Three Shot Burst

by Phillip DePoy

  Hachi folded her hands in her lap. ‘Ironstone Waters has got to be stopped. He’s going to cause a lot of trouble for the Seminole people in Florida if his business continues unchecked. And if he’s killed a federal agent, then more people from the white government will come here. That won’t be good for us.’

  I knew what she meant. The United States Government had no idea how many Seminoles lived in the swampland around Fry’s Bay, and the Seminoles wanted to keep it that way. I couldn’t blame them. In the 1850s the government tried to relocate all the Seminoles to Oklahoma. Over 40 million dollars was spent, and the soldiers didn’t even find half the tribe. They did take away some three thousand never to return again. The Seminole Wars were never completely settled, and no peace treaty had ever been signed. Technically, they’re still at war with America. So who could blame John Horse for wanting the federal government to stay far away from his home?

  ‘Did you know that one of the American soldiers involved in the Seminole Wars,’ John Horse said, as if he’d read my mind, ‘wrote a letter home that said, “If the Devil owned both Hell and Florida, he would rent out Florida and live in Hell!”’

  Then he smiled.

  I nodded. ‘OK. This is a lot to take in. And my primary concern, actually, is getting Lena out of trouble. She’s at Ironstone’s house, I’m pretty sure.’

  ‘She is,’ Hachi confirmed.

  I ignored my impulse to ask her why she was so sure of that.

  ‘So you say you want to help me?’ I continued. ‘Go with me to Ironstone’s house.’

  John Horse stood up immediately. ‘Let’s go.’

  I blinked. ‘Now? I can’t go now. I don’t think I could walk to the door, let alone into another version of the valley of the shadow of death.’

  He rolled his eyes. ‘That’s why I brought you the three bottles. Take them now. All three.’

  I glanced in their direction. ‘I might drink a little Scotch, and I already took some aspirin, but there’s no chance in hell that I’m going anywhere near that white powder, whatever it is.’

  ‘It’s an herbal remedy,’ Hachi said, bounding from the sofa and going to fetch the bottles. ‘If you’re nervous about it, I’ll take some too.’

  ‘Me too,’ John Horse chimed in. ‘Let’s all have some.’

  ‘I need to rest,’ I whined.

  ‘You need to move,’ John Horse said.

  And he said it in a certain tone of voice I’d heard before. It was the voice of the absolute. I really didn’t have any choice. I got to my feet. Hachi opened the Scotch and put the bottle in my hand.

  ‘You said you already took aspirin?’ she asked.

  ‘Eight,’ I told her.

  ‘OK, then you don’t need what’s in the other bottle, just this.’ She opened one of the mystery containers and measured about a tablespoon of the white powder into her hand.

  I stared at it. ‘Do I snort it?’

  She laughed. ‘Just let me put it into your mouth, and then wash it back with the Scotch.’

  Before I could answer, her palm was touching my lips. The powder had a pleasant peppery sensation and a kind of anise taste. But the skin of her hand against my face was a lot more intoxicating.

  I tried to swallow the powder, had trouble, swigged the Scotch, and coughed.

  While I was recovering, Hachi and John Horse both took some of the powder too. Hachi took the bottle from me, gave it to John Horse; he took a single swallow. Then she drank too and we all stood there for a second. I was waiting for some kind of kick. It didn’t come.

  ‘What is this stuff?’ I asked, still tasting it in my mouth.

  ‘It will restore your soul,’ John Horse said, smiling. ‘Goodness and mercy will follow you now.’

  ‘Are you quoting Torah to me?’ I asked.

  ‘Seems appropriate,’ he said calmly.

  ‘Interesting,’ I countered. ‘I was just thinking of another one of – oh for God’s sake.’

  ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘I was thinking, just earlier this morning, about another one of King David’s poems,’ I explained, ‘and I just now realized why: the name David is in my head. And, P.S., you seem to be in my head too, John Horse. In my head.’

  I realized then that my voice had an odd sound to it, and there were a lot of missing steps in my pronouncement. I was feeling more than a little dazed, uncertain of what I was saying.

  ‘What is this stuff?’ I asked again. ‘All of a sudden I feel great.’

  ‘Me too,’ John Horse said.

  ‘Come on,’ Hachi said, grinning, ‘let’s go over to Ironstone’s house and watch Foggy get shot again.’

  ‘OK,’ I said cheerfully.

  I stumbled toward the front door.

  ‘Wait,’ Hachi commanded. ‘You can’t go like that. Man of your style. Where’s your suit coat?’

  ‘Oh.’ I nodded. ‘Right. Gotta look my best.’

  I ambled unsteadily into my bedroom, shuffled through the old closet, and found a little Harris Tweed number – not my usual daywear, but for some reason I felt it gave me an air of sophistication otherwise missing from our insanely foolhardy endeavor. Plus, it went with the pants.

  Moments later we were out in the parking lot in front of my apartment, arguing about who was going to drive. It was a short debate. Hachi snatched the keys out of my hand and went to the driver’s side.

  ‘You’re too beat up, Foggy,’ she said decisively, ‘and John Horse is too old. This is a job for a young woman.’

  John Horse and I looked at each other and started laughing, although I couldn’t have told you why, exactly. I got in the passenger seat, and John Horse squeezed in between Hachi and me, cross-legged on the seat to avoid the gearshift. It had to be a very uncomfortable posture. He didn’t seem to mind.

  FOURTEEN

  It was actually kind of great to ride in my car instead of drive it. I could watch the scenery and feel the air on my face. It was very invigorating. By the time we got to Ironstone’s house – and I had no idea how long we’d been in the car at that point – I was feeling like I could do anything.

  ‘What would you think if I just lifted up the whole house,’ I announced when the car came to a stop, ‘and shook it until Lena fell out?’

  ‘I’d like to see that,’ John Horse said very seriously.

  ‘Both of you behave,’ Hachi said. ‘Here.’

  She handed me the Scotch. I hadn’t seen her bring it, but I was glad it was there. I swigged back a couple of healthy pulls and handed the bottle to John Horse. He drank for a while, it seemed, then he handed it back to me.

  ‘We should save some for Ironstone,’ he said, still in earnest. ‘It is his liquor, after all.’

  ‘Good point,’ I agreed. ‘Let’s go.’

  The three of us loped toward the front door like a troop of puppies. I was struck, once again, by the appearance of the monstrous house, its resemblance to Citizen Kane’s pad. And there was a kind of informal garden around the front walk, very inviting, although I realized that my sense of well-being had less to do with the garden than the mysterious powder John Horse had concocted.

  Still, I made bold to blam on the front door. I hit it harder than I meant to, and it was really loud. John Horse laughed.

  A second later who should appear in the doorway but Holata, the guy whose name meant alligator.

  ‘Hey!’ I grinned. ‘Do you know who this is?’

  John Horse held out his hand to the guy. ‘Hello, Holata. Shouldn’t you be in the hospital?’

  ‘Probably,’ he agreed, stone-faced. ‘Maybe I’ll go when I get off work.’

  He stepped aside gingerly, and I saw that he had a massive bandage wrapped around his calf. He was still in the same pin-striped suit he’d worn in the hotel room in Lake Wales.

  ‘Bet that leg hurts,’ I whispered to no one in particular.

  ‘Did I already tell you to kiss my ass?’ Holata asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I confirmed. ‘Yes, you did.’


  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Still goes.’

  He ushered us into the room where I’d been shot, the one that was a ringer for the one in the movie, huge fireplace and all.

  Ironstone was seated in a great big old chair, cross-legged, in a dressing gown.

  ‘Man,’ I said, ‘you are really going for the Orson Welles prize here. How many times did your architect have to watch the movie before—’

  ‘Shut up,’ Holata said calmly.

  ‘OK,’ I said, ‘but here’s what’s left of your Scotch. We brought it back.’

  Ironstone barely glanced at the bottle.

  ‘Please have a seat,’ he said. His voice was gravelly, like maybe he had a cold.

  In a bizarre kind of unison, Hachi, John Horse, and I sat down on a very large sofa, side by side, smiling.

  ‘I was rather expecting Mr Moscowitz,’ Ironstone went on, ‘but I’m honored to entertain John Horse.’

  ‘And this is my protégé, Hachi,’ John Horse said instantly, nodding in her direction.

  Ironstone licked his lips. He looked like a Gila monster. ‘You’re the one who spied on my son,’ he said to Hachi.

  ‘No.’ She locked eyes with Ironstone. ‘I’m the one who reported your son to the police after he molested Teresa Jumper, Betty Mae Jumper’s relative.’

  ‘Betty Mae Jumper,’ Ironstone growled, like he was saying a group of dirty words.

  John Horse looked at me. ‘Betty Mae is a remarkable woman. She’s the first Seminole to graduate high school, and the first woman head of our tribal council. A couple of years ago, Nixon appointed her to the National Congress on Indian Opportunity – a great honor, even if the Congress is a sham, and Nixon, you know—’

  ‘She’s a woman!’ Ironstone interrupted, spitting.

  Hachi just smiled bigger. ‘Our tribe was just about bankrupt in 1967 when she took over. When she left office in 1971, we had half a million dollars in the bank.’

  ‘Any chance you could get her to look at my bank book?’ I asked.

  ‘The point is,’ Hachi insisted, ‘David Waters molested Teresa Jumper, and I reported it.’

  ‘Completely false accusation!’ Ironstone roared, leaning forward.

  ‘I’m so confused,’ I moaned. ‘Was David a child molester or not?’

  ‘Where’s Lena?’ John Horse said, crashing through all the extraneous conversation.

  A moment of silence ensued.

  ‘Who?’ Ironstone asked.

  I burst out laughing. ‘Who? The girl who killed your son, tried to kill you when you tried to kill her and I caught your bullet. And then you kidnapped her in Lake Wales and brought her here! You’re asking who?’

  ‘She’s here,’ John Horse whispered.

  I stood up and hollered, ‘Lena!’

  Holata was at my side instantly, with an automatic in my ribs.

  ‘Sit.’ He pushed the muzzle into my side.

  I turned to look him in the eye.

  ‘I’ve just about had it with you guys,’ I said.

  And without further ado, I turned, grabbed the gun, broke at least one of Holata’s fingers in the process, then kicked him in his wounded leg as hard as I could.

  He howled. The gun went off. He went down. I kept turning and, when I stopped, I was standing right in front of Ironstone with Holata’s pistol in my hand. The gun almost touched his nose.

  The whole ballet took three seconds.

  ‘What is this stuff you gave me?’ I asked John Horse, staring down Ironstone. ‘I feel like Superman.’

  A couple of other Seminole gorillas barged into the room, but they paused when they saw that I had a gun in Ironstone’s face.

  ‘I have a lot of questions,’ I said to Ironstone, oblivious to my own peril, ‘about drugs and federal agents, and the reality of your son’s wife and child, but at the moment I’ll settle for Lena. Let me take her into my own very professional custody or I swear to God all kinds of hell will break loose. Beginning with a bullet in your forehead.’

  I leveled the gun and twitched my trigger finger, though that was mostly for show.

  ‘Foggy,’ John Horse said cautiously, ‘don’t let the medicine encourage you to do something you don’t really want to do.’

  And, for the first time, Ironstone looked worried.

  ‘What medicine?’ he asked softly.

  ‘Oh, you know,’ John Horse said, ‘Snakeroot, cedar leaf, some secret bark and, of course, belladonna.’

  Ironstone froze. ‘You gave this white man the nightshade powder?’

  ‘I did.’ John Horse laughed. ‘I have no idea how it will affect him.’

  I got it then: John Horse had dosed me at least in part so that he could scare Ironstone. I had to admit, loopy as I was, it was a good plan. Especially since it was working.

  ‘I’m not even sure what’s real and what’s not,’ I lied.

  ‘Foggy,’ Hachi chimed in, ‘you might actually kill that man. Do you understand?’

  ‘I might?’ I asked her, deliberately sounding confused.

  ‘Listen to me, Mr Moscowitz,’ Ironstone said quickly. ‘Lena’s here, in this house, and nothing whatsoever has happened to her. She’s absolutely unharmed.’

  ‘Except for the trauma of being kidnapped by brutes in suits.’ I turned to Hachi. ‘That’s funny: brutes in suits.’

  ‘It’s a scream,’ she responded.

  ‘Lena!’ I shouted again.

  ‘Go get her!’ Ironstone snapped at one of his men. ‘Now!’

  The guy flew away. Holata moaned.

  ‘Everything happens to me,’ he said. ‘Now I got broken fingers!’

  John Horse leaned down and said very softly into his ear, ‘That’s because you’re engaged in the wrong employment. You need to leave Ironstone’s house and never come back.’

  I recognized the tone in the old man’s voice; he’d used it on me before. It was charged with such absolute authority and conviction that it was impossible to ignore.

  ‘You’re right,’ Holata responded, as if he’d just discovered something. ‘Everything bad that ever happened to me started when I went to work for Ironstone Waters.’

  He stood.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Ironstone snapped at him.

  Holata didn’t say a word. He drifted out of the room like he was hypnotized.

  ‘Where do you think you’re going, Holata?’ Ironstone yelled.

  His only answer was the slam of the front door closing.

  ‘One down,’ John Horse said, grinning.

  Hachi stood then. ‘I think I’ll go see if Lena needs any help.’

  And she was gone.

  Ironstone started to get up. I flinched. The pistol in my hand went off. The bullet whizzed past Ironstone’s head and planted a nice hole in the chair he was sitting in.

  ‘I told you to be careful,’ John Horse warned half-heartedly.

  I couldn’t tell if he was talking to me or to Ironstone. I was still trying to figure out how the gun had gone off. It was only luck that made the bullet go into the chair instead of Ironstone’s head. He sat back down, a whole lot less certain of himself.

  ‘Listen, Moscowitz,’ he whispered harshly, ‘you’re not in your right mind. That crazy old man gave you a drug that’s impairing your judgment.’

  ‘You know,’ I began philosophically, ‘that’s what people always say about drugs, that they impair something or other. But that’s not strictly true. More often than not, the drug just offers you another explanation of reality. And on some occasions, your vision is actually clarified, not impaired.’

  Ironstone glared at John Horse. ‘Tell him! Tell him that he’s not in his right mind.’

  ‘You’re not in your right mind, Foggy,’ John Horse said at once.

  ‘You think I don’t know that?’ I answered. ‘I would never hold a gun to a rich man’s head in his own house. Too many complications. But the thing is, see, Mr Waters, you’ve just said, in front of witnesses, that my judgment was impaired. So
from now on, legally speaking, I’m “not criminally responsible” for anything I do. Isn’t that a great law? My people invented it.’

  ‘Your people?’ Ironstone was confused. ‘The Jews?’

  ‘Well,’ I admitted, ‘we had a little help from Aristotle. But the law holds up in America today: impaired judgment. Perfect defense.’

  ‘It’s true, I’m afraid,’ John Horse chimed in. ‘He’d get off even if he’d killed you just now. I might be in a little trouble, since I gave him the drug. But what experience do I have with white people? I had no idea how it might alter him. So it’s not really my fault either.’

  ‘And in any case,’ I observed, ‘how many times has the law tried to find you way back in that swamp?’

  ‘Hundreds,’ he said. ‘But never once successfully.’

  ‘There you are,’ I said to Ironstone.

  I saw, out of the corner of my eye, the only other guy in the room, another one of Ironstone’s henchmen, trying to slink my way. Without a thought I turned the pistol on him and shot his shoe.

  The guy yelped like a dog.

  ‘See,’ John Horse said, ‘you can really hit what you’re aiming at if you just concentrate.’

  ‘Right,’ I acknowledged, swinging the gun back to Ironstone’s forehead.

  John Horse got up off the sofa and went to the wounded man, who was having a hard time standing up.

  John Horse put his arm around the man and whispered into his ear. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but the man calmed down and started nodding. Then John Horse took something out of his pocket and handed it to the guy. He looked down at it and, in seconds, he was crying like a child.

  I glanced over to see what had caused such a display, and there in the wounded guy’s hand was a very small turtle shell, bleached white.

  John Horse said to me, ‘Long life, good health, perseverance, and protection. That’s what’s in a turtle shell. Do you remember that turtle stew you had at my house a while back?’

  ‘With the little potatoes in it?’ I nodded. ‘It was fantastic.’

  John Horse patted the wounded guy on the arm. ‘His mother made it for us.’

  I blinked. ‘Wait. Taft?’