Specimen Song

by Peter Bowen

  “The bottle is too small to be wine,” said Benetsee. “So since you are a polite young man and not a cheap one, it must be whiskey, no?”

  He took the bottle, cracked the seal, and drank deeply. Du Pré took out his tobacco pouch and rolled them cigarettes.

  “This evil man, he don’t like the Cree,” said Benetsee.

  “He only kill the one Cree,” said Du Pré.

  “Three,” said Benetsee. “The woman from the Canada school was half-blood, a Métis. The last one was Métis, too. Red River Breed woman from North Dakota.”

  No telephone out here in the sagebrush. Du Pré thought. No telephone in his house. I am the second person in Montana to know about this last killing.

  Du Pré waited. Benetsee would tell him what he wished to when he wished to. Du Pré went over to the edge of the cliff and slid to the earth in the cross-legged set of the Indian.

  They looked out at the sere landscape. A coyote trotted across the field, up to Du Pré’s parked car, pissed on a tire, ambled on.

  A vee of geese crossed the moon, high up and headed for the Gulf of Mexico.

  “I cannot see his face,” said Benetsee. “But these women, they pass by me on the way to the Star Trail, and they are weeping. Most of the dead are happy, but they are not.”

  But the Star Trail isn’t Cree, Du Pré thought. I don’t know what the Cree think about that. Us Métis, the Jesuits got to us so long ago, we’ve lost some of our poetry forever.

  “Babiche, bakihonnik, watunk,” said Benetsee. Choked, stabbed, and crushed.

  “Could you maybe tell me how to find him?” asked Du Pré.

  Benetsee sat silently. He lifted chaff between forefinger and thumb and let it dribble, to see what way the imperceptible wind was blowing.

  “Used to be an ocean here,” said Benetsee, “long time ago.”

  Du Pré nodded. Yes. Eighty million years ago.

  “Métis used to camp over there,” he said, pointing to a big stand of willows around a spring that ran clear, sweet water. “You go there and stand sometimes, you can see where the corrals were for the horses. You go in the early spring, you can see where they drove the buffalo. Grass comes up greener where the posts were.”

  “I can’t see him,” said Benetsee. “He is in the dark there, hole in the mountain. I can’t see him, just I maybe see him when he starts to move, see his eyes gleam. See him rising up, stirring, little bits of shadow. Then the women pass me when they are dead.”

  Du Pré waited.

  “He hates Indians,” said Benetsee.

  Du Pré nodded. He took the bourbon from Benetsee and had a swig. The burn felt good. It was flat cold out.

  “I try to scare him back,” Benetsee went on. “Maybe there’s another way out of the mountain.”

  Du Pré waited.

  “Maybe that’s just where he sleeps,” said Benetsee.

  Okay.

  “How big is the mountain?” said Du Pré.

  “Can’t tell,” said Benetsee.

  Okay.

  They sat silently.

  “You come over to Madelaine’s with me, huh?” said Du Pré.

  Benetsee didn’t say anything. He didn’t move.

  Du Pré got up, a little stiff.

  “I am very tired,” he said. “I will go to sleep now, grandfather.”

  “You going to go there?” said Benetsee.

  “I don’t know,” said Du Pré.

  “He just quit till you leave,” said Benetsee.

  Shit shit shit, Du Pré thought. Now I got to worry I don’t go there the bastard be killing Indians because I stay here where I’d rather. Shit shit shit.

  “Maybe he don’t quit,” said Benetsee. “I can’t see.”

  Whew, Du Pré thought. Fucking Washington, D.C. Thank you, you old prick.

  “When he’s ready again, I’ll know,” said Benetsee.

  “You let me know?” asked Du Pré.

  Benetsee shrugged.

  Du Pré started to walk away.

  “Gabriel!” Benetsee said loudly, his voice young and crisp. If it was his voice.

  “Yes,” said Du Pré.

  “He will come looking for you when he’s ready,” said Benetsee.

  Okay, thought Du Pré.

  Benetsee tossed something to Du Pré. A smooth round black stone the size of a small plum. Du Pré wrapped his hand around it. He opened his fingers and looked at it for a moment. He put the stone in his pocket.

  Christ, I am tired, he thought.

  CHAPTER 24

  DU PRÉ TURNED THE PAINTED feather in his fingers. Canoes, Indians, a bearded white man, a dog, a bird with a notched beak and talons. He slipped the black steatite carving of the rising wolf from his pocket. The stone was warm from his body and slick as soap.

  The jet flew east swiftly. He would land in D.C. in a couple of hours.

  Du Pré thought he would rather have come on a horse, but things did not move reasonably this late in the century he had been wrongly born in. Zoom. Flash. TV, movies, computers. Zoom. Shit.

  Well, Du Pré had thought, if he is going to come after me, then I will go and spit in his face, maybe he come after me before he kills anybody else—which is fine. I am a good hunter, too. Maybe write a little ballad about it, “The Indian Killer and Catfoot’s Son.” The asshole wants to play, we’ll play.

  At least I stir the shit.

  Du Pré was unused to such cold anger in himself. He hadn’t had a reason to know it was in him till now. D.C. had very tough gun laws, which didn’t work except to keep the good people unarmed, so the bad ones had an easier time of it. So Du Pré had no gun, no knife.

  I got moccasins and shadows, though.

  Benetsee had brought him a pair, plain, all soft leather, unlike the stiff-soled Plains moccasins. The pair Benetsee had given him would wear out walking to the outhouse in Montana. Die of the rocks and cactus. But they were very quiet.

  Benetsee had also given Du Pré a little obsidian knife, a ceremonial one, a hole drilled through the handle. It was on a thong around Du Pré’s neck.

  I am going to a strange land to hunt someone dangerous and all I got is what little I know and some magic an old drunk gave me.

  Fair enough.

  The plane suddenly lost a lot of altitude and Du Pré’s stomach rose up right between his ears. The plane quit plummeting and Du Pré’s stomach sank slowly back home.

  Horses are mostly nice people and a good way to travel, doesn’t put your fucking stomach up between your ears.

  Du Pré was going to the capital of the twentieth century and he didn’t like either of ’em.

  Du Pré sipped a little bourbon. He rolled a cigarette. He looked down at the clouds.

  The plane made its approach and Du Pré watched the ground rush up, the runway flash by. The engines screamed in reverse. He was there. Stopped. He promised himself he would go home on the train. He was never getting on one of these goddamned things again. His mind was plumb fixed on the subject.

  The limousine rolled across the runway to the door. Du Pré came down the stairs, determined never to go up them again. He got in the door the black driver opened for him, feeling embarrassed. He was not comfortable with servants, with being cosseted.

  Bart was in the back. He looked great. Du Pré shook his hand as the car pulled away. Bart stared steadily at Du Pré. Du Pré couldn’t see that black pain flitting in the back of Bart’s eyes.

  “You sure this is a good idea?” said Bart.

  “Hey,” said Du Pré, “you ever round up cattle? Foreman always says the same thing in the dark when you got to get up. Let’s do something even if it’s wrong.”

  “Michelle’s worried,” said Bart.

  “Worst thing happens, the world will go on fine without a dumb-ass Red River Breed plays the fiddle some,” said Du Pré. “World always goes on fine; it’s the only thing it knows how to do. Tears dry up, people forget. So.”

  “Well,” said Bart, “she is at work, wanted to see y
ou as soon as you came in. Officially, she doesn’t know about you, understand.”

  “I walk in her office, she knows,” said Du Pré.

  “We’re having dinner in Norfolk,” said Bart. “You ever eat oysters?”

  “Plenty times,” said Du Pré. He loved oysters.

  Du Pré showered at the hotel while Bart spoke softly into the telephone. They got into the limousine and took off, picking up Michelle Leuci in the parking lot of a shopping center several miles away.

  She kissed Du Pré on the cheek and squeezed his hand.

  “It will be all right,” said Gabriel. “Benetsee said so.” Not too much of a lie, since Du Pré had no idea what Benetsee thought all right was; the old man’s mind and speech were as hard to separate as strands of smoke or the words from a coyote’s howl.

  “What are you going to do?” said Michelle.

  Du Pré just looked at her.

  “I maybe commit harassment,” said Du Pré. “I’m very ugly in the face, you know, so when I hang it in front of someone else’s, it is maybe more than just impolite.”

  Bart roared with laughter.

  Michelle sank back in the seat. After a while, she laughed, too.

  “You aren’t carrying any gun, are you?” she said suddenly.

  Du Pré shook his head. “It is against the law here,” he said. “I got a pocketknife my papa made.” Du Pré slid the little knife with the blade set in a brass fitting that you unscrewed from the handle and turned around so the blade was out and screwed it back in. The brass came off an old gasoline stove, the steel from a saw blade, and the handle was a hollow tube of Osage orange, the magnificent bow wood that the Plains Indians used. A recurved bow made of this tough wood could send an arrow through a buffalo’s chest and clear out the other side.

  Michelle looked out the window.

  Bart put his arm around her shoulders.

  Du Pré wished to Christ they’d get wherever, because he could use a smoke. God meant me to fly, He’d have given me a rocket up my ass. I hate this twentieth century, bah.

  The limousine stopped in front of a dimly lit restaurant in the old part of the downtown.

  “Smoke now,” said Michelle. “This place has gone granola on us.”

  She lit up. Du Pré rolled a smoke and hit it.

  “My vices,” said Michelle, “are all that separate me from beasts.”

  Du Pré laughed. They smoked, finished, stepped on the butts.

  They went in. It was a place that Du Pré liked, shabby, worn decor that had once been pretty elaborate, a spanking stainless-steel kitchen smack in the middle of the room. The tables were black Formica, and the waiters spread worn, starched tablecloths over them as they seated the customers.

  It smelled wonderful.

  They ate oysters and crayfish, lobster and cod, peppery coleslaw, and drank lots of iced tea.

  “Oh damn,” said Du Pré, leaning back, “this is the first thing I have liked about this Washington, D.C.”

  “I don’t know if I could stand all the quiet out there,” said Michelle.

  “It’s actually kinda noisy,” said Bart, “just different noises. Not so many bodies hitting the pavement, splat. Automatic gunfire, no.”

  Bullshit, no automatic-weapons fire, Du Pré thought. I know there is a guy has a P-51 Mustang fighter plane everything works on, including the 20mm cannon. Don’t know who he is. Course, schoolkids there don’t own machine guns like here. Hmmm. Well, some of them do, but they don’t use them.

  They left. The limousine dropped them in front of the big, expensive hotel that Bart was staying at. Du Pré had a room across the hall.

  Late that night, Du Pré slipped out, walked casually through the lobby, nodded at the doorman. He had his old leather suitcase and his old denim jacket over his arm. He walked a mile before he got a cab. He let the cabbie take him to a cheap hotel. He rented a room, listened to the drunk on the crying jag through the thin wall.

  The next day, he bought a cheap light blue suit and a silly fedora.

  I hate to shave off my mustache, Du Pré thought.

  He shaved it off and walked outside.

  The wind tickled his upper lip.

  CHAPTER 25

  DU PRÉ WALKED INTO THE big, gawky building, and he studied the directory until he found Chase’s name. The guard directed him down a long corridor.

  I am a simple man, Du Pré thought, opening the door to Chase’s office, so I will just do a simple thing.

  The office was opulent, refurbished with Chase’s money, no doubt. An elegant young woman sat at an antique desk. She looked up slowly and smiled.

  “May I help you?” she said.

  “Paul Chase,” said Du Pré.

  “He is in a conference at the moment,” she said. “And you are…?”

  “I am in a hurry at the moment,” said Du Pré. He went past her quickly and opened the door wide. Chase wasn’t behind his desk. Du Pré stepped inside, hearing the secretary moving behind him.

  Chase was on a couch near the wall, screwing one of the women from the summer’s expedition.

  “Hey, Chase,” said Du Pré, “I got something for you. Didn’t bring my fiddle, you know.”

  Du Pré slid the little sculpture of the rising wolf from his pants pocket.

  The woman was frantically putting on her clothes.

  Chase was thunderstruck, mouth open.

  “You see him here?” said Du Pré, advancing. “You see this little sculpture? Means something, yes, Chase?”

  Chase slumped momentarily.

  The woman ran out the door, buttoning.

  The secretary was screaming into her telephone.

  Chase had a seizure. His eyes rolled back in his head, his tongue wriggled wildly out of his mouth, his arms and legs jerked.

  Du Pré walked out, through the anteroom, opened the door, saw a men’s room door across the hall, and went into it. Feet pounded down the hallway, a long run. As soon as they went into the office and were silenced by the thick carpeting, Du Pré stepped back out, jacket over his arm, and went swiftly out a side entrance. The fall air here was crisp and the leaves on the maples yellow and red.

  At the hotel, he changed back into his Levi’s and boots and left the cheap suit and shoes on the bed.

  “What the fuck happened to you?” said Bart, a little angry, when Du Pré came in the door of the hotel suite.

  “I…” Du Pré said, feeling his naked upper lip, “I got drunk. I shave off my mustache. I got this nice tattoo…”

  Bart shook his head.

  Du Pré called room service and ordered some cheese and a double bourbon, a few crackers.

  He went to a little ice cream table with filigree chairs by the bay window and sat there. The bellboy brought a tray, set it down. Bart handed the youngster a bill and the bellboy left.

  Du Pré sat, nibbling and sipping.

  “You know, Bart,” said Du Pré, “I didn’t need to shave off my mustache. I was too hasty there.”

  I didn’t know it would be so simple. Now I got to take shit for it till it grows back out. But my beard, it grows like I use chicken shit for soap. That is my French blood there.

  The telephone rang. Bart picked it up and got an earful. He was holding the receiver a good two feet from him. Once in a while, he winced.

  “It’s for you,” Bart said sweetly when whoever was on the other end paused for breath.

  Du Pré took it. “Hello, Michelle,” he said.

  “What the fuck did you do?” she yelled. “You bastard. I had people who were supposed to be watching you!”

  “Well, yeah,” said Du Pré, “but I am a shy man and I don’t like to be stared at, you know.”

  “The paramedics hauled Chase off in straps,” she said. “What the fuck did you do?”

  “I don’t think he likes me,” said Du Pré. “When he figured out who I was, his eyes rolled up in his head. He foamed.”

  “Christ,” said Michelle Leuci, sounding more like a detective.
“I’m sorry.”

  “It is okay,” said Du Pré.

  “Well,” she said, “don’t do that again. Next time, stay where we can see you.”

  “I will go back to Montana now,” said Du Pré.

  “What?”

  “I am going home,” said Du Pré. “It isn’t Chase. He was biting his tongue and blood was shooting out of his mouth. It isn’t him.”

  Detective Leuci was silent.

  “I’m sorry,” said Du Pré.

  “He was taken to a private hospital in Virginia,” said Michelle.

  As long as he was there, nothing would happen, Du Pré thought. Poor Chase, used like a coyote uses a bush. “This guy, I wonder if I have ever seen him. I know that he has seen me.”

  “What do you mean he has seen you?” said Michelle.

  Du Pré had been talking to himself, the mark of people who work alone.

  “I have to think some,” he said, “and I can’t think in cities.”

  “Nobody can think in cities—just look at the fucking newspaper,” said Michelle.

  “So I will go home. What I meant was, Benetsee said this evil man would come after me, and I was just wondering if I have ever seen him. Then I thought he must have seen me.”

  “Why?”

  “He was at the festival and I was playing,” said Du Pré, “so he has seen me. I don’t know him, but he knows me.”

  “Okay,” said Michelle.

  “I am pretty blind here,” said Du Pré, “like you don’t see what there is to see there.”

  “There?” said Michelle. “There’s nothing there but a long view.”

  “Yes,” said Du Pré.

  She laughed. “Well,” she said, “it’s a jumble, for sure.”

  Du Pré handed the phone back to Bart. He went back to his seat by the window. He looked out at the city street. Panhandlers worked the crowds, who lurched away from them like minnows shying from a turtle. A couple homeless folks, shapeless masses of layered rags, slept off their drunks in the day’s dying heat. Papers and plastic cups danced in the breeze. The air felt used.

  An ambulance screeched past.

  This city is not fun, thought Du Pré. Life could be very terrible here.

  He sipped his bourbon. He ate some cheese.

  Down below, two cops hauled a ragged, screeching woman toward a car. They held her as far away from them as they could.