Cash had learned a long time ago that wanting was not something foster kids allowed themselves to do. It had never even occurred to her that she might covet something this pretty. And even when she started to make her own money, she only bought what she needed. That and cigarettes and beer.
She tried on the boots that day in the migrant shed. They slipped on her feet as if they were made for her. She had carried the boots with the broom and dustpan, all grouped together in one hand so that if the farmer looked her way, it would have just looked like she was carrying a pile of rubbish with the broom, not trusting that he wouldn’t have taken them from her. She had walked directly to her Ranchero and thrown them in back. The farmer hadn’t looked in her direction at all. She went back into the shack and checked under the other bed. No more treasures.
There were four shacks on this property. She went into the other two she had already cleaned and checked under those two beds also. Nada. She walked over to the shed the farmer had been working on. It was interesting to her how she had cleaned three and he was just now finishing up with one.
“All done,” she told him. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a roll of bills, peeled off three fives and handed them to her.
“Thanks, Cash. If I need more help I’ll leave word at Mickey’s, alright?”
“That’ll work.”
She had gotten into her Ranchero and driven off to Fargo, had tried on her boots again as soon as she got home.
Tonight Cash pulled on the boots and tucked her jeans into them. She slung the damp bath towel over her shoulder, unknotted and unbraided her hair as she walked into the kitchen. She turned on the water in the sink but then decided to heck with it. She ran a brush through her hair to get the leaves and dirt out of it and pulled it back into a ponytail.
She stuffed her keys and cash into her front jean pocket, Marlboros and matches into the other, turned the lock on her apartment door and pulled it shut behind her. The hard leather soles of the boots sounded loud going down her apartment stairs. The air was early fall warm. Here in town you couldn’t see the stars for the streetlights.
Damn. She’d forgotten her cue. This close to closing, there probably wasn’t enough time to really play anyways. She walked to the Casbah, catching the screen door with her back foot to give her hair time to follow her in. She smiled to herself as she saw Ole pass his quarter to Clyde.
Shorty had her Bud ready for her. Tonight, ol’ man Willie was passed out at a table in back, and damn, given the wide berth around him, he really must have pissed himself. Jim was shooting pool.
He nodded his cue at her. “Want to play partners?”
“Sure.”
Jim went around the table to the guy he was shooting against. “My partner’s here now,” he said. “You and your wife still want to play?”
The guy nodded, walked over to a booth and leaned in. When his wife slid out across the leather seat, Cash could tell right away she was going to be a sore loser. A little overweight and still poured into her Levi’s, she had the country girl ratted-up and hair-sprayed hairdo. She was the kind of white woman who called girls like Cash squaw.
Jim didn’t notice. Even if he did notice, he wouldn’t notice. That’s just how things were in the Valley.
The other guy broke. When Jim motioned for Cash to go next, she shook her head no. “You go first,” she told him. Cash hoped that Jim would run the table. If he won the game for them, the wife wouldn’t be so sore about losing. Jim ran all but three. The wife took her turn. Cash watched her walk around the table, use her cue to line up a shot, then change her mind and lean down to take a different shot. It was clear to Cash the woman was posturing, going through the moves she had seen better pool players make without really knowing why they did them. She did sink two balls though before completely miscueing on the third one.
“Clean it up,” Jim encouraged Cash. She walked around the table. 9-7-3 and then 8 in the corner. That would be the play. She could see the man’s wife scowling at her, her petulance fueled by the beer she was drinking.
“I don’t know, Jim,” said Cash. “That three is a little hidden.” Jim put his arm around her waist and nuzzled her neck.
“Who you trying to kid?” he breathed. “You could make those three shots left-handed and you know it.” Cash gently pushed him away. She ran the 9-7-3 and then put the 8 right in front of her last pocket.
“Choked, huh?” said the wife.
“Happens to the best of us,” Cash said, putting chalk on the tip of her cue and walking over to where she had set her beer on the wall railing.
“Come on, John, win us another pitcher,” the wife cheered. Her breasts threatened the buttons of her cotton blouse as she leaned into him.
“Back up then and give me a shot,” he said. She pouted her way over to the booth to take a drink from her beer.
“What are you doing?” Jim whispered to Cash. “Those were kindergarten shots.”
“She’s gonna get pissed if I win this game for us. She doesn’t want to be beat by another woman, certainly not an Indian.”
“Get off it, Cash. It ain’t like that.”
“Sure it is. You ain’t got anything to complain about anyways. I put the 8-ball right in front of the pocket. All you gotta do is breathe the cue ball by it and it’s going to drop in.”
All of a sudden they heard, “JOHN! Goddamn it. How could you do that?”
Cash looked at the table and saw where John had put the 8-ball in, losing the game for the couple. Cash grinned at Jim over her Bud bottle.
“Indian bitch.” Those were the next words Cash heard.
“What’d you say?” asked Cash.
“Let it go, Cash, let it go.” Jim pulled on Cash’s arm.
All the old men along the bar had turned around on their barstools and were staring.
“No white chick’s gonna call me names just ’cause she can’t shoot pool,” Cash retorted. Jim grabbed the cue stick and beer bottle out of her hand as Cash moved around the table towards the woman.
“She isn’t worth it, Cash,” Jim pleaded.
“What’d you say?” said the advancing Cash. “You want to say that again?”
The woman’s husband stepped between the two women. “She’s drunk,” he told Cash.
The woman sneered, “Not that damn drunk.”
Cash slipped behind the man and slapped the woman across the face with an open right palm. When the woman gasped, Cash hauled back and hit her square in the solar plexus with her left. “You ain’t worth my time, bitch,” she breathed out hard.
Jim grabbed Cash and pulled her back. “Come on, we’re leaving.”
“Get your fucking hands off me,” hollered Cash, trying to break free.
The man was hurriedly telling his wife to get her shit together and get the hell out. She was crying, her mascara running in rivulets down her chubby cheeks.
“Yeah, get her outta here before I kick her sorry ass,” taunted Cash.
All talk had gone quiet in the bar, with Charlie Pride once again trying to get to San Antone. It was so quiet you could hear the TV announcer describing the seventh inning of that night’s Twins’ game. No drinks were being lifted and set down. No one moved. The man, his arm wrapped around his wife’s thick waist, led her out of the bar. Jim let go of Cash and handed her the cue stick. He turned and picked up his own stick and broke it down and started putting it in its carrying case.
“Stupid bitch,” said Cash. “Come on, we got the table to ourselves. May as well play till last call.” She put some quarters into the money slot, pushed it in and the balls fell down. She racked the balls and stood looking at Jim. The rest of the bar had gone back to serious murmuring. Cash heard her name whispered a couple times but let it go. Her hands were shaking with unused adrenaline.
“Stupid bitch,” she repeated, running six balls in a row until she scratched the cue ball.
“Let it go, Cash,” pleaded Jim as he ran four balls and then missed his shot.
Cash hated when he got all wishy-washy. In fact she was damn sick and tired of everyone ignoring fucking reality. A man was dead, an Indian man. His wife was drinking and there were babies involved, babies who more likely than not would get taken away from the woman if she kept on that way.
She looked at Jim. His pale skin. His blond hair combed back. His forearms tan from working in the fields. He wasn’t that many years older than her but he would inherit acres from his daddy’s farm. Acres given free to his immigrant granddaddy. Probably stolen from her granddaddy. No matter how much she loved this Valley, no one was going to give her a homestead, not after they’d already stolen it from her. In that moment, she hated his whiteness.
“Let what go, Jim? The dead Indian in the field that some white guys killed for his truck-driving money? The seven children that don’t have a daddy anymore? Just what the fuck am I supposed to let go of, Jim?” Cash pointed her cue at the center pocket to her left indicating that was where she was going to cut the 8-ball. She made the shot and said, “Rack ’em up. And get me another beer.”
“Maybe we should quit,” Jim said.
“Maybe you should rack ’em up and get me another beer.” Cash saw that Shorty already had another bottle open on the bar for her. She pointed with her stick for Jim to go pay for it. Jim obliged and Cash broke the rack, making two balls, one a stripe and one a solid. She made another stripe before missing a long shot. She gulped the beer when Jim handed it to her. “Have at it,” she said to Jim.
They played each other until closing time. Apparently no one else in the bar wanted to take either one of them on. Cash knew Jim didn’t blame them. He was shooting sloppy, worried about her drinking and her anger. Fuck him and the white horse he rode in on.
Shorty called out, “Last call.” Last chance to buy a beer. Fifteen minutes to drink up the one in your hand.
Cash used the tip of her cue to push the 8-ball into the nearest pocket. She walked up to the bar and ordered two Buds. She pulled herself up on a barstool and proceeded to drink, first a gulp from one bottle and then a gulp from another.
Jim nursed the last half of the beer he had gotten two games ago. Cash could tell he was nervous about how much she was drinking. Fuck him.
When she had killed the two bottles, she stood up, put the bar cue back in the wall rack and started to walk out, lifting a hand in a semi-wave to the regulars still hanging out at the bar. She felt Jim follow her. He didn’t speak at all on the walk back to her apartment. She was feeling the effects of all the beer she had drunk. And come to think of it, when was the last time she had eaten? Shit.
She used the railing of the staircase to steady herself. She fumbled in her jeans for her key and waved at the air a few times before catching the light chain above the kitchen table. Jim raised his eyebrows when he saw the .22 sitting on the kitchen table.
“Rabbit hunting,” Cash mumbled. She went to the fridge and brought out two beers. Opened one and handed it to Jim and opened the other one for herself, taking a long drink as she plopped on the edge of the overstuffed chair and tried to pull her boots off. Jim saw her struggle and bent down to help get them off. He set them neatly on the floor. Somehow that made Cash giggle.
“What?”
“Nothin’.” She stripped off her shirt, dropped her jeans and undies on the floor in front of her, picked up her beer and crawled into bed. Jim went back out into the kitchen and turned off the light. The streetlights cast a green glow into the room. He stood next to the bed. Cash watched him take his shirt off and throw it over the back of the chair. She heard his jeans hit the floor. Actually she heard the thud of his wallet in his jeans pocket hit the floor. She giggled again. She never understood why he always left his underwear on until he was under the covers.
“What now?” he asked.
“Nothin’.” She rolled to face him and pulled his head towards her to kiss him. “Nothin’ at all.”
When they were finished, she rolled to her edge of the bed. Reached down for her beer and leaned over and lit a cigarette. She pushed the pillow up behind her back for a cushion as she sat up, pulling the sheet up far enough to cover her breasts, holding it tucked under her armpits. She giggled. She could do modesty too.
“Are you laughing at me?”
“Nah, just thinking of that crazy fat lady in the bar.”
“What the hell set you off? She’s not the first woman to make some stupid remark, doubt she’ll be the last.”
“Yeah, well, that might be the problem. No one is ever the last.”
“What’d you mean about some white guys killing an Indian? You talking about that guy got killed up by Halstad?”
“Yeah.”
“He has kids?”
“Yeah.”
“How you know that?”
“My cousin’s husband.” Cash took another drink to quell the giggle she felt rising. Damn, who would have thought she had a big family. Even a pretend cousin was more than she had before Tony O died in a field. Sadness came in a wave as she pictured the baby in the swing and the little girl sitting on the bed, gently pushing her baby sister back and forth. She could see Josie drinking the whiskey from the jelly glass. “Fuck.” Cash took another drink of her own beer. “Damn.”
“What’s up, Cash? You’re thinking too hard.”
“Time for you to get home to your wife and kids, Jim.” He tried to kiss her neck, ran his hands down her side.
“Nah, go on now. It’s late. Go on. I got things I got to do tomorrow and you got a wife cooking you breakfast. Get to getting.” Cash pulled the sheet back around her.
She lit another cigarette and smoked it watching Jim dress in the dim lights coming in from outside. She smiled to herself thinking of how he had pulled his underwear on under the covers before getting out of bed to pull on his jeans and shirt. When he came around to her side of the bed, he leaned down and she raised her face to his for a goodbye kiss.
“Lock the door handle on your way out, ok?” she said, the way she’d said dozens of times before.
“Will do.”
Cash heard the door click behind him and then the screen as he eased it shut. She lay in bed, thinking of the run through the woods, the men who had chased a bear, the woman who hated her without knowing her, Josie and her children, Tony O lying dead in the field. Josie and Tony O’s winter dreams running with his blood into the Red River topsoil, and then on into the Red River, flowing north, flowing north to all that is cold.
Fuck!
Cash rolled out of bed and pulled on her clothes, took a zippered hooded sweatshirt to put on under her jean jacket. She pulled open her top dresser drawer and felt around for the sock where she stashed her money. She rolled a bill off the wad and stuffed it in her jeans pocket, grabbed her truck keys off the kitchen table and went down the stairs.
The only restaurant open would be in Moorhead. Cash crossed the bridge and drove south, past Moorhead State College and Concordia, the college for blond, blue-eyed Norwegians and Swedes. She pulled into Shari’s Kitchen, an all-night truck stop that served breakfast 24 hours.
The light inside the restaurant was glaring. Judging from the disjointed conversations and the sullen or over-animated faces, she wasn’t the only drunk who craved a protein fix to stall the morning hangover. She grabbed a stool at the counter. The waitress put a cup of coffee in front of her. “What can I get you, hon? Kinda chilly out there tonight, huh?”
“The truckers’ special. Not too bad, gonna get a lot colder pretty soon.”
“You want some orange juice with that?”
“I guess.” She picked up the Fargo-Forum that was lying on the counter a few stools down. She scanned the front page without seeing anything about the killing thirty miles north.
Guess a dead Indian wasn’t newsworthy. She turned the paper to Ann Landers and read Ann’s advice to some poor soul who was worried about women’s liberation ruining her relationship with her husband. By the time her eggs and pancakes arrived, Cash had
read through the paper and was looking over the funnies.
She ate her food absentmindedly. Years ago she had gotten bored with life’s necessities—food, sleep, comfort. Now she ate when she remembered to. Slept because she had to. And comfort? Hmmmm. During her years in foster homes, it was all she could do just to get through to the next day. She had gotten good at getting through.
She drank the last of her orange juice and coffee, put a five-dollar bill on the table on top of her check. She zipped up the sweatshirt and buttoned the two bottom buttons of her jean jacket. She nodded her head to the waitress as she left the restaurant.
Cash drove through Moorhead, went back over the bridge to her apartment, stripped and climbed into bed. She was asleep before she could even think of drinking the last of the beer that sat on the bed stand or light a last cigarette.
She became aware that she was dreaming even as the woman appeared before her. She listened, careful to pay attention. It was Josie Day Dodge. She stood at the end of Cash’s bed, wearing the same clothes Cash had last seen her in. Her hair was falling down her back in two braids hooked together at the ends. She was holding ribbons in her hands. On closer look, Cash saw that they were strands of wiigob, the strands of basswood that were used to tie birchbark together to make baskets. Josie was running the basswood through her hands. She looked at Cash and said, “I have to go make more baskets. Tell the kids I have to go. That I’ll make more baskets. They can sell the baskets with the pinecones. I’ve got to go. Tony O hasn’t come home yet. Make sure they don’t mess with his body.”
She pushed her hands through the basswood strips, her fingers sorting through the long strips the way Cash ran her fingers through her dried hair. She faded.
When Cash opened her eyes, it was five am. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and sat up. Pulled the bed sheet and blanket up around her, over her shoulder and across her chest and midriff. With her one free arm, she sifted through the ashes and butts in the ashtray until she found three-quarters of a butt.
There were times after dreams like that when she knew that someone else was dead. Shit, she hated this. She didn’t know anyone else who was visited by folks who were dead or dying or just passing through on the night air. Fuck.
Murder on the Red River Page 8