Perma red, p.22
Perma Red, page 22
Louise tilted her head back in the seat of Harvey’s car. It was a cold, clear night, but snow dropped from the trees and froze on Harvey’s windshield. Louise tried to see beyond the car’s headlights. She peered into the darkness, looking for Baptiste Yellow Knife. Looking for the self she had denied. She had never been ashamed to be Indian, except in that moment when for a meal and a warm ride home she had denied her husband.
Her grandmother would tell her the love medicine was gone for certain. But sometimes Louise would sit at the kitchen table with her grandmother and dream that her sister was alive again, that Baptiste Yellow Knife was almost to their home, a deer straddling his shoulders. She told no one how she watched and waited for him to come to her. She listened to the hiss of wind. Snow rattled at the windows like sand but still he did not come. She would curl up at night beside her grandmother under a few thin blankets and old clothes and smell the palms of her hands until she fell asleep.
A pressing ache in her hollow chest made her long to sleep near the soft bellies of old men for warmth, the yawning smell of bacon fat in their wet breath, their cupboards lined with food, jars of yeast, barrels of flour she could knead to sweet bread, the golden batter of honey, smooth and clear on crisp toast, hot coffee with thick cream, full to the top rung of her ribs as they pushed into her. But the hungrier she became, it seemed, the more the men stayed away.
It was a long drive home and Louise began to think about Harvey Stoner. He acted like he had other places to go, better places, places where she knew she would never get to. Sometimes he talked to her about how the Rio Grande in Texas was no bigger than Pistol Creek or how the mountains in Italy looked like the Mission Mountains. She liked his distance. She didn’t want him to be close to her. She wanted him to go away at the end of the evening. To leave her alone.
Maybe it was the long crawl into winter. Maybe it was seeing her once-powerful husband without power that made her want to understand her own intentions. She tried to figure out why she was interested in Harvey. He fed her. He was always good for a two-dollar meal in Plains and a warm night at the Syme’s Hotel in Hot Springs. He’d buy her little things too. He bought her a rhinestone ankle bracelet and a pair of Mary Jane shoes with straps. A dress. Not much of anything she couldn’t live without. The gifts he gave her didn’t matter to her. But he had power. She knew, because any time she was with him, Charlie Kicking Woman would leave her alone.
She could stand up at the bar and swig bourbon from the bottle and Charlie would look right at her and not do a damn thing. She felt safe with Harvey Stoner. He could go anywhere and be welcome. He could pay for a room with solid doors and chain locks. If his car broke down he could get it fixed anywhere. If he couldn’t get it fixed he could buy a new one. He could write a check and have enough sudden cash to pay for a month of good groceries. He would never go hungry.
But Louise had begun learning that power ran two ways. She had started turning down Harvey Stoner. As long as the Indian summer had held she liked saying no to his car ride offers. She liked lifting her thigh up between his legs and saying no when he rubbed against her. He had everything. And she had heard he wanted more. More land, more women. It didn’t make sense to her. He had lost himself to his desire. He had become an object himself.
All she could remember of him when he drove away was the rough smell of his smooth leather seats, the pinklit panel of his car in the darkness. She remembered wood-sweet oil and lavender shampoo, not him. She remembered the black silk stockings, not that he had put them on her. She remembered the purr of his big car driving dirt roads so fast her stomach dropped. She never thought of Harvey behind the wheel. She thought that being with Harvey Stoner was like trying to love every small thing that could be bought. He was tiring.
Once she had slept with another man just to get the scent of Harvey Stoner off her skin. Harvey Stoner could touch her now and it didn’t matter anymore. She felt only small tugs on her skin, a heat in her belly, and then he was gone. And the less he mattered to her the more he wanted her. And the more he wanted her the less he mattered, until he had become small to her. She wasn’t sure what she wanted from him, if she had ever wanted anything from him.
She had left her rhinestone ankle bracelet to gather dust on the windowsill. There was a run in one of her silk stockings and she had thrown them both away. Seeing Baptiste again had made her turn from Harvey. Everything he could give her seemed suddenly unimportant.
“Louise, you love me,” he had said, half-asking.
She looked at the deep shine of the dashboard. She blinked at the reflection of her face, black and silver in the plum-painted metal.
“You don’t have to, you know?”
“I don’t,” she said.
“You don’t what?” He leaned closer to her and was tapping his chin on her shoulder.
She knew what he wanted to hear. She could smell a faint lick of sage through the open window. There was a look some men got when they had lost themselves. A look that wasn’t in their eyes but in the way they carried themselves. It seemed their place in the world had changed, as if they had lost the ability to stand alone. She noticed first the knee crossed inward, toward her. Then more and more they leaned in her direction. And all of their questions began to be directed toward her. What did she want from them? What did she feel about them? What did she think about them? Harvey was pressing toward her. Wanting to know. Wanting to know himself through her. He made her feel sick and closed in, like she needed to press out with her hands, a victim who needed breath.
“Let me out here,” she said to him.
“I want to know if you love me,” he said.
Louise watched the road. He banked his car on the edge of a drift and Louise felt the veer of his tires, the suction of snow. Harvey reached for her hand. She pulled her hand away from him and he grabbed her wrists so tightly she felt the burn of his grasp.
“I got to take a leak,” he said. Louise nodded. She let Harvey Stoner calm down. He kept the car running but he turned off the lights. She could see the outline of him in the puff of cold, the amber haze of his parking lights. A shoulder of wind hit the car and she felt a thousand slivers of ice. She knew the narrow snaking dips of the road, the place where the barrow pits plunged and the places where they bridged to the hillside. In this snow, if she had to make a run for it she could ditch Harvey Stoner.
“I want you to love me,” he said when he had gotten back into the car. Louise could smell the bitter tar of cigar smoke in his hair. He began to rub her thigh. She kept her leg still. He leaned toward her and whispered, “I want you to love me.”
Louise watched the road. From far away she could see the headlamps of another car coming. She waited and watched. She let Harvey roll his thumb along her panty line. When he unbuttoned his slacks she pulled her arm tight to her side and kicked the door open. He was outside the car with her. She could feel the weight of him, the chase of him behind her. Her shoes slipped on the ice-rutted road. Snow ringed the headlamps of the advancing car, created a shimmering glow that lifted around them. Harvey held her wrists behind her and nodded grimly as the car passed them. “You’re showing me plenty,” he said to her.
He slammed her against his car door. The cold had not numbed her. She felt the sting of blood along her spine. She put one hand over her closed eyes as Harvey reached up under her dress to cup her ass. She felt his hard knuckles between her legs as he stroked himself. The wind blew so hard it split her hair to the scalp. She felt the deep ache of her bones. A pulse of heat hit her thigh. For a moment Harvey dropped his head on her shoulder. She grabbed his testicles then, and squeezed until her nails bit through skin. He slugged her the way a man slugs a man, the arm back and rounding with drive, a knuckle-burning blow to her chest. She felt stunning blackness, circling silver bees. She let go of him. Her lungs were dull and heavy in her chest. She saw Harvey slumped over the hood of his car. She shot for the hills.
Harvey waited for her on the bleak roadside like a cat waits for a wounded bird. She scooped beneath a willow bush, down beneath the layers of snow where summer grass had swirled a small tight nest. She pressed her feet into the cold pocket and crouched among the branches. Her grandmother had taught her how to stay warm, how to survive. She thought of her grandmother and rubbed her hands. She would have to keep moving and soon. Harvey Stoner leaned back on his car door and reached through the open window. He began to spotlight the fields along the highway. He directed his brooding light over the soft landscape. Each hill curve became Louise. He could not see her.
The cold had entered Louise. Her skin was becoming gray. Harvey stayed so long he began begging her. He had dropped to his knees with a proposal of marriage. And even in the sleepy cold Louise almost revealed herself. She could have laughed at the idea, Harvey Stoner believing she wanted marriage from him. He got up from his knees, not bothering to brush the curds of snow from his slacks. “You’re nothing,” he finally said. “They don’t call you Perma Red for nothing.” She knew people called her Perma Red, but until that moment no one had dared to call her Perma Red to her face. She knew Harvey had only spoken the name to call her out, a dare for her to show herself. Perma Red, Harvey said in a smudge of breath lifting to the hills and the river, his wet breath making the name sparkle then fade. This was the darkest name they called her, the ranchers and the schoolboys, Mr. Malick and Eddie Taylor, the whispering Indian boys at the end of the schoolyard, the wet-lipped women sipping coffee at their kitchen tables. It meant all the bad names polite company could hiss. Red-light district. Slut. Louise understood the meaning of the name, a label that said she was Indian and nothing more. She came from Perma and she could never change her life standing. She wouldn’t let that name claim her.
Louise stood to watch Harvey leaving. She could see him for a long way down the slow curving road heading back into Dixon. He was almost gone when she saw the red flash of brake lights, the swooping turn back toward her direction. She saw the driver’s floodlight strobe the hillside and the fields, traveling up one side of the road and then the other. A shattering picture, a jarring light stuttering over the land in search of her.
She imagined Harvey Stoner looking through the dense trees, staring at the flat fields, blinking at the stunned mullein sparkling on the roadside. She realized then that he had wanted her to stay hidden in the cold. He wanted to ice her then thaw her, nothing better than a doll mute to his desires.
She was miles from home. Charlie Kicking Woman’s stretch of land glittered under a hard field light. She felt the cold crack in her ankles. She nearly jumped the fence surrounding Aida’s garden. She worried about getting trapped. She could hear the pop of the apple trees in the orchard. She thought of hoisting herself up in the branches of an apple tree but knew that the branch might snap. She edged her way around back to see the lights of Harvey’s car light Charlie’s driveway. She ran to the side of the house, breaking snow. She could not breathe. The moon burned like crystal. She flattened her back to the house’s shadow as Charlie’s porch light snapped on. Harvey pulled his car short. Fence posts wore hats of snow. She saw Harvey open the car door and look toward her as if he were considering approaching the house. Charlie’s voice was hoarse with sleep as he called out to Harvey. She thought for a moment he was speaking to her but she watched as Charlie stepped from his house, shivering, to have a talk with Harvey Stoner. Charlie had left his back door unlatched and she ducked into the safety of his home. She did not hear Charlie as he reentered the house. She was watching Harvey pull himself back into his car, his headlamps so bright she was sure he could see her standing at the window. He backed out of Charlie’s road slowly, and the sparkling snow churned behind him, wolfing his misery.
Charlie Kicking Woman
TROUBLE
I knew I’d have a run-in with Stoner but I never imagined he’d show up at my doorstep at two in the morning. I’d slept most of the day. A Northern cold front swept into the valley and in a matter of hours the temperature slammed to zero. I could feel the edge of cold seeping through the walls of my house. Ice laced the windows. I sat by the stove a long while, listening to the hiss of pitch. I thought of the small rising breath of all the animals sleeping. The Jocko River purling white. Dry snow was snaking the highway. I was glad to be home. At least I didn’t have to be out in this.
I was restless. I’d paid the bills, read the paper. I had too much time on my hands. I remembered the name of Yellow Knife’s horse. “Champagne,” I said to myself, thinking of Louise. I suspected Yellow Knife would be looking for that horse in all the wrong places. I imagined him in a swirl of snow, his thin shirt flapping in the wind. Baptiste creeping up on honest men’s pastures, looking for revenge. I told myself it was only the cold settling, the frost etching the windows, but I couldn’t shake the feeling I was being watched.
I saw a sudden light strike the wall behind me, and I knew someone was driving up my road, traveling too fast. Light bounced on the walls. Trouble. No one brings good news to a country house past midnight.
I pulled my rubber boots on over my socks and stepped out on the porch. I held my arm up to shade my sight. Slivers of snow rode the silvery light. A man got out of the car and stood beside it. Harvey Stoner. He cupped his hands and I saw the red tip of his cigarette.
“Stoner?” I called. “What the hell’s going on?” I saw the smoke of his breath. He rubbed his chin and squinted at me through the roiling light. I walked a few steps closer, but not too close. I imagined he’d been drinking.
“I’m looking for Louise,” he said. His voice needled me. He looked at me without looking away. I realized I was the last-ditch effort of his search. I felt a small wince of pleasure at his predicament, but I remained guarded.
“She’s a grown woman,” I said. I’d had enough of this conversation. I wasn’t interested in this man’s woes. He threw his cigarette to the ground and blew breath into the pocket of his hands. His eyes were watering and I realized that even a rich man broken could be pitiful.
“I think she’s in trouble,” he said, trying to bait me. I wasn’t up for it. I turned back to the house.
“I guess you don’t care what happens to her.” He had raised his voice to catch me. “She’s looking for Yellow Knife,” he said. “He’s going to beat the tar out of her again.” His voice was accusing.
“So what makes you think you’d find her here?” I said, stopping to face him again.
He folded his arms over his chest and glanced away but not before I saw the smirk on his face. “You’re not fooling me,” he said. I felt the rise of sudden heat in my chest, the muscles in my back pulling tight. If I had been closer to him I would have thrown a wild punch at him, a haymaker slam that would have rattled his gold teeth. I didn’t have time to put up with this asshole, not in my driveway, not on my night off. I went inside, leaving him.
I closed my door tight to Stoner and sighed. I heard his car start up. His headlamps flooded the room, a wash of light that illuminated the walls, the cracked linoleum floors, and Louise standing still beside the window. She was breathing hard, her hand pressed to her belly as if she’d just stopped running. Stoner was gone. The room settled gray. The stove glowed red. “You want to tell me what’s going on?” I said.
She sat on the sofa and wrapped her arms around her waist. I snapped on the table lamp and stood beside her. I could see the white tattle of pale frostbite on her bronze face hadn’t quite taken hold. If she had been out in the cold much longer she would have been in trouble. I wanted to hold my warm hands to her face, heal her.
“I’m having a hard time,” she said. I saw the sudden gloss of her eyes, but she did not cry. She leaned forward and grabbed the toes of her shoes to warm herself.
“You’ll stay here for a while,” I said, “at least until this blows over.”
I wanted her to be grateful but she seemed resigned. “OK,” she said, and then, “Yes.” The room seemed suddenly warm. I lifted the window to catch a breath of air.
“Take the bedroom,” I said. She looked at me and suddenly away from me.
“I’ll sleep out here,” I said. She eyed the short sofa. “It’s fine,” I said. It didn’t look like I’d be getting much sleep anyway. Now I had Stoner and Yellow Knife to contend with. I stuffed Aida’s small hand-knit pillow beneath my head. Louise was in my house and I would have slept on the porch steps to keep her here.
There was no door to seal my bedroom; the room opened wide to the living room. I could see Louise clearly in the soft light of the moon, and I slowed my breath and pretended to be asleep, but I was watching her. Louise undressed in that light. Her hands were slender and smooth and beautiful at her throat as she unsnapped the fastener, as each button opened to skin. I watched her hands as she undid the buttons on her blouse, as she unzipped her skirt. Her thin slip fluttered to the floor. I held my breath. Louise stood naked in my house. Light was moving like dust over her shoulders, turning Louise’s hair the color of smoke. Her bronze skin looked pale and gray as rain. I saw the perched line of her nipples, the round curve of her hips.
I pulled the covers up over my head as she tiptoed past me to the bathroom. I heard the rush of water in the basin. And then she returned to the room. She turned on the table lamp and I pulled the covers back from my face. I rubbed my eyes and squinted hard to adjust my sight. She didn’t seem to mind that I could see her or maybe she thought I was sleeping. I didn’t care. I propped myself up to see Louise standing naked beside the bed I had shared with my wife. A pan of water steamed on the bedside table. I could see everything in the lamplight. I saw the purple swell of blood above her left breast. I saw the black grip marks at the tops of her thighs, and I thought of Yellow Knife’s hands, the bruises to Louise’s hips where the imprint of his fist was so deep you could count the knuckles. The smooth cups of her breasts were lavender edged. I could see Yellow Knife’s work there, too, the scar that puckered her left nipple. I wanted to kiss that nipple but I sat back to watch her. I watched as she put her foot on the chair and washed the inside of her leg, from the hollow of her foot up a long length of calf. She didn’t use a washcloth, only her hands shining like oil. I stared. My cock was so hard it lifted the covers. I could smell her skin. I wondered how many people had seen her in her nakedness. I felt my stomach tighten to think of Harvey Stoner touching her.
