Coyote Wind (13 page)

“I find out who killed your brother,” said Du Pré.

Bart slid a black leather envelope out of his coat pocket. He handed it to Du Pré. “There’s five thousand in there,” he said. “More, any more you might need, call Lawyer Foote at this number.” Little card, expensive paper.

“But when I find out,” said Du Pré, “you do what I tell you to do about it, you hear? Do what I say.”

“Yes,? Bart whispered, nodding. “I just want to know.”

D
U
P
RÉ WENT TO
Raymond and Jacqueline’s little house for Christmas dinner. Madelaine’s people were in town and she didn’t want to upset them, someone notice Du Pré knows his way around her house too good, and she an abandoned wife but still married in the eyes of God, and especially her relatives’.

“We all got them aunts,” said Du Pré.“ ’Cept me, my aunt, she a hooker on a horse, got a lariat, fer Chrissakes.”

His third grandchild was so happy to see Grandpère Du Pré he pissed in Grandpère’s lap. Thank you, little Dominick.

“I’m sorry,” said Jacqueline, mopping Du Pré off. Lots of good that will do, thought Du Pré, sit through dinner now on my soaked nuts. This grandfather shit, well.

“You can wear some of Raymond’s underwear, pair of his jeans,” said Jacqueline. Raymond had one pair good pants, church pants, he was in them.

Du Pré changed in their bedroom. He rolled his soiled things together, stuck them in the game pouch of his old hunting coat. Benetsee’s deer. Blood on the sleeve. He’d forgotten the old man, been too busy. Benetsee, he hadn’t come round, either. Hadn’t seen him three, four weeks? Thanksgiving? Damn me. I got to go check. Cow asses, where these days go.

“Hey,” said Du Pré when he came out, “I better go see about Benetsee. I have forgot him.”

“We didn’t,” said Jacqueline. “Father Van Den Heuvel took him to that Bart’s. I would have them here, but … ”

This tiny house. Even with just Du Pré and Maria extra it was stuffed to bursting. The three little ones slept in a big closet off the tiny bedroom.

When they ate today it would be on a kitchen table made of a full four-by-eight sheet of plywood sitting on the little kitchen table, chairs for four. Raymond had made a bench, too, for the little ones. Plenty of room for the people, plenty of room for the food. Bart, now, he had never had a meal like this one here. Poor bastard.

Raymond carved the turkey. A huge bird, Du Pré had driven all the way to Great Falls for it. Bought stuffing mix, chestnuts, and fresh oysters.

The Métis people had lots of goiter, no iodine. Big throats, till the oysters came. Eat oyster stew one Friday time to time after that. In the old days, the Métis traded for salmon, but the whites they stole the fish, too.

Du Pré wondered who the first Métis to see the ocean was. Most likely they saw Hudson Bay.

Red River.

Tomorrow, Du Pré would drive east and then north, back up the trail of the returning buffalo hunters, the noisy Red River carts. Supposed to be no snow for two days. Hah. This country, it sat out there, breathing, waiting for the winter, like a big white cat and you the mouse.

They ate. Du Pré’s grandson added to his legend by throwing up over himself and much of the table. One glob stuck to the side of Du Pré’s wineglass. Du Pré stuck out a finger, wiped it off, looked at the lump, smeared it on his napkin.

“Oh, poor baby,” said Jacqueline, grabbing the boy.

“Good, strong Métis stomach,” said Du Pré. “He throw it far, that little one.”

“Papa!” said Jacqueline, laughing. She took her baby to the sink, put him in it, washed him while shushing his wails.

“So you go see Aunty Pauline,” said Jacqueline, returning. Little Dominick, damp and streaked, much subdued. The boy pecked at a fresh plate of food, eyeing distances, computing trajectories.

“Yes,” said Du Pré, “I haven’t seen her in a long time. Got some time, travel a little.” He’d given Jacqueline a thousand dollars, to keep against need. Hard-headed girl. Raymond wouldn’t even know until they were up against it. Just keep them shots coming, Raymond. Got to make them babies, regular-like.

Raymond looked around the table with pride. Jacqueline loved him enough to let him keep that.

Jacqueline had made a wild plum pie. Garnered the fruit from the bushes that hugged the little creek that ran behind the house. Baby in the little carrier on her back. Rum in the pie. Nutmeg.

I should have brought my fiddle with me, thought Du Pré. Well, I am going to take it with me, see those fiddlers up there know what they are about. Yes.

Du Pré poured whiskey in his coffee. Raymond had a little. The boy hardly drank. Boy, hell, man, got more kids man I do. I was that young once, but I drank lots more whiskey.

Maria sat very quietly, in her sister’s house. Jacqueline had the babies, had proved herself. Du Pré looked at Maria, felt a little sorry for the world, it didn’t lie down, do like she said. He laughed, shook his head My girls.

Tomorrow I go back up that trail, drive first to Pembina, over in North Dakota, then right up past the little Catholic churches every twenty miles on the prairie. Once the Church had railroad cars made up like chapels for weddings, baptisms, funerals. Park it on a siding of the Canadian Pacific, tend to business.

That night Du Pré slept badly, excited, things gnawing at his mind. He dreamed, bad confusing dreams.

He woke up choking, in this house he had been born and raised in.

He remembered being in the little bedroom, the one that Maria had now, one night a very long time ago.

His parents had been talking low, in bed.

His mother, she had been crying.

J
UST ONE MORE PIECE
Métis trash headed north, Du Pré ought. Them English hate us Frenchies, hate the Indians, see what it is like to come from an island. Carry it with you in your soul.

North Dakota in winter. Bleak. Du Pré recalled the joke, the big North Dakota winter sport, get the neighbors to help push the house down the road, jump-start the furnace.

He stopped at a gas station for coffee.

Aunty Pauline was in the little Manitoba town of Boissevain, not so far over the border. Du Pré had called her. She had a wonderful voice, the voice you get from many years of cigarettes and whiskey and broken loves.

Du Pré couldn’t remember if she sang or not. He hoped so.

He wondered what she looked like now, sixty-some, he remembered her blond and beautiful and very strong. How his mother looked at her, not liking her. Too wild. Bring that out in Catfoot, she’d have trouble, threaten my house, my little Gabriel, I don’t like her.

Dangerous women, they scare women not so dangerous.

The border. The Canadian side, man leaned down, asked where Du Pré is going, how long he plans to stay. Du Pré said a week maybe. Then they toss the car, even took out the seats while Du Pré sat in the waiting room, looking at a bronze plaque which stated the stiff penalties for beating the shit out of a customs officer.

It took Du Pré two hours to put his car back together. They had left his fiddle case open on the hood in the bitter cold. The fiddle’s varnish had begun to wrinkle.

Take that, you Frenchy Indian piece of shit, we don’t care you call yourself American.

The Scots were the worst. Live in the mountains on an island, invent haggis, you’d have a sour view of the world, too.

Fuck you, Du Pré thought.

Gabriel Dumont. If poor mad Louis Riel had let him, little Gabriel would have killed your precious General Wolseley, your redcoat troops, left you dead there. Spit in your faces.

Du Pré spat on the asphalt, all rimed with salt. So many people from the cities, never saw ice on the road. Come booming up here from Chicago, wherever, car set on cruise control, hit a patch of ice and that’s that.

But he liked the country. It felt like home. Very big sky, this. The Scandinavians broke under it, often enough. The North Dakota State Motto: I bain don’t tink dis luek like Norvay …

Manitoba. Good woodland Cree word, or was it Chippewa? No English word good enough to name this country, for sure. Red River, I piss here it goes to Hudson Bay.

The road went north, straight as a stretched string. Long, lone, and a little up, long, lone, and a little down.

Boissevain. Little Catholic town, Métis town, little white church, very big graveyard.

Du Pré went to the saloon. Remembered that in Canada, the bars were divided, men single in one end, couples in another. The Canadians, they didn’t like fights.

Du Pré called his Aunty Pauline. Man answered, seemed about to hang up, but he called her to the phone instead.

“I’ll come there,” she said, voice deep and smoky. “I look a lot different. Do you?”

Du Pré said yes.

He had a Molson beer, squat bottle with scratches on it. All Canadian beer bottles were the same, so they could take them back to any brewery.

Du Pré rolled a cigarette, smoked, thought his aunt would be a little while, put on a face, must take longer these days, try to sketch in what had fallen off.

But she came right away. Wearing crimson buckskins, cigarette in a long holder. She smiled at the barman, who smiled back.

My Aunty Pauline, the character. Du Pré liked her.

She was still a good-looking woman. Silk shirt, soft around the throat. Hard face, thick coat of makeup. Brown eyes very big still, lots of green eye shadow.

“So, Du Pré,” she said, sitting down. Cheap large stones on her hands, or maybe even expensive ones. Du Pré couldn’t tell. The shoulders of her crimson leather jacket were damp from the wet snow falling outside.

They didn’t hug, didn’t kiss. Aunty Pauline looked down, the barman brought her a drink brown over ice. Brandy? Du Pré paid for it, left the change.

“What you want?” she said. “All these years you don’t want to talk to your Aunty Pauline, now you do. Your mother never like me.”

“I got a question,” said Du Pré. “Then I’ll leave you alone.”

Pauline sipped her brandy.

“You have a lover once, man named Fascelli? Gianni Fascelli?”

Du Pré waited a moment.

“Aunty Pauline,” said Du Pré, “you hear me?”

She had frozen. Drink in hand. Her hand shook. She set her drink down.

“No,” she said finally.

“I think that I know better,” said Du Pré, “you know?”

“Look,” said Aunty Pauline. “This Fascelli man, he sees me ride in a show, OK? He fall in love with me, crazy love. He has lots of money, sends me gifts, follows me around the circuit. Miles City, he’s in the stands, Havre, Calgary, Spokane, all around. But he scares me. He has crazy eyes, he’s always drunk, he has so much damn money.”

Du Pré nodded, sipped his beer.

“So I tell him to leave me alone.”

Du Pré had another swallow.

“He gets mad with me one night, threatens me with all these gangster people in Chicago he knows. I don’t go with him, he have me killed. So I meet him at a hotel, stay in his bed three days. I’m very scared.”

 Du Pré nodded.

“He pass out drunk, I get up, dress, grab my suitcase, run to Catfoot, hide.”

“So he was looking for you?” And, thought Du Pré, the money in his wallet and left nut, most likely.

“He sent people to ask questions, sent gifts, too, said he would be by soon, and just take me with him.”

Du Pré looked at her. We don’t none of us got a straight story, he thought, but poor Aunty Pauline.

“So that’s what you know now,” she said. “I got a younger man now, he’s very jealous, so I got to go.”

Du Pré nodded.

He watched his aunt walk away. Still had a nice ass, must be she still ride some. Whatever.

D
U
P
RÉ FIDDLED. HE
stood in his Métis finery out in front of the bandstand, lights on him, while the people clapped and danced and cheered. People mostly looked a lot like him, some few English.

The men wore a lot of white with red sashes, the women silks in brilliant colors, white teeth in brown faces.

A man bowed from a life on horseback, hands twice the size they should be for his height, he played the good ringing bones. Somebody had a washtub bass, they pulled on the string and broomstick and the bottom bowed up, slide that deep note.

Good people.

Du Pré fiddled till his fingers hurt, found himself scooting off from the playing of the others, dropping little clusters of icy notes back down on the melody.

He was knee-walking, grass-grabbing drunk. Couldn’t lie on the floor without holding on.

Some people took him home with them, saying these Manitoba Provincial Police bad on drunk drivers, love to arrest people from the States.

Du Pré awoke the next morning, still pretty drunk. He was asleep in a cupboard bed, under a bunch of quilts. He sat up, and he smiled, thought about the night before.

The master of ceremonies had unfurled what he said was the new Canadian flag. A big green frog pissing on nine little beavers. Du Pré began laughing again, thinking about that flag.

Smell of smoked venison frying, slap of spoon mixing up the pancake batter.

Du Pré sat down at a long trestle table. He looked up, looked down, seemed like he was looking at a bunch of cousins.

“You got the big head, he?” said one man, about Du Pré’s age. When he smiled, he had no upper front teeth. Oh. That man, one of the fiddlers from the night before.

“Oh,” said a plump pretty woman, “you play that fiddle good.” She set down a platter of venison, big platter of fry bread.

Peppersauce for the venison, chokecherry jam for the fry bread.

I feel like home here, thought Du Pré. Montana, it is home, I know, I like it, I will die there, but my people are up here too.

Du Pré was famished. He ate and ate till the hosts clapped and laughed at him.

“He need a good woman feed him more,” said a man at the other end of the table. “They got no good women down in them States, eh? You take one of ours back, eh?”

Du Pré blushed, he thought of Madelaine.

Now I got to go all the way over to Moose Jaw, the Oblate Fathers Home, see that old Father Leblanc.