. He hears knees pop as she kneels. “Everything okay?” he says. “I thought I heard something fall.” The pump squeezes again, and again, and again—and he feels a jolt of pain and hisses, then says, “I’m sorry, but I think that’s too much.”

  “Too much, huh?” a voice says. A voice he recognizes. A man’s voice. “Does it hurt?”

  Yesno snaps open his eyes and finds Mickey Golden hovering over him. He wears aviator shades that carry a warped reflection of Yesno’s body. His long bottle-blond hair dangles down and frames his face. His left arm is in a sling, but his right hand holds the pump, which he continues to inflate at a heartbeat rhythm. “How about now? Does it hurt now? When it hurts, tell me. Go ahead and scream. Let it out.”

  30

  * * *

  Another cop has gone missing, this time her partner. When Hank didn’t show up for their swing shift—and when he didn’t respond to her calls—Stacie took the squad car by his house, a rambler on the edge of town. She found the front door open and a cardinal fluttering from room to room.

  There was a dried puddle of blood and two bullet holes in the mattress, but no body. The house was a mess, with piles of dishes on the counters and towers of Sports Illustrated and Hustler magazines stacked throughout the living room. But there were no drawers ripped open, no medicine cabinets raided, no dusty rectangles on shelves where electronics once perched. No attempt to make this look like a robbery.

  The only thing missing was his phone. The phone she repeatedly saw him text from when they escorted the omnimetal delivery from town. The omnimetal delivery that was then interrupted by a failed heist. It didn’t take a lot of effort to make the connection.

  Wherever Hank had ended up—a shallow grave, the bottom of a lake—she guessed she’d find Dan Swanson. And whatever happened to Dan Swanson tracked back to the Frontiers. And whatever was happening to the Frontiers connected to the mining surveys of the Boundary Waters and their profit wars with Black Dog. And she thinks she understands the who and why if not the how of it all. But there are a few more questions to ask before she can be certain.

  But when Sheriff Barnes called Stacie into his office and asked if she had any idea what happened to Hank, she said, “No.” The word felt sour and foreign in her mouth. She thought about taking it back but couldn’t. Right and wrong no longer seemed to apply. Her moral compass couldn’t find its true north, and she felt dizzy, sick.

  “You seem pretty shook up,” Barnes said. He wore his reading glasses and gripped a pair of needle-nose pliers. He was putting the final touches on a dry fly, a caddis woven from elk hair. “And you got every reason to be. It’s not just about losing a pal and a colleague. It’s about wondering whether you’re next.” He tested the prick of the fly’s barb with his thumb. “Am I right?” He studied her over his glasses.

  “But I didn’t do anything,” she said in a hollow voice. “Why would I be next?”

  “You don’t have to do nothing. Except your job. You pull over the wrong car. You knock on the wrong door. You answer the wrong call. Sometimes police pay the price for doing what’s right.”

  “Doing what’s right,” she said, talking more to herself than him. “That’s the job.”

  “Poor old Hank.” Barnes set down his pliers and pinched the fly and examined it admiringly before tucking it into a plastic case with many compartments. “It’s a lot to process. You want to talk to somebody, we got people you can talk to. You want to get back to work, sometimes that’s good. Or ​—”

  “Can I take a few days?” she said.

  “Or there’s that. You want to take a few sick days, you go right ahead.”

  She couldn’t believe she was asking. She could barely acknowledge why she wanted the time off. It was the recognition that she needed to set aside her badge and ignore the laws she’d sworn to uphold if she was going to do what was right.

  * * *

  At dawn, Stacie parks her Jeep on a side road and waits. She has positioned herself to look out on the Cannon Lake Highway that runs between Northfall and the Frontier estate. The morning is cold enough that the ditches are white with hoarfrost. Among the pine trees, the occasional maple burns red and a few leaves spin through the air and cling to her windshield. She has a thermos full of hot cocoa and an insulated lunch bag packed with baby carrots and apple slices. She sings along to pop songs on the radio and listens to an NPR report on the mysterious deaths of all the scientists and professors assigned to an Antarctic field station called the Miskatonic. She keys on the engine every twenty minutes to warm up.

  It’s nearly noon when the black Bronco shoots by on the highway. She is peeing in the bushes at the time, and she says, “Gosh darn it,” and hitches up her pants and stumbles forward in a rush to catch up.

  The road wends through thick woods, and she leans into every turn and feathers the brake, not wanting to rush up behind John. She spots him just as he hangs a right onto Otter Falls Boulevard, a road that bypasses Northfall. The Bronco is hauling a trailer.

  She’s never tailed someone before, and it feels kind of impossible. In town she could have darted in and out of traffic, but out in the country, trees and ridges and distance are her only camouflage. For the next twenty minutes, she does her best to maintain a safe space between them, panicking when a fuel tanker and dump truck slow them down on an incline.

  Where he’s going, she has no idea until—a few turns and miles later—the destination becomes clear. Gunderson Woods. The roughly hewn logs mark its perimeter and she drives along them a minute before rounding a bend. Here are the gates. Several dozen cars and trucks are parked here, including John’s. He’s backed the trailer in, and its doors are flung open.

  The compound is skirted by a gravel parking lot, and enough vehicles are staggered through it that she feels comfortable pulling in and parking thirty or so feet away.

  The gates open, and a crowd of metal-eaters approach the trailer. They wear their standard uniform of black. Some are hairless. They seem to drift more than walk, slow and careful in their movements. Among them she recognizes Nico, John’s brother.

  He directs the metal-eaters up the ramp of the trailer and it dips and rocks with their weight. A minute later they appear, carrying something. What it is, she can’t tell, since it’s draped in a black cloth. But from its rectangular shape and size, it appears to be a massive table. They take tiny hesitant steps as they haul it through the gates.

  The brothers linger outside, talking, and Stacie dares to open her door and softly shut it and sneak closer, winding her way through the cars so that she might hear them.

  Nico’s voice is soft, barely a whisper, carried away like tufts of milkweed in the wind, but John’s voice resonates. Stacie hears, “I’d appreciate it if you talked to her,” and “I’m going to do my best, but there’s a million ways t
his could go wrong.”

  The only thing she hears Nico say before he heads back through the gates is “If you’re going to do it, do it now. There’s not much time before . . .” And here his voice drifts away.

  She has heard the stories about Gunderson Woods—about the richness of the omnimetal reserves here—but she can’t see much from where she stands, only a faint gray shine that matches the clouds in the sky. Towers are staggered along the perimeter and she can see the dark shape of the sentries posted there. She’s wondering if they can see her when a scope flashes, maybe trained in her direction.

  Long after the gates close, John remains in the parking lot, his hands on his hips. Lost in thought. Staring at the barrier as if dreaming his way onto the other side. A haul truck growls along the highway, downshifts as it nears a bend, and the noise wakes him from his reverie. He rubs his eyes and goes to close the trailer, and she figures she might as well make herself known.

  Her feet crunch the gravel and he looks her way. “You.” His face crumples with irritation that then flashes into bright-eyed curiosity. “What are you doing here?”

  “Was going to ask you the same thing.”

  He slides a bar across the trailer doors, locking them in place. “Helping my brother out.”

  “He said there’s not much time,” she says. “What did he mean by that? Not much time for what?”

  He heads to the Bronco and opens the driver door and climbs inside. “You’re following me around, spying on me? Guess that means I’m still a suspect.”

  “It’s not what I think you’ve done.”

  “No?”

  “It’s your family.”

  “Aren’t I my family?”

  “No. I don’t think so. And I don’t think you think so either.”