Buffalo Jump Blues (9 page)

“No, she asked me the same question. I'd like some more of that coffee if it isn't too much trouble.”

As Sean made the coffee, he realized that Melvin Campbell had never asked him why he was there or who he represented. He brought the coffee back to the sitting room and made the playing field level, told him about Ida Evening Star, the old man listening without interruption. He produced the arrowhead from his pocket and Campbell took it in his fingertips, which were callused and had yellowed nails.

Campbell nodded. “John liked bird points because they demanded a precise hand. Also our supply of obsidian would last longer.” His eyes swam away for a moment. “I remember the girl,” he said. “Her father worked for Indian Services and we were both involved with the Museum of the Plains Indian.”

“Do you have any idea why John might have gone to the Madison Valley?”

“None whatsoever. But you're asking if he traveled there because he knew that's where he could find Ida Evening Star.”

“The Hyalite County sheriff always tells me that there is no such thing as coincidence.”

“Our people would agree. Nothing is attributed to accident. On the contrary, everything that happens is the result of a person's relationship with his environment. Our lives are guided by a sacred force symbolized by the sun.” Melvin Campbell smiled, the creases in his skin drawing cracks across his face. “Or perhaps someone told him where to find her.”

He counted back through the years, mouthing the numbers. “I have a set of journals upstairs, in case this place ever floods,” he said. “Try 2001 and 2002.”

He told Sean where to find the room, and a minute later Sean was back with four notebooks, one leather-bound and the others with cardboard covers. Each was dated with a span of months. Sean hadn't counted, but there must have been close to forty journals of different sizes in two cardboard boxes, dating back nearly thirty years.

“Before I got the arthritis,” Campbell said, “I wrote almost every day.” It took the shaking fingers a few minutes to find the appropriate journal and then the page. He placed a pencil as a bookmark and handed it over.

The photograph was black and white, held in place with pasted-on corners. It showed a boy and a girl sitting on a single wood-slat seat of a swing set. It was the swing set Stranahan had seen outside the trailer. The end that the boy sat on was lower and the girl had slid down so that she pressed against him. It was a blustery-looking day, the kids wearing tatty coats, the girl's hair feathering in the wind. Their smiles looked as unforced and as chaste as childhood dreams. Under the photo, scrawled in pen:
John Running Boy and Ida Evening Star. April 22, 2001.

“Did you take this?”

Melvin Campbell shook his head. “A white woman named Peavey. She wrote histories of pioneer women and was a poet in the schools. I encouraged her to document Indian women's lives and she took a
lot of pictures, but the project never got the funding. When John's aunt passed, I helped clean out the trailer and found this in a drawer with half a dozen others, all very similar. One of the pictures had gum stuck on the back, which made me think he'd put it up on a wall. I asked John if I could safekeep them for him. He just shrugged. He was at that age where a kid won't admit that anything matters.”

“He never asked for it back?”

“No. But I gave him one.”

“Was that the last time he visited you?”

“No, three or four years ago. You could see him thinking back to the time.”

“Do you think he might have become fixated on her?”

“I think it would depend upon his circumstances, whether he had someone or was lonely. But he didn't confide in me that way.”

“You said there were a few of these photos.”

“You may borrow this one, if you wish. I do ask that you return it.”

“I give you my word.”

For the second time a smile ran fissures into his cheeks. “Your people have said that to our people before.”

—

The day was into its decline by the time Stranahan reached the community of Heart Butte, sixty or so houses built around the old sub agency that doubled as a senior center and health clinic. The building was closed and all Stranahan had was a name, but he hadn't knocked on more than a half dozen doors before the name rang a bell. He was directed to a house where nobody was home. A woman with a heavy, attractive face one door down told him that Judy had driven to the Great Falls Clinic, where Carl was being treated for snakebite. Carl—it was just Carl, no elaboration—had cut the head off a prairie rattlesnake and wanted to see if it was true that the head could still bite, so he'd picked it up and got the answer he deserved—“Half dumb and some, ennit?” She had a very pretty smile.

Sean thanked the woman, who had no idea when Judy might return, and had walked halfway back to the Land Cruiser when a young man banged the screen door open and came up running.

“Hey, what you want with my mother, man?” His hair was crew cut and he wore a LeBron James basketball jersey that hung to his knees.

Sean said he was looking for John Running Boy.

“Running Boy, huh?” A flicker of smile. “He's always running with something. Used to say call him John Runs with Wolves. Could be Runs with Deer, could be buffalo. Always running, just can't settle on what with.”

“Do you know where I can find him?”

A short laugh. “You see his car here?” He pointed to the next-door lot. “He's gone, man.”

“A friend saw him in the Madison Valley. Do you know who he might know there?”

“No, that's like the United States or something.” He ran a hand across the hood of Sean's Land Cruiser. “You could climb a mountain with this, huh?” Sean saw that he had a rat tail hanging over the back of his collar, with something white braided into it.

“I just use it to get from here to there. Look, here's the deal. A woman I know thought she saw John in a bar on the Madison River. They were sweethearts when they were kids, but he left the bar before she could talk to him. She wants to find him.”

“Rekindle the flame.”

“It's mostly to satisfy her curiosity.”

He shook his head. “All I know is he was hanging with a couple of white dudes who were like brothers. Anyway, they looked like brothers. John said they would like pick stuff off of the other one, like you'd pick lice. Weird.”

“Did he tell you what he was doing with them?”

“They were driving around, going to historical places on the rez. He said they were doing research.”

“What kind of research?”

“He acted like it was a secret. But I know they were out to the pishkun, the one up on the Two Medicine. My brother-in-law run them off. It's reservation land, but a guy who lives there and works with the archaeological people thinks he owns it.”

“Who's your brother-in-law?”

“He's tribal police.”

Sean thought about what Melvin Campbell had said about coincidence. And Martha Ettinger's comment about his case—
That sounds . . . uninteresting
. Well, at the mention of a buffalo jump, it had just got a whole lot more interesting.

“Was there another Indian with him, or just the two white boys?”

“Once there was an Indian, sat in the backseat like a statue. But I didn't know him.”

As they spoke, a couple of other young men drifted up the street. They nodded to the man Sean was speaking to. “Whassup, Joseph?” And stood listening, one with his arms folded to pop out his biceps, and the other, his head shaved with a Mohawk stripe, bobbing like he was a fighter in the ring.

“What kind of a car does John drive?” Sean asked.

“A Fairlane. A genuine rez rocket.” Joseph nodded. “Gets eight, maybe even ten miles to the gallon.”

“What color?”

“Blue. It's old. Like with fins. But hey, you get tired, you don't need no motel. You crawl in back. Take a nice nap.”

The man who had his arms crossed spit on the street. “John ain't got no money. He'd be on foot before he ever reached Choteau.”

“Yeah,” said the other man, whose head had stopped bobbing. “Maybe Letterman pick him up, give him a ride into town.”

Sean thought it was time to extricate himself. He'd read a tone of aggression in the voices and could see how the situation might escalate.

“I better go,” he said.

“You don't want to go, man. Where you want to go?” It was the
man who'd made reference to David Letterman, the former talk show host who had a ranch up Deep Creek on the Front Range, common knowledge in the state.

“I was going to camp at Duck Lake,” Sean said.

“Duck Lake? Get your ass eaten by a grizzly bear.” The man who had his arms folded, folded them the other way. They were very strong-looking arms.

Sean glanced at Joseph, who saw his unease. “We're just bullshitting you,” Joseph said. “Have dinner with us. Jerry's right. You don't want to camp at Duck Lake.”

Sean ended up not only eating dinner with Joseph and his mother, whose name was Darleen, but also saying the grace and, after Darleen went to bed, staying up long into the night talking with Joseph on the front porch. He ended up spending the night on Joseph's couch, at his insistence. It wasn't the first time he'd been made aware of his assumptions toward those who were different from him, felt a tickle of fear in his blood that was unwarranted. Nor was it the only time an instant friendship had been kindled under the circumstances. An old brittle-whiskered tabby hopped up on the couch toward morning, its motor running in its throat, and the next time he opened his eyes he could smell cooking. Joseph came in and handed him a cup of coffee.

“Mom's making fry bread just for you. You tell her it's the best you ever had and you can carve your name on this couch, stay here anytime you pass through town.”

Sean said that might be sooner rather than later.

“You my brah now. You open the door, you say, ‘Hey, Cuz,' you don't never need to knock.”

T
he Queen of the Waters flipped backwards in a languid circle. She came up to the glass, rolled over like a seal, then kicked her tail and swam up and out of sight.

“I stood up from this stool, I'd have to walk on three legs, know what I mean, Kemosabe?” Sam drained his bottle of Moose Drool and tapped the surface of the bar for another. “Any PMDs about?”

PMD was short for pale morning dun, a mayfly with translucent wings that resembled a hovering angel, if mayflies were angels and rivers were the dance floors of heaven. Sean had fished the Missouri River on his drive back from the reservation and nodded.

“Tough, though. You'd get one to come up, think you'd hit on the right pattern, then the next six fish would refuse it.”

Sam grunted sympathetically. “That's the Mo for you. Like a woman who won't put out until you buy her roses and then says they're the wrong color.”

“So, what is it you found out?”

“A guide I know says he saw a couple Indians with two white dudes at the Food Roundup in West Yellowstone. He says the white dudes were volunteers for the American Bison Crusade, the hippies who beat their drums and march down Main on the Fourth. They're the ones who film the hunters shooting buffalo so they can bleed the pockets of the bleeding hearts. Anyway, what was I saying?”

“I don't know, Sam, it's your story.”

“Yeah, right. Thing is, my buddy knew these guys a little bit, because he floated their father a couple of times. The dad's a wig, has a
summer cabin at the Cinnamon Creek Guest Ranch, rents it for like a month.”

“So these white kids, they're brothers?”

“That's what I just said. Anyway, you said find an Indian, I found you one and threw in a spare.”

Two Indians,
Sean thought. That could mean something or nothing. But two Indians with two brothers involved with the American Bison Crusade, it was hard to think they weren't the same group that Joseph had seen on the reservation.

“What's the father's name?”

“Augustine Castilanos.”

“Sounds like somebody out of a Greek
Godfather
.”

“Yeah, except the guy looks like he's part Japanese. The kids are like trust funders or, what's the word, those kids go to private schools and talk Latin?”

“Preppies?”

“Yeah. I think the old man's their stepfather and they got a different last name.”

“You did good, Sam.”

“I'm not done.” Sam drained the bottle.

“Guess who's booked to float them for two days, starting day after tomorrow?” He thumped his chest with a stout forefinger. “Well, not me specifically, but the shop. And the man said two boats, so who knows, maybe he'll take the progeny with him.” He smiled, exposing the grooves in his teeth. “I tie the fly on for you . . . I make the cast, I . . . Come on, help Sam out.”

“You set the hook?”

“That's right. All you got to do is reel them in. Even a sorry-assed painter can reel in a fish.”

Sean was absorbing the information when Sam said, “Ah, it's the Queen herself. Is she a swipe right, or is she a swipe right?”

Sean didn't have a clue what he was talking about, but he rose from the stool as she approached. Molly Linklatter possessed that
combination of carriage and confidence, call it class, that made men dust off old-fashioned manners. She offered her hand and held his eyes one long second longer than necessary, during which she mentally added him to her legion of admirers, or so Sean imagined. He had met her only briefly once before, on that occasion, like the present one, after she climbed out of the aquarium with her hair dripping and no trace of makeup, but with her allure undiminished.

“Sam called you a swipe right. I assume that's a compliment.”

“Oh, that Sam.” She looked at Sam with affection, then abruptly walloped him on the upper arm with a straight right that made people turn their heads. She returned her attention to Sean, as Sam winced and rubbed his arm. “People post selfies and you can swipe right if you like the photo or left if you don't. If you swipe right on each other's pictures, then you can arrange a date. That's the ladylike way of saying it.”

“So why did you hit him? General principles? I've hit him myself, it can make you feel good.”

“A queen doesn't hook up.”

They moved to a table, where she mollified Sam by kissing his cheek. Beers came for the men, an Orangina for Molly—they drank to salmonflies raining from the sky. Sean was unwinding from the drive sip by sip when the bartender told him a man at the bar wanted a word.

Sam lifted his eyebrows. Sean shrugged.

The Hawaiian shirt stretched across the broad back had a surfboard motif, though the man who turned on the stool to face him, longneck in his fist, looked like he'd be more at home attacking a plate of grits than catching a wave.

“I read the notice on the door,” he said, and tapped the camera slung around his neck.

“Did you try to call? I've been out of cell range.”

“No. This is the first I've been in since Thursday. That's the day the note said you're interested in.”

“That's right. You took photos?”

He nodded. “You're free to look at the playback, but just to satisfy my curiosity, what's it about?”

“Someone saw someone they thought they knew, but then he disappeared. She'd like to find him.”

“Blast from the past.”

“Something like that. It's a confidential matter.”

“So what are you, a private investigator?”

“Licensed,” Sean said.

“No shit?” The man brought his head back an inch. He was impressed. “I was just joking.”

“No shit.”

The man took the camera from around his neck. “Just hit the left arrow to scroll back.”

Sean bought the man one of the same he'd been having and started through the photos. The man Sean was looking for was standing a few feet behind the bar in half a dozen shots. Jeans, a shirt with the tail out, a dark-colored vest—the focus on the tank so the man was not in sharp focus, but close enough to the description Ida had given him. As the photographer was behind the man and both were facing the tank, Sean couldn't see a face.

“Your mystery man there?”

“Hard to tell. I saw that you took a video of the mermaid.”

“Yeah, her.” He pointed to Ida Evening Star, who was taking her turn in the tank. “Chippewa Nymph, my ass. The bull must have jumped the fence, because she's whiter than I am.”

Sean ignored the crassness of the comment. “Do you just click on it to play it?”

“Yes, but I uploaded it into my iPhone. It's a bigger screen.” He said the iPhone was on the charger in his SUV. Sean wondered why he hadn't said so in the first place.

The SUV, a 4Runner jacked so far up it was like mounting a horse, had a dead cigar in an ashtray and dice hanging from the rearview. It
took the man, who'd got around to introducing himself as Taylor, only a minute or two to find the video. Sean watched it, the video starting with a tour of the bar and its tiki hut decor before fixing focus on the mermaid tank. Ida was swimming in a gold tail with red and blue spots inside gold circles that creased and uncreased with every undulation. She didn't possess the athleticism of the Parmachene Belle, nor the showy seduction of the Queen of the Waters, but she swam with languid grace and drew whistles from a couple men at the bar.

“She looks like a brown trout in spawning colors,” Taylor offered.

Sean kept his eyes on the screen. Once Ida had become the focus, the camera turned to track her, and the man whom Sean was interested in was in and out of the left-hand side of the frame. He was facing away, but at one point two men approached the bar, and when one accidentally jostled against him to get a better view of the tank, the man turned his head briefly, nodding at the one who'd jostled him and not bothering to uncross his arms. His face was in profile for perhaps two seconds, but Indian all right. Whether it was John Running Boy was impossible to say. Ida would be the judge of that, and she would be drying off in a few minutes.

“Can you send this to my cell phone?” Sean asked.

“Pretty big file for that. For a private investigator you don't know much about technology.” He shook his head mock disapprovingly, his double chin shaking. “Tell you what I can do. I can give you the camera card, then you can do anything with it you want.”

“Don't you need it?”

“I bought an eight-gig two-pack and the photos on the card are already uploaded.”

“How much was the two-pack?”

“Thirty-nine fifty. You buy me the porterhouse with Cajun fries and we're square.”

—

“You can come up now.”

The stairs to the top of the tank consisted of all-weather carpet strips glued to the steps of an aluminum extension ladder. Stranahan climbed up and peered over, where the Chippewa Nymph sat on a deck a few inches above the waterline.

“So this is where the magic happens,” he said.

“Yeah, the magic. I'm not a mermaid, I'm an ‘aquatic performer.'” Ida was working the tail off her legs and handed it to him, along with a six-pound weight belt used for ballast. The tail was heavy, some kind of vulcanized material with a slime.

“It's called Dragon Skin,” she said. “It's silicone. They're like a thousand bucks, but this one was on eBay for two fifty. I thought Cal—he's the owner—was lending it to me, but when I got my first check he'd deducted it. I suppose I should have known how cheap he was when I saw that I'd have to climb a garden ladder.”

Sean descended the ladder and steadied it for her. She asked him to turn around while she took off her top and bikini bottom and slipped into clothes.

“Feel better?” Sean said, when she said he could turn around.

“Lots better. The thermostat broke, so it's too cold in the tank tonight. Molly said her nipples got so hard she was afraid they'd break the clamshells. She can be pretty funny. Anyway, I just hope when the semester starts I'll still have my eyesight. Cal wanted me to do four sessions Saturday and I said no way. Even after two, your vision is so blurry it's hard to read a newspaper.”

“That's too bad,” Stranahan said, “because I have some photos to show you.” He showed her the card chip.

“Did you go up to the reservation? Did you find him?”

“Yes and no. I just got back. Is there someplace private we can talk?”

—

Ida lived in a trailer court between the river and the Earthquake Inn, a few miles downstream from the dam at Quake Lake. Sean followed
the taillights of her Tercel and found himself standing before a vintage Airstream with blue Christmas tree lights outlining the door and windows. A regiment of garden gnomes guarded tomato plants that were outgrowing their wire cages, three to either side of the door. Across the river, on the south bank, softer lights gleamed from a log mansion where a baker's dozen of Sean's riverscapes hung from the walls. Sean had once thrown a man into a pond on that property, it seemed a lifetime ago.

“The lights came with the trailer,” Ida said. “The owner considers them festive.”

“Makes you want to take a turn around a roller rink,” Sean said. He looked up, another starry night, the moon thinned to a silver parenthesis. “You said when you knew me better, you'd tell me what star you were named for.”

“The star I'm named for isn't in the sky. It's a birthmark, and I'd have to know you a lot better to show you that.”

The trailer had eggshell-blue walls and a bolted-down Formica table. The table was chipped, the wood cabinets had warped so that the doors didn't properly close, and the coverings on the bench cushions looked like they had been worked on by the claws of a bobcat. Nonetheless, the place had a scrubbed feel to it.

“I'm one of those ‘a place for everything and everything in its place' types. People like to read into that, but I think it's just a reaction to the chaos my mother was comfortable with.”

“I'm not reading anything into anything.”

Ida opened her laptop and Sean sat beside her as she slipped in the card. Their shoulders brushed, something Sean was acutely aware of. The heat of her skin was a palpable presence; he could hear the intake of each breath.

“This won't take a minute,” she said. It didn't, though Sean wouldn't have minded if it had taken thirty.

He told her to click on the video segment, identified by the time marked on the lower right corner. They watched it through, then on
second viewing paused it when the man turned his head. The cheek in profile was clean-shaven. A wing of black hair, parted in the middle, hung over the ear. As the man glanced at the person who had jostled him, he showed a slight downturn of his mouth under a straight aquiline nose.

“Good-looking man,” Ida said. “But then John was a good-looking boy.”

“You say that, but if he hadn't handed the bartender the arrowhead, could you be sure?”

She canted her head. “Like I said, it's his posture that makes me think of John. That and something I really can't put my finger on.”

“Maybe this will help.” Sean drew the photograph from his shirt pocket.

As she examined it, a sad smile drew the corners of her mouth. “I remember that day,” she said. “John wanted me to sit to the left of him on the swing, so that he only saw my purple eye. He knew my mother called it my Indian eye, and he would study it like it had a secret to tell. A flock of wild turkeys came into the yard that morning.”

She looked from the faded three-by-five to the computer screen. “It's him, you can almost tell just from the photo.”

“It's him or you want it to be him?”

“Who else would give me the arrowhead?”

“That's not the same question.”