His smoothly shaven cheek grazed mine. “Sorry. I’m probably the last man you wanted to dance with tonight, eh?”
“It’s fine.”
“Then relax. I remember when you used to think this was fun.” He twirled us into the middle of the dance floor.
I’d relaxed when he blew it all to hell by softly whispering in my ear, “Are we ever gonna talk about it?”
“I haven’t made my decision on the ranch yet.”
“You know that ain’t what I meant.”
His disappointed tone grated on me but proved I wasn’t any more anxious to spill my guts now than I’d been years ago. “Drop it.”
He did.
During the slide steel guitar solo, we’d glided to the outskirts of the dance floor again. Soon as the song ended, I pushed away from him and made tracks for the exit.
The balmy evening cooled the sweat on the back of my neck. In the darkness, I stopped to get my bearings, angry about the resurgence of memories. Of me as a hopeful teen. Of Jake. Of what we’d had and what we’d lost.
When footsteps shuffled behind me, I snapped, “Go away. I already told you I didn’t want to talk to you.”
“Sorry. I thought Sophie said…”
I whirled around. Not Jake forcing me to face my demons and our past. It was Estelle Yellow Boy.
“I’m sorry, Estelle. I thought you were someone else.”
Sophie sidled up beside her. “Estelle wants to talk to you about something.”
Sophie’s meddling knew no bounds.
“It’s about Albert.”
I figured as much.
Estelle spoke to the ground. “I ain’t gonna lie to you. Albert was going through a rough patch. Running off all the time. Growing up on the rez is hard. We thought it was a phase and he’d straighten out. He won’t get the chance now. So, I wanna know if you’ll help me find out who killed him.”
“Run that by me again?”
“That’s why I come here. To see if you’d help me.”
Happy people milled past, laughing, joking, living, as we lurked in the shadows. Sobering, that Estelle wasn’t at the dance to kick up her heels, to forget about her sorrow for a while, but for the express purpose of talking to me. “What do you think I can do?”
“Anything you’d be willing to do would be something. As it sets, the acting sheriff, Dawson, ain’t done nothing. He ain’t talked to none of Albert’s friends. He ain’t even really talked to us. If I ask him questions, he looks at me like if I’da been a better mother, Albert wouldn’t be dead. Looks at me like I’m wasting his time. Acting like my boy is just another dead Indian.”
My feeling of disquiet grew.
“Your father was a good man and a good sheriff. Fair. If he was still alive, he’da done everything to find who done it.”
“Though I appreciate that you thought so much of my dad, I honestly don’t know how I can help.”
“I can give you the names of them kids he’d been hanging with. They started some club. Albert didn’t talk much about it, which makes me think them boys might of had something to do with him getting killed.”
“Estelle, I don’t know the first thing about—”
“I don’t expect you to do it for free. I ain’t got no money, but I can give you this.” She withdrew a piece of white flannel from her jacket pocket and carefully unfolded it.
Nestled in her palm was an elaborately beaded necklace. Beautiful primary-colored beads surrounded a simple circular design. Pieces of polished bone attached the medallion to the chain, which looked to be a thick black braid fashioned from the hair of a horse’s tail. Red, black, yellow, and white beads—colors attributed to the Earth’s four directions—dangled from curly buffalo leather strips below the pendant.
I touched it. I couldn’t help it. It was magical.
“This belonged to my great-great-great
unci
,” Estelle said. “Been in my family longer than the Gunderson Ranch has been in yours.”
“I can’t possibly—”
“You have to. I need somebody’s help, and only someone who’s lived through a buncha horrible things knows what I’m going through.”
I bristled, expecting her to mention specifics about the woes that’d plagued the Gunderson family for generations: death, death, and more violent death with a dash of crazy stirred in just to spice things up.
Instead, her voice broke. “His neck was snapped like a twig. Whoever done this left his body like it weren’t no more’n a deer carcass. I can’t forget about it and move on like everybody wants me to.”
Shiny tears skimmed the pockmarks before dripping down her brown face. “Paul don’t know I’m here talking to you. He thinks we oughta stay out of it.” She sniffled. “I tried, but I just can’t.”
Maybe it was the crack in her stoicism. Maybe it was because I’d seen broken and forgotten bodies scattered all over the world—more than most people could imagine. Maybe it was a need to connect with another woman to band together against men’s indifference. Whatever it was, something inside me shifted. The theme song from
Underdog
began to get louder and louder inside my head.
“Okay. I’ll see what I can find out. No promises though.”
Estelle’s chin dropped to her chest. “Thank you.”
“Do you have a list of his friends? A place for me to start?”
“Estelle? Where are you?”
She looked up. Panic flitted through her eyes. She hastily swiped her tears and pressed the flannel into my hand. “I’ll call you. Or get the list to you somehow. Please don’t say nothing to nobody about this.” She hustled away to deflect Paul’s suspicion.
Before I could give the necklace back to her, she vanished. So I hid the package in my boot. Desperate for a cold beer, I wove through the cars and trucks. Tripped over my own damn feet when I didn’t see a pothole because of my altered vision. I probably looked like just another drunk. Or maybe the guilt of taking that family heirloom even temporarily added extra weight to my imbalance.
After I wiped the dirt from my knees, I locked the necklace in the glove box. As I reached for my cooler, a couple of shouts caught my attention, followed by the unmistakable sound of a body hitting metal.
A fight.
No kidding. Nothing cowboys liked better than to get drunk and brawl. Mostly the young cocky ones, but I’d seen my share of forty- and fifty-year-old guys duking it out over a slight, real or imagined.
I zeroed in on six or seven kids circling two punks mixing it up in the dirt. Couldn’t tell if any of the gawkers were adults who should’ve stopped the asinsine show of testosterone. I peered over the edge of the crowd to see if I had to be the voice of reason.
And I noticed his shoes right off. Good thing. His face was so damn bloody I doubt his mother would’ve recognized him.
Levi.
He’d pinned the other guy on the ground. He was so tired the wild punches he swung didn’t land.
The situation left me in a dilemma. If I broke up the fight, Levi’s friends wouldn’t let him live it down. If I didn’t break it up and Levi ended up hurt… I couldn’t live with that option either. As I debated, I heard a sharp male voice bark, “What’s going on back there?”
Both boys jumped up. Wiped blood from their faces, glaring at each other from bruised eyes. “Keep your fucking mouth shut about this, Arpel.”
“You don’t tell me what to do, fuckface.”
A short-lived respite. More words were exchanged, and they were back at it again. Pushing. Shoving. Swinging. Missing.
I attempted to diffuse the situation by trying to insert myself between them. Yeah, I probably should’ve waited the full thirty seconds until the Samaritan showed up, but I’d broken up my fair share of fights. Mostly between drunken adult male military personnel, so I didn’t consider the danger of coming between a couple of pissed-off hormonal high school boys.
I should have.
“Stay out of it. It don’t concern you.” This free advice was snarled from a bystander the size of an oak tree.
“Shut your big mouth, Moser,” Levi panted, keeping his eye on his opponent. “
You
stay out of it.”
“Make me, Arpel.”
Levi growled.
“Ooh. Tough guy.”
“Don’t hafta be tough to take a pussy like you.”
Then Levi charged Moser. I ended up in the middle and fell into a tangle of punching arms and kicking legs. Took a shot to my shin. An elbow to the gut. A glancing blow off my jaw. That one hurt. I braced myself for an opportunity to (a) escape or (b) inflict some damage.
Before I’d implemented either plan, both guys were pulled off me and I stared at the angry face of Sheriff Dawson.
Crap. I huddled on the ground, trying to make myself inconspicuous.
“What’s going on here?” Dawson had one meaty fist twisted in Levi’s tank top and the other in Moser’s baggy Denver Nuggets basketball shirt.
When neither answered, he shook Moser. “You. Tell me.”
Moser flashed Levi a nasty, bloody grin. “Nothing’s going on, Sheriff.”
Dawson scowled and focused his attention on Levi. “What about you? Gonna tell me why a couple of you guys are covered in dirt and blood and the rest are standing around watching?”
“Nothing going on. Sir.”
He released them. “Either go inside or get on home. I see any of you guys out here again, doing
nothing
, and I’ll throw you in the back of my patrol car and you can do
nothing
from a cell, understand?”
A bunch of murmured “yes sirs” then boys scattered like aspen leaves in a windstorm.
Dawson finally noticed me. “What the hell are you doing down there in the dirt, Mercy?”
“Nothing.”
He scowled and extended a hand to help me up, but Levi beat him to it.
I hid my shock that my nephew actually acknowledged my presence, and grunted as Levi jerked me to my feet.
“You all right?” Dawson asked me.
“I’m fine. Nothing ice and Excedrin won’t cure.”
Dawson’s gaze pinned Levi like a bug. “Want to say anything now that your buddies abandoned you?”
Levi dropped his chin. His tangled hair fell in his face.
“Didn’t think so.” He sighed. “Levi, I need to talk to your aunt alone.”
From beneath his fall of hair, Levi glared a you’re-gonna-rat-me-out look.
I couldn’t do that to him. “Sorry, Sheriff, it’ll have to wait. Levi’s face is hamburger. If I don’t get ice on it, his jaw will swell up like a toad’s.”
“You headed home?”
I didn’t answer. Let him think we were leaving. “See you around, Sheriff.”
He cupped my elbow before I’d made it two steps. “I haven’t forgotten you promised me a dance.” His husky whisper vibrated in my ear, sending a pleasant shiver through me. “Don’t think I won’t collect. Drive safe.”
Huh. His declaration was as curious as my reaction to it. I tried not to think about either as I led Levi to my truck.
“I didn’t cover for you. I didn’t know what you and that kid were fighting about. Why’d that guy Moser jump in?”
“Because he could. Fucking jerk-off. Thinks everybody oughta bow down to him, like he’s some alpha leader.”
I let his foul language slide because—hello? Pot? Calling the kettle black? I unwound a healthy chunk of gauze, snipped off a strip with my pocketknife, and dipped it in the melted ice from the cooler. “Normally I don’t offer advice, but if I were you, I’d clean off some of that blood before your mom sees you.”
“That bad?”
“Take a look.”
Levi ducked down and peered at himself in the passenger’s-side mirror. “That asshole Donald Little Bear really marked up my face, eh?”
He’d said it with pride. Boys. Men. Some things never changed. “You won’t be winning any beauty contests.”
After he’d become mildly presentable, he hopped up on the tailgate next to me.
I dug out two icy cold cans of Bud Light. Put the first one against my jaw, and popped the top on the other. I sucked down a mouthful of ambrosia and sighed.
Levi asked, “Can I have one?”
“For your eye?”
“No. To drink.”
“Hell no.” I sipped. “Does your mom let you drink beer?”
“Hell no.” His lips formed a smarmy grin. “But I do anyway.”
“You been drinking tonight?”
“Nah. Probably why being at this dance sucks.”
I slid him a sideways glance. “Were you having fun until you and Mr. Little Bear decided to make each other bleed?”
“Are you serious? These things are so lame.”
“Yeah? I always thought they were kinda fun.”
“Not when everyone is watching you all the time.”
Who was watching him? Not his mother. “Think you’ve got it bad? My dad was sheriff. When I was your age? Every time some guy he didn’t like asked me to dance, he’d cut in. In his wheelchair.”
Levi laughed. It was a pure, sweet sound. Not yet man, not quite boy. I didn’t know if I’d heard him laugh at all in the last month.
“I s’pose that’s worse.”
I waited a beat. “Worse than what?”
“My mom. Treating me like a little kid. Making me come to this thing in the first place, so we could spend some time together, then sneaking off with Theo the first chance she gets.”
“Who’s Theo?”
“Her boyfriend.”
The next swallow of beer hit my stomach like liquid nitrogen. “Since when does she have a boyfriend?”
Levi looked torn. Obviously he needed someone to talk to, but his loyalty was to his mom, even when he wasn’t happy with her. “For a couple months.”
“
Months?
Since before Dad died?”
“Yeah. Right after Doc told us about Grandpa.” He paused. “With all the people dying in her life… Ma can’t handle stuff like that. No one but me really knew that Gramps took care of her more than she took care of him. And when he couldn’t anymore, she… had to find someone else who could.”
“Why couldn’t you be the one she leaned on when Grandpa got sick?”
His soft brown eyes were a mixture of bitterness and sorrow. “Because she still sees me as a little kid.”
Oh damn. My heart crumbled, my stomach lurched, my eyes stung. Damn my sister. Did Hope have any idea how badly she’d hurt her son by turning away from him? To a strange man? When Levi needed her?
I chugged the beer. Angrily chucked the spent can behind me in the truck bed and opened the second one. “I understand why she might’ve been hesitant to tell me at first. But I’ve been home for well over a month. Seen her every damn day. Why hasn’t she mentioned it?”
“You ain’t missing much, believe me. Grandpa would’ve hated him.”
“Is that why hasn’t she brought this Theo guy around to meet me?”
“Yeah. She’s afraid of what you’ll think of him.”
“What’s he do?”
“He teaches summer classes at the rec center on Lakota culture.”
“Is he Indian?”
“Some kind. I have to go to them classes because I failed social studies this year. He’s teaching that old shit that nobody cares about. He totally creeps me out.”
“Why?”
“Besides the fact that he’s doing it with my mom? After he spends the night, Mom acts all giggly and shit. It’s sick.”
That’d creep me out, too. “So, Theo was the guy she was dancing with a little while ago?” Levi nodded. No wonder she’d been plastered to him. I couldn’t believe she hadn’t told me. I couldn’t believe my powers of observation were so piss-poor I hadn’t noticed she was mooning around in love.
“It kinda surprised me they were dancing in public. They ain’t exactly been telling anyone they’re together.”
At least I wasn’t the only one in the dark.
“Can I ask you something, Aunt Mercy?”
“Shoot.”
“Do you like being in the army? I mean, I know you gotta like it some because you been in it for so long.”
“You asking if I had it to do over again if I’d join up?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
Talk about a loaded question. Hope hated my military service. The guns. The potential for killing. But this wasn’t about Hope. I wouldn’t blow the first real connection with my nephew and lie to him because his mother would want me to.
“Yes, I would. Even though we’re at war and the chances of getting stationed in Iraq or Afghanistan after enlistment are pretty much guaranteed, I can’t imagine what my life would’ve been like without the army.”
“So’s it true what Mom said? You selling the ranch? Going back to being a soldier?”
“I’ll never be the soldier I was.” I drained my beer. My grimace had little to do with the tart taste of the barley and hops.
His head whipped toward me. “Whaddya mean?”
“Look. If I tell you this, swear you won’t tell your mom. Or anyone else. This is top-secret stuff.”
“I swear.”
With the complete absence of street- and yard lights, the sky was a swath of pure black punctuated with silver dots. It never ceased to amaze me it was the same sky I’d seen on the other side of the world. “The reason I didn’t come back until after Dad died was because I was in the hospital.”
“Why? What happened?”
“Shrapnel injury.”
“Holy shit! Where?”
“Iraq.”
“No. I meant where on your body did you get hit?”
“Oh. In the leg.” I wasn’t ready to talk about my eye to anyone.
“Cool! Can I see it?” Guilt distorted his face. “I mean, not cool that you were hurt—”
“It’s okay. I know what you meant.”
The wavering tent walls of the military hospital in Balad flashed in my mind. I’d waited damn near a day for treatment since my injuries weren’t life threatening. As I writhed in pain, I wondered if the injured Iraqi on the cot next to me had spent the day executing American soldiers. In those hours I basted in heat and hatred, I realized the antiseptic scents never masked the odors of blood, urine, death, and despair. And my utter sense of hopelessness expanded to near hysteria when they’d finally tracked me down amid the hundreds of injured soldiers to give me the message my father was dead.
The band belted out a countrified version of “Satisfaction.” Car doors slammed and people shouted, yet silence hummed between us. I spied a young mother pacing in the shadows of the building, trying to soothe a screaming baby wearing nothing but a diaper and tears.
“So how come you don’t want no one to know?
Shee.
You’re like… a hero! They would’ve had a parade for you and stuff.”
I didn’t answer. I wondered if he’d come to the right conclusion without my having to explain.
“You didn’t want none of that, did you? Not because Grandpa had just died either.”
Surprisingly astute kid. “No.”
Cricket chirps rose and fell.
“Can I ask you something else?”
“Sure.”
“Have you ever killed anyone?”
My natural inclination was to lie. Yet, if he was serious about the military, he deserved to know killing was part of the job. “Yeah.” I yanked the flask from my boot and emptied it in my mouth. “Why?”
“Just curious.”
“Come on, Levi, that’s crap. Tell me why.”
He didn’t look at me. Instead, he picked at a gummy chunk of unknown origin imbedded in the tailgate. “Mom tells me you’ve liked to shoot stuff since you were little.”
“Lots of people hunt,” I said cautiously.
“She wasn’t talking about hunting. She was talking about killing. In cold blood.”
I didn’t point out that Hope had no room to be judgmental when talking about killing.
He blurted, “Did you really shoot your dog when you were kids?”
Whoo-yeah. Hope had a high opinion of me.
It’d been a long time since I’d thought of Rufus, our Australian blue heeler.
That brutally hot afternoon became so clear in my mind I could almost smell the cherry Kool-Aid. Dad was working second shift. Sophie had gone home. None of the ranch hands were around. Just Hope and me and a lazy summer day.
We were swinging on the porch when we heard the most godawful howling. We followed the yelps to the end of the driveway and found Rufus cowering in the ditch.
He’d been hit by a car, back legs broken, hips crushed. He couldn’t even drag himself out of the gully.
Hope raced to pick him up. Happy as Rufus seemed to see her, in his paralyzed state he couldn’t even wag his fluffy tail.
I’d stopped her. “Don’t touch him.”
She wailed, “But we have to help!”
The insistent cawing of black crows brought my attention to the cloudless blue sky and the bluish-black wings of the birds circling above us. Nature knew. I knew. Nothing would help poor Rufus.
“Call Daddy,” Hope begged me over Rufus’s howls. “He’ll tell you what to do. He’ll send Doc Kroger. Hurry!”
The vet was too busy to waste time on a lost cause. My stomach churned the Kool-Aid into battery acid. I knew what Dad would’ve done. No one liked putting down an animal, but it was a harsh reality of ranch life.
My heart pounded. My palms dripped sweat. I’d made myself look at Rufus, the cattle dog my mom loved. Blood poured out his muzzle. Diarrhea matted the black-and-white fur on his rear haunches, proving he’d lost control of his bowels.
I had no choice. “Stay here with him for a minute, okay?”
Relief crossed Hope’s face. She’d nodded and dropped to her knees to stroke his head.
At the house I’d unlocked the gun safe, removed the Remington, grabbed some ammo, and shoved them in my shorts pocket. I’d dragged a shovel, letting the distortion of metal grinding on rocks and gravel fill my ears as I trudged to the end of the driveway.
Hope was bawling. When she saw the rifle, she began to scream.
“Unless you want to watch, go on and get in the house.”
“No! You can’t do this! I won’t let you!”
I stayed mute. It was easier for her to be mad at me. I swallowed the hard lump of regret. Tears swam to the surface again. So when the lump returned, I’d let it stay there like a bone in my throat to keep the tears at bay.
“P-please, Mercy, don’t. Wait until Daddy gets home. He can fix him. Daddy can fix anything.”
I put a cartridge in the chamber.
She screamed. Tears and snot streamed down her red face. “I’m telling! I’m calling Daddy at work to tell him you killed Rufus!”
“Fine. Do it.” I put another shell in.
“I hate you! And when Daddy hears what you done, he’ll hate you, too!” She’d run, shrieking and crying until the screen door slammed behind her.
I don’t remember stuttering any poignant last words to Rufus. I hadn’t been tough enough to look in his bright blue eyes as I’d aimed the barrel at his head. I braced the buttstock on my shoulder, and pulled the trigger.
The whimpering quit.
I traded the shotgun for the shovel. Digging a hole took an eternity when I had to stop every shovelful to wipe my tears.
That night when Dad finally came home, he hadn’t said a word. He’d rested my head on his strong shoulder as we rocked together on the porch swing, in silence, listening to the familiar sounds of a summer night.
But that day had been another turning point in my life.
“Aunt Mercy?”
I blinked away the bad trip down memory lane. “Yeah?”
“Did you cry? You know, afterward?”
“Like a baby.”
Surprise registered on his face. “How come you never told Mom you cried?”
“It wouldn’t have mattered. I did what had to be done.” And in doing the right thing, once again I’d widened the gap between my sister and me.
“How old were you?”
“Twelve.”
He nodded. “When I was twelve, I had to shoot my cat Mooshu after a skunk bit her. Grandpa let me use his gun. Mom freaked out. Like, freaked out for days.”