The Falling Away (7 page)

“What brings you up here?” Couture asked.

“Picking up a delivery.”

“From Canada?”

Dylan shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah.”

Couture took another puff, considered. “Lot of folks on the Fort Belknap rez might not like that much, taking the delivery business away from them. Feel like Crows should stay south for the winter.”

“Yeah.”

“Lucky for you, I don't much care what folks on the Fort Belknap rez think.”

“Yeah.”

Webb moaned from his position on the couch, and Couture's gaze shifted, breaking the conversation. “Guess I'd better take a look at him.”

Couture kneeled beside the couch, unknotted Webb's bloodstained coat from his shoulder. “Bleeding's pretty much stopped. That's a good sign. Means you didn't knick a major vessel.”

“Yeah.” Dylan wanted to point out that he wasn't the one who had missed a major blood vessel, but it seemed like too much effort. Instead, he took another draw of his own cigarette and glanced at Andrew, who was surveying the whole scene bemusedly.

Couture examined the shoulder, poking gently at the small hole, now turning black and bruising around the edges. Dylan noticed, for the first time, that Couture was wearing surgical gloves. Sanitary and sterile; that was obviously the rule of this trailer house. A ghost of a memory, blue nitrile gloves in the Iraq desert, flashed in his mind.

Couture stood. “Went through—won't have to fish out a bullet.” Couture's cigarette was clenched in his teeth.

“Yeah.”

“That your favorite word? Yeah?”

Dylan smiled. “Yeah.”

Couture nodded, disappeared into the bowels of the trailer's hallway for a few seconds. He returned with few sealed packages, tore one open as he approached Webb again. He removed some gauze and dressed the wound, then stood and admired his work. He set the nub of his cigarette in a glass ashtray on an end table beside the couch, picked up the other sealed packages, and offered them to Dylan.

“You'll need to change those dressings for the next few days.”

Dylan accepted the packages, nodding, and Couture brought out a sandwich bag containing some white powder.

“Duramycin. Antibiotic for pigs—essentially tetracycline. Usually comes in five-pound bags, but I figured you wanted to pack a little lighter. Pigs and humans are actually pretty close in how they react to anti—”

“So I've been told.” Dylan cast a glance at Andrew's grin.

“A teaspoon in a drink the next ten days should take care of infection—parts of his shirt and jacket got pushed into the wound, so he'd probably get infected without it.”

“Can't you pull out the fabric?”

Couture picked up his cigarette from the ashtray, clenched it in his teeth. “His muscle's not torn up too much—likely a pretty low-caliber gun, like a .22. If I dug around in there with what I have, I'd probably do more harm than good. Small entrance and exit wounds, so they should heal over just fine. His body will take care of the rest, with a little help from the antibiotics.” He held up another prescription bottle. “To help with the pain, these—”

“We've got a few Percocets and Vicodins. And Oxies.”

Couture nodded. “Those should do. Keep him down to four a day, though.” He scratched at his nose. “Those things are pretty addictive.”

“I've been told that too.” He waited for a crack from Andrew or Joni, and was surprised when none came. “So what do we do now?”

“Don't know about ‘we,' ” Couture said, and cleared his throat. “Me, I'm gonna have another cuppa joe and another smoke. It's my break time. You're gonna give me five hundred bucks and get your buddy off my couch so he doesn't bleed all over the place.”

“Yeah,” Andrew chimed in. “Evil white man ruined everything else for Indians. Can't have him staining the furniture too.”

Dylan could have pointed out that Webb had stopped bleeding—the wound was barely seeping now, and bandaged—as well as the black garbage bags on the couch. But he didn't; this wasn't about what was really happening. It was about showing power. And he needed to show deference to that power.

“Thanks,” he said. Then: “Can I use your latrine?”

Couture narrowed his eyes. “You military?”

“Was.”

“Most people call it a bathroom.” Couture pointed at him. “Purple heart?”

“What makes you say that?”

“Your limp.”

Dylan shrugged, nodded.

“I got me one a those too. Operation Desert Storm. Shrapnel from an explosion. Friendly fire, of course—Iraqi troops couldn't blow up anything if their lives depended on it.” He puffed his cigarette. “Come to think of it, I guess their lives did depend on it.”

Dylan looked at him a moment. “Well, they can blow up stuff now.” His leg flared.

Couture nodded slowly, pointed down the dark hallway. “Second door on the left.”

“Wash your hands,” Andrew called after him. “White Man cooties and all.”

Dylan resisted a response, closing the bathroom door behind him.

Okay. Webb was gonna be fine. Probably. As for himself, he was still 50/50. Maybe even 40/60.

He fished the fresh bottle of Percocet from his pocket and popped two of them. Yeah, they made Webb fuzzy and semicatatonic, because he never used them. They'd once done the same for him. But at some point—and he didn't know that precise point—the process reversed. He needed the Perks or the Vikes or the Oxies to stay clear. Without them, his mind was muddy. And a muddy mind wasn't going to get them out of this mess. Funny how that blurred line worked in his mind. Sometimes he convinced himself he needed to avoid the drugs to think clearly; other times he convinced himself the drugs were exactly what made him think clearly. He'd played both sides of that equation just this morning.

Yes, you're a walking contradiction
.

Who isn't, Joni? Who isn't
?

He dug into his jeans pocket and fished out five bills—half of what he'd retrieved from Webb's rucksack before hitting the city limits of Harlem. No sense alerting Andrew or anyone else to a large pile of cash sitting in his truck.

He set the money on the counter, finally looked at his reflection in the mirror. No blood on his forehead, as he'd expected.

He splashed some cold water from the faucet on his face, ran his wet hands through his close-cropped hair. The drain gurgled with a hollow echo after he turned off the faucet.

Okay. His next step was to contact Krunk. Better Krunk should hear the whole story from him than from someone else. Not that Krunk would believe him. But Dylan might as well give himself whatever sliver of an advantage he might have. It was a good tactical move—defuse the bomb before it had a chance to explode.

That strategy had worked for him before. Many times.

Until the last time, of course, but he was playing the odds here.

Dylan grabbed the bills from the counter and opened the bathroom door again, went back into the living area. Webb was still on the couch, unconscious. Andrew and Couture sat at a small Formica table in the kitchen with their coffee cups in front of them.

Dylan put the money on the table in front of Couture, nodded.

“Thanks again,” he said.

Couture drank from his cup, set it back down, made no move to take the money. “
De nada
.”

Andrew giggled. “You hear that? Veterinarian Assiniboine who speaks Spanish. That's bilingual. You don't see that on the Discovery Channel.”

“What do you see on the Discovery Channel?”

“Don't know. Never watch it.”

“Looks like you need a new coat,” Couture said.

“What?”

“New coat.” He nodded at the front of Dylan's ski jacket. “You put a hole in that one.”

Dylan looked down. A neat puncture, the size of a dime, laced his right pocket; some of the coat's insulation leaked out. He'd forgotten that he'd taken the first shot with the .357 through his coat pocket.

“You can take the jacket on the chair over there.”

Dylan turned, saw a black nylon jacket thrown haphazardly on a flowered recliner across the living room from the couch.

“Thanks,” he said, retrieving it.

“Where you headed?” Couture asked.

“Still working on that.”

“You're marked,” Couture said, staring.

Andrew smiled, turned to look at Couture. “Yeah,” he said. “Dead Man Walking. You get a white boy shot on the rez, you're definitely a marked man.”

“No, not like that,” Couture said. “My grandmother, she called it the mark. But that's not really your word for it, is it?” He stared at Dylan. “You call it chosen.” He took another drag on his cigarette.

Dylan felt his bad leg buckle, and his good one along with it. He stumbled, almost going down before regaining his balance. “What did you say?” he whispered, hoping he'd heard Couture wrong.

“My grandmother, she had this sense that let her . . . see inside other people,” Couture said, sounding almost disinterested. “See their souls, I guess you could say. But she told me about this woman she met once, a woman she said was marked.”

“What did
marked
mean?” Dylan asked.

“Meant the woman's soul was dark to her. Meant she couldn't see inside. Meant the woman was someone special.” Couture exhaled a long stream of smoke. “Chosen.”

“What happened to the marked woman?”

Couture smiled grimly. “She killed herself.”

Andrew was oddly quiet, as was Joni. Dylan heard a strong gust of wind run across the metal roof of the trailer.

Couture motioned at him, cigarette clenched between his fingers. “My grandma knew I had the sense too. Told me I needed to watch for the day I might come across someone marked. Someone chosen. Warn them.”

“Warn them of what?”

“Warn them that evil would always look for them. And always find them.”

Andrew recovered before Dylan could. “Well, I guess Couture here is a big medicine man after all,” he said, smiling. Except the smile looked a bit more painted on than usual. “I'd be worried about you looking into my soul, but I don't have one.”

Couture shot him a hard glance. “That's why I work with animals,” he said quietly. “You don't see inside them.”

Couture suddenly seemed drained. He stared at his ashtray, his eyes watery and vacant.

“How about a cuppa joe to go?” Andrew asked, evidently feeling the need to change the subject, to get past the odd scene that had just taken place. Feeling the need to get Dylan out of there.

Dylan was just as happy to drop it. His leg had healed after Iraq, yes, but his memories of Claussen would never heal. Talk about being chosen only stirred up those memories.

“Coffee,” he said. “Yeah, that'd be good.”

Andrew rose quickly, moved to a fake-wood-grained cabinet, and retrieved a Styrofoam cup from a stack. He blew into the cup, poured some of the dark brown liquid from the coffeemaker into it.

Dylan accepted the Styrofoam cup from Andrew and took a drink, feeling the liquid warm his aching bones immediately. Or maybe it was the Percocet warming him. Didn't really matter one way or the other.

“Be right back,” he said, setting the coffee on the table. “Gotta pack my cargo.”

Andrew watched as he pulled Webb from the couch and half walked, half dragged him to the door. Webb's eyes opened as Dylan struggled with the door, and he was able to stand on his own.

“Make it down the steps?”

“
Hunph
,” Webb said.

Dylan took that as a yes but held on to Webb's good arm as they stumbled their way to the small Ford Ranger.

Webb cocooned himself into the passenger seat without any small talk, and Dylan started the truck again, letting it idle to bring up the heat.

He went back inside the trailer and grabbed his coffee cup.

“Thanks for the coffee,” he told Couture, then turned to Andrew. “And I owe you.”

“Just the way I like it,” Andrew said, rocking back in the metal chair. “Make sure you give a big how-de-do to the fine folks down on the Crow rez for us.”

“Maybe I will, if I ever get back there.”

Andrew looked across the table at Couture, who had worked his way through most of another cigarette but remained silent. “Guess I didn't tell you, Dylan here isn't a rez boy. He's one a those urban Indians. Lives in the Big City.” Andrew took another sip of his coffee. “In that case, give a big how-de-do to the fine folks in Billings for us.”

Dylan, already at the front door, stopped and turned once again. “Maybe I will,” he said. “If I ever get back there.”

11

Dylan met Webb for the first time in a bar. The Rainbow Bar, down on Montana Avenue next to the tracks in Billings, appropriately named because it was always packed with a rainbow coalition of people in search of a buzz. Young college students. Retired railroad workers. Hispanic migrant workers in from the sugar beet fields. And more than a few Crow and Northern Cheyenne, parading through the long, thin interior in a never-ending river of humanity.

Typically, Indians in the bar would scan, find other Indians in the bar, give a nod. Maybe even group together, exchange a few rounds.

Dylan wasn't typical. He noted the dark eyes of others he recognized as Crow, but didn't acknowledge their gestures. He wasn't really a Crow anymore. Not after leaving to join the army. Not after returning from the army unannounced to anyone on the rez. Most of all, though, not after Joni. If he were to venture back to the rez at all, and if he were to be recognized, he would just be that guy whose sister disappeared.

On top of that, Dylan rarely spent time in bars. Rarely spent time anywhere outside his house since returning from the VA hospital in Sheridan several months ago. Venturing into the outside world took too much energy; he had to select a mask that hid the emptiness inside if he ventured into the outside world. His inside world, built around a television, a few threadbare pieces of furniture, and a bottle of painkillers, was so much more comfortable. No masks needed.