Force of Nature

by C. J. Box

  ALICE THUNDER was short and heavy, and her face was the shape and size of a hubcap. She had thick short fingers and a flat large nose and warm brown eyes. As the receptionist for the Indian high school for twenty-two years, she knew everyone and everyone knew her. She’d befriended Nate’s lost lover Alisha when she’d moved back to the reservation to teach, and after Alisha’s grandmother died, Alice Thunder had stepped in. Alisha’s high school basketball photo was balanced on the top of her bookcase. Nate knew the two of them were related in some way, but he wasn’t sure of the details. It was often the case on the reservation.

  Her house was small, simple, and very lived-in. There were few pictures on the walls and a noticeable lack of gewgaws. Unlike some of the other Indian homes Nate had been invited into, there were no romantic portrayals of noble Plains Indians or rugs depicting maidens or warriors. Only the doll made of bent, packed straw and faded leather clothing on a shelf hinted at sentimentality. She’d once told Nate that her grandfather, an important tribal elder, had made it for her when she was a child.

  “First I’ll kill the ducks,” Alice said, “then I’ll see what’s wrong with you. And I’m telling you now I want to eat most of the duck fat. I hope you don’t want any.”

  “I already know what’s wrong with me,” Nate said. “I just need some help with the dressing. And you can have all the duck fat.”

  “So why are you bleeding?”

  “I got shot with an arrow.”

  “Where’s the arrow?”

  “I pulled it out.”

  Alice Thunder paused at the back door with the sack of ducks and looked Nate over slowly. He couldn’t tell whether she was amused at him or puzzled, or both. She had a way of making her face still while her eyes probed.

  “Did you think an Indian woman would be able to help you more than the docs at the clinic because you were shot with an arrow?”

  He said, “I can’t go to the clinic.”

  “Ah, yes,” she said. “You’re an outlaw, I almost forgot.” Then she bumped the back door open with her big hip and went outside to kill and clean the birds.

  The little dogs gathered at the back door to whine and watch.

  HE SAT without saying anything when she came back into the kitchen with three bloody duck breasts. She dipped them into a bowl of buttermilk, dredged them in flour and cornmeal, and dropped them into a cast-iron skillet bubbling with melted lard. She covered bits of bright-yellow fat in the flour as well and dropped them into the lard to create rich cracklings.

  “Take off your shirt and let me take a look at your wound,” she said over her shoulder. “Was it an Indian who shot you?”

  “No,” Nate said. “A redneck.”

  “There are Indian rednecks.”

  “This wasn’t one of them,” he said, rising painfully and reaching up with his right hand to unzip his vest.

  Alice never said “natives” or “Native Americans.” She always said “Indians.”

  While the duck breasts sizzled, she turned around and put her hands on her hips and closed one eye as she observed the bloody compresses he’d taped on himself.

  “Sloppy,” she said. “But keep it on until after we eat. Then I’ll change it.”

  NATE LOOKED away as she stripped the old bandage and bathed the wounds with alcohol swabs and taped them.

  “Does it sting?” she asked.

  “It does,” he said, and chinned toward her ticking woodstove. “Make sure to burn the old bandages and everything you’re using to clean me up. Don’t leave a trace of it in your house.”

  She paused, then continued cleaning. “You don’t want to leave your DNA?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But you’ve been here in the past. I can’t get rid of everything you might have touched.”

  “You don’t need to,” he said. “Just the blood.”

  “I don’t think there’s any infection,” she said, shuffling her feet so she could get a good look at the holes in front and back, “but I’ve got some antibiotics and anti-inflammatory drugs I’ll send with you. I’m not a doctor. You may need to go see one.”

  He grunted his thanks. Finally, he asked, “Don’t you want to know what happened?”

  She said, “I think I know. I heard about the boat they found in Saddlestring. Everybody’s heard about that.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “There is one thing I want to know,” she said.

  He waited.

  “Why did you come to me? Why didn’t you go to see your friend, the game warden, and his wife?”

  “Too risky,” Nate said.

  “But you don’t mind risking me?” she asked. It was a flat statement, and not accusatory.

  “I’ve been meaning to come by for a long time,” he said. She stood aside as he got to his feet and pulled his shirt and vest back on. His shoulder ached, but the binding was tight and clean, and he gained a bit more movement in his left arm.

  Nate went out the back door and returned with his duffel bag. He unzipped it and gave her a block of cash.

  Alice took it from him and put it quickly on the table.

  “It’s ten thousand dollars,” he said. “I wanted you to have it.”

  She shook her head. “Are you buying my silence?”

  “No. I want you to use it however you see fit. But maybe you’d consider using some of it in Alisha’s memory. Maybe a scholarship fund for her students, or memorial or something.”

  Surprisingly, he noted moisture in her dark eyes. “I miss her,” she said.

  “I miss her, too,” he said, and gave her a thin braid of Alisha’s hair. It was similar to the strand he’d attached to his gun. She took it from him and sniffed it and worked it through her fingers and held it there.

  “It’s my fault, I know that,” he said. “If it wasn’t for me, she wouldn’t have been in the wrong place. I know that.”

  “Tell me what happened,” she asked. “I’ve heard rumors, but no one else was there.”

  Nate said, “Two intruders breached my security and attacked the place I lived. Alisha was visiting for the weekend. I was outside when it happened. Alisha wasn’t. She didn’t suffer, at least.”

  “But you have,” she said. It was a statement.

  “If my life was more normal …”

  Alice shook her head as if to discount him. She said, “Don’t take all the blame. You’re talking to someone who lives in a place that’s never been normal. It’s not so unusual to me, and it wasn’t unusual to her. She would have followed you anywhere, I’m sure.”

  “I found the men who did it,” Nate said. “I put them down.”

  She looked away.

  “I need to go,” he said.

  She stepped aside. As he neared the door, she said, “A man came by the school last week and asked about Alisha. But I knew he was really asking about you.”

  NATE PAUSED and turned. “What did you tell him?”

  “The truth,” she said. “I told him Alisha no longer worked there, that she had left the school and the res.”

  “But no more than that?”

  “No. Then I waited. He acted kind of put-out and asked me where he could contact her. I told him I didn’t know. He asked me if I knew anyone who might know of her location. Any friends, for example.”

  Nate leaned against her kitchen counter, waiting for more.

  She continued, “He asked me, doesn’t she have a friend who is a falconer? Did I know where he can be reached?”

  He arched his eyebrows.

  “I told him I didn’t know where you were. And I didn’t, either. I told him if he wanted to try and find you he should ask the local game warden, Joe Pickett.”

  Nate felt a chill. “You mentioned Joe?”

  “I thought that might make him go away. He seemed like the kind of guy who wouldn’t really want to talk to a law enforcement officer.”

  “Describe him,” Nate said.

  She closed her eyes, as if conjuring up an image.
“Tall, white, maybe six-foot-two or -three. He was older than you by ten years or so, but in good shape. He had light brown hair and blue eyes. His eyes were set close together, and he had a long thin nose. High cheekbones, but Scandinavian, not Indian. His face was angular and his mouth was small. He had a mouth like a pink rose, I thought. Like he wanted to kiss somebody. But he gave me a bad feeling.”

  She opened her eyes.

  Nate nodded. “Did he give you a name?”

  She said, “Bob White.”

  Nate snorted.

  “It seemed like a fake name,” she said.

  “It is. Did you see what he was driving?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t look out in the visitor’s parking lot. I didn’t think of it until later, and by then he was gone.”

  Nate asked, “How much vacation time do you have?”

  She cocked her head to the side, puzzled at the question. “I have a lot,” she said. “I never take any days off.”

  “Alice,” he said, “I want you to take some of that money and go someplace you always wanted to go. Take a couple weeks. Just please promise me you’ll go away for a while.”

  “Do you think he’ll come back? Do you think he’d hurt me?”

  Nate shrugged. “I don’t know, but we don’t want to take a chance.”

  She thought about it. “I always wanted to go to Austin and see the bats. You know, the bats that come out every night from under that bridge and fly? I like bats.”

  “Then go to Austin,” he said. “See the bats. And when you get bored with them, go somewhere else and see some other bats. Just get out of this place for a while.”

  She looked at him for a long time. Her face never moved.

  “Start packing tonight,” Nate said.

  “Who is this man?” she asked.

  Nate said, “Someone I used to work with. And believe me, he’s not someone you want to see again.”

  He recalled Large Merle’s last words, and it all made sense to him.

  They’ve deployed.

  7

  AFTER LEAVING Alice Thunder’s home, Nate saw lights through the roadside trees and turned in to an alleyway that led behind the small lighted building. The sign in front flickered from ancient fluorescent bulbs inside, but it read bad bob’s native american outlet. It was a convenience store at the junction that sold gasoline, food, and inauthentic Indian trinkets to tourists. Three old pickups were parked at odd angles in front. One, an older model blue Dodge, had its back end aimed to the side and Nate could read the bumper sticker. It showed a graphic of four Apaches holding rifles and it read homeland security: fighting terrorism since 1492. Another sticker read my heroes have always killed cowboys.

  Bad Bob, the owner of the pickup, also rented DVDs and computer games to boys on the reservation. The back room was where the men gathered to talk and loiter and Bob held court. On the side of the store was one of the few remaining pay telephone booths still in operation on the res. Nate pulled up next to it and dropped two quarters into the slot and punched numbers.

  “Dispatch,” answered a woman with a nasally voice.

  “Hey,” Nate said. “I need to report a game violation. Is this the hotline I’m supposed to call?”

  “It can be,” she said. “This is the general state dispatch center, but we can take your information and forward it to the proper agency. What is your name, where are you calling from, and what is the nature of the call?”

  He hesitated for effect, then said, “My name’s not important, but I’m calling from a pay phone in Twelve Sleep County. I just saw a crime, and I want to report it.”

  Nate described a scenario where someone in a pickup with a spotlight—he used Bad Bob’s vehicle for inspiration—was firing indiscriminately at a herd of mule deer just off Hazelton Road near Crazy Woman Creek. He said it was awful, and gave her the location.

  “When did this happen?” she asked.

  “Just a few minutes ago,” he said. “I just got to a phone. You’ve got to send someone up there.”

  “Are you sure you can’t give me your name?” she asked. “We might need to follow up and contact you for better directions.”

  “The directions are perfect,” he said.

  “I’ll contact the game warden in the district and relay your report,” she said. “I can’t promise he’ll be there right away, though. It’s a huge district, and he may be off duty right now.”

  “Thank you,” Nate said.

  “Thank you for calling the Stop Poaching Hotline,” she said, obviously reading from a screen.

  WHEN NATE hung up the phone, he looked up to see Bad Bob coming around the corner of the store holding a lever-action rifle. Bad Bob was shaped like a barrel and had a wide oval face pocked with acne scars. His hair was black, and it glistened from the gel he used to slick the sides down and spike the top. He was wearing a Denver Broncos jersey, baggy trousers, and unlaced Nike high-tops. When he saw Nate, he said, “Jesus!” and jumped back and raised the rifle.

  Nate didn’t reach up for his weapon. He said, “Bob, it’s me. Put the rifle down.”

  “You fuckin’ scared me, man,” Bob said. “I heard something and I was going out back to see if them bears were in my Dumpster again. I’ve been asking the tribe for some bear-proof garbage cans for months, and they keep saying they’ll bring some, but here we are and I still got damn bears.” He patted the rifle. “I’m gonna smoke one if I catch him and make me a bearskin rug.”

  Bad Bob was Alisha’s brother. Nate hadn’t seen him since her death.

  “I’m sorry about your sister, Bob,” Nate said.

  Bad Bob lowered the rifle and lowered his voice. “Yeah, she was always too good to be true, you know.”

  Nate didn’t respond to that. Bob was Alisha’s older brother, and they’d had a strained relationship and rarely spoke to each other. Alisha had left the reservation after high school, got a degree, married, and moved comfortably in Denver social circles. After her divorce, she’d returned to the res on a mission to try and help the students move up and out. She believed in entrepreneurship and individualism, and fought against a group mentality. Bob, on the other hand, rarely ventured off the res and gave talks encouraging the tribes to secede from the union. But he never mailed back a government check, either. The convenience store had been passed down from an uncle who died of cancer, and it had become Bob’s headquarters. The sign in front lured white tourists into the store so Bob could insult them face-to-face.

  Bob said, “I heard that the couple of guys who did it are taking the dirt nap.”

  “They are,” Nate said.

  Bad Bob nodded with satisfaction. “So what are you doing here, man? I thought you left the country.”

  “I’m passing through,” Nate said. “Just using your phone before I leave.”

  “Why don’t you come in? I got some coffee on, and there’s some wine getting passed around in there.”

  “No, thanks,” Nate said. “I’ve got to go. But I’ve got one question for you.”

  Bob leaned the rifle against the brick wall of his store and walked forward and slumped against Nate’s Jeep and looked down at his shoes. “You want to know when you’ll be getting some of that loan back, I know. But times have been really tough around here. When there’s all that unemployment out there outside the res, you can imagine what it’s like inside. Shit, I run credit accounts for all these mooks until government check day and then I just hope they’ll come in and pay off their tabs.”

  “It’s not that,” Nate said. “I was wondering if you or any of your friends have seen a guy.” He described “Bob White.”

  Bad Bob took a long time answering. “I think he might have got gas last week,” he said. “At least it sort of sounds like him, man. All you white people look alike to me.” Bob grinned.

  “Not now,” Nate said impatiently. “Was it him?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. He pulled out front, gassed up his rig, and left. We didn’t have a convers
ation, really. Oh—he asked how to get to the school.”

  Nate nodded. It would have been the same day the man met Alice Thunder.

  “What was he driving?”

  Bob rubbed his chin. “I’m trying to remember. Oh, yeah, It was a nice rig, one of these crossovers; part luxury car and part SUV. An Audi Q7. First one I’ve seen on the res. It was dark gray or blue.”

  “Plates?”

  “I don’t remember, but I think if they was out-of-state I would have noticed. But maybe not.”

  “Anybody with him?”

  “Naw,” Bob said. “He was alone. But I do remember he had a bunch of shit piled in the backseat. Gear bags or luggage or something. Nobody could have sat back there because there wasn’t room.”

  Nate asked, “How did he pay?”

  “Cash,” Bob said. “That I remember. Not many people pay in cash these days, they all use cards. But he peeled some twenties off a roll and I gave him change. That I remember.”

  Nate nodded. Then, “Bob, we didn’t have this talk. You never saw me tonight.”

  Bob looked over, wanting to hear more.

  “That’s all. Forget I was here.”

  “All right,” Bob said with hesitation.

  “And forget about the loan,” Nate said, restarting his Jeep.

  “Thanks, man,” Bob said, stepping away from the Jeep. It was perfunctory. As far as Nate knew, Bob had never repaid a loan, and he didn’t expect him to start now.

  A FEW HUNDRED YARDS up the reservation road toward the mountains and Hazelton Road, Nate saw a sow black bear in his headlights and swerved to miss it. In the red glow of his taillights he watched her amble down the faded center stripe of the asphalt en route to Bad Bob’s Dumpster.

  8

  CRAZY WOMAN CAMPGROUND was empty except for two travel trailers full of elk hunters in the farthest reaches of the campsite. Nate could hear the hunters whoop from time to time, and he hummed along with old country music emanating from one of the closest RVs. Because of the possibility of being seen by any of the hunters if they chose to go for a walk in the dark, he moved his Jeep out to Hazelton Road, drove a mile away from the entrance of the campground, and backed it deep into the trees on an old logging road and waited.