Girl Gone Missing

by Marcie Rendon

  While she was talking, Wheaton had left the gravel farm roads that snaked along the river and driven on the pavement heading north. When they reached the small town of Hendrum, he pulled into a parking spot in front of the town’s café. As they exited, he told Gunner to guard the car. The dog lay down on the driver’s side, ears perked up. All business.

  Inside Wheaton ordered hot roast beef sandwiches for the both of them. And two cups of coffee. They ate in silence. Then he ordered two slices of blueberry pie, with ice cream. After the waitress cleared their dinner plates and they were waiting for their pie, Wheaton said, “Tell me again about this brother of yours.”

  So Cash repeated the story of waking up to the “shave and a haircut” knock. Mo standing at the door. Moving in. His story of his adopted family and their cruel behavior toward him after they’d adopted him, then thrown him out. At that part of the story, Wheaton put down his fork, his blueberry pie ignored while he stared out the café’s window. The occasional car or pickup drove by. The elderly couple four booths down ate their meal in silence. The clink and scrape of their silverware on their plates was loud. From the kitchen Cash could hear a radio without being able to make out the words of the songs being played.

  Wheaton didn’t say anything for a long time. Cash was afraid he was going to ask her if she was okay again. She used her finger to scrape up some of the melted ice cream from her plate.

  Wheaton finally turned back to the table. He looked Cash in the eyes and said, “That happened to me.”

  Cash’s finger, dripping with ice cream, stopped mid-air on the way to her mouth.

  “What?”

  “My mom was Cree from Canada. Came down to work the fields like everyone else. No one ever told me much. She got pregnant. Never said who the dad was. Had me. The story they told me is that she was young. She left me with the family that raised me, legally adopted me. As their own. This was up on the North Dakota side of the river. Up by Grand Forks. I was their oldest son. They had a couple more kids. One of them a son. My younger brother and two sisters. I watched over them. Protected them from scraps at school. Did their homework for them sometimes.”

  Cash couldn’t remember Wheaton ever putting so many sentences together at once talking about himself. She stopped eating or moving. Afraid if he noticed her, he would quit.

  “Worked the farm alongside the old man. Combining. Hauling hay bales. Milking the cows. I was captain of the football team. By the time I was in high school, it was like everyone forgot I was the abandoned Indian baby from Canada. Graduated high school. Joined the Marines and got sent to Korea. It was a short stint, to my way of thinking.

  “But everything changed when I got back. That first Sunday afternoon, the old man said, ‘Let’s go check on the old homestead.’ We got into his pickup. The old homestead was on the north 40. He parked and just sat there looking at the weather-beaten remains of his parents’ house. Finally, he cleared his throat and said, ‘You know, Dave’—did you know my first name is Dave?”

  Cash shook her head no.

  “He said, ‘You know, Dave, we’ve been talking as a family while you been gone. About what’s fair and it’s the only thing that really is fair, Jacob being my son and all. Well, he’s going to be the one to take over the farm.’

  “I got out of the truck. Looked 360 degrees all around me. Land that I had been working since I was knee high to a grasshopper. It was a hot summer day. But I got cold. Ice cold like I used to get back in Korea when we were getting shot at. Or when we were shooting at someone. I was scared of what I might do so I walked up to the old farmhouse. Stood around, looking at land that I loved and plowed and planted and sometimes cursed. Smoked a cigarette. Walked back to the truck.

  “The old man started the engine and drove us back to the main farmstead. I went into the house and packed my duffle. Didn’t take anything that was theirs, or that they had given me. Except the pickup. I went out and got into his pickup and drove off. The old man didn’t even try to stop me. For about a week, every time I passed a cop car I thought I’d get pulled over for stealing. My payment for all those years of work was a fifteen-year-old pickup. His son is now one of the richest landowners up that way.”

  Cash’s chest was constricted. “What did you do?”

  “Went a bit crazy. Saw the countryside. Saw America first, before it was the thing to do. But this is the country I know. This Valley. This river. This flat land that goes on forever. The dang wind chill every winter. The wind blowing across this prairie we bend over and walk into. We get used to it. It becomes us. You know, when they sing, ‘amber waves of grain,’ that tugs at my heart. Still. Those are our wheat fields, Cash, our country. Our land, our birthright that they’re singing about.”

  Cash picked up her fork and ate the crust of her blueberry pie.

  “So they can just take us in and throw us out?”

  “Happens more than we want to know. There are Indian kids, just like you, just like your brother, heck just like me, all over this Valley. Fostered out, adopted out, working their fingers to the bone—heck, many of them not being properly fed so they are nothing but muscle and bone to begin with, thinking that if they just do good enough, maybe, just maybe, someday they will actually belong.

  “Mostly what I see is once they’ve been used up—in some cases broken beyond repair—they’re thrown away like all the battered farm equipment you see sitting in the back of farmyards, back by the windbreak.”

  Wheaton finished his pie and held up his cup for the waitress to refill. “Anyway, I eventually came back and got the job I got. I like it. Suits me. You, you’re going to finish school. Maybe you’ll be a lawyer. You’re too smart to be stuck driving grain truck all your life. Maybe get married, have a couple kids.”

  Cash sputtered on her coffee.

  Wheaton laughed. “All right, maybe just law school then.”

  “Maybe just a college-educated cop.” They sat in silence for a spell. Cash emptied her coffee cup and put her hand over it when the waitress headed over. Wheaton pulled some bills out of his pocket and laid them on the table.

  Dusk was starting to settle over the Valley. He drove Cash back to her Ranchero and they did the farmer hand wave over their steering wheels as they backed their vehicles out and headed in different directions, Wheaton to cruise around town, Cash back to Fargo-Moorhead.

  Out of habit she stopped by the Casbah. Mo wasn’t there like she’d expected him to be. She waved away the beers Shorty held up to her and left as soon as she entered.

  She knew even before she reached the top step leading into her apartment that Mo would be gone. There was note on the table. “Hey, soldier. I decided to re-up. Don’t worry, only the good die young. Catch you on the rebound.” His corner by the wall was bare, his deck of cards sitting square on the table. Cash didn’t touch the note. She turned and left the apartment and headed straight back to the Casbah.

  Cash’s life returned to the routine she cherished. With beet-hauling season over, she did odd jobs and errands for the farmers she knew, either early in the morning before school or right after her last class each day. It kept some cash in her pockets in addition to what she won in her nightly pool games. She went back to shooting partners with Jim and his occasional late night visits to her apartment resumed.

  The Valley had its first snowfall, then the second and third. The dirt fields acquired their winter cover and the farmers put snow tires on their vehicles. Football season ended and basketball season began. She got one letter from Viet Nam. The envelope was edged with red and blue slanted squares. Instead of a stamp, it was marked FREE in the upper right corner. Via Airmail was stamped below the FREE. Mo wrote about jungle rot and joked about white slavery. He signed it, Don’t Worry, Only the Good Die Young.

  On campus there had been a bit of gossip, students going silent and looking at her side-eyed as she walked by. But that died down quickly as pot, protests and finals took their attention.

  Professor Danielson caug
ht her in the social studies building one afternoon.

  “Renee, Renee,” he said. “I just wanted you to know, I had no idea, none at all. I’m sorry. I want to apologize for all of us here.” Waving his hand around the hallway.

  Cash looked at him, arms hugging her books tightly to her abdomen. In front of her she saw a middle-aged white man, not that different from the farmers she had grown up with. But the one in front of her, his muscles were slack and his shoulders rounded forward a tiny bit, from hunched-over reading, not from carrying heavy loads of cow feed or hay bales. In her mind she thought, “He’s a creep, but a harmless creep.” She nodded at Danielson and walked off.

  Mrs. Kills Horses had chased her across the campus one day, shouting questions after her as Cash walked away, throwing yes and no answers over her shoulder. She outdistanced the guidance counselor, attempting to run in high-heeled cowgirl boots, her denim skirt flapping around her thighs. Cash avoided her office and didn’t return to the Indian Students’ meetings.

  Sharon, as always, wanted to know every detail of what happened. She followed Cash around, even started to get better at pool as she took every opportunity to question Cash. Cash’s answers were brief, five words at best, made quickly before she bent over the table and took her own shot, shooting balls into the pockets, one right after the other.

  Sharon did give up her quest of Danielson, claiming she was “disgusted with all men, except Chaské and there were things to be said for monogamy,” a word Cash had to look up.

  The Tweed girl didn’t return to campus. Wheaton told Cash that the Tweed family had decided she would commute back and forth to the new Ag Tech school in Crookston. Her dad drove her in the morning. Her mom picked her up at the end of the day. She seemed to be doing fine, he told her.

  It was the end of the semester. Cash was at the student union, practicing her cut shots between classes, aiming at the 9-ball when out of the corner of her eye she saw Tezhi, Bunk and Marlene enter. They headed straight for her table. She kept shooting. They each grabbed a cue stick. Tezhi said, “Me and Bunk against you and Marlene.”

  “Rack ’em up,” responded Cash, stepping back from the table. “You go ahead and break first.”

  Tezhi was almost as good as Cash. Bunk and Marlene were probably better shots with a few beers in them.

  Bunk said, “We’re having an Indian Students’ powwow the weekend after finals. AIM is coming up. Bringing some speakers and musicians.”

  That was the extent of the conversation during the whole game. Cash and Marlene won.

  On their way out, Bunk said, pausing at the doorway, “Two weeks, Saturday night. There’ll be a potluck at the usual place, then the powwow and speakers at the Newman Center across the street. See you.” And they were gone.

  Cash forgot the conversation. It wasn’t until she was leaving campus after her psych final and saw a poster saying powwow and speakers at 7 pm that she remembered. The poster made her think of the night in St. Paul when she had sat in her car outside the AIM office and she saw Longbraids get into the car with two women.

  She decided to skip the powwow.

  But when 7 pm Saturday rolled closer, she found herself pacing the small apartment. She folded and sorted her clothes. Opened and closed the fridge. Washed the small linoleum kitchen counter. Cleaned the bathtub. Finally, fed up with herself, she threw on a clean pair of jeans and T-shirt, redid her braid. She got on her hands and knees and pulled out her “go to town” cowboy boots. She grabbed her cue case, chucked it behind the car seat and drove to the Newman Center.

  She sat in the Ranchero for half an hour, smoking. Her heart beat so fast she could feel it. “What the heck am I afraid of?” she asked herself. She watched whole families walk into the Center. They must be coming from nearby reservations because she had never seen so many Indians in Fargo-Moorhead at one time. There were a couple of men in brightly colored feather bustles standing outside the main door, smoking cigarettes. A gaggle of teen girls wearing fringe dance shawls giggled every time a teen boy entered the building. Each time the door opened, she could hear the drum and the men’s ankle bells keeping time.

  Then a rush of people came out at once. They stood around and smoked. Cash saw Tezhi and Bunk sharing a cig. Each of them had their long hair braided in two braids wrapped in strips of red cloth. It was a look Cash hadn’t seen before. They were wearing bell-bottom jeans with a triangular red material insert at the hem that made the bell flare even wider. Marlene joined them wearing the same outfit. When the crowd was finished smoking and they all returned inside, Cash worked up enough courage to get out of the truck.

  She slid inside the main door. The meeting room was lined with folding chairs occupied by powwow dancers, some with full regalia, others with just a shawl or maybe a feather bustle tied over blue jeans. She scanned the room left to right and back again. Looking for familiar faces.

  A small clump of students stood at the front of the room, all with red-wrapped braids and big flared bell-bottoms with red inserts. Tezhi had on a ribbon shirt, the ribbons down his back and chest longer than his shoulder-length braids.

  Mrs. Kills Horses was at the front of the room, speaking into a mic. She thanked everyone for coming and was “so thrilled to be a part of this momentous occasion: the first powwow ever on our college campus.” She introduced a man whose name Cash didn’t catch. He approached the mic, wearing the exact same attire as the students. But the ribbons on his shirt were longer than Tezhi’s.

  As he started to speak, Cash continued her scan of the room. Another group of Indians stood off to the side of the man speaking. Cash froze. Longbraids was standing up there. A young woman stood next to him, looking up at him, a big smile on her face, clearly more interested in Longbraids than in the speaker. Cash looked around the room one more time, then got up and left the building.

  She spun out of the parking spot, raced through Moorhead, finally slowed as she crossed the river into Fargo and pulled into a parking spot at the Casbah. A couple of beers and a few games of pool and her heartbeat was back to normal and her “could care less” attitude was back in place.

  Shorty did a last call. Cash turned toward the bar and held up two fingers. He nodded, put the Buds on the counter for her. She lined up the cue ball with the 8 and pointed her cue at the side pocket where she was going to send it. She bent over, gazed until she was in the zone, and then softly tapped the cue. It drifted down the table, barely moving. The ball didn’t even make a sound as it passed the 8-ball. The 8 dropped into the pocket, and the cue drifted another three inches.

  “Rack ’em and weep,” she said to the farmer who reached out to put his quarters in the table. She turned to the bar to retrieve her beers and walked straight into Longbraids. He was carrying her beers to her, her two in one hand, his two in the other.

  She took a step back and looked up. “Partners?” he said.

  Cash grabbed her beers and turned to the table, “Sure. Got a partner?” she asked the farmer. He pointed at his wife sitting in the nearest booth. She swayed a little when she stood up to get a bar cue, but she actually made two balls before scratching. Cash and Longbraids kept the table for two more games before Shorty hollered out, “Drink ’em up. I’m gonna close it down.”

  Cash finished her beer in big gulps. Put on her jean jacket. Broke down her cue and put it in its case. Started to walk out of the bar.

  “I’ll come with you,” said Longbraids.

  She didn’t get into the Ranchero. She needed the night air to clear her brain. The snow on the sidewalk crunched under their feet. She could see their breath in the cold night air. Halfway to her apartment, Longbraids spoke. “I saw you standing at the back of the room at the powwow. When I looked up, you were gone.”

  Cash didn’t answer. Kept walking. He put his arm across her shoulders and pulled her to him. He tipped her chin up and kissed her. Deep, with longing. “I missed you.”

  “Yeah,” said Cash. She shut off the thoughts in her brain and walke
d silently with him back to her apartment. Once there, she pulled two Buds out of the fridge, opened them. Handed him one and walked to the bed. He flicked the sheet hanging over the doorway as he passed under it and raised an eyebrow at her. Cash plumped a pillow up against the headboard, stripped and crawled into bed, taking her Bud and pack of cigarettes with her. She watched Longbraids undress and crawl into bed beside her. She looked at the sheet covering the doorway and began her story of Mo, her brother showing up. Then she told him about the white slavery escapade, leaving out the part where she herself almost got hurt.

  Longbraids leaned against the pillow on his side of the bed, drinking his beer, listening. When she was done with as much of the story as she felt like telling, he leaned over and kissed her, his braids, still wrapped in red cloth, falling on her chest. They made love. Slowly and tenderly. They smoked a cigarette and drank another beer that Longbraids retrieved from the fridge. He turned out the lights. He told his story about traveling with AIM, the protests they had engaged in at different college campuses and a big one at a construction site for a nuclear power plant down by the Cities. They made love again. Told some more stories. Drank another beer. Smoked half a pack of cigarettes together. About 4:30, he looked at the clock on her dresser and said, “I should get back to where we’re staying. Your school put us up in some motel on the edge of town.”

  He pulled Cash close, their two bodies warm under the blankets. After a few minutes, Cash turned away from him to look out the bedroom window, the window Mo had climbed in after scaling the brick wall. Longbraids folded his body around her back and held her, brushing the strands of hair that had come loose from her long braid, brushing them softly back off her forehead.