No Mercy (15 page)

Molly smiled softly. “Poor things. She loves those little babies so much we tease her that she’s gonna love them to death.”

As if that were possible.

As I closed in on the town of Eagle River, clusters of houses appeared. Abandoned cars stood next to piles of garbage and bald tires. Old mattresses, busted refrigerators and stoves. Most homes looked worse than junkyards. Surprising that diseases like the bubonic plague weren’t running rampant, since dead dogs and cats were discarded and left to rot on the side of the road.

Geneva’s four-bedroom house crammed with six kids and two adults was nothing compared to the housing situation in Eagle River. Not uncommon for a dozen or more family members to live in a two-bedroom, one-bathroom house. Indians had lived together like that for thousands of years.

Although I had some Indian blood, that lifestyle was a foreign concept to me. My mother hadn’t been raised that way.

After my Minneconjou Sioux grandmother, Caroline Longbow, married my white grandfather, William Fairchild, he’d removed her from the reservation. Their only child, my mother, Sunny, cared little about her Indian heritage. She hadn’t enrolled in the Minneconjou tribe and hadn’t seen the point of enrolling her daughters. She’d taught us the Gunderson lineage was the only one that mattered.

Why hadn’t that ever bothered me?

Several sprawling buildings housed the multitude of tribal offices. Most people employed on the reservation worked for the tribe, for the state, or for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Others worked at the Indian Health Services Hospital. In addition to early childhood development programs, there were two colleges.

Yet few young kids who’d graduated with marketable skills ever found jobs on the reservation, since there was zero economic development. A small number of businesses survived, a couple of convenience marts, the fast-food joints, a grocery store. The funeral home. Luckily the tribe funded the community center and rec center, or neither would’ve lasted.

As I drove through town, it saddened me to see little had changed in twenty years. Same decrepit buildings. More cheap housing.

I passed several groups of kids, some as young as four and five, running around unattended. Many didn’t wear shoes. Their clothes were tattered, their faces dirty, their hair matted and uncombed. I had to look away.

I’d seen some of the worst areas on the planet. Ghettos in big cities. Barrios in third-world countries. War-torn cities where death and destruction is a part of everyday life. This was somehow worse. Since we were the most prosperous nation on Earth, there was no excuse for such poverty and hopelessness. Shoving aside my morose thoughts, I pulled into Taco John’s parking lot.

The lunch crowd had dwindled. Sue Anne worked the register. She didn’t look at me as she asked, “Can I help you?”

I glanced at the menu. “I’d like a Taco Bravo, a large order of Potato Olés, a large Diet Coke, and an Apple Grande.”

Sue Anne poked the buttons. “Would you like sour cream on the Taco Bravo?”

“Please. And on the Apple Grande.”

“Is this order for here or to go?”

“To go.”

“Your total comes to seven twenty-nine.” The register spit out my ticket, and she grabbed a pen.

I handed her a twenty.

“Your name?” Sue Anne asked as she passed back my change.

Taco John’s still asked for a first name on every order? I remembered in high school my friends spent way too much time thinking up kooky names. Mine was odd enough. I said, “Mercy,” and waited for her reaction.

She finally looked at me. “Omigod. I’m sorry. I can’t believe—”

“Sue Anne. Order!” the line cook shouted.

She turned away, dropping a napkin and a plastic cup of hot sauce in the paper bag on the counter. She slid my order under the metal tab and called out, “Virgil?”

An Indian man around sixty snatched the bag. He didn’t look me in the eye as he shuffled out. Not a snub. Typical behavior for a Lakota man when faced with an unknown white woman.

But you aren’t white.

Ignoring my racial identity crisis, I rested my shoulders against the back wall and waited for my order.

A large red wax cup appeared. Sue Anne bagged my food. “Mercy? Your order is ready.”

The moment of truth.

“Can I get you anything else?”

I said softly, “Yes. I need to talk to you.”

“I can’t. I’m working.”

“Please. This is important. It’s about Levi. You name the place and I’ll be there.”

She squinted at the clock. “I’m off in thirty minutes. I’ll meet you out back at the picnic table.”

“Thank you.”

Half an hour later Sue Anne slid across from me. I noticed she’d removed the ugly polyester hat and changed her clothes, yet she smelled of taco meat, fryer grease, and powdered sugar. She dumped out five tacos from a carryout bag. “I’m starving.”

I purposely shifted my focus to the cars on the main drag. Seemed like only a minute passed and she was crumpling spent wrappers.

Sue Anne sipped from a supersized cup. “I’m really sorry about Levi. He was… great.”

“Thanks. I didn’t see you at the funeral.”

“I had to work.”

Uncomfortable silence descended, broken by the hum of the air-conditioner compressors kicking on at the rear of the restaurant.

“Why do you wanna talk to me?”

“Because I’m trying to find out who killed my nephew.”

“I don’t know nothing.”

“That’s where I think you’re wrong.”

She finally looked at me.

“When was the last time you saw Levi?”

“The night before he… at the Custard Cupboard.”

“Who was Levi with that night?”

“Me. Then Bucky showed up, and he and Levi got into a shouting match.”

“About what?”

“Some stuff about Albert.” Sue Anne slid the elastic band from her hair. “Levi was pissed when Moser stepped in and wouldn’t let Bucky talk to him anymore. After them guys left, Levi quit talking to me and called for a ride home.”

“Who’d he call?”

“Pretty sure it was his mom. Looked like her car anyway. That was the last time I seen him.”

I knew Hope hadn’t picked him up. So who had?

“Is that it?” she asked tightly.

“No. Tell me about the group.”

“What group?”

“The Warrior Society. Albert was in it. But Levi wasn’t. He wanted to be a part of it so bad.” I watched her closely. “Were you in it?”

“Yeah.”

“So what is this group, Sue Anne?”

She twisted the hair band around her index finger. “Nothing big. Started as a way to celebrate our heritage. We’re all like fifth- and sixth-generation rez kids. Ain’t none of us jocks. Or druggies. Or none of them crusading no-sex, no-alcohol religious freaks. We’d get together and talk about learning Lakota. We even built this sweat lodge in the grasslands and had an
inipi
, which was way cool. We did a couple of ceremonies.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“Moser. Little Bear. Albert. Bucky Two Feathers. Randall Meeks. Lanae Mesteth. Me.”

Lanae was a new name. “Axel Rouillard?”

“At first. Then Axel didn’t want any part of it.”

“Why not?

“Moser and Little Bear decided we’d train to do the Seven Sacred Rites. Axel was a total dickhead and said we needed a Lakota holy man to teach us. When Moser and Little Bear found someone, Axel said a bunch of nasty shit about them being stupid puppets because it was being done wrong.”

“Who was the leader helping with the rituals?”

She shook her head.

I almost snapped, “Tell me.” Instead, I switched tactics. “If I paid you, would it convince you to help me?”

“It ain’t about money.”

“Then what is it about? Honor? Levi told me how much he wanted to be in this group, and the next thing I know, he’s dead. Please, Sue Anne, I need some answers.”

She gnawed on her straw, avoiding my gaze as she debated. Finally, she sighed. “I’ll tell you this much. It started out one leader, then another guy started coming around. The leader told us we had to pass a bunch of tests to prove our worthiness before we could do the actual rituals.”

“What kind of tests?”

“Mental. Spiritual. Physical. Endurance.”

“Endurance for what?”

“For pain.”

It was pointless to berate her or judge her. I’d blindly followed military orders my whole life, even to the point of excruciating pain. “And did these tests hurt?”

“The first couple weren’t so bad. Then we started the harder ones, like the Warrior’s Challenge.” She squirmed. “The leaders passed around fire water to help us with the pain so I was sorta drunk when it was my turn.”

“What do you remember?”

Her eyes lost focus. “Facing a pole in the center of a sacred circle with my hands tied above my head. Then my back was whipped with a willow branch while the other warrior candidates watched.”

I must’ve made a noise; her answering look was defiant.

“Everyone participated. It was a spiritual cleansing. My Indian blood mixed with my tears on sacred ground as I cried a lament to the Great Spirit. Then the leader cut me from the pole and gave me the willow branch as a symbol of my bravery. Afterward we sat in a circle, chanting, drumming, and finishing the ritual by smoking the peace pipe.”

My stomach roiled. Bet there was wacky tobaccy in that peace pipe. Bet they passed the bottle around again.

“And before you ask, I used the whip on my friends. The whipping may sound cruel, but we thought it was a celebrated part of our heritage. Toughening us up to honor our warrior ancestors.”

“How else were they toughening you up?”

“By cutting us.”

Holy shit.

Sue Anne fell silent. When she finally spoke, I strained to hear her muted voice. “We believed the cutting prepared us for the piercing rituals of the Sun Dance.”

A pickup load of young kids drove by. Sue Anne ducked her head from view. “Look. I said enough. I gotta go.”

“No. Please stay. Please finish. I’m not judging you. I’m just trying to understand.”

Angrily, she said, “I don’t know how any of this will help you. Levi didn’t even know what we were doing. Moser and Little Eagle were using him, making him do things, then laughing behind his back, knowing they’d
never
let him in. After the sick shit that happened with the last so-called ritual, I don’t know why he or anyone would want to join such a fucked-up group anyway. I realized they was even using me. I was so stupid—” She made a move to leave.

My hand circled her wrist before she could run. “What happened?”

Sue Anne twisted out of my grip. “Of the Seven Sacred Rites, the
Ishna Ta Awi Cha Lowan
is supposed to be about purifying a girl after she gets her first period. It’s meant to be a time where her mother and sisters and aunts prepare her for womanhood. But these advisers, and the guys, they fucking
twisted
it….”

Dread expanded in my chest. “Into what?”

“Into a gang rape. They called it a ‘mating ritual.’ During the spring equinox they tied Lanae up and took turns raping her. I wasn’t there, but Lanae came to me and told me afterward.” She swallowed. “That’s when I knew Axel was right and the stuff these ‘leaders’ were making us do was bullshit. There ain’t nothing like that in our Lakota traditions.”

“But you stuck it out up until that point?”

“Yeah. We were so…
crazy
for a group to call our own, to belong to something that was
ours,
that we did anything they told us to. Stupid, huh? Lanae went to live with her sister in North Dakota. Most of them guys think she’s just spending the summer there, but I know the truth. She’s never coming back here.”

“Couldn’t you tell an adult or a tribal elder what happened?”

“Yeah, right.”

“Someone has to know about it. Especially since these leaders are adults. Not only is it morally wrong, it is against the law.”

Sue Anne laughed. “Everyone looks the other way. Or they’re part of the ceremony stuff. Or they’re making up their own ceremonies to rip off stupid white tourists for money. Or they like screwing young girls. Plenty of that shit around here.”

Briefly, I thought of Rollie and his young paramour, Verline. I pressed her for more answers. “Were you the only girl after Lanae left?”

“Yes. That’s when I knew I wanted out because I’d be next. I knew that’s the only reason they ever invited me was to rape me.” She shook her head violently. “I stopped going to the meetings and started hanging out with Molly. But I didn’t tell her all of it. I just wanted to be normal. I just wanted out.”

“Who else wanted out? Albert?”

No response.

“Could a member of the group have killed Albert because he tried to get out? And Levi was helping him?”

She fixed her gaze on the mangled straw in her cup.

“Mercy?” A male voice called out behind me.