by James Grady
I tried to conjure Nina’s soothing voice telling me to calm down, tried to turn my thoughts from the Sig Sauer in my glove box. I didn’t wish to cause Nina trouble. She needed this job and everyone knew it. It wouldn’t do her any good if I was to pop a cap in his ass, but I had to make Squint back off. He was out of control.
I arrived at eight in the morning, the quiet time at Custer’s. The regulars were drinking coffee and eating cinnamon rolls. It was already a scorcher, so hot my coffee didn’t even steam the air. My stomach quivered. I had the peculiar feeling something was gaining on me. Squint wasn’t going to give up his pursuit of Nina. There was no place to go but ugly from here.
Nina had just finished her prep work and was ready to hear me out when I caught sight of an old pickup. I don’t know what drew my attention, maybe a jagged flash of chrome. The pickup was miles away, just a speck on the horizon, but I swear I heard its engine. I wasn’t the only one. As the vehicle covered ground we watched a bad-ass wind barrel round and round behind it, making its own crazy static.
Toolbox came out, whistled, then scurried back inside. I took off my shades. Man-sized tornadoes spun in the wake of the pickup, sparking tiny arrows of blue lightning. Wind rushed the fields and the muggy heat licked us like a pup.
Indian kids made for their cars. Old Indians limped away quick.
“If you know what’s good for you,” Angelina Thump Bird told me, “you’ll skedaddle.”
Nina raised the service screen and pushed herself halfway out the window to get a better look at the speeding truck. Her shirt hiked up to reveal the small of her back, the sensuous curve of her lean spine. “Shit,” she said.
She swiped her forehead with the back of her hand and jumped down. She didn’t take her eyes off the approaching truck. She reached over, switched off the coffee urn, and dumped the whole pot into the sink. Toolbox and Smug hid behind the ice-cream machine. Nina closed all the blinds and turned off the ever-blinking arrow sign. She slammed the window closed and flipped the sign on the door. SHUT UP, the sign read.
I stood beneath the arrow sign wondering what the hell was going on. I felt peculiarly alone. The only dumb-ass facing a churning funnel. A fierce wind roiled around me and I had to catch myself or fall. The wiry-haired Indian gunned his pickup and trundled toward the stand. The trash barrel tipped over and rolled toward the highway; napkins, paper cups, and greasy baskets flittered across the road and littered the fields. Hail pelted a twenty-foot circumference directly over Custer’s. I tented my newspaper above my head and wondered if I was in my right mind. The sun shimmered down and cars kept passing, their drivers oblivious.
The Indian shunted his pickup around back of the stand and I heard the familiar slam of Custer’s door. When Nina spotted me she gestured wildly, and before I could understand what she was trying to communicate, the old Indian was turning toward me.
In my nightmares, one bad dream plays over and over again: the hit-and-run. I hear ribs shatter, the snickering thunder of kneecaps striking earth, the hollow ker-blonk sound of a man’s skull batting from grille to undercarriage. And now I smelled the acrid bloom of singed hair as the nightmare leaped from the Indian’s palm.
* * *
I woke up in the bed of my El Camino—red as a red dog, my skin almost seared. I sat up and saw sparks of light. I couldn’t tell how long I’d been out. What had happened to me?
The doctor took one look at the scattershot wounds that’d blown clean through my arms and legs and asked if I needed counseling. When I said no, he shook his head. “You don’t like yourself,” he said. I called in sick.
A little over a week later I limped my way back to Custer’s and sat at the rickety picnic table. I didn’t have enough energy to get a drink. The Indians kept their distance and I couldn’t blame them. I looked worse for the wear—torn up. Nina came out with a cup of coffee, a weak offering. She sat across the table from me. “I should have warned you,” she said. “But really, it’s nothing you need to know. And nothing that can be any good for you.”
I didn’t understand but knew I wasn’t meant to. “You mean, it’s none of my business,” I responded.
She patted her lips lightly. “That wouldn’t be exactly right. I’m not trying to scold you.” She touched my hand. “I’m trying to save you.”
I didn’t ask questions. I figured she’d tell me what she wanted to tell me, eventually. My ribs ached. Dry heat pulsed in my throat. I gulped my coffee.
“My grandfather didn’t mean to hurt you,” she said. A car passed by on Highway 93 and we heard the tick tick tick of studs. Nina was watchful but didn’t look at me as she spoke. “Grandpa Magpie is scary crazy these days. He sees things other people don’t. It’s hard to explain. If it were only his dementia . . .” She shrugged. “If he doesn’t like someone, well, that person kind of goes away.” Her Salish accent gave the bad news a lilt.
The other Indians had gathered at the table behind her, listening to our conversation. “He got help, don’t he?” Myra Little Bull asked. “Sure, he got that social worker. Snooping around. Shaking her big white finger. That’s what those social workers do. Aye.” The other Indians laughed and jostled each other.
Nina reached over for Joe Elder’s cigarette. She pulled a long smoke then streamed it out her thin nose. “You guys didn’t hear?” she said. “She disappeared about a week ago. They found her car straddling the road edge.”
They quieted down. Angelina Thump Bird gazed at me. “Don’t know what we’re gonna do.”
“All I need,” Nina said, “is to have Squint follow me. Wouldn’t that be great. I even told the tribal police not to go up there. To wait it out until I got some help.”
Little Bull gripped her elbows and rocked back and forth. “We need a medicine doin’s.”
“Go home and heal up,” Nina told me.
A car pulled up to the stand and a family threw open their doors but didn’t move. They argued about the menu. “It’s a joke,” the woman said, applying her bright pink lipstick. “I sure as hell wouldn’t eat here.”
A fat boy struggled out of the backseat. “I want a JOE-RAN-imo,” he announced.
Nina turned to me. “I gotta go, but come back when you’re feeling better. I’ve got a surprise for you.”
I’d had all the surprises I could take. I’d been off work for more than a week and I had some thinking to do. I told the boss I couldn’t shake the flu and that I was giving notice. I hated to do it; I’d just been promoted to yard foreman and I liked my job.
I went home and slept. Out my door, Flathead Lake lapped the rocky shore. I drifted off and imagined I was swimming out to the deepest part of the water, out where the Flathead Lake Monster was hiding, and woke with the idea that there were things beyond my knowing in these mountains that only the Indians understood.
I thought about Nina working endlessly in Squint’s hellish kitchen, how Custer’s Last Stand really was a joke, another way for the white man to grind the Indians down and trivialize their victories. Can’t beat ’em, make fun of ’em. Nina was between a rock and a hard place. I didn’t understand what was going on with her grandfather, but knew it had something to do with dementia and his medicine powers run amuck, and deep down I was afraid. What if her grandfather did have the power to kill someone with his feelings? Or worse: what if he knew what I had done? I turned the idea over and over in my head until I was sick with it.
* * *
I was nursing a cup of coffee at the Polson Bakery. I didn’t want to keep showing Nina how weak I’d become, how I’d got the stuffing knocked out of me, so I’d begun avoiding the stand. I was about ready to settle up when Squint came into the bakery and plopped down at a table not far from me. I’d lost so much weight I didn’t think he’d recognize me. He slurped his soup and chomped his sandwich in three bites. His appetite sickened me. Squint surveyed the coffee shop, nodding at a few customers who shifted uneasily. He was about to leave when he took a hard look in my direction. I kept my head do
wn as he sized me up.
He swaggered over to me and pushed back his hat. “I don’t allow vagabonds in my town,” he said. “And if I see you around here again, I’m going to haul you in.” He stabbed his toothpick between his front teeth and smiled. “And if I catch you near that squaw again, it’s not going to be pretty—she’s not going to be pretty. Get my drift?” He gazed around the room to make sure he’d been heard.
My first thought was to be flattered, bowled over with giddiness, and that’s when I knew I was in a world of shit. A man can get in trouble with the law; he can be obsessed with motorcycles and fast cars; he can drive himself to ruin with gambling and drink—but if a woman even shadows the frame of his life, if she begins to be his first thought in matters where he should be thinking, then he’s already gone. I’d fallen in love with Nina Three Dresses, and Squint saw me as a threat. One big, glorious hallelujah!
I decided to keep my mouth shut and let it pass. I’d get even with the son of a bitch another way. But just as he turned to leave and his grubby mitt touched the door, I got a stab of inspiration.
“You don’t have to worry no more,” I called out.
Four old men who’d been gossiping stopped midsentence and glared at me, then at Squint.
“The two of us are heading south this evening. All she’s gotta do is pack her bags and we’re outta here. You get my drift?”
Squint gave me the kind of look that could fry eggs. He stopped picking his teeth and let the toothpick teeter in his mouth. “We’ll see about that,” he said. “We’ll just see about that.” I’d stepped into a scene from High Noon, an old-fashioned showdown between men where the woman would take the hurt.
My heart was a furiously ticking time bomb. I’d taken too big a risk. I should have headed over to the stand, talked to Nina, told her what I’d done. But I knew Squint would be on my tail. I’d counted on that, hadn’t I? It was my ace in the hole. He’d follow me. Jesus, he’d follow me to hell.
* * *
I waited until Nina got off work and then I waited awhile more. The seconds ticked. Stink rolled down my rib cage in small rivulets and stars circled my head. I wondered if I’d ever feel right again. Yet that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but Nina, her future, and her happiness.
When the evening light rippled over the lake and the stars emerged, I got in the El Camino and headed slowly into town. I picked up a carton of cigarettes at the Town Pump. I checked my rearview mirror but saw no sign of Squint. I waited and then drove like a weary old man. I smoked three cigarettes while I searched. I canvassed the alleyways, the spaces behind the 4B’s, and Walmart, but caught no sign of him. I blasted music. Bass thundered through the soles of my feet, edged up my spine, and flared out the windows like a flag, and still no sign of Squint. I rubbed my wet palms on my jeans and drove on, a man determined. I’d banked everything on an idea only a nutcase would believe.
I cracked a beer and took a long tug and headed up the east shore. I’d been up Hell Roaring many times and knew every sharp turn, every dry dip. As I followed the first curve up the road, dust sparkled in my headlamps like a sorcerer’s mist. An electric charge hummed along the hood of the El Camino. Weird sparks lit the ends of my fingers. My funny bone was lit. Hell Roaring behind me, ahead of me, and still no sign of Squint. The thin moon smiled wickedly over the valley as I gunned the engine and headed up and up that dark road.
I came to the road chain and jumped out. I worked steadily, sawing through the link until it clanked off. I tossed the chain aside. The wind began to pick up, snarling through the trees and creating a bluish blister around me. I smelled the scent of freedom that is older than time, a scent immune to white civilization. For a reeling moment, the scars of my long-ago sadness disappeared. Then I heard a relentless chuffing, an engine grinding low. I cupped my ear to listen. Spinning tires huffed along the road below, growling, coming for me.
I continued onward, upward. The smell of elk piss wafted through my windows. The road was a thin gray tongue over hell’s chasm. No road barriers. No fences. Nothing to save me but the thought of Nina. I spotted the white Buick half on, half off the road, straddled precariously over the darkness. One little push and it would clatter mercilessly off the cliff edge. One tire slip from me, and off it’d go. It had to be the social worker’s car that Nina had spoken about, but I wouldn’t risk edging past it.
I stopped dead center in the road and checked my glove box. No flashlight. I could smell the oily dust beneath the carriage of my car, the only thing that made the night seem real. I’d driven a long way and had only a few more steps to go. The windows of the Buick glinted and flashed in the flimsy light of the moon, but just past the curve was Magpie’s house—all its windows dark. An engine died behind me. I heard cussing. A thin light jittered up the road, then a tunnel of light roiled over the deep canyon, and I wanted to snicker with glee. My plan was working. The flashlight shot up past the line of trees and I skittered into the bushes.
Grandpa Magpie’s shack sat perched above me. I’d seen this place way back when I was a teenager and had looked through the windows at the tidy kitchen, a few scrubbed pots hanging from the wall, a kettle boiling on the stove. I remembered I couldn’t fathom how anyone could live up here, let alone survive the brutal winters.
I could make out a hundred tiny flags on the switchback path that led up to the house. I heard Squint’s hard breath as he worked his way up the first step. Suddenly, an eerie light illuminated the darkness and for a second I was blind.
“Harold?” Nina’s voice called. “Is that you?”
The thought crossed my mind that she was calling someone else. But Harold was my name.
“Stay where you are,” she said. “Don’t come any closer.” She lifted the kerosene lantern and I saw Squint’s oily eyes, his smug face haloed by darkness.
Nina gasped. “Officer Custer, don’t. Please go away. You’re in danger.”
He chortled and quickened his stride. As he passed the first flag, a rattling gust blew so hard his hat flew off and tumbled down the road and off the embankment. He thrust his hands out to steady himself but continued onward, pitching unnaturally forward like a cartoon character. His clothing plastered his body and his coat flapped behind him. He was heading toward Nina but each time he passed a flag the wind would abruptly change and knock him backward and sideways. A shadow moved behind Nina and she retreated into the house.
“I warned you!” she shouted back. “I’m sorry!”
A sound careened from the old Indian’s body, a warble that issued from his chest, a buzzy zing. Trees groaned and cracked around me. I felt jazzed, electrified. Squint’s eyes flashed in terror. He was lit up, a gigantic neon-road-sign pig. His hair frazzled red like lit grass. I smelled burning fingernails, the old body scent of death. It came to me that I was only dreaming as I watched Squint sail through the night and wing out over the edge of the precipice to fall forever into the pitch darkness from where he’d come. The last thing I saw in the whistling night was the young man I had hit. He was smiling. He was alive.
* * *
The boss had left a message on my phone. My job was still waiting for me. I combed my hair and brushed my teeth. It was eight in the morning. I’d been asleep for three days. I got in my El Camino and was headed for the Polson Bakery when I changed my mind. I turned toward the mountains, toward Nina and Custer’s Last Stand. I had a burning desire to see her.
I parked and watched her from my car. The windows of the stand gleamed as if someone had polished them to a squeak. I caught a whiff of fresh food—not fries or stale hamburgers, but good food. I smiled when Nina spotted me, smiled so wide my face hurt. I felt better than I had in years, better than I ever could or should. She took off her apron and unleashed her hair. Her beautiful hair tumbled down and the sun shone on her face.
“You would not believe what happened,” she said. “Never in a million years.” The concussive sound of wind drummed my ears. Her hair glittered with brilliant light. �
��He’s gone. And even stranger . . .” She patted her chest and her eyes welled up. “His wife turned the place over to me. Just like that. Said she wanted none of it. I sign the papers this afternoon.”
“Did it really happen?” I asked, dumbfounded at the larger question that loomed before us.
Nina didn’t answer. She went back inside and poured me a large cup of coffee with real cream. All the stupid signs had been torn down. Now it was coffee, the best buffalo burger in the state of Montana. There were boxes of fresh vegetables on the counter. Buy local. Buy organic. Buy Indian-made.
She raised an eyebrow. “You’re with me, aren’t you?”
I looked off toward the blue Mission Mountains and understood their power was something akin to magic. “Yes,” I said, “I’m with you.”
Red Skies of Montana
by Keir Graff
Lolo
Sidd breathed hard as his shoes crunched the gravel. He thought: You can’t outrun smoke.
He’d woken early to run his eight kilometers before the sun rose above the mountains and began to scorch the brown hills of the Bitterroot Valley. He loved the quietness, broken only by the scree of a cricket, the twee twee of a bird, the distant burr of an engine on the highway. After only two years in Montana, he was still unused to the exhilarating joy of being alone.
The cold nights, too, gave him a thrill, and it was a pleasure to be awake when the first rays of sunlight topped the mountains to warm his skin.
On a normal morning, the light would have had a lovely violet tint. Today it was just brown. Smoke from Idaho wildfires had been drifting east for more than a week, dimming the stars, blunting the sun, and, if the way he was gasping now was any indication, infiltrating his lungs.
Exercise in such foul air was probably worse than no exercise at all. He worked phlegm out of his throat and spat, laboring toward the Y in the road where he usually turned around.