Notches (21 page)

Washington plates.

Du Pré straightened up and he walked to a trash bin and tossed in the bottle of cheap wine in its brown paper bag. He walked to the van Bassman had found for him and he got in and he shaved and washed up and put on the loud tropical shirt that he had bought in Miles City and the pants and running shoes. He scribbled on a piece of paper and tucked it in the pocket of his shirt. He went to the registry booth and handed the paper to a woman, who was looking at someone else. Du Pré slid away rapidly. He went back to the van with the Washington plates and past it to a pile of railroad ties left for some future corral construction and he sat down and rolled a smoke.

The public address system bellowed the name that he had found on the yellow sheet of paper, and said that there was some trouble with his van.

In three minutes a tall, thin man with the long arms and ropy muscles of a stevedore or a choker setter came loping across the parking lot. He had long stringy blond hair. He wore jeans and running shoes and a sweatshirt. The sweatshirt hung down over his belt.

Du Pré looked at him.

Well, well.

Du Pré waited till the man had given up in the matter of his car and a problem and he went back toward the field where the little planes were taking off and landing.

Du Pré sauntered after him.

The man joined two others who were fussing over a model Piper Cub, checking the actions of the little joystick on the control box with the flaps and ailerons on the model plane.

One of the two men squatting on the ground spun the propellor with his finger and the little engine caught and the plane quivered while the tiny motor spat and banged.

The man Du Pré was after stood back. He wasn’t with these two, just watching.

One of the two took the plane out to the dirt runway and held it while the operator revved the engine and then gave the thumbs-up. The man holding the plane let go and the little plane dashed down the dirt and lifted easily into the air and it flew almost straight up.

When the little plane came down the man Du Pré was after made some remark and the two men at the control box looked at him and they didn’t laugh. The man colored and he turned quickly and walked away toward a block building that had rest rooms in it.

He was in there a long time.

When he came out he blinked at the bright sun for a while. He went off toward one of the fair barns.

Du Pré followed him as he went around the displays of kits and engines and paints, fabrics and plans, the skeletal assemblies of models awaiting the silk coverings and the coats of varnish.

The man paused at a booth that held replicas of WW II fighters. The details were fine and well wrought and the man spent an hour talking with the builder. The builder was getting exasperated with him, because he would not move out of the way and let others look, too. Finally the seller had enough and told the man to move on.

This guy is not right, Du Pré thought.

I knew that.

The man spent the next two hours wandering and staring at the displays. Du Pré did, too, following at a distance.

The crowd began to stream through the doors and out to the field. The public address system announced a dogfight between an American plane and a Japanese Zero. Du Pré went, too, staying a hundred feet or so behind the man he was after. The man stopped.

Du Pré moved back on a line between the man and the van with the Washington plates.

The dogfight started. The little planes snarled and climbed and went through corkscrews and did Immelmann turns and they each fired little fake machine guns.

The crowd watched the planes and Du Pré watched the man.

The man began to move back toward Du Pré.

Du Pré rolled a cigarette.

He passed thirty feet from Du Pré and he went between the parked cars toward his own van. He was hurrying.

Du Pré followed.

The crowd was all staring up at the two little planes.

When the man got to his van he went around to the back and he was opening the door to get in when Du Pré stepped out and shot him twice in the head with a small .22 pistol that had a perforated silencer made out of aluminum pipe on the end of it.

The gun went phut phut and the man Du Pré was after straightened up and then he fell into the van. He was dead. Du Pré shoved his legs in and he tossed the gun after him and he peeled off the plastic painting glove he had on his right hand and he stuffed it in his pocket. He shut the door and he wiped the handle with his kerchief.

Du Pré walked through the parked cars to the van he had borrowed and he got in and he drove slowly away.

The crowd sent up a loud cheer. The Zero was trailing a plume of black smoke.

Du Pré turned out of the fairgrounds and he got on the expressway and drove and drove until he felt hungry. He stopped in Bismarck and went to a good restaurant and he ate a big steak and two slices of apple pie with ice cream.

Du Pré got gas and he stopped at a liquor store and got a pint of bourbon and he drove till three in the morning. When he pulled into Bassman’s yard the lights came on briefly in the house and then Bassman came out with a couple men that Du Pré had met years before but he couldn’t remember whether or not they played music.

One of the men got in the van and he helped pass out Du Pré’s stuff and Du Pré stuck his bedroll back in the trunk of the cruiser and then he took his bag and set that on the driver’s seat.

The two men with Bassman left in the van Du Pré had used.

Bassman brought out a big plate of sausages and cheese and cold cuts and vegetables and a jug of cheap wine and they ate silently sitting on Bassman’s little porch with the half-moon up above.

Du Pré got his fiddle and Bassman got a guitar out of the house and they sat and played some old music.

They played “Baptiste’s Lament.” They played some shanties and some meat songs. They played a couple songs the voyageurs sang after they had carried the heavy packs of furs around a hard portage.

After a while, they just sat and drank and smoked.

“I will be over, there,” said Bassman. “Maybe a month, we play that good music, that bar. Me, I like that woman who own it. You know, she give us each a hundred dollars last time we play there?”

Du Pré nodded. Susan wouldn’t insult him by offering to pay him, but she knew that Bassman and musicians like him never had any money. They spent it all on pretty women and booze and silk shirts and strings for their instruments.

“Yeah,” said Du Pré. “She is a good person.”

“Your Madelaine, she is well?” said Bassman. His eyes were twinkling.

“She is plenty good,” said Du Pré.

“She dance real good,” said Bassman.

“Yes,” said Du Pré.

“When you maybe come back here to Turtle Mountain,” said Bassman, “we maybe play some music, the bars here.”

“I like that,” said Du Pré.

“You play that good Métis music,” said Bassman. “You know them young people used to think we were shit, they are coming around now, saying, hey, you teach me the old music. I thought they all would maybe like that Michael Jackson or something. But they are working good at it. I got a couple kids, one of them plays the fiddle, they be pret’ good ten years or so.”

“Take a long time,” said Du Pré.

He looked up at the stars, at the Drinking Gourd that pointed to the Pole Star.

Long time ago, my grandpère he give me a little fiddle, I am maybe eight or something. I make noise. My grandpère he smile and say I do good. Catfoot, he play and I drive him crazy.

They teach me a long time. Get me a couple more fiddles.

One I got now was grandpère’s. Had to get a little work done on it but it sounds right.

Play them old songs.

Didn’t play really well until my wife she die. I play all right before she die, but better after, I am very sad.

Maybe you got to lose something big, play well.

What have I lost, maybe?

Du Pré put his fiddle in the case.

“I got to go home,” he said.

Bassman nodded. He held out his hand.

“You come back, Du Pré,” he said. “We play that good music.”

R
OLLY
C
HALLIS LOOKED AT
the little black receiving unit. Du Pré stood with his arms folded and he waited.

“Looks good,” said Rolly. “If you can do your end. Three days. Day after tomorrow after tomorrow. Works out good. I can make it to Spokane and then on and back, no problem.”

Du Pré nodded.

Rolly grinned at him and he got up in his big black semi and pulled out on Highway 2 and headed west.

Du Pré went to a picnic table and he sat on it for a while and had a smoke and then he got in his cruiser and headed south.

The Wolf Mountains rose on his left.

Shit hit the fan pret’ soon, Du Pré thought. Maybe. All I need, them FBI got somebody following that asshole I killed in Fargo. They are not maybe that smart.

Oh, bullshit, I would have been arrested, my way out of the fairgrounds. There is no one there. I would have seen them.

Not my kind of work.

It is now.

If that was the guy. If not, he still maybe should not jerk off over where little Barbara she is left dead, her head in her belly.

Tracks. That was the track, yes.

That Harvey, he add it up, be all over me like stink on shit anyway. I can hear him. Me, I just ask him he want another drink, otherwise, you fuck off maybe.

One more.

That Madelaine, I miss her but I am not going home until I am done. She is not, any mood, half the job done.

I think.

When did this all start?

Red River.

You are a poor Métis, you had better take care, your life.

Live my life under them Wolf Mountains. On these High Plains. On what was Red River.

Sometimes, I wish my people beat them English. Have our own country.

English they are pret’ smart and mean as hell, nobody beat them.

Du Pré reached under the seat and he took the bottle and he had a snort. The whiskey made him cough a little. It burned good.

Du Pré rocketed down the highway. It was a clear late summer day and the air was clean. It had rained some in the night. Enough to knock the dust down. The western horizon was gray with more.

When Du Pré got to Toussaint it was early in the day. He parked in front of the bar and he went on in. The place smelled of bleach and cleanser and polish. Susan kept it scrubbed. She had hired two women to help her three days a week plus Sunday morning.

She looked up when Du Pré came in, and then she ducked down again.

Du Pré leaned over the counter.

She was inside one of the coolers, scrubbing.

“Make yourself whatever,” she said.

Du Pré came round the bar and mixed himself a ditch.

“Your pal Harvey,” she said, “called for you. He sounded pissed.”

“Them Blackfeet, they are pissed all their life,” said Du Pré.

“Yeah,” said Susan. “Well, he was so pissed he said that he was going to be here soon to be pissed at you personally.”

“Check I give him, it bounce,” said Du Pré.

“Yeah,” said Susan. “You been gone a while. Madelaine has come in here looking for you a couple a times.”

The cooler made her voice big.

“She got a gun, knife, she come in?” said Du Pré.

“No,” said Susan. “You ain’t been pronging one of those women make the eyes at you when you play, have you?”

“Which women?” said Du Pré.

“Damn near all of them, you Métis son of a bitch,” said Susan. “I didn’t love Benny so much I’d jump your bones myself. You are a pretty man and you play real good.”

“I don’t love nobody, Madelaine,” said Du Pré.

“I thought so,” said Susan Klein, “but, then, you are a guy, and you guys got such strange notions of what you can do and live.”

“I help you any?” said Du Pré.

“Guys,” said Susan, “cannot clean anything for sour owlshit. You lugs are like bears with furniture. Benny tries to help me clean. He does the bathroom. He really works at it. Always looks worse than before he tried. You guys are pathetic.”

Du Pré nodded at himself in the mirror.

“What’d you and Madelaine fight about?” said Susan.

“I don’t know,” said Du Pré.

“I bet you don’t,” said Susan. “I really do.” She got out of the cooler and she stood up. She was flushed and sweaty. She had a blue bandanna around her head. Her work shirt was stained dark under the arms.

“You oughta call her,” said Susan.

Du Pré looked down at his drink.

“OK,” said Susan. “I will.” She went to the phone and she dialed.

Du Pré sat on a barstool. He felt sick.

Madelaine came right away. She walked up to the bar and she slid up on a stool and Susan poured her a glass of the sweet, bubbly pink wine she liked. Then Susan went off through the door to the storeroom in back.

“Hey, Du Pré,” said Madelaine, “you been gone, long time, don’t call your Madelaine. What is her name, this new one.”

Du Pré looked at her.

She dropped her eyes.

“OK,” she said. “I am sorry. I am sorry for all of this.”

“Well,” said Du Pré, “I am not liking it much.”

“Where you been?” she said.

Du Pré shrugged.

“Oh,” said Madelaine, “you did that.”

Du Pré looked at the mirror. He felt like he was going to puke.

“Is this, over?” said Madelaine.

Du Pré shook his head.

“OK,” said Madelaine. “I don’t ask you no more dumb questions.”

Du Pré felt sick. He ran to the men’s room. The door was open. The place was freshly mopped. He puked in the toilet, bent over and heaving. He retched and retched till he was pale and shaking and running sweat. He stood over the sink for a while, his hands on it. then he ran cold water and he scrubbed his face and splashed it on his neck. He dried off with wads of paper towels.

He went back out.

Madelaine was standing there, she was holding a bottle of the whiskey that he liked.

“You come home,” said Madelaine. “You have not been eating right. You need a bath, maybe three. You come home, let your Madelaine take care of you. You come now.”