As Good As Gone (9781616206000) (29 page)

But when the waitress, a tall sharp-­faced woman with small close-­set eyes approaches the table, the boys restrain themselves momentarily. She holds her pencil poised over her order slips. “Okay, what can I get you honyockers?”

They agreed earlier on their order—three hamburgers with pickles and onions and three glasses of water. Stuart was adamant about not paying for soft drinks, French fries, or the deep fried onion rings, which are another Groom's specialty. But just as they're about to tell the waitress what they want, something outside appropriates her attention.

“Hel-­lo,” she says. “What do we have here?” Ignoring the boys, she calls over her shoulder to Mr. Groom, “El, you better come take a look at what's goin' on across the street.”

Will turns to the window, but he can't see anything but parked cars, Northern Pacific Avenue, and its traffic.

Mr. Groom comes over to the table, and he instantly sees what he is supposed to. “Is that Lonnie Black Pipe? By God, that's trouble for sure.”

Stuart almost knocks over his chair in his hurry to get to the window. “Lonnie Black Pipe? Where?”

“Should I call the sheriff, do you think?” the waitress asks Mr. Groom.

He hesitates for a moment before answering. “Nah. Let 'em go at it. Somebody'll come along and break it up sooner or later.”

Will finally sees what everyone else is staring at. Across the street, outside the Wagon Wheel, a small crowd has gathered on the sidewalk. They encircle two men who are squared off like boxers, though their fists are held higher and closer to their faces than Will and his friends do when they pretend to box. One of the men drops into a crouch, and when he does, Will can clearly see that the other fighter is his grandfather!

For an instant he considers making an announcement of the fact—his friends might be impressed!—but since Will can hardly believe that it's so, he dashes from Groom's Diner and into the traffic of Northern Pacific Avenue.

Brakes squeal and horns honk, but Will keeps running, his hands covering the top of his head as if someone has just called out, “Heads up!”

Once he reaches the safety of the sidewalk in front of the Wagon Wheel, Will becomes a part of that group that has now grown larger. A few customers have come out of Bob and Goldie's, the bar two doors down from the Wagon Wheel, and four high school boys who must have been driving by and saw the possible altercation, have also joined the spectators. There are not so many people, however, that Will can't push forward to an unobstructed view.

He remembers—and recognizes—Lonnie Black Pipe from the day his father introduced him at the rodeo. But even without that memory, Will would know the man from town gossip. Lonnie Black Pipe, now there's an Indian you want to steer clear of. And the scars! Will can't imagine what it's like to go through life with a face so hideous that no one would want to look upon it.

The two combatants keep circling, one man occasionally feigning a punch just to see the other pull back. Although Lonnie Black Pipe is a good six to eight inches shorter than Will's grandfather—and looks even shorter because he's bobbing and ducking low—he seems confident and unperturbed. In fact, he's smiling, as though he's pleased to learn that this day has suddenly offered up something golden—an opportunity to give this old white man a beating.

Suddenly, as if a signal has been given, they come together in a flurry of punches. His grandfather bounces a straight right off the top of Lonnie Black Pipe's skull, but it's not enough to keep the Indian from boring in and slamming a blow to the ribs that brings a
whoof
from his grandfather.

Then their arms and torsos lock together, twirling away from the Wagon Wheel's front door, which is propped open and exhaling its stale beer and whiskey breath onto the summer sidewalk. As the two men move the crowd moves too, so synchronized they might all be part of the fighters' clinch.

Will can see both men, yet he can't tell exactly what the fighters are trying to do. They grunt and push and pull, but neither seems to be gaining any advantage. This isn't like any fight Will has ever seen, not on the playground or on television. How can they be struggling so hard, how can they be so intent on damaging the other, and yet so little is happening? There—Lonnie Black Pipe thrusts his head up, up, trying to butt Will's grandfather.

As they grapple, they fall against the Wagon Wheel's window, and Will winces as the glass shakes in its frame.

But the glass holds, and the two men slide and roll across the glass and then scrape against the Wagon Wheel's bricks. And then they run out of wall to hold them up. A narrow alley separates the Wagon Wheel from Houk's Auto and Truck Parts, and when the men come to that gap, one or both of them loosens his grip, perhaps to keep from falling.

THIRTY-­FOUR

How the hell did we get in this alley, Calvin thinks. But more urgently he wonders how he can get out, for he feels himself instantly at a disadvantage. The space between the two brick walls is so narrow he can't keep his opponent at a distance, and already Calvin feels Lonnie Black Pipe's menacing heat closing in. Furthermore the sun's rays have a difficult time finding their way in here, and in the dim light Calvin can't see his opponent's eyes very well, and the way they widen just before he throws a punch has been important to Calvin's defense and counterpunching.

The crowd is making matters worse. They've followed the fighters, and now block the opening to the alley. They are strangely silent, no one shouting encouragement, no one demanding that the fighters get serious, no one cheering one fighter or jeering the other. They're just waiting.

Calvin has a bad feeling about how he might leave this alley, but it doesn't take him long to run through the possibilities: he'll walk out or he'll be carried.

And because he'd just as soon the matter be decided sooner rather than later, Calvin throws out a left jab and follows it with a right hook. Lonnie Black Pipe easily blocks the jab with his forearm, and the other blow doesn't do much damage either. Calvin aims it at Black Pipe's temple, but it barely skims the top of the Indian's head.

The punches give Black Pipe something to think about, however, and he seems a little less determined to bore straight in on Calvin. Instead, he circles to his left, and as he does, he bounces up and down in his crouch. “Hey, old man,” Black Pipe says, “you got your will made out?” This question seems to please the Indian, and he grins at his own wit.

Calvin says nothing but backs up a step, and when he does, something crunches under his boot. He tries moving to the side but now whatever is covering the alley floor is so thick underfoot that he has to drop his guard to steady himself. Fortunately an incinerator barrel is between him and Lonnie Black Pipe.

When Calvin glances down to see what he's walking on, he sees nothing but glass. Shards, slivers, jagged circles, beads, and chips of broken glass, green and brown and clear. Scores of beer and liquor bottles have been broken back here, perhaps hurled deliberately against the brick wall or smashed accidentally in careless attempts to throw them into the barrel.

“We can both walk out of here,” Calvin says. He keeps his voice low; these are words meant only for Lonnie Black Pipe, not for the goddamn rubberneckers. “Your choice.”

This remark seems to amuse Lonnie Black Pipe. He doesn't say anything, but his lopsided smile widens, and his fists now loosen and lower too. At the sight of that twisted smile and those open hands, Calvin allows himself to relax. Especially because Lonnie Black Pipe now moves away from Calvin.

But it's not because he too has grown tired of this fight; he is only changing his tactic, and Calvin doesn't understand that until it's too late. Lonnie Black Pipe grabs the rim of the trash barrel and topples it over. When Calvin skips to the side to avoid the tumbling barrel and the debris that spills from it—more broken bottles but with a few cans too—he stumbles and feels himself going down.

In the Wagon Wheel, he could urge himself to stay on his feet, but there he also found something to grab onto to stay upright. There's nothing here, but Calvin has another warning for himself—
Don't land flat!
—for if he does one of those daggers of glass might pierce his heart or lung or liver.

Calvin manages to twist himself to the side as he's going down, partly turning his back to his attacker in the process. He gets his hands out to break his fall, though he knows full well what the consequences of this action will be.

His hands, his hands from heel to fingertip, are pierced, torn, and sliced open, a sensation so specific that it separates itself immediately from the scrape of his skin across the concrete and cinders of the alley floor. But then the feelings merge, as the momentum of his hands pushes the glass deeper into his flesh and the rush of warm blood mixes pain with pain.

From behind Calvin, someone cries out, “Shit—he's down!” and for an instant Calvin wonders if that's his own voice.

But then he hears another—“Look out!”—and it can't be Calvin's own cry, because he couldn't warn himself before Lonnie Black Pipe's boot slams into his ribs.

With the pain from the kick—oh, God
damn
, here's another one!—comes an even sharper pain when he tries to breathe, and whether in or out makes no difference. Was that snap from a rib breaking?

The shadows in the alley grow. The crowd recedes and falls silent. Not even the broken glass surrounding him gives back any light. He's losing consciousness, but Calvin can't seem to stop his drift toward darkness. He's on all fours, glass grinding into his hands and knees, and now if he collapses completely, his face and chest will be unprotected. Despite the pain, he tries to push himself up. Nothing happens. It's as if every muscle has been sliced free of bone, and he's left with nothing but desire
get up, get up, get up
.

Suddenly Lonnie Black Pipe is squatting right in front of Calvin, so close Calvin can smell the Indian's sour breath. Black Pipe grabs Calvin's hair and lifts his head so Calvin can see what's in Black Pipe's hand. It's a broken beer bottle, and Lonnie Black Pipe holds it by the neck, its jagged points glinting like knives.

“Hey, look up here,” Black Pipe says. “Somebody just told me who you are. And if you wasn't Bill Sidey's old man, I'd slice your fucking face off. You hear me?”

Blood is smeared across Black Pipe's face, the result of a still-­dripping bloody nose. The sight gives Calvin a little shiver of satisfaction, both because it means at least one of his punches did some damage but also because that bright scarlet is a sign his vision is clearing.

Black Pipe yanks Calvin's hair and asks again, “You hear me?”

Calvin nods as best he can.

Lonnie Black Pipe stands up, glass crunching under his boots. He tosses the broken beer bottle aside, and it lands with a melodic
ping
completely at odds with the purpose Black Pipe was going to put it to. “Now get the fuck out of here.”

Calvin braces himself for another kick, but it doesn't come. A moment later, Lonnie Black Pipe walks away, and it sounds to Calvin as though the Indian is being congratulated for “showing that old man what's what.” There was a time here in Gladstone, Calvin thinks, when an Indian who so much as looked the wrong way at a white man might have been beaten within an inch of his life, or several inches beyond. Well, that's progress, Calvin supposes.

Then, while Calvin is still trying to find a way to get up, while his boots are scrabbling ineffectually in the glass and cinders, a man wraps his arms around Calvin's midsection, and helps him to his feet, a gesture he's grateful for, despite the pain it causes him. Yes, he's sure of it; his ribs must be broken.

Once Calvin is standing, the man continues to hold on to him. “Easy, mister,” the man says.

Calvin leans back to get a look at the man who has come to his rescue. A burly, bespectacled fellow in a powder-­blue Ban-­Lon, he looks to be close to Bill's age, and Calvin is about to ask him if he, like Lonnie Black Pipe, also knows Bill Sidey, but then Calvin stops himself. His mind's still not quite right, and he'd better keep his mouth shut until he can be sure it won't be nonsense that spills out.

“Just hold on,” the man in the blue shirt says. “We'll get somebody to call an ambulance.”

Calvin takes a couple of unsteady steps. The man in the blue shirt keeps his arms out as if Calvin is a toddler who might fall at any moment.

“I'm all right,” Calvin says.

“Mister, you might be a lot of things, but all right isn't one of them.” His blue shirt is streaked with Calvin's blood.

“I don't need the ambulance,” says Calvin. He's moving now, and the momentum of one small step after another seems oddly to steady him. He walks out of the alley, and when he does, the rays of the late afternoon sun hit him so hard he has to look away. But more light is another help. Calvin is sure now that both the darkness of the alley and of unconsciousness are behind him. The small crowd parts to allow him to walk farther from the alley and the site of his beating and humiliation. Even the man in the blue shirt now leaves Calvin alone.

To help stop the bleeding, Calvin holds his hands high and out in front of him. In the heel of his left hand, a piece of brown glass protrudes, and a scrap of the bottle's label still adheres to the glass. Schlitz. Calvin plucks out the glass and lets it fall. If an ambulance is coming, its driver hasn't turned on the siren. The only sounds are the usual rush of traffic, and an occasional
ooh
—half gasp and half moan—when someone sees Calvin's hands.

WILL KNOWS HE SHOULD
do something, but what? He couldn't see what happened in the alley, but it must have been awful, awful, awful, because his grandfather is limping and dripping blood, and when he walks out into the light his face is as gray as the sunstruck sidewalk underfoot.

“Grandpa?” Will says, but he barely whispers the word, and he knows that his grandfather can't hear him. What if his grandfather asks Will for help? Then what would he do? He can't stop his grandfather's bleeding, and he can't stop the man, the gruesome-­looking man, who did this to his grandfather. Lonnie Black Pipe is walking back toward the Wagon Wheel in the company of two men who are laughing and patting the Indian on the back.

Will looks around for Stuart and Gary. If they also crossed the street to watch the fight, maybe Will can ask them what he should do. But everyone who gathered for the spectacle is drifting off now, so that Will stands alone in front of the door of Houk's Auto and Truck Parts. From inside the store comes the smell of rubber tires and motor oil.

Will is usually unable to look at any blood or gore—a run-­over dead squirrel in the street can literally sicken him—but strangely the sight of his grandfather's cuts doesn't bother him. While Will is pondering this change in his nature and wondering if it's a consequence of having been submerged in the river's muddy water and believing that he was going to die, his grandfather suddenly stumbles. He doesn't fall, but he stops, and he seems not only to have lost his energy but his way. He takes a breath, and Will can hear the hiss when his grandfather inhales. Then Calvin shakes his head as if to clear his vision, and when he looks around to get his bearings, he sees Will.

“Grandpa,” Will says, loud enough this time to be heard.

“Will, what are you doing here?”

“I saw you,” Will says.

“Well, you weren't supposed to.” His voice is a low-­pitched rasp and not much louder than Will's whisper. “Now you better get on home before you see something else you shouldn't see.”

“Your hands.”

“Nothing a little iodine and a few Band-­Aids can't take care of.”

“Can I help you . . . ?”

His grandfather shakes his head, and with that tight-­lipped gesture he begins to move again, his first step a lurch in the direction he was headed in before.

Will waits a moment, then follows. Soon he sees where his grandfather is going—toward his truck, parked in the lot of the Northern Pacific train depot. Will runs ahead of his grandfather, and when he arrives at the truck, he puts his hands on the door's hot metal as if he's touching goal in a game of tag.

Once he catches up with his grandson, Calvin Sidey says, “You want to help? Reach into my pocket here and get out the keys and unlock the door.”

His grandfather's T-­shirt is smeared with red, but Will can't see any blood around the pockets of his grandfather's Levi's. Still, Will's careful as he reaches in for the keys. When he extracts them, he starts to walk around to the driver's side.

“No,” Calvin Sidey says. “Open this one,” meaning the closer passenger door.

Will does as he's told. When he opens the door, the heat that had been stored in the truck rushes out like a hot sigh. Will climbs in.

“Huh-­uh,” his grandfather says. “Out.”

“I'll ride home with you, Grandpa.”

“Out,” Calvin Sidey says again.

Will jumps down from the truck, landing on asphalt that feels soft from the day's heat. Then Will has to step aside so his grandfather can reach inside the truck. Blood drips on the seat, but Calvin Sidey doesn't seem to care. His grandfather opens the glove compartment and takes something out, and Will gasps when he sees what it is. A gun, a pistol. Unlike many of his friends, Will doesn't have much experience with guns. He doesn't own one, he doesn't hunt, and he's never even fired a gun, not a shotgun, not a rifle, and certainly not a pistol. The weapon in his grandfather's hand is an automatic, Will thinks. Like soldiers have in the World War II movies. His grandfather has trouble holding the pistol, and if he weren't able to loop his finger through the trigger guard, it would probably fall to the pavement.

Thus armed, Will's grandfather heads back exactly the way he came, and though he certainly must know where he's going, if he were lost he could follow his own blood trail.

Will has no doubt of his grandfather's destination either. He's going back toward the Wagon Wheel to take revenge on the man who beat him. Will looks around frantically. There aren't many people on the street, but the few who are present, lingering outside the bar or walking to one of the other bars or businesses in the neighborhood, pay no attention to the old man and the boy making their way down the sidewalk in a strange slow dance. Does no one notice that this bloodied old man has a gun in his hand? Shouldn't someone stop him? Where's that man in the blue shirt? Earlier he was going to call an ambulance—will he call the police now? If someone doesn't do something, his grandfather will walk into the Wagon Wheel and shoot Lonnie Black Pipe. And then not only will the Indian be dead, Will's grandfather will be arrested, tried, convicted, and sent to prison. Or worse . . . One of the older boys, Larry Jenkins, whose father is a lawyer, told Will and his friends earlier in the summer that Montana still has the death penalty, and the method of execution is hanging!