by Thomas King
“He’s training.”
Claire looked at the post. “For what?”
“I don’t know.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. Thumps didn’t know. Not for sure. Though he was willing to put money on a guess.
“You’re sure.”
Thumps stepped up to the post and threw a half-hearted punch at the rope wrappings. “It’s a homemade makiwara board. Martial artists use it to toughen their hands.”
Claire stood up and came to the post. She ran a hand across the blood stains. “He didn’t get a black eye from hitting a post.”
“That’s as much as I know.”
Claire eased herself into Thumps’s arms. “He’s all I have.”
The article hadn’t mentioned tears. Thumps knew this was a simple matter. He was to put his arms around her and hold her gently but tightly, so she knew she was loved. He was not to say comforting things such as “it’ll be all right” or ask questions such as “what’s wrong?” or get frustrated with the contradictions of cause and effect. He was not to try to solve the problem. He was to keep his mouth shut. Someone, probably a woman, had told him that many times women cry not because they’re unhappy but because it relieves stress. Unfortunately, knowing this was not a great help, and as he stood in the barn with Claire buried against his chest, Thumps could feel his emotions heading for high ground to escape the flood.
“Can you stay the night?”
“I think the night’s over.”
“You don’t like me crying, do you?”
There were all sorts of trick questions that you had to deal with in a relationship, and Thumps had never been able to figure out the right answers. Partly it was because the answers changed, and partly it was because there were no right answers. Only wrong ones.
“It’s not that,” said Thumps, which is what he always said.
“You always say that,” said Claire.
Thumps stroked Claire’s hair, but his heart wasn’t in it. His mind had already returned to the matter at hand. Noah Ridge.
“Well, if you’re going,” said Claire, pushing away and wiping her eyes, “you should get going.”
“Maybe my car won’t start.”
Claire kissed Thumps on the cheek. “Call me when all of this is done.”
The wind had died down, and watching Claire walk back to the house, from the shelter of the barn, almost made the world feel warm. Part of him wanted to go with her, crawl into bed, and stay there. Maybe the car would help. But as he slipped the key into the ignition, he knew the perverse collection of metal and plastic and wires would kick over on the first turn.
And, of course, it did.
TWENTY-FOUR
Thumps arrived at the top of the coulee just as the sky was beginning to soften. Below him on the river bottom was Moses Blood’s place. Thumps hadn’t seen dawn come up in a very long time, so he waited in the car with the heater running and watched the early-morning colours leave the eastern horizon and climb into the sky. The sun would arrive later. Perhaps it would be a bright day. Maybe even warm.
The track down the side of the coulee was in no better shape than the last time he had taken it, and as the Volvo shuddered and snapped from side to side and plunged in and out of the ruts and potholes, Thumps wondered what he thought he was going to accomplish. Maybe he just needed a place to rest for a while, where neither the sheriff nor Asah, Dakota, or Claire, or Freeway, for that matter, could find him. Someplace safe and quiet. Someplace where people were kind to one another. Someplace where folks didn’t kill each other.
Thumps was used to finding the unexpected when he visited Moses, but the green plastic table with its yellow-and-red umbrella, sitting in the snow in the yard, was a startling surprise. Moses was sitting in one of the two lounge chairs. On the table was a large thermos and two cups. Through the windshield, Thumps could have mistaken the scene for a picnic.
“Been expecting you,” said Moses as Thumps stepped out of the car.
Thumps had been wrong. Sun or no sun, it wasn’t going to be warm.
“Boy,” said Moses, “you got to like this weather.”
“It’s a little cold.”
“Sure,” said Moses, “but it’s supposed to be cold. No point complaining about the cold in winter. Always best to save the complaining for the spring when it’s supposed to be warm and it isn’t.”
Thumps could see the logic of this, but he could also feel his blood beginning to thicken.
“I’ll bet you’re looking for that famous guy who disappeared.”
Thumps was never surprised anymore by what Moses knew. “I figured he was in one of your trailers playing video games.”
“Ho,” said Moses, “that’s what that guy on the university channel would call ‘droll.’ You got to love English. That language has sure got some great words.”
“So, you haven’t seen him.”
“Nope.”
“You know anyone who has?”
“Nope.”
Moses wasn’t one to hoard information, but like Cooley, if you wanted an answer to a question, you had to ask the right question.
“You hear anything?”
“I hear all sorts of things. Some of it, shouldn’t listen to. Especially television. The things those guys say.”
“What do they say about Noah Ridge?”
“Some nice television woman said that there was blood in the hotel room.” Moses opened the thermos. “She said there had been a death threat and that a retired FBI agent had already been rubbed out.”
That was pretty much it, all right, thought Thumps. There wasn’t much more than that. “I should probably be getting back to town.”
Moses poured the tea. It came out of the thermos in clouds of steam and rolled into the cups. “You should warm up first. Cold is okay, but you don’t want to overdo it.”
Thumps eased himself into the chair and gripped the arms to try to stop from shaking. “He could be dead.”
“Sure,” said Moses, “but who would want to kill him?”
That should have been an easy question, but now that Moses had asked it, had said it out loud, Thumps realized that he hadn’t really considered the possible answers as carefully as he had thought. In a perfect world, Mitchell Street would have been at the top of the list, but he was dead. Grover Many Horses would make a good suspect, but only because of a sister he had barely known. That left Dakota Miles and Reuben Justice. Neither of them was a particularly good choice. Dakota had stuck with Noah through good times and bad, and Justice, so far as Thumps could tell, had no particular reason to dislike Noah enough to kill him. And all that before you got to the other question. Why?
The only possibility that made sense was that Noah had staged his own kidnapping and then gone into hiding. And that, when the time was right, he would reappear with a story good enough to send book sales right through the roof. That worked as long as you ignored Street’s body lying in Beth’s morgue and the blood in Noah’s room.
“Here it comes.” Moses raised his head and let the first light of the sun strike his face. “Boy, that is one beautiful sight.”
Thumps’s head was tucked into his jacket, and he wasn’t about to move it.
“Sure beats television,” said Moses.
“Good tea.”
“Most Indians on the run would head back to the reservation or into the mountains,” said Moses. “But I don’t guess your man is one of those. Maybe he’s more like you.”
“I suppose.”
“So,” said Moses, leaning back to enjoy the light, “where would you go?”
“Someplace warm.”
“Florida,” said Moses. “I hear the Indians in Florida dance with alligators.”
“I need some information.” Thumps took a pen and a piece of paper out of his pocket. “You think you could ask Stick to check this out on the internet?”
“Sure,” said Moses. “We’ll talk to the Nephews about it. They’re not real smart, but they know a lot of stuff.”
Thumps could feel his teeth start to rattle in his head. He wiggled his toes in his shoes to make sure they were still alive.
“Can’t beat winter,” said Moses. “It’s my favourite season. Everything slows way down, and the world gets quiet. If you listen, you can hear mountains talking to each other.”
“I prefer summer,” said Thumps.
“You ever see otters come down an ice slide? They have a good time in winter ’cause they have a good coat of fur.” Moses poured the last of the tea into the cups. “That’s the secret. Animals or humans, it doesn’t matter. If you’re going to enjoy winter, you have to have a good coat.”
AS THUMPS GOT back to the main road, he reminded himself that he was not Noah. Moses had been wrong about that. For the most part. But he had been right about the rest. Noah wouldn’t have headed for the reservation. A stranger, Indian or White, in that world wouldn’t stay hidden for long. And he wouldn’t go to the mountains either. Certainly not in winter. He would go someplace else. Someplace out of sight. Someplace warm.
Thumps had just turned onto Main Street when he saw the flashing light in his rear-view mirror. Thumps couldn’t see who was behind the wheel of the cruiser, but he guessed it was Andy Hooper. He and the deputy were not exactly on speaking terms, and Thumps knew that giving him a ticket was going to make Andy’s day.
But the man who lumbered out of the police car and motioned for Thumps to roll his window down was not Hooper. It was the sheriff.
“Went through that stop sign back there.” Hockney squatted down so he was on eye level.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Running a stop sign’s a serious offence.”
“You’re kidding.” Thumps tried to think of what he might have done to get the sheriff any angrier than he had been when Thumps had last seen him.
“Where’ve you been?”
“Out.”
“I don’t pay you for being out.”
“So far, you haven’t paid me at all.”
“Might have to take the fine out of your salary.”
Thumps was much too tired to play this game. “Okay, I quit.”
The sheriff rocked back on his heels. “You know, you’re getting pretty good at quitting.”
“Is there a point?”
“Maybe I won’t give you a ticket.”
“Duke . . .”
Hockney grabbed the edge of the window and pulled himself to his feet. “Andy just called in. He’s found Ridge.”
Thumps searched the sheriff’s face for the answer to the question. But all he could find was the weariness that all cops carried with them.
“I was just on my way out there.”
“Alive or dead?”
“You got your cameras?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you better bring them.”
THUMPS FOLLOWED HOCKNEY north out of town. At the Shell station, they turned east and headed out onto the back of the prairies. Here the world was broad and uninspiring, a landscape of space, where the air seemed thin and precious. He had tried creating a series of photographs out by Red Tail Lake, but even with an orange filter to darken the sky and make the clouds appear more dramatic, the final result had been disappointing. Thumps loved water, but not even the lake had been able to save the composition.
But now that seemed to be where they were headed. Red Tail Lake. The sheriff had hinted that they were going to look at a corpse. Thumps had heard the hint but had not followed up on it. Maybe he didn’t want to believe that Noah was dead. The more he had thought about it, the more he had liked his theory that the man was just a publicity-seeking egotist who would do anything to get on the evening news. But if Andy had actually found Noah’s body, the whole complexion of the case would change, and at that point, Thumps promised himself, he would quit again.
Thumps had been to Red Tail Lake only two or three times. Once for photography and once with Claire, when Sterling Noseworthy, owner of Wild Rose Realty, had thrown a summer party for people with money. Neither Claire nor Thumps qualified, and Thumps wasn’t sure why she had got the invitation, though he suspected that it had to do with the condominiums at Buffalo Mountain. Wild Rose was the exclusive listing agency for the units, and inviting two Indians to a rich folks’ party was probably Sterling’s way of saying thanks.
A Radio Shack gift certificate would have been more fun, but it hadn’t been a complete waste of an evening. Thumps had been able to sell two of his photographs and had arranged a commission with a banker from Missoula to take a black-and-white picture of the man’s house with the lake in evening light. Thumps had spent the better part of two days trying to get the house and the lake to co-operate, but in the end he had had to settle for a sombre portrait in which neither of the participants would smile.
The third time was a fishing trip. Hockney had talked him into his fishing boat, a tiny aluminum shell with a huge motor, which required Thumps to sit at the very front, or the bow, as Duke corrected him, to counterbalance the weight. Thumps suspected that getting the boat trim required a second fisherman, and that if Hockney tried to take it out all by himself, the boat would sink at the back. Or the stern.
They had even caught fish.
Most of Red Tail Lake was wild. The southern end was a state park that nobody used, while the east side dribbled out into a series of capillaries and marshes. The west side contained the tiny town of Red Tail, which consisted of a general store and gas station and a “waterfront” motel.
Dora Manning owned everything in Red Tail: store, station, and motel. Thumps had met her once, on the fishing trip, when Hockney had stopped at the pumps to get gas for his car and his boat.
Hockney pulled into the gas station. Thumps pulled in behind him.
“You need gas?”
“No.” Thumps double-checked the gas gauge. It was one of the few things on the car that worked on a regular basis. The needle was on full, which was good, since he knew the car was looking for any excuse to roll over and quit.
Maybe he and the car had more in common than he imagined. Dora was behind the counter stacking cigarettes into the plastic dispensers. Hockney was standing in front of the glass doors looking at the soft drinks.
“You got any root beer?”
“No root beer,” said Dora.
Hockney grabbed two lemonades and brought them to the counter. “How’s business?”
“Fine,” said Dora.
Dora had worked for a big corporation somewhere back east. Not that you would have guessed it to look at her. She was a tall, gangly woman with a long face and thin hair who reminded Thumps of photographs he had seen of sharecroppers from Oklahoma on their way to California.
Hockney laid a five-dollar bill on the counter. “You know where the Connor place is?”
“There trouble out there?” Thumps asked.
“That which is everybody’s business is nobody’s business,” said Dora without blinking.
“Do tell,” said the sheriff.
“A man stopped here the other day,” said Dora. “Got gas and a couple bags of chips.”
Hockney took off his hat and spun the brim around his finger. “That’s exciting, all right.”
“Asked about the lake.” Dora gestured to the community bulletin board at the back of the store. “Talked to Arthur about real estate.”
The sheriff nodded. “He use a credit card?”
Dora shook her head. “Cash. Maybe Mr. DreadfulWater knows him.”
“Thumps?” Hockney was looking sour again.
“He was Indian,” said Dora. “Don’t see too many Indians out here at the lake.”
“Yeah,” said the sheriff, “I’ll bet. Can you draw me a map to the Connor place?”
“Journey over all the universe in a map, without the expense and fatigue of travelling, without suffering the inconveniences of heat, cold, hunger, and thirst.”
“Was that a yes?” said the sheriff.
“No,” said Dora, “that was Cervantes.”
THE CONNOR PLACE was one of the newer houses on the north end of the lake, an area that had come to be known as The Shore. It was a pretentious designation for a strip of lakefront that consisted of rocks and sand and a slight elevation, which gave you the illusion of being on high ground. There was nothing particularly wrong with the view, but neither was there anything to recommend it. The Shore was the water version of Glory, a seasonal shelter for the wealthy.
Archie had told him that The Shore had originally been a series of fishing cabins. It didn’t have a name in those days, and that didn’t change even after the cabins had been converted into summer cottages. But then money moved in, and the cabins and the cottages were bulldozed to make way for real houses with floor-to-ceiling windows, hot tubs, and wraparound decks.
Mind you, no one lived year-round at The Shore. The houses were winterized, but as soon as the geese took to the sky, so did the people. Which meant everyone who lived at The Shore had at least two houses. Thumps suspected that many of them had more.
“Who’s Arthur?”
“Dora’s husband,” said the sheriff.
“I thought she was on her own.”
“She is,” said Hockney. “Arthur died about two years back.”
“But she said Arthur talked to the man.”
“You know,” said the sheriff, “nothing much gets by you, does it?”
THE CONNOR PLACE sat on a promontory of land that ran out into the lake. It was a split-level affair with blue-grey hardboard siding and a series of large porthole windows at the front. Thumps suspected that all the real windows were at the back overlooking the water, and he found himself moderately excited about seeing the inside of the house.
Andy’s cruiser was parked in the driveway, and Thumps could see right away what had made Andy suspect that something was amiss. Fresh tracks in the snow.
“You believe it?” said Hockney, climbing out of his car. “They build a house like this in the middle of nowhere, and then they don’t live in it.”