Notches

by Peter Bowen

  “Rolly was alive,” she said. “They flew him out. Where he is, I don’t know.”

  Du Pré nodded. I lie to Rolly, I kill the one who killed his little sister. But the only two know that are me and maybe Pidgeon, and now, who cares?

  “Harvey’ll get over it,” said Pidgeon. “He’s just ticked. He’s sure you set this up but, of course, no way to prove it.”

  Du Pré shrugged.

  A wrecker with a lowboy tilt-trailer behind pulled off the highway and it bounced over the ground to the smashed van. The driver backed the trailer up and he got out and put a cable on the van and he set the trailer bed down and he began to winch the burned hulk up onto the oak planks.

  “Go through that with a very fine comb,” said Pidgeon. “I expect we will find a few things. Simpson, and I don’t know how, was alive enough to have started to crawl out when the fire started. He burned to death.”

  Du Pré nodded.

  Good. Hope it hurt bad.

  “Now,” said Pidgeon, “I expect there will be just two hundred and some odd murder cases open forever. We won’t ever really know. Thing about it is, you talk to these bastards, you never really know either. They ain’t human, Du Pré. I don’t know what they are.”

  Pidgeon took a filter cigarette from a pigskin case and she lit it. The little breeze ruffled her long auburn hair.

  An accident records van pulled up and technicians got out and began to walk back up the highway, looking for the black skid marks.

  “You be around some?” said Du Pré.

  Pidgeon shook her head. “Got some charmer down in Alabama who skins his victims. Alive. Got another in western Pennsylvania, strangles and then beheads. Got a lot of them, Du Pré. This is over. And, it’s never over. Harvey and me, we’ll stop in Toussaint on our way down to Billings, but not for long. It’s what we do, you know.”

  Du Pré nodded.

  “Harvey’s calmed down some,” said Pidgeon. “I can tell by the way he stands. You want to talk to him, maybe it’s a good time.”

  Du Pré glanced over at Harvey, who had his hands in his pockets. He was looking off in the far distance.

  He walked over and stood by his friend.

  Harvey glanced at him and went on looking far away.

  “Pidgeon say you maybe stop in Toussaint, your way back,” said Du Pré.

  “Yeah,” said Harvey.

  “Well,” said Du Pré. “I think I go, maybe, we have something to eat you get there.”

  “We will,” sighed Harvey. “Du Pré, just keep your fucking mouth shut, will you?”

  He went back to looking far off.

  Du Pré turned his cruiser around and he headed back to Toussaint. It was late afternoon when he got there. The bar had several trucks and cars parked in front of it.

  Du Pré went in.

  Benny Klein was standing at the bar, having a beer. Susan was pulling a draft pitcher for a couple cowboys.

  Du Pré walked up and he stood next to Benny.

  “Afternoon,” said Benny, twinkling. “Heard about some wreck up on the Hi-Line. You know anything?”

  “Semi hit this van,” said Du Pré.

  “Messy,” said Benny.

  Madelaine came out of the women’s John.

  Du Pré looked at her.

  He nodded, once.

  Madelaine smiled. She smiled and her white teeth shone. She came to Du Pré and she put her arms around him and she hugged him swaying a little.

  “Come sit,” she said. “I get you a drink.” She went behind the bar.

  Du Pré saw her beaded purse on one of the little tables by the far wall. He went and sat with his back to the room.

  “That Lourdes she will be back in two days,” said Madelaine. “She like that Chicago. I talk to Bart’s Aunt Marella. She is a good lady. She said Bart, he thinks she is his maiden aunt but he is so drunk both times that she is married he don’t remember. She got two daughters, one about Lourdes’s age. Bart, he don’t remember they are his cousins.”

  “Yah,” said Du Pré. “Well, that Bart he drink some there for some long time, you know.”

  “It is over, yes?” said Madelaine.

  Du Pré nodded.

  “Du Pré,” said Madelaine, “you drink some whiskey, we eat some food, you get your fiddle and make some music. It is our life, yes.”

  Du Pré drank a little. Madelaine dragged him out to the dance floor and she danced and then Du Pré did, too. There were a couple good dance tunes on the jukebox, a record Du Pré had brought from Canada.

  They danced to “Boiling Cabbage.” They danced heel-and-toe to “The Water Road.”

  Susan Klein brought Du Pré a big steak and some more whiskey.

  Du Pré ate like a pig.

  Madelaine leaned over and she smiled.

  “You that,” she said. “My babies they are safe now.”

  The bar filled up.

  Bassman showed up and some more of Du Pré’s cousins from Canada and from Turtle Mountain, the old Red River country. There were maybe ten good musicians and they all played, sitting in and leaving, dancing and drinking.

  Du Pré stopped fiddling for a minute and he went to the john and he came back out and he ran right in to Benetsee, who was standing at the back of the crowd with Young-Man-Who-Has-No-Name.

  The old man was as solid as a tree trunk rooted in earth.

  Du Pré grabbed his shoulder and he turned him around.

  Benetsee was laughing.

  “You old bastard,” said Du Pré, “what are you here now for, eh?”

  “Come in, drink some wine,” said Benetsee, his black eyes laughing, “You got some tobacco? Some manners?”

  Du Pré nodded and he rolled a thick smoke for the old man.

  He lit the cigarette and he passed it to Benetsee.

  “Pret’ good,” the old man said.

  He smoked happily.

  Susan Klein brought him a beer mug full of the awful cheap white wine that he liked. She kissed him on the cheek.

  “Damn,” said Benetsee. “Wine, pretty women they are kissing me. I like this place.”

  Young-Man-Who-Has-No-Name laughed.

  “I call this one ‘Pelon’ now,” said Benetsee.

  “What him call him?” said Du Pré.

  “I don’t care,” said Benetsee.

  “Pelon,” said the young man.

  “I got to talk, you,” said Du Pré.

  Benetsee shook his head.

  “We sweat some soon,” he said. “I am here, drink wine, kiss pretty women, and maybe I play the flute.”

  Du Pré nodded.

  He went back up and he fiddled with Bassman and some guitar pickers and a guy he didn’t know who played pret’ good accordion.

  Pidgeon and Harvey came in and they stood by the door. When Du Pré looked at them Pidgeon tossed her head a little.

  Du Pré finished the song and he stepped down from the little stage and he made his way through the crowd to them. Pidgeon and Harvey went outside and Du Pré followed.

  It was cool and pleasant out in the night air. It was very hot in the bar.

  “We’re on our way,” said Pidgeon. “Just wanted to say hello.”

  Harvey stood there.

  “Challis is in the hospital in Billings,” said Pidgeon. “He was hurt pretty badly. They had to take out his spleen and he had a collapsed lung, some fractures, pretty smashed up.”

  “OK,” said Du Pré.

  “It’s been real nice,” said Pidgeon. She shook hands with Du Pré.

  Du Pré turned to Harvey.

  Harvey hit him, hard, in the jaw.

  Du Pré flew over the handrail and he landed on his head in the dirt.

  He struggled to his feet.

  “Don’t fuck with me again,” said Harvey.

  “Harvey!” said Pidgeon.

  They walked off to a tan government pool car.

  Du Pré sat up. He rubbed his jaw.

  He looked up. Madelaine was standing there.
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  She put her hand to her mouth and she ululated.

  Victory’s song.

  Harvey drove off without looking back.

  Du Pré and Madelaine waved anyway.

  CHAPTER 39

  DU PRÉ STOPPED FOR a minute in the parking lot of the hospital. He looked up at the blank glass windows and he shook his head and he went on. Madelaine held his arm tighter.

  She pulled him to a halt fifty feet from the front doors.

  “Your wife die here, Du Pré,” she said. “Old hurts, they leave scars. It is all right. I love you.”

  Du Pré looked at her a moment. She know what is bothering me, he thought, when I do not know.

  He smiled a little and he nodded. They went on in.

  The front desk clerk directed them toward the right floor.

  “Critical care may not let you see him,” the clerk said. “I can call for you.”

  Du Pré nodded. He walked Madelaine around in a circle while they waited.

  “You can go up,” said the clerk, “but they may ask you to leave if they feel the patient is tiring or getting agitated.”

  Du Pré and Madelaine went to the elevator and up to the floor. The doors opened and the smell of illness and disinfectants surrounded them.

  Du Pré winced. Madelaine gripped his arm a little harder.

  A nurse led them down to Rolly’s room. She opened the door very gently, putting out a hand to make Du Pré and Madelaine wait. She went in very quietly.

  They heard her voice, then Rolly’s, strong and deep.

  She came back out and motioned them to go on in.

  Rolly was propped up on pillows, the bed cranked high. His head was a turban of bandages and a weight hung off a frame at the foot of the bed, a cable running to the end of a cast.

  His left arm was gone.

  But his blue eyes twinkled out of his swollen face. Purple, green, and black bruises lay across all his skin. The bridge of his nose had a metal form taped to it.

  “Mr. Du Pré and Miss Madelaine,” said Rolly, laughing. “Ain’t this some shit? I need a jukebox and a barstool and a beer. Pool table ain’t so much of a concern anymore, I guess.”

  “You like pool?” said Du Pré.

  “Can’t remember,” said Rolly. “It was a long damn time ago.”

  Rolly handed a note to Du Pré. His right hand had a patch of adhesive across the back of it. Du Pré unfolded the note.

  “Be careful, the cops have been here some and the flowers ain’t mine.”

  Du Pré nudged Madelaine and she glanced at the note and then at Rolly and she nodded.

  “How long you be here?” said Du Pré.

  “Couple weeks,” said Rolly. “Got to come back, get fitted for an arm. You know, they got ones now that are part electronic. What they call ’em, bionic?”

  Du Pré shrugged. He watched very little television.

  “What else they cut off?” said Madelaine.

  “Just the arm,” said Rolly. “They thought about cutting off the leg but I told ’em I’d have to kill ’em.”

  “Hmm,” said Madelaine. “After you get out of here where you go? You be a while, getting better, you know.”

  “Uh,” said Rolly, “Well, your pal Bart called and he give me a choice, go someplace or come up to Toussaint and get to know Booger Tom and him better. So I guess that’s what I’ll do.”

  “Ah,” said Madelaine.

  “Good,” said Du Pré. “She have someone, put that good soup down. Fuss over. Me, I am scared to death I get sick.”

  “What is wrong, my soup?” said Madelaine.

  “Not enough salt,” said Du Pré.

  “Salt’s bad, your heart,” said Madelaine.

  “These days,” Rolly laughed, “If it tastes good at all, it’s downright toxic.”

  Du Pré nodded and laughed.

  “You need us, do anything?” said Madelaine.

  Rolly grinned. “Know any hookers wear nurse’s uniforms?” he said.

  Du Pré laughed.

  “OK,” said Madelaine. “Anything else?”

  “All I got to do is wait and sleep,” said Rolly. “I rode a long ways on a big horse.”

  Madelaine tugged a flat pint of whiskey out of her purse and she showed it to Rolly. He held out his hand. She gave it to him and he slipped it under the bedclothes.

  The nurse who had shown them in opened the door.

  “Five minutes,” she said. “He has a doctor coming.”

  She shut the door.

  Madelaine got a small oblong plastic pill container from her purse, the sort that has seven compartments. She went to the sink and she ran a thin stream of water and she grabbed several paper towels from the dispenser as she moved the box back and form under the stream. She dumped out the excess.

  She went and sat on the bed and she put her forefinger into the paint and she lifted it up and put a crimson slash on each side of his mouth. She put black and yellow in zigzags on his cheeks. A stripe of blue from his lower lip down under his chin.

  Madelaine nodded. She took out a mirror and she held it up to Rolly, and he looked at himself and he nodded.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “OK,” said Du Pré. “We see you, Toussaint.”

  Rolly stuck his thumb up.

  They all laughed.

  Madelaine and Du Pré made good time to the elevator, getting in just as the doors closed. They were walking across the parking lot in a matter of two or three minutes.

  “That damn nurse she shit rusty pickles she see him,” said Du Pré.

  “Yah,” said Madelaine. “Me, I want a. beer.”

  Du Pré looked at her. She didn’t drink beer very often. Very hot days and this was a cool one.

  They got into the old cruiser and Madelaine pointed downtown and Du Pré nodded and he drove down to the poor part of Billings, where the Indians on drunks and the hobos and the mentally ill pushed their homes in shopping carts down the pitted sidewalks.

  “There,” said Madelaine, pointing at a shabby sign above a little bar. The windows were glazed with dirt. A wino was sleeping curled up in the stairwell next to the front door.

  Du Pré laughed.

  So did Madelaine.

  “Maybe I ask you a better place, start looking for Rolly’s hooker,” said Madelaine. “You, know them probably, yes?”

  “Oh, yes.” said Du Pré. “Me, I spend much time here, you bet.”

  They got out and they went into the bar. A very tired-looking middle-aged woman was slumped on a stool behind the bar, a cigarette hanging from her lip. She was watching a soap opera on the little television on a shelf behind her.

  Du Pré ordered bottle beers for both of them. He went off to the john to take a leak. The floor was swimming in water from a broken seal at the base of the toilet. Du Pré used the toilet anyway.

  By the time he came back out Madelaine was talking into the telephone on the bar. The woman behind the bar looked cheerful.

  Spread a little money around, Du Pré thought, it is like the sun.

  Madelaine turned away from Du Pré when he slid back up on the barstool. She listened for another moment.

  “Yah, well,” she said. “You do this, hundred up front, another you come back with a note from him, uh?”

  Madelaine put the phone back in the cradle.

  They drank beer for a half hour.

  A good-looking hooker came in and she walked right up to Madelaine.

  Madelaine nodded. The hooker was wearing a crisp nurse’s uniform.

  “Four forty-two,” said Madelaine, handing her a hundred-dollar bill.

  The hooker went out.

  “This soap all right with you?” said the woman behind the bar. She smiled. Her false teeth had clots of dental fixative on them.

  “Yah,” said Madelaine.

  Du Pré laughed.

  They got some fives and they went to the video poker machines. The machines were shut off.

  They went back to the bar and sat
and a man in a workman’s uniform came in and he carted the machines out the door.

  The woman behind the bar never looked away from the television as the four machines went out the door.

  Du Pré looked at Madelaine. He grinned. They both laughed.

  An actress on the television was suffering from amnesia.

  A commercial sold soap. Another, feminine hygiene.

  Madelaine reached down and took Du Pré’s hand and she squeezed his fingers.

  They had another bottle of beer each.

  The hooker in the nurse’s uniform came in.

  She handed Madelaine a slip of paper.

  Madelaine glanced at it and she laughed and she handed over another hundred-dollar bill.

  She gave the note to Du Pré.

  “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Paint a great hit. Raster Creek,” Du Pré read.

  “We go home now,” said Madelaine.

  CHAPTER 40

  DU PRÉ WAS FIDDLING and Bassman and Père Godin were backing him up. Père Godin was famous for having been thrown out of a seminary in Quebec when three very pregnant young women accused him of fathering their impending children. He was in his late seventies now and he had fathered more than forty children. He played the accordion and he sang in a high falsetto, a tenor, a baritone, a bass. Double-voiced. Du Pré had never heard anyone else like him.

  The Toussaint Bar was packed. There were local people and then many from Turtle Mountain and from Canada. The women wore bright dresses with headings and bells, the men ribbon shirts.

  Godin quavered to the end of the ballad and Bassman and Du Pré quickly finished. It was time for a break.

  Du Pré was sweating in the heavy silk shirt that Madelaine had made for him.

  He made his way over to her and he put an arm around her. She grinned and looked merrily up at him. Her face was a little flushed. She had been drinking her sweet pink wine.

  “I never see so many Métis, one place, here,” said Du Pré. There were about thirty in the room. One couple had come from Manitoba, a drive of nearly a thousand miles from their home.

  “Why they here?” said Du Pré.

  “Listen to my Du Pré fiddle,” said Madelaine. “You are a very famous man, you know, them records you made, people listen to them.”

  Du Pré nodded.

  Bullshit, he thought. They got plenty good fiddlers, Turtle Mountain, Manitoba, Alberta. Me, I am OK, not the best. Me, I do not want ever to be the best, anything I do. Does bad things to you, that best.