Cold Dish wl-1

by Craig Johnson

  Artie Small Song’s mother lived up a dirt road off 566 going toward Custer National Forest. It looked like a cliff dwelling with the parted-out vehicles and abandoned, lesser trailer homes wedged into the rock walls of the little canyon. It was a grand location, if a little cluttered, and the farther you went back into the place, the older the vehicles got. By the time we climbed our way to the trailer that had a little stovepipe with a trail of smoke coming out, I was looking for the original wheel. I asked him to park the truck headed down the hill, which he did after a little grumbling. Once again, I waited and wondered why it was I was even here.

  I rolled down the window as far as it would go, about halfway, and breathed. The sharp contrast of the canyon air mingled with the musty warmth of the truck. There was one thing I liked about Henry’s truck, even if I never told him: its comfortable smell of old steel, earth, and leather. I had grown up in old trucks like these, and there was a security there, a sense memory that transcended brand names and badge loyalties. I looked around at the assembled vehicular dreams and thought about the mobility of western longings. None of the wheels around me would likely ever roll again, but were there any deep-seeded passions still harbored in the sun-dried interiors and slowly rusting bodies? It was doubtful, but hope does tend to roll eternal.

  He was on the makeshift porch, talking to an older woman through a closed screen door. His hands hung loose to his sides; after a while the inside door closed, and he returned. He grinded the starter a few times, then quietly turned the wheel and coasted down the hill, hopes dashed.

  “Well?”

  Once the truck lurched to a start, he mumbled, “A different girl-friend.”

  We followed 566 to 39, took a right, and headed north. “Would the gun be there or with his mother?”

  The response was a little ominous. “Artie always keeps his guns with him.”

  Artie Small Song’s latest hit didn’t live too far from the cutoff that headed back to Lame Deer. Alice Shoulder Blade was a dental hygiene student at the college in Sheridan but spent her weekends back on the Rez with Artie. Henry said that chances were she wasn’t there, it being a Wednesday, but you never knew when Artie might pop up. It was a smallish, white house with wooden clapboard sides and a bare dirt yard that had a number of dogs asleep alongside the foundation and under the porch. When we drove up they roiled out at us from all directions and made a great show of attacking the truck and raising a general Cain. There was one blue-heeler/border collie mix; the rest were anybody’s guess. Henry rolled down his own window as he parked and growled very loudly, “Wahampi!” The dogs slid to a stop, yelped, and ran back under the porch, so far back I couldn’t see them. As he opened his door, he paused and looked at me. “Lakota for stew. Those dogs are Sioux from Pine Ridge.”

  “How can you tell?”

  Henry knocked. “Cheyenne dogs would wait quietly, till you got out of the truck.” Nobody answered, so he knocked again. This time, the force of his knocking jarred the door open about two inches, and we looked at each other. “On the reservation, this constitutes an invitation.”

  I thought about the numerous laws, both federal and local, that I was breaking as I crept in after him. There wasn’t a whole lot there, only a few pieces of furniture and a framed picture of Alice at what I’m sure was her senior prom. There were lots of boxes scattered around the living room, filled with hunting clothes, old lace-up boots, videotapes, and reloading equipment. It was difficult to discern whether Artie was moving in or out. “Maybe Alice doesn’t live here anymore.” This to the roll of the eyes and a turn of the back as he checked the small kitchen.

  I kneeled by the box containing the reloading equipment and took a look at the dies; the ones that were in the machine read. 223. Henry came back through and wandered farther down a short hallway, checking each room as he went. I carefully rummaged through the loading box and came up with a small wooden container of dies in separate cardboard; the third one I pulled out was old and didn’t have any markings. Automatically, I reached to the pancake holster at the small of my back. By the time I had popped the safety strap and pulled the. 45 out, Henry had returned from the hallway. When he saw the gun, he stopped and quickly looked around the little house, finally returning his look to me. “What?”

  “What?”

  “The gun?”

  “Checking the caliber on his dies.”

  He stretched his shoulder muscles. “Jesus, you scared the shit out of me.”

  I smiled and unlocked the safety, pressing the side of my thumb against the button, allowing the magazine to slide into my other hand. I rested the die on the closed wooden box and thumbed a shell from the Colt, setting the bullet next to the die. The circumference was identical. Artie Small Song could reload Sharps. 45-70s. “Okay, if I were a gun in this house, where would I be?”

  We both said it at the same time, “Closet.”

  I carefully repacked the dies, placing everything back in the box as it had been. Then I popped the bullet back in the magazine, reloaded my weapon, and replaced it in the holster. I followed Henry down the hallway to the only bedroom at the end, turned the corner, and saw him standing with his hands on his hips. “You better come look at this.”

  I walked over to the open door of the closet and looked in. There were enough weapons in there to arm a small platoon. There were FAL. 308s, AK-47s, MAC-10s, and the M-16s leaned against the inside wall. There was even an Armalite M-50 and a collection of Mossberg 12 gauge, short barrel, and tactical shotguns. Even sitting on the wooden cases of ammunition, in a dental hygienist’s closet, they looked deadly. Some of the guns were civilian versions, but others were fully automatic and fully functional. I leaned against the doorjamb and crossed my arms. “Wow.”

  “Yes.” He looked sad. “I am guessing Artie does not have a federal license for all this automatic stuff.”

  “Maybe he’s gonna open a store?”

  “Yes. Guns-R-Us.” He leaned in for a closer look. “Is that an M-50?”

  “Looks like to me.” I poked my head in and looked in the other corners. “I bet if we dig in those crates down there we’ll find ourselves a couple of. 45 ACPs that match the dies in the other room.” I looked around. “Maybe this is a conversation we should have in the truck?”

  He followed me out after closing the closet door, and I felt a lot better when we were standing on the porch. I think I heard a few low growls as we walked off the steps, but the mad rush for our heels didn’t come. We leaned against the front of the truck’s grill guard and talked. It had turned out to be a beautiful day, and the temperature was rapidly approaching forty-five. I unbuttoned my jacket and put an arm up. “Well, I’ll tell you what I didn’t see in there.. ”

  “Yes. Artie’s taste in weapons seems to run au courant.”

  I turned to look at him. “I’m pleased to see that some of that high school French took.”

  He continued to look at the house. “Oui.”

  “What do you know about Artie, other than his momma don’t love him no more?”

  I waited while he composed himself. I don’t know if not knowing Artie was a full-fledged militia-ist or if weighing the odds on his being guilty of murdering Cody Pritchard embarrassed him, but his jaw set and the eyes hardened.

  “Artie is an angry young man.” He paused. “What do you know about him?”

  I had looked Artie up and came clean. “He’s got two cases of aggravated assault, one pending. He did a domestic for spousal abuse over in South Dakota and has two unpaid speeding tickets here in Wyoming.” I waited a moment. “You seem to be taking this personally.”

  He shook his head. “I am reacting to the lost potential.”

  “Yep, I know you wouldn’t know anything about that angry young man stuff.”

  We both shook our heads. “No.”

  I had to push the truck this time, twice. The first time, it jumped when he let out the clutch and barked all the skin off my right shin. The second time, with my arm locked st
raight with the effort of moving the two-ton beast, it stoved my shoulder and blew a sooty cloud of smoke and unburnt gas in my face. I climbed in and shut the door. “I hate this truck.” We drove back toward Lame Deer on 39, and I peeled off my jacket and laid it on the seat between us. I thought about where we were headed, about Lonnie.

  I wondered how long it would take for the Little Bird look to come back.

  Jim Ferguson wore a gun at the trial; that alone was enough to make me laugh, but the context robbed me of my sense of humor. It was before Vic, so my two deputies were Lenny Rowell and Jim. Jim kept fussing with his belt, and Lenny was trying to catch a nap as he leaned against the bookcases of burgundy leather-covered Shepard’s Wyoming Citations. I told Jim to get his belt adjusted because fidgeting deputies with guns made the common populace nervous and excused myself to go to the bathroom. When I got there, Lonnie Little Bird was trying to get his wheelchair into one of the stalls. The county hadn’t gotten around to putting in handicapped facilities, and Lonnie wasn’t fitting. He looked up through his coke-bottle glasses and smiled. “Mm, hmm. Yes, I am having troubles. It is so.”

  I looked around. I hadn’t noticed anybody on the way in. “Lonnie, is there anybody to help you?”

  “Mm, hmm… Mm, hmm.” He continued to smile. “You.”

  He was a small man, even counting the two missing legs, and it was relatively easy to lift him up and hold him as he unbuttoned his pants. I sat him on the toilet. The grin never left his face. He had a large head with prominent ears. The nose was flat and looked like it had been broken numerous times. There was a rumor that the old guy had played professional baseball for one of the teams in the Midwest but, as far as I knew, it was only a rumor. He spoke as I started to close the stall door. “Mm, Sheriff?”

  I paused. “Yep, Lonnie?”

  “You know how old I am, Sheriff?”

  I figured about sixty-five. “No, Lonnie. I can’t say that I do.”

  “Mm, fifty-three years old. Yes, it is so.”

  Jesus. “Lonnie, that’s pretty young.” There was silence for a while, and I was afraid I had said something wrong. “Lonnie?”

  “Mm, sometimes I think it’s very old.” Another pause, and I zipped up and moved over to the sink to wash my hands. “Sometimes I feel like I’ve been here a very long time.”

  I pulled out a paper towel and dried my hands. “Yep, I feel like that sometimes too, Lonnie.”

  “These boys, the ones that have done this thing to my daughter?” My breath caught in my throat. “It’s a bad thing they’ve done, yes?”

  I leaned against the counter and looked at the stall door. “Yes, it is a bad thing that they have done.” There was a long silence, and I was glad no one could see my eyes well in anger and frustration. “Very bad.”

  The voice that came back was soft. “Mm, I get confused sometimes, and I just wanted to ask you.”

  When I got back to the courtroom, the jury light was glowing red.

  There was a small dish attached to Lonnie’s house that brought in the world, and I’m pretty sure who had ordered and paid for it. Henry’s eyes were beginning to glaze over as Lonnie gave us his version of what was happening on this particular daytime drama, but I did my best to pay attention. “The problems started at the health clinic, that’s where Dirk begged Catalina to not go through with the abortion. Cat agreed and said she was looking forward to having a family, mm-hmmm, mm-hmmm… But I’m not so sure. After they left the clinic, there were complications, but the doctors said she would be all right, so Dirk dropped her off at the mansion and went over to see Latisha. But when he got there, Latisha told him that he needed to be with Catalina now that she is pregnant, so he left, but that’s okay ’cause now Latisha is with Ben, and he seems to be a good fellow. Mm, hmm. Yes, it is so.”

  Lonnie watched soap operas because there was no baseball in November. The rumors of Lonnie’s playing pro ball turned out to be true. There was baseball paraphernalia scattered in a few spots around the place, baseball bats tucked into corners, old gloves stacked up on shelves. There were pictures of Lonnie standing around with Cubs, Billy Williams and Ferguson Jenkins; Cardinals, Lou Brock and Joe Torre; Reds, Tony Perez and Johnny Bench, whom he blamed for ending his career. “After I saw him coming up, I just didn’t see any reason to go on playing. He’s part Indian too, you know. Choctaw. Mm, hmm.. Yes, it is so.”

  The only thing that outnumbered the baseball pictures were photographs of Melissa. The only photographs I had of Melissa were not good ones. I stopped before an especially wonderful one of her in full dancing regalia, seated on a Palomino in front of a painted teepee. Its frame had started out as gold but was now rusted and tarnished at the edges. It was likely it was taken down and handled a great deal. I thought about defects, about the rape, the trial, and the Little Big Horn reenactment where I had seen her last. Lonnie probably thought about those things a lot, too.

  It was nearing one o’clock, and Lonnie had wheeled himself into the kitchen to instruct Henry how to make the pickle-loaf, yellow American sliced cheese, and Kraft-spread sandwiches on Wonder Bread that would be our lunch. This was my kind of food, but Henry’s gourmet sensibilities were having a hard time of it. “Lonnie, I buy you good food, why don’t you eat it?”

  “Your good food is complicated and takes too long to make. Mm.. There are Vlassic pickle stackers in the door there.”

  With a sigh, Henry returned to the refrigerator, retrieved the jar of sliced pickles, and got ice from the freezer side of the appliance. “Lonnie, are you buying all that frozen food off the Schwan’s truck again?”

  He looked over at me through those thick, metal-frame glasses, needing an ally. And if Lonnie had said that little green men had deposited the eight boxes of Hot Pockets in his freezer, I was going to agree. “I feel sorry for him when he drives all the way up the driveway.” I nodded as he continued. “We have good talks; he is from Kentucky.” I nodded some more.

  It was a little single-level ranch house that must have been built in the fifties, and the only things that kept me from thinking I was on one of those family sitcoms from the period was the amount of Indian art and craft that decorated it and the concrete ramps that led up to the doors of the spotless house. Lonnie Little Bird was on a campaign to get his daughter back from that gaggle of aunts in closer to town. This campaign meant Lonnie didn’t drink, Lonnie didn’t smoke, and Lonnie didn’t use the Lord’s name in vain, at least when any of the aunts were in earshot. There was Barq’s root beer in the refrigerator beside the pickled pig’s feet, and that’s what we were drinking. I finished off the end of my two sandwiches. “When did Artie sell that rifle, Lonnie?”

  “Mm, hmm. About a year ago. He sold that gun to that Buffalo Bill Museum over in Cody. Yes. It was winter, and he needed the money.” He took a swig of his root beer and studied the Formica for a moment. “Not everybody has a nice house like mine…” His eyes glanced furtively at Henry. I got the feeling Lonnie liked secrets. A moment passed. “Sheriff?”

  “Yep, Lonnie.”

  “Do you think that Artie did this thing to this boy?”

  I picked up the root beer can and looked at it; as near as I could figure it had been about twenty years since I had tasted the stuff. “Well, I’m just checking everything out, everything and everybody.”

  He smiled. “Mm, hmm. Am I being checked out also?”

  I looked at the little spark behind the glasses and wasn’t going to be the one to tell him that without any legs he was kind of low on our list of suspects. “Just following up on all the leads, Lonnie.”

  He continued to smile but looked over to Henry and said a few short words in Cheyenne. Henry glanced at me, then back to his cousin, and then got up and walked out, turning the corner at the hallway. My eyes returned to Lonnie with a question, but he only sat there looking back through glasses so thick you could see little rainbows at the edges. After a moment or two I heard Henry returning down the hallway, his boots padding softly on t
he wall-to-wall carpeting. When he turned the corner again, he was carrying an old leather rifle scabbard with the straps you attach to a saddle hanging down, unbuckled. Due to my recent course of study, I recognized the Sharps butt plate that stuck out the end. When he got to the counter, he handed the weapon to me. I looked up at Lonnie, who gestured for me to take out the buffalo gun.

  I carefully slid the rifle from its wool-lined sheath and rested the butt on my knee, and it was the most beautiful gun I had ever seen. It wasn’t in as good shape as Omar’s, there were scratches along the stock and the part of the foregrip that was wood, but each scar had been lovingly poulticed with oil and polished to a gleaming sheen. The metal had not been so lucky. Someone had taken steel wool to it at some point, and the ruddy sepia tone of its original color only showed in small creases; the rest was ghostly silver. There was a simple cross of brass tacks in the stock, the pattern a great deal like the one on the side of Red Road Contracting’s truck, and ten distinct notches along the top ridge of the stock. The foregrip had three red-wool trading-cloth wraps ornamented with quillwork and with smaller feathers than I had seen on the scabbard of Omar’s gun or, lately, in plastic bags. I touched the feathers and looked at Henry. “Owl.” Messenger from the world of the dead indeed.