I tried to take all this in. “What happens next? Do I get him in some drug treatment program here? Counseling?”
The doctor smiled at me, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “I wish we had something, but we don’t receive any funding for behavioral health at this facility. I believe there’s a program in Rapid City.”
“IHS doesn’t have any drug programs here? You gotta be kidding.” I looked at him, but he averted his eyes.
“I’ll remind you that your care here is paid for, courtesy of the US government. No charge to you. If I were you, I’d be grateful he survived and that you didn’t have to pay for it. Now, please excuse me.” He turned and walked away.
I felt the urge to punch him in the back of the head. Jesus, the Americans stole the land from us, and all we got in return was shitty health care and crappy canned goods. I wanted to tell the nasty doc that we’d be happy to take our land back and give up the health care and commodities. But there was no point. I had to focus on Nathan and not piss off anyone here.
There was one thing I could do. I took my cell phone out to the courtyard, where I’d get some reception. I dialed the numbers and waited.
“Ben?”
“Yeah, who’s this?”
“Virgil Wounded Horse.”
A pause. “How’s Nathan? Marie told me what happened.”
“He’s going to make it.” This was the first time I’d said this out loud. I hadn’t wanted to speak the words out of some weird fear of cursing Nathan. But as I spoke, I felt angry. Angry that Nathan had done this to himself, angry that he’d put me in this position. Angry that Natives like Rick Crow would sell dope to kids on the rez, starting the whole cycle over again.
“That’s good,” he said. “Glad to hear it. We don’t need any more overdoses. Not on my watch.”
I waited for him to say something else, more sympathetic words, but I realized that this was the extent of Ben’s compassion.
“I’m ready to go to Denver,” I said. “What we talked about. Rick Crow.”
“Are you sure—with Nathan in recovery?”
I hadn’t thought this through. “I’ll look after him. Soon as he’s on his feet, I’m good to go.”
“Okay.” Ben cleared his throat on the other end of the line. “Best to take care of this away from the rez. Less complicated. How long do you need before you’d leave?”
“I could maybe take off by the end of the week.”
“All right,” he said, “you need money to get down there?”
“No, I got enough.” I’d tap into the college savings, what little there was.
“Need some extra help? I got a couple of guys I can possibly set you up with down there.”
“No.”
“You positive? Rick runs with a pretty bad crowd. You got to promise me you’ll handle this. Fix this problem—for the people.”
For so long, I’d been unsure about what it meant to be Indian. I’d believed it meant going to powwows, speaking the language, wearing Leonard Peltier T-shirts. Maybe it did mean all of that stuff. But I knew one thing now. Rick Crow might look Indian, but he was no Native. He was a cancer, and it was time to cut out the tumor.
“I don’t care about his crowd. When I find him, I’ll jam every bag of drugs I can find up his ass. I’ll burn off every one of his goddamn fingers. Motherfucker will suffer. That’s a promise.”
7
Nathan was sleeping again, his chest moving slowly up and down. He’d be released from the hospital in the next few days, so I didn’t have much time to decide what I was going to do about his care. Ben had said Rick was in Denver now, buying more dope, so there was no time to wait. Not to mention, I was burning to find that fucker and show him the front side of my fist and the back side of a baseball bat.
The problem was Nathan. I couldn’t leave if he was still sick, and I sure as shit didn’t want to take off until I was positive he wouldn’t mess with drugs again. I needed to find out where he’d gotten the stuff and why he’d made the colossally stupid decision to take it. When he was ready, I’d talk to him and find out more.
The only answer was to have him stay at my auntie’s place. She was eighty years old and lived in a two-room house about twenty miles from town. If he stayed there, he’d be away from his friends and any trouble. He could take a few weeks off from school while he recuperated. There wasn’t much space there, but Nathan could help her gather firewood when he got his strength back. The place had no central heating, just a wood stove in the middle of the main room, but he’d be fine. Having Nathan stay there was the best—maybe the only—option I had.
I felt bad about leaving, but what did I know about taking care of sick kids? My auntie was better at this; she’d raised three children and knew all about this stuff. I stared at the dregs of my coffee. Truth was, I was scared about screwing up with Nathan. Even though I’d had my own struggles with booze, I didn’t know anything about addiction recovery. What I was good at was knocking the shit out of assholes.
“This a bad time?”
I looked up into the eyes of Marie Short Bear, standing in the doorway of the hospital room. Her black hair was longer than when I’d last seen her, falling past her shoulders and down her back. She had on a white strappy blouse that showed off her shoulders and long slender frame, and a dark skirt that appeared to be decorated with ledger art. Her face looked sad and beautiful, her brown eyes flashing with glints of copper.
“I like your skirt.”
She looked embarrassed. “It’s Bethany Yellowtail. My mother gave it to me.”
“Looks good.”
“Can I come in?”
“Let’s go out to the waiting room,” I said. “He’s still sleeping.”
Marie peered over at Nathan. “Poor guy.”
We moved to the dingy waiting room, which was thankfully empty. I tried not to stare at Marie as she pulled out a chair. It had been a long time since I’d seen her, and memories surged into my brain like a flash flood. Thoughts of our time together, images of Marie as a schoolgirl.
She’d been a weird kid in grade school. And I do mean weird. She wore plastic wolf ears and a wolf tail in class for the entire fourth grade, and would howl periodically throughout the day, which infuriated her teachers. She claimed she was half wolf and couldn’t stop wailing and yowling. Thankfully, she grew out of the wolf stage, but the damage had been done. All throughout elementary school, kids would bark behind her back, and they called her “Dogbreath.” I was too small to help her when the teasing started, and in any case, I was more concerned with my own social status. At the rez school, the pecking order was as clearly defined as that of some fancy prep school back east. Marie was at the bottom then, and I wasn’t far away.
In high school, Marie had tried to fit in with the super-Natives, the tradish kids who decreed who was sufficiently indigenous and who wasn’t. Those girls froze her out, which wounded Marie deeply. I guess they resented that her mom was Osage, not Lakota, or her family’s money, or maybe they just didn’t like her. She became friends with a Navajo girl, Velma, who’d somehow ended up in South Dakota. Velma was a big girl with a roaring laugh and a don’t-fuck-with-me personality. They’d drive down to Denver to shop at the thrift stores, hit the punk record shop, and go to all-ages concerts. They pasted loads of stickers on their school lockers: Wax Trax Records, Misfits, Black Flag. None of this endeared them to the popular kids, but Velma and Marie claimed they didn’t give a shit what the other kids thought.
But I knew that Marie did care. She joined every environmental and indigenous club at school, becoming president of most of them by sheer willpower. She formed teams for the hand games and Lakota language competitions in Rapid City, holding monthly Indian taco sales to pay for the travel. She graduated near the top of the class and was accepted to Dartmouth College, where her sister had gone, but she’d refused to go to school out of state, instead insisting on attending our local tribal college, Sinte Gleska University, where she could study
Lakota language and culture, her qualifications as a super-Indian then beyond question. Her parents had fought her on that, long and hard, but Marie prevailed, graduating in just three years. Her father got her a job working for the tribe in the family services office, where she helped kids and elders. She’d started at the bottom, but as usual worked harder than everyone and got promoted to the commodity food program, where she had to take orders from people she didn’t like or respect.
In a sad twist of fate, her boss was one of the girls who’d been nasty to her in high school, Delia Kills in Water. A full-blood Lakota, Delia had been a cheerleader in high school, the popular girl who knew everybody but talked behind everyone’s back. They’d hated each other then, and the passage of time hadn’t smoothed things over. If anything, their rivalry had gotten worse. Last I’d heard, Marie was still working there.
I pushed aside my memories and suddenly became aware of my own physical condition. I hadn’t showered in at least two days, hadn’t brushed my teeth, and was wearing clothes that probably smelled like a locker room.
“Listen, I haven’t had a chance to clean up—”
“Don’t worry about it. I didn’t know if you’d eaten anything, so I brought this.” She pulled a sub sandwich out of her bag. Black Forest ham and cheese. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized how hungry I was, and I gratefully took it. I looked over to see if she had food for herself.
“Please, go ahead,” she said. “I already ate.”
I started eating, unable to wait.
“I came because I wanted to talk to you. In person.” She put her hand on my shoulder for a moment. I realized how long it had been since she’d touched me. I put the rest of the hoagie away and used a napkin to clean myself up as best I could.
“Thanks for coming,” I said. “And for the lunch.”
“You’re welcome.” She smiled, which was nice. There hadn’t been many smiles during our last few months together. “So, have you had a chance to think about my offer?”
“You mean, you coming along to Denver?”
She nodded.
“Sorry, not going to happen. I’ll handle this on my own.”
The smile went away. “What makes you think you’ll be able to find Rick there? Do you know anything about his deals, or where he stays?”
“I found some info at his trailer. I’ll get him, don’t worry about that.”
Her face darkened. “For Christ’s sake, Virgil, Denver isn’t the rez. It’s a big city with millions of people. It’s not like you can just hang out at the corner store and eventually run into him.”
“I suppose you know where he is?” I tried to keep my voice low.
“As a matter of fact, I do. I have a pretty good idea, and if he’s not there, then I know where he’s likely to go.”
“Can you call him? On his cell phone, find out where he is?”
“No,” she said, “he uses those disposable phones, the ones you buy and throw away. Don’t know his number anymore.”
I was afraid to ask this question, but I had no choice. “How is it you know so much about him?”
Marie turned away and looked out the window. The harsh glare of the fluorescent lights illuminated her skin as she stared out at the rolling hills of the reservation.
“After I left you, I was pretty angry. Angry at you for being such an asshole. Angry at myself for not being able to help you. You were messed up, and there was nothing I could do. I saw you were hurting, but you wouldn’t talk to me. You wouldn’t say a word for days. I’m not like you. I need people, I need somebody to tell my stuff to. So I met Rick at the Depot one night. After you and I broke up. He talked to me, listened to me. I knew his reputation, but I just needed somebody. It’s my life, I don’t have to defend my choices.”
Now my anger was back and in full bloom. “So I’m an asshole and a hired thug and won’t talk, but you take up with a drug dealer? The way I see it, you’re just as bad as him if you were with him.”
She looked defeated, and I instantly regretted my words. “Yeah, he’s not a good guy,” she said. “I left as soon as I found that out. Someday I’ll tell you about it. That’s why I want to help. I know where he stays in Denver, and I’m pretty sure I know who he gets the drugs from. It’s a street gang, the Aztec Kingz.” She looked off into the distance. “You have to believe me, if I’d known he was bringing heroin here, I would have told you. Someone. I never heard anything about that, I promise you.”
I considered what she’d said. “Why don’t you just give me the address, tell me what you know, and I’ll go down there on my own?”
“No. If you want the details, you have to let me come with you. I can use my vacation days.” Her face was an angry, steely mask, and she looked me straight in the eyes. “Look, I’ve got some things to say to him. This is something I need to do.”
Having Marie come with me to Denver was out of the question. Rick Crow was a bad dude, and it sounded like he’d hooked up with some even worse people in Colorado. It would be completely wrong to bring her into this.
I looked at Marie, her long black hair, the swell of her blouse, and her dark-brown eyes.
“Okay, we leave in three days.”
8
When I got back to the hospital room, the nurse told me that Nathan had been sitting up and talking a bit. A wave of relief shot through my body. When he saw me walk in, his face trembled and he started to cry a little.
“I’m sorry, Uncle.” His lips contorted as he tried to contain his emotions. “I messed up.”
We’d never been the hugging type, but I moved to the side of his bed and held him. Now he really started to weep, and stuck his head on my shoulder. His breath stuttered and jerked.
“It’s okay, buddy, it’s all right,” I said, and we stayed like that for a while. Finally I moved back and took a look at him. His eyes were sunken and dark, and his skin was ashy. But he was alive.
“How you feeling?”
“Not so good. I feel weird, like I’m a zombie or something. Like I’m watching stuff happen, but nothing’s real. And my head really hurts.”
“You want some water?”
“No, I’m okay. They gave me a little. Said I can have food later, but I’m not hungry.”
He still had an IV hooked up to his arm, but the other machines were gone. “They told me you’re probably gonna get out soon.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, you’re going to stay with Auntie Audrey for a bit,” I said. “She’ll look after you.”
“What? Out in the country?”
“It’ll be fine. You can rest up, get your strength back. She used to work at the hospital, you know, she’s good at that.”
“How long will I be there?” He slumped back into the bed.
“Depends how you’re feeling. I got to go out of town, but I’ll call and check in. You need anything, you can call Tommy.”
“Where’re you going?”
“Denver.”
He didn’t say anything. It was time to ask the hard question.
“Nathan, I know you’re still sick, but I got to know something. So, what happened?”
He looked puzzled. “Uh, I guess I overdosed.”
“No, I mean, why did you take that stuff? The drugs.”
He sat up and focused his attention on the IV line in his arm, as if the answer to my question was there. “I guess I screwed up.”
“Come on, you can tell me. The truth, okay? Have you done this stuff before?”
“No. This was the first time, I promise.” He looked away and stared at the wall.
“All right. So why’d you do it?”
“Well, school has sucked so bad this year—”
“Sucked? What’s going on?”
Now he turned to me with a resentful expression. “You don’t know what it’s like there. Most of the kids are freakin’ shitty; they make fun of me sometimes. You know, ’cause my mom is dead or I’m not Indian enough or whatever. I barely have any friends.
I just been like, really stressed out, feeling like crap all the time.”
Yeah, I did know what it was like at the school, and I remembered pretty well what it was like to be harassed and bullied. But my heart cracked when I realized he’d been going through it too. Alone.
“Why didn’t you come talk to me? You know, let me help out.”
A pause. “Uh, you’re not exactly a person people talk to. Like, have a heart-to-heart or whatever. I mean, I need someone’s ass kicked, you’re the guy.”
This hurt.
“You don’t want to talk with me, that’s cool,” I said. “But you got issues, you can go to a school counselor or someone.”
He smirked, looked at me like I was the stupidest person alive. “Yeah, okay.”
I decided to try a different tack. “Don’t you hang out with Jimmy, talk to him? He’s your bud, right?”
“Ah, not so much anymore. He’s, like, starting to get all sporty, playing b-ball, hangin’ with those dudes. I’m more into rap, hip-hop, cool stuff.”
I knew when I’d hit a dead end. “All right. But you got to tell me one thing.” I looked him in the eyes. “Where’d you get the drugs?”
He paused. “At school. By the football field.”
“What do you mean, the football field? From who?”
“I don’t know, some dudes hanging out there.”
“Rick Crow?”
“No. Some other guys, like four of them. I seen ’em once or twice before, don’t know their names. We were talking about music and stuff, you know, chillin’. So they said I could try it, didn’t ask me for no money. Said it was no big deal, like smoking a joint or whatever. I guess I just wanted to do something different. I didn’t think none of this was gonna happen.”
I wondered if he was bullshitting me. There was no way that drugs were being given away, and I knew he didn’t have money to buy them. There was more to this story.
“You being straight with me? Whole thing sounds shady.”
Now he was staring at me like I’d been the one who’d caused him to overdose. “I’m telling you the truth! You know, I got the right to make friends. Live my life. I made a mistake, all right?”
Winter Counts Page 5