Murder on the Red River

by Marcie R. Rendon

  Now she would need to take another trip up to Red Lake. See where those two little ones were. Damn, she’d never even met the older kids. She reached down to the floor and pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of her jean jacket pocket and lit another one.

  Cash didn’t leave much room in her heart for feelings. She had learned a long time ago to squash those little buggers down. But thinking about Josie and Tony O’s kids made her chest feel tight. She took a deep drag on her cigarette. In every school she had attended, each grade seemed to have an Indian kid from a foster home—a kid working someone’s fields or doing their laundry for them so their wife and kids would look good in church on Sunday morning.

  Cash had learned that friendships were fleeting. The county moved foster kids around at the slightest provocation. And rarely were brothers and sisters kept together. She had no idea where hers were. The Indian kids played together on the playground and talked about how the social worker would show up one day, stuff them in a car and take them to some new place. Some of their parents drank, some of them were just poor, but the common denominator was they were all Indian. Legal kidnapping.

  White parents drank. White parents were poor. Heck, some of them beat the crap out of their kids on a weekly basis. No social worker ever drove up and stuffed their kids in a car.

  Cash had never met a white foster kid, come to think of it. Another deep drag on the cigarette. She had waited for years for her mother to come get her. The beatings, the touches in the middle of the night, the food used as punishment, as reward. The cold parsnips—after a night of sitting sleepily in the kitchen chair and not being able to gag them down, the foster mother, with the aid of her biggest daughter, had forced them down her throat before church on Sunday morning. No matter what the social worker said or the foster mother screamed, Cash knew this was not the life her mother had planned for her, and that somewhere her mom was sitting, smoking, just like Cash was—although her preferred brand was Camels—her heart as thick and heavy as Cash’s.

  Cash had never felt abused or unloved by her mom. She had missed her brother and sister so bad at first it made her sick, unable to think straight, a constant fog in her brain. As the years wore on she had adapted, called on something to get her through each day, each moment. She had learned to not ask about her mom, her brother, her sister. Because when she did ask, she was told her mom didn’t want her, that her brother and sister had forgotten her. She didn’t believe any of that. But she gave up hope, because hope created more pain.

  And now a whole family of kids was going to experience the same thing, she just knew it.

  Cash dropped the blanket off her shoulders and pulled the sheet out from the end of the bed, stood up and wrapped it around her. Walked into the kitchen and picked up another crumpled pack of Marlboros she had thrown on the table. She took one out and lit it up. She filled the coffeepot with water, put it on the hotplate, dumped in some coffee. She stood smoking, looking at the morning darkness out her kitchen window while she waited for her coffee to boil. The linoleum floor was cold. She went back and pulled on a pair of socks before going back out to the kitchen to shut off the coffee, which had just started to boil. The coffee grounds rimmed the edge of the pouring spout, the grounds going into her first cup of coffee when she poured it.

  Still wrapped in the sheet, she sat down on a chair at the table. Her mind caught the image of Josie standing at the end of her bed, the wiigob running through her fingers. Cash wondered how a mother could ever choose to leave her children, but the thought made her colder than the linoleum floor had made her feet and she chased it away by taking a sip of the too-hot coffee. She took a few more sips, then got up to finish getting dressed.

  This time she knew she was taking a trip. She made her bed quilt into a long strip by folding it lengthways by thirds. She laid a pair of jeans lengthwise on the quilt strip, then a t-shirt. Last a pair of undies and clean socks. She rolled the whole thing up into a log-sized roll. She slipped a belt around it and cinched it tight.

  Back at the kitchen table, she remembered the .22 bullets that had rolled under the bathtub. She went into the bathroom, lay down on her belly and retrieved them from where they rested on the far underside baseboard. Stuffed them back in her front jean pocket. Went back out to the kitchen table, made sure the .22 was loaded and the safety on. At the sink she rinsed off the bottom of her tennies, using a rag from under the sink to wipe the river clay and cow shit off as best she could.

  The sky was starting to lighten by the time she was ready to walk out the door. She debated on getting the beers still left in the six-pack, then decided she could always stop along the way to pick up more if she needed to. It was a good thing she had eaten last night, she thought.

  Once in her truck she headed north to Ada. She would catch Wheaton just when he was arriving at the jail.

  He was at the clerk’s desk, talking on the phone with someone who wanted him to take the names of some kids she knew who were stealing from her store. Wheaton dutifully wrote down their names on a pad of paper in front of him. When he hung up the phone, he crumpled the paper into a ball and tossed it into the wastebasket sitting by the desk.

  “Those Stevenson kids been stealing since they could walk through the store themselves. All they ever take is candy. If they had some food at home, they wouldn’t be walking into town to steal sugar to eat. Whatever happened to Christian charity?” he muttered. “You didn’t see that. Or hear it,” he said to Cash. “Got anything new?”

  Cash slumped into the chair that sat next to the desk. “Almost got shot last night.”

  “What!”

  “Not quite,” laughed Cash. “They had one too many drinks to know what they were doing. Fact of the matter is, they thought they were shooting at a bear.”

  “What the hell. What were you up to?”

  Cash told him the story of going to the two town bars and then figuring that the men had gone back to the field where Tony O’s body had been dumped. How she had gone down by the Bjork farm, tromped through fields and then ended up getting chased because they thought she was a bear.

  This morning it was funny. She had a hard time telling Wheaton the story without laughing—the hold-your-stomach, tears-roll-down-your-cheeks kind of laugh—talking some, then getting overcome with silliness again. She could tell from Wheaton’s face he didn’t find it funny at all.

  Gasping for breath she said, “Damn, Wheaton, I’m sorry. I can’t even tell you what kind of truck they were in. You know I can’t tell the difference between a Ford and a Chevy. It was dark, I know that. It was dark-colored.”

  More laughter.

  “And I saw the one guy in Arnie’s bar. The other two, one was drunk, one wasn’t. But they were talking about killing Tony O.”

  Finally, the laughter was dying down. Cash knew that most of it was the nervous energy she didn’t get to burn off last night. She had been hunted as a bear and dealt with some stupid white broad when she had had far too many beers to think straight. She wasn’t going to tell Wheaton that story though.

  Trying for a serious face, she said, “Best I can tell you, Wheaton, is to listen around town for whoever was out hunting bear last night.”

  “You don’t want to hang around tonight and see who’s talking?” Wheaton asked her.

  All the funny left Cash. “Nah. I gotta go back up to Red Lake.”

  “Red Lake?”

  “Yeah, I dreamt last night Tony O’s wife died. You know if his body got sent up there yet?”

  “What was the dream?”

  Cash told him about Josie standing at the end of her bed, running her fingers through the basswood strands, telling Cash she had to go. Wheaton leaned back in his chair. Folded his hands across his middle and just looked at her.

  He stood up. “Let’s go check. Ride with me.”

  They walked out to his cruiser. Cash rolled down the window and lit up a cigarette. “What?” she asked.

  “The call before the store clerk?
It was a call from the feds up Bemidji way. When the priest went out to the Day Dodge place to ask the wife what she wanted done for a burial, he found the kids in a state.”

  “She was going to bury him the old way,” Cash said quietly.

  “The kids were crying. Screaming. Huddled in one of the back bedrooms. Seems their ma had drunk herself to death overnight. By the time the tribal police got back ahold of the feds, all the bigger kids had disappeared. Their dad’s boat is still on the shore so they figure the kids are out in the woods. Got a couple trappers, hunters out looking for them. But you know what I think. Indians looking for Indians, even if they find them, they aren’t going to turn them over to no state social workers. Got the little ones, apparently a little girl and a baby, staying at their auntie’s house down the road, from what they told me.”

  Cash slumped in her seat.

  “Foster homes are bad for kids,” she said finally. “You know that, Wheaton.”

  “Maybe that auntie will take care of them.”

  “Like the county gave me to my aunties? There are seven kids, Wheaton. Seven. You think one of these farmers around here is ready to take in seven Indians? Nah, they’ll be split up and shipped all over the state.”

  Cash stared out the window. She turned to Wheaton. “You know, every one of these farmers is farming our land. They got it for free. The government gave them our land for free.” Cash was almost yelling at Wheaton. “And now they’ll have seven more farm laborers to work our land for them…for free!” She slammed her hand on to the dash and turned back away from him.

  They drove in silence for the couple blocks until Wheaton pulled into the hospital parking lot. Cash jumped out and slammed the car door and stomped to the door. She waited there for Wheaton, glaring off into space. When he caught up with her, they made their way down into the basement that seemed even colder than the time they visited just a couple days ago.

  Dr. Felix was sitting at his desk. Feet up on it. Reading the Fargo Forum. When he saw Cash and Wheaton, he slid his feet to the floor, slowly, as if to say to them, Your presence isn’t why I’m doing this.

  “What can I do you for you, Sheriff? Got another body for me?”

  “Wondering where Tony O’s body is,” said Wheaton.

  “Should have gotten into Red Lake last night,” said the doc. “Some injuns from the tribe came down yesterday morning, loaded him in a box on the back of a pickup truck. That’s the last I seen of ’em.”

  Cash and Wheaton turned to go.

  “What? That’s all you wanted to know?” the doc asked their retreating backs.

  Cash lit up another cigarette as soon as they got out of the hospital. “Like I said, don’t let me die there. And hell, if I get sick and need a doctor, if I get shot or something, drive me into Fargo, alright?”

  “Alright. Listen, doesn’t seem like you need to go up to Red Lake. What more can you do? It’s just gonna upset you. You don’t really know the family, you’re not from there.”

  “I know. But it’s the dream. I gotta go. Whether I want to or not.”

  “What are you going to do once you get there?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t just leave it alone. I don’t know why I dream these things. See things. Don’t ask. I just know I got to go. I don’t know why she came to me. Figure I’ll know when I get up there what I need to say or do. Say something to her kids at least.” Cash slumped against the car door.

  She looked like the little kid he had carried into his jail all those years ago. He reached over and touched her shoulder. They drove in silence the few short blocks back to her Ranchero.

  Before she got out of the cruiser, Wheaton said, “You know, you don’t have to work farms all your life.”

  Cash looked at him, her eyebrows raised.

  “I don’t know, you were the smartest kid all through school. Seems you could be doing something besides driving grain truck.”

  “Yeah. Ok.” Cash pulled the door handle.

  “I’ll stop at the bars at noon and nose around. See if anyone in town has been talking about bears down by the river. Drive careful, hear?”

  “You bet,” said Cash. She walked to her truck, got in and headed north.

  Sun-drenched wheat fields. Healing rays of god’s love wash gently over me. Oh, hell, thought Cash, as she turned the country station on as loud as she could handle. She supposed some day she’d have to write that down. The bottom drawer of her dresser was almost filled with notepads of—what? Poems? Songs? Had never occurred to her to think about what it was she was writing. But the words would come into her head and run through her brain waves until she put them on paper. Once they were written down, they quit popping up through her consciousness. Time to do it for this one because god’s love wasn’t doing her or anyone else all that much good.

  The news came on the radio station. Apparently the VC were presenting an eight-point peace plan and then something about the Paris peace talks still being at a stalemate. Meanwhile the body count rose. Cash had had her fill of getting shot at. Not something she wanted to face on a nightly, hourly basis. No thanks. She wanted a drink so bad. Didn’t make sense though. Instead, she pulled off the main road where she could see no farmers were out plowing or combining. She drove about a quarter of a mile onto a mud field road, got out of her truck, pulled the rifle from behind the seat. She walked the small ditch for a few yards, finding three empty beer bottles along the way.

  She set the bottles on top of three fence posts, with four fence posts between each one.

  She opened the driver’s door of her truck, rested the rifle through the open window. She fired off bullets until the three beer bottles were shattered glass. Not that bad, she thought. But not that good either. With eight bullets she’d eventually hit all three bottles. She put a new bullet in the chamber and the safety back on the gun.

  She put it back behind her seat and sat there watching a few birds fly. The white clouds drift across the sky. Smoking. Not really thinking about anything. Just sitting. She could smell the earth, the combined field she sat next to. Thank god she drank. She really didn’t know how she’d get through life any other way.

  She had gotten over missing her mom, her brother and her sister years ago. Or at least she thought she had. Wheaton was her only real friend. Jim didn’t count. She should have whacked him with the cue stick last night. Always trying to appease folks. Come on, Cash, let it go. Yeah, she figured that’s how folks ended up dead. Just letting it go. Well, so far she had had to let go of everyone who mattered to her. Maybe she didn’t want to just let it go anymore.

  Maybe she should have stopped Josie from drinking the other day.

  Cash thought about how in the past, without knowing it, she would find herself scanning the cabs as the beet trucks or grain trucks lined up in the fall, looking at the drivers, never quite admitting to herself she was looking for her ma.

  The only time she had ever walked into a church willingly was once around Christmas a few years back. She had seen a couple of Indian women getting out of a car driven by a white social-worker-type woman. The women each had a grocery bag and they walked into the church. Their dark calico-flowered skirts hung down to their ankles. They were wearing shoes, while the social worker lady had on some kind of fancy zip-up boots with fur trim around the top that were made to go over the high heels she was wearing.

  The Indian women had kerchiefs tied around their heads and knotted under their chins. Old wool coats hung loosely down their shoulders and backs. Cash had never seen her mother dressed in a skirt, but maybe she had aged and gotten Jesus. Maybe one of those women was one of the aunties who used to fake-speak Spanish to get into the bars.

  Cash had looked at the church sign and read that the Lutheran church was having a holiday bazaar, selling beadwork made by Indians from the White Earth Reservation. Cash had driven around town for about fifteen minutes, then pulled up to the church. When she walked in, there was no one upstairs. Just empty rows of pews facing the de
ad guy hanging on the cross up front. Creepy. She could hear voices in the church basement so she walked down the wooden stairs behind the last row of pews. At the bottom of the stairs she looked into the church kitchen area. The Indian women were laying out beaded earrings and tiny leather moccasins on two of the dining tables.

  Neither of the women was Cash’s ma nor an auntie. Cash didn’t even remember if she felt disappointed or not. She just turned and walked back up the stairs and out of the church.

  Cash finished her cigarette, stubbed it out in the ashtray. She turned the key in the ignition, backed around and continued her drive north to Red Lake.

  It was early afternoon when she pulled into Josie’s driveway. No one was in sight. Cash got out of the truck and walked up to the house. No child answered her knock, but Cash felt like she was being watched. She looked around but didn’t see anyone, didn’t see any movement that would tell her where whoever it was, was. The birds were silent, so someone had to be around.

  Cash walked around the corner of the house and down the path that led to the shore. The traps and fishing nets hung lifeless from the trees. Even the boat already looked forlorn. Sadness permeated the air. Cash stood at the lakeshore and looked out onto the expanse of Red Lake.

  Stories told said that there had been a battle between the Ojibwe people and the Dakota. It was such a bloody battle it turned the lake water red. Cash stood there and felt ancient grief wrap itself around the present-day sorrow. The water lapping the sand did so with sorrow. The leaves moving in the gentle wind off the lake moved with sorrow.

  Cash stood there silently until the birds started to talk to each other again. Until the insects started to fly through the air again. Wrapped in a fog of sorrow, it was her subconscious that registered the sound—though maybe it wasn’t even a sound, maybe it was just an undercurrent of awareness that off to her left, in the woods, were humans.