In the City of Shy Hunters (66 page)

True Shot parked Door of the Dead van in a place you weren't supposed to park.
DO NOT ENTER
, the sign said. But the big chain across was unhooked, so True Shot drove in over it and parked next to the water. Out in the harbor, Our Lady of the Paintbrush was the same color as my father's old Dodge pickup.

I was new-shoe stiff at first, afraid about cops and
DO NOT ENTER
and the medicine bundle on a blanket in the back of Door of the Dead van. But then True Shot started talking, and I wasn't afraid anymore.

True Shot had a rag under his seat, and he pulled out the rag and blew his nose. He sat for a while like you do when you're trying to get it together. The plastic statue of the Virgin Mary on the dashboard, the green sequin-framed Brigitte Bardot glued next to the jockey box, Our Lady of the Paintbrush out the windshield.

True Shot pushed in the Sioux tape, and the song was all wavy for a while; then the Sioux tape was a drum, a heartbeat drum inside Door of the Dead van.

I didn't say anything because of the heartbeat drum. I just stared out onto the water.

As I lit the cigarette, the World Trade Center was in the rearview mirror, and I turned around to look. The World Trade Center buildings were so beyond human they'd disappeared.

I was born in Jackson Heights, True Shot said. My father was Puerto Rican, a dentist. He considered himself Spanish, not Puerto Rican. He claimed there was no Taino blood in him, but he was a liar. His mother was half Taino. My mother was a Mexican woman, a housewife, and my father considered her lower class.

There was never a sweeter person to live on God's green earth than my mother.

I was the only child, True Shot said. Distant father, overindulgent mother, same old story. In the early sixties, I started reading the beat poets: Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac. In 1964, I bought a Dodge van—not Door of the Dead van, it was a '58—and after reading
Dharma Bums
decided I'd make the all-American trek across the country. Taos, New Mexico, is where I was headed. I was going to find me an Indian chief and we were going to go on a vision quest and I'd find the meaning of life.

I did meet an Indian chief, True Shot said. His name was Hanford Littlejohn. But instead of a vision quest, Hanford and I started dealing marijuana. Lived pretty high for a couple years, till I got busted in Phoenix. Spent six years in prison for selling a controlled substance.

Prison was one of the best things that ever happened to me, True Shot said. My cell mate was this Sioux guy. His name was True Shot.

The cigarette papers were in my shirt pocket. I reached for them, started rolling cigarettes. True Shot just sat there, the sound of the Sioux drums, the ocean hitting the rampart, seagulls, and one of those bells you hear way out on a buoy in the dark.

True Shot took a sip of coffee, wiped his lips.

The real True Shot and I got as close as two men can get without fucking, True Shot said. The real True Shot was at Wounded Knee, True Shot said, But not me.

For four years, night after night, True Shot and I talked. He taught me Lakota, told me Lakota stories about the sun dance, the sweat lodge, the ghost dance. He told me of the Lakotas' final humiliation at Wounded Knee.

My friend True Shot was in for life, True Shot said. He killed a cop, shot him in the forehead because the cop called him a dirty heathen savage son of a bitch.

One morning I woke up, True Shot said—I slept on the bottom bunk—and my friend True Shot's legs were hanging right next to my eyeballs. At first I thought he was just sitting on his bed with his legs dangling over. But then I stood up and saw the rope around his neck.

I think I cried the whole next year, True Shot said.

Fog drifted in over Our Lady of the Paintbrush, first around the light, then around her head. The lights of the boats on the water below her shone green and red and amber in the fog. The slow monotonous bell. The water against the ramparts.

I grew my hair long, True Shot said, Wore it braided Indian style, and read every book I could get my hands on about Native American culture—mostly Plains Indians, mostly Sioux, the Indians of the Northwest, and the Hopi and the Navajo.

When I got out of the pen, True Shot said, I didn't know what to do. I just thought I didn't want to be no
pendejo
Puerto Rican anymore. I hitchhiked back to New York City. My mother was dead and my father had remarried. He was a golfer and lived in Washington Heights. He gave me a hundred bucks and wished me well.

True Shot zipped up the faux leopardskin coat. His breath was white exhaust coming out his mouth. The light from Our Lady of the Paintbrush made True Shot look like Rose's Buddha.

I reached for my tobacco, started rolling a cigarette.

Roll me one of those too, True Shot said. I'm going to need some tobacco to get through this.

I rolled True Shot a cigarette, lit his cigarette, lit mine.

I went back to selling drugs in Dog Shit Park, True Shot said. That's where I met Ruby. That smile of his could charm a rattlesnake. Ruby and I dealt drugs and stayed stoned for years. Somewhere in there, Ruby started calling me True Shot, and in bars sometimes I'd pose as this wise old Indian from Taos who could barely speak English, and Ruby was
one of my followers who was showing me around the town. It's amazing how many people believed us. People say New Yorkers are hard mean souls, but down deep each one of us wants to believe.

Eventually, me and Ruby started going different ways, True Shot said. Ruby started shooting heroin with Fred, and I quit drinking, quit smoking, quit picking pockets, started up my company, Spirit Schleppers.

Fred? I said.

I didn't know Fred then, True Shot said. Fred was supposed to be some poet or something, but he was just a junkie.

Then one night, True Shot said, Ruby and Fred crashed at my house. They were way stoned and slept on the couch. When I woke up, Fred was giving me a gum job.

A gum job? I said.

I hit Fred with my fist and knocked him down, True Shot said. I was going to kick him, but he looked so pitiful lying there all skinny and old with strands of hair sticking up in patches here and there on top of his head and blood coming out his nose.

Even more than that, True Shot said, He looked like Gandhi lying there in a pair of orange coveralls that said
FRED
on the pocket. I felt like a raving redneck lunatic asshole for committing violence on such a holy old gentleman.

So I gave him my handkerchief instead, True Shot said.

Fred said, Thank you. You're very kind.

Then I realized I was standing there with my cock poking straight out, and that scared me even more than Fred, True Shot said, So I quick tried to put my boner back in my pocket and that got the old guy to laughing and the way he was laughing, I saw how ridiculous I looked and I couldn't help but laugh too.

True Shot's breath in. His breath out. Big chest heave. True Shot took off the swooped rhinestone mirrors. Wiped his eyes. Blew his nose in the rag again.

It didn't take me long to figure out Fred was about to croak, True Shot said. Ruby took off early the next morning, so I let Fred stay there with me, four days, just me and Fred. Stay with me till he died.

A HELICOPTER BUZZED
around the head of Our Lady of the Paintbrush, yellow lights like a yellow jacket on a picnic you swat away. The ocean sound against the ramparts was breathing in, breathing out.

My breath in. My breath out.

In all my life, True Shot said, I never heard one man tell so many stories. Fred was a skeleton with an oracle inside him. We'd wake up in the morning and he'd have instant coffee with Cremora and two teaspoons of sugar waiting for me and his toothless mouth would just start talking talking, puffing on his More menthol cigarettes, one after the other, talking about all kinds of shit. Indian stories, Buddhist stories, Greek stories, Bible stories, the rabbi story, O'Henry stories, Scheherazade.

On the fourth day, Fred wasn't eating at all, True Shot said. He just lay there on his sleeping bag, a skeleton possessed by More Menthol cigarettes, telling everything he knew and had learned, chattering away all the shit that was inside him.

I lay close to him at night, True Shot said, Like you and me last night. Fred was mostly babbling. I couldn't make a lot of sense out of what he was saying. Fred wasn't not making sense. It was me who couldn't comprehend.

That last night, I leaned against the wall and held him in my arms on my lap. He was nothing but a bag of bones. He recited some poem, True Shot said, By some Turkish guy. The poem was about a horse called the Stallion of Love. But I've forgotten the poem and the name of the Turkish guy.

Late in the night, True Shot said, When I woke up, Fred was sitting cross-legged at the bottom of the bed from me, and he was talking talking smoking smoking again.

Then Fred pulled out his old suitcase from under my bed, True Shot said. He opened it and took out all the herbs, sage, cedar. He drew a circle around us on the floor with his foot. He unrolled the pipe from the ocelot skin. Put the pipe stem into the pipe bowl.

At sunrise, True Shot said, We smoked the pipe and prayed in a good way. After we prayed, Fred rolled the pipe back into the ocelot skin, put the pipe and the herbs back into the suitcase, closed the suitcase, and gave the suitcase to me.

I am dying, Fred said. My grandfather gave this pipe to me many years ago. My intention has always been to give this pipe to another man, but the Great Mystery has not intended it so. So now, my friend, it seems you are the one I am to give it to. Treat it always with great respect. Honor the pipe, for it is the universe. Follow the good road, the red road, Fred said. I did not. Perhaps you will.

Fred died in my arms, True Shot said.

A long time ago, True Shot said, The night we went to the meatpacking district, you told me Charlie had a scar across his face. That
freaked me out. Fred had that same scar. But he was old, I told myself, He had no teeth. How could this possibly be Charlie? And then I knew, True Shot said. Fred had AIDS. You get old fast with AIDS. You lose your hair, your teeth.

Then the pipe, True Shot said. The pipe I had at Ruby's pipe ceremony was Fred's pipe, and you recognized it. You had heard the rabbi story and the locomotive story. Only then, really, did I let myself know.

The light from Our Lady of the Paintbrush was one long line of illumination toward Door of the Dead van. The line came up the hood, through the windshield, onto True Shot's chin, his lips.

True Shot laid his head on my shoulder, his right hand, palm up, into my hand, lips at my ear.

You got to know that when Ruby and I first saw you at the airport, True Shot said, Ruby fell in love with you. I never saw anything like it. The man looked over, saw you, and was smitten. He thought if he got you in the van, he could get into your pants.

You looked so... so raw, so vulnerable. But Ruby could tell you were cautious because you
knew
you were too raw, too vulnerable, too delicious.

To trick you, True Shot said, Ruby and I made this plan: If he got you in the van, I'd play a wise old Indian chief. We figured you'd go for a wise old Indian chief your first night in Manhattan because you had all that Wild West wind-and-big-sky wilderness in you.

But as we went on, True Shot said, The act got too real. Ruby was more and more in love with you.

In my forearms, up to my shoulders, splash down through my heart to my stomach. Cattle prod to cock.

So it was all a scam, I said.

I rolled down the window of Door of the Dead van.

My breath in. My breath out.

You got to understand, Will, True Shot said. It started out a lie, but the lie brought us all to the truth. By pretending to be a wise old Indian chief, I have become one, True Shot said.

LATER ON THAT
night, True Shot on the foam mattress right up next to me on the futon. We were holding on tight to each other, to the someone else there, like Bernadette would do.

Was the story of Wolf Swamp part of the scam? I said.

No, True Shot said.

Fred told you the story of Wolf Swamp, didn't he? I said.

How did you know? True Shot said.

There weren't any horses I said, In America until after the white man. Charlie could always tell a good story, I said, But he didn't always get his facts right.

True Shot leaned up on his elbows. Only silence for a moment, in all the world, all of New York City, only silence.

Then: What happened to Fred's body? I said.

We took up a collection, True Shot said, And had him cremated.

What did you do with his ashes? I asked.

The wind took most of them, True Shot said. A big dust-devil wind came up and took the ashes with it. But I got some of them ashes, True Shot said.

Where are they? I said.

True Shot touched the buckskin bag with the beaded blue horizontal and the beaded red vertical. He put his thumbs and fingers on each side of his neck, pinched the buckskin strand, lifted it over his head.

I bowed my head. My ears tingled as the buckskin necklace passed them and settled on my neck.

The buckskin bag touched my throat: the beaded blue horizontal and the intersecting beaded red vertical. The surprising weight of it.

With my hand, my right hand, palm up, I held the buckskin bag, held the ashes of Charlie 2Moons.

To be brothers. To always respect and love each other and always tell each other the truth and to keep each other's secrets and to never forget.

BOOK FOUR

CHAPTER
TWENTY-SEVEN

F
ifth Street Videoland went into Stranded Beings Searching for God. They tore off the whole front of the place and made it all windows. Tore off the sign with the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the three Polaroids.

The light was real bright in Fifth Street Videoland, unrelenting. The light came out onto the sidewalk at night and pushed garbage and garbage-can shadows into the street. And Videoland played the same music: one big loop of Top Hits round and around and around again.