Burial (45 page)

‘I agree,' said Papago Joe. ‘We should always remember the Nazis.'

I smelled a trap. ‘You're trying to tell me that the white settlers were as bad as the Nazis?'

Papago Joe took a mouthful of Chivas Regal, swilled it around his teeth, and then swallowed it. ‘It depends, doesn't it?' he challenged me. ‘It depends whether you believe that to decimate a whole civilization is forgivable and forgettable or not.'

I said, ‘Come on, now, the world changes. You can't stop people exploring. You can't stop people looking for something better. And you sure can't blame every single white settler for what the Army and the government did. Plenty
of whites were massacred, remember, as well as Indians.'

‘Of course. But it wasn't your guns that killed us. It was simply you.'

‘I don't follow you. '

Papago Joe swallowed more whisky, and refilled his glass. ‘It was simply
you
, my friend. Did you know, for example, that when the Pilgrims landed in New England they found so many dead Indians that, in some places, acres of ground were literally carpeted with bones? It was a landscape like some kind of nightmare. Like hell, like the end of the world. Too many to bury, and not enough left alive to bury them. And do you know
why
so many Indians died? Because four years before, by accident, they had caught measles from European fishermen. Measles! Three quarters of the entire native population from Maine to Connecticut were wiped out

‘Then there was smallpox. You didn't need guns, all you needed was smallpox! In the early days, whole tribes contracted smallpox from just one explorer, or from just one wandering trader. Some of them were entirely wiped out before white colonists ever discovered them. Gone, vanished, without any trace at all, and nobody will ever know their customs, or their culture, or their language, or what they looked like, or even their names.

‘You've heard of the Mandans? In just one winter, the Mandans were reduced from sixteen hundred to just thirty-one; and in the same winter, the dreaded ferocious Black-foot were almost completely wiped out Not by guns, not by battle, but by
you
. Your being here, alone, was enough to destroy us.'

Papago Joe sat down on a backless kitchen chair, and looked up at me with those deep black glittery eyes. ‘We thought it was magic. Pathetic, isn't it? Our leaders and our loved ones died in our arms. We were stricken with grief, confused, angry, and terrified. We really believed it was magic.'

I cleared my throat. I felt pretty damned embarrassed, I can tell you. Partly because of Papago Joe's bitter condemnation of us white folks. I mean, did I feel diseased, or what? And partly because I hadn't expected an Indian who ran a used-car dealership in a one-horse Arizona junction to be so eloquent and so knowledgeable and so
committed
.

I said, cautiously, Okay, I take your point You don't want to forgive and you don't want to forget. I guess all that I can say in our favour is that we didn't give you all those diseases on purpose.'

Papago Joe gave me a wry smile. ‘You don't think so? Maybe you didn't, but you tried, my friend, you certainly tried. The British handed out smallpox-infected blankets to the Great Lakes Indians, in the hope that it would start an epidemic; and there were many more deliberate attempts to spread disease amongst what your forefathers were pleased to call “the dissatisfied tribes”.'

‘Well,' I said, finishing my whisky. ‘What can I tell you? I wasn't personally there at the time, but I'm sorry. I'm embarrassed, I'm ashamed, and if there's anything I can do to make it up to you, I will.'

I opened the Airstream's door. The sunlight ran in two parallel lines down Papago Joe's cheeks, like fluorescent warpaint

‘You're not going?' he asked me, still smiling.

I hesitated. ‘I was under the impression that I wasn't particularly welcome.'

Papago Joe laughed. ‘You shouldn't let me upset you. I do get preachy, at times.'

‘Maybe, but from what you've said, you're entitled to get preachy.'

‘Come on back, Mr Erskine,' said Papago Joe. ‘This is good whisky. If you don't help me drink it, then E.C. will help me drink it, and I can't stand E.C. when he's drunk.
He starts reciting all of the names of all of the tracks on all of the Grateful Dead albums.'

I thought for a moment, then I closed the door. If Papago Joe knew so much about Indian history, then maybe he could help me track down Karen — and, even better, get her free from Misquamacus.

‘I'm going to tell you something,' said Papago Joe. ‘If we taught the real history of America in our schools, then every classroom every day would be awash with tears. What happened to the Indians makes the Holocaust pale by comparison. You preach human rights to the Russians, and talk about Tiananmen Square? You ought to think about what you did to the Indians. It's the biggest whitewash job in all the annals of modern history, but it never went away, it was always there, and now it's eaten this nation's heart out.'

I accepted his offer of another three fingers of Chivas Regal. I watched his face in fascination. His skin had the quality of smooth leather, folded into wrinkles under his eyes. I would have given him forty-eight, forty-nine — maybe fifty.

‘You're pretty militant,' I remarked. ‘If you'll forgive my saying so, that's pretty unusual in an In — in a native American your age.'

He shook his head. ‘Why don't you call me an Indian? You think I'm an Indian, for Christ's sake call me an Indian. I can't stand hypocrisy.'

‘I'm worried about what you might call me in return,' I told him.

He thought about that, and then grinned. ‘Listen, paleface, my father always wanted me to make it big in business. He had worked his ass off for twenty years, and do you know where it got him? Deputy vegetable manager at the local market. Heady stuff, hunh? But he always dreamed that his son could do better.

‘He gave up smoking and he gave up drinking and he gave up candy bars and for all I know he gave up breathing. He saved his money and in the end he managed to send me to Arizona State. I was supposed to be taking a business course, but I could tell from the start that I was never going to make a success of it How could I, when all the white students kept saying “How!” and calling me “Tonto” and treating me like something unpleasant that had gotten stuck on the sole of their shoe?

‘I began to realize that even my
own
perception of what an Indian was had been totally distorted by cowboy movies and all that noble-savage-
Last of the Mohicans crap
. I didn't know
who
I was, or
what
I was, and most of all I couldn't understand why my fellow students thought that I was so inferior.

‘I cut all of my business classes and I went to the university library and I spent a whole year finding out the truth. It's all there. You only have to look for it And when I
had
found out, I decided that I didn't particularly want to be a businessman any more — the deputy deputy vegetable buyer for some godforsaken supermarket, or the token Redskin for some two-bit suburban mortgage-and-loan corporation. I decided I wanted to run my own business, no matter how little money I made; and I decided that I wanted to live the life of a native American, somebody who was here first'

I swallowed whisky, watching him.

E.C. Dude said, ‘You should have realized by now that Papago Joe is one totally three hundred percent committed Indian. Aren't you, Joe? I mean, this dude can scalp you just by talking to you.'

Papago Joe said, ‘E.C. go across to the Sun Devil and bring back some ice and some almonds and some potato-chips. We're not being very hospitable here.'

E.C. Dude said, ‘What do you think this is? The Biltmore?' But all the same he tugged on his jeans and left the trailer, slamming the door noisily behind him.

Papago Joe said, ‘I think it's better if you and I talk in private, to begin with.'

I said, ‘You haven't yet asked me who I am or why I've bought you a bottle of whisky.'

‘I assumed that you would tell me, given time.'

‘My name's Erskine, Harry Erskine. I'm a kind of a psychic investigator. You know, like James Randi? I'm looking for a girl who was here the other day, when you were being interviewed on television.'

Papago Joe said, ‘Actually, Mr Erskine, I know who you are, and I know why you've come.'

‘You
know
?'

‘Somebody you know well has already been in touch with me.'

‘Who? Not Amelia?'

Papago Joe shook his head; smiled. ‘Somebody closer than that. Somebody who always has your interests at heart.'

I was beginning to feel that something was going badly wrong. That first briny taste of uncertainty, and fear.

‘Stop worrying,' said Papago Joe. ‘Give me your hand.'

Reluctantly, I held out my hand. Papago Joe took hold of it, and pressed it against the crumpled aluminum side of the trailer. The alloy was chilled by their air-conditioning, and it made me shiver. ‘What's this in aid of?' I asked him.

‘You'll see. Do you feel okay?'

‘I might feel okay if I knew what the hell was happening.'

‘Relax,' said Papago Joe. He kept my hand pressed against the aluminum.

‘What?' I wanted to know.

Papago Joe didn't say any more, simply kept on smiling. But there, in the palm of my hand, the metal began to crinkle and rise. I could definitely feel it changing shape. I frowned at Papago Joe in uncertainty, but his expression was giving nothing away. At first I didn't understand what he was trying to do, but then I felt somebody
breathing
into
my hand, and I felt eyelashes flicking against my skin, and I realized that Papago Joe was doing what Martin Vaizey had done for me, back in his apartment, with his book of Velazquez.

Singing Rock
.

I tried to tug my hand away from the trailer wall, but Papago Joe gripped it tight and held it there, and gave me a quick negative shake of his head. ‘Don't break contact. I'm not very highly sensitive. I can only keep it here for a minute or two, at most.'

‘Singing Rock?' I said, hoarsely.

There was a lengthy pause, but then I felt cold breath, and metallic lips moving in the palm of my hand.

‘
… what you have to do now
…' said the blurry voice of Singing Rock, across fifteen years and the dark frontiers of death itself. ‘…
find them, rouse them up, nobody else can help you
…'

‘Who are you talking about?' I asked him. ‘Find who? Rouse who up?'

Singing Rock said, in the strangest of voices, ‘…
rouse them up, Harry, it's their land, too, they'll help you
…'

Papago Joe was sweating and breathing hard. Obviously he found it much more difficult to sustain Singing Rock's image than Martin Vaizey had.

I heard Singing Rock say, ‘…
your people, your people
…' But then, almost immediately, I felt the metal crumple and collapse beneath my hand, and Singing Rock was gone. I stepped back and stared at Papago Joe straight and level. ‘You're a sensitive?' I asked him.

‘I was taught by Blood Hook. I was initiated, and when I was younger I used to see spirits all the time. But in the end I turned my back on it. I found it too depressing, being visited by spirits from the time when men could roam freely. There didn't seem to be any point. After all, there was nothing we could do to change the future; or so I thought.
I didn't believe in the Ghost Dance, the dragging-down. I didn't believe it was possible.

‘But, three nights ago, your friend Singing Rock visited me when I was dreaming. He spoke to me in riddles, in a spirit language that I didn't understand. But I knew that it wasn't any ordinary dream.

‘The next day I took the vision powders, and I found Singing Rock and raised his face out of a buffalo-skin satchel. He told me all about Misquamacus, and what happened at the Sisters of Jerusalem; and how he had been beheaded at Lake Berryessa. He also told me that Misquamacus would be coming here, bringing your friend Karen with him. And then he said that
you
would come, too, looking for Karen, hunting for Misquamacus. He was worried that Misquamacus might set an ambush for you.'

‘How did Singing Rock know that Misquamacus would bring Karen here?' I asked Papago Joe. Now I was growing excited.

Papago Joe said, ‘Misquamacus was counting coup.'

‘Counting coup? What does that mean?'

‘Counting coup is when Indian warriors touch their enemies to show their bravado. That's why they used to carry those feathered coup-sticks. Obviously it's braver to touch your enemy while he's still alive, but they used to count coup on dead bodies, too. It's rather like Air Force pilots painting little aircraft on the noses of their fighters, to show how many enemy planes they've shot down.

‘But, in this case, Misquamacus has a problem. Because he's only a spirit he can't physically touch his victims. Not unless he possesses somebody's body and uses their hands to touch his victims by proxy. In this case, your friend Karen.'

‘Jesus,' I said. ‘Does that mean Karen — But why should he
want
to count coup?'

‘Every coup makes him stronger. Every spirit he takes
makes him greater. When the Indians eventually rise up, Misquamacus will have the scalps of thousands of white men blowing from his lodge-poles. He will have more coups than any Indian who ever lived. You can imagine what will happen then: they will practically make him a god.'

‘So Karen may still be here.'

Papago Joe said, ‘Yes. If Misquamacus is counting coup, Karen will still be here. She will be looking for all those people who died here, so that she can touch them, and claim their deaths for the greater glory of the great Misquamacus.'