Buffalo Jump Blues (13 page)

“Was Lilly raped?”

“No, it didn't get that far. And the answer to your next question is no, too. I don't have any reason to believe they were involved in the buffalo jump at the Palisades. But at my age there isn't much that surprises you.”

“Do you have many Indian volunteers besides Henry?”

“We've had volunteers from all seven reservations in Montana at one time or another. Our cofounder was Margaret Hangs Her Shirt, she's Pend Oreille. But you're thinking of the person who was killed and we haven't had anyone since the hazing season, which ended
more than three months ago.” He shook his head. “I think you're looking in the wrong place.”

Sean had one last question, about the half dozen or more bison that survived the jump, including the one he and Martha had seen the night before. McKenzie stood without a word and led Sean to the tent, which was poorly lit by electric lights that worked off a generator. The main room consisted of a rectangular table, a dozen mismatched chairs, a desk with a computer, and a map that took up half of one wall and was studded with pushpins. He brought the lantern to reflect on the wall and said the pushpins were repositioned twice a day to show where bison were gathered near park borders. He explained that the numbers in the Hebgen Valley hadn't jumped since the herd broke apart, and the bison with the broken horn would have been spotted if it had returned.

“They could be a lot of places,” he said. “They could have returned to the park by way of Targhee Pass”—he traced the route with his finger—“or they could still be in the vicinity of the West Fork. A half dozen bison can be hard to spot if they stay in timber.”

He showed Sean the woodstove where the camp cook prepared meals and explained the double-layer asbestos cloth that protected the canvas from the chimney pipe. He pulled aside a blanket hanging from a rope to show the partitioned-off room where he slept on a cot. He winked, then drew a bottle of clear liquid that was lumpy with what looked like apricot halves from under the cot.

“Hair of the buffalo. Mother would have a fit if she knew I had it.”

They walked back out under the stars.

“How about that elk steak?” McKenzie said. “If you make me wait much longer, we'll be spitting your dog over the coals.”

J
oseph Brings the Sun tugged his basketball jersey as he looked at his reflection in the window of Sean's Land Cruiser. He ran fingers through his hair.

Sean said, “Dead men don't care how pretty you are.”

“I'm just nervous,” Joseph said. “We don't have to deal with this shit on the rez. Somebody shows you a body, you just say that's Cuz Michael, and that covers you 'cause you probably have one that's missing.”

Their steps echoed on the marble floor of the morgue, Sean leading the way to the room where they donned their PPEs, though with the autopsy completed and potentially hazardous fluids drained from the body, full protective clothing wasn't mandated.

“Is he going to be naked?” Joseph asked, pulling paper slippers over his shoes.

“You'll probably just have to look at his face.”

Sean knocked on a door and heard Doc Hanson telling them to come in. “Shit, man,” Joseph said.

“It's going to be okay.” Sean knew it wouldn't be. The Indian's body would be the third he'd seen in cold storage, and he'd tasted bile in his mouth on each prior occasion.

“You're Joseph Brings the Sun?” Doc Hanson looked at him as if he was a specimen.

Joseph nodded.

“We already signed in at the desk,” Sean said.

“There's protocol to follow back here, too.”

They followed it, which consisted of another couple signatures,
and entered a storage facility that had two doors on each side and was a chilly four degrees Celsius. Hanson opened one of the units, checked the toe tag, and rolled the body out. He pulled the sheet down from the face.

Sean saw Joseph's Adam's apple working.

“It's him.”

“State his name.”

“I don't know his name. But he's the guy who was with John and the white dudes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I'm pretty sure.”

“Like sixty percent sure?” Hanson said. “Seventy percent? Try to put a figure on it.”

“Maybe seventy. It was dark. He was in the backseat and there wasn't like a dome light on.”

“Did he have any distinguishing marks or missing teeth, anything that could make you more certain?”

“No, he just sat there. I didn't hear him talk. He never opened his mouth.”

“This man has a birthmark on his abdomen.”

“What you trying to say? We was getting it on? Hell, man, I never seen him with no shirt off. But it's him, just like I told you.”

—

They were back in the Land Cruiser, turning from the pavement onto the gravel of Cottonwood Creek Road. Joseph rolled up the window to keep the dust out.

“Fuck, man, that was just wrong on every level back there. I feel like I need a bath.”

Sean drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. He was missing something, it was like a color at the edge of his thought that bled away when you looked at it. He saw a stick on the left-hand side of the
road, then, seeing it was a snake, jammed the brake and swerved to the right.

“You do that in Heart Butte, they think you're crazy,” Joseph said.

Sean shifted into neutral and set the handbrake.

“Come on, let's see what it is.”

“It's a fucking snake.”

“But what kind of snake?”

“The kind you run over. White people.” But he got out of the car.

The snake, a mature five-foot bullsnake, reared into an S-coil at Sean's approach and hissed loudly. Sean feinted with his left hand, and as the snake struck he reached his right hand around and picked it up, holding it a foot or so in front of its tail. The bullsnake struck once more at Sean's pants leg, then, hanging in shallow S-bends, twisted its muscular body a few times before calming down. Sean paid it out like rope, one hand over the other, the snake's black tongue tasting the hair on his forearm, then tickling at his ear. He explained to Joseph that once the snake started trying to regain its balance, it had forgotten about striking, that that was the way you picked up any snake that threatened to bite. “It wouldn't hurt that much if it did, but if you jerk your hand away, it can hurt the snake's teeth.”

“I'll keep it in mind.”

“Come on, hold him.”

“No way.” But Sean shamed him into it, and after admiring the creature they carried it away from the road, where Joseph released it. The bullsnake blended into the leaf litter and grasses so perfectly that it was almost impossible to see, even lying in plain sight. Sean knew then what had eluded him before, the thought he couldn't grasp among the detritus that clogged his memory.

“Your cousin,” he said, “from the tribal police—”

“He's my brother-in-law.”

“Your brother-in-law, would he have taken down the names of John Running Boy and the others that he ran off the historical site?”

“The pishkun?”

Sean nodded. Joseph shrugged.

“Do you have a phone number for him?”

“My mother does.”

Sean unfolded his dumb phone, feeling like an idiot for not thinking of it earlier.

A minute later Joseph had his brother-in-law on the line. “Whassup?” he said. And a few seconds later: “Yeah, they have rivers and trees and all that shit. The Lone Rangers even stop their cars to take snakes out of the road. I'm calling cause, remember those dudes that you run off the pishkun, did you, like, take down their names. They got a body down here and he's an Indian might have been one of them. . . . No, this is legit. You got them? . . . yeah, I got a piece of paper.” He took a gas receipt Sean produced and penned a name.

Gary Hixon.

“Not too imaginative,” Sean said.

Joseph turned to Sean. “No, a regular name is good. It will make him easier to track. You say ‘Running Wolf' in the classroom, half the kids raise their hands.”

“How about the names of the white kids?”

Joseph repeated Sean's question over the phone line. He nodded as he listened.

“He says they said Peter and Paul DeCibel. That's what he wrote in the incident book.”

“Decibel. Like noise level? Ask him how to pronounce it.”

Joseph listened some more. “It's disciple. Peter and Paul Disciple. Like in the Bible.”

“Cute,” Sean said.

“Yeah,” Joseph said into the phone, “sounds like bullshit names . . . No, I'm talking to somebody. Yeah, I'm keeping out of trouble. Tell Mom I'll be back tomorrow.”

Sean took the phone and left a message for Martha, who could have somebody work the databases for a Gary Hixon and make calls
to the reservation that had enough authority behind them to get answers.

A mile farther down the road stood the cone of Sean's tipi. Sean said that he needed to change his clothes, then they'd head up the Madison Valley, that he wanted Joseph to meet the young woman who had been John Running Boy's childhood sweetheart.

Joseph shook his head as Sean brought the rig to a stop. “I appreciate you putting me up tonight, but I came all the way from Heart Butte to sleep in a lodge? You got to be kidding.”

“I told you I lived in a tipi.”

“I thought you were bullshitting me.”

Sean said he'd perk up after a burger at the mermaid bar.

—

“Kemosabe,” Sam said, and kicked out a chair for Sean before noticing that the man following him was Indian. “Oh shit, my bad. I don't mean any disrespect. It's just a thing we have.”

“Relax,” Joseph said.

“So what's yours?” Sam said.

“Uh, I don't know. A Coke.”

“Coke it is.”

Sam bought a round for the table as they were joined by Molly Linklatter, whose hair hung in wet curls, making dark spots on her snap-up cowgirl shirt.

“Is Ida swimming tonight?” Sean asked her. He'd looked for her car in the lot, but hadn't seen it.

“As far as I know she's still third shift. I'm a little worried about her. She's been pretty quiet the last two days.”

“What do you mean?”

“Distant, distracted. Not anything specific.”

Sean saw that Joseph hadn't heard their exchange. His eyes were locked on the tank behind the bar, where the Parmachene Belle was working her tail.

“I got to get off the rez more often,” he said, without turning his head.

Sam raised his chin an inch and casually made his right hand a fist, pointing his thumb over his shoulder. Sean got up and followed him outside.

“I got a line on the Fairlane,” Sam said. “I put the word out with my clients and someone saw it. At least he thought it could be a Fairlane. It had fins and it wasn't a trout. Guess where?”

“Where?”

“Earthquake Inn. My client said it went up the drive where the trailers are.”

“When was this?”

“Yesterday, but he didn't tell me until today because he was embarrassed to admit he was at Jimmy's fly shop. Jimmy's good people but he's a competitor, so the client felt like he was patronizing the enemy.”

“That's the trailer court where Ida lives.”

“I know that. The plot thickens, or whatever it is you dicks say.”

Sean stared at the ridges that lifted like the folds of a fan toward the peaks of the Gravellys. “Thickens” wasn't the word he'd have chosen. Rather, the water had cleared somewhat. So John Running Boy was still in the valley and his car had been seen within a few hundred feet of Ida's trailer. Ida, who had paid Sean to find John Running Boy before having a sudden change of heart. Ida, who was late for her shift.

The bartender, Vic, was taking a cigarette break, and Sean walked over. Vic said Ida had called a half hour ago to say she had a migraine and couldn't make it. Sean asked him to check the number she'd called from. Cell service was a prayer and a wish at the Earthquake Inn.

The bartender looked at his last call. “That's the landline at the trailer court,” he said.

“Something's happening,” Sean said to Sam.

“I heard. So she's not coming tonight. People get sick.”

“No, John's car shows up at her place and next thing she's taking a day off? I'm heading over there. Can you put Joseph up and get him to the bus station tomorrow?”

“What time? I have an a.m. float and the guy's a tipper.”

“Forget it. I changed my mind.”

He turned toward the bar, leaving Sam itching his chest hair through a hole in a T-shirt that read:
Fishing—For When You Want to Relax and Still Kill Shit.

“Let's go, Joseph,” Sean said.

“I thought we were going to see the Chippewa Nymph.”

“She's not swimming. I'll tell you on the road.”

It was ten miles to the trailer park and he made it in that many minutes, the Land Cruiser bottoming out at each bump in the road. No Fairlane. A rap at the trailer door greeted by silence.

“What kind of car she drive?” Joseph said.

“Tercel.”

Sean walked around to the back, where a folded-up polytarp was pinned to the ground with river stones.

“Hey, man, look at this,” Joseph said. He pointed to four spots where the grass was a shade lighter. “That's where the tires were sitting, huh?”

Sean nodded. The spacing clearly showed it had been the Fairlane. The Tercel's wheelbase would have registered tire marks closer together.

“You think it was hidden under the tarp?”

Sean was thinking ahead. Ida had made the call to the bar approximately forty minutes ago. He'd passed the community phone on the way in; it was bolted to the wall of the fly shop. Had she been driving away when she called the bar to say she couldn't make it? If so, then she had a forty-minute lead on him.
The
y did, if they were caravanning in two cars.

“Hey, Sean.”

Joseph had picked up one of the gnomes by the tomato plants. “It's
the trailer key under the gnome trick, except at my mom's it's under a stone frog with its head broken off.”

“What are you waiting for?” Sean said.

Joseph turned the key and they stepped into the trailer, where two coffee cups on the sink drew Sean's attention. The cups were rinsed out, but the whistle kettle on the burner was almost hot to the touch. Perhaps she wasn't as far down the road as he'd thought.

Where the gravel drive met Highway 287, he hesitated. Right or left? Right was east, the Hebgen Plateau and Yellowstone Park. Left was north. Ennis was to the north, so was Bridger, she could be heading almost anywhere. Sean turned left, flooring it, driving tight-lipped. Neither spoke what both were thinking, that if you took a compass bearing due north and kept driving, you'd hit the Blackfeet Reservation at first light.

“Is this crazy?” Sean finally said. He eased his foot off the accelerator, bringing the RPMs down where they belonged.

“Not if you're an Indian. We do crazy shit all the time.”

“Is it true that Indians are always driving on empty?”

“No, we fill her up, we just do it two gallons at a time. You're thinking we catch up at Ennis, she'd be at the pump? It doesn't take that long to gas up, man.”

“No, but someone there would remember if she went inside to pay. Then we'd know if we were on the right road.”

“You really are a detective.”

Sean smiled. “I'm going to ignore the sarcasm and choose to take that as a compliment, Joseph.”

He pressed down on the pedal.