Prairie Gothic

by J. M. Hayes

  “Dead?” Martin, Deffenbach, and the sheriff made the query into a three-part harmony.

  “Tommie died about supper time last night.”

  “If Tommie Irons is dead, Dorothy, then why can’t we find his body?” It was really less a question than Lucille Martin’s effort to demonstrate the fault in her student’s logic.

  “That would be because nobody around here checks on us much, unless we demand it of them. And because that man came and took him away this morning.”

  The sheriff felt like he needed to regain control of the discussion. “That man? Do you mean somebody from Klausen’s Funeral Parlor?”

  “No, don’t be silly.” The little woman wiped the suggestion out of the air with a dismissive gesture.

  “Doc Jones, then?”

  “Not him either. It was that big guy who got to be friends with Tommie this last fall. I’d tell you his name only I’m having a senior moment and it won’t come to me. But that doesn’t matter. Tommie died natural. That baby probably didn’t.”

  The sheriff glanced at Martin and Deffenbach. “Either of you know who she’s talking about?” Neither responded. “Don’t you think you should?”

  “Guests are supposed to sign in at the front desk,” Mrs. Martin said.

  “Will you forget about that,” the little old lady interrupted. “I’ll remember his name in a minute and I’ll tell you. But you need to come see to that baby.”

  “I’ll check on the baby soon, Ms.…” The sheriff didn’t know the old woman’s name. That was unusual, but it wasn’t because he was suffering one of his own occasional senior moments, though he was decades less entitled to them. It was because he’d never seen her before.

  “Dog,” she said.

  “Your name is Dog?” The sheriff was nonplussed.

  “No, no. I’m just Dorothy. Dog, that’s the man’s name. Mr. something Dog.”

  “Mad Dog?” the listening trio chorused, the sheriff dismayed, the others clearly more accusative.

  “Yes, that’s right. Mr. Harvey Mad Dog. That’s who came for Tommie Irons’ body.”

  ***

  The last buffalo in Benteen County watched mournfully as Mad Dog’s Saab went by his pasture without stopping. He was the only surviving member of the dozen feeder calves Mad Dog had decided would be the start of his effort to repopulate the Great Plains with the great herds. It was another of his occasional attempts to be a born-again Cheyenne that hadn’t quite worked the way he’d planned. The veterinary bills had been phenomenal and the skills of modern medical science insufficient to maintain a herd of more than this one solitary bull.

  He was a magnificent creature, inspiring what Mad Dog hoped were racial feelings of kinship within himself. The animal stood at the corner of the fence line, his breath smoking with such ferocity it seemed possible he might be responsible for the clouds that hid the rising sun. He was proud, noble, immortal—well, maybe not immortal. A shadow detached itself from the evergreens on the other side of the fence row and Mad Dog hit the brakes, tumbled out of the Saab, put two frozen fingers to his mouth, and blew. The silver-gray wolf paused in its tracks and looked from the buffalo to Mad Dog. The buffalo pawed at the frozen earth. It had seen the predator as well. The wolf seemed to shrug powerful shoulders, as if deciding to leave the bison for another day. It turned and loped easily to the fence, leapt it without pausing before charging Mad Dog and lunging at his face.

  The pink tongue with the single black spot slathered him with wet kisses. The force of her affection sent Mad Dog tumbling back into his seat. His timing with the buffalo herd probably hadn’t been the greatest, since he’d gotten involved in wolf-hybrid rescue about then, too. Mad Dog’s pack had cost him part of his herd, and the ill will of several local sheep men, before he found most of the animals new homes and built proper pens for the rest.

  Mad Dog hugged her and she submitted, for just a moment, then scrambled across his chest and into the passenger’s seat.

  “How’d you get loose again, Hailey?”

  Her answer was a wide yawn, then a polite sniff at the bundle behind the seats. She didn’t seem to mind sharing the Saab with Tommie Irons’ corpse. She settled into her accustomed spot, overflowing the passenger seat’s cushion, her nose comfortably fogging the window she preferred in the down position.

  Hailey was the only one he’d gotten as a puppy. The Wichita attorney who’d imported her from Alaska had the money to afford an exotic pet, but not the patience to deal with one. After she dug through his new leather sofa, searching for the source of a faint squeak in one of its springs, he sent her to the vet to have her euthanized. Mad Dog had just mailed out a batch of fliers advertising his services as a foster home for wolf-hybrid rescue to central Kansas veterinarians and this one hadn’t reached the circular file yet. The vet was soft hearted enough not to destroy an obviously healthy puppy. In spite of the attorney’s unqualified instructions, the vet had called and Mad Dog brought the puppy home the same day.

  Hence her name. She came from an all but hopeless situation. She was like one of those last-second, desperation passes he fondly recalled from his days playing for the Buffalo Springs Bisons. Time running out, fourth and long, nothing to do but throw up a Hail Mary and pray. Mad Dog had caught a couple and salvaged unlikely victories during his football career. He figured this pup was one more. Feminized, Hail Mary had become Hailey Marie, the smartest animal he’d ever known, and his problem child. Given her propensity for finding a way out of any combination of restraints he applied, he thought he should have feminized a version of Houdini instead.

  Tommie Irons had been one of Mad Dog’s neighbors. He lived down where the great flat stretch of farmland southwest of Buffalo Springs began to show a little topography on its way to the once mighty Kansaw River. He was older than Mad Dog. The two men had known each other only well enough to exchange the occasional “howdy” or a wave as their vehicles passed going to and from town. Irons would have seemed just another Kansas farmer, except, like Mad Dog, he turned out to be an Indian—part Choctaw on his mother’s side.

  It didn’t mean much to Mad Dog at first. A Choctaw wasn’t anything like a Cheyenne. Choctaw were East Coast Indians, driven out by early white settlers and relocated to Indian Territory. They weren’t Plains Indians like Mad Dog and his kin.

  Irons and Mad Dog might never have progressed beyond neighbors and casual acquaintances but for Doc Jones. There weren’t that many doctors in Buffalo Springs anymore. Not that many people either. The town, and the area which it served as county seat, had been losing population steadily for a good fifty years. Doc Jones was Benteen County Coroner as well as one of its best-liked general practitioners. Mad Dog and Doc knew each other through the sheriff. It wasn’t like Mad Dog trusted Western medicine that much, but there were times when even a natural-born shaman couldn’t perform a self cure. Doc had proved up to Mad Dog’s occasional small emergencies. So far. He also happened to be the man who diagnosed Tommie Irons’ cancer. He told Mad Dog when Irons’ health forced him into a full-care residential facility, and caused the old farmer to ponder philosophical questions he’d previously avoided.

  “He’s heard about your vision quests and stuff,” Doc explained to Mad Dog on a bright day in October so filled with promise that it still seemed possible this could be the season Kansas State went to its first Orange Bowl. “Probably isn’t anybody in Benteen County who doesn’t know how you shave your head, cover yourself with body paint, and set yourself out in the middle of Veteran’s Memorial Park every summer. Well, Tommie Irons has some curiosity about what you’re up to, and whether you’ve come to any conclusions about the way the universe works. He doesn’t know much about being a Choctaw, but he’s thinking he’d like to find out. He’s dying, Mad Dog, and he’d like to talk to someone who can tell him how an Indian’s supposed to do that, where he might be headed, if it’s any place other than just some hole in the ground out at Southlawn Cemetery. Doesn’t matter whether you know what you�
�re talking about as long as you’ll take some time and listen too. I can’t help him anymore. And you can’t do him any harm.”

  By then, Mad Dog was less certain of his own philosophy than he’d once been. One of his first efforts to practice his “people’s” shamanistic beliefs had been linked to a couple of deaths. He felt at least partially responsible. His talks with real Cheyennes had been disappointing. Most didn’t know as much about their belief system as he did. The exceptions wouldn’t take him seriously. As far as they were concerned, he was just another white man playing new-age games, pretending to be Indian. Still, Mad Dog started visiting Tommie Irons and sharing his beliefs. He did some research on the Choctaw and taught the dying man what he could about the religion and customs of his mother’s people.

  Mad Dog helped Tommie Irons die confident of his soul’s destination. The Civilized Tribes, of which the Choctaw were one, were the source of the concept for the “Happy Hunting Grounds.” The old man couldn’t remember any better days, he confessed, than walking a slough with a shotgun or snuggled into a duck blind watching his breath and the sky. That’s exactly where he wanted to spend eternity. It was his mortal remains that concerned him. The Choctaw interred their dead in burial mounds, but not until the corpse had been picked clean of flesh by Bone Picker or Buzzardman. If that was how it should be, then that was how Irons wanted it. It was close enough to Mad Dog’s Cheyenne world view, and the way he wanted to be treated when he died, that he’d agreed to help the old man’s final wish come true.

  Irons had farmed a section less than five miles from the old Maddox place, now Mad Dog’s. The land there sloped gently down toward where Calf Creek joined the Kansaw. One minor drainage curled through an edge of the section with a tiny stream that stayed wet in all but the driest years. Another, dryer slough zigzagged from the northwest corner down to meet the creek. Those were the hunting grounds Tommie Irons dreamed of stalking again. And he had built a pond near their confluence, grading up a small dam just below where the slough turned damp and natural springs seeped sweet, clear water. It was the only mound Irons had ever made, and a perfect destination from his perspective.

  Getting there took Mad Dog time. The roads that were clear of the last snow tended to get used. The Saab was remarkably nimble on snow and ice, but it wasn’t a four-wheel drive. It had limitations. And the county’s infrastructure had seriously deteriorated. Old bridges seldom got repaired or replaced when they wore out or washed away in spring floods.

  Mad Dog parked the Saab just short of where the trees along the slough became thick enough to allow snow to drift across the road. No one had driven through there since the last storm and that seemed a good indication that Mad Dog could finish his business uninterrupted.

  Tommie Irons was stiff as a board. Rigor was already at an advanced stage by the time Mad Dog picked up the body. A long drive on an icy morning hadn’t done anything to soften him. Because he was unbendable, Mad Dog had been forced to dangle Irons’ feet over the rear bumper. They were probably frozen solid by now. Mad Dog could sympathize. Most of him felt similarly chilled.

  With Hailey delightedly investigating the slough for something to chase, Mad Dog dragged, towed, and slid Tommie down to the grove of cottonwoods above the pond. The concept of Bone Picker/Buzzardman seemed to indicate that birds should handle the task of defleshing Irons’ bones. Mad Dog wrapped him in the mesh hammock he’d purchased with that in mind, chose a high branch unlikely to be spotted by humans, and started climbing. It wasn’t easily done while wearing two layers of clothing and a quilted down jacket of a thickness to make him resemble the Pillsbury Dough Boy. Good handholds were scarce for thickly gloved fingers, but the cottonwoods cooperated. One leaned inward at an angle suitable for scaling, then another offered massive limbs at conveniently ladder-like intervals. Irons’ final perch was difficult to view from below and out of the reach of coyotes, bobcats, and other carrion eaters without wings. Come spring, when the birds had presumably finished their work, Mad Dog would return, move the bones a few yards south, and plant them in the side of the dam. Tommie Irons, Choctaw Moundbuilder, would finally rest in peace.

  By the time the job was done, Mad Dog was exhausted. You’re too old for this, he thought. It wasn’t something he liked to admit. In his mid-fifties, Mad Dog could still pass for a decade younger. He jogged, he exercised regularly, and he ate right—except for an addiction to chocolate. There were plenty of men two decades younger who couldn’t have done what he was doing for Tommie Irons. Still, that didn’t help Mad Dog find the reserves he needed to climb down and return to the road. He sat, for a moment, in the crotch of a tree, behind a massive trunk that blocked a little of the wind that had already turned Tommie Irons into a frozen pendulum, counting its way from now to forever.

  What would anthropologists call this, Mad Dog wondered? Was there such a thing as an extended tree burial?

  If he hadn’t been so cold and exhausted, Mad Dog would have appreciated this view of Tommie’s Happy Hunting Grounds. Even in the frozen grip of the harshest winter in a decade, the stream and sloughs were an enchanted place, crisscrossed with game trails, prints, and spore. It was the kind of location Mad Dog would have enjoyed hunting in his youth. No more, though. Killing for sport had lost its appeal. When he hunted these days it was with a camera or binoculars.

  A harsher gust nudged him, a reminder he’d better get down before his aging muscles began to stiffen in the cold. It was nearly too late already, but he made it.

  Tommie was barely perceptible in the jumble of branches above. When there were leaves, he’d be absolutely invisible.

  Mad Dog put his fingers to his lips again. It was time to reclaim Hailey and head for home. He stopped short of whistling. Something, besides the frozen wind, prickled the back of his neck. He was being watched. He moved his eyes and pivoted his head.

  It was only Hailey, come up behind him with her usual stealth, an ability that made her seem able to beam herself instantly from place to place. She smiled at him, but only with her eyes since her mouth was filled by a big oval rock.

  “Drop it, babe. Let’s get out of here. Go back to the house for some coffee and a rawhide chew toy.” He didn’t try to take things out of her mouth anymore. There were ways in which wolf hybrids were different than domesticated dogs, even ones like Hailey who adored you. She stepped up beside him, though, and put the rock gently on the snow at his feet. It was a peculiar rock with regular indentations. Mad Dog bent and picked it up and found himself wanting to quote Hamlet’s line about poor Yorick. It wasn’t a rock. It was a human skull.

  ***

  “Not likely we’ll have visitors on a morning like this,” Deffenbach said a little defensively. The young woman they’d found to replace Mrs. Martin at the front desk of the

  Sunshine Towers seemed overwhelmed by the possibility she might have to answer a phone or look up a room number. Minimum wage, minimum skills, the sheriff thought.

  There was a long hall just off the lobby, offices on one side, a cafeteria on the other. None of it lived up to the reception area’s bright promise.

  “Our multipurpose room,” Deffenbach explained as they passed.

  “We call it the mess hall,” Dorothy said. “Mess is the perfect description for what they serve in there.”

  “It is a little bland,” Mrs. Martin admitted, “but wholesome.” There wasn’t much of a breakfast crowd and most of those were just nursing cups of coffee.

  “How could Mad Dog, or anyone, walk in here in the wee hours of the morning and leave with a dead body?”

  “Inside help.” Mrs. Martin shot an accusing glare at the little woman with the red tennies. “We secure the doors every night at nine, then unlock at seven the next morning. They can all be opened from inside so people can’t be trapped in case of some emergency, say a fire, but an open door sounds an alarm at the front desk. If he came through a door, we should have known. The windows are supposed to be secured too, but I’ve found a few that hav
e been jimmied from time to time. This isn’t a prison you know.”

  “Coulda fooled me,” Dorothy grumbled.

  “Were you the one who helped Mad Dog come and go?” The sheriff bent to focus his question on the little senior.

  “One of them, but let’s talk about that after we see to the baby.”

  One of the offices was a nurse’s station. A frazzled woman was counting out prescription medicines into labeled cups. “Mrs. Burton’s in her room, far as I know,” she said, in answer to Mrs. Martin’s query. “Haven’t seen her on this level and I haven’t managed to do rounds upstairs because I’ve been persuading one of our ladies she doesn’t need a morning-after pill on account of last night’s indiscretion.”

  “Card games get pretty boring after awhile,” Dorothy muttered again.

  There was an elevator midway along the hall. It took a long time to arrive, during which the bird woman entertained them with further examples of the Sunshine Towers’ many shortcomings. From what he could see, the sheriff agreed with her.

  A Mutt-and-Jeff pair of elegantly dressed matrons were on the elevator when it finally arrived. They took one look at the group that was going up, then stepped aside to make room rather than get off.

  “Not much excitement around here,” Dorothy said. “We get hungry for it, grab onto most anything.”

  Lucille Martin rolled her eyes as the elevator began to ascend. “Perhaps we should explain just who our Dorothy is, Sheriff.”

  “Surely he recognizes her?” the Mutt woman wondered.

  “Why, those ruby slippers give her away,” her Jeff counterpart replied.

  “Yes, visiting from Oz.” Mrs. Martin tapped her skull gently in an indication that Dorothy’s might be softer than normal.

  “No autographs,” the little woman said. The elevator let them out into a hall with open doors every few feet. Nearly all were occupied with ancient women sitting in chairs that varied from folding to wheeled.