Brown Dog

by Jim Harrison

  March came as it does every year and not a moment too soon. Except the weather didn’t know spring was coming, and after that summer—March was as bad as December and January, and a lot worse than February. Delmore and me went over to the winter powwow at the junior college gym and next morning he took off on a bus for the Milwaukee airport with about thirty members of the senior citizens group to go on a jet plane for a week in sunny Las Vegas. He had a bunch of brochures about what they were going to do and see including the Hoover Dam, Wayne Newton, and a show with Siegfried & Roy who had trained albino tigers. To me, Siegfried & Roy looked as weird as a Christmas tree in June.

  I enjoyed the powwow because I’d never been to one before, also I was tagging along with Delmore who was a pretty big deal among the local Chips. He got introduced to the whole crowd of about a thousand Indians, including some from over in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Then to my shock I also got introduced because I was a “wild”one who had been in the newspapers and on TV. A bunch of people clapped, mostly young men who then raised their fists so I did too thinking it must be some sort of sign. Until that moment I tended to brood about the newspaper saying I was an outcast and an outsider. When I had said something to Delmore about it he said not to worry because there were too many people inside which didn’t exactly cover the situation. The best part of the evening was Berry in the crow and raven dance that all the little and younger girls took part in. There must have been fifty of them dancing around and around in a circle with the five drummers, beating faster and faster, and all the girls acting like crows and ravens, bobbing their heads, strutting, waddling, beating their wings. Berry was by far the best and Doris said it was probably because Berry didn’t know she wasn’t a crow or a raven which didn’t take anything from it. There were also a bunch of white people of the better sort at the powwow, and in a room where they sold food I ran into Gretchen and Karen eating frybread. They just turned red as beets and walked away so I judged I wasn’t forgiven.

  We had to leave early on account of Delmore. What happened was that an old man of about a hundred years did his last bear dance of this life. He was completely caped in a bear head and hide and even his hands were hid by paws. He danced all alone real slow and every few steps he’d shake his war club at the gym ceiling. Delmore couldn’t handle it so we left. He was shedding a lot of tears and it was lucky he was going to Vegas next day so he could get over it. I got a little edgy out in the parking lot because someone was following us. I slipped on the brass knuckles I had taken to carrying just in case Travis or Fred wanted another go-around. Under the parking lot light I could see it was a dark man in a dark suit wearing a ponytail. It turned out to be Marten, Rose’s little brother, who I had seen earlier but didn’t recognize with a bunch of huge braves from Wisconsin who showed up on Harleys. Marten whispered we can’t be seen together because of State Police spies and he’d meet me tomorrow night at the Buckhorn and off he went. Delmore was already in the car and asked who it was. When I said Marten he said Marten was an agitator and whenever he came back to town he started trouble among decent law-abiding Natives. Californians always did that. On the way home I argued how did he know about California if he’d never been there and Delmore used the old biblical saying “By their fruits ye shall know them.”

  While Delmore was in Vegas I was supposed to stay in the house but such was not to be. I was even going to plug in the TV but then tragedy struck. The wind had clocked around to the south and by midmorning the deep snow was mushy and hard to move around in. I was trying to cut a big birch low to the ground so as to not leave too much stump. I wasn’t paying too much attention because I was horny as a toad and was having sex thoughts about this Indian girl I met at the powwow who was so smart she went to the university up in Marquette. She was a third cousin of Delmore so she might have thought I was a bigger deal than I was. Delmore said she was “crane clan,” whatever that meant, probably sandhill cranes. Anyway, in my mind we were out in the woods laying on sweet moss with her dress up when all of a sudden the birch fell, hit another tree, and bucked back. In a split second I came out of my pussy trance and threw myself backwards or the tree would have caught my head or chest and I’d be dead as a cleaned fish. Instead, the butt end of the tree caught my knee and blasted my kneecap up a few inches. It was a full minute before I felt anything. I just sat there looking at blood coming out of my torn pants, and then the pain hit and soon I was flopping around and yelling. Somehow I knew I had to crawl a quarter of a mile out to the road where Teddy had been trying to get the skidder started. I must have left quite a blood trail.

  III

  POINTS EAST AND WEST

  To most, a hospital is a bright, shrill, utterly lonesome place—inhospitable, in fact. Visitors fail to make the slightest inroads on the notion that one wishes to be elsewhere, the nights full of slight but unaccountable noises, a factor of illness that penetrates even the vases of flowers, the professional smiles that you never quite forget are concealing skulls.

  Brown Dog, however, was enjoying his stay after the initial postoperative discomfort natural to having a smashed kneecap put back in place and a few tendons reconnected. His only other time in the hospital, in Bozeman, Montana, had been far less pleasant for the simple reason of the subdural hematomas covering face and head. He was confident he could have handled two cowboys, but three were out of the question. Walking out of the bar for the fight, he had wrongly assumed there was a code of the West that guaranteed against gang rape. The good thing this time was that, unlike the head, you could distance yourself from your knee. It was simply there, the sharp edges of the pain dulled to a smooth roundness by drugs.

  Before being wheeled into surgery he had made Teddy, who had accompanied him in the ambulance, promise to get the other half of a frozen roadkilled deer up onto the raven-feeding platform at the cabin. Teddy was strong enough to pitch the carcass up there and wouldn’t need to use a ladder. B.D. was mindful despite his inchoate pain that once you get the ravens coming in, you didn’t want to disappoint them. He liked calling to them out the cabin window and often one or two would respond, though when he tried to slip quietly outside to get closer they’d fly away. On Berry’s Sunday visits, however, there was the thrill of watching her gargle out her gaagaafhirmhs, her chortles from deep in her throat, caws, chucks, clucks, and whistles. The ravens would wheel around the yard in a state of frantic interest, resettle on the platform, and peer down at the small brown girl who spoke their language.

  On the second day, when he was out of intensive care and ensconced in a ward with two very old, terminal men and a motorcyclist who had hit an ice patch without his helmet, B.D. enjoyed a train of visitors. Vera brought him a pint, which he slid under the mattress, and a real nice hamburger with plenty of onions wrapped in tinfoil, allowing him at his request the briefest glance of tit. Doris came with Berry but didn’t stay long because Berry immediately took to imitating the groans of the motorcyclist. Doris brought him a cold venison steak between homemade bread and a packet of salt and pepper. She said Rose still couldn’t figure out how he beat the shit out of Fred. Delmore had told Doris the real story which she thought wonderful. On the way out B.D. had Berry do her raven renditions and this brought a nurse on the run.

  Being full from the snacks, B.D. was somewhat critical of the single pork chop, applesauce, and salad brought for dinner by a nurse’s aide named Elise. He complained that the pork was dead and affected tears which confused Elise, who stared at the chop in a new light. She was pretty cute though hefty, with just a trace of a downy mustache. He kept a hand at the edge of the bed in hopes she’d rub against it, which she did. “Look at my little tentpole,” he said, pointing at the risen sheet around his pecker. She blushed and fled but he was confident of her return because he couldn’t very well sleep with a tray above his chest.

  During evening visiting hours Marcelle showed up but was slack-jawed and sullen. She wanted to know if she should alert Delmore out in Vegas to the accident, and B.D.
said no, Delmore was getting old and should have a trouble-free vacation seeing Siegfried & Roy. Then Marcelle got all teary over the fact that B.D. had beat the tar out of Travis. It had never happened before and now Travis was pissed about their wayward life.

  “You must have really got the drop on him,” Marcelle said petulantly.

  “You might say that,” B.D. agreed, deciding not to correct her wrong impression. He tried to force her hand under the sheet but she was intent on whining about her marriage, so he grimaced in fake pain so she’d shut up. She made a halfhearted attempt but her hand was cold and her fingernails sharp. Finally Marcelle was put off and left when the old man in the next bed started vomiting. So much for love that can’t overcome circumstances, B.D. thought. Even Elise made a rush job out of retrieving the dinner tray.

  His last visitor of the evening took him by very real surprise. The nurse had just given him his bedtime Demerol and he was feeling the delicious tingling consequence when in walked Gretchen, a vision of loveliness in her habitual black turtleneck. He speculated on which of the dainty undies he had sorted through in her dresser she was wearing. The drug helped him see their pale, silly renditions of the rainbow. Unfortunately, Gretchen was in a business suit.

  “Let’s just forget your bad behavior, although I’d like an apology. Karen thought you’d like these fruit and bran muffins. I doubt you get enough fiber.’’ She dropped a brown bag on the nightstand and took a pen and forms out of her shoulder bag.

  “I apologize from the depths of my painful heart.” His eyes became misty but when he reached for her hand she moved farther back from the bedside.

  “Your employer, Delmore Burns, hadn’t paid any workers’ compensation insurance so we’ll file through the state to make him liable. Let’s start with your full name and Social Security number.”

  “Delmore’s my relative. He’ll take care of me. I can’t be getting him in hot water.” In his dope haze B.D. hadn’t the strength to reenter the Social Security nightmare, with visions of the government carting him off to lifelong rest in prison.

  “I need at least to know how much he’s paying you so we can prorate a claim,” she said. “We can do the rest tomorrow.”

  His look was so full of grief that a remnant trace of the mother arose in her. She leaned over and impulsively cuddled him, a breast brushing his face. When he told her he got fifty bucks a week, room and board, she flushed with anger and hugged him tightly. The situation was worse than the Chicanos she had worked with in Leelanau County.

  B.D., with his face between Gretchen’s breasts, drew in a new scent that reminded him of the Chicago student riots after he’d been booted from the Moody Bible Institute, having blown his tuition on a hooker. He would never know the scent was called patchouli. “It would be nice to know you when you’re not working,” he squeaked, nose to nipple, and she turned loose as if he were a hot potato.

  “I have to be honest with you. Karen and me are twilight lovers if you know what I mean.”

  “I’m not sure I get you.” There was the image of these two nifty women walking at twilight, his favorite time of day.

  “Lesbians. We love each other all the way.” Gretchen was almost embarrassed but made yet another of dozens of leaps out of the closet with gusto. She rather liked B.D.’s naïveté and lack of presumption, the absence of bristling showmanship that repelled her in men.

  “You don’t say. Well, there’s more than one way to skin a cat, that’s for sure. Can’t say I’ve ever met one that I knew of. If there’s any way I can help out with you two, just let me know.” His mind had quickly become a whirl of intrigue and pleasure, also he was flattered that this fine young woman had confided in him. She was a bit of an outsider just like himself.

  “Thank you, but we can manage.” She gave him a peck on the cheek, letting the alternative of being insulted pass by. He was such a goof, sort of like discovering a long-lost retarded brother.

  When she left, B.D. struggled to remember the movie he and Bob, his partner in the salvage business, had seen in the booth at the porn shop over at the Soo. These two women who ran a flower shop were working each other over in the back while they filled the vases. One had the tattoo of a lizard on her ass. One of their customers was this jerk-off guy whom they tied up and beat senseless with dildos to get back at their mistreatment at the hands of men, or so they said. Gretchen and Karen were clearly a higher sort of people than these flower-shop women and he hoped to become their friend.

  Meanwhile, B.D.’s errant comments to the media had set in motion a troublesome set of decisions for the State Police detective, Harold “Bud” Schultz. He rather liked his temporary duty in the U.P., as his marriage back in East Lansing was in a state of travail—his wife had gone back to college and his two teenage sons scorned his profession. Schultz had quickly determined that B.D. was up to essentially nothing despite the media blarney, and that tailing the man resembled following around a stray dog. The prospective felon was being sponsored by a prominent Native citizen, perhaps a blood relative, of impeccable reputation other than being a registered Democrat. B.D.’s rap sheet was dreary indeed, including a scrape in Montana, a number of drunk and disorderlies, suspected illegal selling of maritime salvage, the business of trying to sell a long-dead body from Lake Superior, the theft of an ice truck from Newberry, the arson of the anthropologist’s tent near Grand Marais, all of which did not add up as a threat to public order. Still, Schultz liked the idea of spending his spring in the Upper Peninsula, far from domestic discord and the very real crime in southern Michigan.

  The true impetus for the surveillance was that his superiors in the State Police and the governor’s office did not want a replication of the civil discord in Wisconsin over Native fishing rights which had a measurable impact on tourism. The upshot was that though it was relatively easy to determine that B.D. was a loose screw representing only himself, it was difficult to file such a simpleminded report in a political climate where conspiracy was the only satisfactory free lunch. B.D. appeared to be a happy-go-lucky pussy chaser, and the fact that he consorted with Gretchen Stewart, a feminist activist out of Ohio State, Marcelle Robicheaux who was from a family of Louisiana malcontents and small-time dope smugglers, and Vera Hall whose second husband was an auto thief from Duluth, added up to nothing whatsoever. Schultz’s job therefore boiled down to the simplest imperatives: merely stop the nitwit from breaking the injunction to keep out of Alger County until the University of Michigan could do their gravedigging. In order to maintain the state’s interest in the project and his own soft duty, Schultz would continue to plant intriguing items in the press. The sole, small mystery in B.D.’s file was that neither Social Security nor the IRS could come up with a trace of a record, nor the Selective Service for that matter. The only string on the man was his driver’s license.

  Schultz proceeded on his somnolent way, even reading Densmore and Vizenor on the Chippewa and their arcane customs, until the night of the powwow when a lightbulb blew up and he spotted a true dissident, Lone Marten, a.k.a. Marten Smith, thought to be residing in Westwood, California, but from the local area. Schultz felt juiced indeed while he watched Marten talking to B.D. in the gymnasium parking lot, but the energy was somewhat dissipated when he got back to his quarters at the Best Western and did a sleepy phone check on Marten. As he reread his notes in the morning, it occurred to him that though he was an ex–American Indian Movement member, Marten was small-time indeed, having shown expertise mostly in getting government grants from Interior, Health and Human Services, and the National Endowment for his dissident films on contemporary Native life. Marten had also raised funds as the chairman of the Windigos, a supposed Native radical organization, but the best intelligence had not turned up any other members. There was a dropped charge for manufacturing crystal methamphetamine, three motorcycle accidents, and the most miserable credit record Schultz had ever seen. In short, Marten was a chiseler, no doubt looking for a little excitement while he was home vis
iting his mother.

  Or so Schultz thought out on the county road as he watched the ambulance carry B.D. away. He drove over to a pine grove down the road from Doris’s house and glassed Marten as he pissed against a maple tree, then tailed him as he drove his rent-a-car, gotten with a suspicious credit card at the Marquette airport, to a realtor’s office. There Marten made a three-thousand-dollar cash down payment on an abandoned fake fort out on Route 2 that had once been the entrance to a shabby zoo for tourists, then a failed RV court, then a local flea market that expired when everyone was rid, finally, of their recirculated junk. Schultz found all this out when he opted to talk to the realtor instead of doing further surveillance of Marten. He picked up Marten’s trail again that evening, when Marten appeared to be waiting for his co-conspirator B.D. at the Buckhorn, not knowing that B.D. was in the hospital. Just about everything led to nothing, Schultz thought, as he hit his Best Western sack with a two-week-old copy of People.

  B.D. was more than a little annoyed the next morning when Elise was giving him a sponge bath and a new doctor interrupted. B.D. had almost got her to touch ole Mister Friendly when in walked this asshole sawbones and sent Elise away. Since B.D. was decidedly proletarian he lacked the bourgeoisie’s reverence for members of the medical profession, thinking of them as body mechanics who were no more reliable than the grease monkeys at the local garage. The doctor merely stared at him from behind the austerity of white suit and surgical mask and B.D. looked away with growing anger. He thought of Elise as Fuzzy Wuzzy for her downy skin, and they had been talking about religion which he knew instinctively was the best sexual approach. When he was sprung from the hospital she’d go out with him if he’d go to church with her. Why not? he thought, as he guided the hand that held the sponge toward his pecker, truly a beautiful moment that had been destroyed by the doctor, who was flipping through his chart at the bed’s end.