The Work of Wolves (31 page)

Willi got out of the car. "How did you do that?" he asked Ted.

From the pallet Ted looked at them without answering. Finally he said, "You two must be seriously lost."

"We came to talk to you," Earl replied.

"You came to talk to me." A sardonic smile lifted the corners of Ted's mouth. "You become Christers? Gonna save me from the error of my ways?"

Earl shook his head. "Nothing like that."

"Not? Too bad. Woulda been entertaining. 'Course you've been that already."

Ted leaned his shoulders against the door jamb of the trailer and crossed his arms. The wind blew a thick strand of his neck-length hair across his face. "I'm waiting," he said.

"We want to talk to only you, you know?" Earl said. "Is anyone else home?"

"A couple cousins. They're asleep."

Earl knew that Ted's parents were serious alcoholics. They drifted from bar to bar, city to city—Sioux Falls, Lincoln, Omaha, Pierre, Rapid City—staying with friends or relatives a few weeks or months, then moving on to another city, another set of drinking friends. They returned to the reservation only sporadically, after making one of their periodic joint resolutions to dry out, resolutions that lasted two or three months, after which they would find themselves going by a bar at Interior or Ruination or White River, and the urge to drink would come upon them both like a visitation, and whichever one of them was driving would pull into the parking lot, and they would climb from the car without a word, guilty and terribly relieved both, looking at each other with an understanding that passed for love. Later, after the fourth or fifth beer, they would speak of it with a kind of religious fervor to whomever would listen, how it had struck both of them at once and how each had known what the other was thinking. They would be awestruck by their compatibility, the attunement of their minds. "Of course," one or the other would always then say, "if we didn't think that way, maybe neither of us would be sitting here right now." And the other would lift a glass and reply, "I'll drink to that," and they would, and smear beery kisses across each other's faces, thankful they had each other to despise. It was the gift they gave each other—someone else besides themselves to despise—and it made them inseparable and gave to their relationship all the appearances and accouterments of love.

In the vacuum created by their absence, the upkeep and care of the family land had fallen to Ted. For two years after he was conceived, his parents had quit drinking, but when they started again they took their child with them, enrolling him in schools in whatever city they happened to find themselves—until, when Ted was twelve, he'd stood in the doorway of the trailer house and refused to go with them. He'd seen enough of the world. His parents, already in the car, looked at each other and, with their perfect, mutual understanding, decided without words that if he was old enough to refuse to come with them, he was old enough. Ted's father turned the ignition key. His mother lifted a hand just above the window frame, and they left Ted in the doorway of the house.

Ted had scavenged, or he had lived with his grandmother, or he had lived alone and with his grandmother alternately, or he had hunted for food. It depended on who was telling the story. In any case, he'd survived, developing an intermittent relationship with his parents and with the school system. At sixteen he'd dropped out of school altogether, at seventeen kicked his parents out of the house when they were drunk and told them not to return unless they were sober.

After claiming the house by the simple act of establishing rules of conduct in it, Ted decided to begin drinking himself. Having put it off for seventeen years, seeing in his parents all the reasons not to, he gave in finally to a sense of fatalism: If this was who he was, he might as well get on with it. He had the house and land; he might as well have the identity, too. He drank himself into unconsciousness the first time he drank and woke the next day to a sun too hot and a world too loud, and only one thing to do to seek coolness and silence.

Always, though, Ted kept the rule he'd made for the house. He wouldn't allow himself or anyone else to bring alcohol into the house or to stay there when drunk. Since he refused to travel, having seen as much of the world as he cared to before he was twelve, this rule served to limit how much and how often he drank. For within Ted, as strong as the need to drink, was the need to walk the family land, to sit in the shade of its trees, to see the deer that grazed its grasses and the moon rising over it.

Through gossip and conjecture, Earl was vaguely aware of all this. He thought of those cousins asleep inside Ted's house. The house was known as a place where anyone who wasn't drinking could come for a roof and for whatever food they could find. Even the reservation's numerous abandoned dogs seemed to know that Ted refused no guest.

"How about coming down by the car," Earl said. "In case your cousins aren't sleeping."

Ted snorted. "You playin some game with me?"

"We just have some serious stuff we want to ask you."

Ted's eyes glinted with derision and suspicion, though he remained leaning against the doorway, appearing nonchalant and indifferent.

"I got lost two times trying to find this place, you know?" Earl said. "All we have is one question for you. If you say no, we'll leave. We just don't want anyone else hearing the question."

Ted pushed himself away from the door jamb with a heave of his shoulders and stepped off the pallet, loose-limbed as if he were stepping off a dock into water. He came across the dog-trammeled yard, his tennis shoes leaving neat, oval imprints in the rakeage of claws. Leaves from some distant cottonwood blew past, yellow swirls in the air. Earl moved to the rear of the car, and Willi joined him there. Ted stopped four feet from them, hands in his pockets.

"You remember that party?" Earl asked. "Those horses I saw?"

"I might."

"We went down and looked at them. They're Magnus Yarborough's. They're being starved. We're going to steal them. We need a place to take them. Can we bring them here? That's all we want to know."

Earl said all this in a rush, not stopping and not explaining anything, and when he was done, Ted stared at him for several seconds, unmoving, his face impassive, unable to believe or quite disbelieve something so outrageous and direct.

"You're gonna steal Magnus Yarborough's horses," he finally said. "And you want to bring them here?"

Earl nodded.

"No one would look for them here, we think," Willi said. "And if they did, you could say you did not know anything. That they just appeared."

"You two are gonna steal horses."

"And Carson Fielding."

Earl shot Willi a warning glance. The less said the better. But it was too late. Ted saw the glance. "Carson Fielding," he said. "That horse trainer, enit?"

"Yeah. That horse trainer."

Earl's glance at Willi had convinced Ted he was being told the truth. His derisive air remained, but he couldn't keep genuine curiosity from his voice. "How'd he get involved with you two?"

Willi seemed willing to answer any question put to him. "I know him," he said. "I have from him some riding lessons taken. When we found the horses, we asked him what to do. Then we found out he had trained them."

Ted tilted his head and regarded Earl and Willi through narrowed eyes. "Stealing horses," he said. "You two remembering that's the kind of thing people go to prison for?"

"We don't plan to get caught."

"I bet you don't. This don't make sense. Why're you doin this?"

"They're starving, you know? Like I said."

"Lots a things starving. All over the world. You gonna save 'em all?"

"Just these horses."

"Yeah. Everybody wants to save something. Might as well be a Christer comin out here, giving me this shit. Save these horses and then go off to college and tell those white girls what a warrior you are."

Earl shriveled under the attack. His mind went blank. He felt himself growing hot as Ted's black eyes bored into him.

Then he heard Willi say, "Yes, the only reason I want to steal these horses is so I can go back to Germany and get the girls in bed. I have always thought stealing horses is the best way to do that. In Germany I can never any action with the girls get because there are not any horses to steal. But here is nothing but steal horses, hop in bed, steal horses, hop in bed. But if you will not help us with those girls, we will have to find another way. Maybe we will try lying to them. Let's go, Earl."

Willi walked to the passenger door of the car, opened it, got in, slammed the door. Earl and Ted were both so surprised they stared at him, then at each other.

"He's right, you know?" Earl said. "We'll have to lie."

He turned to go. But Ted's voice, quieter now behind him, stopped him. "Walks Alone. Wait."

Earl turned back to him. Ted turned both hands outward at his sides, briefly lifting and dropping them. "You really ain't shittin me, are you?" he said.

Earl just looked at him.
The Aintshittin Indian,
he thought,
pauses on his way back to his vehicle.
"We just want to hide them for a while," he finally said. "Until we can think of something else. You've got land. And not too many tourists out here, you know?"

Willi opened the car door and stood up out of it, listening. A greyhound, thin as a snake, wandered out of the grass, thrust its nose into Ted's hand hanging at his side, then flopped down, emitting a small grunt of satisfaction.

"We figure with the land out here being trust land, all cut up, if someone did happen to find them out here, you could just say they must've come from somewhere else. That you didn't even know they were on your land, you know? But there could still be trouble for you. So if you don't want to do it, we'll think of something else, I guess."

"Trouble? I don't know—you and me might be cell mates."

Ted smiled, a lock of hair falling over one of his eyes. He jerked his head to clear his vision, then looked back to Earl, still smiling.

"That would make the time just fly," Earl said.

"They're Magnus Yarborough's horses?"

Earl nodded.

"Rich sonofabitch. Yeah, you can bring 'em here."

Earl and Willi exchanged glances over the hood of the car.

"Quite an outlaw gang you got, enit?" Ted said. "The Apple, the Kraut, and the Cowboy."

But he grinned so widely that Earl couldn't take offense, and Willi was merely baffled. At that moment a commotion began at the abandoned car furthest from them. The door creaked slowly open, and a bare foot emerged, followed by a foot wearing a dirty white tennis shoe. These two feet found the ground, patted it tentatively, settled themselves. Then from the dark interior of the car, a figure unfolded itself, standing on those feet—a tall Indian, gaunt and raggedy, wearing a tattered, red Western shirt and blue jeans. He hunched himself up from the open door, stood, wavered a moment, then reached back inside the door and emerged with a misshapen felt cowboy hat which he placed carefully on his head, adjusting the hat several times until it sat at the proper angle. Then he dropped his hands and fumbled with his fly.

Glancing around while finding his zipper, the tall Indian saw Ted and Earl and Willi watching. He nodded in their direction, unperturbed. Ted nodded back. The tall Indian leaned back against the car and peed into the grass. In the bright sun the stream of urine looked like a curved, golden wire attached to his groin.

"There you go," Ted said. "The reservation Golden Arches. All we need's a marketing campaign."

The man finished his business, zipped himself up, then fished in his shirt pocket, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, shook one out, stuck it in his mouth, replaced the pack, snapped shut the pearl snap on the Western shirt, reached into his pants pocket, pulled out a lighter, lit the cigarette, dragged deeply, exhaled a cloud of smoke, replaced the lighter, leaned back more comfortably against the car, lifted the cigarette to his mouth again. A dog crawled out of the car door he'd opened, sniffed the grass where he'd urinated, lifted its leg in the same spot, then trotted away.

"Uncle Johnny," Ted said. "He don't like sleeping in the house."

"Why is that?" Willi asked.

"Too far to the bathroom."

Willi and Earl stared at him, then laughed.

"S' truth," Ted said.

Then he said, "Tell you what. Some of this land"—he nodded backwards—"ain't visible from any road. No one'd ever find those horses on it. You can bring 'em here. But I got one condition."

"What's that?"

"You let me help steal 'em."

Earl flashed a warning look to Willi. The more people involved, the more likely something would go wrong. And he wasn't sure he trusted Ted in something like what they were planning. Ted was sober right now, but would he be sober when the time came? Earl imagined how difficult Ted could make things if he came along drunk.

Ted saw the look Earl gave Willi, and when Earl looked back at Ted, those dark, sardonic eyes were gazing at him.

"Don't worry, Walks Alone," he said. "I got this belief. Drinking and stealing don't mix. Don't you think if I'm gonna risk getting arrested for stealing horses, I at least got the right to steal 'em?"

Earl glanced at Willi again. Willi shrugged. "That is a point," he said.

T
HEY CAME BY THEIR SEPARATE WAYS
to the Donaldson's Foods parking lot when light was waning. They stood in silent contemplation of that waning. At first they stood apart from each other, as if they had just happened to come here for individual and private reasons, but Willi gathered them together, speaking first to Earl, then walking with Earl to where Carson stood, and the three of them finally nodding to Ted, who pretended at first not to see them, flipping his hair out of his eyes with a jerk of his head and staring out of the parking lot at two stray dogs trotting down the street. But when the dogs disappeared, Ted stuck his hands in his pockets and ambled over to the group. He stopped a little apart from the others, as if he were content in his own isolated business, which just happened to bring him near. But Willi thought to introduce him to Carson, and Ted stepped forward to shake hands, and then no one could think of anything to say. Shadows crept up the yellowed stucco wall of the grocery store, and light from inside began to form faint rectangles on the asphalt.