by Chuck Redman
Cosetti ain’t interested in justifying nothing, he wants to know what in the world is going on with her. It’s personal, it doesn’t matter, that’s all she’ll comment on the subject. “It didn’t help to find out through hearsay that you could have been killed last night.” Something in his eye says there may be something in her eyes that Cosetti ain’t been on the receiving end of in a long, long time. She swallows. But a poor swallow.
“You better sit down.” With just a slight groan, he takes his big briefcase from the green easy chair and don’t seem to know what to do once she’s in it. He sets on the bed and the more he looks at her and tries to pry into what ails the gal, the more pale and grim gets the gal. She’s shivering in her sleeveless shirt, so he switches off the air conditioner behind her. “Janet,” he says bending over her just a little with his hands on his knees, “can I get you something? A beer? I got cheese crackers—”
Well, most of it goes straight on him, and he’s so stunned that it soaks in pretty good before he does anything. But, since Janet ain’t eat a bite since breakfast except coffee and half a protein bar, what she spews up is mainly yellow muck, so it could be worse. Cosetti keeps saying it’s okay it’s okay and his hands hover over the woeful sickly heap like a maestro tellin his woodwinds to pipe down. By the time she’s burped a few last sour notes and cried herself out, Steve’s back from the bathroom sponged off and changed into swim trunks and company teeshirt. He hands Janet a wet motel towel to clean her face up with. Some of the color has came back.
He puts his suit jacket over her shoulders, which is still shivering, then he steps out for a second and comes back with a cold Spritzy-Up from the pop machine and pours some into a glass. Steve lets her drink it down before he starts in cross-examining her emotional nosedive since the press conference this morning. She don’t want to open up. Besides, says she, he still owes her an explanation of what he was tryin to prove by digging up her old editorials and committing them to memory. “What do you want with me?” How can a fella look away from eyes like that like that?
“Mmmh—” Absent ventilation this here room ain’t the freshest place on earth. I’d have to admit. With a deep flush and a smatter of sweat basted across it, Cosetti goes and slides the big window open some, then sets back down upon the bed and studies the brown crisscross stripes on the beige carpet. He musta strained that incision, some way or other, his left hand is pressed hard upon his side. His cheekbones is raised, but not from no grin, when he looks up and says “You talk to me about what’s going on with you and I’ll answer your twenty questions. Deal?”
His right hand hangs in the air like the wooden arm of a old abandoned railroad crossing. “Why did you have to bring him here!” If an explosion of fiery words could wallop a young fella and tumble him over like in the funny pages, Cosetti’d be on his back looking up from that motel-grade carpet with little tweety birds circling his head.
“Who?”
“He made me feel like a fool. Ugly.”
“Krolak?”
“I was fine,” she says, “I erased him years ago.”
“Apparently you didn’t, Janet,” and he pours the remainder of the soda in her glass. He wonders if she don’t mind him having a beer.
“I’d rather you didn’t.” He nods quite sympathetic. Pretty soon Cosetti’s that statue they call The Thinker as Janet’s eyes grow to Sandhill lakes and she ounce by ounce and drip by drip starts to heave upon this stranger all the emotional bile that’s been bottled in her poor gut since—. Well, it seems she had the crush to end all crushes, back in college, for this grave character Krolak. Janet was so dismal deep in love, it seems, every time she was out with the guy she couldn’t just say whatever popped in her head like a normal gal, she had to—choose—every—single—word—like—a—Pulitzer—Prize—article—or—something. One little adjective that wasn’t pure Shakespeare might break the magic spell of their love. Her love, that is. No, his love. Oh, I don’t know. She embeds her face in that cool white towel and appears to shake several hard truths into the warm lamplight. Cosetti’s eye can just about discern them truths, if I’m any judge.
Anyways, while Krolak would just stand there stroking his beard and thinking lofty thoughts, Janet was frozen in her words and even more frozen in her actions. She had to show the brainy anthropology major how she felt about him. How to best go about that? She had not the foggiest. She vowed to heaven that Saturday night she would kiss his serious whiskered mouth. I mean really kiss him. Or die trying.
Saturday night after he walked her back to her campus apartment and they finished their coffee over a conversation so tense that all it needed was the climax music from some Betty Davis picture, she kissed him. It was a long kiss, even though she had some trouble getting her trembling lips approximately near to the dude’s pale brooding ones because she first had to kick out one or two kitchen chairs that was in the way, still it was a long kiss. And he kissed her back just as long. And she kissed him and they kept that kiss going. And nothing happened. Nope. Not a darn thing. That kiss just died of old age. And so did Janet’s heart.
Steve blows air out his thin nostrils and his question to her, after a minute, is how could she give up on romance because of one little flop. With an egg-headed narcissist.
“Because,” she says, “what’s the point?” Steve ain’t following. So she has to look him in the eye: the one that ain’t but a patch. Didn’t he have self-doubts, she wants to know, after—
“You mean could anyone love me?” That’s exactly what she means. “Never. I got engaged, married, had a kid. Got divorced. And it’s not your turn yet.”
“I think I’m ready for a beer,” she says.
“I don’t think that’s such a good—”
“Trust me. I’m a journalist. But maybe you don’t have any beer. Maybe that was a hoax all along.”
“Oh I’ve got beer all right, Janet. I own the beer. Bought it outright.”
She thinks that’s an awful droll thing to say and says so. They uncork two beers. They neither of them was kiddin about being thirsty. “It is my turn, by the way,” she says. “Let’s have it.”
“Mmmh. You want my confession.” The regular Janet might have made a remark, but this Janet just raises her beer bottle in a little ironical salute. He ahems and don’t know exactly where to start and wants a direct question put to him, being a lawyer and all I guess, so she frowns.
“Okay,” she says, and she shrugs his swanky suit jacket off her bare shoulders and I sure like the nifty way she done that. “Mr. Cosetti: You came to Cottonwood because your company is so benevolent it just has to spread its largesse to all our poor downtrodden peasants.” Askance is how the corporate counsel regards that there opener. Outside somewhere a couple car doors slam. The crickets trail off to a low hum. “But there’s something else you’re here for. From the beginning you’ve looked at me in a way that makes me feel—suspect.”
He sees there ain’t no way to duck or sidestep. “You’re right,” says him. “I wanted to see you. Possibly say hello to your dad.”
“You know my dad?” Doubt’s another word for what we wrestle with in our heads. And it’s always the good and the bad squaring off, we don’t know which is which half the time.
“We played golf together.”
The regular Janet ain’t here to comment that she’d have pegged him as more the hunting and fishing type. This one just needs to know When.
“September nineteen ninety.” The spine of this Janet sits up straight. The lips fuse. “Charity golf tournament. Support the Nebraska Beef Queen Pageant. We were paired up.”
“Okay.” I ain’t sure if Janet’s heart has took a siesta.
“Twelfth hole. I was up by three. We had some good-natured chatter going on. His turn to tee off first.”
Suddenly she’s whiter than before she took sick and her index finger is revolving in the air like it’s tryin to trace the dark iris that ought to be there, gazing at her half-amused, but ain’t.
“It was the tee,” she says in a voice that’s been strangled to a whisper.
Funny time to chuckle and grin. “No. His number two wood.”
“His golf club hit you in the eye?” You ain’t seen or heard true anguish if you ain’t in this little motel room.
“Hit me in the gut. He had a great follow-through, your dad.” Things go all frozen for a second like the old projecter at the Tivoli Theatre before Milt finally got around to upgrading everything to digital. Her eyes has glued in on Steve’s adam’s apple tryin to make sense I guess, and her mouth is startin to form the letter W. “He lost control on the follow-through and it sailed into my belly.”
“So your eye was okay.”
“Just had the wind knocked out of me.” Janet knows the feeling. “He felt so bad, he took me to the clubhouse and bought me a beer. Two beers. I wasn’t much of a drinker at the time. He didn’t know. I was buzzed, I shouldn’t have driven. I never made it out of the parking lot. Ran my truck head-on into a light pole. Windshield shattered.”
“Oh Steve.”
“He shook my hand not a minute before I crashed up.”
Her head is in her hands, saying she never knew, all’s she knew was he had a breakdown. “A complete breakdown.”
“I gathered,” Cosetti says.
“I was at grad school, I had to step in.”
“Hell of a job you’ve done.”
“You know I’m going to have to write up that robbery.”
“Your readers have a right to know, Janet.”
“I think I can find some room on page thirteen between Livestock Roundup and Obituaries.” First smile since—ever.
Cosetti roves his sure eye over this new face. Without saying nothing he reaches towards the desk chair where his best suit pants are throwed. Finds his handkerchief, spits where the monogram ain’t, and wipes a fleck of dried puke from just about under her ear. Where the hair bends like September barley in a hailstorm. He sticks the hankie back in his suit pocket. Wadded. It wasn’t that he hadn’t blew his nose once or twice at that press conference anyways.
“You’re sure, you’re absolutely sure she was the girl in your dream?” Slowly he shakes his head at the uneasy light of his late lodgefire. Eagle Chief’s mood if anything is darker than ever.
Straight across sits Left Hand smoking furiously, and not twitching no more than about every once in a while. “It’s her,” says the feller with his pipe-clenching smile. “To a T. I take my destiny seriously, Chief. I think you know that about me. The Great Spirit doesn’t send a Morning Star dream to just anybody.”
You would think there ain’t nothing Eagle Chief couldn’t pacify with the wisdom of his two downward motioning hands. “Why don’t you wait, son, for another occasion. This girl may not be the one. It seems she came here on some sort of benevolent mission.” Chief lets his eyes take stock for a minute, circling the lodge where, in the shadows of their compartments along the earthen walls, his kinfolk are pert’ner all folded in slumber. Cept his wife, though, she returns the chief’s meditative glance as she sits rockin their newest grandbaby with quite a nice Pawnee lullaby and the resins of corn husk and poplar bud on a finger pressed to the child’s sore gums.
A tallish middle aged gent in a great beaver pelt hat shaped like wings paces around the lodge, listening to the discussion but coming often to a standstill with narrowed eyes and thoughts, apparently, from other realms. Once in a while the gent opens a red and white painted satchel and examines various poultices and herbal concoctions.
Lefty wants to know, with a violent twitch of his eyes and nose for emphasis, since when exactly are sacred traditions no longer honored in Eagle Chief’s village. He turns to the village priest sittin on his right. Secret Pipe is one of these fellers that likes to sip his tea for a while before recognizing a spiritual question, and’ll wonder and stare into the heat waves high above the flames before handing out parcels of enlightenment. Finally, in a voice traveling from somewhere else, and I don’t mean Topeka, the feller starts in very soft-spoken about some pretty deep things. Like how small and how humble are humanfolk in the great universe. How folks like them is born on the earth, walk upon the earth and no where else, and die right there where they lived and walked. Which brings him back again to the idea that humans is pretty puny things, in the scheme of it. “Who here can gainsay that?”
Now he ups the volume and puts that question neither blinking nor liftin his eyes off of Left Hand and it’s an even bet as to which one of these shaved and feathered heads wants to win this here staring contest worse. “To find our way,” and as he sips his tea he coughs just enough to forfeit the contest and dribble some on the jangling bearclaws that line his buckskin shirt. “Ahum. To find our way, do we look only at our moccasins, forever trampling and kicking dust? Is it the small stones scattered from underfoot that show us what direction we must follow?” Thus the feller turns his reverend gaze onto Eagle Chief, whose mouth starts to sag like melted wax. “Or do we look to the heavens to guide our steps? For is it not the Great Spirit who makes the stars to move? And for a holy purpose?” And then the feller brings up the timely example of the Morning Star in particular and while the decibels trickle out of his voice the awe floods into it. Hushed to a near-whisper, he prods his three listeners to think about the brave bright Morning Star and whether, those times when it’s situated so as to rise up alongside the sun, that ain’t a sign. A sign to be paid attention to. And what about dreams, ain’t dreams supposed to mean somethin, especially dreams with stars in em? Priest sure seems to think so. Eagle Chief don’t know what to do with that there gospel, which is hard stuff to argue with, except to cast a doleful set of features towards Left Hand. Whose bouncing head don’t need no words to imply somethin like What’d I tell you, Chief? Am I vindicated? Lefty scoops his open hands toward Secret Pipe. As if the holy man was performing center stage at the Bijou Theatre and just finished levitating a entire Comanche war party and was takin his encore bow.
Then the priest starts to launch into one of his famous parables, which is called The Boy Who Saw A-Ti’-Us, but Lefty cuts in and reminds the pious feller that they’ve already heard that one a time or two, and his smile makes it pretty obvious he decided to understate things by about two or three score.
“Good Sky,” says Eagle Chief to the fella who’s pacing up and down, “Weigh in here, will you, my friend. What was your impression of the girl?” Just then a serious young feller with beaver hat aflapping dashes in to consult about somethin private and pressing. After a bunch of swift hand movements and excited utterings, it’s awful clear there’s been a unusual mishap took place somewheres hereabouts. Good Sky leans down quite calm and dictates several whispered instructions to his assistant, checks the lad’s red and white satchel, then sends him on his way. He puts his hands up so as to discourage questions. The three gents seated round the fire just look at him. Well, one of them smokes and smiles.
“All right,” says Eagle Chief to the medicine man, “about the girl?”
“Ah, the girl.” Good Sky keeps his pacing up, but now his hands are clasped behind his back and his long frame tilts forward. “Well, let’s see: the subject presents as a young adult Sioux female who is casually groomed and attired. Since this evaluator has not had the opportunity to perform a physical examination, only gross findings can be made at this time. The young princess appears to be alert and oriented as to time and place. Some agitation was noted, but this would be expected in a new tribal setting.” Boy, Left Hand can roll his smoky eyes with the best of em. “Head, neck, torso and limbs are unremarkable.”
“You got all that from ‘hello’?” Lefty says.
“What hello?” says the doc. “I never met the girl.” He run into Many Clouds after supper, is the way it come about.
“You base your opinion on what a meddling old auntie tells you?”
“No. I base my opinion on what my meddling old auntie told me. Strike meddling.”
“Great Spirit help m
e if I ever need medical advice in this village.”
“Always gotta be a skeptic in the crowd.”
“The point is,” sighs Eagle Chief, “the girl is basically healthy. Of course,” and his glance pivots over toward the priest for a second, “you want someone healthy. But that’s a two-edged knife, my friends.”
“What’s the problem, Chief?” says Left Hand, pipe smoke sifting through his teeth. “I know how to handle a two-edged knife. It cuts the way I want it.” And with a curdling war whoop the feller leaps up and swipes his weapon at a long loop of the medicine man’s hair as he paces by in abstract self-analysis. I can see Doc turning and standing there scowling and clicking his tongue but I can’t hear a single click, what with the howls of a left-handed jackal who dances in the firelight, shakes a fistful of hair and knows exactly what he wants.
Friday
I gotta hand it to her,” says Bill McCarmady, turning the Caterwauler over to Milt and preparing to fit a quadrant of blueberry bran muffin to his large mouth, “she put that nonsense about the tree and that high-priced nut from California right on the front page.”
“It says he’s from Portland.” Milt points at the dude’s bearded likeness in grainy newsprint.
“I was never too good in geology,” Bill says.
“Geography,” Milt says, gaping.
“Don’t you know when I’m messing with you, Milt?” Considering a grinning mouth full of fiber, Bill’s speech ain’t too sloppy. “Then, she found the human interest angle and really played it up. That squirrelly vandal comes off smelling like a rose.”
“She made him into a goddam local hero,” Kenny says. “She can pull all the heart strings she wants, she’ll win no points with that garbage.”