Mark Henry_Amanda Feral 02 (25 page)

“Thanks.”

“Gonna add about an hour to your drive, I’m afraid.” So much for shaving an hour off the drive time, I thought. The woman moved on to the camper.
Wendy was visibly scowling as she struggled to crank down her window.

An hour into the drive, we rolled up to our first stoplight. A thin strip of town bled off to the right. I didn’t have much hope that this was the place, but there was a gas station and on the post in front a sign for a grocery. Scott had spotted it, too. The orange monstrosity turned.

Three buildings down the dirtiest street in America stood the Crow Valley Shop Mart. A single picture window next to a glass door were both obscured by so many flyers, it was impossible to see inside. I parked around the back of the building between a dented dumpster and a broke-down Chevelle with a fuzzy purple steering wheel cover and one of those air fresheners shaped like a king’s crown attached to the dash.

“Let’s do this.” I grabbed my bag and we were off.

Scott stayed outside but Wendy joined us. We opened the door into a vision of hell not often seen outside of war-torn third-world countries. The once-white linoleum was scarred by embedded dirt and a smoggy haze hung in the air like a crack house. I half expected to see ratty sofas with the legs busted off sitting under the list of names of people that could not enter the store without paying their bills. The poverty was palpable and yet I couldn’t help but wonder how the zombie tourist board hadn’t found this gem. That list just screamed menu and just like the fun runs at the welfare office, no one was going to go looking for some fiscally irresponsible Native Americans, any more than they would a down-on-her-luck single mother fresh from a weekend tweak binge.

But. And there’s always a “but.”

The girl at the cash register was pleasant enough
looking and so I approached. “We’re … uh … looking for the … um … emcee?”

She threw back her head and let out a snorting laughter that could have easily chortled from a pig’s snout. “You mean M.C. Shaman?”

“I guess?” I shrugged.

“Master of the mike?” She giggled. “Duke of dope rhymes?”

“That’s him,” Wendy added. “He around?”

“He’s down cleaning the piss pit.” She poked her thumb over her shoulder at an open staircase leading into some kind of a basement. The sign above it read: “Restrooms locked for OUR safety.” Quaint.

“Should we just go down—”

“Gilbert!” the checker yelled, cutting off my question. “Give these people the keys to the piss pit.”

Do you see how those two words just don’t sound good together? The imagery conjures up summer camp nightmares and German kink nightclubs. I was left queasy as though I’d turned a corner and sauntered through a lingering fart or opened
Grave and Country
and found an unflattering picture in the society section.

An elderly Indian man, skin as wrinkled as ribbon candy, creaked into view from behind stacks of yellowed paper, from a raised dais that must have served as the office-slash-security lookout. He shuffled toward the rear and then out of sight. A full minute later, he rounded the corner, baggy trousers dangling off his skeletal frame from a pair of suspenders fashioned from electrical cords. A look NOT from the resort collection of any major house, I assure you.

He scraped across the floor, dragging two scuff tracks in his wake. It took him a full five minutes to reach the cashier, and I oughta know; I checked my watch about eighteen fuckin’ times during the old
man’s trek. He came right up to the girl, reached past her and underneath the cash register, moaning with the effort and retrieved a ring of keys attached to a two-by-four.

I was outraged. “What the fuck? Why didn’t you just get us the keys,” I asked the checker.

“Policy.” She shrugged, and pulled an emery board from the cash drawer and began filing the chipped nails at the end of her stubby fingers.

Gilbert handed Wendy the keys and shuffled back to his post.

Where any normal store that locked its facilities would simply tag the keys, “Ladies” or “Gents,” the Crow Valley Shop Mart proprietors felt it necessary to mark their bathroom keys thusly …

… in Magic Marker no less.

Do I need to tell you we were horrified?

In fact, we were the ones shuffling now, each of us alternating pushing the other toward the grimy stairwell, the base of which seemed to vanish into a black hole that could only be the opening of some septic tank or heroin den.

“You go.” Wendy prodded me toward the first step.

“Mr. M.C. Shaman? Are you down there?” I called. I heard nothing in response but a dull thud and some distant clanging. The first step was the hardest.

Wendy and Honey clung to my shoulders, fighting for the full use of me as a shield, as we descended into the piss pit.

Despite looking like a cave, the base of the stairs was dimly lit by a single overhead bulb, a dimple of grunge dead center like a dirty nipple. The sign on the door simply read: PRIVATE, and the key was not to a knob but to a padlock. Apparently the Duke of Dope Rhymes enjoyed absolute solitude while cleaning up piss, or whatever. I slid the key into the slit and turned. It popped open with a click and we were in. A gust of stagnant urine caused my eyes to bulge, Wendy to gasp, and Honey to shout, “Dude!”
¹³⁵
The door opened on a hall of other doors; the two on the left shared the international symbols of laying cable, the other, at the far end, was cracked. The floor was cement and wet brown stains ran in rivulets from the toilets to a rusty drain in the center of the hall.

“Mr. M.C. Shaman!” I called again.

“Yo?” Wendy added.

I grimaced.

“What?” She shrugged and looked down the hall, eyebrows raised.

The cracked door opened, filling the murky hall with a blast of light bordering an angelic—dare I say— shaft. I had to squint to see the approaching silhou-ette—a man, not tall, but wearing some sort of cape and leaning on a cane. As he came into view, it dawned on me that he was dressed in full-on pimp regalia, from the insanity of a purple zoot suit down to the jewel-studded chalice he held in his hand like a brandy snifter. If you could just frame out all that fabric, he
wasn’t half bad looking. His skin was the burnished brown of years in the Montana sun. He had sleepy bedroom eyes and a nose like a small winter squash. It was the hair. You might expect a couple of braids falling from a feathered headband.
¹³⁶
No. Not M.C. Shaman. He was rockin’ it old school in a larger-than-life afro.

I swallowed a laugh. I wish I could say the same for Wendy and Honey, who giggled openly. Pointing.

He rapped the cane on the cement like a gavel and stepped closer. “There you is, I been waitin’ for y’alls dead asses. Where you bitches been?”

I for one was appalled. Not at his deft use of ebonics, but at the Grillz he wore. I’d initially thought they were gold teeth. But as he entered our comfort bubble, I noticed that the word “shaman” was spelled out across his teeth in diamonds—er—cubic zirconia.

“Dude, you talk just like Davonne Graham.” Honey grinned.

“Thanks. You the girl with a question to ax. Get yo ass ova here.” He gestured for her to come forward.
¹³⁷

She slipped passed me, but I held onto her belt and dropped in behind. “That’s right. I—” she began.

“Oh I already knows the question.” He tapped his ’fro with the tip of his cane. “And it’s a sad thang. A sad sad sad thang.”

“Well if you could just—”

“Shit. You know what it is?” His eyes widened.

“What
what
is?” I asked, unable to hold a fashion comment back any longer. “And why are you dressed like a—”

“A mothafuckin’ white tragedy, that’s what.”

Honey’s mouth dropped open, she glowered. “But I’m Korean.”

“Don’t matta none.”

“Listen. Don’t you think you’re being a little racist?” Wendy pointed out, literally.

“I can’t be no racist, bitch. I’s a minority.”

I pushed Honey behind me, the logistics of which were becoming increasingly difficult, as the walls were smaller on one end of the hallway than the other. “Not where we are, you aren’t. The way I see it we’re the minority and you’re being offensive.” I felt a knuckle in my back and looked back at Wendy. She mouthed, “You’re offended?”

I shook my head, mouthed back an exaggerated “No, of course not,” and went back to work. “We’ve driven a long way to meet you, and this poor girl just wants to see her brother again. The least you can do is drop the bullshit posturing and give us an answer.”

“You gots the answer. Bust a cap in the bitch. She’ll be eyein’ her brotha real quick.” He jutted his jaw, pursing his lips.

Wendy must have sensed my anger, as she grabbed Honey’s hand and stomped off up the stairs.

I twirled toward M.C. Shaman. “Okay Mr. M.C. Wannabe Gangsta. I’m gonna need another answer before I leave here or I know one racist Indian that’s going to go missing.” I cocked my jaw open, clicking at the man until his eyes were saucers and he’d begun to back away into the bright room.

“No. No. No. Don’t do that. I got tons of answers. You just don’t know the questions.”

I followed him in. A card table sat square in the middle of the room under a pendant lamp, a label-less bottle rested on the motheaten green felt, a glass next
to it; stacks of cellophane envelopes sat awaiting sets from piles of Grillz.

“Holy shit. Those aren’t by any chance enchanted,” I asked.

“Now there’s a question. Hells yeah. They all gots the magixes. I see you familiar with my product.”

I thought of The White House, the mistakes, the clusterfuck. “Not really. So, how about we start with a way for Honey to see her brother again?” I asked.

“Well, sure. There are tons of ways. An ocularis, for instance. Drink?”

“What’s that?” I pointed at the bottle.

“Alcohol. Whatchoo mean what’s that?” He poured a shot and slid it toward me.

I sat down and fondled the glass. “No. What you just said. Ocularis?”

“Just like a telescope only different. You don’t see no stars, you see spirits. But it don’t matta. Her problem ain’t about seeing her brother. Her problem about dyin’. Bitch is gonna die soon and there ain’t nothin’ you can do about it.”

“Why? How?” I reached for the shot glass, tossed it back and whistled. Rotgut. Probably made it himself in a rusty bucket. Still, I needed a little pick-me-up. His words were hitting hard.

“Don’t know why but seem to me she get beat to death. Nasty way to bite it, you ask me.” He poured me another.

“Who?”

“Don’t know that, either.”

“Jesus, can’t we go do a sweat or do some kind of vision quest or some other Indian shit and figure it out?” I rolled my eyes.

“Who’s being racist now?”

“Well you are a shaman, aren’t you?”

“God, no.” He stood up and snatched his pimp cup.

“What?”

“I’m a psychic … and a pimp. I just like the name M.C. Shaman. Helps with my street cred.”

I imagined the sad little patch of cement outside. “Don’t you mean ‘road cred’? There’s not even enough pavement outside to call it a street.”

“Whatever. All I’m sayin’ is your girl’s gonna die. Or supposed to.”

“Supposed to?”

“Sometimes you can stop these things.”

“I can?”

“No.”

“Jesus, you just said—”

“I know. I thought it’d make you feel better. Kinda don’t wanna go down your food hole.” A series of giggles erupted from M.C. Shaman, nervous as hiccups.

“I see.” I stood up and walked back into the hall.

“Wait. I do see one more thing.”

I stopped but didn’t turn around.

“Caves. Lots and lots of caves.”

Caves. Yeah. I got that one already.

I was done with M.C. Shaman. Done with mystics, psychics, seers, whatever. If there was a way to save Honey it was going to come from good old-fashioned ingenuity or perhaps a big mouth, and I’m pretty sure you know I’m not talking about a snappy comeback.

As the Crow Reservation gave way to Montana ranch land, the horizon flattened out paper thin and wind swept off the snow-capped Big Horns like a frigid hurricane. Scott’s Mustang, arguably the most aerodynamic of the three vehicles, rocked with each gust and I ought to know; I was spread-eagled in the passenger seat, clutching the headrest with white knuckles, Scott’s hand searching for the sweet spot between my legs.