I overheard her say that her grandfather was getting worse. They’d all be in trouble if she couldn’t get help. I gathered that he lived up Hell Roaring Creek, the last house before the road became a skinny ledge over the canyon. I knew the place.
“He’s got some crazy shit going on up there,” Nina said. “Anyone within a mile of his place is screwed.” The Indians clucked their tongues. Nina gazed off toward the Mission Mountains that were as blue as a raven’s heart above us.
Every once in a while, Johnny Sees Red Night would stop by and Nina would be out of the stand in a shot. There was a morose urgency to their chats. They’d head over to the scrub pines and talk in low voices. I’d catch a few lines here and there, enough to patch together there was trouble I couldn’t comprehend. The other Indians would stop talking and glance over their shoulders at the two, swat at invisible flies, put their heads together, and whisper conspiratorially. Something bad was going down that apparently didn’t concern my white ass.
By August, the wind woofed at the window screens and the double fans blew the smell of grease out to the highway. Tourists stopped by in their cutoffs and cover-ups, gulped iced tea and huckleberry shakes, and took off their reflector sunglasses to gawk at Flathead Lake shimmering just beyond the edge of the highway.
I’d been working up the courage to ask Nina out. I had a job at the Polson lumberyard and was finally making money. I put cash down on an El Camino, rented an apartment on the lake, and was ready to make my move. I planned to take Nina to Bigfork on a real date: after a meal at Showthyme, we’d go to the theater.
Summer unleashed the hottest spell on record. Heat sizzled the highway and glittered up from the shore. Squint became a dog on the prowl, a monster loosed on our tiny world. He slapped the asses of cocktail waitresses, leered at high-school girls, and spun nickels at them as he patrolled slowly past. Two teenagers from Browning got their skulls cracked and were left for dead but no one tattled. When old Bigshoe pissed behind the China Garden, Squint shattered every bone in his hands and still no one censured him, not even the whites. He whooped his siren without cause and gunned his car up on sidewalks to scare any Indian minding his own business. He turned his attention on Nina and pestered her relentlessly. He ignored the static of the dispatcher announcing disturbances — the damn Indians, always those damn Indians causing trouble for whites. Never the opposite, never whites like Squint causing Indians trouble. He let everyone know he was a big-shot son of a bitch who could shirk his duties to chase tail.
“Tell me where you live, baby girl,” he said.
Nina tried to throw him off with kindness, play like she halfway cared, but that only made him more of a jackass.
“I’m going to find you,” he said. “You know I have the means. I’ll follow you home.”
He wrapped his arms around her and gripped the back of her neck. “Please don’t,” I heard her say, and I stepped up. She swiped her hand at the window and cut me a pleading glance that said I’d only make matters worse. Whether for her or me, I couldn’t tell. When Squint went to the head, Nina ducked outside and beelined for me. “You don’t want to cause yourself trouble and please don’t cause me any. But stay here,” she said. “I have more I want to say to you.”
I twisted a cigarette in my mouth and took a couple of drags. I thought she didn’t want to be alone in the situation with Squint. She needed an ally, nothing more. We waited until Squint got into his cruiser and drove away. His heavy car humped up over the dirt road and as his front tires gripped the highway, his back tires spit gravel at a few customers lounging at the picnic tables. He was pissed.
Nina stood away from me to watch Squint leave. There was no glee in her watching. She waited until he was far down the road before she spoke: “He says he’s going to come back for me.” She rubbed her forehead and blinked away tears.
It was late. She closed up shop, slung her backpack over her shoulder, and headed toward the highway. “Don’t follow me,” she said. “I mean it.”
But I did follow. I followed her on foot until she disappeared into the dark fields beyond the road. I called out but I’d lost her as if she’d vanished before my eyes. I’d become her second stalker. Lurking around. Chasing where I wasn’t wanted.
I tried to conjure Nina’s soothing voice telling me to calm down, tried to turn my thoughts from the Sig Sauer in my glove box. I didn’t wish to cause Nina trouble. She needed this job and everyone knew it. It wouldn’t do her any good if I was to pop a cap in his ass, but I had to make Squint back off. He was out of control.
I arrived at eight in the morning, the quiet time at Custer’s. The regulars were drinking coffee and eating cinnamon rolls. It was already a scorcher, so hot my coffee didn’t even steam the air. My stomach quivered. I had the peculiar feeling something was gaining on me. Squint wasn’t going to give up his pursuit of Nina. There was no place to go but ugly from here.
Nina had just finished her prep work and was ready to hear me out when I caught sight of an old pickup. I don’t know what drew my attention, maybe a jagged flash of chrome. The pickup was miles away, just a speck on the horizon, but I swear I heard its engine. I wasn’t the only one. As the vehicle covered ground we watched a bad-ass wind barrel round and round behind it, making its own crazy static.
Toolbox came out, whistled, then scurried back inside. I took off my shades. Man-sized tornadoes spun in the wake of the pickup, sparking tiny arrows of blue lightning. Wind rushed the fields and the muggy heat licked us like a pup.
Indian kids made for their cars. Old Indians limped away quick.
“If you know what’s good for you,” Angelina Thump Bird told me, “you’ll skedaddle.”
Nina raised the service screen and pushed herself halfway out the window to get a better look at the speeding truck. Her shirt hiked up to reveal the small of her back, the sensuous curve of her lean spine. “Shit,” she said.
She swiped her forehead with the back of her hand and jumped down. She didn’t take her eyes off the approaching truck. She reached over, switched off the coffee urn, and dumped the whole pot into the sink. Toolbox and Smug hid behind the ice-cream machine. Nina closed all the blinds and turned off the ever-blinking arrow sign. She slammed the window closed and flipped the sign on the door. SHUT UP, the sign read.
I stood beneath the arrow sign wondering what the hell was going on. I felt peculiarly alone. The only dumb-ass facing a churning funnel. A fierce wind roiled around me and I had to catch myself or fall. The wiry-haired Indian gunned his pickup and trundled toward the stand. The trash barrel tipped over and rolled toward the highway; napkins, paper cups, and greasy baskets flittered across the road and littered the fields. Hail pelted a twenty-foot circumference directly over Custer’s. I tented my newspaper above my head and wondered if I was in my right mind. The sun shimmered down and cars kept passing, their drivers oblivious.
The Indian shunted his pickup around back of the stand and I heard the familiar slam of Custer’s door. When Nina spotted me she gestured wildly, and before I could understand what she was trying to communicate, the old Indian was turning toward me.
In my nightmares, one bad dream plays over and over again: the hit-and-run. I hear ribs shatter, the snickering thunder of kneecaps striking earth, the hollow ker-blonk sound of a man’s skull batting from grille to undercarriage. And now I smelled the acrid bloom of singed hair as the nightmare leaped from the Indian’s palm.