Justice

by Larry Watson

  They drove into McCoy in early afternoon. The snow had subsided, but, as if to support their decision to stop, the wind had increased, clearing the highway of snow in one place and then piling it high with drifts in another. As the snow whipped across the road, the asphalt itself appeared and disappeared under those rolling, waving, ghostly snakes.

  They parked in front of the Overland Hotel, a square two-story building of unevenly laid reddish orange brick. Two rows of windows, unnaturally small for the building’s size, stared down at the snowy street.

  The old woman at the desk regarded the boys suspiciously when they came in. She was short and squat and had tiny dark eyes. The blanket she kept wrapped around her shoulders like a shawl dragged on the floor as she moved around behind the desk. She gave them the key to a room but warned them, “You boys. I got other guests. Make trouble and you go.” Her accent was thick, Germanic.

  Frank asked her, “Where should we put the car?”

  “Where you got it now?”

  “Out in front.”

  “What’s the matter with there?”

  Their second-floor room had a bed with an iron bedstead, a dresser with a porcelain pitcher and washbowl, a straightbacked chair, and a small table beside the bed. Over the bed hung a small framed picture of the Last Supper that looked as though it had been cut from a magazine. The window shade was up and the lace curtains tied back, but the window looked out on nothing but a snowy field.

  Lester lifted the hem of the chenille bedspread and peered under the bed. “Is there a slop bucket or somethin’? As long as there isn’t a biffy.”

  Wesley recalled that Lester’s family did not have indoor plumbing.

  “Bathroom’s down the hall,” Frank said.

  Tommy pointed at Lester and laughed. “You never stayed in a hotel before, have you?”

  “What the hell for?” Lester answered angrily. With his boot he shoved his canvas duffle against the wall. “Don’t bother me to sleep outside. I’ll do it tonight if you like.”

  “Nobody has to sleep outside,” said Frank. “But we do have to set up a plan.”

  Tommy bounced up and down on the edge of the bed, making the springs whine. “What kind of plan?”

  “Let’s say one of us wants to bring a guest up here,” Frank explained. “The others are going to have to clear out for a spell.”

  “A guest?” asked Lester.

  Wesley felt sorry for Lester. He stood in the middle of the room, still wearing his coat with the dirty matted sheepskin lining and with the earflaps on his fraying wool cap tied down. Lester was the most skilled outdoorsman of the group, a crack shot with a rifle and a shotgun and a fisherman who could land a cast within inches of a lily pad. If they brought down a deer Lester would be invaluable; he could field dress a deer with a speed and efficiency that a butcher might envy. Yet if a tree were growing up through the floor of the hotel room it would not look more out of place in these surroundings than Lester.

  Tommy stopped bouncing on the bed. He looked up at Lester. “You know, you’re so fucking dumb sometimes it hurts. You know that—it hurts.”

  Lester looked to Frank like a dog appealing to its master.

  “If one of us gets a girl,” Frank said slowly, “we’ve got to have a plan so he can have the room to himself.”

  “If he wants to keep her to himself,” said Tommy.

  Lester snorted. “You ain’t too cocky, are you. Where the hell you going to find you a girl?”

  Tommy started bouncing on the bed again. “You know her name, don’t you,” he said to Frank. “Goddamn. You know her name!”

  Frank shrugged his shoulders. “I remember her first name. That’s all.”

  With a bound Tommy was off the bed and at Frank’s side. “Come on. Get her over here. Her and her mama both. We’ll have us some red meat for supper.”

  Frank shoved Tommy aside. “You wouldn’t know what to do with it.”

  Tommy put his head and shoulders down like a football lineman and pretended to run into Frank. He stopped his charge short and came up grinning. “You try me. Get her up here. Try me.”

  “Get your own.”

  Lester was searching through the pile of duffels and packs. “Where’s those fucking cigars.” He came up with one in his mouth. “You’re going to look for girls. Don’t make me laugh. You ain’t going to find any. In the meantime we ain’t supposed to get into that liquor. Shit. We’ll end up taking it back home. Three days and I won’t get off a shot or pull a cork. Shit.”

  Wesley suddenly felt ill. After those long hours in the cold car the hotel’s warmth was too much for him. There didn’t seem to be enough air, and he couldn’t take a deep breath because of the strong smell of camphor in the room. He tried moving away from the chest of drawers but the odor followed him. He knew he wouldn’t be able to take the smell of Lester’s cigar.

  “I’m going down to the lobby,” he announced.

  “What for?” asked Frank.

  “Not for anything. I’m just going down there.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  As he left the room, Wesley heard Lester say with disgust, “You want ‘em, you go get ’em.”

  Wesley sat in the lobby on a hard, oil-stained horsehair sofa. There were smells here too—cigar smoke again and something like creosote. He kept himself turned to the side so he could look out the window and monitor the storm. He was certain now; yes, the snow had stopped falling, but the wind continued to rise and as much snow filled the air from the ground up as it had earlier from the sky down. He didn’t know why he still cared. He knew he wasn’t going hunting. There was nothing to do but wait out the hours and days until it was time to return to Montana. Maybe they’d go back tomorrow. Tonight they’d look for girls, find none, get drunk, and drive home early tomorrow. The hotel had presented them with an expense none of them had planned on.

  While Wesley stared out the window the old woman from behind the desk approached him. She walked slowly, taking tiny steps and listing from side to side. She stood in front of Wesley a long time before she spoke.

  “Where’s your family?”

  The question was simple, yet Wesley had trouble understanding what she meant. Did she want to know how near his family was, if he had relatives around McCoy?

  “My brother’s upstairs.”

  She twisted her mouth as though she were trying to dislodge something from her teeth.

  “You got more than a brother, don’t you.”

  “In Bentrock, Montana. Like we wrote on the register.”

  She snorted. “If I could read that I could read it for myself.”

  “It’s in Montana.” Wesley realized he had already said that, and he began to explain where in Montana. “Northeast Montana. Not far from the Canadian border. Bentrock is the county seat.” His voice softened and trailed off until, like snow falling, it was barely there. “My—I mean, our—parents live there.” The old woman turned and walked away, but Wesley could not stop. “We go on this hunting trip every year, but this is the first year none of our folks came along. My brother’s going to be in college next year. He’s got offers from all over....”

  The day had gotten colder, but the boys walked down the wooden walkway of McCoy’s main street with their coats flapping open in the wind. They had brought along knit caps and wool caps with earflaps, but now all of them but Lester had switched to Stetsons. They wore them pulled down low and held onto them to keep them from blowing off. They walked four abreast but no one had to step aside for them because no one else was on the street. They were going to the Buffalo Cafe, an eatery the woman at the hotel recommended. The cafe was, she said, “where most of the guests eat. Families too.”

  As they entered the cafe, a bell attached to the door announced their arrival, but no one came forth to greet them. They stamped the snow from their boots, brushed flakes from their sleeves, and slapped their hats on their trousers.

  The skin under Lester’s nose was raw from his jacket’s rou
gh wool, but he wiped his nose one more time on his sleeve. “And you were going to find you some girls. Hell, there’s nobody out today. We ain’t even going to get a hot meal.”

  “They’re open,” said Frank. “The door wasn’t locked.”

  The cafe reminded Wesley of someone’s home. The walls were covered with peeling, yellowing wallpaper, the windows with lace curtains, the floor with mismatched rag rugs. If it weren’t for the fact that there were four oilclothcovered tables instead of one, Wesley believed he could have been in the dining room of a neighbor back in Bentrock. Then he noticed two more differences hanging on the walls: a blackboard listing the day’s menu and the prices, and, in place of a family photograph, a massive buffalo head, horned and glossy-eyed, its shaggy, matted fur the darkest presence in this brightly lit room.

  Tommy pretended to sight a rifle at the buffalo and then squeezed the imaginary trigger. Deep in his throat he imitated the muffled sound of a gunshot and then rocked back on his heels as if the gun had a tremendous recoil.

  At that moment a tall, gray-haired woman came through a curtained doorway and into the cafe’s bright interior. She wore a man’s faded plaid flannel shirt over her print dress. The sleeves of the shirt were rolled to the elbow revealing her muscular forearms. She was wiping her hands on a dish towel.

  Two Indian girls, teenagers, came out of the back room behind the tall woman. When Wesley saw the girls he almost gasped out loud. Jesus, there they were. Frank and Tommy wanted girls and there they were. The sons of bitches didn’t even have to go looking for them.

  One of the girls was almost as tall as the gray-haired woman, while the other girl was short and overweight. The shorter girl had a pretty face though, and something about the way she never stopped smiling made Wesley think she was a friendly, good-natured person who would be easy to talk to. Her black hair hung loose, past her shoulders. Under her unbuttoned wool coat she wore a dark blue dress with a small white collar. Her black rubber overshoes were too big for her; she had to slide her feet to keep the boots from slipping off. With every step she took, the overshoe buckles jingled and the wet rubber squeaked on the wooden floor.

  But of the two, the taller girl was the real beauty. She was slender and graceful and carried herself confidently. Her hair was plaited in two long braids that hung down her chest. She wore an unbuttoned coat and dress identical to the other girl’s, but on her feet instead of galoshes were high buckskin leggings that whispered across the floor when she walked. Then, as she came closer, Wesley saw the scar. It was a pale diagonal seam that extended from near her nose to her upper lip, and whatever had happened to her must have cut through muscle because her lip curled up slightly.

  Because of her stern expression and the haughty look her curled lip gave her, Wesley felt that he and this Indian girl were somehow similar, both slightly disapproving of the company they were in, both present and yet not present in every room they entered. Then Wesley caught himself. This was just an Indian girl; he had no good reason to think she was anything like what he imagined.

  The gray-haired woman spoke over her shoulder to the girls. “Your ride doesn’t come, that’s it. You’re out of luck. That’s a private phone.”

  The short girl kept smiling. “We know. Thank you.”

  The woman saw the four boys standing by the door. “You here to eat? Or just come in out of the snow?”

  Frank spoke for them. “We’d like to get something to eat. If it’s no bother.”

  “Oh, it’s a bother all right. That’s why I make people pay me.”

  Tommy was the only one who laughed.

  “But you got to sit down, boys. That’s the way it works. You sit down and I bring the food to you on a plate.”

  Lester began to walk toward the back of the cafe, but Frank caught him by the hem of the coat. “Over here.”

  They hesitated like a flock of birds that take an instant to understand the direction they’re heading, then turned and followed Frank to a table by the window. The girls were already seated at an adjoining table.

  As soon as they sat down, Tommy began to talk to the girls. “You gals need a ride somewheres? Is that what I heard?”

  The tall girl stared out at the blowing snow, but the plump girl looked over at the four boys.

  “How about it?” Tommy asked again. “We got a car. We can take you.”

  “Someone’s coming for us,” the shorter girl answered.

  Tommy ignored her reply. “Out to the reservation? Is that where you’re going?”

  The tall girl cast a withering look their way. “We go to Sacred Heart.”

  The other girl nodded. “We live here in town.”

  “Sacred Heart,” Frank said in a voice so soft Wesley barely recognized it as his brother’s. “The high school, right?”

  The plump girl kept smiling that smile that never seemed to increase or decrease in its intensity. “We’re seniors,” she said.

  “We are too,” Frank replied. “Well, three of us. My brother’s a sophomore.”

  Wesley winced. At least Frank hadn’t said which one was his brother.

  Tommy leaned over the table. “Where do you want a ride to?”

  Frank waved his hand over the oilcloth, a small, quick gesture that looked as if he might have been brushing crumbs away, but Wesley knew what his brother was doing: Frank was trying to tell Tommy to shut up, to tell all of them that they should allow him to do the talking.

  “We’re sort of stuck here,” Frank said to the girls. “We were heading down toward the Badlands to do some hunting. When it started snowing and blowing we decided we better get into town and hunker down. We’re staying at the Overland Hotel.”

  “Where did you come from?” the shorter girl asked.

  “We come a ways,” said Frank. “We’re from Montana. From Bentrock. You know where that is?”

  Wesley thought he heard the tall girl sniff derisively at Frank’s question.

  The other girl giggled. “Montana. My uncle says Montana’s nothing but cows and cowboys.”

  Frank smiled at her. “He’s not too far off. It’s the Wild West, that’s for sure.”

  Tommy almost came out of his chair. “Yeah? You know what we call North Dakotans?”

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” Lester put in. “There ain’t a restaurant in the whole damn state of Montana where you have to wait this long to get waited on.”

  Frank changed the subject. “How’s the food here? She’s not going to try to poison us, is she? Just because we’re from Montana.”

  Without looking in their direction the tall girl said something that sounded to Wesley like “Ah-nish-ah-pahn-ta,” and her friend laughed.

  “What the hell was that about?” Lester asked.

  “She said—” she had to wait until her laughter subsided—“she said it’s good enough for cowboys.”

  “What was that?” Frank asked. “Sioux?”

  The tall girl turned their way once more. “Lakota,” she said sharply.

  Lester asked, “Is she ever going to take our order?”

  Frank slid his chair over to the girls’ table. “Say something else,” he said. “In Lakota, I mean. I like the way it sounds.”

  Wesley was amazed. He couldn’t believe how gentle, how soft-spoken his brother was. He had seen Frank around girls before, at school, at football games, at the drugstore counter, and Frank was always louder and funnier and bigger and bolder than anyone else. Girls couldn’t stay away from him—because he was handsome, yes, but also because there was something dangerous about him. They had to keep an eye on him. And they were right. Wesley had heard the way his brother talked about girls, as if he could tear chunks from them, get “a piece of ass,” “a little tail,” “some tit,” or how he could punish them with sex, make them “moan” or “squeal” or “beg for more,” or how he’d reduce them to animality and have them “crawling on their hands and knees.” Now Wesley saw this courtly young gentleman who seemed more interested in the Indi
an language than ... than what Wesley knew his brother wanted from these girls.

  The girl did say something else in Lakota, another phrase that sounded to Wesley like a little run of soft sighs punctuated with sudden stops of consonants. She did not speak to Frank, however. She addressed her friend.

  “What is it? What did she say?” asked Frank.

  The plump girl scowled. “Not for you, she said. We don’t speak our tongue for you to listen.”

  Lester pointed to his companions. “Do you know what you want to eat? Should I just go back there and tell her what we want? Me, I’m going to have a fried ham sandwich. Maybe some soup.” He leaned toward the plump girl. “Hey. How about that tomato soup. Is it the kind made with milk?”

  She looked at Lester as if he were the one speaking a foreign tongue.

  Tommy nudged Frank’s chair with the toe of his boot. “You going to ask ’em?”

  Frank ignored him. “I wasn’t making fun of your language. Really. I just like to hear you talk it.”

  Tommy kicked Frank’s chair again. “Tell them about the whiskey.”

  “What’s he talking about?” the plump girl asked.

  Frank gave Tommy a dark look and mouthed the words “shut up.”

  “What?” she asked again.

  “My partner here was hoping—I mean, we were all hoping—since our hunting trip is all fouled up we were hoping you could cheer us up.”