Perma red, p.5
Perma Red, page 5
Dag Bailey had taken Jules Bart outside. She saw the red brake lights of Bailey’s truck as they were leaving. She imagined Jules’s face illuminated by the dim panel light, an angry sleep deep inside of him and his limp hands vulnerable as a wide, open wound. She looked again at Marjorie Canfield to measure a response.
“Honey, I’m not looking for a fight,” Marjorie said. Louise sat down at the bar long enough so no one could recognize her broken heart.
She knew now he would never touch her thigh or arch his back into the lean darkness of her ribs. She did not have to be hiding in tall grass for him not to see her. She imagined she was invisible to him. He did not see her slide her skirt up the smooth length of her thigh. He did not see the button left unsnapped or the deep shadow between her breasts as she bent forward to order again and again. He looked toward her and saw only the road beyond, the failing smoke of her cigarette. She felt thin around him, thin enough to see through and beyond. And the thought made her feel distant from herself. Unrecognizable. She wondered if she had been defined by both men. Baptiste because he saw only her, Jules because he could not see her at all. Jules Bart and Baptiste Yellow Knife were a shifting of light, a different way of seeing. They could each be beautiful, and ugly. She wanted things to be different from what they were. She didn’t want Jules Bart to be just a man, like Baptiste Yellow Knife. She saw herself standing before twilight watching her image in water, the bottomless pond gurgling. If she could see herself in the shadowy dusk at the moment darkness eclipsed her face she would see her real self. But that moment never came. Only Baptiste Yellow Knife would come for her. The man she despised was the only man thinking of her.
Before sleep she would hear the dry cattails near the pond, the cottonwoods, the steady sucking squawfish. Sometimes she would get up from the warm sleep of her sister to pump a glass of cold water, careful of her sister’s shifting. In the moonlight her slip glowed a ghostly blue that chilled the length of her arms. She sank down against the white light feeling loneliness at the hollow of her knees, her throat swallowing the burning smell of sweet nettle. Hearing the steady breath of her sister in sleep, the sudden jerk, the pulling away, arms meeting knees, a forehead to back, a settling in toward the absence of her body.
The sky was gray with morning when she heard someone calling to her from the screened door. She knew it was Baptiste. She recognized his hard, insistent voice. She pulled on her skirt and slipped her arms into a blouse. She stepped out on the porch and frowned at him.
“Louise, don’t be mad,” he said. “I’ve missed you. I’ve brought you a surprise.” He disappeared behind the house and came back with his horse. Champagne was a beautiful horse, a quarter horse stallion that everyone envied. Baptiste had several horses but he knew this horse was her favorite. She could see the sun over the mountains, golden trails of light lit the high hills. Her grandmother was still sleeping but she would be up soon, would have been up hours earlier had she not waited up for Louise to come home the night before. Baptiste was on the horse in one easy movement. He reached for her.
“Come on,” he said. “Ride with me.”
She thought about Jules Bart, drunk and sleeping still. Men, Louise thought, were all the same. “Before I come with you,” she said, “we have to get one thing straight.”
Baptiste bent forward to hear her.
“If you ever harm anyone in my family again,” she said, “I’ll kill you.”
He leaned back on Champagne and smiled at her, and it came to Louise that he was different. He hadn’t been drinking.
“OK, Louise,” he said. “I believe you would.”
She grabbed his hand then and he pulled her up on the broad, bare back of the horse. She hugged his waist tight and dug her knees into the barrel of the horse. She thought for one brief moment and then she clutched his balls hard enough to make him squeal. “I’m serious,” she said. “I’ll kill you dead.”
“I understand,” he said. “I get your point.” She let go of his crotch then, and Champagne was running. Baptiste slapped his thighs and Champagne ran faster. They were running dead speed, the ground passed quickly beneath them: pale rocks, twigs, sage, the highway, the railroad tracks gleamed beneath them. She felt light. Her hair whipped her face. She had never ridden a horse so fast. She heard the spray of gravel, the hard ground was passing. She held her breath and held on.
Charlie Kicking Woman
THE HARD TRUTHS
Being a tribal officer was never easy, but the job was hell when I was working with Officer Cliburn Railer, a white police officer from Lake County. Railer didn’t like me either. Old Railer got wind of my connection to Baptiste Yellow Knife, not something I like to admit even to the Indians who know we’re related. Yellow Knife’s my cousin. My auntie’s husband was a Yellow Knife and, according to the old ways, that bonds me to him. Just last week Railer referred to Baptiste as the troublemaker, the troublemaker my blood brother. Railer saying that to me made me realize again how much I had in common with Baptiste Yellow Knife, and how stupid the white man could be. Railer was imagining I had mixed blood with Baptiste by choice; Boy Scouts behind the outhouse rubbing self-inflicted cuts, pledging oaths. I wondered how the white man could be civilized if they didn’t know their relations. How did Railer know his wife wasn’t his sister; his mistress, his cousin. For a moment, I felt superior. For a moment, I believed the reason the white man had become so crazy was because they were an inbred people. I considered the story of Adam and Eve the nuns would tell us, how that story shamed me when I was a young boy dreaming of girls and letting myself imagine parting the warm thighs of my cousin Eileen. For a while I figured if we were all related to Adam and Eve we were all brothers and sisters, first cousins. The idea allowed me to shame myself, to entertain for a few short years the idea of bedding all my beautiful cousins. And the idea soiled me, made me grim nailed, leering, and disrespectful. An idea that still has the power to shame me, can make me lower my eyes in Eileen’s company, turn my back to family gatherings.
I couldn’t deny even to Railer that Baptiste was my relation. I’m still shaming myself by trying to deny the connection. My mother used to encourage me to help Baptiste, to be a good example to him. When Baptiste was younger I’d tried to have a man-to-man talk with him. I was twenty-some years old and Baptiste must have been about thirteen at the time. Baptiste was smoking kinnikinnick outside the Dixon Bar. I sat down next to him on the stoop. He was just a scrawny kid but he turned his back to me. He was bare chested and the day drifted to the edge of cold. His skin welted with goose bumps, but he squared his shoulders to the cold and most likely to me. “Look Baptiste,” I had said, “Auntie tells me you got some problems.” He pulled on his homemade cigarette, and I heard the tough snap of a seed exploding. He faced me and blew smoke out his nose like a tough guy. I thought I had his attention. “You can talk to me you know,” I had said. “If you got problems, kid, you can talk to me.”
“Yeah,” he said, lifting his eyebrows to me, and I felt good then, hopeful, like I was making a difference. “I’ve got a lot of problems.” He drew hard on his cigarette again, then opened his fingers to let it drop to the ground. Before I could stop him he stepped on the stogie with the ball of his bare foot and rubbed it out. He didn’t flinch or even show discomfort, and I thought what a kid he really was. “A lot of problems,” he said, looking me in the eye. I was nodding, urging him on. “And you’re number one,” he said. He had taken me off guard. He stood up and I saw how thin he was, scrawny, long armed and long legged, his thin pants high-water. His belt was looped with a woman’s red scarf. He looked pitiful.
I put my hand on his shoulder and he pulled away from me with such force it startled me. I felt the heat of his shoulder, the strength of his frame. “Don’t be getting funny with me,” he said. And he walked away from me then. I don’t know how long I sat on those cold porch steps in my polished shoes and ironed shirt, my good intentions turned sour. I could hear the bar customers at my back talking about the price of cattle, laughing about their hard luck, and I wasn’t even good enough to step into that bar and wash down Baptiste’s sour words with a beer. I wasn’t even good enough to walk behind Baptiste. I sat there for a long time until I believed I had shaken the connection. I was wrong.
I’d been called in for an accident backup outside of Perma. A Studebaker had struck a guardrail post and flipped over on its top. Railer had made it to the scene first. I saw the red glare of his cherry light. It was early afternoon and the sun was beating off the bumper. The top of the car was almost flat. It was going to be rough, I thought. I stopped my car and reached for my flares.
“I got cones in the back of my vehicle,” Railer said. He was standing casually next to the wreck, his arm resting on the underside of the car like he was leaning on a fence, chatting with a neighbor. I detected a grim smile on his face and I thought he was a cruel bastard. I avoided looking at the vehicle upside down on the hot pavement. I had to steady myself. Railer got a kick out of me when I got sick by the roadside. He’d seen me more than once heaving my lunch into the weeds. And he feels free to comment on my predicaments. “See you had egg salad for lunch,” he would say, and his comments would make me sick all over again. I guess he thought he was funny. He’s a sick SOB. I took some deep breaths. “Try the trunk,” he says to me. I grabbed the keys from the ignition. I saw a magpie flutter to a fence post, the sky was the blue of blue veins, the blue of a white man’s eyes. I could smell hot road tar and a faint whiff of wild rose. I wanted to be out in that field. I felt a particular swell of lonesome. Since I began working for law enforcement I saw the landscape differently, littered with glittering chrome, beads of broken turn signals, busted headlamps silver in sunlight, steering wheels teetering from the high branches of a tree, hub screws, baby bottles, schoolchildren’s notebook papers, lipstick holders, car registrations, love letters. We found them all. The miles were haunted. I rubbed my neck and grabbed the cones. Railer was squinting at me. I heard then the high, shrill voice of a man. “Get me out of here,” he screamed. Railer hunched down by the car door and grinned into a few inches of squashed window. I dropped the cones quickly, almost relieved. I could see the red face of a white man. His tie fluttered with his breath when he spoke, spitting directions at us. I surveyed the door.
“Are you feeling any pain?” I asked the man as I crowded next to Railer and checked the door.
“Steering column’s pinching my nuts,” he said. Railer wiped his hand over his mouth, trying to hide his grin. I looked at the ground, checking for gasoline. Radiator fluid gleamed on the road, and I smelled the dense sweet scent of it, felt the throb of my head. I’d come to hate that smell.
“Get me out of here,” the man yelled. “Get me out of this frigging car now.”
“We got an Indian brave to help us now,” Railer told the man, always the funny guy. “We’ll have you out in no time.” I was too tired to feel even a small well of anger.
The man shot me a look. “I don’t care if you got the whole damn tribe or the US Cavalry,” he said, “just get me the hell out of here.”
“Not to worry,” Railer said. “We’ll have you out in a jiff.” Railer stood up and tipped his head for me to follow him. I ignored him. I could see the door was stuck tight, buckled to a weld. I reached to pry the door with my fingers but Railer grabbed my shoulder. “Kicking Woman,” he said and motioned again for me to follow him. “We got some equipment in the car, big fella,” he said. The man arched his neck to see me, his eyes mournful and bulging.
“Sir,” I said, “just relax.”
Railer stood by the side of his car. “I called for the fire truck,” he said, “but they’re out on a call. It’s just you and me, friend.”
I glanced back at the car. I could hear the man wheezing. I was thinking he’d give himself a stroke.
“Got any ideas?” Railer said. He had pulled a toothpick from his jacket pocket and he was teetering it between tight teeth.
“We could get a crowbar,” I said.
“I thought of that,” Railer said. “It isn’t going to work. You got a winch on that heap?” he said.
I was getting nervous. I didn’t want to kill a man who stood every chance of living except for a stupid call on our part. I shook my head no.
“Look,” Railer said. “I got a chain in the car. We can leverage it on a guardrail post and use your car to right the vehicle.”
I knew Railer was suggesting we use my car for fear of damaging his own, but it was pointless to fight him. A man was hanging upside down in a car. “OK,” I said unwillingly. The early afternoon had turned into a long stretch of day and we were in the middle of it. I held my stomach and turned back to my car.
“What’s going on?” the man asked. I could detect fear in his voice. His anger had gone. I saw the sheen of slobber on his cheeks. He was close to shitting himself.
“Take it easy,” I said. “We’re going to pull you right side up. We’ll be able to pop you right out of there.” I could see his tight hands clutching the steering wheel. He’d lost any faith he had in our abilities, and I had too. Railer was unwinding the chain and securing the underside of the truck. We looked busy anyway. I could hear the tick of the chain as he threaded it through the drive train.
I backed up my cruiser and surveyed the hillside. I would have to get around to the passenger side. I was looking for a down side. I found a low incline and drove down. I heard the scrape of weeds, the squeal of rocks beneath the floorboards of the car. For a moment I had the idea that our scheme just might work. Railer strapped the chain to my tow bar and then gestured for me to begin the pull. I took a deep breath and held it. I gunned the engine, heard the chain roll, then felt the jolt of the catch. It slammed me in my seat. I had gassed too quick. I could smell the burn of motor oil. I saw the car rock and then it was dragged. I heard the screech of metal on the hard road, a loud screaming of man and car. Sparks of fire flew from the roof of the car. I saw Railer’s tight face, Railer’s referee arms. “Stop,” he was yelling, “stop.” I’d already lifted my foot from the pedal but Railer’s face told me to slam the brakes. I stomped the brakes hard in a split second, making a slip judgment call I would never live down.
I could see the surprise in Railer’s face, feel the burn of surprise in my own chest. I had stomped on the gas pedal instead of the brakes, a dumb grinning kid in a farm truck. The chain snapped, recoiled back to slam my hood. The flattened car spun around and around, a ton top squealing metal sparks. I could hear the jagged spin of it, see the man’s startled face quick and quick again, a mean carnival ride, a coyote trick. I felt the panic of hilarious laughter in my throat. Railer had jumped to the side to avoid being hit. The car stopped. I caught myself thinking the trapped man was laughing but I was slammed with the sound of his wailing cry. Railer took off his cap and threw it to the ground. And then Railer was at my side door, yelling, “You dumb prairie nigger,” he yelled. “Damn dumb prairie nigger.” My hands were shaking as Railer yanked me out of the car. I thought he was going to hit me but he just stood close to me, loose limbed, chest heaving. He put his hands to his hips and lifted his fingers to the man who had not taken his hands from the wheel of his car. It was suddenly quiet except for the man blubbering, his red face had turned white and puffy, his breath hoarse and heavy.
I stood stiff at attention, wishing Railer was still yelling at me. The man’s crying was unbearable, and I was responsible. We just stood there, Railer and me, caught up in our asinine plan with no more answers. Brute wind caught us up, rocked the car. We stood. Wind rushed at us, cracked the dry grass. I felt someone behind me. I looked at Railer but he was looking at the man, the wreck we had turned into a disaster. Railer was unaware that we had company but I knew. I crooked my neck, feeling the tight draw of muscles in my jaw. There on the hillside, big as life, big as a roadside warrior, a movie hero to the rescue, was my cousin Baptiste Yellow Knife on his faithful pony.
He sat straight in the saddle, a smirk on his face. He looked at me and held my gaze. I thought he was alone but when he shifted his shoulder I saw Louise on the back of the horse. At that moment she had never looked more beautiful. Yellow Knife dismounted. His horse was not even captured by a bit. He held the reins of the halter in his dark hands and without taking his eyes from mine reached up to help Louise down. I saw the shine of her long legs. Railer cleared his throat and I could see him looking at her, too, the trapped man forgotten.
Louise glanced at us and without hesitation walked over to the man in the car. She squatted down beside him and lifted the hem of her skirt to dab the tears from his face. I couldn’t understand what she was saying but her voice soothed all of us, low and cooing. The man’s breath stuttered. I saw the man smile at Louise and roll his wet face in the folds of her skirt. When he looked up again he was lovestruck.
In the sunlight Louise’s hair seemed firelit. We were all gawking at her but she only looked back at Yellow Knife. “Baptiste will help you,” she said. “He’ll get you out of here.”
“Thank you,” the man said.
“Don’t worry. Don’t you worry,” she said.
“Yes,” the man said, spellcaught, “yes.”
“You have a rope?” Yellow Knife asked, though he did not appear to be addressing either Railer or me. I didn’t fight. I went to my trunk and came back with a rope.
“We’ve already tried to right the car,” I said.
“I see that,” Yellow Knife said. As always, he had me. I shifted my weight, tried to look important.
“Aren’t you going to help him?” Railer said to me. “Go help him.”
“Boys,” Yellow Knife said, “help like yours he doesn’t need.”
“What are you going to do?” I said, too eager. I realized I must have sounded childlike to him and to Railer, too ready to submit to his authority. I was glad that Yellow Knife ignored me. He harnessed the horse quickly and then gathered the rope up as he made his way to the side of the car. “Easy,” he said to the horse though the horse hadn’t budged. Yellow Knife tied a strangle knot to the door handle and worked it down tight while the man squinted up at him with admiration. “It’s going to be fine,” Louise said to the man, and he saluted her.
