The Work of Wolves (5 page)

Through a gap between the outbuildings, Carson saw his father's pickup creep over a hill in the pasture, coming in from hauling hay to the cows out there. The pickup was a blur through the thickening snow, disappearing in a squall and then reappearing further down the hill, so that it seemed to move in jerks, in sudden annihilations of space.

"Goddamn," Carson said.

His own breath obscured the pickup. Then the cloud on the window evaporated inward from the edges, and he watched the pickup until the barn hid it. He turned back to the corral, to what was no longer visible there. He thought of how his father would receive the news, as something from a foreign sphere. He'd gone out to the pasture in one world, would return to another.

"Wasn't nobody's fault," Carson murmured.

Still, he wanted to blame his father. For not being there. For being somewhere else. For anything that might have changed if he had been there.

"Nobody's fault," he said again.

In a few more minutes, his father would arrive at the door below and be told. In Twisted Tree an ambulance was setting out. In some minutes its siren would be heard, if they used it, wailing behind the hills, and if Carson stayed at this window he would see the red lights, if they used them, setting off a circle of flaming snowflakes. Then below him he would see much activity, doors opening and closing, efficient movements, a regimen enacted, his father standing up in the corral where he would have gone to direct them over. Snow brushed away.

All those things to do, mostly useless.

At the moment there was only one useful thing to do. Carson turned from the window to go back downstairs to unsaddle and care for the horse.

W
IND HUMMED IN EARL'S SPINE
, the television tower throbbing like a musical instrument deep below sound's register. Near the fire the party went on, but no one looked Earl's way. He'd become invisible. A part of the background. A lump. A stone. Earl leaned his head against the steel framework, then turned and pressed his ear for just a moment hard against the tower, heard a hollow, wordless bellowing. Wind and iron. The lights of Twisted Tree illuminated the sky to the east, a muddy glowing. Earl thought of Bambi asleep in his plywood house, dreaming of stilled vehicles—the dog's rote and ceaseless hope.

The fire threw the shadows of the partygoers into the cedars, crooked spokes from a hub of flame: bent, wavering, twisted. Or maybe the lighted areas were the spokes and the shadows the spaces between them. Earl tried to see that wheel, but the shapes of light were meaningless, and he looked again to Lostman's Lake and the intermittent flashing of white from the hill beyond it, the barely discernible shapes of the horses. He didn't know what he was doing here.

He stood. No one looked at him.
The Invisible Indian,
he narrated silently,
can't even be seen by other Invisible Indians. We're not even sure we're filming him. Maybe all we're filming is a television tower.
Earl might have made it entirely away if he'd looked down and noticed the empty beer can. Instead, he kicked it, and it whanged along the ground, and all eyes turned to him.

"Leaving already, Walks Alone?"

Ted Kills Many was a little more drunk now, his voice more surly. Earl kept walking. He tried to believe what his mother said, that people like Ted felt threatened by him because they were weak. That's why they tried to knock him off the Red Road, Lorna said. But Earl wasn't sure he was on the Red Road. Wasn't sure he was on any road at all. And if Ted was weak, he sure had a way of seeming strong, of seeming solid and significant—like Goat Man, the shape-shifter that people sometimes saw in their headlights or mirrors, huffing down the highway in long strides, immense and muscular and smelling of earth, like air from a cave or wind from a swamp.

The fire had died down. A current of smoke streamed out and for a moment obscured Ted's face. Earl let himself imagine that Ted was disappearing. Fading. A mirage being eaten by the air. He thought of the men who had hunted Goat Man, the story they told of finding themselves on a windswept plain, deep in the reservation at the edge of the Badlands, their dogs whining and slavering and straining at their leashes, but not to go forward, even the pit bulls cowering and urinating in fear, leaving thick, yellow stains in the snow. But the men had borne forward and had finally seen a gray-brown shape, cobwebby and distorted, within a single tree a hundred yards away. Out of this shape two eyes stared and over this shape horns curved. The scent came to the men, like stagnant water at the edge of a stock pond where cattails grow and cattle have trod and shat: moss, algae, dead fish, fermented vegetation. One of the pit bulls broke its leash and tore away toward home, quaking so violently it couldn't run a straight line but snapped back and forth like a rag in the wind.

The men gripped their rifles, resolved, and dragged the remaining dogs forward. The dogs sat on their haunches, bracing against the pull, or scratched the frozen ground until their paws bled, leaving a flattened path in the snow, raked with red. Then the men stopped. The form in the tree had disintegrated. The shape was there and then it wasn't, and no one could say when it disappeared. Or how. The dogs rose on bleeding paws and panted.

But Ted Kills Many didn't disintegrate, in spite of Earl's imaginings.

"Gotta get home an study?" he said. "Check in with your mother, enit?"

Earl shut his eyes and thought of Goat Man peering out of the tree, and for a moment he saw the men and dogs through Goat Man's eyes, strange and frightening creatures with dire intent. Maybe it wasn't Ted who was like Goat Man at all. Maybe it was Earl.
This looks like a sober Indian, but it's really a creature called Goat Man.

He opened his eyes, looked away from Ted, and through a gap in the cedars saw a flash of white from the forehead of one of the horses beyond the lake. "I'm going to look at those horses," he said, to divert attention from himself.

He jerked his chin in that direction. Everyone looked but couldn't see anything. Gerald Dupree struggled up and came over and stood next to Earl for a moment, then went back to the fire and collapsed near it.

"Greggy Longwell will arrest you, you go up there," he announced. "That's Magnus Yarborough's land."

"That won't bother Walks Alone," Ted said. "He'll just say it was our land first, and Longwell will let him go. Hah, Walks Alone? That right?"

"Ha-uh, ha-uh, ha-uh." Gerald Dupree made sounds in his chest without opening his mouth. Every high school student in Twisted Tree could imitate Greggy Longwell's two-note grunting laugh. Most of them had heard his flashlight tapping on their windows, had seen its beam in their faces, illuminating the interiors of their cars, seeking alcohol or drugs or nakedness, and then his questions, and the three two-note grunts of laughter that dismissed all answers.

Earl walked away from the fire. Shucked them all off. On Monday, in school, a few people would make fun of him for coming up here, but then they'd forget, and he'd be back to his careful and invisible life. And if he was careful, he could keep it invisible. Or if he stayed invisible, he'd have no trouble being careful. He'd made a little mistake tonight. If he was quiet enough, it would correct itself.

He was in the shadows of the trees, almost out of range of firefight—almost back to his life—when a voice called out, "I am coming with you."

WILLI SCHUBERT, WOULDN'T TOU KNOW
? The German foreign-exchange student lived with the Drusemans, a white family, but he spent as much time as he could on the reservation, participating in Lakota activities. Every summer Europeans, Germans in particular, appeared in Twisted Tree to "Experience Lakota Life." It was all one phrase, and it was always, even spoken, capitalized. Willi made Earl feel like a research project. On the other hand, Willi spoke Lakota, which Earl and most of his classmates couldn't do, and Willi had studied Lakota history and stories until he knew them with a disconcerting and uncanny accuracy.

Earl kept walking, putting tree after tree behind him, until the shadows thickened and stabilized and he could no longer tell his own shadow from the shadows of the trees. The music faded, absorbed by cedar needles. Then Earl heard the sound of footsteps behind him. Then the sound of breathing.

"Who is Magnus Yarborough?"

Willi's English was nearly perfect, his ss just a bit heavy, his constructions sometimes, but seldom, reversed. Earl didn't answer him. He didn't turn his head to look at Willi. Instead of being rebuffed, Willi walked a little faster, dodging trees, until he was alongside and ' a little in front of Earl.

"These horses we are going to see," he asked, breathing hard. "Magnus Yarborough's horses. Who is he?"

Earl looked down the moonlit hill. "Just a rancher, you know?" he said. "
A
rich one."

"And Mr. Longwell is police? Would he arrest us? For seeing these horses? If he knew?"

"I guess Yarborough doesn't like people on his land."

"But why would he care if you are just looking at horses?"

"I don't know. Why are you following me?"

"To see the horses."

"You think I'm going to talk to them?"

"Talk to them?" Willi looked back at Earl, his eyes wide and curious.

"That's what Indians do, you know? Talk to horses."

Willi missed the quiet sarcasm in Earl's voice. "Do you know about horses, much?"

"Why were you at that party?"

The question confused Willi. For the first time he sensed Earl's mood. "Angie Long Feather invited me," he said, a little defensively.

"So you could see a bunch of Indians drinking?"

Earl knew what he was doing wasn't fair. He was angry at Ted, and he was angry at himself for letting Ted make fun of him, and now he was taking it out on Willi just because he could. For that matter, Earl was angry at his mother and probably his father, and certainly the man who'd been on the wrong side of the road that long-ago night. And he was angry at the party makers above him for their drinking, and angry at people who thought Indians did nothing but drink. And Willi, here in the darkness, was just a little weaker, a little more vulnerable, than Earl himself. An easy target. Earl couldn't look at him. He asked the question and then looked away down the hill, as if to take the question away, dilute it, pretend he hadn't asked it.

Willi stopped walking.

"If you do not want me with you," he said, "I will go."

"Why not see a bunch of cowboys drinking, you know? There's a cultural experience for you."

"I think I will go back."

Earl shrugged, staring down the hill. Willi brushed past him. Earl heard his footsteps climbing upward. Then he heard them stop.

"Why did you go to that party?" Willi's voice asked.

Earl turned around. Willi stood above him, moonlight illuminating his hair so that it frayed brightly around his head.

Earl shrugged again and answered more honestly than he had intended. "Because I wasn't invited, I guess."

"OK. The next time I get invited, I will invite you. So you can stay home."

Earl stared at Willi. He didn't know whether Willi was serious or joking, but the statement was so absurd, yet so dead-center, that it broke Earl's sullen mood, and he laughed. Willi grinned uncertainly.
The wind rushed through the cedars around them and a moment later hit the tower high above, and the bass throb of the guy wires descended to Earl's gut.

"I just wanted to get away from that party, you know?" he said. "I wasn't even gonna look at them horses."

"I should not have invited myself to come with you."

"On the other hand, I did say I'd look at them. I should do what I say."

Earl met Willi's eyes, then started down the hill again. Hearing nothing behind him, he turned back. Willi hadn't moved. Beneath the incandescence of his hair, his face was in shadow.

"You coming?" Earl asked.

THEY EMERGED FROM THE CEDARS
covering Tower Hill onto the highway running south and west into the Badlands and then the Sand Hills of Nebraska. In the dark the highway looked like a fossilized river whose banks had eroded away, raising it above the land. The sky opened up, the Big Dipper vast and bright in the north. Their footsteps rang on the asphalt.

"It is so quiet here," Willi said. "In Germany even the quiet places have noise. Because all the people go to find the quiet. And here it is so dark. With stars."

Earl paused in the middle of the highway. He'd never given the darkness and quiet much thought. He looked at the sky, trying to see it new, like Willi did. The lights of Twisted Tree were hidden behind Tower Hill. Even the Little Dipper was distinct and clear.

"The second star in the handle of the Big Dipper is a double star," Willi said. "Some American Indian tribes call them the Horse and Rider."

"Huh," Earl grunted. "Horse and Rider, huh?"

Willi nodded.

"You know it's actually a double double?" Earl asked.

"Double double?"

"Two pairs. Each star revolves around its partner. Then each pair revolves around the other pair."

"I did not know. It is a big dance up there. It is a star powwow."

"Or gravity," Earl said.

He walked across the highway onto the dirt drive leading to Lostman's Lake. In another minute the lake came into view, stretched out in the moonlight, lapping against its earthen berm and against the sand the Corps of Engineers had hauled in to form a beach and boat ramp that no one ever used. Earl's uncle Norman said it was just like the Corps of Engineers to dam a stream and then try to appease the Indians by building a boat ramp even though no one had a boat and even though the Indians opposed the dam not for their own sake but the stream's. Norm periodically threatened to get a modern-day war party together to hijack one of the yachts being carted across the country on 1-90. "Wouldn't that be something, Earl?" he said. "One of those big old yachts on that little lake and a bunch of Indians with war paint on, drinking out of cocktail glasses."

"This is a pretty lake," Willi said.