by Peter Bowen
Madelaine sat across the table. She had eaten a bite of an egg. She was smoking one of the tailor-made cigarettes Du Pré had bought in Miles City. She was drinking coffee. Her eyes had dark circles under them and she was edgy.
“You are not talking to your Madelaine these days, Du Pré,” she said. “You go off someplace, come back with them funny clothes, go off again, come back with your hand cut open bad. You don’t say nothin’. You know who this guy is. I know it. You don’t talk to me.”
Damn right, Du Pré thought, you go on the warpath and cut off that Simpson’s balls I let you know who I think it is, he is. Then Harvey he get to arrest you. I don’t think so.
“What you find where you went?” She was looking at him very hard.
“Not much,” said Du Pré. He bent his head and he strained to crush another piece of ham away from the steak.
“You are not talking to me, Du Pré,” said Madelaine.
Christ, thought Du Pré, I had better lie some, I guess. But she will know I am lying.
Du Pré shrugged.
Madelaine dashed her coffee in his face.
“You know this guy is!” she yelled. Then she threw a plate of corn muffins at him and she jumped up and began to fire all of the dishes in the drainer.
Du Pré dropped down below the table.
She pegged crockery at him between the legs.
“Jesus, Mama!” said Cyrill, her youngest. “You are crazy!”
“Fucking bastard Métis son of a bitch cocksucker,” screamed Madelaine.
Du Pré hunkered. If he ran she’d chase him. Might as well confine the damage to the one room.
Cyrill ran off.
Du Pré wished him a long life in a dark hole.
Madelaine nailed Du Pré on the left knee with a big crockery bowl.
“Ah!” said Du Pré. “I am dead. You have killed me!”
“My fucking cousin’s baby she is dead with her head cut off and you won’t talk to me!” yelled Madelaine. She was down to silverware.
Du Pré tried to remember if there were any big sharp knives in the drainer. He couldn’t.
A big sharp knife stuck in the floor in front of his leg. It thunked when it hit and it quivered.
“Jesus!” said Du Pré. “I am finding this guy, you know, you want to kill me before I do?”
“Bastard!” yelled Madelaine.
“People, people,” said Father Van Den Heuvel, rushing in the front door. “Please! Madelaine! Gabriel!”
The big priest slipped on the hall runner and he crashed into the glass-fronted cabinet that held Madelaine’s collection of porcelain. The sound of the collision was awful.
“Oh,” said Madelaine.
“Oh,” said Du Pré.
“SHIT!” said Father Van Den Heuvel.
Madelaine was still.
Then she began to laugh, low and throaty. She went on.
Du Pré peeked over the top of the table at her. She was looking at him and laughing and shaking her head.
Father Van Den Heuvel crunched to his feet. He began to brush little white shards of porcelain from his cassock.
“Men,” said Madelaine. Her voice was thick with amused contempt.
Du Pré stood up and he looked around the kitchen at all the damage. Couple holes in the plaster walls he would now get to patch. Have to drive Madelaine all the damn way to Billings, get new crockery. He measured the distance between where the knife hit and where his nuts had been sitting. Less than a foot.
Du Pré was a very smart man. He kept his mouth shut.
“I’m … very … sorry,” stammered the priest. He had little bits of glass and porcelain on his black robe.
“Shit … heads,” said Madelaine, laughing.
Du Pré nodded vigorously and kept quiet:
“I’ll buy you some new …” said the priest lamely.
“Oh, no,” said Madelaine. “You do not. You were trying to help. Me, I lose my temper, God punish me. He also forgive me right away, you guys are such assholes. I watch you, years, you do these things, mostly us women we just smile and shrug. You can’t help it, them two heads, always thinkin’ with the little one. Priests, too. Father crap you talk. Me, I pray to Mother of God. He needs one. Fucking fools. You men. Bah.”
When Madelaine got mad her eyes flashed crimson on the black irises. Lots of Assiniboine blood in her. Women famous for their beauty, famous for their tempers, famous for being very warlike.
Wonder them damn Assiniboines don’t run about everybody up a tree, Du Pré thought, women like these in the camp. Jesus.
“Well,” said Father Van Den Heuvel, “now that we are all calm …”
“Me, I am not calm,” said Madelaine. “I am not calm. You are just so sorry I cannot help but laugh. My niece she is lying dead, head cut off and stuck in her belly. No, I am not calm a little. Fucking Du Pré he go off looking, that guy, some guy, he don’t find nothing, dumb shit he still come home. You know what we do, days of the carts?”
Du Pré kept his mouth shut.
“Carts?” said Father Van Den Heuvel.
“Long time,” said Madelaine. “You guys you aren’t much around, come, help make a baby, we send you off, be a voyageur, a hunter, ’cept for those of you supposed to be ten miles away from the camp make sure nothing get to us and our babies.”
Du Pré nodded.
“So I am mad,” said Madelaine.
Du Pré nodded.
“Du Pré he knows something and he will not tell me. He will not tell me because he does not want, scare this guy. He rather scare me instead. Don’t let me know, maybe use one of my babies as some bait.”
Du Pré shook his head.
“Shit,” said Madelaine. “You lie to me, Du Pré. I cut your damn dick off right then.”
Du Pré looked at the ceiling.
“We must be gentle with each other,” said the priest.
“You shove up your ass, gentle with each other,” said Madelaine. “That damn Du Pré know someone he think maybe do this and he won’t tell me so it don’t scare the guy off. He don’t trust me.”
No shit, thought Du Pré, you take a shotgun to him, be sure that it not come from his direction. No shit I don’t tell you.
“Uh,” said Father Van Den Heuvel. “We could go and get a cup of coffee and maybe talk.” ‘
“Priest,” said Madelaine, “I want shit out of you I squeeze your head. My baby Lourdes we are talking, my baby Simone. You think more people save this damn Du Pré’s sorry ass I think maybe you squeeze your own head. Now, you are nice man, but you are not much help. Why don’t you go, talk to someone, listens. I got no time.”
“Uh,” said Father Van Den Heuvel.
“You go,” said Du Pré. “You go on. She is right.”
“Please,” said the priest. “No more of this.”
“More of what?” said Madelaine. “I bust up some, cheap Kmart plates, bowls, you wipe out all my porcelain, some my great-grandmother’s. Some help.”
“I’ll go,” said Father Van Den Heuvel.
“In some time I be sorry I am mean to you,” said Madelaine, “but now I am not sorry. Go talk, someone else. Go fuck a goddamn goat. Go fuck a goddamn goat in your church, there, I got to talk, this Métis piece of shit.”
Du Pré held his hands up, palms to the sky. He looked at the priest and he shrugged.
“You got to go,” said Du Pré. “Me, I maybe die but you cannot help that either.”
“He give you that Extreme Unction,” said Madelaine.
“I …” said the priest. He was almost gasping.
“It will be all right,” said Du Pré. “People, they the all the time. It is very common thing for them to do.”
“I say I am sorry, I won’t throw nothing more at Du Pré. I not cut his damn nuts off. I am sorry my Jesus. I lose my temper, I come say your fucking Hail Marys and I repent a lot when I fucking well want to repent,” said Madelaine. “But you better go now.”
The big priest crunched a
way on the bones of Madeline’s porcelain. The door shut gently.
They heard a yelp when he tripped and fell off the porch.
They waited.
The car door slammed. The car started.
“Him,” said Madelaine. “At least he don’t shut his head in it this time.”
Du Pré nodded.
“I find the guy, I am following him,” said Du Pré.
“He in my kitchen, here?” said Madelaine.
“I got to go,” said Du Pré.
“Yah,” said Madelaine. “You better, better not come back he is dead, you hear me?”
Du Pré nodded.
“My babies,” said Madelaine.
Du Pré left.
CHAPTER 33
DU PRÉ WAS SLEEPING on a high ridge that reached out west from the Wolf Mountains. He’d found a place with several stone peekaboos, piles of flat plates of shale left long ago by other hunters. They could look through the gaps between the stones and not show any movement. From the ridge, Du Pré could see maybe seventy miles north and a hundred west and fifty south. To the east the Wolf Mountains rose, stacked in an east-west line, blue flanks of pine and spruce and fir, the rock above the timberline gray as the sea, some snow on the peaks every month of the year.
A mule deer, curious, had come to look at him. The deer slipped on some shattered yellow mudstones and it leaped in panic and sent down a shower of rock from the ledge it climbed in one bound. Du Pré awoke, his gun in his hand.
There was a flash of green light. A meteor streaked yellow-green across the sky, north to south. The bright trail faded quickly. Du Pré shut his eyes and the dancing spot where the last yellow flash as the meteor evaporated utterly burned a moment behind his eyes.
It was cold. The wind was still. The air was dry.
My people come down from Red River in the fall, Du Pré thought, to get that winter meat. Drive them little two-wheeled Red River carts, cottonwood rounds for wheels, not a piece of metal in them, they carry the parfleches, we drive the buffalo into corrals and kill them, dry the meat, the leader of the hunt he makes sure everybody got all their winter meat before he take any. Go on home. Them Sioux, Assiniboine, Blackfeet, sometimes the Crows they try to steal our horses, steal our women, kill the men, drive us away from the buffalo. We don’t go. We got them Hudson’s Bay Company muskets.
Trail is right over there ten miles. No Red River carts, long time. I can still hear them, the night. Screek screek screek, you hear them axles, twenty miles across the prairies. No grease on them, time to time, they catch fire. Métis men, they piss on them, keep them cool. Not so much water here.
Red River.
Benetsee and Madelaine they tell me things, better listen.
That Bart, I go to him, say, I need someone, keep on that Simpson’s trail, keep real close. So that Bart, he look at me, see his chance. If he got someone close, I don’t kill that damn Simpson.
Some reporter, Bart’s newspapers, he is with that crew, big story in the Sunday paper, “Do You Know Where Your Noodles Come From?”
That Hi-Line Killer, him I got to find.
Dream that deer and the deer come.
Dream that killer and he leave me a track.
Sick bastard.
Du Pré slid out of his bedroll and he walked a few feet away and he pissed. The stream steamed in the cold night air.
OK, my Madelaine, I am out, the country, keep him away from you, your babies. Like we used to do. Don’t paint my face, though.
It was four in the morning. The dawn would come in an hour, a first faint rim of pink in the east.
Du Pré rolled up his blankets and sougans in his henskin and he fastened the clips and he tossed it to his shoulder and he walked down to where his old cruiser was parked. He dropped the bedroll into the trunk and he set the bag with his whiskey and tobacco and spare 9mm clips and ammunition and jerky and chocolate on the front seat. He had turned the car around when he had parked it. He drove down the rutted stony trail to the county road, followed that to a small two-lane blacktop. The road was narrow and poorly surfaced. Du Pré sped along at seventy-five, wallowing around the worst potholes.
He got to Raster Creek’s rest area when the light was rising to full day. He parked the cruiser and went into the john and came back out and he walked slowly back to where little Barbara Morissette had lain, her head stuck in her belly and the flies dancing around the blood and wounds.
He took his time.
Some guy, walked back here, maybe yesterday, the afternoon. Du Pré got down on his haunches and he looked at the faint print of a bootsole, a hiking boot with five stars up the center of the sole.
He counted the ant tracks across the earth. Into the faint depression and on toward whatever it was that the ants were working on. A bombardier beetle had scuttled across. Four and one. He looked over at the anthill twenty feet away.
Yah, he thought, maybe twenty-four hours. Less, I think. Yesterday afternoon, late. No dew, no rain. Who are you?
He looked ahead at the line of tracks going straight to where little Barbara had lain. No dog tracks, the guy wasn’t pumping his pooch out. He was going right there. No reason to go right there. No reason …
Du Pré went on. He saw a folded piece of yellow paper, one the size of a deck of cards. Thirty feet ahead.
Du Pré moved slower than he had.
Same tracks. Don’t miss nothing now.
The piece of paper had got stuck against a sagebrush. Little wind did that. Yesterday late afternoon, when the wind always comes up from the west.
Du Pré moved slowly.
When he got to the paper he squatted and he reached out and picked it up gently and he turned it over in his fingers. The paper was crushed and shiny and on one side there was a faint stain, a brown one. Guy folded it, stuck it in his hip pocket between his wallet and his ass. Sat on it. Sweated in it. Tamped it down good.
Du Pré looked up at a hawk that had floated between Du Pré and the rising sun. The shadow had flitted across his face. The hawk was hovering. It plunged and Du Pré heard a squeak, cut off.
Du Pré unfolded the paper. Heavy, yellow stock. Printed with an announcement for a model airplane show. In Fargo, North Dakota. In two days.
Du Pré looked at the other side.
A name. An address. In Renton, Washington.
Du Pré looked at it for a long time.
He refolded the paper and he put it in his pocket and he went on toward little Barbara Morissette’s killing ground.
Du Pré saw the cheap pair of girl’s underwear cast on the ground where Barbara had lain. He went forward quickly and he picked up the panties and he saw the stains on them. He looked down and there were the spread prints of the bootsoles and the little gouge where a heavy belt buckle had hit to the left of the left foot when the man had dropped his pants to jerk off.
Only this guy, Du Pré thought, is him. Nobody else been back here. Just this guy. He was here, not long ago.
Du Pré walked back quickly to his cruiser. He stuffed the panties into the trash receptacle, down under a bag of cans and cigarette butts. He took out the yellow piece of paper and he stared at it for a long time.
Then he struck a farmer’s match and he burned it and he ground the black ash to smears on the yellow earth.
OK, I come now.
Du Pré looked toward the sun in the east. It was shining red through low haze.
Du Pré got in his cruiser. He rolled a smoke and he had a little whiskey. He was thirsty. He got some big glasses of cold water from a blue-and-white thermal jug. He ate a little jerky.
He drove on east. Fast. He got to a junction and he angled off south a little. He drove like hell. He got to the Interstate and he got on and he slowed down twenty miles an hour.
He stopped and got gas just over the line in North Dakota. He passed the place where the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers joined.
Used to be a big trading post there.
Take them furs in, get bad whiskey.
Trade beads, knives, brass pots and vermilion, needles and thread, flour, tobacco.
Voyageurs, some of them take the boats down to St. Louis, New Orleans. Float down, haul them damn boats back up on a rope over your shoulder. Long damn walk. Takes two years, the trip back.
Du Pré turned off on a secondary highway and he headed toward the Turtle Mountain Reservation.
Been many times, this country, he thought.
See them cousins of mine.
Talk to Bassman.
Du Pré called Bassman’s house from a pay phone at a gas station.
The number was temporarily out of service.
’Nother poor Métis, can’t pay his phone bill.
Du Pré drove on to Bassman’s house. His first wife had got drunk and died in a car wreck five years ago. Bassman had remarried quickly and the kids from the first and second marriages were all playing in the yard, a year or so between their ages. Except that there wasn’t a four-year-old, since Bassman had taken ten months or a year to find that new wife. The kids were running around and laughing and the older ones were watching out for the younger ones. A couple disreputable yellow dogs barked when Du Pré pulled in and he parked.
Bassman came out the front door. He was wearing a tattered red T-shirt, jeans, and moccasins. His hair was braided. This month, he was Indian. Next month, maybe, he cut his hair short and wear a long-sleeved Western shirt, hide the needle tracks on his arms. Bassman had spent ten years in LA, mostly not very good ones.
Du Pré liked him a lot.
“Du Pré,” said Bassman, “you come on in here, now, you eat?”
“Yah,” said Du Pré.
“You look tired. Sleep?”
Du Pré shook his head.
“Ah,” said Bassman, coming down to the cluttered yard. “You need a car got them good North Dakota license plates.”
Du Pré nodded. Moccasin telegraph still worked pretty good.
“I got you a good one,” said Bassman.
They drove over to where it was. Pretty new van, good engine, good tires. Dark blue. Curtain behind the bucket seats.
“Keys in it,” said Bassman, carrying Du Pré’s bedroll. “All gassed, you need anything, Fargo, you call that Le Bon. Toussaint Le Bon. He fiddles some good as you.”