Perma red, p.23
Perma Red, page 23
She sat down on the bed and I had been so busy gawking at her body I hadn’t noticed she was struggling to keep her emotions in check. Her hands were trembling. She turned off the light and lay down slowly. She was quiet, so quiet. I couldn’t hear her crying but I knew she was. I was ashamed of myself, my hard cock and my desires. I couldn’t go to her. I sat up on the couch. “Louise?” I said, my eyes adjusting again to moonlight.
“I’m OK, Charlie,” she said. I could see the outline of her face in shadows, sad and dark like mountains. I lay back down and closed my eyes to it all, to Louise’s sad face, to the long night. I felt a cold breeze lift the curtain and knew she had fallen asleep.
I slept on and off, waking to Louise’s shifting movements. I got up reluctantly and washed my face. I had a night shift. I was grateful that Louise slept on through the day. She didn’t wake until late afternoon when I was already dressed and ready to go.
The cold night would be full of urgent calls but I was determined more than ever to find Yellow Knife. I was going to make sure he was off the streets for good.
When I left Louise, she was sitting in the big chair with one of Aida’s romance novels open on her lap, but she wasn’t reading. She looked out the big, black window to something I couldn’t see. All I could see was me, my hard badge glinting in the window’s reflection, a beautiful woman turned away from my glances.
It was a tough night for driving. Snow sank over the ruts in the road like soft ground sifts over a grave. I seemed to be the only one driving the road that night; the back roads were quiet with snow. My wheels made no sound. Snow was so light it sprayed from my car, a silence that made me edgy. Yellow Knife was out there someplace, ready to jump me. I was looking for him, looking hard, but all I found were annoyances, a lot of little annoyances.
There were traveling nights where I felt the need to keep searching. And then there were tangled nights. Long night calls, drives to disturbances where even the fighters have given up and gone to bed. Even when the shades were drawn and the houses were quiet I had to investigate the complaint. And I pounded on doors only to be met by the half-woken complainer peering from behind a half-open door, a woman clutching her nightgown to her throat, the man behind her blinking at me in his sagging underwear, drink turning to the dull dream of regret and headache. Heartache. That was one of those nights. I crossed off the sour complaints and chased the next call. I turned toward Hot Springs from Perma, passed the turnoff where Florence had drowned. A new-moon night. The river held light the way soft stones do.
I should have determined a plan of action to find Yellow Knife. I was chasing hunches. I could have been driving toward Baptiste or way the hell away from him. I spotted some car tracks headed up Bluebird Road and followed them. The road circled back over the river through the badland peaks. Land where the farmers grazed their cattle but no occupied homes existed anymore.
I imagined I wouldn’t find anything out of the ordinary, probably a cheating couple looking for privacy on a dark road. I’d flashed my searchlight on too many breathfrosted cars, saw the startled faces of lovers, the sudden gleam of skin as they scrambled to cover themselves. I expected I’d have to warn another couple about the dangers of asphyxiation, a job that required diplomacy, not quick wit.
My headlamps cuffed the potholes but I continued to drive. I came up on the Chefler place, an abandoned homestead built on Indian land. A cheater’s stake. The house and the outbuildings had that wind-whistled look, gray and rusted-wood entryways open to sky, the only legacy of the family’s forgotten dreams. Story had it the Cheflers broke every plow blade they buried in the earth. I realized, almost gratefully, that our land would not always surrender to the plow. The bare asses of rocks jeweled their fields. They’d had to give up their blades, dig in the earth with their bare hands only to expose more rocks. A field of them, rocks, big and deep centered. Their harvest had become rock. Piles and piles of rocks.
The snow was deep here. If there was a sunbelt on the Flathead, this was the snowbelt. Snow could bury this house and be nothing more than a sprinkling just a meadow over. Now the outbuildings housed bats and swallows, another haunted place where old wishes remained, a place the farm kids laughed at and then ran from.
I saw the tracks of one car cut around back one of the outbuildings. The other tire tracks seemed to lead to a rock outcropping. I parked my car just off the road. I didn’t want to risk getting stuck. I took my flashlight with me even though there was something about the way the hills surrounded this place that made it throb with light. I had to take a leak. I was standing by the sagging outhouse when I heard an animal sound. The sound a deer makes when its backside’s been grazed, a lung-wheezing sound. I stepped around the old barn keeping my back covered when I saw the LaSalle with Washington plates. I took a slow, deep breath. I wasn’t sure what I would find but images of Louise and Yellow Knife charged me. I pulled my gun and checked the safety. I was ready. I heard the low pummel of fists. If you hear the dull thud of a man’s fist on another man’s body you will never forget the sound. It’s a sound with consequence beyond the action. The bystander can feel the fist slam deep in his own gut, a heart squeeze, a rush of hot adrenaline like a booze shot that can either sicken you or addict you. I wasn’t going to step into trouble with only one gun against Baptiste Yellow Knife. I went back to my car.
I backed the vehicle up just far enough to get some forward momentum. I had to bank my car up in the snow to spotlight them. I figured if I could spotlight them I could scare them. I should have radioed but I didn’t. I acted.
I hoped I’d get some power beneath my wheels in the powdered snow. I didn’t need torque on this snowy road. I needed to move fast. I started the drive forward with my headlights off, slipping only inches forward, and then my car fishtailed, and I had enough speed to sail. I cleared the first hump of snow and then I shoved up over the hill, flipping my light switch, whooping my siren, stopping in time to catch two men running. I got out of my car and yelled for them to stop. Then I fired into the air. I felt the crawling unease of someone looking at me over my shoulder.
I used my spotlight and chased the hills until I caught Harvey Stoner. He had placed his hands squarely on top of his head. He flinched into the light. “Who’s with you?” I asked. I refused to call him by his name, refused to recognize him or admit he had any power here. “We meet again, Officer,” Stoner said, but I looked away from him. Someone was slumped on the ground. He was heavy-drunk, a gunnysack of meat. I shined my flashlight on a man. He turned to me and mustered the strength to stand. He was only recognizable by his stance, his unshakable stance. He’d taken a mean hit to his eye. Baptiste Yellow Knife.
“Charlie,” he said, “you come here to save me?” Even at my distance, I could smell the juniper berries on his breath, the stench of cheap gin. I looked at Baptiste. Stoner may have gotten one good punch in but that would be the end of it. Yellow Knife was too drunk to harm. He was like the drunk in the automobile accident, the limber-loose scarecrow.
“Who else is here with you?” I asked. I could see there was someone else.
“Here.”
I turned my flashlight on Jules Bart. He lifted his hand to his face to block the light. “Just making things fair,” he said. “Evening out the score.”
“Don’t leave me here with these candy-asses,” Yellow Knife said. “I’ll be here all night.” Yellow Knife reminded me of the Blackfeet warrior who had been captured by the Flatheads. The Flatheads plucked his eyes out; they cut off his fingers, branded him. And after every torture he would laugh at the Flathead men and call them women.
“You come around here, Charlie, sniffing for my wife? Join the line.”
I pulled myself up. I had been trained to let things be. Be slow to anger. Be patient. Be courteous. I remembered seeing Louise on the floor of her grandmother’s house, beaten. I remembered seeing her earlier. Yellow Knife had beaten her again in the worst way, in the hidden way a man can beat a woman, so there are no bruises, no true signs, only the light in her begins to die. I remembered Hemaucus Three Dresses.
I stepped back from these men. I trudged to the car, letting myself believe in simple justice. I put it in reverse and tapped the horn for help. When Stoner responded I rocked my car, forward and back, spun my tires to make him strain to help me. I would leave Baptiste Yellow Knife the way Baptiste Yellow Knife had left Louise. Beaten. I figured Yellow Knife would take a few more hard punches and then they would all go home.
But as I pulled back onto the highway I felt the urge to turn around. I wanted to spin my car back down that odd haunted road and pull Baptiste Yellow Knife from the hands of those white men. I turned this thought over and over in my mind but I did not turn around. I heard the wheeze of my compression wipers as snow clotted my windshield. I kept thinking Yellow Knife deserved this treatment. He deserved at least one good beating. But I wasn’t sure I was the one to make that call. The truth was I was more concerned about my own health when Yellow Knife got loose from Stoner.
I was relieved when I found Louise still at my house that morning. She had pulled her hair up on top of her head, and I noticed how thin her face had become. It looked like she had washed her dress in the sink. It was bunched in places but she looked rested. She had made me breakfast. “Stay for a few days,” I told her. She wouldn’t commit. “Stay,” I said again. “I’m just offering for a few days,” I lied. My heart had lifted to come home to Louise, to see her sad face smiling and know she was safe. She slept in my bedroom and I slept on the couch, content. There would be time now. I could finally see my chance with her. I went to work with a light heart, a grin I couldn’t hide.
Two days later the black-haired woman came into the office looking to file a report. Her face was almost pretty, but her eyes were hard. She looked like a woman who had been left too many times. She said Baptiste Yellow Knife had disappeared. I wanted to tell her Yellow Knife running wasn’t my problem. He’d been looking for Louise and I knew it. I felt the sharp squeeze in my chest, the sinking. I figured Yellow Knife would have made it back to her by now. He was looking for Louise and I wondered if he would find her at my place.
I looked at the woman, listening to her, not talking. I was going to call somebody else in to write up a complaint we could toss in the waste bucket when she left. She licked her lips so many times I found myself licking my own lips. I found myself looking at the crack in the doorjamb when she wiped her eyes. I wanted to tell her how sorry she looked loving a man like Yellow Knife when someone like Louise was first in line. Someone beautiful and wild and tough as Louise. I wanted to tell her to give it up. Go back where she came from. Yellow Knife was gone for good. A woman like her could never hold him. But I felt like I was hearing a part of an old story that was my own, the story of liking Louise too much, of wishing for attention that was never going to come my way, of that old desire, the want to hold somebody down because you want what you know they can’t give you or never want to give you. You can’t make somebody love you, my mother used to say. I learned that lesson the hard way, over and over again. And even knowing Louise was hidden safe at my house didn’t make it any easier.
I tapped my pencil on my leg and then I began to hear what she was saying. Here I’d been listening to my own problems and she was telling something to me as an officer of the law. I sat up, not sure I was hearing right.
“Come see for yourself,” she said, “if you don’t believe me. Just have a look yourself. I went up to Lake County, and once I said ‘Baptiste Yellow Knife,’ they wouldn’t even talk to me.” I could believe this. She stood up and gestured for me to come outside. I followed her.
“Just look,” she said. “Now, I’m not making this up.”
The wind was blowing hard. It snapped her coat up. I wanted to go back in and pick up my coat but felt guilty for not listening earlier to what the woman had been trying to tell me. There was something in her voice, a dryness, like resignation. She wasn’t fooling herself.
“The night before last, Baptiste took the car or I thought he took the car. I’ve been drunk,” she said, “I don’t remember. The next morning the car’s back without Baptiste.” She looked at me then, hoping, I guess, that I could tell her why, that somehow I was the man to solve her problems with Baptiste Yellow Knife. She was lucky to get her car back at all. I was lucky I didn’t have to be looking for a vehicle.
“That’s Yellow Knife for you,” I said, thinking I knew more than this woman about the ways of Baptiste. I thought about telling her she was better off without the son of a bitch. And then I was going to go back inside because I was freezing my balls off. I didn’t consider anything was wrong. It seemed just like Yellow Knife to get a long ride with a woman, chase all over the countryside for Louise, and then dump the woman when he found her. That was Baptiste Yellow Knife. The woman went to the car door and kind of pushed it open with her fingertips to make her point.
Blood was splattered on the dashboard. It looked like someone had taken a beating in the car. I looked to see if the blood had splattered in a certain direction, if there was any kind of clue to what had taken place in there. I figured they’d jumped Yellow Knife in the car before taking him out to the field. But as I squatted beside the car and checked under the seat, the thought of Stoner and Bart hit me, clubbed me. I could feel the heaviness of Baptiste Yellow Knife. I wanted to think that this woman was trying to pull something on me, that she was up to something with Yellow Knife. This was my payback for having left him to the white men. It was my own guilt speaking to me.
I leaned farther into the car, still believing in the possibility of a hoax. My open hand pressed the seat. Thick blood welled up between my fingers sticky and rust-smelling. I wondered why Stoner and the cowboy had returned the car to the woman, but I had my ideas. And my idea was we’d never find Baptiste Yellow Knife again. They’d moved the body and ditched the car. I fought the idea because I didn’t want to face the fact that I was responsible for his death. But I knew I was. I had known Yellow Knife was dying even as I drove away from the Chefler place. And from the feel of it and the smell of it Yellow Knife had gone down hard.
I went back inside, not wanting to call Lake County and the feds, beating my brains for a different plan. I had a sudden idea that I realized might be either a life jacket or a lead vest that I was too eager to strap on. I wouldn’t file a report on Yellow Knife. I straightened my tie, tightened it around my throat. Yellow Knife’s girlfriend followed me. I sat her down across the desk from me. I had to believe Yellow Knife had it coming to him. If it hadn’t been Yellow Knife dead it would have been Louise. I had saved Louise, I told myself.
I pulled my handkerchief from my pants pocket and wiped my hands. I told the white woman to forget about Yellow Knife, to go back to Yakima. I looked into her face and then I had to look away, because I could see she believed I would somehow save Baptiste Yellow Knife and, worse, that I would save her too. I understood the pinched corners of her eyes, the intent stare. All my instincts, all my suspicions seemed thin now. I questioned my reasoning and my ideas about Yellow Knife. I could have hated him because he had what I would never have. He had Louise.
I followed the woman back out to her car. She did not answer me. Her lips drew together tight and straight. She opened the trunk of her car and removed an old Pendleton blanket like she had been expecting my reaction. She flapped the blanket on the car seat. I thought she might stick around, haunt me like a white woman on a mission. But she left without questions, without answers, and I realized she had little more power than an Indian, a small voice she was quick to silence herself, maybe because she had never been heard, and she would never be recognized. She could come back a week later with a posse of officers. She could come back with a lawyer, a detective, a team of investigators. She could change her mind a year from now and return to Lake County with her blood-rusty seats and her long list of suspicions, but I knew she would never return. I was safe from her. I was safe from little else but I was safe from her. I turned to see the woman looking at the blood on my hands, dry eyed, accepting this end for Baptiste Yellow Knife, expecting this end, I thought. Now the only grief was work.
Before I went home to Louise I paid the killing site a visit. I parked my own car a mile from the Chefler place and stumbled toward the spot I’d last seen Yellow Knife. The thing I will remember most is the blood. There was so much blood at the site where Yellow Knife had been beaten, my knees trembled. I tried to find Yellow Knife’s body but when I couldn’t find him, I walked the long mile back to my car. I grabbed the fire shovel from the trunk. I walked fast, so fast my head throbbed. My lungs gripped breath. It was cold but a steam of fog was hiding me. I ducked at every sound and I prayed. I prayed like the nuns had taught me because I figured the devil had something to do with all of this. I needed to be rid of him.
I dug down to tough rocky soil. I ignored the shrill scrape of metal on rock and frozen ground. I churned up dirt with the same urgency I used to save a man because I was saving a man, I was saving myself and all I had worked for, for the good I believed in. I was working to save Louise.
I worked so hard the calluses that claimed my hands chipped off and stung with blood again. If it had been summer I would have scrubbed my hands with lye soap and salt until they bled clean to hide my own guilt from the rattlers. I realized this was a crazy thought because I couldn’t escape. The story was set now. I had to stop myself from saying this is what comes of deceit and treachery, because I was already bloating, filling up with poison. Choking bile. When I had covered up Baptiste’s blood with dirt I shoveled fresh snow over it. I shoveled enough earth and enough snow to create a new hill. But it was the hard work of a fool. Blood seeped through the snow again.
