Truth and Bright Water (17 page)

“Were you ever married?”

“Don’t believe everything you hear,” she says. “If you want to know anything, ask me.”

I’m looking right at the tattoo. Auntie Cassie catches me and puts her coffee cup down. “I did this when I was nineteen.” She curls her knuckles into a fist. The letters stretch out and become larger.

“Neat.”

The guy in the movie is still trying to convince the woman to take him back. He’s promising that he won’t drink anymore and that he’ll be a good husband. All in all, it’s a dumb movie. My
grandmother would have chased him down and torn his throat out.

“Does it hurt?”

Auntie Cassie relaxes her hand and rubs her fingers over the tattoo. “Yes,” she says. “Sometimes it does.”

She walks me out into the garden. Soldier has had enough of the sprinkler and is rolled up in the shade against the garage. My grandmother is down at the chicken coop throwing feed through the wire.

“You going to stay?” I ask.

Auntie Cassie looks towards Truth. “I hear Monroe is painting the church.”

“You should see it,” I say. “He’s making the church disappear.”

“They do that all the time.”

“Who?”

“Men.”

“Do what?”

“Disappear,” says auntie Cassie, and she turns and walks back to the trailer.

I untie Soldier and wake him up. My grandmother is in with the chickens. I wave, but she doesn’t see me. I watch her as she slings the feed around the pen, her hand stroking the air as if she’s trying to pet them. As soon as Soldier sees the chickens, he begins to whine and drool. I grab the chain and try to pull him around, but he’s strong, and it’s hard to get him turned towards Truth.

In the end, I have to drag him all the way out of the yard, but the minute he’s into the grass, he forgets about the coop and the birds and begins sniffing his way from one ground squirrel hole to another.

At the top of the rise, I look back at my grandmother’s place. There are no clouds, and the sky is the kind of blue you see in pictures of oceans and lakes in magazines, and the house and the coop and the trailer, on the far side of the garden, and my grandmother in her sweater, moving among the chickens, all seem to be under water.

B
y the time we get to the river, Soldier’s neck has started bleeding again. The flies buzz around the cut, so I tie my handkerchief around his neck to keep them away.

“You okay?” I say, and I give him a couple of pats. When we get to the ferry, I put him into the bucket as gently as I can. I don’t stop it in the middle of the river, and I don’t swing it back and forth either. Soldier still pees all over the floor, but I don’t yell at him.

“She’s pregnant,” I tell Soldier. “Auntie Cassie is going to have a baby.” I figure my mother knows and that the two of them are keeping it a secret from my grandmother. “That’s why she came home. That’s why she wants my old baby clothes.”

The lights in the shop are out, and the door is locked. I let Soldier go in first. “Mum?”

The kitchen is clean, and everything has been put away. I look in the refrigerator. There are some boiled potatoes and salad stuff and a large bowl of spaghetti that wasn’t there this morning. On the counter under a bowl is a note that says, “Food’s in the fridge.” Under the note is twenty dollars.

“You hungry?” I ask Soldier, but he’s already curled up on the couch with his head buried under his back leg. I pick up the twenty. With my mother off on her vacation, I don’t see why I should be stuck eating leftovers.

Railman’s is almost empty. Miles Deardorf is at the counter with Gabriel Tucker and Sherman Youngman. Skee is sitting on the ice cream freezer.

“Franklin bet on the bridge,” Miles is saying, “and look what happened.”

“You really think they’re just going to let it sit?” says Sherman.

“Already too late,” says Gabriel. “The decking’s begun to warp. Once that starts, it’s all over.”

Miles stirs a chicken leg into the potatoes and sucks on it. “Sure has screwed things up,” he says. “Hell, the only decent thing I’ve sold in the last while is the church.”

Skee straightens up, drops the rag on the counter, and drags it down to where I’m sitting.

“Could have done us a lot of good,” says Gabriel. “Bridge like that would have kicked the economy in the ass and got it jumping.”

“I’ll have a burger,” I tell Skee. “Medium rare with fries. And a root beer.”

“Real estate will manage okay,” says Miles, and he looks out the window in the general direction of Bright Water. “But other businesses are going to wind up in the crapper.”

“Happy Trails,” says Sherman, “ain’t going to be so happy.”

“More like the end of the trail,” says Miles.

Skee drops a handful of silverware on the counter in front of me and sorts through the pile. “Your old man hasn’t been by for a while,” he says. “He off on a toot?”

“Nope,” I say. “He’s fine.”

“When you see him, you might mention that the cops were over at the shop looking for him.”

“The police?”

“And they weren’t looking to wish him happy birthday.” Gabriel winks at Skee. “Elvin ever finish that chair for you?”

“He’s still waiting for parts.” Skee puts a glass under the pop machine and fills it until the foam pours over the top. “Ain’t that right?”

Miles comes down to where I’m sitting. He slides in next to me and opens his newspaper. “You see this?”

It’s a story about a research team from the University of Toronto travelling around Canada and the States, collecting blood from Indian people. There’s a picture, too, of a doctor holding up a vial of blood and looking at it the way you see people looking at glasses of wine in those old black and white movies on late-night television. The project has something to do with genes and DNA.

“What do you think?” he says.

“Guy on the radio this morning called it the Vampire Project,” says Sherman.

“Sure as hell wouldn’t let them do that to me,” says Miles.

“Bleeding people should come natural to you,” says Skee.

Miles gets up and taps the paper on the counter. He buttons his blazer, and as he does, I see that there is a split opening up along a seam under his arm. It reminds me of the tear my father’s truck put in Franklin’s tent.

“They’re trying to find out where Indians came from,” says Miles.

“Don’t need a blood test to see that,” says Gabriel.

Miles stuffs the newspaper under his arm and pulls at the corners of his eyes so they slant back, and all of us have a good laugh.

“See your aunt’s back in town,” says Skee.

“That’s right,” I say.

“You tell her hello for me,” says Miles.

“Give it up,” says Gabriel, and he pours the rest of the cream into his coffee. “She’s not that bored.”

“She could do a whole lot worse.”

“I don’t know,” says Gabriel, and he winks at Skee. “Who do you figure could be worse?”

“What about Swimmer?” says Miles.

“Monroe’s rich,” says Sherman. “Women like that.”

“Probably queer,” says Miles. “Most of those artists are.”

Skee brings my burger over and drops the plate on the counter. The burger and the fries bounce and rattle around like coins in a can. The meat looks a little burned, but I don’t say anything.

“So we got rich and queer versus broke and dull,” says Gabriel.

“Anybody else in this room drive a Lincoln?” says Miles. “Anybody else in this room have a piece of recreational property?”

Skee takes a paper towel and blows his nose into it. “You talking about Parliament Lake?”

“It’s lakefront property.”

“It’s a mud flat,” says Gabriel.

Miles takes out a ten and drops it on the counter. “Soon as they fill the lake again, you won’t be able to buy property like that for love nor money.”

“You believe that,” says Gabriel, “and I’ve got a bridge I can sell you.”

We all have another laugh, even Skee.

“I’d watch out if those research boys show up here,” Miles says to me as he goes out the door. “They sound like real blood-thirsty savages.”

Skee goes to the machine and finishes filling the glass. “So, what about it?” he says, and he puts the glass down in front of me. “Where do you figure Indians came from?”

Soldier is waiting for me when I get back to the shop. He’s stretched out in the middle of the shop floor. His eyes are open, and he’s looking at me.

“I didn’t leave you,” I say. “You went to sleep.”

I dig my sleeping bag out of the closet. It smells foul and musty, as if it has been buried under a pile of dirty socks. I dump the rest of the stuff into a plastic bag—flashlight, matches, toilet paper, and a water bottle. I get a box of crackers out of the cupboard and a couple of apples from the refrigerator and am looking for the peanut butter when I hear the bell on the front door jingle.

“Hello.”

My father is standing in the shop next to Soldier’s body. He’s wearing a suit, and he’s holding a handful of flowers twisted up in green paper. He looks a little wobbly, as if he’s just jumped out of bed and now has to wait for his brain to catch up with his body.

“What’s wrong with the dog?”

“He’s pretending to be upset,” I say.

My father smiles and looks down at Soldier, but I can see his eyes darting around the shop. He holds the flowers out in front of him like a stick, as if he expects that someone is going to leap at him from the shadows or come bounding out from behind a door.

“These are for your mother,” he says.

“Great.”

My father looks at the sink, and then he looks past me towards the back room. “She here?”

“You okay?” I say.

“Business,” he says, and he unbuttons his coat and sits down in the chair by the sink. “Where is she?”

“Don’t know.”

My father drops the flowers in the sink and looks at Soldier. “You sure he’s okay?”

“He’s just looking for sympathy.”

“She go shopping?”

“Don’t think so.”

“She and Cassie take off?” My father looks at me, and I know he thinks I’m not telling him everything there is to know. “Your mother and me were talking about Prairie View the other day,” he says. “It’s really growing.”

“Is that where you’ve been?”

“Some good opportunities in that town for someone with a head for business.”

“We moving to Prairie View?”

My father slides out of the chair and squats down next to Soldier and begins scratching his belly. “You know what’s wrong with this world?”

“Sure.”

Soldier sighs and slowly tips over on his back. “Just needs a little love.” My father runs his hand behind Soldier’s ears. “What happened to his neck?”

“Barbed wire,” I say.

“Well,” my father tells Soldier, “we’re just going to sit right here and wait until old momma comes home, aren’t we.”

Through the window I can see that the sun is already in the mountains. I want to get to the flat before it’s too dark. “I don’t think she’s coming home tonight.”

My father stops rubbing Soldier. “She over at granny’s?”

“I don’t think so.”

“She with him?”

I take a couple of steps back and feel for the wall. My father stays on the floor. Soldier rolls up on his side.

“Who?”

“She doesn’t have a car.”

“You haven’t fixed it yet.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Soldier is on his feet. He circles my father and comes over and leans against me. I reach down and smooth the fur on his neck.

“Nothing. I didn’t mean anything.”

My father hasn’t gotten off the floor yet, and this is a good sign. I try to remember if we have any beer in the refrigerator.

“Don’t you lie to me!”

I can feel Soldier’s neck muscles harden under my hand. “I’m not lying. Lum and I are going to camp by the river. I was just getting my sleeping bag and stuff.”

“Sonofabitch!”

“You like to get away.”

“That’s business!”

“You want a beer?”

“Sonofabitch.” My father rolls up on his knees. He sounds calmer, but you never know. “When’s she coming home?”

“She said she was thinking about going to Waterton Lake.”

My father frowns, and I’m sorry I’ve mentioned it. “Waterton? Why the hell would she go to Waterton?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Another vacation?”

“And she didn’t take you?”

“I didn’t want to go.”

My father begins roaming the floor between the sink and the window. “You can’t get a reservation this time of the year. So, where the hell is she going to stay?”

“There’s that big hotel.”

“You think she can afford that?”

“No.”

“Any of this make sense to you?”

“No.”

My father takes the flowers out of the sink. “Women,” he says, and he turns to me. “You’ll figure that out soon enough.” He peels back the green paper and holds them out so I can see them. They’re carnations for the most part and a few daisies. They look weary and limp, but my mother has come home with worse.

“You want me to put them in water?”

My father drops the flowers back into the sink and shakes his head. Then he turns and opens the door, pulling it hard so that the bell snaps and makes Soldier jump. “The trouble with the world,” he says as he steps out of the shop, “is women.”

It’s well into evening before Soldier and I get to the flat. I figure that Lum will be there already, but he’s not. I throw my stuff in a pile under a cottonwood and lie down and wait. I take the skull out of the pack and prop it against the tree so it can see what’s happening. Soldier watches the skull out of the corner of his eye. Every so often, he leans over and licks at it and then pulls away. He’s waiting for me to do something interesting or fun, but I’m tired and just want to relax. He tries whimpering for a while and looking pitiful, but in the end, he gives up and goes to the river and sniffs his way up and down the bank.

I look up through the branches and the leaves, but I’m not trying to find the sky. I’m thinking about my father and what it would be like to move to Prairie View, and what’s going to happen when my grandmother discovers that auntie Cassie is pregnant.

Soldier begins to bark. I can see him down by the water jumping back and forth. He stops and looks at me. His ears are up, his body all coils and springs, and I figure that it’s a frog or a snake or something he hasn’t seen before. There’s always the chance that it’s a bone, something to go along with the skull, but that’s the sort of thing you see in movies and not in real life.

“What’d you find?”

The next thought catches me when I’m not looking. I’m still thinking about auntie Cassie as I roll off the sleeping bag, but as I stand up, I start thinking about that night on the Horns and the woman and how she stepped off the edge and disappeared. And as I walk towards Soldier, I know that what he’s found in the water is a body, the body of the woman from that night, washed ashore.

“Don’t touch it!”

I’ve seen those kinds of bodies in movies, and they never look very good, white and bloated with pieces missing, and as I hurry
across the flat to the river, I’m sure that dead bodies in real life look even worse.

“Leave it alone!”

Soldier is bent over like a bow with his butt in the air. He barks and then jumps to one side.

“Soldier!”

I can see the body now. It glistens in the light, pale blue and swollen. I’m surprised by the colour, which is even worse than I imagined, and I stop for a moment and watch it as it bobs up and down in the water. Soldier looks back at me and growls.

“Get back!”

Instead, he charges into the water and begins dragging the body into the shallows. As he gets it to shore, I can see how you could be fooled. It’s the evening light. It hangs along the tops of the mountains, slants down the slopes, and floods the prairies. In the glow, everything comes to life.

“That’s not a body.” Soldier wrestles it into the shadows of the bank. Out of the water and out of the light, it looks flat and dark and lifeless. “So, what are you going to do with it?”

It looks like one of those thin plastic tarps you see on the back of pickups, only it’s much smaller. But when I try to lift it, it’s heavier than I expect and it feels soft and swollen, as though it’s been filled up with thick cream or jello. Soldier watches me as I turn it over. While the one side is blue and feels cold and slick, the other side is white and thick and feels more like cloth. There are stains on this side, yellow and brown bruises that float in circles and fans on the surface. It’s a pad of some sort, but what it reminds me of most is a heavy blanket or a wet diaper.