Coyote Blue (10 page)

"Enos works whenever he can find someone to fuck with," Billy said. "I'd like to hang that fat fuck's scalp from my lodgepole."

"Oooooo, brave warrior, heap big pissed off," Samson chided in pidgin –
speaking Tonto
, they called it.

"You telling me you wouldn't want to see Anus's head through a rifle scope?"

"Yeah, if I thought I could get away with it. But a rifle would be too quick."

For an hour and a half, between stops to add water to the radiator, they theorized on the best way to do away with Enos Windtree. When they finally arrived at the party it had been decided that Enos should have his entire body abraded with a belt sander and a two-inch hole saw slowly driven through his skull with a drill press. (Samson and Billy had just finished with their first year of shop class and were still fascinated by the macabre potential of every power tool they had used; this fascination, of course, was fed by their shop teacher, a seven-fingered white man who described in detail every accident that had mangled, mutilated, or murdered some careless shop student since the turn of the century. The teacher had been so successful in instilling
respect for the tools
in the boys that Billy Two Irons had taken to skipping two classes after shop to mellow out and would have had a nervous breakdown had Samson not finished building his friend's birdhouse for him.)

Billy pulled the Fairlane slowly onto the dam and up to a dozen cars that were parked haphazardly on the three-hundred-foot structure. He threw the car into reverse and gunned the engine until the transmission screamed in protest and the car stopped in a jerking, squealing mechanical seizure.

Samson was out of the car in an instant and a warm wind coming off the newly formed reservoir washed over him with the scent of sage. Twenty people were gathered at the rail of the dam, beating drums and singing a song of heartbreak and betrayal in Crow. Samson scanned the faces in the moonlight, recognizing and dismissing each until he spotted Ellen Black Feather, and smiled. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Her long hair was blowing in a black comet tail behind her, her shirt was wrapped tight around her in the wind, and Samson noticed, to his delight, that she was braless. She saw Samson and returned his smile.

It was perfect. Just as he had envisioned it on a dozen nights while he lay in the dark with his cousins sleeping around him. They would sing and drink for a while, maybe smoke a joint if somebody had one, then he and Ellen would finish the evening in the backseat of the Fairlane. He walked to Ellen and sat beside her on the rail of the dam, oblivious to the three-hundred-foot drop behind him. As he started to beat his drum and sing he looked back to the car to see Billy adding water to the radiator. It suddenly occurred to him that if he were going to enjoy the favors of Ellen Black Feather in the back of Billy's car, it would be a good idea to move the twenty jugs of water first. He excused himself with a pat on her knee and returned to the car.

"Billy, help me get these jugs into the trunk."

"They're all empty, don't worry about them."

"I'm going to need the space. Just open the trunk, okay?"

Billy handed him the car keys. "Hunts Alone, you are a hopeless horndog."

Samson grinned, then took the keys and ran around to the back of the car. He was loading his first armload of jugs into the trunk when he heard a car pass by and the singing abruptly stopped. Samson looked up to see the green tribal police car stopping in the middle of the partiers, some thirty yards away.

"Fuck. It's Anus," Billy said. "Let's get out of here."

"No, not yet." Samson eased the trunk lid down and joined Billy at the front of the car. They watched Enos Windtree climb out of the car and reach back in for his nightstick. The partiers stood stock-still, as if they were standing near a rattlesnake that would strike at the first movement, but their eyes were darting around looking for possible lanes of escape. All except for Ernest Bulltail, the biggest and meanest of the group, who met Enos's gaze straight on.

"This is an illegal gathering," Enos rasped as he swaggered up to Ernest. "You all know it, and I know it. The fine is two hundred dollars, payable right now. Cough it up." Enos punctuated his demand by driving the end of his nightstick into Ernest's solar plexus, doubling the big man over. Ernest made an effort to straighten up and Enos hit him across the face with the nightstick. One of the other men stepped forward but froze when Enos dropped his hand to the Magnum strapped to his hip.

"Now for my fine," Enos said.

"Fuck you, Anus!" someone screamed, and Samson's heart sank as he realized that it was Ellen. Enos turned from Ernest and started for the girl.

"I know how you're going to pay up," Enos said to Ellen with a leer.

Samson knew he had to do something, but he wasn't sure what. Billy was tugging on his sleeve, trying to get him to go, but he was fixated on Enos and Ellen. Why hadn't they brought a weapon? He moved to the back of the car and opened the trunk.

"What are you doing?" Billy whispered.

"Looking for a weapon."

"I don't have a gun in the car."

"This," Samson said, holding up a tire iron.

"Against a three fifty-seven? Are you nuts?" Billy grabbed the tire iron and wrenched it out of Samson's hand.

Samson was almost in tears now with frustration. He looked back up the dam to see Enos, his gun at Ellen's head, putting his free hand under her shirt.

Samson pushed Billy aside, then reached into the trunk and pulled out the spare tire. He began creeping up the dam, cradling the heavy spare in his arms. The others watched him, eyes wide with fear. Ten yards away from Enos he started running, the tire held out in front of him.

"Enos!" Samson shouted. The fat policeman pulled away from Ellen and was bringing up his gun to fire when the tire hit him in the chest and drove him back over the railing. Samson followed, tumbling halfway over the rail before someone caught the back of his shirt and tugged him back. He didn't turn to see who it was, he just stared over the railing at the dam wall that disappeared into the darkness two hundred feet below.

The others joined him at the rail and several minutes passed before the stunned silence was broken by Billy Two Irons. "I just had that spare fixed," he said.

Part 2 – The Call to Action

Chapter 13 – Forget What You Know

Crow Country – 1973

Of all the people who had seen Enos go over the side of the dam, only Billy Two Irons seemed to have avoided a state of stunned silence. While the others were still staring over the edge into the darkness, Billy was already formulating a plan to save his friend.

"Samson, come here."

Samson looked back at Billy. He was beginning to shiver with unused adrenaline; a look of dreamy confusion had come over him. Billy put his arm around Samson's shoulders and led him away from the railing.

"Look, Samson, you're going to have to run."

A moment passed and Samson did not answer until Billy jostled him. "Run?"

"You have to get off the res and not come back for a long time, maybe never. Everyone here is going to think that they're going to keep this a secret, but when the cops start kicking ass, your name is going to come out. You've got to go, man."

"Where will I go?"

"I don't know, but you have to. Now go get in the car. I'm going to try and raise some money."

Grateful that someone was thinking for him, and because he didn't know what else to do, Samson followed Billy's instructions. He sat in the car and watched his friend going from person to person on the dam collecting money. He closed his eyes and tried to think, but found that there was a movie running on the back of his eyelids: a slow-motion loop of a fat cop with a spare tire in his face going backward over a rail. He snapped his eyes open and stared, unblinking, until they filled with tears. A few minutes later Billy threw a handful of bills on the front seat and climbed in the car.

"I told them you were going to hide out in the mountains and I was getting money for supplies. You should be able to get a long way before the cops figure out that you're not on the res. There's about a hundred bucks here."

Billy started the car and drove off the dam toward Fort Smith.

"Where are we going?" Samson asked.

"First we have to stop and fill up these jugs with water. I'll take you to Sheridan and you can catch a bus there. I don't trust this car to go any further. If we break down in the middle of nowhere you're fucked."

Samson was amazed at his friend's ability to think and act so quickly. Left to himself he knew he would still be staring over the dam wondering what had happened. Instead he was on his way to Wyoming.

"I should go home and tell Grandma that I'm going."

"You can't. I'll tell them tomorrow. And once you're gone you can't call or write either. That's how the cops will find you."

"How do you know that?"

"That's how they caught my brother," Billy said. "He wrote a letter from New Mexico. The FBI had him in two days after that."

"But…"

"Look, Samson, you killed a cop. I know you didn't mean to, but that won't matter. If they catch you they'll shoot you before you get a chance to tell what happened."

"But everyone saw."

"Everyone there was Crow, Samson. They won't believe a bunch of fucking Indians."

"But Enos was Crow – part Crow, anyway."

"He was an apple, only red on the outside."

Samson started to protest again but Billy shushed him. "Start thinking about where you're going to go."

"Where do you think I should go?"

"I don't know. You just need to disappear. Don't tell me where you're going when you figure it out, either. I don't want to know. You could try and pass for white. With those light eyes you might pull it off. Change your name, dye your hair."

"I don't know how to be white."

"How hard can it be?" Billy said.

Samson wanted to talk to someone besides Billy Two Irons, someone who didn't make as much sense: Pokey. He realized that for all his craziness, all his ravings, all his drinking and ritual mumbo jumbo, Pokey was the person he most trusted in the world. But Billy was right: going home would be a mistake. Instead he tried to imagine what Pokey would say about escaping into the white world. Well, first, Samson thought, he would never admit that there was a white world. According to Pokey there was only the world of the Crow – of family and clans and medicine and balance and Old Man Coyote. The white man was simply a disease that had put the Crow world out of balance.

Samson tried to look into the future to see where he would go, what he would do, but any plans he had ever made – and there hadn't been many – were no longer valid, and the future was a thick, white fog that would allow him to see only as far as the bus station in Sheridan, Wyoming. He felt a panic rising in his chest like a scream, then it came to him: this was just a different type of Coyote Blue. He was trying to look into the future too far and it was ruining his balance. He needed to focus on right now, and eventually he would learn what he needed to know when the future got to him. What did Pokey always say? "If you are going to learn, you need to forget what you know."

"Don't use all your money for the bus ticket," Billy said. "Once you get out of the area you can hitchhike."

"Did you learn all this when your brother got in trouble?"

"Yeah, he writes me letters from prison about what he did wrong."

"He put a bomb in a BIA office. How many letters can that take?"

"Not that. What he did wrong to get caught."

"Oh," Samson said.

Two hours later Samson was climbing on a bus headed for Elko, Nevada, carrying with him everything he owned: twenty-three dollars, a pocketknife, and a small buckskin bundle. He took a window seat in the back of the bus and stared out over the dark countryside, really seeing nothing, as he tried to imagine where he would end up. His fear of getting away was almost greater than his fear of being caught. At least if he were caught his fate would be in someone else's hands.

After an hour or so on the road Samson sensed that the bus was slowing down. He looked around for a reaction from the other passengers, but except for an old lady in the front who was engrossed in a romance novel, they were all asleep. The driver downshifted and Samson felt the big diesel at his back roar as the bus pulled into the passing lane. Out his window he saw the back of a long, powder-blue car. As the bus moved up Samson watched the big car glide below him, seeming to go on forever. He saw the back of the driver's head, then his face. It was the fat salesman from his vision. Samson twisted in his seat, trying to get a better look as they passed. The salesman seemed to see him through the blackout windows of the bus and raised a bottle of Coke as if toasting Samson.

"Did you see that?" Samson cried to the old lady. "Did you see that car?"

The old lady turned to him and shook her head, and a cowboy in the next seat groaned. "Did you see who was in that car?" Samson asked the bus driver, who snickered and shook his head.

The cowboy in the next seat was awake now and he pushed his hat from over his eyes. "Well, son, now that you got me wetting myself in suspense, who was in the car?"

"It was the salesman," Samson said.

The cowboy stared at him for a second in angry disbelief, then pushed his hat back over his eyes and slid back down in his seat. "I hate fucking Mexicans," he said.