Coyote Wind

by Peter Bowen

  The Oleson brothers came in, dressed alike, new denims and the railroad red cotton kerchief. Ike was carrying the mangy case his curly-maple Hardänger fiddle slept in.

  Du Pré hated Hardänger music. He claimed it had been invented to scare herring into the nets. Scree. Scraw. But he liked Ike Oleson.

  The college boys were murdering “The Red-Haired Boy,” a tune Du Pré would like to have heard in other than a tortured state. While the boys screeked away, they stared at Du Pré and the Olesons. Jesus Christ, Justin, there’s some real ones. Right, Nigel.

  “You look good there,” said Ike, coming by, taking his hat off to Madelaine. Elderly bachelor, always a gentleman to the ladies, who scared him witless.

  “You lookin’ good, Dupree,” said Oleson. Du Pré wondered what chickenshit television program the old fart had been watching. Du Pré indeed. These English, even if they were Swede.

  “You play that Injun fiddle, eh?” said a big half-drunk man, so drunk it seemed a reasonable question to him.

  “Wahoo,” said Du Pré, turning away. The man went off.

  “Play “The Steep Portage,’ Du Pré,” said Madelaine.

  “I want to wait a minute,” said Du Pré, “see them tune.” There were a dozen fiddlers twisting keys, the college boys would be tuned by the century’s end.

  Du Pré looked down at his feet, beaded moccasins in red and turquoise and yellow and black. Old Nez Percé woman over in Idaho did them. Du Pré had asked her if they were old Nez Percé designs. She had said no, she got them out of a book in a language she could not read.

  “What language?” Du Pré asked.

  “Japanese!” said the old woman, laughing.

  “Hey! Du Pré!” Buster Lacroix from fifty miles east, played the rib bones.

  Du Pré fiddled, Buster thocked out the rhythm hard. He made the good ringing bones from the third rib of a fat steer, aged them in the shitpile, or so he said.

  The college boys looked hungrily at the two of them. Go be some professors, Du Pré thought, we got to work our lives.

  Some of the Métis women began to dance, the old reels and Cree glories, leftovers from the days when the Red River carts with their huge cottonwood wheels skreeked and scrawked down from the north to hunt the buffalo. The Métis drove the buffalo into stout blind corrals or drove the herds from swift surefooted buffalo ponies. Make everybody meat for the winter. The carts sounded for many miles over the prairies. At night the men gambled. The leaders were all poor, like those of the Indians who were the lost generous and humble. Wealth was a sign of a bad heart. The more power you had, the less you owned. Nobody who ever wanted a chief’s job got it.

  Take that, you white fools who want to be president.

  Madelaine got up, joined the ring of dancing women. Her heavy breasts swung while she danced. She threw back her head, laughed, her white even teeth startling in her brown face. Her black hair flashed crimson, sheen of fire.

  Long ago the English hanged poor mad Louis Riel, him with his visions and little talks with God, Jesus, the Holy Ghost, the saints Louis had heard of. Many of the Métis came down to Montana. To the old buffalo grounds, just before the buffalo were all slaughtered, just before the great cattle drives began. North to fatten scrawny Texas steers on good Montana grass, Texans came with the cattle, and Montanans hated them men and hate them still.

  Gabriel danced too much and fiddled too much and drank too much. Madelaine danced too much and drank too much sweet pink wine and she flirted with the men, who laughed and nudged each other.

  When they left, the fiddles were wobbling in search of the right notes.

  Gabriel was too drunk to go to confession, so was Madelaine.

  In the night the telephone rang. It was the Sheriff’s office. Maria and some other kids had been busted, beer, a little dope. The Sheriff would let her go if Du Pré came to get her.

  “No,” said Gabriel, “I leave her there till morning.”

  Madelaine was half-asleep, but she woke up for that.

  “You won’t go get your own daughter out of jail?” she said.

  “It would just make her mad with me if I did,” said Du Pré. “See, that girl likes taking her licks for her own doings, you know? They are both pretty tough, my girls.”

  “I don’t know,” said Madelaine.

  “My girls, I do,” said Du Pré.

  He went and fetched Maria early in the morning. They said nothing to one another while he drove her home.

  She kissed him on the cheek and said a soft “thank you.”

  That be that, thought Du Pré. Whew.

  CHAPTER 9

  9U PRÉ CAME BACK from checking out a long stretch of fence that was seldom watched. Ranchers were so pressed for time that often they did not miss stolen stock until the fall roundup, if the thieves repaired the fence. Du Pré watched for tire tracks in the barrow pits, fences a little saggy, maybe new wire bright on a splice. You could get a couple thousand dollars in a truck in a hurry. Beat wages, yes it did.

  But he hadn’t seen anything. Times like this he had his gun on the seat, in its holster. He’d arrested two men a few years before, one of them actually reaching for a rifle when Du Pré had shot and winged the bastard, shattering the man’s upper arm. Then the judge let the guy off easy, on account of the trouble of his arm.

  “He reach that rifle, maybe I’d be dead,” said Du Pré. “Damn his fuckin’ arm anyway.”

  No one paid any attention to Du Pré. The man got a year. Suspended.

  So much, thought Du Pré, for my fuckin’ civil rights, like breathing.

  When he had offered that opinion the judge threatened him with jail for contempt.

  The world was in a sack, for sure, Du Pré thought.

  Used to be, Montana, you just shot them, said to the judge that they needed killing, went to the saloon.

  Du Pré looked down the road from the top of the Big Bench toward Toussaint. The yellow-gray packed dirt, ribboning down to the shabby little town. The Sheriff’s big fat cruiser, more damn lights on it than a Vegas hotel, coming up toward Du Pré.

  I don’t like this, Du Pré thought. I am a cow-ass man. A specialist in burnt skin and hair. Pyrography, I think that they call it. Shit. He hoped the Sheriff’s car would blow up or something.

  Du Pré pulled over to a snowplow turnaround, big pile of sand to spread on the icy spots, little gravel in the sand so big trucks can blast holes in your windshield when they pass you. He got out, rolled a cigarette, smoked it, wished he would quit. Bad for you, but I like it.

  The Sheriff’s cruiser slowed, turned in, parked beside Du Pré.

  “Du Pré,? the big man boomed, “I got news. That plane went down thirty-five years ago, rancher and his wife from the Dakotas, someplace, Pembina I think. Didn’t file a flight plan or nothing. You know how the people are around here. Government says I got to do something, fuck them till they ask politely, then maybe I’ll think about it.”

  Du Pré nodded. He knew what the people around here were like, sure enough. Hell, when Montana convened its first legislature the first elected governor refused to swear allegiance to the damn Yankees, claiming that Pemberton’s Missouri army had just marched northwest and was still in the game. The legislature removed the offending language from the oath of office. Kill a Montanan, you got to cut off their head, bury it where they can’t find it.

  “There’s parts of three people up there, though. They got most of two skeletons. And another skull and extra fingers and hand bones.”

  “Sonofabitch,” said Du Pré. “The Headless Man.”

  The Sheriff nodded.

  A generation ago, when Du Pré was still a boy, twelve, maybe, a rancher found a corpse without head or hands, pretty rotten, too, dumped in a culvert. Not a tooth or a fingerprint to go on. Guy had an appendix operation scar, couple other things. No clothing. Du Pré remembered his father talking about it, the year before he died.

  “Bloated up pretty good,” said Du Pré’s father, a brand ins
pector, too, quiet guy, called “Catfoot” because he never wore anything but moccasins and barely ruffled the dust when he walked.

  “We haul him out, coroner let the gas out of him, man, what a stink. So we send the meat off to the state lab, they send back a paper says the guy is dead, sure enough, so we wouldn’t worry, and without anything to identify him with. They ask around, see if anyone got a head and a pair of hands, want the rest of the act. But no. Guy was about thirty-five, white, and that’s all anyone ever knows. Had his appendix out, but it didn’t help him much, I guess.”

  “Long before my time,” said the Sheriff, “I didn’t move here from the Bighorn country till seventy-five.”

  “Well, maybe,” said Du Pré. He wondered why the Sheriff always shouted. Maybe he was deaf, too vain to wear a hearing aid. Maybe he was just a loud bastard.

  “Report’s at the office,” said the Sheriff. “Maybe you could look at it.”

  “I ain’t a cop,” said Du Pré.

  “Yeah,” shouted the Sheriff, “But your people go back more’n a century here, maybe you know somebody knows something.”

  Du Pré spat at a beetle struggling through the gravel under his boots.

  “I mean,” said the Sheriff, “you ought to be a little curious, at least.”

  “No more than to lean over, someone telling the whole story in a bar,” said Du Pré.

  Du Pré got in his car, drove off toward Toussaint, and the Sheriff’s office in Cooper, few miles on.

  “Why,” he said to himself, “would somebody go to all that trouble, kill someone, cut off the head and hands, hump them up into the Wolf Mountains, stick them in an old plane wreck. Knew the country good, knew about the plane wreck. Knew it better than all these folks who spent their lives poking around in this country, find the Lost Bullfrog Mine or something.”

  Or was it something else?

  Du Pré thought. He remembered spitting on a dirty rock once, and a head rose up out of the coils, and the rattle started.

  But before he spat, it was just a rock, you hear?

  CHAPTER 10

  DU PRÉ HADN’T LIKED reporters since he met one. They had very bad manners and they always got everything wrong or if they got anything right they misspelled it. One had come a few years back to do a piece on the fiddlers and he spelled Métis “Metissé,” like a goddamned movie writer or something.

  The movie people were so much worse they were kind of fun. One bunch had hired Du Pré at two hundred a day as a “consultant” while they made some piece of crap about a Sioux kept a pet grizzly—they thought grizzlies ate soybeans or something—and every time this Sioux killed a buffalo he held a wake for it. All the Sioux’s relatives keening over this fine buffalo, good fellow, strong, brave, great singer and dancer, forgive us for making stew out of you our brother. The Sioux was extreme badasses, and before the whites give them horses and guns they was eating each other and any Cree that they could catch. As in, “We feeling peckish, so it is you. Least Muskrat. Apologies to you for we are eating you our brother.” But never mind.

  The deputy got the report for Du Pré, passed it over the counter, right under the nose of some watery-eyed asshole from the Great Falls Tribune. The reporter very much wanted to talk to Du Pré, as Du Pré had found the wreck.

  “No, I didn’t,” said Du Pré. “The wreck was found by a cowboy named Bodie, works for the Crossed Eyes Ranch. Big house, looks like it belongs in a big city, up the road toward the Wolfs.”

  “The Crossed Eyes Ranch?” said the reporter.

  Du Pré nodded.

  “Oh, bullshit,” said the deputy. “It’s the old Higgins place, but he’s right about the house. Bodie’s gone, though.”

  “Gone?” said Du Pré.

  “Yeah,” said the deputy. “Seems he owed a bunch of child support and his name wasn’t Bodie anyway. So he’s in jail in Miles City.”

  “Ho,” said the reporter. “So I could talk to Mr. Dew Preee?”

  “He’s dead,” said Du Pré. The deputy pointed and rolled his eyes.

  Du Pré grunted, reading the simple report. Remains of three people, two had died of impact and fire, most likely, and the one extra skull with a bullet hole in it, the slug was probably a .38, but so weathered all the striations had long since worn off.

  The hole in the skull was the sort a .38 could make, or a pole barn spike, or a meteorite that size. The skull with the hole in it lasted longer because it was not all crunched up when the plane hit and probably had arrived there at a later date, maybe.

  The examining pathologist signed off, probably laughing at the very thought of ever finding out any more about this particular homicide, maybe, by bullet or pole barn spike or meteorite, maybe.

  “Could I see that?” said the reporter, looking at the paper in Du Pré’s hand.

  “Sorry,” said the deputy, taking the paper. “It’s a murder under investigation.” (Fuck You.)

  “Could I talk to you, Mr. Dew Preee?”

  Du Pré looked at the asshole. “I’m a brand inspector,” he said.

  “But you found the plane.”

  “Yeah,” said Du Pré, “but I got a bunch of cow asses I got to go kiss. I ain’t a cop. I don’t have anything to do with this.”

  Du Pré walked out, got into his car, decided to go on home, maybe see how Maria was and if she wanted to talk to him, which she probably didn’t.

  He hoped the reporter would go up, talk to the rich drunks, get his shoes puked on.

  Du Pré turned down the side road to his house, saw a crabbed figure tacking and yawing on the right side, sometimes throwing up his arms and tossing his head back. Nearly falling over.

  Benetsee. Three parts drunk out of a possible two. Headed for Du Pré’s house. First time, since Benetsee used to come by, see the Catfoot, the two of them would go and pick arrowheads out of the plowed fields in the spring, pull mussel shells out of the creeks for their wives to make buttons from.

  Benetsee, now, he tells me about the coyote howling by the bones up the in that draw, tells me I’ll figure it out when I see Coyote scratch the earth. They scratch the damn earth all the time. The old fart knows something. Probably everything. I think I don’t want to talk to him.

  Someday I’ll be senile, won’t know anything at all, whew.

  Just like God, maybe He’s senile.

  Du Pré pulled up beside the old man. The drunken old fart was singing, high thin voice, Coyote French, love song for a voyageur’s girl. Pull on the rope, bring me home. Benetsee was carrying a little bundle of dried flowers.

  Du Pré rolled down the far window. “Want a ride?” he yelled.

  Benetsee glanced at him, went off singing again, made an obscene gesture. No, and go do things to a lame coyote.

  Du Pré shrugged, drove on. Now I got to go look for him at sunset, or maybe he freeze to death tonight. Damn.

  Maria had the stove in the kitchen stoked up so it was red hot. It was so warm she was washing the dishes and cleaning up in a bra and panties. When she heard him come in she grabbed a robe, wrapped it around herself.

  My daughter’s a woman, good-looking, too, thought Du Pré. Ass like her mother’s. Figures.

  “You want something to eat,” said Maria. “Billy brought us some venison, I got some other stuff at the store.”

  “Sure,” said Du Pré. “Old Benetsee may show up. He’s drunk.”

  “He’s always drunk,” said Maria.

  “He bother you?”

  Maria shook her head. “He’s just like that, but a good man,” she said. “Lots worse things to be than drunk.”

  “You want to talk to me?” said Du Pré. Make a stab at being a father, I don’t know how.

  Maria shook her head.

  CHAPTER 11

  “THAT GIRL EVER TALK to you about the other night?” said Madelaine. She poured them coffee. Her children were off at school, except for the littlest, Sebastian, who had a cold. The kid kept coming into the kitchen, snuffling and sniveling.


  “She don’t need to talk,” said Du Pré. “Thing about Maria is she’s a good girl wants us to think she’s bad.”

  “She needs a mother.”

  “She had one,” said Du Pré. “Now all she got is me: And, Madelaine, I don’t want you trying to mother her, it just upset both of you, and then, of course, it upset me.”

  “I just want to help.”

  “Sometimes the best help is no help at all.”

  Sebastian wandered back to his lonely bed of pain, a cookie in each chubby fist.

  “See,” said Du Pré, “when my wife was dying and she knew it and she made her peace with God and sent her love to her people and told me what to feed the dog and the cats. Took care of everything. So I took the little girls, four and eleven, into the big hospital in their little white dresses. Their eyes were very big, Mama was dying, she was going up to heaven, and my wife told me to leave the little girls with her a minute and go out into the hall and wait, she had to talk to them some, women things … ”

  Madelaine was looking very hard at her coffee, more than it deserved.

  “So I went out in the hall and the little girls were in there for maybe fifteen minutes, I don’t know. And my wife, she went into a coma that night and she never woke up. When she die, I have a house full of relatives, of course, and the priest, and all that, and I go out—it’s summer, when she had that bad cold killed her—just to get away from all the people … ”

  Madelaine coughed some, sipped some coffee.

  “So I’m sitting out there by the little creek, on a log, glad I don’t have to hear someone tell me how sorry they are—I loved her a lot, you know, tore my insides out to lose her—and I looked up and there are my two little girls, one has a sandwich for me, the other a half-bottle of whiskey …

  Madelaine scratched her neck.

  “So I say thank you, I eat the sandwich and have some of the whiskey, and Jacqueline says ‘Mama told us to take care of you. So we do that. I’m older, so what I’m gonna do is get married soon as I can and have a lot of babies for all the babies that Mama couldn’t have for you … ’ ”