by Callan Wink
When he got closer, he could see his mother wiping at tears, smiling. This was fairly common now too. She had her cheerful voice and then her even more cheerful wiping-away-tears voice.
“It’s fine,” she said. “I’m okay, honey. Say hi to Ken. We were just talking.”
“Hi, Ken.” He still had his stick resting on his shoulder. Ken’s eyes were red rimmed, and his nose was running. He was leaning over doing something with his hands in the snow next to his leg. He threw the snowball with almost no warning. “Batter’s up, kid,” was all he said.
Probably Ken thought he’d miss, but his dad had taught him how to hit a long time ago, and he was ready even though it looked like he wasn’t. He swung his cottonwood stick as hard as he could, and the snowball evaporated into a mist of cold white powder that slowly filtered down over all three of them. He could feel it melting on his neck under his collar. It turned to wet drops like tears under Ken’s cheeks. It coated his mom’s dark hair so it looked like she’d instantly gone old and gray.
“Hot damn,” Ken said. “What a cut that was. You might make the big leagues yet.”
ONE MORE LAST STAND
At the last rest stop before Crow Agency, Perry pulled off and donned the uniform in a stall in the men’s restroom. Navy-blue wool pants and high-topped leather riding boots. A navy-blue wool tunic with gaudy chevrons and large gilt buttons. Elbow-length calfskin gloves. A broad-brimmed hat with one side pinned up rakishly. He smoothed his drooping mustache and ran his fingers through his long blond hair. When he got back into his car, he had to take off the hat. He was tall, and the crown crushed against his Camry’s low ceiling.
Out over the Bighorn range the sky was going red, a red shot through with sooty black tendrils of cirrus horsetail. He came in fast, pushing the Camry up to ninety down the last hill into the Little Bighorn valley. It felt like a charge, headlong and headstrong, brash, driving hard into the final waning moments of a lurid sunset. He put the windows down to feel the rush of air. Only in this place, Perry thought, could the sky look like an expanse of infected flesh. What was the saying?
Red sky at night, sailors take fright?
Red sky at night, keep your woman in sight?
How about: red sky at night, bad men delight?
—
He’d gotten his usual room at the War Bonnet Motel and Casino. There was a king-sized bed and an ironing board that folded down from the wall and an unplugged mini-fridge. The first thing he did was plug in the mini-fridge. The second thing he did was take off and hang up the uniform. Then Perry stretched out on the bed in his boxer shorts and undershirt and fell asleep.
When he woke an hour later it was full dark. He drank a beer and flipped through the channels until he found the weather and was pleased to see the weekend forecast called for high eighties and almost no chance of rain. It was going to be hot and dusty out there but better that than rain. Nothing like rain to ruin a reenactment.
Perry called home. It was only nine, but Andy sounded sleepy when she answered.
“Did I wake you?”
“No. It’s okay.”
“It’s only nine, I didn’t think you’d be asleep.”
“It’s okay. It’s just I had a feeling like I wasn’t going to be able to sleep tonight so I took something, and then there was this documentary about meerkats on PBS, and I started watching that and fell asleep and was having these absolutely insane rodent dreams. You know, that’s the problem with when you take something, you fall asleep and then you dream so hard it’s like you have a full day or sometimes it seems like a year, and then, just as you are ready to lay down for sleep, you wake up. You know what I mean? You take something and you sleep, but you’re not rested. Anyway, how was the drive?”
“Fine. Long. I got an audio book at a truck stop in Sioux Falls. It was about this guy in New York who tried for a year to follow the Bible exact. Did you know that the Bible says you shouldn’t wear clothing that is made of fabric that mixes wool and linen?”
“I had no idea.”
“Seriously. Also you shouldn’t trim your sideburns, and the corners of your garments should have tassels.”
“Tassels?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure. But, according to the book, there’s a store in New York City that sells nothing but tassels. Tassels Without Hassles.”
“What?”
“That’s what it’s called. The store. Tassels Without Hassles.”
“Huh. Why was this guy doing this? Trying to follow the Bible exact, I mean, what was his reason outside of trying to come up with an idea for a book?”
“To awaken his spiritual side I guess. Connect to his Old Testament ancestors.”
“Is he Jewish, the author?”
“Yeah. In the book he went to a Hasidic dance in Crown Heights in New York, which, from what I gather, is like an Indian reservation but for Orthodox Jews. There weren’t any women there—they didn’t allow them to come to the dance. It was a life-changing experience, he said.”
“Sweet, sounds fun.”
“Yeah.”
“I think if I were a Hasidic woman I’d have a big problem with not being allowed to dance.”
“Perry, I think I’m going to go to bed now.”
“Sounds like it might be a good idea. I’m tired myself from all the driving.”
“Love.”
“Love.”
—
Perry drank another beer, then put on the uniform and headed down to the War Bonnet Lounge. He was surprised to see a new bartender this year, a young guy with a black goatee and a spiderweb tattooed over his elbow. “Well,” the bartender said when Perry bellied up, “looks like the reenactment is in town. Either that or you’re lost. In the wrong century.” He laughed.
“Maybe both,” said Perry. “Where’s Nolan?”
“He died.”
“No shit. When?”
“April.”
“How?”
“He was old. And diabetic. And Indian. How do you think he died?”
“I was accustomed to seeing him here. We were kind of friends. I didn’t know. How old was he anyway?”
“I have no idea, old enough to die and not have it be much of a surprise to anyone that actually knew him.”
“Okay, fair enough.”
“Beer?”
“PBR with a shot of Evan.”
Perry shot the Evan and chased with a small sip of Pabst. He scanned the slot machines. When the bartender came around, Perry asked about Kat.
“Kat who?” the bartender said, narrowing his eyes. “Kat Realbird?”
“Yes, Kat Realbird. She been around tonight?”
The bartender leaned his elbows on the bar and spun an empty shot glass around on the bar top.
“Not tonight. Last night, though.”
“How was she? I mean, how did she seem? How did she look?”
“What do you mean, how did she seem? She came in and played nickel slots with her old grandmother. She had two Coronas with lime. She looked fine. She wore pants. And a shirt. And she had black hair. And she looked Indian. I mean what the fuck do you want from me here?”
“Nothing. That’s it. That’s all I wanted. Thank you.”
Perry finished his beer, and when he did, flagged down the bartender.
“Another?”
“No, I’m done. But a quick favor for me, if you would. When you see Kat Realbird give her a message for me. Tell her the General is back in town.”
—
That night Perry fell asleep waiting, nursing a beer, still in full uniform on the king-sized bed. When the knock on the door came, he thrashed awake and spilled the beer down the side of his tunic.
She stood in the shadows thrown by the motel vapor lights. She was in full regalia—a turkey-bone breastplate, a fawn leather breechclout—her hair braided and adorned with a single raven’s feather. Her paint was different this year, the left side of her face starting belo
w the eye was chalk white; the right side was unpainted except for a red, quarter-sized circle on her high cheekbone.
Crossing the threshold she was on him hard, her hands twisted in his tunic, her lips dampening his full mustache. She drove him back onto the bed and her smell—a mixture of leather, bear-grease face paint and knockoff Chanel No. 5—came over him. He breathed in where her neck met her shoulder and it was like a return home after a long journey fraught with uncertainty and peril.
—
“I think about you,” he said. “Back home at work I sometimes put on my uniform and imagine this. I’ll sometimes spend whole days downstairs in my office, in full dress. I do conference calls in my hat and gloves and cavalry pants. It makes me feel closer to you—to this.”
He was still on the bed. She was in the room’s small bathroom washing off the face paint and rinsing the grease from her hair. She came out toweling her hair, her face clean and bare. He could see the faint pockmarks on her cheeks.
“I have to wash that stuff off, or I break out terribly.”
“Kat, did you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“And? Do you think of me? During the year, in your real life?”
“I do. But it doesn’t change anything, so I try not to.”
She got in bed and put her body tight next to his, her face on his bare chest. She twisted a lock of his long blond hair between her fingers and then put the ends in her mouth, wetting it to a tip like a paintbrush. She traced invisible designs on his chest.
“You painted your face different this year,” he said. “I almost didn’t recognize you.”
“Oh? You have a lot of half-naked Indian women in traditional dress coming to your hotel rooms these days?”
“Of course. But I send them all away.”
“Sha, you know no one but me is crazy enough to do this with you. Just so you know, I wasn’t going to do it this year, the reenactment. But when I came to the War Bonnet, and heard you were back I just couldn’t not come. I gave John some half-assed excuse and came up to my cousin’s. You realize that I just snuck out and walked a mile across Crow Agency in the dark in a breechclout with no panties or bra?”
“Thank you. You were beautiful. You are beautiful.”
“Sha, yousay. General?”
“Hm?”
“I’ve had a bad year.”
—
The first day of the reenactment went as well as could be expected. They did three shows each day of the weekend, and the first was always the roughest. There were always logistics to be straightened out. Horses that acted up. That was Perry’s least favorite part about the whole thing. The horses. Inevitably he got stuck on some knobby nag that wanted to stop mid-battle to take a mouthful of grass or take a shit right were Perry was supposed to lie after being killed.
As had become their custom, on the first day Perry waited on Last Stand ridge until Kat had time to get there and kill him. He knew it pissed some of the guys off, the way he refused to go down until Kat came flying up the ridge and vaulted from her horse with a piercing war cry—but so what, tough shit for them. She would run at him and he would fall under her weight. As she pretended to slit his throat she always gave him a full kiss on the lips, her body shielding this from the people watching in the grandstands. He never wanted her more than right then. Pretend dead on his back in the dust and the horseshit, an erection straining the front of his blue cavalry trousers.
This year was different, but only a little. Perry staggered and gestured as if he were in agony. The field was littered with the bodies of the fallen, and he could sense their annoyance. Fucking go down already, man, one of the dead bluecoats lying in the dust near him muttered. It’s hotter than hell out here. Show’s over. Warriors on horseback were circling and Perry stumbled and then rose slowly to his feet. The crowd was clapping and cheering, and he was scanning the ridgeline for Kat. And then she came and it was a sight to see. She and her horse were cast from the same mold. Her brown thighs rippled and tensed, echoing, rhyming the muscled brown haunches of her mount. Everything was black streaming hair, black flowing mane. He turned to face her and when she swung one leg and sprung from the horse he caught a fast glimpse of taut inner thigh. His heart hiccupped. She rushed him and tackled him full force. He tried to get a quick feel of breast as he went down but she made a show of pinning his arms as she straddled him with her knife between her teeth. She brought the dulled blade across his throat theatrically and when she leaned in close for the kiss he thought he saw tears smearing the paint on her cheeks. It could have been sweat. But then he saw her sad smile.
—
There were no good restaurants in Crow Agency—actually no restaurants at all if you didn’t consider fast food a viable option—so he bought steaks and they grilled them on the small fenced patio off the back of his hotel room. It didn’t matter, about the lack of restaurants, because they couldn’t have been seen like that anyway, out together. The reservation was small. Word would have traveled.
Perry got the beer she liked, Corona, and they drank them while he messed with the steaks. Kat painted her toenails, her knees drawn up to her chest. Over the top of the warped vinyl patio fence Perry could just make out a ragged flock of turkey vultures circling over the battlefield, searching for stray hot dogs and partially eaten Indian tacos left by the tourists.
“Do you mind if I call my wife quickly?”
“You know I don’t.”
“Okay, we’ll eat soon.”
He went into the room and left the door open behind him. He sat on the edge of the bed and called.
“Andy. Hi, it’s me.”
“Oh, hi, I was just loading the dishwasher, just a minute.” Perry heard the phone being fumbled. He could see her fumbling it, her hands wet with soap.
“Okay, I’m back. How did it go today?”
“Pretty good. Hot and dusty. But we put on a good show. I think the people were happy. During the second act the guy that finally killed me was a little rough with the takedown. I’ve got some bruises.”
“Geez, my poor banged-up man. What do these guys think? It’s not your fault how everything worked out, you know, the scope of history and all that. They won the battle; we won the war. No need to take it out on you. Actually, I don’t know how you do it. I think it would start to get to me, you know, dying every day. It’s like you’re a sacrifice.”
“Or a martyr for the greater American conscience.”
“Yeah, that’s it, Jesus H. Custer dying for our sins. Three times a day.”
“Whose sins exactly, do you suppose?”
“I’m not sure, everyone’s, I guess. What are we even talking about?”
“I don’t know either, never mind. How are you feeling today? Yesterday you seemed tired.”
“Yeah, to tell you the truth I hardly remember our conversation. I was a little whacked-out. This new stuff they’ve got me on is potent.”
There was a pause, her sharp intake of breath, and a soft laugh that couldn’t mask what lay underneath.
“Jesus, I feel like shit.”
“I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have left.”
“No, it’s not your fault. It’s just the thought of another round of this next month makes me want to die. I mean, seriously. I’m actually surprised that I’m saying this but maybe they should just cut that fucking thing off and be done with it. I could get a prosthetic. I could still wear bikinis.”
“They make those? Prosthetic breasts?”
“Yeah. You can pretty much get a prosthetic anything these days.”
Perry could tell she was crying and trying to hide it. He could smell the steaks cooking on the grill, could hear Kat humming tunelessly to herself out on the patio.
“I know it sucks now but it will all work out. You won’t need a prosthetic anything.”
“Promise?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, I’m being depressing. Let’s say good night.”
“Love.”
—
They ate their steaks out on the patio. There was no furniture, so they sat on the bare concrete with their plates balanced on their laps, cutting their meat while a dusky swarm of moths batted around the single halogen bulb.
“We’ve been doing this for a long time now,” he finally said.
“Yes. This is our seventh year. And?”
“And, it’s funny to think that we existed, us together, before either of our marriages.”
“So?”
“Doesn’t that beg the question, which is the marriage, which is the affair?”
“I married John at the First Church of Christ in Hardin. We live together. Every day. That’s the marriage. Don’t be dumb, General.”
Kat was right, of course. She had a smear of steak juice on her upper lip. Perry thought that that was unbearable.
Later, she emerged from the bathroom in a one-piece dress of white beaded deerskin, cinched at the waist with a wide, quill-stitched belt. Her face was scrubbed clean without paint, and she had used a thin plait of her own hair to tie the rest back into a ponytail. The dress was short and ended in fringe at her upper thighs. Strong thighs, horse-squeezing thighs. The dress was new. A new thing for them.
“Christ, you are beautiful.”
“Sha, yousay.”
And then she straddled him on the bed. Rode him like she had stolen him and god himself was in pursuit.
—
After another hot day on Last Stand ridge, Perry spent an hour posing for photographs with tourists. He put his arms around two rotund sixty-something women and they all smiled for the photographer.
“We are twins,” one of them said. “And we’re from Michigan. Did you know Custer was from Michigan himself?” Perry smiled behind his mustache and made a show of examining the women. He thought they only looked like twins the way all fat older women looked like twins. He wanted a beer, he wanted a steak, and he wanted Kat’s head in his lap. “We love Custer trivia,” one of the twins said. “Did you know he graduated from West Point at the top of his class and would probably have been made president one day had his career continued on its natural path?”