“Do you happen to remember the boot maker’s name?”
She laughed, and I could sense she was in the act of shutting down. “Stoltzfus, try and forget that one; but they had a falling out and I don’t think Clarence was welcome there anymore.”
“Anywhere else, places where you think he might go if people were looking for him?” I was losing hope. “Anywhere at all.”
She actually smiled. “No.”
The Bear interrupted. “Hey, Inez?” She took her time, turning to look up at him. “You know who the smartest man I know is?” The fingers laced around the ball and he palmed it, one-handed, in my direction. “Him.” The Cheyenne Nation took a few steps back onto the court. “Now he may come on with the ‘just-an-ol’-cowboy routine,’ but when he does that it means the wagons are circling and pretty soon there is not going to be anywhere to go.” He bounced the ball to her, and she caught it. “You and me, we are going to play a game of TALK; you win-you walk, I win-you tell us Clarence’s hiding place. These are the rules-you shoot and miss, it is a letter for me. I have to match the shot to keep the letter. You shoot and make the shot, I will subtract a letter, two letters if I miss. That sound fair?”
She smiled and slipped off her coat, allowing it to fall to the floor. “You’re on, Old Bear.”
“I’ll give you a couple of warm-ups.”
I leaned back to watch and, spreading my arms, rested my shoulders on the next seat level.
Inez threw the ball back to the Bear. “Don’t need ’em.”
Evidently the hook had gone out with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, because after Henry’s graceful arc that hit nothing but net, Inez tossed a brick.
The Cheyenne Nation pivoted with a reverse layup and deposited the ball in the hoop. Again. He caught the ball and tossed it to her. “T. Reverse, left-handed.”
Inez misjudged and bounced the ball off of the underside of the rim, almost crowning herself.
He went to the three-point line again, this time to the far end of the baseline, and sunk another. “A.”
Inez took a deep breath and followed suit, and this time the ball rebounded off the rim.
He continued in his around-the-world venture and paused at the top of the key, raised his arms and, with his thick wrist, flicked the ball and swished another one. “L.”
“Jesus.” I whispered the word before I knew it.
She moved to the same spot, but you could see her enthusiasm was flagging. She shot again, and this time she made it. “Take that, Old Bear.”
Henry gripped the ball and dribbled for a moment, possibly having pity on the kid, but it wasn’t in him and he moved another thirty degrees along the perimeter, took a deep step into two-point territory, and drained another. “Back to A.”
Inez moved to the spot and shot, but this time it jumped off the backboard over to me. I picked up the ball and stood, giving the Bear a good chest-to-chest pass.
Henry moved to the top of the key again and drained it. “L.”
She slumped and slowly moved out to the spot to give the shot a try. “One step?”
“I’ll give you two,” he said, unsmiling.
It was the Cheyenne Nation’s form of charity.
The young woman heaved the ball up to where it bounced off the rim twice and then kicked back off the backboard. He retrieved the ball and casually sunk another hook shot. “K.”
He strolled over to her, slipped his arm around her shoulders, and brought her over to the bleachers, even going so far as to kiss the top of her head. “I guess we cannot call you Inez Two Two anymore.”
She laughed in spite of herself and stooped to pick up her coat. After a moment she turned to look up at me, and I smiled.
“There was a fire lookout tower that he took me to down near Black’s Pond. It was locked up, but he broke the clasp off and we spent the night there one time. Diamond Butte Lookout, I think.”
Henry tucked the ball under his arm. “Anywhere else?”
“Not really; he was always looking for a place where we could, you know…” She turned to me and then back to him. “When he could.”
Henry asked. “Meaning?”
She glanced down and shrugged. “He had problems, down there.”
I threw her a line. “Inez, do you know a man by the name of Artie Small Song?”
Her eyes widened just a bit. “I don’t want anything to do with that guy; he’s crazy.”
“Do he and Clarence know each other?”
“I guess. They had a run-in one time.”
“In all honesty, we’re looking for both Clarence and Artie. Do you have any idea where Artie would be?”
The answer was hard and fast. “No.”
“Is there any chance they would be together?”
“No.”
“You make it sound like they don’t like each other.”
She looked at me, incredulous. “They don’t; when I saw the two of them together they were screaming at each other and threatening to do things, kill each other and shit.”
“And when was that?”
“About a month ago.” She was silent for a while and then took a deep breath. “Can I go now?”
“Sure.”
She took her hat and started for the door.
“Hey, Inez?” She stopped when she heard Henry’s voice but didn’t turn. “Be good, because I will be watching.”
She nodded solemnly, but she didn’t say anything as she opened the door and escaped.
Henry looked after her. “Rarely do you see the promise of a man in a boy, but you almost always see the threat of a woman in a girl-and sometimes the threat is not hollow.”
“She’s young.”
“Not that young.”
I tipped my hat back down. “Well, that was an interesting departure from the good-cop/bad-cop-the good-cowboy/bad-Indian.”
He sighed. “Her family has a history of playing hand games. I knew I could count on her sportsmanship, if not her honor.”
He easily evaded me when I attempted to slap the ball from under his arm.
“You never did have the guts to play in the paint, Henry.”
He laughed.
The agent in charge was standing by Rezdawg when we got outside, along with two other agents, one still in the Crown Vic and the other examining Henry’s truck, probably wondering if it ran.
“So, do I have to go talk to Inez Two Two, or have you done my work for me?”
I walked over and stopped, laying an arm on the bed of the truck. “I didn’t know you guys worked on Sundays.”
He slipped off his sunglasses, and we both looked around at the gorgeous day. “Neither rain, nor snow…”
“That’s the postal service.” I thought about it and quoted. “Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these courageous couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”
“Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever heard the whole thing.”
I nodded. “They stole it from Herodotus, about 500 B.C. during the Greek/Persian war-he said it about the Persian mounted postal couriers.”
He shook his head in disbelief. “Are you sure you’re a sheriff?”
I ignored the remark and joined him, tipping my hat back and absorbing the warmth of the sun. “Hey, you don’t happen to have a copy of the phone recordings between Artie and Clarence on you, do you?”
He gave a small laugh. “Those recordings are FBI property.”
“You don’t have a copy?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“How ’bout we trade you what Inez said for a copy of the recording.”
He lounged against the scaly surface of Henry’s truck. “Not a good enough trade. I can always just go inside and question the girl myself.”
“You might not get anything; she’s tough.” I gestured toward the Bear. “And you don’t have an Indian scout.”
Henry spun the basketball in his hands and glanced up at the outside hoop about thirty feet away. “I will play
you for it.”
The agent in charge’s head came down, and he smiled at the Cheyenne Nation. “As much as I’d like to, I don’t have time.”
“Three letters.”
Cliff Cly studied my friend for a moment, and then a broad grin spread across his face. He ceremoniously pushed away from the truck and then carefully took off his jacket, folded it, and placed it on the side of the bed and began loosening his tie. “I should probably warn you that I played JV ball at Rutgers.”
Henry looked impressed. “Wow.”
Rolling up the sleeves on his dress shirt, the FBI AIC paused. “Do I get to pick the three letters?”
The Bear dribbled the ball once, and then held it, his dark eyes studying the federal agent. “Funny, I was thinking A-I-M.”
10
“Rutgers must have been really shitty that year.”
He smiled to himself as we bumped along in Rezdawg, whose top speed today was, evidently, fifty-two miles an hour.
I held the CD in my hand and studied the broken AM radio with its cracked glass and missing buttons, the optic orange indicator frozen permanently at the bottom of the dial. “Have I told you lately just how much I hate this truck?” I sighed, and popped the CD back into its paper envelope. “What do you know about this Amish boot maker?”
“He makes really good boots.”
“Other than that.”
“He supposedly got into trouble for his tastes in women.”
“He married an Indian?”
“He did. In many ways, Levi Stoltzfus is doing his part for the integration of the high plains races.” He coaxed the truck off the rumble strip and back into the center of the lane with a movement that would’ve sent any other vehicle slashing into the opposite ditch. Rezdawg considered the movements of the steering wheel in Henry’s hands as mild suggestions. “To his credit, he just loaded up his boot shop and moved on down the Tongue River to Birney.”
“White Birney?”
“No, Red Birney; once you have gone red, you cannot get it out of your head.”
We took a meandering right onto a dirt road just before the Tongue River and followed the dusty track for a good half mile before Henry urged Rezdawg to a stop, then threw the gearshift into reverse and backed up fifty yards with the transmission sounding as if it was going to fall out onto the roadway.
The truck stumbled to a stop, and the Bear pointed at a crooked ranch gate with words chiseled into the overhead log-STOLTZFUS WORLD FAMOUS BOOTS.
I pivoted to take in the empty road and hillsides and then turned to look back at my buddy. “Hard to be world famous ’round these parts.”
“Give the people quality, and they will beat a path to your door.”
I guessed. “F. W. Woolworth.”
He shook his head.
“S. S. Kresge?”
He shook his head again at my listing of defunct five-and-dimes and spun the wheel several times to get the front tires to turn. “Actually, it was the Kinks.”
The road was deeply rutted and wound around a tall knob of rocks to our right, then straightened into a washboard that leveled off into a low-slung building that must’ve been built around the same time as the original Small Song structure back in the forties. There was a house farther up the hill and a large garden where a Native woman was picking vegetables with two small children.
Henry parked near the shop; again he turned the wheels so that if Rezdawg decided to go on an unscheduled sojourn, it wouldn’t be a long one.
There was a pinsized stream of antifreeze arcing from the radiator that I didn’t see until I walked in front of the vehicle and it sprayed on me. I jumped away and wiped the excess down my jeans and clenched a fist as if to strike the grille guard. “I really hate this truck.”
“Yes. So you have told me.”
I dropped my fist and followed Henry toward the front porch when the woman called from the edge of some tacked-together sheep fence on the hill. “Are you here about your boots?”
The two children joined her and looked at me as if they’d never seen a grown man who had pissed himself.
I tipped my hat. “No, ma’am.”
“Because if you are, they’re not ready.”
“Well, we’re not really here about boots.”
She continued as if she hadn’t heard me. “He always sends a postcard when the boots are ready; did you get a postcard?”
“No, ma’am. We haven’t ordered any boots.”
She glanced at Henry and then back to me; it wasn’t like we’d arrived in a reputable vehicle, so I could understand her concern. “Then what do you want?”
I gestured toward the Bear. “We’d like to speak to your husband, if we could. Are you Mrs. Stoltzfus?”
She pulled a bandana from her black hair and wiped her throat. “Yes, God help me.”
“Is Levi around?”
She gave some quick instructions to the children, who looked disappointed but returned to work as their mother hiked up her skirt, climbed onto a wooden cross-step, and swung a leg over the fence. “Do we owe you money?”
“No.”
She picked her way down the hillside, topped the porch risers, and walked over to where we were, her lace-up packers clapping the rough-cut wood like a xylophone. She’d been a beauty at one time, but age and hard work had worn her down; as Lucian would have said, you can’t have ’em plow on Friday and dance on Saturday. “Doesn’t make any difference, he’s still not here.” She glanced at the Cheyenne Nation. “I know you?”
Henry raised an eyebrow. “I do not know, do you?”
“You’re Henry Standing Bear.” She planted a provocative leg forward with a Mother Earth quality, and I immediately liked her. “I’m Erma Spotted Elk; you dated my sister.”
The Bear nodded his head. “Erma, how is Dottie?”
“She’s living in Seattle; she married some doctor and we never hear from her.”
He folded his arms and leaned against one of the porch poles. “That is too bad.” He looked past her to where the two children were working but continuing to sneak glances at us. “Yours?”
“Yah. They don’t like to garden, but they like to eat.” She turned to look at me, our heads about the same height with her standing on the porch. “You a cop?”
I smiled, but she didn’t smile back. “Does it show?”
“Yah, especially with that hog-leg at the small of your back.”
Henry’s voice played around her. “Erma here has a varied past.”
She laughed. “Varied. I like that.” She dabbed at the sweat that was dripping into her eyes. “I lived down in Denver for a while, danced; got into some trouble. I developed a talent for a lot of things, including spotting cops.”
I glanced up the hill. “And now you’re Amish?”
Her head inclined a little, belaying the next statement. “Yah, I’ve seen the world out there, and you can have it. Everything is going to hell.”
“Maybe.”
She smiled and studied me. “You gonna fix it?”
I shrugged. “Doing my part.”
“Which part involves my husband?”
Henry’s voice was low, but it carried. “Clarence Last Bull.”
She froze for just that brief instant, and if you hadn’t been looking for it you might’ve missed it, but I had a couple of talents myself. She converted the freeze into a slow turn toward the Bear and then looked back to me. “You wanna buy a pair of boots?”
I looked at mine-they were a little worse for wear. “Not especially, but I’d really like to talk about Clarence Last Bull.”
“That’s too bad, ’cause I really want to sell a pair of boots.” She turned, and the wide cotton skirt twirled as she clacked through the open doorway into the shop.
“Seems like the day for the barter system.” I glanced at the Cheyenne Nation, and he nodded for me to pursue.
She was sitting in a wooden armchair and had propped her feet on another facing it. She studied me. I walked over,
and she put her feet on the floor so I could sit, settling my hat over the embarrassing stain near my crotch. She motioned toward the floor, so I pulled off 50 percent of my footwear and handed it to her. Erma took my boot and examined it like a surgeon would a tumor.
“I’d like to know about Clarence Last Bull.”
She examined the boot some more. “He used to work for my husband, but that was a while back.” She ran her hand over the nap. “You like rough-outs? Because we only do regular leather.”
Surprising me, she took my foot and propped it on the edge of her chair between her legs. “Clarence was really good; an artisan. He had an ability and flair, but what he didn’t have was stick-to-itiveness; he’d show up and work a few days and then disappear. Levi finally got tired of it and told him to hit the road. I understand he joined the army and became a cook or something.” She wrapped her strong hands around my foot. “Big feet.”
I nodded. “When was the last time you saw him?”
There was that momentary pause and the flicker of eye movement that meant the truth had just flown in the doorway, inspected the place, and flown out. “Year ago.” She looked down at my captured foot and leaned forward, her breasts on either side. “Fourteen.”
“Thirteen.”
I watched as she eased back and pulled a piece of paper from a sheaf on the rolltop desk. She placed the paper on the floor. “Stand on that.”
I did as she instructed, placing my stocking foot on the sheet as she pulled a carpenter’s pencil from the tomato can on the desk and traced around my foot, first at an angle underneath and then vertically. “I understand you have a cabin down by the river where he used to stay?”
“Yah, when he worked for us he used to bunk down there.” She tapped my leg, and I stepped off the paper. “I need your other foot.”
I pulled off the left boot and stood on another sheet. “Do you mind if we take a look in the cabin?”
She continued to regard me. “Yes, I do.” She studied my foot again. “If you want to wait you can ask for my husband’s opinion, but you might be here for a while.”
I examined the tools and the dust on them. “Where is he?”
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