Buffalo Jump Blues (7 page)

“But I do have another one. I have one here, see?”

She fingered a thin oval chain from under her shirt and lifted it over her head. The arrowhead was small and dark, with a silver base cap soldered to a ring to hang it from the chain. She placed it beside the one on the desk. “No two arrowheads can be exactly alike, but as you see, these are very close.”

Sean nodded.

“He gave this one to me the night before we moved. He had two of them and let me choose. He'd keep the other one. They were like engagement rings. I had the cap made a few years ago.”

“You talked about marriage and you were twelve?”

“We were in love.” She said it as a fact.

“And you were still in love when you had the cap made?”

“Not really. It's a piece of nostalgia now, something that grounds me in my past. I lost my mother a few years ago, it was a complicated relationship, and my father, he's out of the picture.”

“I'm sorry.”

She shook her head. “No, there's nothing to be sorry about. But people change. I don't know who John is now, if he still carries a torch or has some kind of fixation on me.”

Sean leaned back, cupping his hands behind his head and kneading his skull. It was a habit he'd picked up from Martha Ettinger, who said it got the blood moving and made her smarter. It had never had that effect for him, but it made him look like he was thinking, in any case.

“Will you find him for me?”

“You had me at ‘duplicitous.' But why not try yourself first? Can you still get in touch with the aunt, or maybe the man who taught him how to make the arrowheads? There must be people around who knew him.”

“You're trying to talk yourself out of a job.”

“I told you—”

“I know. Honesty is one of your more dependable virtues.”

Her face became serious. “I haven't decided, that's the thing. If I really
do
want to see him again. But still, I'd like to find out why he was in the bar, why he left before I could speak to him, why he came back. Something to give me an idea what his intentions are. It makes me feel vulnerable not to know.”

Sean brought his hands forward and interlaced his fingers. He said, “Here's what I'm going to do. I'll have you sign a standard contract. But I'm going to cut my daily in half because I don't want to be responsible for you dropping out of school. If I can't get any traction by this weekend, we'll reconsider. No, don't argue. I'm not patronizing you, and when you see the rate, you're still going to wince and I'm still
going to make money. But you might not have to drop any classes to ease your mind.”

“You'll drive up there? It's almost to Canada.”

“If I need to. But he was seen in the valley, so I'll ask around here first. You found me through Sam, you said.”

She nodded.

“Does he know you were coming into Bridger to see me?”

“No. That night he pointed you out to me in the bar, he talked about a couple scrapes you two got into. He pulled his shirt out and showed me where he'd taken a bullet for you.”

“Not exactly, but that's Sam for you.”

“He told me what you did, about the studio . . . this other business. He said you were going through a rough time. I think he had the idea of hooking us up.”

“That's Sam for you, too. The reason I ask is that there might be a time when I want to bring him into our confidence. Actually, that will be today. Sam knows everyone in the valley. Is that going to be a problem?”

“I don't see why.”

“Okay, let's go back to last Thursday. You said the man looked Indian. What does that mean? That his face was Indian, his hair in a braid?”

“His hair wasn't that long, maybe down to the top of his shoulders. His skin was darker than mine, but then I'm very light. It was more his posture that made me notice.” She dropped her chin to her throat, crossed her arms over her chest. “Like this. He'd stand this way when he was around people like my father, authority figures. Present a shell when uneasy is what he really was.”

“How was he dressed?”

“Jeans, I think. Some kind of shirt, long sleeves. Not tucked in. I remember that because it hung below his jacket and the jacket was short and didn't have sleeves.”

“Like a vest.”

She shrugged. “It was a dark color and looked bulky. Oversized. John always wore hand-me-downs, clothes that were too big for him. I think he had a cousin somewhere who was older. I know somebody sent packages of clothes to his aunt.

“Uh-huh.” Sean picked up a pencil. He took down some personal information, her address, two phone numbers, a cell and a landline, the mention of which made him raise his eyes. In his experience, the only young people you could reach on landlines lived off the grid on ranches. She said the landlord of the trailer park where she stayed paid for a communal phone because cell reception was hit-and-miss. You could dial out on the landline and you could call that number, but unless someone walking by heard it ringing and that person was willing to walk down the road and knock on your door, you couldn't be reached. Which didn't surprise Sean. Unreliable communication was one cost of doing business in Montana. He initialed some changes on a contract and she signed on the line. She stood and pulled her knife from the wood and pocketed it, and was reaching for the arrowheads when Sean's hand stopped her.

“Let me have the one the bartender gave you, just for a couple days. I promise I'll return it.”

He saw her reluctance.

“I promise.”

She relented, nodding. She tucked the chain with the capped arrowhead under her shirt. “Good fishing,” she said, turning to leave.

“What makes you think I'm going fishing?”

“Sam said you never go anywhere without getting your fly wet.”

Sean laughed softly. “I suppose that's one way to put it. And the Blackfeet Reservation does have some very good lakes. But if I drive up there, I promise I won't play hooky on your dollar.”

“Sam said that, too. He said you were trustworthy, that you were a man—how did he put it? Someone who would manage to step into
shit even if there was only one horse in the pasture. I think he meant it as a compliment.”

On that note she left, and Sean listened to her footsteps as they echoed down the hall. He'd know them the next time, for every other step was a little louder than the one that preceded it, hinting at a limp that he'd failed to notice. He opened the lower right-hand drawer of his desk and took out the bottle of George T. Stagg sixteen-year-old. Bourbon was one of his few indulgences, but one that he'd been indulging in more often. He looked at the bottle, then replaced it in the drawer without pulling the cork.

He picked up the arrowhead from the scarred desktop. Holding it between his right thumb and forefinger, he used the point to etch a small question mark into the wood.

S
am Meslik glanced up from the glass display case of fly reels as Sean walked into the fly shack. It was a shack. The wood sign with the burnt letters over the door proclaimed it—
Rainbow Sam's Fly Shack
.

Sam's booming voice filled the room. “If it isn't my fucking best buddy I never see anymore. What can I sell you today? No, don't tell me. You have the look of a man who needs this Bozeman Reel Company Vom Hofe design SC Classic. Handcrafted by lightly perspiring virgins. Fit for a fucking prince.” He pawed a handsome fly reel with a perforated spool from the top shelf of the case. “'Course you'd have to pay on the installment plan. Hard to go lump sum when you keep turning away jobs. I had four guide days for you last week, had to pawn them out. I know. You've been having issues.” Sam scrolled quote marks with his fingers. “You know, you could talk to me. I'm not a fucking stranger. Come on”—he walked around the case—“let's hug it out.”

Sean drank in a big breath after Sam released him, the big man smiling, showing the grooves in his teeth where the enamel had worn away from biting monofilament leader tippets.

“What brings you to my door, Kemosabe?”

“Indians. Or rather one Indian.”

“That wouldn't be Ida Evening Star, would it? That's one comely young woman, and I was hoping you'd hit it off with her.”

“It's not what you think.” Sean told him what it was instead, the short version, as Sam shook his head.

“No, man. I wasn't in the bar that night. Thursday's Molly's night in dry dock. The Queen of the Waters was right here. We were just kicking back, maybe doing a few other things.” He grinned his wolf's grin.

“She says he was there again last night, at the bar.”

Sam shook his head. “Can't help you. I wasn't there then, either.”

“Are you on the wagon?”

“I'm thinking about it. Let's leave it at that.”

Sean faced his hands.
None of my business.
“Okay,” he said, “what's your impression of Ida?”

“I thought you were eating dog biscuits and playing kissy face with Katie Sparrow.”

“People know about Katie?”

“What part about ‘Sam knows everything' don't you understand?”

“Ida,” Sean persisted.

Sam shrugged. “I can't say I really know her. She doesn't seem to have many friends, except for Molly. It can be tough for Indians. You go off the reservation, go to school like she did, try to better yourself, there are people treat you like a deserter. Tell you to come back, ‘keep it real.' You go back, keeping it real gets to be claustrophobic and you start looking outside the rez again. Back and forth, man, for a lot of young people it's back and forth.”

“How would you be the expert?”

“Kuwait. I bunked with another medic. His Lakota name was Odakotah. Means ‘friendship.' Said he was descended from Red Cloud his own self. We were like this.” He held up two fingers. “And I was from me to the door when he got blowed up. Some guys, they don't want to get too close to a brother, 'cause maybe that guy's not around tomorrow, how it is over there. Not me. Best buds I ever had were bullet catchers, and he was best of the best. We talked about some deep shit. You figure you got a chance of modeling a body bag or coming
home on the stumps minus your dick, you can get into some really deep shit with a brother. Shit, man, I miss you. Where the fuck did you go?”

“I'm right here.”

“Well, I hope so. Hell, let's go fishing. Put the dogs in the truck, make it a Montana double date. I want you to try out this sculpin pattern I been tying with bison hair. I'm calling it the Buffalo Jump Blues account of what happened to that herd that went over the cliffs. Has a ring, huh? See if it fishes as well in the Big Hole as it does in the Madison.”

“I'd like that, Sam, but first I need to find out who saw this guy, who he was hanging with, if anyone knows where he is. Think you might want to ask around? There wouldn't be a lot in it for you. Same cut as before, except I already halved my rate for her.”

“And you're not interested, right? But yeah, Sam could do that. You're going to have to tell me about it, though. That ‘I'd be betraying a confidence' shit, ‘need to know' shit, that shit gets old.”

Sean started to tell him the full version while Sam got two beers from the cooler. They sat on the porch in sling chairs regarding the river. Sam got up and got two more beers. So much for the wagon.

“That's an interesting story,” he said.

“So what do you think. True love?”

Sam popped the cap and took half the can in one swallow. “Either that or the arrowhead's a warning that he's going to shoot one through her heart for leaving him when they were kids.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Nothing. I just say things to be contrary, you know that.”

“Speaking of love, how are things with Molly? I never really heard the whole story about how you met.”

“Key West. It was back in March. I was setting up the guide business and she drove down to see about a job with a dive boat. Said she was getting tired of the glass-bottomed shindig in Largo. I racked up a game of eight-ball at the Parrot and she ran about half the table and
asked me if I'd ever been kissed by a woman who could hold her breath for five minutes. I said, ‘Why, do I need to sign a disclaimer?' Anyway, we wound up exploring some other kind of pockets and I told her to forget the dive boat, come to Montana instead. Told her a bar on the Madison was going to add a mermaid tank and she could be the star attraction. I must have been persuasive, 'cause here she is. No call, just a cab in the drive and a knock on the door. One suitcase with her clothes, another for her tail.”

“And things are good?”

“I get a log like a redwood just hearing her voice, knowing she's the one to holler timber.”

A rental Suburban lifted a cloud of dust coming up the drive and four anglers spilled out, one with comb tracks in his hair, another wearing a ponytail, and two who didn't look like they'd been good-looking in the first place and made no attempt to do so in their fifties. Sam put on his salesman's hat and ushered them inside to aerate their wallets. Sean finished his beer, knowing where to drink the next one.

—

Vic Barrows was a tatted-up iron pumper with enough ink under his skin to print the Sunday edition of the
Bridger Mountain Star
. He finished pouring a Cold Smoke Scotch Ale and cut the foam with a knife. He placed the pint in front of Stranahan and shrugged. “Stringy hair, living in his clothes 'cause I could smell him, a couple inches shorter than you. If he was a white guy, I'd say your normal local, minus the gut.”

“Can you describe his face?”

Again the shrug. “Young guy. An Indian, you know. What was strange was the way he stared at her. I mean, everybody looks, that's why the girls are here, but he really stared.” Barrows folded his arms like Mr. Clean and stared at Sean. “I don't think he blinked in half an hour.”

“And as soon as Ida's shift finished, he left?”

“That's right. He handed me the arrowhead and split.”

“What did he say?”

“‘Please give this to Miss Evening Star.' Exact words. I said if he waited five minutes he could give it to her himself. He just walked out the door.”

“And you saw this same guy again last night?”

“Yeah, he weaseled around for a minute or two and split. Like he was just checking to make sure it was her in the tank.”

“Back to last Thursday. If you'd had your eyes closed, would you know it was an Indian speaking?”

“Now that you put it that way, no. I'd have thought he was an English teacher.”

Sean couldn't tell if he was being serious or sarcastic. “A lot of customers take photos in here,” he said.

“Are you asking?” The bartender didn't wait for an answer. “Sure they do. And video. It's okay with me if it goes up on YouTube. It spreads the word.”

“And you get a lot of repeat customers.”

“Come on, what do you think? Guys camping on the river, they come in every night they're here. Guides turn their clients on to us. Weekends, the place is packed.”

“Do you have a piece of paper and a marking pen?”

“What for?”

“I'd like to leave a note on the door outside.”

“I'd have to clear that with the owner.”

“Where's the owner?”

“Carmel, California.”

“Look, all I want to write is—”

“I'm bullshitting you. I'll get the paper, but I do want to see what you write.”

He produced the paper and Sean pushed his note over for inspection.

If you took photos or video here last Thursday night, July 3rd, please
call this number. We're trying to identify a patron who left something of sentimental value. Thank you.

“All right with you?”

The bartender nodded. “I'll get you the staple gun. I hope you find him and at the same time I don't, if you know what I mean. Guys who stare are never good news.” He looked hard at Stranahan. “She's a nice kid, that Ida. I wouldn't want to see anything happen to her.”

—

Martha Ettinger sat up abruptly when she heard the Land Cruiser pull into the drive, heard Sean's Sheltie bark her greeting as Goldie bolted out the double barn door.

For Christ sakes, why now?

“I must look like a witch,” she said aloud. She heard the harsh scream of the resident barn owl as she ran her hands down her front, flicking her fingers at stray pieces of straw. Then: “Oh, hell with it,” and splashed a smile on her face.

“Caught you,” Sean said.

“Try being a mother again at forty-one,” she said. “You'd be sleeping when you could, too.”

He was backlit at the door, so she couldn't see if he was smiling. For some reason she always amused him, the bastard.

“I suppose you came to see him,” she said. “Place has become a revolving door since the news broke. It's like that Indian guy we found doesn't even register. All anybody cares about is the buffalo calf. Where did you hear?”

“Horse's mouth once removed,” Sean said. “Ken Winston heard it from Robin Cowdry.”

“Humpff. Did you hear what went down with the DOL?”

He shook his head.

“No, I guess you wouldn't. Harold threatened to rub Drake's face in shit if he tries to take the calf.”

“Really?”

“Oh yeah, they've got bad blood going back years, when there was the first talk about Indians wanting herds of their own. There was a public meeting where Drake made a joke about the ‘bucks' who drove down to field dress a bull bison that the park rangers had shot, that they were half naked and only one of them had a knife and they walked around the bison three times and left, figuring the job was too big for them. It was bullshit—they were just waiting for the truck to arrive with the guy who had the permit from the state—but Drake said if Indians couldn't be trusted to properly process one bison, how could they be trusted with a herd? Harold waited outside for him and they almost came to blows.”

“You think he'll follow through on his threat?”

“If I know Harold. So, you want to see the cause of all this trouble?”

She crooked a finger, leading him to a stall where the bison calf lay on his right side, the cow, a few feet away, on her left side.

“I heard about the trick with the hide,” Sean said. “I guess it doesn't take a lot to fool a cow.”

“No, the cow's not the problem. But the calf's developed a nervous condition and hasn't been putting on the weight he should. I think he's still traumatized by what happened. Anyway, there he is. You've seen him, now you can leave.”

“Come on, Martha.”

“No? How do you want me to act? As if nothing happened? Well, that's exactly what happened, nothing. I kept expecting you and you never came.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I'm talking about after you took my son fishing last month. I turned the light on, on the porch. Four nights I left it on. Don't tell me you didn't see it.”

“That was for me?”

“Who else would it be for?”

They looked at each other from a few feet away. Martha sighed,
exhaling through her mouth. “I even put on the kinky boots you like, thinking maybe you'd figure it out through telepathy.”

“I saw the light, Martha. And when I walked up the road there was Harold's truck, parked in front of your house.”

Martha shook her head. She sat down on a hay bale and with her elbows on her thighs put her head in her hands. “That was the fourth night,” she said quietly. “I'd given up on you.”

“My dear, it seems we've been at cross-purposes.”

“Don't go Rhett Butler on me.”

Silence, then far away the hoot of an owl.

“I should have never made you see that movie. Oh, go away. Just go away.”

“I didn't come here to see the buffalo.”

“No? Why, then? You know something about the Indian? Because we could use the help. There wasn't a scrap of paper on the body, so he's over in the morgue with a J. D. tag on his toe.”

“Not him, either. You said if I had trouble getting over what happened at the burial pit, you knew someone I might talk to. Well, I'm at that point. I can still see him jerking the hay hook in, only sometimes his face changes and it's somebody else. Somebody innocent. Someone I know. It's like a bad dream I can't shake and I'm killing the people closest to me night after night.”

“Yes, of course. I'm glad you came to me. I mean it. We all need someone to talk to in this line of work. I'll set it up and give you a call.”

“I got a job. I may be out of town a few days.”