At the mention of our collective obstruction, the laughter died away in his throat. “Oh, it’s my sister Arbutis. Umm hmm, yes, it is so.”
Henry raised a hand and massaged the bridge of his nose with a powerful thumb and forefinger. “ Ahh-he ’, I had forgotten.”
I knew Arbutis Little Bird-more as Lonnie’s daughter’s aunt than as his sister. Melissa, with whom I’d been involved in a complicated case a couple of years ago, was now away in Bozeman playing point guard for Montana State. The news couldn’t have been worse for our cause-Arbutis was a steely-eyed, iron-bottomed gunboat of a woman whose natural response to everything was an absolute negative that brooked no discussion.
I looked back out the window where the crows had disappeared and the rain appeared to be winning the battle. We were doomed.
“Henry, have you thought about taking him down to Painted Warrior? That’s a pretty fine spot, um hmm, um hmm. There are crows all over the bottom land, and they circle the cliffs up where the warrior’s war paint streaks the rocks. Yes, it is so.”
The Bear released his nose. “Near Red Birney?”
They both smiled, and Lonnie nodded. “Yeah, definitely not White Birney.”
In a perverseness of geography, there were two towns by the name of Birney just on and just off the Rez. To the Indians they will forever be referred to as Red Birney and White Birney, but to the politically correct Caucasians the names had been transmogrified to Birney Day (for the day school), and Birney Post (for the post office). Like most things on the Rez, it was complicated.
“You can take the ridge road, but you’ll need a four-wheel-drive if it really decides to rain. If I was you, I’d take 4 down to the windmill at Tie Creek, and then go up the dirt track till you get to the spotter road to your right-that’ll take you straight over to the base of the cliffs.”
A spotter road was the name the locals called roads used to spotlight and poach deer on the Rez. I was already losing faith. “Lonnie, Cady’s really got her heart set on Crazy Head Springs, and the wedding is in two weeks.”
He nodded again and then became somber in respect for the gravity of my situation. “Well then, maybe you should go on over to the library, but take your gun, Walter. Umm hmm, yes, it is so.”
Vic stopped at the counter to buy some chewing gum and was having a conversation with Brandon White Buffalo-probably something to do with Katrina Walks Nice.
Henry was rolling Lonnie out the door and into the stunningly mixed-up summer afternoon, the ozone hanging in the air like baskets. The Cheyenne Nation, thinking it might be wise to explore other avenues, looked back at me. “Would you like to go take a look at Painted Warrior?”
I made a face, thinking about how I was going to break the news to Cady. “Well, I really don’t want to go over to the library and tangle with Arbutis Little Bird, I can tell you that much.”
“It is possible I can do that later. Do you have your gun? I may have to borrow it.”
I slapped the small of my back, where my duty sidearm rested simply from habit. “All I’ve got is my. 45, and I don’t think that’d bring down Arbutis.” I pushed open the door and started toward Henry’s truck, which I truly despised. I’d loaned the Bullet to Vic so that she could go ahead to Billings, where she would be taking a flight to Omaha later that day for a training seminar on police public relations. That left me with Lonnie, Henry, and Rezdawg, the most pernicious vehicle on the North American continent.
Vic made her way past, reading my mind. “You’re sure you don’t need your truck?”
“I’ll be fine.”
She placed a fist on her belt and stood there, hipshot.
“I’m still trying to figure out why it is you volunteered to go to Omaha.”
“Somebody’s gotta do it.”
“Yep, but Saizarbitoria could’ve gone-Frymire or Double-Tough.”
She shrugged and turned her head.
“This doesn’t have anything to do with the upcoming nuptials, does it?”
She stubbed the toe of a ballistic boot on the asphalt of the parking lot. “Mom’s going to be here the day after tomorrow.” She looked to the distance, at nothing particular. “I’m not good at this shit. I’ll be back right before the wedding, but I think I’ll just avoid the run-up to the three-ring circus-if you don’t mind.” She hit the button on my remote, and the lights blipped on my truck.
“Okay, but I assume you’re not taking Dog.”
She responded by opening the door, and we watched as more than a hundred and fifty pounds of assorted canine lineage vaulted from the front seat and circled around to the ’63 three-quarter-ton beast, first going to Lonnie. The Northern Cheyenne chief reached his wrinkled hands out the door and around Dog’s head, running a thumb over the bullet furrow and holding him as if giving a blessing. “ Ha-ay, big rascal.”
I went around the back and lowered Rezdawg’s tailgate, pinching my fingers in the chains in the process. I waited till Dog noticed me and came around. He looked at the derelict truck and promptly sat.
“Vic needs the Bullet. Come on, we both get to suffer.”
He jumped in the bed and I closed the tailgate twice because, of course, the first time it didn’t line up.
Vic rolled down the driver’s-side window of my truck. “You’re going to be all right up here playing cowboy with the Indians?”
I joined her at the door. “I think so.” We both watched as Henry put Lonnie’s blanket over his lap, folded up the chief’s wheelchair, and placed it in the bed with Dog. “I’ve got a good scout.”
“Uh huh.” She hit the ignition and fired up the V-10 and then sat there, rumbling. “I’ll call you from Nebraska.” She thought about it and pulled the three-quarter-ton down into gear. “Fuck it, what else is there to do?”
It was only a mile up the road to Lonnie’s place, which was good because that was about the distance that Rezdawg could make without breaking down.
In the numerous conversations I’d had with Henry concerning his pickup, I’d asked him why, as meticulous as he was with every other aspect of his life-his house, his business, his car-why it was that he didn’t get his piece-of-crap truck really fixed. His answer, as we’d waited by the side of the road for another of Rezdawg’s rest periods to pass, was that the truck was a holy relic of his life and that replacing parts would alter its spirit. I retorted that it seemed to me that the junk pile’s spirit was in need of a little repair, but he’d ignored me like he always did.
I’d also pointed out that the thing didn’t have its original gas, tires, or oil, but that hadn’t gotten me anywhere, either.
I rolled the chief up the incline to his picture-perfect home. Lonnie had had some wilder days when he was younger and had played baseball and drunk on a professional level until losing his legs to diabetes. He was still under parole with a cadre of sisters, headed by the formidable Arbutis, and had to negotiate with his sisters for visitation rights whenever Melissa, the point guard, came home, but he complained that that was less and less.
“She has lots of friends up there in Bozeman. I can see why it is she’d rather stay there than come home and watch stories with me.” The stories Lonnie referred to were the soap operas he watched religiously and reported on as if the characters were actual friends. “But it just makes me love her more when she does come home-um hmm, yes, it is so.”
I paused on the porch so Lonnie could collect his mail from a box attached to the house; most residents on the Rez had post office boxes and didn’t get this kind of attention to delivery, but Lonnie was special.
“They toy with our hearts, these daughters of ours-don’t they, lawman?”
“Yes, they do.”
He patted my hand in reassurance. “Don’t worry; we’ll get your daughter’s wedding sorted out.”
“Thanks, Lonnie.”
I started to roll him into the house, but his hands fastened around the chrome runners of his wheelchair. “I think I will stay out here and watch the rain; maybe listen to some baseball. The Rockies are at home and playing the Phillies this afternoon.”