Two Medicine (14 page)

Spent my days with a woman unkind,

Smoked my stuff and drank all my wine.

Made up my mind to make a new start,

Going To California with an aching in my heart.

Someone told me there's a girl out there with love
in her eyes and flowers in her hair.

Took my chances on a big jet plane, never let them
tell you that they're all the same.

She clapped her hands with
a big smile on her little face as I finished, not with sarcasm but
with honest delight. “Nice job!” she said. “Now sing me one
you
wrote.”

“
Next time… we’re almost
back.” I pointed over to the store with the paddle as we approached
shore. I paddled harder and soon the boat ground to a halt on the
rocky shore right where we had started. As we ground to a halt on
the shore she lost her balance on the bench and plopped down into
the bottom of the boat at my feet.

“
Fuck!” she shouted. Her
little butt had gotten wet with the dirty water that had sloshed
around in the bottom of the canoe, collected from the drips of the
paddle as it passed from side to side as we went along.

I quickly helped her out
onto the shore, and then I dragged the boat up to the trees back to
where it had been, and locked it up with the chain.

“
So,” I said, wiping off
my hands on my jeans, “we survived, almost intact. You
ok?”

“
I’m fine,” she said,
wiping her bottom. “I’m an ‘Injun’ remember? We invented
canoes.”

“
So, you got time to take
a walk around the lake with me?”

She wrinkled up her nose
as she did from time to time, and her little mouth slid sideways,
in thought. “No, don’t really have time, Will, and it’s getting
dark. But show me your room in the store… I want to see where you
guys live. I’ve always wondered what those rooms looked
like.”

I glanced over at the
store warily, thinking of Larry and his strict “no guests” rule,
Ronnie with his shirt off and sexual overdrive, and wondered
whether it was worth the risk. I looked back at Alia. She looked so
beautiful, and it definitely was.

“
Ok,” I said, “but let’s
go the back way.”

I walked her back towards
the rear entrance, which led to the kitchen, and she grabbed my
hand as we walked. This made my heart beat a little faster. Her
little hand was soft and very warm. I smiled at her.

“
Well, well, well,” I
joked, from my own tension more than anything else, “Ms.
Romantic.”

She laughed and ripped her
hand away. “Fine – screw you then.”

She ran up to the screen
door in the back, her butt has two round water stains on it
now.

I called over to her.
“Wait! Larry is kind of a dick about his rules…” I ran up beside
her to the screen door and grabbed her hand; she turned to me with
a mischievous smile, her eyes showing entertainment at my
awkwardness. I smelled her fragrance and wanted so much just to
bury my face in her hair and kiss her neck. I looked through the
screen door – and the coast seemed clear.

Eleven

I led her quickly and
quietly through the screen door and into the kitchen, then up the
stairs, and finally into my room. I could hear music blaring from
Ronnie’s room; his door was open but we couldn’t see him in the
room.

I hurriedly shut the door
to my room and waved an arm around the tiny wooden rectangle.
“Here’s the tour – bed, closet, mirror, window, and…. bats.” I
pointed up in the slanted wooden ceiling at the little black lumps
of fur clinging to their usual spot.

“
Hmmmmm,” Alia murmured as
she walked over and studied them. “So adorable…” One of the bats
moved, as if realizing it was being talked about, and Alia
involuntarily recoiled, and then she stepped away and walked over
and sat down on my bed, the only furniture in the room that offered
a seat. I sat down beside her.

Alia looked around the
room and then at me; she smiled as if satisfied by the look of the
place. “Aside from the bats, I like it,” she said.

“
They watch the place for
me during the day.”

“
This is pretty much what
I thought these rooms would look like – log cabinny.” She took the
room in again, and then looked over across from me at my
door.

“
It might seem weird, but
I like visiting this store,” she said after a moment. “It seems…
different, it’s like someone else’s house, kind of. I like the
faces I see here, most of them. The people who visit here talk so
different, from all over the place – goofy accents. So different
than what I’m used to… on the res.”

We were setting together
just inches apart on the bed. “The first time I saw you, I thought
you were really handsome, and liked your smile,” she
said.

“
Past tense?” I said
softly, smiling slightly at her. The tension was growing again,
stronger now that we were alone.

“
A little, still…” she
said, staring into my eyes.

I hesitated for a second
and she looked away shyly, over to the window. You can only hold a
gaze like that for so long, before either kissing or looking away.
And she looked away. I worried for second, thinking I had blown my
chance at a kiss. I looked down at her neck where soft streams of
dark hair escaped and met the smooth curve at the nape where her
neck met her shoulder. The little, metal arrowhead earring shivered
slightly with movement. Her fragrance was so light and sweet like
sugar in the air that I breathed it in deeply to try to get a
strong sense of her inside me.

I leaned down slowly to
kiss her neck; this was going to be it, my hand moved up to brush
aside the light strands of hair by her hear. But she was looking
down at her feet when I made my move and she didn’t see me. She
then happened to hop up in the instant I had just brushed a few
strands of her hair – and then she looked back at me in sudden
surprise, which quickly turned to frustration as she realized I had
just tried to kiss her.

To complete the disaster,
before I could say anything to her, someone banged loudly on my
door. BAM! BAM! BAM!

“
Will!” Larry shouted
through the door.

Larry! That old
bastard…
I cursed him under my breath. I
looked over at Alia and she looked back at me. She didn’t seem
nervous at all, more fascinated and watchful, as if trying to see
what kind of reaction I would have to this interruption.

“
What?” I barked back at
him, looking over at the door.

“
You forgot to take the
trash out tonight,” he said, “had to get Katie to do it. Don’t let
it happen again – there’s too much trash!” he barked. I heard his
heavy steps creaking loudly back down the stairs as the ancient
boards complained about the weight.

I looked away from the
door, slowly shaking my head.

The magic had faded from
the room like old smoke. Larry’s offensive presence, even outside
the door, bellowing about trash, had changed the air in the room
like a grotesque smell. I gave up and nodded in the direction of
the door to Alia. She smirked at me and shrugged back, imitating
me, fascination and thoughtfulness in her eyes.

“
I should be getting back
anyway,” she said, almost in a whisper.

We left the
room and I walked her out and down the stairs, and
then walked a bit with her towards the road that led from the store
and campground into the main park. As we walked I cursed Larry
inwardly. More than the interruption, what bothered me was here I
was a grown man, out of college, on my own, and here was the guy
ordering me around like I was some teenage punk, in front of Alia.
I kicked at some stones on the path as we walked. The whole thing
embarrassed me.

Then I looked over at
Alia, who looked lost in thought herself. “Wait,” I said, looking
around the parking area, “how are you getting back home?” Browning
was about a half hour away – by car. There were no cars at all
anywhere around the store, not at this time in the evening after we
had closed.

“
Oh,” she said causally,
“I’ll walk part of the way, and call a friend of mine to pick me
up.” She patted the phone in her pocket.

I looked around the woods
and the gravel lanes leading through the trees. “That’s not too
safe, though, is it?” She smiled and turned towards the road and
began walking, without so much as a hug.

“
Don’t worry about me,
mister,” she said, looking back at me and blowing me a kiss. I
watched her little form disappear into the darkness around a bend
in the road.

Twelve

The day after Alia and I’s
little hangout, me, Ronnie and Katie were scheduled to head to the
main lodge for an afternoon park orientation, put on by the
rangers. Larry told us it was mandatory, and that he and Phyllis
would run the store without us for a few hours. But he also warned
that we should hurry back to help as soon as the orientation was
over.

“
No ‘lollygagging,’” he
told us.

Before we left, Larry
pulled me aside. He walked me back to the gift shop front of the
store and stood close to me, looking me in the eye. His breath
reeked and I looked down at his fat, heaving belly to avoid
it.

“
Will,”
he said in a terse whisper, “did you let an
Indian
up to your room
last night?” He breathed on me again and I backed off a little. I
looked at him with disgust.

“
None of your concern,
Larry,” I said.

“
It is my concern, because
I run this place. And to bring one of them…”

I held up my hand and he stopped, glaring at
me. “I don’t want to hear another word about it, Larry. You mention
her again like that and we are going to have a serious
problem.”

I turned and walked away
from him, leaving him standing there in dismay; I could feel his
glare on the back of my head as I walked into the
kitchen.

“You bring her back here and you’re fired!”
he shouted after me.

I kept walking.

Ronnie was the
only one of the three of us staffers who had a car
– an old, beat up Ford Tempo. The entire summer it was full of
junk: clothes, CDs, dirty cups and coffee mugs; and he permanently
had the stereo blasting when he was driving. Never once did I see
him pull up or pull out of the store parking lot without it
blaring.

So the three of us packed
into Ronnie’s car and drove off for the lodge due south. Ronnie
shoved Led Zeppelin into the deck as we started off, cranked up the
volume knob and lit a cigarette, cracking his window and the one
behind him a bit to drag the smoke out. He did all this while he
was pulling out of the parking lot. Katie moved over to the seat
behind me in the rear to avoid any 2
^nd
-hand puffs. For her part she rode in silence the whole way,
staring moodily out of the window beside her. I felt a wall between
us that I didn’t understand, and didn’t really want to at that
moment.

The Tempo meandered
through the lower hills and spurs of the mountains on a winding,
asphalt road, which was actually the main road that connected Two
Medicine with the rest of the park, and the road that split off and
led to Browning as well. At one point we passed a jammer bus
chugging along, chock full of early-season tourists and peering
through the windows. I thought back to my first morning coming to
the store in a bus like that, maybe that very bus. The driver was
someone else, I noticed. As I sat back in the car seat I realized
that that bus ride now seemed months ago.

It took about an hour to
drive to the lodge, and once we got there, around 3 o’clock in the
afternoon, I navigated for Ronnie, pointing down a side gravel road
to the ranger station some distance away from the lodge.

There were a few other
cars there, and some people were filing in through open doors to
the station. The ranger station was a small, square brick building
with a couple of official-looking ranger trucks parked beside it.
Radio antennas and other communication aerials stuck out from the
roof of the building at different angles; but basically it looked
more like a small post office than anything
police-related.

Ronnie, Katie and I walked
in together, and we were greeted by a young-looking ranger in the
park ranger uniform of grey khaki short-sleeved shirt and dark
green khaki pants, wearing a gold badge and canvas belt. “Sanders”
was his last name, reading from his name tag.

“
What’s up guys?” he
asked, smiling at us as we walked up to the door. He was short, and
had dark, very curly hair, and a puckish, friendly, almost Greek
face. He had very hairy arms and a thick stubble on his face – a
bit “hobbit” like.

“
I’m Greg, one of the
rangers here,” he said. “Where are you three working this
summer?”

“
Two Medicine,” I
said.

“
Ahh!” He suddenly
brightened, his thick eyebrows raised. “Two Med? That’s my turf! My
wife and I will be seeing a lot of you guys probably – she’s a
ranger there too.”

“
Super,” Ronnie said with
a frown, then glanced away at the rest of the people in the
room.