Death Where the Bad Rocks Live

by C. M. Wendelboe

  “Maybe when the judge gets the Supreme Court appointment he’ll buy his mother one.”

  “Be my guess, Sophie High Elk is old-school enough she doesn’t have a lot of use for luxuries like a phone.”

  Willie slowed as the Dodge kicked up dust that swirled around and cut down on visibility. A sudden gust of wind blew thick, dark dirt across the road, obscuring Sophie’s house. When the wind died down, it left the house in front of them as if it had just floated down from the dust cloud. Or crashed. The tattered tar paper-roofed shack swayed with the wind in the middle of a prairie dotted with junk cars. A rusted Cadillac and wrecked Hudson in Sophie’s yard had sunk into the ground, their tires covered axle-deep with Dakota dirt, standing guard on either side of her front door. Montana Mini Storages, Unc often called them. He thought that was people’s rationale for leaving them scattered along every reservation in the west, that they were cheaper than buying storage sheds. Healthier for the environment. A person could even gut one, fill it with dirt and flower seeds, and make a giant terrarium out of it, though Manny had never seen one.

  Willie pulled up beside the Hudson, which was missing all its windows. Indian air-conditioning. “Unci,” he called, using the term of respect for grandmother as he stepped from the Durango.

  Manny caught movement at the back of the shack, and he started through thick jaggers that stuck to the legs of his Dockers. He cleared the far corner of the house when a shriveled, stooped old woman thrust a rifle barrel into his face, her knuckles whitening through dark liver spots as she kept pressure on the trigger. “What you want?” she hissed through ill-fitting teeth that clacked together.

  Manny chanced a look to his side. Sophie High Elk spoke through teeth so bright and straight they could have been in a Polident commercial, one for ill-fitting dentures. She stooped with a pronounced dowager’s hump, a head shorter than Manny, with a fire in eyes more rimmed with age lines than Manny had ever seen. But they were no laugh lines. Her weathered, leathered face was a road map of where she’d been in life, what she’d done. From what Willie told him, Sophie had been alone and independent most of her life and expected help from no one. Including protecting herself.

  “I didn’t catch that, mister. I said, what you want?”

  “We need to talk with you, Grandmother.” Willie had walked up on them soundlessly and stood beside Manny.

  Her eyes shifted to Willie even if her gun did not, taking in his black OST uniform, and she finally lowered the pump .22. “Hamilton said you’d be coming here to ask questions about his past. He said for me to answer truthfully, that things would come out in the Senate hearings anyway. Don’t mean I have to like you snooping around about him.”

  “We’re not here for that, Grandmother,” Willie said, taking off his hat. “But we do need to speak with you about your son.”

  Sophie let the hammer down on the rusty Remington .22 pump and cradled the gun in her arm. She said nothing as she brushed past them and into the house. They followed her into the small, stucco house the color of last month’s curdled milk. Sophie motioned through the doorway to a living room and a sweat-stained couch missing one cushion before disappearing into the kitchen.

  “That was close,” Willie whispered.

  Manny smiled. “I doubt that old rifle could even shoot as rusty as it is. She just wanted to make sure we didn’t take what’s hers.”

  “This?” Willie gestured around the tiny room. Sophie’s house consisted of this room, a kitchen, and another small room missing a door that housed a bed and milk crates piled three high acting as a dresser. Dingy muslin skirts identical to the one Sophie wore took up space in one milk crate, the other two housing socks and what looked like frayed bloomers.

  He turned his attention to the living room decorated in gaudy, faded brown paisley wallpaper that had been popular decades ago. A water leak from the roof had trickled down and stained one wall, lifting plaster from it and exposing the chicken-wire underlayment. Wind ruffled through loose wallpaper.

  Willie nodded to newspaper sticking out of the wall. “What with the paper?”

  “Insulation.” Manny lifted a corner of the wallpaper away. Sophie had stuffed newspapers between the plaster and the outer wall. Unc had done the same thing to the log cabin he and Manny had lived in. Unc would scour garbage cans for discarded newspaper to shove between the inner and outer walls, plugging the chinking and preventing wind from whipping through. “People used to stuff most anything behind their walls for insulation, rags, newspapers, even old canvas and burlap they’d scrounge. It wasn’t the most efficient, but it kept some of the cold out.”

  But Manny wasn’t interested in the damaged wall. His eye was on the one across from it. He fished inside his pocket for his reading glasses and stepped closer. Photos of Ham adorned the entire wall, which was free of wallpaper and painted a pleasant robin egg blue. The pictures showed Ham in various stages of development, from when he was eight, perhaps nine Manny guessed, through his law school days, each photo unmistakably Alexander Hamilton High Elk, with his prominent nose and intense blue eyes.

  Sophie shuffled out of the kitchen carrying a pot and cups. She set them on a cedar log coffee table in front of the couch. “Don’t have coffee. All I got is cheyaka.”

  “Tea is fine, Grandmother.”

  Willie poured the tea and handed the cup to Sophie, but she waved it away. “You men drink. I only got those two cups.”

  She used the edge of a cushioned chair to ease herself down and grabbed a bowl from the floor and balanced it in her lap. She took out a leather loop, porcupine quills adorning half the loop, and put several more quills in her mouth to soften. “What do you wish to know?” she said between sucking quills.

  “Gunnar Janssen, Mrs. High Elk.”

  Sophie showed no signs of recognition as she continued quilling. “That college pal of Hamilton’s? He brought him here a couple times, him and that other roommate of his from college. He disappeared—Gunnar, not the scary one—and Hamilton thought he might have hid out from the draft board or had some hunting accident.”

  “He was found murdered in the Stronghold a few days ago, in the old bombing range.”

  Sophie put her quillwork down and stared over her glasses at Manny. “Hamilton brought him here a few times when they were in college. That’s all I know.”

  Manny tasted the tea, weak and bitter and tepid. He set the cup on the table. “Tell me about that time when Gunnar went missing.” Manny scooted to the edge of the couch to watch her eyes. “Ham said he stayed with you for a week back then, looking for Gunnar. Do you recall that?”

  Sophie flattened a porcupine quill as she pulled it between clenched dentures loose enough they threatened to come out. She pushed against her lip to seat the dentures. “That what Hamilton told you, that he looked for Gunnar for a week?”

  “He did.”

  “Then that is what happened.” The wattle under her chin swayed as she spoke. “You think he’d lie to you about that?” Her stare bore through him, defiant and unwavering, her mistrust of authority apparent, thick like a curtain that Manny needed to peel back.

  “Sometimes a person forgets when they get on in age.”

  Sophie used the arm of the chair and stood. Willie leaned over to help her but she brushed his hand away. “Hamilton stayed here for the entire week, just like he said. A federal judge and a Lakota, and you question his words?”

  She walked hunched over to her I Love My Son wall and tapped a picture with a gnarled finger. The eight-year-old boy Manny was drawn to earlier stared back through blue eyes set on an angular face and had a pleasant, natural smile. A trusting smile. A smile that beckoned a person to stop and talk with the boy. Ham’s smile that he never lost. He clutched a tiny bow and a quiver slung loosely across his back. “Hamilton always saw the good in things. Always happy despite his life here at home. This was Hamilton’s last day with me. His father, Samuel, was a drunkard of the worst kind. Did you know that has always been the curs
e of our people?”

  Manny nodded. The curse of the bottle had been the curse of so many Manny knew on the reservation. It had been one of the reasons he had fled Pine Ridge to the safety of the White man’s world. Right out of college the bureau had offered him a special agent position and he’d grabbed it, never looking back to the poverty, along with the rampant alcoholism, on the reservation. He often wondered if he should have taken the fork in the road that Lumpy had, stayed right here and tried to make a difference. “You said this was his last day with you.” He pointed to the photo. “Where did he go?”

  “The Jesuits.” Sophie straightened as best she could and her jaw jutted out, a proud mother remembering her only child. “Hamilton was eight when Samuel died, leaving me with no job, no source of income. I was lucky to do some hunting for meat, and plant a garden every year, not that it grew well here in this dry heat. I had little enough for one person, let alone a growing boy. Holy Rosary Mission was a godsend for Hamilton. They did him right.”

  She chin-pointed to another picture taken when he was a teen. Ham stood beside grandstands, a multicolored medal draped around his neck under his disarming smile. “This was the year Hamilton set the state record in the cross-country.”

  Willie pointed to a set of pictures of Ham wearing ill-fitting suits. “Law school?

  “The dorm in Vermillion. He couldn’t find a suit to fit him so we went shopping at the Salvation Army. Made no difference—he still came out top in his class.”

  Sophie smiled for the first time. “His last day of law school, and his first day starting for Whitney Glover.”

  “The Rapid City firm?”

  Sophie nodded.

  “High profile,” Willie said, squinting to get a better look.

  “As I recall, Ham defended Calvin Wolf Guts in a 1979 homicide. Made a name for himself when he got an acquittal.” Manny remembered the case from his Pine Ridge days. AIM enforcer Cal Wolf Guts had been arrested for killing Marjorie White Plume. Whitney Glover assigned his junior attorney, Alex High Elk, to defend Wolf Guts. The press had already convicted Wolf Guts and were salivating over the sentence even as the jury acquitted him. After that, the press consumed stories of the new bright shining star in the Glover law firm. But Whitney Glover hated being replaced in the company spotlight, and assigned Ham piddly cases thereafter until a law firm in Sioux Falls scooped him up.

  “Glover expected Calvin to get convicted, like everyone else,” Sophie whistled through her dentures. “Thought Hamilton would plead it out, but he didn’t. He stood his ground and went to trial.” She faced Manny. “And you question a man with that kind of integrity? If Hamilton said he was here for a week looking for Gunnar, he was.”

  “It’s information we had to verify.” Manny backed away from Sophie when she put a porcupine quill in her mouth. The last thing he needed was a trip to the ER to dig a porcupine quill spit by an irate senior citizen out of his face.

  “You don’t know anything about my son, do you?”

  “Just what’s in the Judicial Quarterly and Indian Law Review.” And the dossier the bureau sent me.

  “The magazine ever mention his grandfather, Clayton Charles? Samuel’s father?”

  The dossier had a single brief line about the judge’s famous grandfather. “Not much.”

  “How the good senator abandoned Hamilton’s father, Samuel, and his mother, Hannah? Of course, your history whitewashes that.” She pulled the quill between her teeth, looked at it, and popped it back in her mouth to soak more. “Sam never got over Clayton abandoning him and Hannah. Hannah was a strong woman, never letting on there was anything wrong with Clayton living apart from them.

  “But Sam—it ate on him. Bad. He never forgave his father for shunning him and his mother. So when Hamilton was born, my husband insisted on naming him Alexander Hamilton. Know why?”

  “Because the original Alexander Hamilton’s father abandoned him when he was only eleven,” Willie answered. “In a place called Charles Town.”

  Sophie’s eyes narrowed. “You know your history, Officer. Charles Town. Just like the Charles family ranch that Hannah and Sam wasn’t good enough to ever set foot on. Samuel thought it would be funny if he named his son after the first Alexander Hamilton. But it was anything but humorous, and it ate on Sam until the day he died.”

  Sophie dropped back into her chair and her head bobbed on her chest. She had told them things she may never have told anyone else, just to protect her son, to parry some of the painful questions that were going to sling his way during the Senate hearings. When it appeared as if she had dozed off, her head snapped up and once again her fiery eyes met Manny’s. “Hamilton’s a good person and a good son. Leave him alone.”

  Sophie slumped farther into the chair then, and her head rested on her chest. Gentle snoring rose from the old woman, and Willie and Manny tiptoed out the door. As they started toward the Durango, Manny felt eyes watching him. He turned to the house, but saw no movement.

  “I’d have hated to get on her bad side back in the day.”

  “I’d hate to get on her bad side now,” Manny said, watching the house until they drove away.

  CHAPTER 11

  Manny and Willie walked into the house just in time to hear Pee Pee Pourier shout out “thirty-four ninety-nine!” Drew Carey, his arm barely able to drape over the massive, shaking shoulders of the woman in the muumuu, gave the lucky contestant the choice of the winning prize. Pee Pee waved them into the living room and dropped back in front of the television. He turned the volume down and divided his attention between the TV and them.

  “Watch this. Drew Carey’s going to lead this schmuck into picking door number two.”

  “You certain?”

  “Just watch,” Pee Pee smiled and rubbed his testicles as if it would bring the woman luck.

  Drew Carey gave the fat lady on stage the choice of three doors, the crowd chanting, working themselves into a failure frenzy following Drew’s lead. “Door number two! Door number two!”

  “Door number two!” she shouted out and the curtains rose slowly as if in mourning. Gone was the new Chevy Impala. Gone was the entertainment center, complete with surround sound, and vacation trip to Disney World’s Epcot Center. The contestant wound up with two tickets to the Rose Bowl.

  “At least she won something.”

  Pee Pee laughed and turned the television off. “That damned fool lives in Connecticut. You think she’s going to plunk down change to go all the way to Pasadena to smell a bunch of flowers and watch a football game?”

  “I see your point.”

  Pee Pee faced them and leaned back in the chair. His T-shirt wore more breakfast than his plate had as if he were competing with Willie for most sloppy. He rubbed his crotch waiting for an answer. At least Willie doesn’t fondle himself. “You didn’t come here to hang out with old Pee Pee or watch Drew Carey put the screws to someone else. You want to know about that car.”

  “Give that man door number two!” Manny did his best to imitate the Price Is Right host.

  “That’s pretty good,” Pee Pee laughed. “But you sounded more like Bob Barker. Remember when he was the host?”

  “For years. A hometown boy.”

  “Close. From the Rosebud.” Pee Pee checked his watch. “Wait a sec while I check some bidding.” He moved to a chair in front of a computer that took up most of the kitchen table and was the only thing in the room that didn’t have food dribbled on it. He played the keyboard like a sloppy Liberace and eBay popped on the screen. Pee Pee entered a bid a dollar higher than the last bidder.

  “What you shopping for?” Willie leaned over his shoulder. “I’ve picked up some good deals on eBay myself.”

  “Boots.” Pee Pee winked, his finger poised over the mouse pointed to the bid button. “The pair that Elvis wore in his last concert in Sioux Falls in ’68.”

  “Think you’ll get them?”

  “Only other bidder is Lumpy.”

  Now it was Manny’s turn
to look over Pee Pee’s shoulder. “How you know it’s Lumpy?”

  “Deduction, Watson. I told him about this pair of Elvis boots that was nearing the end of the auction and how I’d like to bid on them. I also told him I needed to go to Hot Springs and see my dad in the VA home. So Lumpy was real generous and gave me the day off. Said take all the time I need.” Pee Pee tilted his head back and laughed. “All he wanted is for me to be away from my computer so I couldn’t bid on them.”

  “That’s not very smart. You know Lumpy will bid them up.”

  Pee Pee chuckled. “I’ll recoup my money in the end. Lumpy will hound me until I finally relent and sell the boots to him for more than I paid for them.”

  “Kind of cold,” Willie said. “Staying here bidding instead of visiting your dad.”

  Pee Pee smiled. “Didn’t they teach you anything about deception at the police academy? My dad hit it big time at the Prairie Wind Casino last year—biggest haul in the quarter slots they ever had. He took his winnings and moved to Daytona Beach; lies around all day looking at babes in thongs and getting a tan.”

  “Didn’t anyone ever tell him we Skins already have a natural tan?”

  Pee Pee checked his watch again, his finger poised above the mouse, checking the time left, then hit it. His bid went through, and the time ran out on the auction. “There, fat ass! Take that.”

  “Won?”

  Pee Pee nodded and sneered. “Be here overnight. I can’t wait to see Lumpy’s face when I come waltzing in wearing those fancy Tony Lamas.”

  “The car,” Manny pressed.

  “The car. Sure.” Pee Pee moved onto the couch and grabbed a manila folder from the end table. “Car was a 1940 Buick Roadmaster. Damned near new in 1944. But bombs definitely did the old girl in. I found fragments of bomb casings imbedded in the sheet metal, and the pattern of the broken windows indicated overpressure blew them out.”

  “You sure?” Willie sat beside Pee Pee and flipped through the folder. “No one would put a new car out there for bombing practice.”