Reason To Believe (35 page)

And so they spoke of red holidays, red holy things, red people, and the red road. For the Lakota, the red road was a spiritual journey. Red represented the sun. Yes, the rising sun, the photographer from across the ocean said. The same sun shared by all the members of the circle. The same sun their ancestors had shared.

"How's your father, Ben?" Robert Cady asked.

"Still kickin'." The fire burnished Ben's wistful smile. "With one leg, anyway."

Howard laughed. "Hell, one's better than none."

But Cady persisted with a more sensitive approach. "Will he be okay?"

"I think he's okay now. He's an old man; he's lived a damn good life; he's done right by everybody, pretty much." Ben snapped a twig and tossed the pieces into the fire one by one. "He's hurtin' now, but that won't last."

"So you'll be the keeper of the sacred pipe now? How do you feel about that?"

Was this his first official interview? Ben wondered. If it was, a gritty feeling in his gut told him he wasn't going to be an easy mark. The question struck him as intrusive. He glanced up at Clara, perched on the bale he was using as a backrest, her eyes anticipating his answer. Damned if he'd admit to feeling anything about any of it at this point. Not before he'd sorted it out himself.

Since it was a Cady kind of snare, he turned it back on its author. "How do you feel about takin' pictures?"

"It's what I do," Cady said. "When I do it well, I feel good about it."

"There you go." Ben gave his old cocky cowboy smile. "I don't suppose your father and his father before him were photographers, too?"

"My father was a shop foreman."

"Really? Now, see, if I'd stuck with the job I had up in Bismarck, in another ten, fifteen years I could have been—" He gestured, weighing the possibilities, then turned his mouth down and shook his head. "Maybe a shift supervisor, but not a foreman. Not a manager. See, Indians are real good workers when they're not drinkin'. But sooner or later, they're bound to start missin' work or show up drunk. Everybody knows that, right? You see it on the streets, you read it in the paper." He gave Cady a nod. "Guys like you take pictures of it and publish them all over hell. How many sober Indians do you know, Cady?"

"All of the people here."

"Yeah, but what if next month you run into one of us at a bar? Right away he's a drunken Indian. A white man gets drunk, he's just a drunk. But an Indian gets drunk, hell, we're
all
drunks."

Cady shook his head. "I've shot at least a hundred rolls of film on this ride, Ben. The only drunks on any of those rolls were the bunch in the Blazer back in Timber Lake."

"And who's gonna publish that?"

"Probably nobody," the photographer had to admit. "But just for the record, I sure wish I'd gotten a picture of the guy who almost ran your father down."

"Me, too. We didn't even think to get his license plate number."

"I
think it was one of those vanity plates," Howard put in. "If I remember right, it was R-E-D N-E-K."

A drawstring of laughter gathered the fabric of the circle firmly together.

"Hell, yeah," Dan Medicine said. "Did you see the tires on that thing?" His hands described whoppers. "Jacked up taller than ol' John Deere himself. Big ol' tape deck, speakers rigged up everywhere, woofers and tweeters bangin' out the 'Boot Scootin' Boogie.' "

"I didn't hear any music," Marvin Cutler said, chuckling. "All I heard was 'Yee-haa!' "

Firelight flashed in Howard's surviving glasses lens as he leaned into the conversation. "What worries me is the gun racks in those big four-wheelers. Specially when they've got more than one."

Ben laughed. "Loaded for bear, too."

"Damn straight." Teeth flashing in a grin, Howard pretended to take aim and shoot. "Pow! Oops. Was that one o' them redskin bears?"

"Just Lester Bobtail Bear."

Laughter danced buoyantly around the fire again.

"I got a gun rack, too, but mine's empty," Cheppa Four Dog reported. "Hocked my deer rifle. Sorry, Ben, but I ain't taken the cure yet."

"Eez, that guy," Ben said good-naturedly. "Hadda make us look bad."

"Still got my woofers and tweeters, though."

"Shit, Cheppa, the only woofers you've got are sleeping under your front step."

"Can you do that stuff? That Western dancing?" Cheppa took to his feet to demonstrate. "Jeez, you gotta keep count. Heel-toe, heel-toe, slide-two, three, four." Cheppa's hip swagger, part Texas Two-step, part
kahomni,
raised hoots and howls. "No, I've tried it, hey. Went to Spidey Leingang's wedding dance."

"Better stick to the ol' rez stomp, Cheppa."

"Whatever happened to Credence?"

"They're oldies, just like you, Dan."

"Whatever happened to good old-fashioned lyin', cheatin', ass-kickin' country?"

"It's still around," Ben said. "Always will be. Hell, you gotta have a lonesome song for every broken heart."

"For every lonesome cowboy who's moanin', moaanin' the blues," Cheppa crooned.

"Tomorrow we ride for those who are sick." Ben wagged a finger at the man on the opposite side of the fire. "And Cheppa, you sound like one sick puppy."

"Somebody throw him in the stew pot."

And so it went, until sleepiness settled in over merriment, and the riders stretched the circle as they drifted to their beds. After Clara said good night, Ben took time out in the privacy of a river-bottom grove. He leaned against a tree, lit a cigarette, thought about the days ahead, and recalled the time when he, too, had been one sick puppy.

He lifted his face toward the starry sky, rolled the smoke off his tongue, and tasted the bitter memory. Remembering was important. It had been two long, lonely years, and with no end to the loneliness in sight, remembering was as necessary as breathing. Times like today, when he'd left the hospital wearing the red coat, carrying the pipe bag. Without warning, the desire for a quick shot of fortification had popped into his mind like some naked woman stepping into his path.

He had nothing left to lose. Come clean, they'd told him. Get honest with yourself and the people you care about. So early on in the treatment program he'd told Clara the truth, and for one brief moment, he'd been relieved of a terrible weight. Ten tons of guilt had melted clean away. Moments later, double ten tons of debris had crashed down on his chest when Clara told him to get his lyin', cheatin' ass out of her life. Only she'd said it Clara-style. An eloquent condemnation of his wicked soul.

And that night he'd walked away from the treatment center. First thing he had to do was shed the damn hospital pajamas and find himself a pair of jeans. No problem. He had friends in Mandan. Mandan was a cowboy town on the west side of the river.
Where the West begins.
And Ben Pipestone was Hunkpapa Lakota. West-river Sioux. Damn if he'd get down on his belly and crawl for anybody, and damn if he'd let a white woman tell him how to run his life. Wife or no wife. If he wanted to get laid, he would, and DUI or no DUI, if he wanted to get bombed, he would.

He passed up the former and went straight to the latter. Big mistake, not taking a second pass. He'd forgotten about the Anabuse. He'd been warned that the drug was no cure, but it was meant to be a deterrent. And for anybody who used his head when he took the stuff, it worked. For the hard-ass who didn't think he could be touched, it taught him otherwise. All it took was one drink. Ben had never been so sick in his life. He spent some purging time in the men's room, but rather than come to his senses, he vowed that it would take more than a damn drug to cut his much-needed binge short. And he bought himself a bottle.

He tried as hard with that bottle as he'd ever tried with any fool thing he'd ever latched on to for distraction— cigarettes, booze, women, wild horses, the whole gamut. It nearly killed him. As if puking himself inside out wasn't bad enough, he got the shakes so bad, he could hardly push the buttons on the pay phone. He'd meant to call home. He figured he'd make it easy for Clara to come and get him, the way she always did—always would, hell, she wasn't fooling him—but he'd ended up babbling something obscene to a U.S. West operator.

When the police picked him up he was crawling on his belly for nobody but his sorry-ass self. He remembered puking bile on the trunk of the squad car when they cuffed him. For reasons he couldn't fathom, he'd ended up back at the treatment center. Why they hadn't shit-canned his ass after that stunt, he didn't know, but he remembered waking up with the worst hangover of his life, looking into counselor Bernie Tinker's pitiless eyes and asking how come hell was so damned cold.

"No colder than a morgue, Pipestone, which is gonna be your next stop."

"Yeah, well, let's just bypass the holding tank." He could hardly see for the blinding pain behind his eyes. "You said if I screwed up, I couldn't get back in. So what am I doing here?"

"You were wearing our pajamas under somebody else's jeans. Cops brought our property back with you in 'em."

Ben tried in vain to sit up.

"Restraints," Bernie explained. "You're about as bad off as they come, cowboy. You wanna live, or you wanna die?"

"I got a choice?"

"Sure, you got a choice. Sooner or later the booze is gonna kill you." He leaned closer and offered more gently, "But you can live without it."

"Maybe I wanna die."

"Why? Because you finally come clean, and your wife leaves you? That ain't fair, is it? It's not supposed to work that way. She's supposed to forgive you, like she always has before." Bernie sat back in his bedside chair and lit a cigarette. "You love your wife, cowboy?"

"Yes," Ben hissed fiercely, as though the question itself were an affront.

"The hell you do."

"I love Annie, too. My daughter, Annie."

"You don't love anybody but yourself. And this." He produced an airline bottle, miniature version of the same label Ben had acquired earlier. Warm brown, gut-steadying Seagram's whiskey.

Ben pressed his scummy, chapped lips together. He could almost taste the liquid fire, the only thing strong enough to purge the wickedness from his soul. Although Lysol might do it, too, if it ever came down to that. Lysol or Sterno just might do the trick. Do him in, once and for all.

He tried to stare a hole through his counselor. What did Bernie Tinker know about what it was like to be Ben Pipestone? Not a goddamn thing. Ben hated that bottle. If his hands were free, he'd grab it and break it.

Like hell. He'd open it and drink it.

He blinked furiously, hoping the damn thing would go away. Running low on voice, he croaked, "I don't wanna live without my wife and baby."

"Die then. There's a real good chance you can't have them back." The little bottle in Bernie's hand did a seductive jig. "But you can have this."

At this point Ben couldn't even swallow. The moisture that should have been in his swollen throat had gathered in his eyes.

"What's the matter?"

"I don't have anything left to puke up."

"So you can start all over. That's how it works, Ben." Bernie pushed the bottle closer. "Come on, drink up.

And up and up and up 'til nothing can touch you. The higher you go, the harder you fall, the sicker you get. Puke 'til you clean yourself out, then start all over." He twisted the little cap, breaking the seal. "This is enough to get you started again. I ain't shittin' you, Ben. I'll give it to you if it's what you want."

Ben squeezed his eyes shut and turned his head away. Something wet slid over the bridge of his nose, and he thought, Christ, the bastard's pouring it on me.

"How about this?"

"Fuck off," Ben growled, gritting his teeth.

"No, I think I'll stick around. Look at me, Ben."

"I said—"

"I've seen men cry before, Ben. I've been there myself. Turn over here."

The smell of smoke enticed him to turn his head. Bernie offered his cigarette and repeated quietly, "How about this?"

Ben's lips parted, and Bernie tucked the cigarette between them gently, as though he were feeding a sick child. Ben drew a long, deep, shaky drag.

"My wife left me, too," Bernie said quietly. "Same reason."

"Did she ever come back?" The question was tagged to a trail of smoke.

Bernie shook his head. "I never see my daughter, either." He withdrew the neck of the small bottle from his shirt pocket. "Change your mind on that happy note?"

Ben shook his head, then jerked his chin, soliciting another drag on the cigarette.

"So what'll it be? Should I fuck off, or should I hang around and light another cigarette?"

"Stay," Ben whispered. "Please."

"I'll light as many as you want. You hang in there."

And that was the first time he'd truly understood the sacredness of a shared smoke.

It
was a Christmas unlike any Clara had ever experienced. She had known little real deprivation in her own life. She remembered her mother's annual notice that the family couldn
't
afford "to go overboard" at Christmas, and she'd probably said it herself once or twice since she had become the wife and mother, the cincher of the family purse strings. But during her childhood there had always been plenty of trappings, significant activity, and a profusion of booty. This year she and Anna had agreed to save the gift giving for the New Year. It might have seemed an austere holiday had the spirit of the ride not modified their outlook on ways to celebrate.