Perma red, p.16
Perma Red, page 16
“Easy,” he said.
He cradled her head with moist hands and pulled her forward so that her nose was resting in the pocket of his groin. She closed her eyes. Her breath crowded her nose. She could smell cloves, a sweet and bitter smell she could taste near the back of her throat. She jumped. She felt a small squeeze at the crown of her skull then a sharp coldness, a small fire that took hold and began to make her limbs loose as fever. She could feel a thickness at the top of her head where her skin was swelling. Her tongue seemed loose and heavy—large as a bull’s, she thought, swallowing—a slick tongue slipping back from the hammer.
Louise tried to bolt from the firm grip of the doctor but he held her tight. She could hear small snips. She could see long strands of her hair fall to the floor. She could see blood on the doctor’s hands and blood on the scissors he dropped in the sink. She could hear someone moaning behind the nurse.
“Louise,” the doctor said, “you’re fine now.”
She heard her own voice coming closer to her and realized she was making a deep sound she could not quiet.
The doctor held Louise’s face tight in his cool hands and asked her to remove her clothing. Louise closed her arms over her breasts and set her teeth. She had seen the ragged wound. She didn’t want the doctor to see the deep smile cut on her left breast. The doctor stood for a moment, looking at Louise. His face was clean shaven and slack. He had a fine tremor that ticked beneath his right eye.
“Take this,” he said, handing Louise some white gauze, a small brown bottle. “Fix yourself up there.” He pointed to her chest. “I can’t be responsible.”
The doctor took a jar of sweet-smelling ointment and rubbed the tender spot on her leg. He held her calf and pressed firmly with both thumbs.
“I’ll set this,” he said. “I suspect a hairline fracture.” Louise could see his scalp turning red through his sparse hair. “I shouldn’t but I’m going to,” he said. “Do you understand?”
Louise looked away from him.
“I’m just going to set this for you. Wrap it up in hard white plaster,” he said. He took a breath. “You just take it easy. Come back in a week or so and I’ll cut it off. See, when we get hurt like this it’s best to protect ourselves. Insurance,” he said.
The nurse brought in a pack of ice and pouched it on her leg. The doctor left the room. Louise felt the cold first at the back of her neck. She lay still for a long time until her leg was as cold as block ice. She had fallen asleep and when she awoke it was late afternoon. She heard the doctor enter. She saw the white strips of powdered gauze the nurse carried behind him in a silver tray. She closed her eyes and felt the heavy plaster on her leg. “Anyone asks,” the doctor said, “they can answer to me.” She could hear the beef in his voice. She could see Baptiste and the doctor entering the boxing ring.
She looked out the window to the white-grass hill beyond St. Ignatius, the small road that led out to the highway. She could see Charlie’s patrol car in the weedy parking lot. Louise looked down at the cast on her leg and lay back down on the table. She would find a way to ditch Charlie. Even broken up and dizzy she could outwit Charlie. She had to leave the Flathead if just for a few days. She removed the ice pack from her leg and got up to rinse her hands, to dab cool water to her lips. She felt for a moment that she would pass out. A hand hotter than her memories of late July cupped the back of her head. She felt blood, light in her belly, and then she felt the clean, cool sting of Dirty Swallow’s poison. Baptiste was in her.
Charlie Kicking Woman
CHASING THE DREAM
Louise got away from me and I was sick with worry to find her. I radioed dispatch, lied through my teeth, told them I was in hot pursuit of Baptiste Yellow Knife and I was crossing the reservation boundary line and heading to Missoula. I was chasing the dream of Louise, sure she had headed to town. It was a dumb-luck wager that I knew could mean both my job and my marriage, but I made the decision with my temples throbbing with fever. I was going to find Louise. I was going to save her.
I saw the loiterers of small-town businesses leaning against storefronts, looking for loose change. I watched the glassy stare of the Blackfoot River worn smooth by the press of autumn. I saw women in “going to town” dresses eating ice-cream cones, wearing gloves and lipstick, men driving clean cars, men visiting men in hardware stores, and they turned to glance at me in my reservation uniform, unsure of what authority I had. I saw myself in storefront windows and turned away. With each window I passed I expected to see my shoulders twitching.
I sat at the end of the long bar at Cattleman’s and was surprised when they even served me a pop. It was the warm end of a long fall, the rattling tail of summer, the drinkers were saying, the hottest part. Indian summer, they said into their sluggish beers. In the haze of slow smoke I nursed my second pop, under the scrutiny of drunk men etching quarters into the bar to leave their marks. I wondered if Louise was lost now in the nest of a tavern dark with men as mean or meaner than Baptiste. The thought worried me.
I walked down the alleys, watching for Yellow Knife but looking for Louise. I checked under the Higgins Bridge thinking some of the Indians there would have seen her. They hadn’t. I left a few dollars lighter. I walked past all the beer joints and listened. I knew I would find her. I could sense it. The day was slipping to afternoon and I walked the long streets, a loiterer myself now, a man determined. When I did see her I felt the weight of my own heart. If it were not for the cast on her leg, I think she would have run from me. Louise wiped her chin on her sleeve, but she was only trying to hide a smile because I must have looked ridiculous to her. I was out of place here and she knew it. She looked a little funny, too; I noticed her crutches were too high for her.
“You looking for me, Charlie?” she said. She had caught me off guard.
“I was looking for you,” was all I could say.
She didn’t say a word to me then. I turned to her clear, sad eyes and I felt suddenly ashamed to be chasing her, no different from Stoner or Yellow Knife, my desire visible as sunrise. Louise gave no indication she noticed. She looked out over the street. I felt I had made a mistake but I was not ready to back out.
“Hungry?” I said.
She ordered ham and eggs. The waitress brought us two dishes smoking with hash browns and white toast limp with butter. She ate. She drank great steaming gulps of coffee without flinching and lit a cigarette, but did not stop eating. I watched her. I ate my toast, looked out the window too. While I was talking to the waitress, I saw Louise grab the sugar bottle and make syrup out of coffee. She looked up from her cup and smiled and I wondered where this was heading. I looked at her slender fingers, the chipped red polish on her nails. She did not wear Baptiste’s wedding ring.
“You eating this?” she said to me, and I pushed my plate toward her.
When she had finished, she lit another cigarette and blew a slow breath away from me. I had wanted to be with Louise off the reservation for so long that when the moment presented itself to me I was ready to take it. I felt the slow trickle of sweat beneath my armpits. In late fall the day had turned hot. I would take my chance with her and hope I could settle my desire once and for all. Maybe it was Baptiste’s beating her that prompted me to this action, fear there would be no more chances.
I took her to a hotel room. On a day that sweltered like fever the steam pipes were sizzling. The room felt damp. I sat down on the bed and wiped my forehead. She limped behind me. I removed my jacket slowly, watching her face. She did not look away from me. She did not seem afraid of me. The window shade strained the late October sun yolk-yellow. I held my breath. I hated the sound of my voice then, the demands I was making on her. I had told Louise to do a hundred things as an officer of the law; now I was telling her as a man to stand in front of that shade, to undress for me slowly, one piece at a time, her summer-faded dress, her single shoe.
“Leave the stocking on,” I told her so low I didn’t think she would hear me, but she did. She lifted the dress up over her head. Awkward. The dim room glowed like goldenrod. She had on cotton bloomers, washboard-gray and riddled with holes. I decided I liked the holes, a hundred small scents of skin, a hundred openings to her. One crutch fell to the floor and she hopped to get it. She tried to cover her breasts with the spread of one hand. I could see the doctor had bandaged and taped her left breast. I felt the old anger for Baptiste pressing my chest. “What did that bastard do to you?” I said and wished I hadn’t.
She turned her back to me. “Left my brassiere at home,” she said.
She covered her face. Her shoulders bowed forward. I could see the hollow of her back, how it pooled in small darkness at the base of her spine. White light sprayed though thin tears in the curtain shade to touch her skin, each rib, I thought, her ribs. I watched her, knowing something about myself I had not known before.
I stepped out of my slacks and unbuttoned my shirt quickly. I pulled my undershirt off over the bristle of my hair and felt a sudden blush of weakness for my wife who had ironed my uniform the night before. I stood naked before Louise. Desire lit my belly, so strong in that moment, I could forgive myself for what I was about to do. I was surprised when she stepped toward me. I hoped she would not notice my jaw was trembling in my effort to keep my teeth from chattering. I was so close to her I pulled her to me. Her cast was cold, rough, and heavy, as it brushed my leg. I helped her lift it onto the bed, thinking of her thin leg in plaster, the bone-break ragged beneath yellow bruises. She crossed her arms over her breasts, her head heavy on the pillow. The hair close to her neck was wet and curled tight to her throat. I tried to pull it back. My fingers were swollen fat in the heat. I poked her accidentally in the throat. She coughed, and I sat up laughing at my damn clumsy hands. Unsmiling, she turned her face from me toward the brownish skulllike water stain that bloomed above the bed stand. I lay down beside her.
I saw the high ceiling, watched long threads of dust chase our breath. Sunlight haloed the edge of the shade, illuminated the dress she had left on the chair. The thin fabric fluttered slightly from a breeze beneath the door crack or through the mercury sliding window. And for some reason I thought of my grandmother, the day she died. She had worn her hair in tight braids all her life. But my grandfather loosened her long hair after she had stopped breathing and opened up all the doors and windows in the house. It was April. And the wind was cool and smelled of lilacs and water. All night the wind blew through her hair, lifting it up to the bedposts like the pale, gray ghost of her. My grandfather sat with her body for two long days, not leaving her side, not eating, watching her still chest just to make sure she had stopped breathing.
I heard the dense breath of Louise’s sleep, saw the pulse in her neck slow to dreams. Her hand slipped to the bed, pulling half the gauze from her left breast. I leaned closer to kiss what she had hidden and pulled back from the sweet-rot smell. From her open breast blood oozed yellow. I eased back the tape and lifted her arm over her head. She was sleeping. I looked closer. And I knew then but the thought jolted me. Yellow Knife had cut her. It was a bottle cut. I had seen the wound in bar fights. Unmistakable. I knew the jagged flesh, the puncture in places so deep, no blood. Bloated white edges like skin too long in water. Infection.
I got up from the bed and rocked back a little, holding my gut. I had a snort of whiskey in my jacket that I kept for roadside accidents. I pulled the flat bottle from my pocket, sniffed it once and steamed a washcloth with tap water. I hoped she was sleeping. I pulled the tape off slowly, breathing through my mouth. I touched the hot cloth to her raggedy breast. Her eyes were closed but she was still and tight. I dabbed at the wound, touched the cloth to it, drawing blood-water. I dabbed. I dabbed. A hummingbird tongue to a delicate rose. I covered her breast with the cloth and went to the bathroom to wash my hands. I pressed my wrists to the sides of the cool porcelain basin. I could smell her blood beneath my fingernails. I dug my fingers into the soap bar, rinsed clean.
Louise was unmoving on the bed, her eyes halfclosed. I opened the whiskey bottle. I decided not to tell her how I was going to use it when she opened her eyes. I felt the sting for her in the tips of my fingers. Her tears were clearer than water, smooth, steady, quiet, clean. I wanted to say, Jesus Christ. I wanted to say, Dammit. Dammit to hell. Damn.
“You should see Baptiste,” she said. I didn’t know what she meant at first. I didn’t see the humor in it. I said nothing. Light changed from yellow to blue. I lay down beside her, forgetting why I’d come here. Forgetting anything but the sound of her breath in sleep.
I knew the white moon was growing at the window shade; the Blackfoot was turning black-silver. I knew Louise slept beside me. I was in Missoula in the Northern Pacific Hotel. My name is Charlie, I said, Charlie Kicking Woman. I felt heat in the room, a strange sweat-heat like there were many people standing close together under a brutal sun. Waiting. There was someone else in the room with us. Who are you? I whispered, afraid of the answer.
The shade lifted from the window and the breeze was cool. Moonlight moved on the linoleum like water, the color of cow-pasture creeks: Dead Horse, Crazy Woman, Magpie, Lightning, Revais, I whispered the names. I knew something was waiting to happen. I stood near a wide river, pressed my foot in water. I felt nothing but the pulling. The pulling down. I remembered what Railer said when we were investigating a complaint near Nairada and had found a dead man in Clear Creek. His words sizzled on my saliva-thick tongue. We are all just ghosts waiting to happen. I held on. I reached out and put my hand on Louise’s thigh. She was fever-wet and smelled like the raw split center of a spud. The sun was red at the back of my neck. A hot wind dried my scalp. I was not dreaming.
I sat up to catch her and saw pinpoints of light circle my glances. The light was so bright my pupils failed. I struggled from sleep to find Louise standing at the foot of the bed balanced on crutches.
“You were dreaming,” she said.
She had brushed her hair. It hung smooth and straight over her shoulders. She was ready to be going.
“Lie down,” I said. I was groggy with early morning, not sure what I was seeing. I propped myself up.
She stopped at the door and then opened it fast. I jumped up to stop her. Punched the door shut with my fist. She backed away from me.
“I’m sorry to find you’re like all the rest,” she said.
“No,” I said. “Please, Louise, sit down.” She hesitated, watching me. Then she sat down carefully on the bed, balancing her cast leg. I pulled the pillowcase off my side and began to rip it.
“Take off your dress, now.”
I went into the bathroom and grabbed the clean washcloth. I folded it and wrapped it in the sheet strips. She had slipped her dress off her shoulders. Her skin held the copper light of October. I could see the delicate trace of her ribs, the bones of her spine. Her hands were very still on her knees. She sat straight, poised in her near nakedness as if I were going to sketch her. She trusted me and I was grateful.
She had turned the old rough bandage inside out and had put it back on. It had dried a little but it still smelled awful. I eased the tape off and gave it a toss toward the cobwebbed ceiling. She smiled away from my glance.
I felt like an asshole. I had become a man worse than the husband who had beaten her. I had wanted more from her than Yellow Knife. I had seized the opportunity of her suffering to be near her. I was the worst kind of fool.
I pinched together the sad, open breast. It was bruise-hardened and puncture-soft. She sucked a breath through closed teeth but did not cry. I had never seen a woman so beautiful. Her red-brown hair touched her shoulders like light. I pressed the cloth to the wound and made her hold it. I ripped a long strip from the top sheet.
“Hold up your arms,” I told her. I wrapped her up good, tight and clean, and stepped back to help her with her dress.
“Go,” I told her. She knocked a crutch to the door as she opened it, and without saying good-bye Louise was gone.
I wouldn’t go after Louise this time. I was going to stay in the hotel room until I figured some things out. I hung my uniform in the bathroom and took a long, hot shower. By the time I had dressed I felt the panic of regret. I would pay for a long night that had already punished me. I looked around the sad yellow room and felt foolish for how I had acted. I felt heavy and sick. I opened the window and sat down on the bed. The night came back to me, a bad dream. Shame. I wanted to be able to go back and change what I’d done. I closed my eyes and prayed like the nuns had taught me. I said an Act of Contrition. I checked the time with a sudden second-chance realization. It was early. Early enough to make it back home, see Aida, and still make my dayshift. Blessings. I felt the surge of my blind stupidity. All I had longed for I already had. It was such a simple idea I left the hotel running, the jangle of my heart hinged on hope. I was praying I wouldn’t see Louise on the roadside because I would have to pick her up. I wanted to go home without recrimination. I wanted to keep my cheating secret, give myself a chance. I rolled down the windows and noticed fall had come. The wind was cold and welcome. The leaves had died and the bright orange colors made me dizzy. A change of season had happened overnight.
Louise
HEADING HOME
She got a ride home in a dull blue Buick with a plump white woman from Paradise and her six kids. The woman’s name was Myrna Michaels and she named off her children like a roll call Louise might remember: Virgil, Vern, Velma, Vernice, Vida, Violet. The name Michaels sounded familiar to Louise but she was too tired to place it. She wished she had a cold beer. She could see the stool where she liked to sit at the Dixon Bar, the brown lip of the beer bottle, the cap hissing white. The day was hot, so hot Louise could feel tears of sweat stream her rib cage, the breath heat rising from her makeshift bandages. She could feel the sheet strips loosening from her ribs, cool and damp. Her leg was swollen in the heat. She could barely squeeze the tip of her smallest finger into the moist opening of her cast.
