DR03 - Black Cherry Blues

by James Lee Burke

  "Oh," I said.

  "I think a lady must have left that there."

  "I sat on it. I forgot to tell you."

  "Don't worry about it."

  "She won't be mad?"

  "No, of course not. Don't worry about things like that, little guy."

  The next day I made arrangements for Alafair to stay with the baby-sitter if I had to remain out of town that night, and I headed for the Blackfeet Reservation, on the other side of the Divide, east of Glacier Park. In the early morning light I drove up the Blackfoot River through canyons of pink rock and pine, with woodsmoke drifting through the trees from the cabins set back in the meadows. The runoff from the snowpack up in the mountains was still high, and the current boiled over the boulders in the center of the river. Then the country opened up into wider valleys and ranch-land with low green hills and more mountains in the distance. I started to climb into more heavily wooded country, with sheer rock cliffs and steep-sided mountains that ran right down to the edge of the road; the canyons and trees were dark with shadow, and by the time I hit the logging town of Lincoln the air had turned cold and my windows were wet with mist. I drove into clouds on the Divide at Rogers Pass, my ears popping now, and rivulets of melted snow ran out of the pines on the mountainside, bled across the highway, and washed off the dirt shoulder into a white stream far below. The pine trees looked almost black and glistened with a wet sheen.

  Then I was out into sunlight again, out on the eastern slope, into rolling wheat and cattle country with no horizon except the Rocky Mountain Front in my rearview mirror. I made good time into Choteau and Dupuyer, and a short while later I was on the Black-feet Indian Reservation.

  I had been on or through several Indian reservations, and none of them was a good place. This one was not an exception. Ernest Hemingway once wrote that there was no worse fate for a people than to lose a war. If any of his readers wanted to disagree with him, they would only have to visit one of the places in which the United States government placed its original inhabitants. We took everything they had and in turn gave them smallpox, whiskey, welfare, federal boarding schools, and penitentiaries.

  At a run-down filling station I got directions to the tribal chairman's office, then drove through several small settlements of clapboard shacks, the dirt yards littered with the rusted parts of junker cars, old washing machines on the porches, chicken yards, privies, and vegetable patches in back, with seed packages stuck up on sticks in the rows.

  The tribal chairman was a nice man who wore braids, jewelry, a . western vest, green-striped trousers, and yellow cowboy boots. On his office wall was an associate of arts degree from a community college. He was polite and listened well, his eyes staying focused attentively on my face while I spoke; but it was also obvious that he did not want to talk about AIM or the oil business with a white man whom he didn't know.

  "Do you know Harry Mapes?" I said.

  This time his gaze broke. He looked out the window onto the street, where three Indian men were talking in front of a poolroom. The neon sign above the door said only Pool.

  "He's a lease man He's around here sometimes," he said.

  "Most of the time he works on the edge of the reservation."

  "What else do you know about him?"

  He unwrapped the cellophane from an inexpensive cherry-blend cigar.

  "I don't have any dealings with him. You'll have to ask somebody else."

  "You think he's bad news?"

  "I don't know what he is." He smiled to be pleasant and lit his cigar.

  "He killed his partner, Dalton Vidrine, down in Louisiana."

  "I don't know about that, Mr. Robicheaux."

  "I think he killed two of your people, too."

  "I don't know what to tell you, sir."

  "Do you know of two guys from AIM who disappeared?"

  "Not on the reservation. And that's what I'm elected to take care of- the reservation."

  "What do you mean, 'not on the reservation'?"

  "I'm not in AIM. I don't mix in their business."

  "But you've heard about somebody disappearing?"

  He gazed out the window again at the men in front of the poolroom and breathed cigar smoke out his nose and mouth.

  "Just south of here, down in Teton County. Clayton Desmarteau and his cousin," he said.

  "I don't remember the cousin's name."

  "What happened?"

  "I heard they didn't come home one night. But maybe they just went off somewhere. It happens. Talk to the sheriff's office in Teton. Talk to Clayton's mother. She lives just off the reservation. Here, I'll draw you directions."

  A half hour later I was back off the reservation and driving down a narrow gray dirt road by the edge of a stream. Cottonwoods grew along the banks, then the ground sloped upward into thick stands of lodgepole pine. Ahead I could see the plains literally dead-end into the mountains. They rose abruptly, like an enormous fault, sheer-faced and jagged against the sky. The cliff walls were pink and streaked with shadow, and the ponderosa was so thick through the saddles that I doubted a bear could work his way through the trunks.

  I found the home the tribal chairman had directed me to. It was built of logs and odd-sized pieces of lumber, up on a knoll, with a shingled roof and sagging gallery. Plastic sheets were nailed over the windows for insulation, and coffee cans filled with petunias were set along the gallery railing and the edges of the steps. The woman who lived there looked very old. Her hair was white, with dark streaks in it, and her leathery skin was deeply lined and webbed around the eyes and mouth.

  I sat with her in her living room and tried to explain who I was, that I wanted to find out what happened to her son, Clayton Des-marteau, and his cousin. But her face was remote, uncertain, her eyes averted whenever I looked directly at them. On a table by the tiny fireplace was a framed photograph of a young Indian soldier. In front of the picture were two open felt boxes containing a Purple Heart and a Silver Star.

  "The tribal chairman said maybe your son simply left the area for a while," I said.

  "Maybe he went looking for other work."

  This time she looked at me.

  "Clayton didn't go off nowhere," she said.

  "He had a job in the filling station in town. He came home every night. They found his car in the ditch, two miles from here. He wouldn't go off and leave his car in the ditch. They did something to him."

  "Who?"

  "People that want to hurt his organization."

  "AIM?"

  "He was beat up one time. They were always trying to hurt him."

  "Who beat him up?"

  "People that's no good."

  "Mrs. Desmarteau, I want to help you find out what happened to Clayton. Did he ever mention someone's name, somebody who gave him trouble?"

  "The FBI. They came around the filling station and called up people on the phone about him."

  "How about Harry Mapes or Dalton Vidrine? Do you remember his using" those names?"

  She didn't answer. She simply looked out into space, took a pinch of snuff out of a Copenhagen can, and put it between her lip and gum. Motes of dust spun in the light through the windows. I thanked her for her time and drove back down the road toward the county seat, the shadows of the cottonwoods clicking across my windshield.

  The sheriff was out of town, and the deputy I spoke to at the courthouse soon made me feel that I was a well-meaning, obtuse outsider who had as much understanding of rural Montana and reservation life as a seasonal tourist.

  "We investigated that case about four months ago," he said. He was a big, lean man in his khaki uniform, and he seemed to concentrate more on the smoking of his cigarette than on his conversation with me. His desk was littered with papers and manila folders.

  "His mother and sister filed a missing-persons report. We found his car with a broken axle in the ditch. The keys were gone, the spare tire was gone, the radio was gone, somebody even tore the clock out of the dashboard. What's that tell you?"r />
  "Somebody stripped it."

  "Yeah, Clayton Desmarteau did. It was going to be repossessed. Him and his cousin were in the bar three miles up the road, they got juiced, they ran off the road. That's the way we see it."

  "And he just didn't bother to come home after that?"

  "Where are you from again?"

  "New Iberia, Louisiana."

  He blew smoke out into a shaft of sunlight shining through the window. His hair was thin across his pate.

  "Believe it or not, that's not uncommon here," he said. Then his voice changed and assumed a resigned and tired note.

  "We're talking about two guys in AIM. One of them, Clayton's cousin, was in the pen in South Dakota. There's also a warrant out on him for nonsupport. Clayton's had his share of trouble, too."

  "What kind?"

  "Fights, carrying a concealed weapon, bullshit like that."

  "Has he ever just disappeared from his home and job before?"

  "Look, here's the situation. There's one bar on that road. They were in there till midnight. It's five miles from that bar up to Clayton's house. Three miles up the road they wrecked the car. Maybe they walked up to Clayton's house without waking the old lady and took off before she got up. Maybe she doesn't remember what they did. Maybe they hitched a ride with somebody after they stripped the car. I don't know what they did. You think a bear ate them?"

  "No, I think you're telling me Desmarteau was an irresponsible man. His mother says otherwise. The guy had the Silver Star. What do you make of that?"

  "I don't guess I'm communicating with you very well. What you don't understand is the way some people live around here. Come back on a Saturday night and take your own tour. Look, when a white person hires Indians to work for him, he hires six so maybe three will show up in the morning. They cut up their own relatives at wedding parties, they hang themselves in jail cells, they get souped up and drive into the sides of trains. Last winter three kids climbed in a boxcar with a gallon of dago red and a tube of airplane glue. The train went on up into Canada and stopped on a siding in a blizzard. I went up with the families to bring their bodies back. The RCMP said they were frozen so hard you could break their parts off with a hammer."

  I asked him to show me where Clayton Desmarteau's car had gone off the road. He was irritated, but he consented and drove me down the same dirt road I had been on earlier. We passed the bar where Desmarteau and his cousin had been last seen, a wide, flat log building with neon Grain Belt and Great Falls beer signs in the windows; then we curved up the road through bare, hardpan fields and finally picked up the creek, the cottonwoods, and the sloping stands of lodgepole pine that began on the far bank. The deputy stopped his car on the shoulder and pointed.

  "Right over there in the ditch," he said.

  "He hooked one wheel over the side and went in. Snapped the axle like a stick. No mystery, my friend. It's a way of life."

  I got back to Missoula late but in time to pick up Alafair at the baby-sitter's before she went to sleep. The baby-sitter had run an errand, and a friend of hers, a third-grade teacher and assistant principal at the school named Miss Regan, had come over to stay with Alafair. The two of them were watching television and eating from a bowl of popcorn in the enclosed side porch. Miss Regan was a pretty girl in her late twenties, with auburn hair and green eyes, and although her skin was still pale from the winter months, I could see sun freckles on her shoulders and at the bottom of her neck.

  "Come see, Dave," Alafair said.

  "Miss Regan drew a picture of Tex and she ain't ever seen him."

  "Don't say 'ain't," little guy," I said.

  "Look," Alafair said, and held up a piece of art paper with a pastel drawing of an Appaloosa on it.

  "That's very nice of Miss Regan," I said.

  "My name's Tess," she said, and smiled.

  "Well, thank you for watching Alafair. It was good meeting you."

  "She's a sweet little girl. We had a lot of fun together," she said.

  "Do you live in the neighborhood?"

  "Yes, only two blocks from the school."

  "Well, I hope to see you again. Thanks for your help. Good night."

  "Good night," she said.

  We walked home in the dark. The air was warm, and the maple trees looked black and full under the moon. The lights of the bridge reflected off the swirling brown surface of the river.

  "Everybody says she's the best teacher in the school," Alafair said.

  "I bet she is."

  "I told her to come down to New Iberia and visit us."

  "That's good."

  "Because she don't have a husband."

  "Say 'doesn't.' "

  "She doesn't have a husband. How come that, Dave?"

  "I don't know. Some people just don't like to get married."

  "How come?"

  "You got me."

  We ate a piece of pie before we turned out the lights and went to bed. Our bedrooms adjoined, and the door was opened between them. Across the river I could hear the whistle of a Burlington Northern freight.

  "Dave?"

  "What?"

  "Why don't you marry Miss Regan?"

  "I'll give it some thought. See you tomorrow, little guy."

  "Okay, big guy."

  "Good night, little guy."

  "Good night, big guy."

  The next morning I made long-distance calls to Batist, the bondsman, and my lawyer. Batist was managing fine at the bait shop and the bondsman was tranquil about my returning to Louisiana by trial date, but the lawyer had not been able to get a continuance and he was worried.

  "What have you come up with in Montana?" he said.

  "Nothing definite. But I think Dixie Lee was telling the truth about Mapes, that he killed a couple of people here, maybe Indians."

  "I tell you, Dave, that might be our only out. If you can get him locked up in Montana, he won't be a witness against us in Louisiana."

  "It's not the ninth race yet."

  "Maybe not, but so far we don't have a defense. It's that simple. I hired a PI to do a background on Mapes. He beat the shit out of another kid with a golf club in Marshall, Texas, when he was seventeen, but that's the only trouble he's been in. He graduated from the University of Texas and flew an army helicopter in Vietnam The rest of the guy's life is a blank. It's hard to make him out as Jack the Ripper."

  "We'll see," I said. I didn't want to concede the truth in his words, but I could feel my heart tripping.

  "The prosecutor's talking a deal," he said.

  I remained silent and listened to the whir of long-distance sound in the earpiece. Through the window I could see the maple tree in my front yard ruffling with the breeze.

  "Dave, we're reaching the point where we might have to listen to him."

  "What deal?"

  "Second-degree homicide. We'll show provocation, he won't contend with us, you'll get five years. With good time, you can be out in three or less."

  "No deal."

  "It may turn out to be the only crap game in town."

  "It's bullshit."

  "Maybe so, but there's something else I'm honor-bound to tell you. We're going up against Judge Mouton. He's sent six men I know of to the electric chair. I don't think he'd do that in this case. But he's a cranky, old sonofabitch, and you never know."

  After I hung up the phone I tried to read the paper on the front porch with a cup of coffee, but my eyes couldn't concentrate on the words.

  I washed the dishes, cleaned the kitchen, and started to change the oil in my truck. I didn't want to think about my conversation with my lawyer. One day at a time, easy does it, I told myself. Don't live in tomorrow's problems. Tomorrow has no more existence than yesterday, but you can always control now. We live in a series of nows. Think about now.

  But that sick feeling around the heart would not go away. I worked my way under my truck, fitted a crescent wrench around the nut on the oil pan, and applied pressure with both hands while flakes of dried mud
fell in my eyes. Then the wrench slipped and I raked my knuckles across the pan. I heard the telephone ring inside.

  I crawled out from under the truck, went in the house, and picked up the receiver. The skin was gone on the tops of two of my knuckles.

  "What's happening, Dave?"

  "Dixie?"

  "Yeah. What's happening?"

  "Nothing important. What is it?"