“George was his best friend,” Velma said. “Even if he was a shitheel, it makes sense that Benjamin was all broken up when George killed himself. Look at Benson here. He’s still messed up over that college boy who... went missing. Aren’t you?”
“Yeah. Well. It’s hard, not knowing what happened.”
Miss Mary’s cackle competed with the rattle of dried leaves. “Nothing hard about not knowing. Look all around you. It’s the easiest thing on earth.” Not dead yet, she liked to say about herself. Not by a long shot.
“It’s all about how things end.” Velma leaned back and stretched her legs as though the sun still shone upon them. “Like the ending to your book. It got me.” She took Benson’s hand and laced her fingers through his, speaking the words like a vow. “In the distance, a dog barked.”
Custer’s Last Stand
by Debra Magpie Earling
Polson
Nina Three Dresses worked at a fast-food stop called Custer’s Last Stand at the edge of Polson, a mean little joint where the cars parked in a circle and blistered picnic tables sat squat beneath a stingy strip of shade. The road sign couldn’t be missed: three white-bulb arrows falling in perpetual motion toward a round building made to look like a drum. They served up coffee drinks with lame names like SacaJoewea and Joeranimo, and cups of grainy soft ice cream with tomahawk sprinkles. Wednesdays it was “scalped” potatoes and red dogs. Oddly enough, it’d become an Indian hangout. I was drawn to the place by a sense of irony.
I’d had trouble I couldn’t shake. Got myself arrested for walking out on a steak and a bottle of whiskey at the Depot Restaurant. Thrown in the hoosegow for a quick wink, then told to get out of town. No sentencing, no arraignment. Just a night of steel bars and Pine Sol dreams.
I didn’t want to hang around Missoula anyway. I hated the hippies and the high-school university, the lazy-ass writers writing about lives they’d never led, the college kids with rich parents and low IQs, the shit-asses who hang out at breweries and call recreation a living. I hightailed it back to the Flathead to get a job and lay low.
It’s the shitty little things that dog a person. Three years back, I was arrested in Butte for breaking a bottle on the sidewalk and not for the real crime I’d committed there. Hit-and-run. The guy’s shoe landed topside up on my hood where I found it the next morning when I woke to a belch of bad memory, recollecting a sound like a pig squeal, the image of a man’s crazy eyes as he looped in the air. I ditched my truck and headed farther west.
Custer’s Last Stand was a new joint, a shitty idea dreamed up by a loser. When I first visited it, I made the dumb-ass comment to a big Indian behind the counter that the local Indians didn’t even fight Custer, so why this stand here? It’s way out of place, I told him. Rightfully belongs in Crow Country, I said. The big Indian in his Flathead Braves T-shirt stared at me from behind the counter, then placed a weak espresso in front of me with three packets of Coffee-Mate. “Yeah, well,” he said, “just so you know, you’re out of place.” And he closed the serving window on me.
A few weeks later, Nina showed up and the little stand became my haven. She’d slide that serving window open and poke her head out, shield her eyes with her slim hands, and in a shivering half-whisper say, “Looks like it’s going to be a scorcher.” She’d wink at me and the world took on new meaning.
She’s what drew me to Custer’s, her calm demeanor. I felt right at home at those peeling picnic tables with a cup of steaming coffee, my morning paper, and a cigarette. I’d stop in once a week, sometimes twice, and for hours at a time if I was feeling lonesome.
The joint was run by a jaded cop who’d fled from Missouri to Montana all for the love of a Merle Haggard song. I’d been off the Flathead since I was a teenager but remembered there’d been others like him over the years. A woman who’d started a pancake house in a concrete teepee on the east shore of Flathead Lake. A couple who’d dyed their hair black, wore headbands with feathers, and had the balls to sell “Indian” beadwork they’d made themselves at the Crazy Daze festival in Ronan.
But Custer’s Last Stand was another thing altogether — an anomaly three hundred miles out of place. Eavesdropping on the old Indians who slurped coffee, I heard about the history of the place and plenty more. Apparently, Officer Verlin Custer, the proprietor, was a character. A mean SOB who waved Indians through yield signs and then pulled them over for traffic violations. There was talk he had some deal going with the smoke shops, kickbacks from cigarettes sold for triple the price to lazy gamblers at the Wolf Den. Pissy penny-ante shit that would eventually turn to bad-ass shit. All his workers called him Squint — even in his presence — but he was too arrogant, too much of a prick, to appreciate their own stand against him.
Nina’s “coworkers” were a joke: a big smiler named Toolbox, and a tattooed half-breed called Smug who had the longest cleavage I’d ever seen. Those knuckleheads would sit outside and smoke while Nina flipped burgers and cut fries.
Around eleven in the morning the gang would show up. Indian girls plinked away on cell phones, flirted with plump-ass boys, and picked flecks of eyeliner from the corners of their eyes. Surly girls who wore black hoodies, smirked instead of laughed, jiggled their keys like they were going somewhere but instead ordered yet another coffee with whipped cream and crushed-candy toppings.
Nina was immune to their jittery talk. She must have been twenty-five. She had a wicked scar that dented her left cheek, a dusting of freckles across her nose. Whenever work slammed the counter, Nina floated from task to task as if she had all the time in the world, and that grace made her seem far wiser than the others, especially when she served the boss.
She delivered every item to Squint with a cool countenance, and then double-flicked her wrists. It was a secret language he was too dumb to get. His coffee, flick flick, nothing here; his coffee straws, flick flick, no more; his steaming butterhorn, flick flick, all gone. Her nonchalance was natural, an easy read. Nothing here for you, buster.
He’d stop by every morning at nine a.m. to inspect the place, except for good days when he’d roar by the stand, his siren wailing: MeMEmeeeeEEE.
Squint didn’t know enough about weights to exercise for health. He worked out to strut bulging thighs, lifted heavy to have arms that strained against his sleeves like tethered mutts. His neck bulged against his uniform collar as he leaned on the service counter to perform semi-push-ups.
“How’s business?” he puffed. “Are you smiling for our customers?”
He wiggled a toothpick between his teeth and squinted at Smug’s cleavage. He grabbed Nina’s hands and traced his thumbnails along her palms to read her misfortune.
“One day a handsome man is going to snatch you up,” he said. “And it may very well be me.” Folks knew he was married to a battle-ax who made her profit off the sale of waterfront property that rightfully belonged to the Indians.
The old Indians would catch me watching Nina too. They’d smile at me through puffs of smoke. I’d shrug, order another cup of coffee, and sit at a picnic table so I could watch Nina come outdoors to serve them. It was worth any trouble for her quick glance, her smugly beautiful snub.
On lucky days, Nina would sit with the old Indians in the shade. I’d listen in, pretending I was reading the paper or checking texts. Nina sipped her coffee and reached for anyone’s cigarette. She’d take a long pull, then blow a slow stream of smoke from her thin nose. She was sexy as hell but there was always a worried look on her face.