As the crow flies wl-8

by Craig Johnson

  As the crow flies

  ( Walt Longmire - 8 )

  Craig Johnson

  Craig Johnson

  As the crow flies

  1

  “I wanna know what Katrina Walks Nice did to get kicked out of a joint like this for sixty-one days.”

  I began questioning the makeup of the negotiation team I’d brought with me to convince the chief of the Northern Cheyenne tribe that he should allow my daughter to be married at Crazy Head Springs. “Don’t call the White Buffalo a joint; it’s the nerve center of the reservation.”

  My undersheriff, Victoria Moretti, shook her head. “It’s a fucking convenience store.” She smiled, enjoying the muckraking. “She must’ve done something pretty shitty to get eighty-sixed out of here for two months.” Vic gestured toward the white plastic board above the cash register where all the reservation offenders who had been tagged with bad-check writing, shoplifting, and other unsavory behaviors were cataloged for everyone to see-sort of a twenty-first-century pillorying.

  My eyes skimmed past the board, and I watched the crows circle above Lame Deer as the rain struck the surface of Route 212. It was the main line on the Rez, and the road that truckers used to avoid the scales on the interstate. Before 212 had been widened and properly graded, it had been known as Scalp Alley for the number of traveling unfortunates who had met their demise on the composite scoria/asphalt strip and for the roadside crosses that ran like chain lightning from the Black Hills to the Little Bighorn.

  As my good friend Henry Standing Bear says, on the Rez, even the roads are red.

  I was trying to pay attention, but I kept being distracted by the crows plying the thermals of the high plains sky; it was raining in the distance, but the sun appeared to be overtaking the clouds-a sharp contrast of blue and charcoal that my mother used to say was caused by the devil beating his wife.

  “She must’ve stolen the cash register.”

  My attention was forced back inside and under cover, and I twisted the ring on my pinkie. My wife, Martha, had given it back to me before she died so that I could give it to Cady whenever she got married.

  I looked up-the negotiations weren’t going well. It would appear that Dull Knife College had suddenly scheduled a Cheyenne language immersion class at Crazy Head Springs on the day of the wedding. We had reserved the spot well in advance, but the vagaries of the tribal council were well known and now we were floundering. The old Indian across from me nodded his head in all seriousness. I was negotiating with the chief of the Northern Cheyenne nation, and he was one tough customer.

  “That librarian over at the college is mean. I don’t like to mess with her; she’s got that Indian Alzheimer’s. Um hmm, yes, it is so.”

  I trailed my eyes from Lonnie Little Bird to the rain-slick surface of the asphalt-Lame Deer’s main street being washed clean of all our sins. “What’s that mean, Lonnie?”

  “That’s where you forget everything but the grudges.”

  I smiled in spite of myself and took a deep breath, slowly letting the air out to calm my nerves, as I continued to twirl the ring on my finger. “Cady’s really got her heart set on Crazy Head Springs, Lonnie, and it’s way too late to change the date from the end of July.”

  He glanced out the window, his dark eyes following my gray ones. “Maybe you should go talk to that librarian over at the college. You’re a large man-she’ll listen to you. You could show her your gun.” He glanced down at the red and black chief’s blanket that covered his wheelchair. “She don’t pay no attention to an old, legless Indian.”

  Henry Standing Bear, my daughter’s wedding planner, who had made the arrangements that were now being rapidly unraveled, sipped his coffee and quietly listened.

  “But you’re the chief, Lonnie.”

  “Oh, you know that don’t mean much unless somebody wants a government contract for beef or needs a ribbon cut.”

  Up until this year, Lonnie’s official contribution to the tribal government had been limited to falling asleep in council. A month ago, when the previous tribal leader had been found guilty of siphoning off money to a private account belonging to his daughter, an emergency meeting had been held; since Lonnie had again fallen asleep, and therefore was unable to defend himself, he was unanimously voted in as the new chief.

  “She’s in charge of all the books over there and she’s full blood-that’s pretty much the worst of both worlds.”

  A heavyset man with long hair and a gray top hat with an eagle feather in it stopped by the table and rapped his knuckles on the surface. “Mornin’, Chief.”

  Lonnie sighed. “I wish you wouldn’t call me that, Herbert.”

  Herbert His Good Horse, the morning drive announcer on the low-power FM station KRZZ, smiled and turned to the rest of us in the crowded booth. “Do you know the story about the three Indian women who died at the same time?”

  Herbert was a mainstay on the Rez, where almost everyone tuned in to 94.7 FM just to hear the outrageous jokes he told between songs.

  Lonnie responded for the table. “Nope.”

  “St. Peter was sitting on his throne at the gates of heaven-”

  “Is this a true story, Herbert?”

  He nodded his head vigorously, the eagle feather stuck in the band of his hat bobbing up and down like a crest on his head. “It’s from one of those priests over at St. Labre, and those Catholics, they sometimes tell the truth.”

  Vic barked a laugh. “Fuckin’ A.” She raised an empty coffee cup to get Brandon White Buffalo’s attention in hopes of a round of refills, but the big Crow Indian was attending to another customer.

  Herbert His Good Horse produced an elongated cigar from his silk brocade vest along with a cutter. “One of the women was Lakota, one was Crow, and the other was full-blood Cheyenne. St. Peter looked at them and said that they were heathens and there wasn’t anything he could do to let them into the white man’s heaven, but that he was curious because they had all three died at the same time. He asked the first one, the Lakota woman, if she had anything to say, and she said she didn’t know anything about the rules but she had always lived her life attempting to seek a balance in the red and black roads. St. Peter listened and was impressed by the spirituality of the woman and told her she could go in after all.”

  Lonnie smiled and nodded as Herbert repocketed the cutter and produced a chopped-down, brass Zippo lighter, the one that he had carried in the seventies in Vietnam. “St. Peter leaned down to the Crow woman and asked her if she had anything she wanted to say, and she told him that to her, there was a spirit in the air, the land, the water, and all the creatures that populated mother earth and that she had spent her life attempting to be respectful of all these things. St. Peter was so impressed that he waved her into the white man’s heaven, too.”

  Lonnie sipped his coffee, and Henry, smiling, glanced at me.

  “Then St. Peter turned on his throne and looked at the Cheyenne woman. He asked her, ‘Do you have anything you’d like to say?’ The Cheyenne woman nodded and said-‘Yeah, what are you doing in my chair?’”

  Lonnie laughed so hard, rolling his head from side to side with his mouth hanging open, that no sound came out. After a while he began slapping Henry on the leg; I suppose just because the Bear had both of his and because he was also Cheyenne. “Um hmm, yes, it is so.”

  Herbert, who had recovered from laughing at his own joke, lit his cigar, rapped the table, and signed off with his signature slogan-“Stay calm, have courage…”

  The entire booth responded with the rest: “And wait for signs.”

  Henry, probably glad for the interruption, put his own cold coffee on the table, smiled indulgently, and watched the disc jockey stroll away. It really wasn
’t the Bear’s fault that our site had been suddenly appropriated at the last minute; as he’d explained to me, clearing all the events of all the organizations on the reservation was akin to herding prairie chickens.

  I stared down at the platinum ring with the smallish diamond that was between two inset chips. “What’s the librarian’s name, Lonnie?”

  At the mention of our collective obstruction, the laughter died away in his throat. “Oh, it’s my sister Arbutis. Umm hmm, yes, it is so.”

  Henry raised a hand and massaged the bridge of his nose with a powerful thumb and forefinger. “ Ahh-he ’, I had forgotten.”

  I knew Arbutis Little Bird-more as Lonnie’s daughter’s aunt than as his sister. Melissa, with whom I’d been involved in a complicated case a couple of years ago, was now away in Bozeman playing point guard for Montana State. The news couldn’t have been worse for our cause-Arbutis was a steely-eyed, iron-bottomed gunboat of a woman whose natural response to everything was an absolute negative that brooked no discussion.

  I looked back out the window where the crows had disappeared and the rain appeared to be winning the battle. We were doomed.

  “Henry, have you thought about taking him down to Painted Warrior? That’s a pretty fine spot, um hmm, um hmm. There are crows all over the bottom land, and they circle the cliffs up where the warrior’s war paint streaks the rocks. Yes, it is so.”

  The Bear released his nose. “Near Red Birney?”

  They both smiled, and Lonnie nodded. “Yeah, definitely not White Birney.”

  In a perverseness of geography, there were two towns by the name of Birney just on and just off the Rez. To the Indians they will forever be referred to as Red Birney and White Birney, but to the politically correct Caucasians the names had been transmogrified to Birney Day (for the day school), and Birney Post (for the post office). Like most things on the Rez, it was complicated.

  “You can take the ridge road, but you’ll need a four-wheel-drive if it really decides to rain. If I was you, I’d take 4 down to the windmill at Tie Creek, and then go up the dirt track till you get to the spotter road to your right-that’ll take you straight over to the base of the cliffs.”

  A spotter road was the name the locals called roads used to spotlight and poach deer on the Rez. I was already losing faith. “Lonnie, Cady’s really got her heart set on Crazy Head Springs, and the wedding is in two weeks.”

  He nodded again and then became somber in respect for the gravity of my situation. “Well then, maybe you should go on over to the library, but take your gun, Walter. Umm hmm, yes, it is so.”

  Vic stopped at the counter to buy some chewing gum and was having a conversation with Brandon White Buffalo-probably something to do with Katrina Walks Nice.

  Henry was rolling Lonnie out the door and into the stunningly mixed-up summer afternoon, the ozone hanging in the air like baskets. The Cheyenne Nation, thinking it might be wise to explore other avenues, looked back at me. “Would you like to go take a look at Painted Warrior?”

  I made a face, thinking about how I was going to break the news to Cady. “Well, I really don’t want to go over to the library and tangle with Arbutis Little Bird, I can tell you that much.”

  “It is possible I can do that later. Do you have your gun? I may have to borrow it.”

  I slapped the small of my back, where my duty sidearm rested simply from habit. “All I’ve got is my. 45, and I don’t think that’d bring down Arbutis.” I pushed open the door and started toward Henry’s truck, which I truly despised. I’d loaned the Bullet to Vic so that she could go ahead to Billings, where she would be taking a flight to Omaha later that day for a training seminar on police public relations. That left me with Lonnie, Henry, and Rezdawg, the most pernicious vehicle on the North American continent.

  Vic made her way past, reading my mind. “You’re sure you don’t need your truck?”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  She placed a fist on her belt and stood there, hipshot.

  “I’m still trying to figure out why it is you volunteered to go to Omaha.”

  “Somebody’s gotta do it.”

  “Yep, but Saizarbitoria could’ve gone-Frymire or Double-Tough.”

  She shrugged and turned her head.

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with the upcoming nuptials, does it?”

  She stubbed the toe of a ballistic boot on the asphalt of the parking lot. “Mom’s going to be here the day after tomorrow.” She looked to the distance, at nothing particular. “I’m not good at this shit. I’ll be back right before the wedding, but I think I’ll just avoid the run-up to the three-ring circus-if you don’t mind.” She hit the button on my remote, and the lights blipped on my truck.

  “Okay, but I assume you’re not taking Dog.”

  She responded by opening the door, and we watched as more than a hundred and fifty pounds of assorted canine lineage vaulted from the front seat and circled around to the ’63 three-quarter-ton beast, first going to Lonnie. The Northern Cheyenne chief reached his wrinkled hands out the door and around Dog’s head, running a thumb over the bullet furrow and holding him as if giving a blessing. “ Ha-ay, big rascal.”

  I went around the back and lowered Rezdawg’s tailgate, pinching my fingers in the chains in the process. I waited till Dog noticed me and came around. He looked at the derelict truck and promptly sat.

  “Vic needs the Bullet. Come on, we both get to suffer.”

  He jumped in the bed and I closed the tailgate twice because, of course, the first time it didn’t line up.

  Vic rolled down the driver’s-side window of my truck. “You’re going to be all right up here playing cowboy with the Indians?”

  I joined her at the door. “I think so.” We both watched as Henry put Lonnie’s blanket over his lap, folded up the chief’s wheelchair, and placed it in the bed with Dog. “I’ve got a good scout.”

  “Uh huh.” She hit the ignition and fired up the V-10 and then sat there, rumbling. “I’ll call you from Nebraska.” She thought about it and pulled the three-quarter-ton down into gear. “Fuck it, what else is there to do?”

  It was only a mile up the road to Lonnie’s place, which was good because that was about the distance that Rezdawg could make without breaking down.

  In the numerous conversations I’d had with Henry concerning his pickup, I’d asked him why, as meticulous as he was with every other aspect of his life-his house, his business, his car-why it was that he didn’t get his piece-of-crap truck really fixed. His answer, as we’d waited by the side of the road for another of Rezdawg’s rest periods to pass, was that the truck was a holy relic of his life and that replacing parts would alter its spirit. I retorted that it seemed to me that the junk pile’s spirit was in need of a little repair, but he’d ignored me like he always did.

  I’d also pointed out that the thing didn’t have its original gas, tires, or oil, but that hadn’t gotten me anywhere, either.

  I rolled the chief up the incline to his picture-perfect home. Lonnie had had some wilder days when he was younger and had played baseball and drunk on a professional level until losing his legs to diabetes. He was still under parole with a cadre of sisters, headed by the formidable Arbutis, and had to negotiate with his sisters for visitation rights whenever Melissa, the point guard, came home, but he complained that that was less and less.

  “She has lots of friends up there in Bozeman. I can see why it is she’d rather stay there than come home and watch stories with me.” The stories Lonnie referred to were the soap operas he watched religiously and reported on as if the characters were actual friends. “But it just makes me love her more when she does come home-um hmm, yes, it is so.”

  I paused on the porch so Lonnie could collect his mail from a box attached to the house; most residents on the Rez had post office boxes and didn’t get this kind of attention to delivery, but Lonnie was special.

  “They toy with our hearts, these daughters of ours-don’t they, lawman?”


  “Yes, they do.”

  He patted my hand in reassurance. “Don’t worry; we’ll get your daughter’s wedding sorted out.”

  “Thanks, Lonnie.”

  I started to roll him into the house, but his hands fastened around the chrome runners of his wheelchair. “I think I will stay out here and watch the rain; maybe listen to some baseball. The Rockies are at home and playing the Phillies this afternoon.”

  I looked at the sky with its patchwork of sun and storm clouds-the devil must be beating his wife indeed. I bet I was the only one who used that phrase anymore.

  I adjusted Lonnie’s chair so that he could look northwest and watch the rain come in or not, whatever its choice. The laden clouds were reflected in Lonnie’s thick glasses and joined with the tiny rainbows that had a tendency to magically appear there, confirming the impression that Lonnie was a pot of gold.

  “The devil must be beating his wife. Um hmm, yes, it is so.”

  A damp Dog joined us on the bench seat as we headed back toward town, and I continued to spin the ring on my finger as I aired an elbow out the passenger-side window that only partially rolled down. “It’s not your fault.”

  The Cheyenne Nation ignored me and stared out the cracked windshield.

  “Look, whatever happens, she’ll forgive you-just not me.”

  The Bear nodded and then moved on to one of our other myriad problems. “We have maxed out the Western 8 motel in Ashland.”

  There were no other motels for about fifty miles.

  He shifted gears, and I listened to them grind. “There is my home.”

  “I don’t want you to have to do that.”

  “It would be an honor.”

  If you hung around with the Cheyenne long enough, you learned when not to argue with their generosity. “Thank you.” I stretched my hand across Dog’s broad head and scratched behind both ears, something he enjoyed as though it was a religious experience. “Strange weather.”

  Henry didn’t say anything but glanced at the ring on my pinkie. I tried to change the subject. “Why do you suppose the old-timers used to say that the devil must be beating his wife?”