by Неизвестный
As had become their custom, on the first day Perry waited on Last Stand Ridge until Kat had time to get there and kill him. He knew it pissed some of the guys off, the way he refused to go down until Kat came flying up the ridge and vaulted from her horse with a piercing war cry – but so what, tough shit for them. She would run at him and he would fall under her weight. As she pretended to slit his throat she always gave him a full kiss on the lips, her body shielding this from the people watching in the grandstands. He never wanted her more than right then. Pretend dead on his back in the dust and horseshit, an erection straining the front of his blue cavalry trousers.
This year was different, but only a little. Perry staggered and gestured as if he were in agony. The field was littered with the bodies of the fallen and he could sense their annoyance. Fucking go down already, man, one of the dead bluecoats lying in the dust near him muttered. It’s hotter than hell out here. Show’s over. Warriors on horseback were circling and Perry stumbled and then rose slowly to his feet. The crowd was clapping and cheering and he was scanning the ridge-line for Kat. And then she came and it was a sight to see. She and her horse were cast from the same mould. Her brown thighs rippled and tensed, echoing the muscled brown haunches of her mount. Everything was black streaming hair, black flowing mane. He turned to face her, and when she swung one leg and sprung from the horse, he caught a fast glimpse of taut inner thigh. His heart hiccuped. She rushed him and tackled him full force. He tried to get a quick feel of breast as he went down but she made a show of pinning his arms as she straddled him with her knife between her teeth. She brought the dulled blade across his throat theatrically and when she leaned in close for the kiss he thought he saw tears smearing the paint on her cheeks. It could have been sweat. But then he saw her sad smile.
There were no good restaurants in Crow Agency – actually no restaurants at all if you didn’t consider fast food a viable option – so he bought steaks and they grilled them on the small fenced patio off the back of his hotel room. It didn’t matter, about the lack of restaurants, because they couldn’t have been seen like that anyway, out together. The reservation was small. Word would have travelled.
Perry got the beer she liked, Corona, and they drank them while he messed with the steaks. Kat painted her toenails, her knees drawn up to her chest. Over the top of the warped vinyl patio fence Perry could just make out a ragged flock of turkey vultures circling over the battlefield, searching for stray hot dogs and partially eaten Indian tacos left by the tourists.
‘Do you mind if I call my wife quickly?’
‘You know I don’t.’
‘OK, we’ll eat soon.’
He went into the room and left the door open behind him. He sat on the edge of the bed and called.
‘Andy. Hi, it’s me.’
‘Oh, hi. I was just loading the dishwasher, just a minute.’ Perry heard the phone being fumbled. He could see her fumbling it, her hands wet with soap.
‘OK, I’m back. How did it go today?’
‘Pretty good. Hot and dusty. But we put on a good show. I think people were happy. During the second act the guy that finally killed me was a little rough with the takedown. I’ve got some bruises.’
‘Geez, my poor banged-up man. What do these guys think? It’s not your fault how everything worked out, you know, the scope of history and all that. They won the battle, we won the war. No need to take it out on you. Actually, I don’t know how you do it, I think it would start to get to me, you know, dying every day. It’s like you’re a sacrifice.’
‘Or a martyr for the greater American conscience.’
‘Yeah, that’s it. Jesus H. Custer dying for our sins. Three times a day.’
‘Whose sins exactly, do you suppose?’
‘I’m not sure, everyone’s I guess. What are we even talking about?’
‘I don’t know either, never mind. How are you feeling today? Yesterday you seemed tired.’
‘Yeah, to tell you the truth I hardly remember our conversation. I was a little whacked out. This new stuff they’ve got me on is potent.’ There was a pause, her sharp intake of breath and a soft laugh that couldn’t mask what lay underneath.
‘Jesus, I feel like shit.’
‘I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have left.’
‘No, it’s not your fault, it’s just the thought of another round of this next month makes me want to die. I mean seriously. I’m actually surprised that I’m saying this but maybe they should just cut the fucking thing off and be done with it. I could get a prosthetic. I could still wear bikinis.’
‘They make those? Prosthetic breasts?’
‘Yeah. You can pretty much get a prosthetic anything these days.’
Perry could tell she was crying and trying to hide it. He could smell the steaks cooking on the grill, could hear Kat humming tunelessly to herself out on the patio.
‘I know it sucks now but it will all work out. You won’t need a prosthetic anything.’
‘Promise?’
‘Yes.’
‘OK, I’m being depressing. Let’s say goodnight.’
‘Love.’
‘Love.’
They ate their steaks out on the patio. There was no furniture so they sat on the bare concrete with their plates balanced on their laps, cutting their meat while a dusky swarm of moths batted around the single halogen bulb.
‘We’ve been doing this for a long time now,’ he said finally.
‘Yes. Seven years. And?’
‘And, it’s funny to think that we existed, us together, before either of our marriages.’
‘So?’
‘Doesn’t that beg the question: which is the marriage, which is the affair?’
‘I married John at the First Church of Christ in Hardin. We live together. Every day. That’s the marriage. Don’t be dumb, General.’
Kat was right of course. She had a smear of steak juice on her upper lip. Perry thought that was unbearable.
Later, she emerged from the bathroom in a one-piece dress of white beaded deerskin, cinched at the waist with a wide, quill-stitched belt. Her face was scrubbed clean and she had used a thin plait of her own hair to tie the rest back into a ponytail. The dress was short and ended in fringe at her upper thighs. Strong thighs, horse-squeezing thighs. The dress was new. A new thing for them.
‘Christ, you are beautiful.’
‘Sha, you say.’
And then she straddled him on the bed. Rode him like she had stolen him and God himself was in pursuit.
After another hot day on Last Stand Ridge, Perry spent an hour posing for photographs with tourists. He put his arms around two rotund sixty-something women and they all smiled for the photographer.
‘We’re twins,’ one of them said. ‘And we’re from Michigan. Did you know Custer was from Michigan?’
Perry smiled behind his moustache and made a show of examining the women. He thought they only looked like twins the way all fat older women looked like twins. He wanted a beer, he wanted a steak and he wanted Kat’s head in his lap.
‘We love Custer trivia,’ one of the twins said. ‘Did you know he graduated from West Point at the top of his class and would probably have been made president one day if his career had continued on its natural path?’
‘I did know that. In fact I have a PhD in Custer Studies and my dissertation was a theoretical projection of the scope of American politics had Custer survived the battle and gone on to be elected president.’ Perry thought this to be sufficiently lofty to discourage further conversation.
‘Oh, how interesting! Did you know that Custer had size twelve feet and was married to Elizabeth Bacon?’
Perry was developing a headache. He could feel hot rivulets of sweat roll from his underarms.
‘I did know that,’ he said. ‘Now I have one for you ladies. Did you know that when a reinforcement cavalry regiment finally arrived on the scene of the battle, they found Custer had received over thirty-two assorted stab wounds, arrow punctures
and rifle shots, was scalped, and had his penis and scrotum cut off and stuffed in his mouth?’
That night, after dinner, they walked together on a path along the bank of the Little Bighorn River. They slapped mosquitoes off each other’s necks and Perry threw pebbles into the air to make the bats dive to the ground in pursuit. ‘It’s because they can’t see,’ he said. ‘That’s why they chase a pebble. They emit noises too high for the human ear to hear and it’s like sonar. The sound bounces back to the bat and that’s why they think any small thing flying in the air is probably a bug.’
‘Bats have eyes, don’t they?’
‘I think so.’
‘Well, they must be able to see a little then. I’m nearsighted too; I know what that’s like. It’s not the same as blind. General?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Do you think you could catch a bat that way, if you wanted to? Like have a net ready and when one swooped down for the pebble you could snag it?’
‘Maybe. But what would you do with a bat after you caught it?’
‘I don’t know, keep it for a pet. Let it hang upside down from a hanger in my closet. Nice and dark in there. They’re kind of cute, especially when they’re babies.’
‘Bats? Cute? I don’t see it.’
‘Pretty much anything that’s a baby is cute. I read somewhere that’s Mother Nature’s way of helping something defenceless survive. Like, when I was a kid and we had cats that lived out in the barn. My dad always hated those cats and bitched at the way they kept producing litters left and right up in the haymow. But I remember one time I came out to the barn to get him for supper. He was sitting on a hay bale playing with a little calico kitten that was barely half the size of one of his boots. The rest of the litter mewled and rolled over each other in a pile of hay and my dad had a gunny sack and a piece of twine in one hand and that little calico licking the other. I was young, maybe seven or eight, but even then I knew what he was going to do. He looked at me standing there in my barn boots, I was probably crying, I don’t remember. Anyway, he didn’t say anything, just pitched the calico back in the pile with its brothers and sisters. He threw the gunny sack and twine in the trash on the way out of the barn and he carried me on his shoulders all the way up to the house. I don’t remember him doing that very much.’
They had been holding hands but Kat pulled away and walked on a few steps.
‘Let’s head back. These bats suck at what they do. The damn mosquitoes are eating me alive.’
In Perry’s room at the War Bonnet she stopped him when he went to put on the uniform.
‘Let’s just do it like normal people tonight. If you don’t mind.’
‘Normal people? I thought you liked what we do.’
‘General, you know I do. It’s just tonight, I don’t want to be your Indian tonight. How about we do something different? How about you pretend I’m your wife? How about we do it like that?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Please? What does she wear to bed? How does she like it?’
‘I don’t know, Kat. It feels like a wrong thing. Dishonest.’
‘Just once, General. Then we can go back to the old way until you leave. You said yourself that you were unsure what was the affair, what was the marriage.’
She had her arms around him and was rubbing her fingers in tight circles down his back. Looking down on her he could see where she had missed some white face paint behind her ear.
‘OK. Fine. She wears one of my T-shirts and a pair of my boxer shorts. I usually work late and she likes to read. Most of the time she’s asleep with her book by the time I get to bed.’
‘Sometimes do you wake her up?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Sha, I bet you do. OK. Go into the bathroom and come out in five minutes.’
Perry went into the bathroom and sat on the toilet seat. It was a small bathroom and his bent knees hit the shower door. He realized he had forgotten to call Andy. He waited as long as he could and when he emerged, the lights were off in the room except for the small bedside lamp. Kat had let her hair down. She was on her back on top of the comforter and her black hair spilled across the pillow. She had the hotel Bible split open, face down on her stomach. She was wearing one of his white T-shirts, a pair of his white-and-red-striped boxer shorts. Her skin was very dark against the white cotton, her nipples erect and visible through the thin material. She had her eyes closed and her arms laid out by her sides.
‘Oh, hi,’ she said drowsily. ‘I was asleep. I must have just nodded off while reading.’
On the final day of the re-enactment, clouds came down across the Bighorn Mountains and the sky opened up. It was a mud bath. Between acts everyone stood under the pavilion at the visitors’ centre. The warriors’ painted faces streaked. Their feathers sodden. Soldiers drank coffee, miserable in wet wool tunics and pants. During a short break in the rain, Perry found Kat retouching her paint, using the side mirror of a Winnebago in the overflow parking lot.
‘Can you believe this?’ he said. ‘I checked the weather and there was no mention of rain.’
‘Imagine that, the weatherman being wrong.’ She was using two fingers to rub the white paint over her cheek and the side of her jaw.
‘In the last show I got killed in a puddle and had to lie there for fifteen minutes while the crowd cleared the grandstands.’
‘Poor General.’ She flashed him a quick smile.
‘Kat?’
‘Yeah?’
‘My wife has breast cancer.’
She turned to him slowly. She put her arms around him and her painted face left a dull smear on the rough wool of his tunic.
‘But it’s going to be OK. I think we’re going to be all right.’
After the last show everyone went down to the War Bonnet Lounge and got drunk. It was an annual tradition on the final day of the re-enactment. All the re-enactors piled into the dim bar, most still in full dress. The place was hazy with cigarette smoke and the stink of slow-drying wool. A grey-haired man in a full eagle-feathered headdress played the jukebox. Grimy cavalry soldiers played pool with shirtless warriors. Perry ordered a beer and when the bartender – the same goateed guy from the other night – extended the bottle, he didn’t release his grip when Perry tried to take it from his hand.
‘Don’t think people don’t know about you, man.’
‘What?’ Perry said, unsure he’d heard correctly in the noisy bar.
‘Don’t what me, man. You come to get you some red pussy? Is that your deal? John Realbird is my cousin, man. You think you can come here and do whatever the fuck you want?’
Perry felt the blood rising to his face. He looked to see if anyone else was hearing the conversation. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, pal. I’m just here for the re-enactment like everyone else. They pay me to come. I’ve been coming here for years.’ Perry backed away from the bar and the bartender said something but Perry couldn’t hear over the jukebox and raised voices. Someone clapped Perry on the shoulder and pressed a drink in his hand. When Kat came in he nodded at her and left out the back door. After a while she followed.
They were both a little drunk and in the room they got drunker. Kat perched precariously on the shaky fold-out ironing board and Perry sat on the end of the bed. They passed a pint of J&B.
‘My paint is different this year,’ she said.
‘I know, I asked before. What does it mean?’
‘I’ve been wanting to tell you, I just didn’t know how.’
She touched her cheek, the red circle. ‘This is a part of me, a piece of my heart that is gone forever.’ She touched the other cheek, the chalky white paint. ‘This is my soul, blank as a field of snow, white like a ghost wandering the world.’ Perry nodded solemnly. Kat gave a snort and shook her head. ‘You white people are suckers for that Indian shit. Hand me the bottle.’ She drank deeply and laughed like none of it was true.
He nearly forgot to call Andy again, and when he remembered it was l
ate. Kat was slid up against him on the bed, maybe asleep, maybe just being quiet. He dialled with one hand not to disturb her.
‘Hello?’ Andy’s voice was groggy with sleep.
‘Hi, it’s me. Sorry it’s late.’
‘Jesus, it’s late.’
‘I know, I just got caught up with everything here and forgot to call you yesterday and I just wanted to see how you were doing and so I’m sorry but I called you anyway.’
‘You sound kind of drunk.’
‘I am kind of drunk. End of re-enactment party. Drinking firewater with the locals. That kind of thing.’
‘Sounds fun, I’m kind of jealous. Tonight I tried to make a tofu stir-fry. I’m not sure what happened but the tofu ended up scorched and the vegetables were still raw.’
‘Tofu can be tricky.’
‘Apparently. You know what else I did?’
‘Hmm?’
‘I bought a pack of cigarettes and smoked almost half of them.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘What kind?’
‘Don’t laugh.’
‘What kind?’
‘Virginia Slims. Long skinny girly ones.’
‘I’ve never seen you smoke before. I’m having a hard time picturing it.’
‘I’m new to it, so I’m not very good at it yet, but maybe I’ll do it for you when you get back.’
‘Wearing something sexy, holding a glass of wine?’
‘If you’d like.’
Kat had reached one arm across Perry’s chest and pushed her face down against his neck. The raven feather in her hair brushed his cheek. Her hand found his, the one that wasn’t holding the phone.