by Will Weaver
“Minor accident at Doc’s,” he said. He stared at Madeline. Her eyes. Only her eyes were the same, as round and deep brown as walnuts. The rest of her was somebody else. Her hair was very long and was split into even braids. The roundness, the softness in her face was gone. Now her cheekbones were sharp and reddened, chapped by sun and wind. Around her neck hung a leather thong strung with three beads of turquoise. She wore a gray, coarse wool sweater under which her small breasts lay free. A buckskin jacket sat folded on the chair. Her faded blue jeans ended at battered Adidas.
No short-curled hair.
No Sears dress.
No leather shoes.
No wristwatch.
No pale lipstick.
No makeup at all.
“Walked,” Guy said suddenly. “From where?”
“From No Medicine Town. I stay there,” she said, looking down briefly.
Guy looked out the west window toward the far-off timber. His mother had walked fifteen miles and only now was the sun fully up.
“I started early,” she said, as always a half step farther along the path of his thoughts. “If you walk fast, it doesn’t take long.”
“Where’s the Cutlass?”
“Your father sold it. About five years ago. Said he had a tractor payment to make.”
Goddamn him.
“You should have a car,” Guy muttered, standing and pulling on his jeans. “You shouldn’t be out walking around in the middle of the night.” He would buy her a car. They would go together this morning to Detroit Lakes and he would buy her a car.
“I don’t want a car,” she said. “I’ve gotten quite used to living without one. If I had a car, then I’d have to worry about insurance, mechanics, all the rest. Without a car, things are simple.”
Guy stared down at her.
“I know,” she said. “I’m a different person than when you left. But you probably heard that.” She looked down again.
“Sort of,” Guy said. He did not mention Helmer’s letter or Doc’s explanation.
“Sometimes I feel like I should apologize for changing—but I won’t,” she said before he could speak. She began to say more but suddenly Martin’s boots stamped on the porch. For an instant his mother’s eyes widened with fright. Then she said rapidly, “Guy, don’t worry about me. And don’t stay. There’s nothing here for you anymore. You’ve got your own life, go back to it. Don’t think about us. Forget all this . . .” She waved her hands at the living room, at the farm beyond.
Martin came into the kitchen doorway. He stopped to stare. “Well, well, a family reunion.”
“Just visiting,” Madeline said softly. She put on her jacket.
“Buckskin, now,” Martin said, staring at her jacket. “You look more and more like an Indian every time I see you.”
Guy was standing halfway between his parents. “I’ll cook some eggs,” he said. “Make some coffee.”
“No eggs ’cause there’s no chickens,” Martin said. “Not hungry anyway.” He shrugged off his jacket and threw it in the corner.
“I better go,” Madeline murmured to Guy. As she passed she stopped to pick up Martin’s jacket. She began to hang it on the hook, then looked at a rip on the elbow. She folded the jacket over her arm.
“Where the hell you taking my jacket?” Martin shouted. “Your Indian buck lose his?”
“The elbow’s gone,” she said softly. “I’ll mend it. And wash it.”
Martin stared. A tic worked his right cheek like a worm just beneath the surface of the skin trying to break through.
Guy walked his mother into the yard. Behind them in the house, something made of glass shattered.
“Just like the old days,” Guy said, then wished he hadn’t.
His mother swallowed but kept walking. “Your father and I were in love once,” she said quietly. “For a couple of years, anyway. When you’re in love, love doesn’t let you think about anything except itself. So we were mostly happy, then. But slowly we fell out of love. Other things crept in, came between us. Your grandfather. The cows. Never having anyone to wake up with because your father was always gone for chores at five-thirty every morning of the year. Canning with your grandmother. The garden. Other things. Small, dumb things. But they all were like grains of sand in a shoe. For a while, maybe a long while, you can keep walking. The sand doesn’t matter. But at some point you start to limp. Then after a while you can’t walk another step. You’ve got to stop and empty it out.”
She stopped walking. “That’s what I did, I suppose. I knew I had stopped moving. So when I stopped was a good time, I thought, to empty out of my life some things that weren’t working. I started throwing away things. And kept throwing and throwing. Soon there wasn’t much left. That’s when I got moving again.”
She looked back over the farmyard, then back to Guy. The harsh light of the early sun lit her face, showed the mesh of wrinkles around her eyes and mouth, showed the gray in her hair. Guy realized she was nearly sixty years old. He reached for her. In reaching he felt the old blood try to pull back his arms, try to stop his hands from reaching, from pulling her close.
The old blood. In one instant he understood it. The old blood was a river from the red lake of the heart that flowed into the past. The river started wide in the present; his father, grandfather, and himself, three generations of living men, formed a wide breach in time. Beyond Helmer, into the fourth generation and further back, the river narrowed. Beyond Helmer were shadowy photographs of big men and long-skirted women beside sagged cabins. Beyond photographs were only images, memory. A tall man with blue eyes and great hands . . . a woman with red hair. But all of them were men and women who worked the land. If right now he spaded up a hole and put in his hand, in the cool earth he could feel them shifting, turning; hear them whispering to him; feel the pull of their fingers on his.
But right now the old blood was not so strong. It was not strong because he was older and because he had been away from the land for a long time. He had broken its hold. Now he controlled the river of his own heart.
In the sunlight in the open yard, he held his mother for a long time.
“Come,” he said finally, steering her toward his car. “I’ll drive you back.”
But Madeline shook her head. She stopped him, then pushed him, gently, away. “No—I have to walk.”
He watched her go. Her thin figure passed down the driveway. On the road, she walked without looking back. As she receded, the two brown braids on the light buckskin of her jacket gradually grew together, fused. At the half-mile corner she angled across the field. He watched her move steadily toward the green timber of the reservation, a tiny figure taking rapid steps across the land.
19
Monday morning. Thirty-one degrees, partly cloudy. Guy and Kennedy hauled a load of cattle feed into Flatwater for grinding. Martin had let the grain bin run dry. The cows bellowed and followed Guy with their heads as he passed their stanchions; he went to the grain room and kicked the bin. Only dust fell.
He pulled an orange wagon full of ear corn and oats behind Martin’s pickup, the ’64 Ford. Where the farm driveway met the road, Guy went into the ditch. There were some brakes but not enough. Luckily the wagon did not tip, and he was able to drive back onto the road. There he drove slowly and watched the Ford’s gauges as he headed to town.
The truck’s oil gauge showed less than forty pounds of pressure. The water temperature needle rose fast and stayed high. The steering linkage was loose. The tires shuddered. The brakes grabbed metal on metal whenever he slowed. Rather than take the main highway, Guy turned onto the gravel of Chippewa Highway, a narrow, potholed road that wound its way generally parallel to the main highway, to Flatwater. It was called Chippewa Highway because it was the main route from White Earth to the liquor store in Flatwater. If Indian cars, with their
broken headlights and expired license plates, stayed off the main highway, the county sheriff and his deputies stayed off Chippewa Highway.
As did the road graders. Guy drove ten miles an hour on a surface so washboardy it chattered his teeth. Ten miles from town, he came around a bend and let the truck coast to a full stop. Ahead on the road was a woman beating a car.
Against a backdrop of evergreens, a woman in a gray coat was kicking a dusty yellow Chevy Vega. The woman was white, young, with short dark hair. Steam rose from beneath the Vega’s hood. And if her car smoked, so did the woman; her breath puffed frosty steam with each kick. So far she had caved in the driver’s door and was working her way back. Intent on her work, she did not notice Guy. He rolled down the window. He listened, then grinned. “Kennedy, cover those ears, you’re too young for that kind of language.” Kennedy yipped. The woman turned to stare.
Guy walked forward. “Trouble?” he asked.
The woman surveyed him up and down. Her cheeks were scarlet on white from the cold air and exertion. She was tall, six feet at least. Her coat was gray wool, a thin cashmere. She wore leather dress shoes, wool slacks, a wine-colored turtleneck. Her shiny brown hair was short on the sides, long on top, and hung forward in a diagonal slant across her forehead. Her teeth were straight, white, and expensive. The whole woman was expensive. She was the kind of woman Guy saw in magazines like Vogue and Cosmopolitan.
“This fucking car,” she said, jerking her head at the Vega. “If I never see this broken-down bastard again, it’d be fine with me.”
“I see,” Guy said. He swallowed a grin. You did not grin at angry women. That much about women he understood. Rather, because he had on a pair of Martin’s spotted green coveralls and a dusty feed cap, he nodded and spit. “Mind if I take a look?”
She looked him up and down again. “Why not? Every goddamn would-be mechanic from here to Fargo has looked at it, so why stop now?”
“Right,” Guy said. He popped the hood. The water pump hung loose. Antifreeze dripped green where it had boiled over. The valve cover rattled, its gasket broken. Oil had leaked down the side of the engine block and smelled like butter left burning in a frying pan.
First he checked the oil. The dipstick came up dry but for a dot of oil on its tip. At least three quarts low.
Next he checked the radiator; its cap blew off at his touch. He jerked backward, striking the back of his head on the hood latch. White milkweed pods floated and popped behind his eyes. He steadied himself against the fender.
“You okay?” the woman asked, making no move toward him.
“Fine,” Guy muttered. He stared at her for a moment. She had clutched her coat around its neck and hunched her shoulders against the breeze that came down the road from the northwest. “You could sit in the truck if you like,” he said.
“I’m fine,” the woman said crossly, stamping her feet to stay warm.
Guy leaned back over the Vega’s engine. With a finger and then with a twig, he fished the radiator for antifreeze. He found none. “How long did you drive it this way?” he asked. When he received no answer he looked up. The woman was opening the door to the pickup. He leaned back over the engine, wet a finger, and touched the side of the engine block. His finger sizzled for a moment. He cursed, jerked it away, and sucked on it. He guessed the engine was fried. Still, if he tightened the water pump the Vega might make it to Flatwater.
He returned to the pickup for tools. “Doesn’t look good,” he said, digging through Martin’s toolbox.
“No kidding,” the woman said. She looked up from the dashboard and its crushed Hamm’s cans, grease seals, and bolts to the empty road ahead.
“So how long have you had this car?” Guy said.
“Me? Have this piece of shit? I rented it yesterday in Fargo. The last rental car in town, the man said. The bastard.”
“Right,” Guy said, backing away with ratchet and half-inch socket.
Back in the engine compartment, he fit the socket, turned the ratchet. In the first quarter turn he broke off the stud that went into the engine block. Fucking aluminum. But no matter—three of the four studs would hold the pump. The next stud broke immediately.
He cursed. Now the water pump was finished. He leaned back to think. As he rested his wrench on the wheel well, electricity jerked through his arm all the way to his teeth. He stumbled back—his wrench had touched a broken wire from the battery—and hit his head again on the hood latch. This time he sat down hard on the dirt road. When he could see clearly, his first image was of the woman staring at him through the windshield of the pickup like she was on TV. She didn’t move. He shook his head and got to his feet. He kicked the Vega in the grille. It shattered. Plastic. The whole goddamn car was aluminum and plastic and vinyl. Kennedy’s dog shit was better made than this car.
He stalked back to the pickup and threw the wrench into the toolbox. “Any luggage?” he said.
“Yes,” the woman said, “in the back seat. Why?”
Guy didn’t answer her. He retrieved one medium-sized, Italian leather suitcase, plus a locking briefcase nearly as heavy, and put them in the pickup. Then he dug behind the seat and found Martin’s dusty twelve-gauge shotgun.
“Oh God!” the woman said, shrinking away, feeling for the door handle.
“Relax,” he said. In the glove box he found shells. Then he walked back to the Vega, found the gas line to the carburetor, jerked it loose. Gas spurted and ran down the sides of the engine. Then he walked halfway back to the pickup, turned, and fired three rounds into the Vega, the last through the gas tank.
He waited. Black smoke began to creep from the engine compartment. On the Vega’s upraised yellow hood, paint began to bubble and creep; a black sun appeared.
Guy returned to the pickup and cased the gun. “Couldn’t save it,” he said, “sorry.”
The woman still held her hands over her ears and stared openmouthed at the Vega.
Guy started the pickup’s engine and pulled past the car. The woman’s head turned as they passed. Black smoke boiled inside the car. They had driven half a mile before she yelled, “Where are you taking me?”
“Nearest town. Flatwater.” He rubbed his head.
“But . . . my car. What about my car? What am I going to say about my car?”
“This is the reservation.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your car broke down. You got a ride into Flatwater. Somebody came along. It happens all the time.” He rubbed his head again. There was a daddy longlegs crawling on his neck.
“Jesus,” she murmured, turning to stare out her window. Then she looked back. Her eyes fell to his neck. “Jesus,” she said, “you’re bleeding.”
“Silver, Cassandra Silver. My friends call me Cassy,” she said, extending her hand over the table. Guy dumped the cattle feed at the mill, then went to the clinic for three stitches in the back of his head. Now he sat with her in a booth at the Red Caboose Cafe just across from the mill. His head ached.
“Miss Silver,” he said. She wore no wedding ring, did not strike him as married. “Guy Pehrsson.”
“Mr. Pehrsson.”
They shook hands, one pump.
They sipped their coffee in silence. At length she said, “You . . . shoot and burn cars often?”
“Not that much. Just when it seems right,” Guy said. He grimaced. His stitches hurt when he talked.
“Kind of like The Dukes of Hazzard?” she said. “This must be Duke country.”
“I don’t watch the show, sorry,” Guy said.
Cassandra Silver stared at him a long moment, then looked about the cafe. Guy followed her eyes. Men in insulated coveralls and seed-corn caps sat at the counter eating plates of eggs and hash browns and catsup, drinking coffee, and smoking. Through the steamy picture window, across the street, was the
feed mill, a cement-block building with a brown drift of oat dust across its metal roof. In front of the mill, below the loading dock, a farmer in the rear of a blue pickup was handing feeder pigs up to another man standing by a crate and a scale; he swung the pigs up by a leg; the second man caught them. To the left of the feed mill, on the sidewalk, a black-coated Indian walked trembly-legged, as if he were on thin ice. Her eyes returned to the table next to theirs. A man in tattered orange deer-hunting coveralls was slamming the butt of a catsup bottle with his palm. Catsup spurted onto his eggs.
“Jesus,” she murmured to herself, and went to buy cigarettes. Guy sipped his coffee. As Cassandra returned the man in the orange coveralls said to another man, “It’s the Jews, you know. They’re behind everything. Take this cholesterol business. It’s a big Jewish conspiracy. All you read now, all you hear on TV—it’s cholesterol. People shouldn’t eat red meat. People shouldn’t eat eggs, drink cream. That’s all you hear, right?”
The second man drank coffee from his cup and listened.
“And that’s all you hear because the Jews control the newspapers and the TV, plus the American Medical Association. I mean most doctors are Jews, right?” the first man said.
The other man nodded.
Cassandra’s jaw slowly slacked.
“So when people hear this stuff day in, day out, they get scared,” the first man said. “They think—shit!—red meat and eggs is plugging up my arteries. I gotta lower my cholesterol intake. So they stop eating meat and eggs and ice cream. Millions of people, they all stop, right?”
The other man nodded.
“Suddenly there’s no demand for red meat, eggs, milk. No demand, prices fall. I mean, you can see that happening right now.”
“You got that right,” the other man said.
“No demand, farmers go out of business. No farmers, the value of the land drops to nothing. Bingo—then it happens. Suddenly the Jews are buying up all the farmland. I mean, every goddamn acre. Then when they got all the farmland under their control—along with the newspapers and the banks and the Federal Reserve Board—then bingo. It happens again. Suddenly we’ll start to hear reports and see articles that say ‘Hey! Sorry. We were wrong. Cholesterol? No problem with cholesterol! In fact, the more cholesterol you eat, the longer you’ll live.’”