Buffalo Jump Blues (8 page)

“Painting?”

“No, it's more the line of work you're talking about.”

“What's it about?”

“A missing person. Someone saw a face from the past and wants me to find him for her.”

“That sounds . . . uninteresting.”

“It is, though. It's got a mermaid, it's got an arrowhead, maybe even true love.”

“True love is a myth.”

“So, how's it going with Harold, or shouldn't I ask?”

“It's going. It certainly isn't love. What about you and Katie Sparrow, or is that a rumor?”

“We're having . . . fun. I guess that's the word.”

“She's only been throwing herself at you for the last three years.”

“I finally caught her.”

It was quiet in the barn.

“I guess your owl realized it was too early to hoot and went back to sleep,” Sean said.

They walked into the twilight. It took a second try, but Martha managed to put a smile on her face. It faded as he drove out of sight.

T
here was, predictably, a dog in the yard. White with brown patches, some terrier in it, no right rear leg and no surprise there, either. Three-legged dogs were as common as three-fingered men in Montana, the Blackfeet Indian reservation no exception. The dog had taken a keen interest in Stranahan's shoelaces and he was bending over to retie them when the door of the trailer opened. He'd planned on talking his way inside and knew right away it wasn't going to be easy.

Browning was a seven-hour drive from Bridger, and it had taken him another to find the trailer after reaching town. Ida Evening Star had no address, only what she called Indian directions—right where the road forks, left past the mailbox with a flag shaped like an upside-down rooster, down “I don't know, maybe a mile, you'll see a house with a chimney.” What kind of chimney? “A tall one.” She said the trailer would be about a quarter mile north of there on a dirt lane. It was white with a black band. There used to be a swing set in the yard.

There was no fork, the road had changed, he was climbing into aspen stands on the flanks of the Front Range before he had the sense to turn around.

He pulled over to talk to a man walking along the blacktop, not a house to be seen in either direction. “Black-and-white trailer?” The man itched at the back of one hand. “That's the old Campbell place, but there hasn't been anyone there for years. Just ghosts.” Sean offered him a ride, which he declined. But the man told him where to
go and was wrong, because the woman who stood in the doorway with her head thrown back and her arms crossed was no ghost.

Sean decided his only chance was to level with her and watched as she listened, not hiding her suspicion of him as a white man, or maybe as any man. She was younger than he'd expected the man's aunt to be—midthirties, heavyset, with a fleshy face with large pores and short black hair. She wore an oversize red sweatshirt with a Browning Indians logo.

“I don't know John Running Boy. I moved here last spring and you're talking stuff when I was in Cut Bank.” And shut the door in his face.

Sean gave the dog a pat and the old swing in the yard a push, the rusty chains creaking. The one double-wide wood-slat seat looked like it would break if a bird perched on it. He walked back to his rig. People had been telling him he must have Indian blood since he was little, but apparently it wasn't enough to pass. He idled back the way he had come and looked at the house with the big chimney he'd driven by on the way in. Ida had told him that was where the man lived who'd taught John how to nap arrowheads. It was two-story with a checkerboard roof of missing shingles and looked deserted, a haunted house built on a little hill, though there was a vintage truck in the drive with a grille big enough to roast a pig. Sean climbed the two steps to a sagging porch, noticing an American flag in a flag holder. He knocked. No answer.

He walked back and placed a hand on the hood of the truck. It was warm, but then it was a warm day.

He heard the door open. A man appeared. He'd been quite tall once, but was now so stooped he had to lift his head, turtlelike, to see in front of him. He tapped his cane, stray yellow-gray hair falling over his shoulders and hanging in front of his face.

“What do you want? Are you from the registry?” His voice was strong but had a quaver to it.

Stranahan said he wasn't.

“They said they'd send someone to talk to me.”

“It wasn't me. What does the registry want?” Stranahan had no idea what the registry was, but thought his chances for cooperation were better if he could keep the man talking.

“They're going to interview me for their war records before my soul passes into the spirit world.” The man had managed to make it to the bottom step, where he lifted a hand to shield his face from the sun. “Nobody wants to come out and say I'll be dead and then it will be too late, so they pick their words accordingly.”

“I'm here about someone you might have known a number of years ago. His name is John Running Boy. Or it was.”

Sean advanced one stride but went no closer, out of courtesy, not wanting the man to have to crane his head farther to look up at him. The man's right forearm shook under the weight he placed on the cane.

“You'll come into my . . . house.” He placed the stick as a pivot and turned around it.

Sean followed the tapping up the steps and inside, where he could see depressions in the floorboards worn by the cane's metal tip. It was like following an elk trail in the mountains that kept splitting off in different directions, a line of pockmarks leading to a living area, another branching into a kitchen, a third bending into a corridor.

The man stopped in he middle of the room to take a few breaths. “My wife made me put a crutch tip on my stick, but she's complaining from the other side now and I choose to ignore her voice. I like the sound it makes, it's company.” He tapped the cane on the wood—
tap, tap, tap
—and directed himself toward the only chair in the room, a boxy recliner.

The house could have been any run-down dwelling in Montana, on reservation or off, with the exception of a built-in bookcase that took up most of one wall. Besides the reclining chair, the living area had a leather loveseat and a threadbare throw rug. A hair-rubbed cowhide was spread under a coffee table stained with coffee cup rings. A shed
elk antler perched on the fireplace mantel, cobwebs stretching from one tine to the next. Above it was a photograph of a group of men in uniform, standing and kneeling. Sean waited to speak until the man sat down, an undertaking that took time.

“You were in the Army,” Sean prompted.

“Eighty-first Infantry Division. I was a code talker.” He pressed his hands on the coffee table and pushed himself up so that his back was nearly straight. Doing that added significantly to his stature. Though his eyes were smoky and there remained a minor trembling of his jaw, Sean was aware that he was in the presence of an impressive man.

The stick wavered as the man indicated one of the GI's in the photo. “I was nineteen, never been outside Montana.”

“I thought the code talkers were Navajo,” Sean said.

“Everybody thinks that, including most Indians, but there were Crow, Choctaw, Comanche, Kiowa, even Sioux. When I joined up in '44, they asked if I spoke Indian, and I said two different languages. See, I was Blackfeet, but my wife was Oglala Sioux, so I spoke some Lakota, and they had another guy who did, too, so I was recruited. I worked for a two-star general in the Pacific and helped pass messages back and forth with his chief of staff before the combat landing on Angaur Island. I'm proud to have served my country, even if my country failed to serve my people. You can sit down on the sofa.” He tapped the love seat with the cane. “It's got a sag, but that's no nevermind to a young man like yourself.”

Sean sat down.

“Melvin Campbell,” the man said. “Bland name for an Indian, huh?” He put out a livered hand and Sean leaned forward and shook it. “I'd offer you coffee, but it takes some starch out of me just going to the door, so I'll ask you to get yourself a cup. It's on the counter.”

“Would you like some?”

“I'd appreciate it. With about a tablespoon of that condensed milk on the top shelf of the refrigerator.”

Sean went to make the coffee. He knew he'd be here awhile now,
whether or not Melvin Campbell had anything to recall about John Running Boy. It was a function of being in the country where people talked to their dogs and their departed, where flesh-and-blood company, expected or not, was the highlight of the day. He returned with the coffee and watched Melvin Campbell's lips purse, fishlike, to explore the brim of the cup.

“John Running Boy,” he said. He took a sip and set the cup down. “When he was little it was John Runs Away, the name his father gave him. I always thought that was ironic. It was the father who went away. His aunt Thelma died back in '08. I'm the one rented her the trailer.”

“That's your property?”

“I don't think of it that way, but there's a piece of paper somewhere says that it is.”

“The woman living there now isn't very cordial.”

“No, she is not.” Campbell laughed, a short “ha” that made a little spit. “Feel sorry about her dog, though. There was some kids from the high school got together to watch
Smoke Signals
and decided to drive all over the rez in reverse. A lot of fun, ha-ha. The dog was out to the mailbox and they hit it, I could hear it squeal from here. They were just whooping it up.” He shook his head sadly. “There isn't a kid in these parts hasn't seen that movie five times.”

Sean thought to steer him back on track. “I heard you taught John how to nap arrowheads.”

“Yes. He was a fast learner, better than me in just one summer. Had the knack.”

“Do you know where he went after his aunt died?”

“His mother took him back. When he was little, she shacked up with a no-account and they just fought all the time and she couldn't be bothered, so she sent the boy to his aunt's. She's got a place down in Heart Butte, came into an inheritance. Found Jesus. You ever been to Heart Butte?”

Sean said he hadn't.

“Flat like that.” He held out his hand. “She's got one of those houses on the allotments by the sub agency.”

“Is John still living with her?”

His eyes seemed to roam far away before settling their focus. “John, he used to come up here when he was in high school and would get a ride. Pretty rough-looking. You had to look a long time to find the boy I'd known in there. I remember he came in all beat up one time. He and some kids had driven into Great Falls and got fighting with white boys who insulted them, called them Mowgli. Hard to believe they were so ignorant they didn't know the difference between a India Indian and a Native American. I wanted him to enlist like I had, but one of the white boys was from the Malmstrom Air Force Base, so that soured him on the military. I could see he wasn't going anywhere, so I tried to interest him in Blackfeet history.” He waved a hand toward the bookcase. “I urged him to go to Montana State and major in Native American studies.”

“Did he?”

He shook his head. “No. I still see Judy once in a while when she comes to the supermarket.”

“That's his mother?”

“Yes. Judith Crandall.”

“When's the last time you saw her?”

“Back . . . been a while I guess. I want to say March, but it could have been February.”

“And he was still with her then?”

He nodded. “They say Italian men live with their mothers until they're forty. We might give them a run for their lire.”

“When's the last time you saw him?”

“It was after when I talked to his mother. Early May? He sat right where you are. The first time I saw him in years. He'd quit coming around and myself and that Ford outside have an agreement. She'll keep on getting me from here to there long as it isn't any farther than
South Browning. Heart Butte's 'bout forty mile from here, might as well be Mars.”

“Why did he come?”

“He wanted to borrow some books. He'd become interested in the history of our people. He looked good. Had a shirt buttoned all the way up, his hair was washed, he'd had some work done on his teeth. I encouraged him to take all the books he wanted, then bring them back and get some more. I had an ulterior motive, you see. Showing up after so much time passed, I wanted him to feel an obligation to come back. I wanted the company, but I also saw him as someone who could help me transcribe some notes I've written over the years, oral histories and so forth. I have the arthritis now that makes writing painful.”

“What books did he take?”

“Biographies of the chiefs—Sitting Bull, Looking Glass, Joseph, Crowfoot. Histories of Plains Indians, tribal traditions, Native hunting traditions, American Indian Wars. A general overview. I made the selection for him.” He nodded to himself. “I've seen it happen before. Kids grow up here, they're just weeds blowing in the wind. A lot of poverty, a lot of alcoholism and self-defeating behavior. No jobs. You get mad at the world and on the way to that your fellow man. It's no different than the urban poor in a city. Kids rebel against their fate by assuming an attitude of indifference Where you see no future in life, life has a reduced value. Like what happened to that dog. Those kids didn't even bother to stop and see if it was hurt.”

The old man looked up at Stranahan.

“Something snaps inside the brain,” he said. “It can be triggered by life-changing experience or just words someone says. They see a fire in somebody's eyes who has walked beyond the boundaries of life as they know it, and they realize they are part of a rich cultural history and want to tap back into it. The revelation exhilarates them. It gives
them purpose and they turn around and help others see what they have seen.”

As he listened, Sean had all but forgotten about the man's frailty, which was only noticeable in the shaking of the cup. He found that he was both surprised and unsurprised by Campbell's erudition and eloquence. Sean had knocked on a lot of doors, and the farther he was from centers of population, the more unexpected the result. It was one of the first things that struck him upon moving to Montana.

“Perhaps yours was the fire he saw that made the change,” he said.

“I'd like to think so, but he met some other people. A few weeks after he got the books, I called his mother and she said he'd taken off with two white boys and another boy she said looked like deep rez. All that means is it's somebody she never saw before. I call them boys, but I suppose they were young men, like John. He told her he'd be back in a week, but it's been more than that and I worry about him.”

“He didn't say where he was heading?”