Two Medicine (38 page)

So there Thunderbird sat,
like a wild, American Buddha, with a fat belly in the shade,
gesturing over at the mountains to the family of tourists on their
way past his teepee as he spoke.

When he saw me he wrapped
up his conversation and got up heavily from the ground, waving me
over. “Will! Let’s go buddy. Let’s take a walk about around the
lake.”

I looked over at the lake. “Ok, but I gotta
be back at work in an hour.”

He waved his hand
dismissively and started towards the lake path. Once we got down to
the lake, right next to where Alia and I had set off in the canoe,
we started trudging along the dry, gravel lake shore path. We
crunched along in silence on for a moment, before he finally
spoke.

“
So, the council told me
that you are in, Will. You can go to the powwow!” he said. He said
it with a joyful expectation, as if I had been invited to meet the
President.

“
They did?” I asked in a
lackluster tone. I was concerned about getting caught up in some
weird, spiritual experience with Thunderbird that I may end up
regretting. If he noticed my hesitation, it didn’t change his
energy a bit.

“
It’s
the Blackfoot’s powwow – private! The Blackfoot Nation gathers in
the park every year to honor the spirits and exchange culture.” he
said. “Outsiders are
strictly
forbidden, Will, but I’ve
been telling the council about you and they voted that you can
go.”

“
Why
do
you
want
me to go?” I asked him.

He looked at me with
surprise. “So you can settle your spirits.” He scanned my face. “I
think I can still see her spirit on you, weighing you down. You
still don’t feel right, do you?”

Had I ever felt right
before?
I asked myself. But I didn’t answer
him.

“
You can’t carry two
spirits.” He repeating himself from before. “At least not for long.
It’ll drive you nuts!” He looked down at my wrist. “Is that
helping?” he asked.

“
I really couldn’t say;
what’s it supposed to do?” I asked him.

“
It’s supposed to calm her
down – keep her spirit at peace,” he said. “It was hers, before it
was yours.”

“
She wore it?” I asked,
surprised that he had not told me that before.

He just nodded
nonchalantly, and kept walking along the shore with me. “The
council understands that you were with her – the last one with her
– before she died. And so they know you carry her spirit. We got to
let her go – go in peace back to the earth. We’ll do that at the
sweat,” he said.

“
The sweat?” I asked. “As
in a sweat lodge?”

“
Uh huh,” he nodded.
“You’re gonna go with us to the sweat; I got
permission.”

“
Permission from
whom?”

“
The council,” he said.
“It’s a special honor, Will.”

“
Thunderbird,” I said. “I
heard you were the liaison or something for the tribe with the BIA
and rangers for the council.”

“
Yep,” he nodded
emphatically.

“
Well, what is going on
with her investigation? Have you heard anything? Do the cops have
any suspects?”

“
Oh,” he said breezily,
“Officer Olsterman thinks you may have done it.”

I stopped walking and
looked at him. “He told you that?”

Thunderbird stopped and
looked at me with a concerned frown. “I told them you had nothing
to do with it, Will, that you had her spirit on you.”

Great.
The idea of Thunderbird talking to cops about me and Alia’s
spirit couldn’t do me any good at all. “Wait…” I said, “when did
Olsterman tell you that he thought I did it?”

Thunderbird waived his
hand again, casually. “Oh, don’t worry about that Will.” He turned
and kept walking, adjusting his day pack on his huge rolling
shoulders. “They aren’t going to do anything – I talked to
them.”

I stood there a moment
before answering while Thunderbird walked on. I looked out across
the lake. The day was beautiful – a long, dark-blue sky was spread
over the lake like a smooth sheet of silk, small waves being blown
across the water by a breeze underneath. The mountains reflected in
the calmer parts of the water. Yet again – the ludicrousness of
talking about murder suspects, cops, investigations, in such a
pristine and wild place struck me.

However, the fear of being
arrested also struck me – and worried me now. Thunderbird had
looked back at me and caught my worried expression as I stared at
the lake.

“
Will,”
he said with a furrowed brow, “don’t worry. The BIA can’t solve
this anyway – it’s a tribal matter.
We’ll
figure it out.”

“
When?”
I asked.
Better not wait too
long,
I thought.

He smiled at me. “Wait
until the powwow! You’ll see what we do there.”

I shook my head in wonder,
and caught back up with him on the trail. “Well, there’s one thing
you may have wrong, Thunderbird,” I said, as I resumed walking next
to him, “I wasn’t the last one with her before she died – the
person who killed her was.” I looked over to the store and then
beyond it to the peak of Rising Wolf. A dark bank of thunder clouds
crept over the summit and began its marching towards the store.
“And Alia’s spirit could be on
him
then, and, if so, I hope she’s giving him
hell.”

We got back
to the store soon after that, and I took my leave
of Thunderbird, and tried to get back into the swing of things in
the kitchen once I’d returned from my break. Thunderbird had
worried me more than encouraged me with his news about the BIA and
his getting me an invite to a crazy sweat lodge ceremony; but
despite his simpleminded clownishness he was a part of Alia’s life
and he could help in that regard, if in no other.

Besides, I thought to
myself as I rang up an order for Chef Katie in the kitchen, nobody
is what they seem around here anyway. Not Thunderbird, not Clayton,
not Katie, not Larry, not even Greg, whom I hadn’t heard from for
days and who had originally seemed so gung-ho to help me out, so
driven... Everyone was a chameleon who only revealed their true
sides when faced with adversity – and there was plenty of that to
go around in this otherwise idyllic paradise.

I switched places that
afternoon with Katie so I could cook and just keep to my own
thoughts. She was always glad for any chance to get off the grill,
anyway. After a couple of hours cooking burgers, tacos, chicken
strips and fries, she stuck her head into the kitchen and said,
“You’ve got a call, Will. Someone from Georgia, they
said.”

Georgia
?
Would
Dad
be calling me
? I had actually called him
and very briefly talked to him a couple of days after arriving in
Two Med, just to check in, and then hadn’t heard a thing from him –
nor had I particular wanted to.
Who else
knew my number?

I reached for the phone. “Hello?”

“
Hey Will…” It was Holly,
that unmistakable light, sweet, angelic voice. It made my heart
seize for a second, and then almost just a quick I felt a clear
reluctance to speak to her.

“
Holly?” I said. “What’s
up? How you doin’?”

“
Oh, I’m
good. I’ve been working like crazy as a teacher’s assistant, and
taking a couple classes at night too. I called the park’s main
number and got your location from them. I just wanted to hear from
you… How are
you
is the question. How’s that job? What’s Montana
like?”

How could I describe
it?
I wondered. I also felt a strong
inclination to
not
describe it –and that I shouldn’t drag that old life of mine
into this new one – and even though she was probably the main
reason I had finally decided to chuck it all out and move to
Montana – the last straw… the breaking point. I didn’t even want to
bring
her
into my
world in Two Med, not even her who had been the love of my
life.

“
Oh, it’s pretty good,” I
said breezily. “It’s beautiful here – you’d love it.” I didn’t
sound like I had much feeling or conviction, and I knew Holly could
hear that in my voice. She could always detect the slightest
feeling in anything I said – she never missed any signals like
that.

“
This job is kind of
funny,” I continued, as an explanation for my tone. “Kind of like
working in a fast food place and a gift shop at the same
time.”

“
Really?” she asked. “I
thought you’d be out chopping trees or fighting bears or
something.”

“
Ha, yeah…” There came a
lull in the conversation.

“
It’s different here,” I
said after a moment, still trying to thread together a coherent
explanation of my life in Two Med. “It’s hard to explain…” I
trailed off unsuccessfully.

“
I understand,” she said.
“You’re in a different world now. I just wanted to see how you were
doing, to make sure you were OK.”

“
It is really good to hear
your voice,” I said, and it was the first time I had said anything
with the ring of truth to it, and she could hear it.

“
Yours too,
Will.”

Another pause. “When are
you coming back?” she asked. “
Are
you coming back? You left so suddenly…”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I
may work for the park here, over the winter... Ronnie’s got this
connection – Ronnie’s this guy I work with.”

“Ah.” she said. “All year,
huh?”

“It’s a possibility…” I
said. I looked down at the leather string and beads on my wrist. I
thought about Alia and everything since.

“
This place…” I began to
say on the phone, then stopped. Better not get into it – it would
take an hour to discuss my feeling of “this place.”

“You sound different,” she
said after a moment.

“Really?”

“
Are
you ok?” she asked.

“Sure.” And that was the
truth too. Despite it all, it
did
feel ok, despite it all, I realized as I spoke
with her that I wanted to be in that place more than any other I
knew. “I love it here at times, Holly. I wake up and it just amazes
me that I live out here… in the mountains. It…. Just
feels
right to
be.”

“Good,” she said, sounding
a little relieved. “Well I’m glad I caught you. I wanted to make
sure you were ok.”

“Yeah, it was good talking
to you too,” I said. Then considering for a second, I asked, “Are
you still with Jonathan?”

A pause. “Yes.”

“Is he good to
you?”

“Of course he is,” she
said. “But let’s not talk about him, Will. Let’s not end on that
note. I wanted to hear from you and I knew you wouldn’t call
me
.”

“You were right,” I said.
“I think, now that you’ve called, that it was a good idea. I needed
to hear from you again – for a proper goodbye, at
least.”

“Then Goodbye, Will,” she
said. “And don’t think I don’t ever want to hear from you – we can
still be friends.”

“I doubt that,” I said,
imagining it and not seeing the possibility. “Never just
friends.”

“Well, if you ever want to
talk, give me a call,” she said softly. “And take care of yourself
out there.”

“Goodbye,” I
said.

“Goodbye Will.”

I hung up
and just stood rooted in place by the phone for a
minute. I felt sadness; and I knew after I had hung up that I would
probably never talk to her again. I simply didn’t want to reopen
old wounds, and for what?

How quickly things can
change in this world, I thought to myself as I went back to the
kitchen and tied my Two Medicine apron back on. I still had love
for her; I could feel it like a cold stone lying dormant inside me
as I spoke to her on the phone, slowing warming up and getting
close to an awakening. But the love was of a different kind, now,
it was like the love of someone who’s passed away, or so out of
reach that they may just as well have passed away. It was
nostalgia, and it was solemn, like a memorial to a past
life.

That was the last time I
ever did talk to her. But I wasn’t done with Georgia, not just yet.
We were getting into mid-summer when I got my call from Holly. And
a short time after that, I got another visitor from the
past.

Thirty-One

I was off on this
particular day, but was in the store as it was raining heavily and
I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I was sitting in one of the big
rocking chairs that encircled the stone fireplace in the store –
where Larry didn’t want customers to “loiter” – and I was whittling
a stick into the shape of a bear like I had seen someone do in
camp, or trying to – it looked more like a lumpy goat than a
grizzly – when I heard someone call out, “Will Benton!”