Who in Hell Is Wanda Fuca? (19 page)

With a lecherous wink to his pals, he pulled her roughly in a planted an
open-mouthed kiss on her. Caroline, of course, responded with passion. Is
topped in my tracks. Jesus Christ.

As he ground his mouth against hers, one of her hands crept lovingly to the
back of his thick neck and mussed the sweaty curls plastered to the back of his
head. The pool shooter redoubled his efforts.

Suddenly, as if overcome by emotion, Caroline went completely slack. As she
slid from his embrace, only her teeth, firmly locked on his tongue, kept her
from hitting the floor. For a second or two, her entire weight was suspended
from his tongue. Purple in the face, his eyes bulging, he forearmed her to the
floor and staggered about the room, clutching his mouth, bellowing like a bull.

I used the diversion to walk the length of the room and  get a
two-handed grip on the cue he'd left leaning against the bar.

"Eeee bib mee. Eee bib eee," he howled incredulously as he
examined the blood that now seeped through his fingers and covered the backs of
his hands. Blood poured down over his chins.

I watched his throat work as he swallowed blood and tried to work his tongue
back into the warm, soothing confines of his mouth. No go. She'd torn something
loose. His tongue hung from his mouth like a piece of raw, lacerated liver.
Gingerly, he tried to push it back in with his thick fingers. Bad idea. The
pain nearly took off the top of his head. Water poured from his eyes as he
released his tongue and clutched his temples, staggering about in small
circles. He howled again and started for Caroline.

His watering eyes opened wide as he lumbered back across the floor, his
massive arms outstretched, his fingers reaching for Caroline, who was still
sitting on the floor. Using both her hands and feet, she skittered crablike
backward toward the door. she wasn't going to make it.

When he got even with me, I tried to conk him on top of the head with the
thick end of the cue, but he saw it coming. At the last instant, he stood
straight up. The cue hit him directly in the mouth. I cringed.

He went down in a heap, his hands clawing at his mouth, his feet turning him
around in circles on the floor as if jet-propelled. If it weren't for the
horrible, high-pitched keening sound that was coming from somewhere deep inside
his body, he would have looked like he was break dancing.

Mindful of the three others, I turned quickly back toward the pool table. No
need. They stood ashen against the back wall. The pockmarked kid had a gleaming
Buck knife in his hand. Several other men had formed a loose circle around the
trio. Without the big guy, these three weren't shit.

I checked o Caroline. She had regained her feet and was vigorously wiping
her mouth with her sleeve.

"Way to stay out of it," I said.

"Somebody had to do something," was her muffled response.

And older woman at the bar reached over and handed Caroline a beer. Caroline
used it like mouthwash, swishing and swirling it around in her mouth. Satisfied
that she'd gotten the last vestiges rinsed out, she was at a loss as to what to
do next. Apparently she didn't want to swallow it. I couldn't say as I blamed
her. Equally apparent, spitting was not part of her private-school background.

With her cheeks bulging, she looked at me and raised her eyebrows. I pointed
to the guy on the floor. She looked at me again as if to say "Are you
sure?" and I nodded. She leaned over and spat the beer on the pool shooter,
who by now had stopped circling and was slowly rocking to some internal rhythm.
The move was greeted by a standing ovation from the crowd. That left the other
three.

I walked to the back of the room. Nobody had moved. The kid still held the
knife down by his side, neither brandishing it nor putting it away. As I
shouldered my way to the front, the three guys tried to press themselves
through the wall.

"You better get him to a hospital," I said to none of them in
particular.

They stirred but didn't move. "Don't worry," I said. "I wont
let her hurt you." Laughter rippled behind me.

The shortest of the three, a rat-faced guy in engineer overalls and a
grease-stained John Deere hat, slowly made his way around me, keeping himself
as far from the kid with the knife as possible. The others followed.

As they half-dragged, half-carried the guy from the bar, they were treated
to a shower of beer and spittle as the patrons, emulating Caroline, filled
their mouths with whatever was handy and sprayed it over their retreating
forms. As the door swung shut, a loud cheer erupted.

It was beers all around. Within two minutes, Caroline and I each had four or
five beers thrust in front of us; the jukebox came to life, playing an old
George Jones tune; a friendlier pool game got underway; the doorway cleared out
as people headed back to their seats. In spite of our momentary heroic status,
I was at a loss as to how to begin asking people questions.

The older guy in the black hat wandered over. Seeing Caroline surrounded at
the bar, he stepped over next to me.

"Thanks," he said.

"No problem," I replied, sipping a beer.

    "I didn't need any help," he
said quietly.

"Never figured you did," I replied.

He gestured toward Caroline. "That woman of yours - "

"Not mine." I help up my free hand. He nodded.

"Good thing," he answered. "Too young for you anyway."
He hesitated, then folded his face into a smile. "Good teeth,
though."

"Amen." We clicked beers to Caroline's teeth.

We stood and surveyed the bar together.

"My name's Leo," I said, sticking out my hand.

He took it in his own calloused hand. "Daniel," he said,
"Daniel Dixon."

We returned to watching the bar. Figuring that there was never going to be a
better time than this, I said, "Actually, Daniel, it's me that needs some
help."

"Not as long as you got that little panther with you, you don't."

"She can't help with what I need."

He looked at me closely. "What is it you need?" he asked, showing
no visible curiosity.

"I need to know about Bobby Warren."

He took a pull from his beer. "They say Bobby's dead."

"I know. I was there."

"they say somebody might have burned him up."

"They're right," I answered. "They tried to burn me up
too."

He mulled this over at length. "What makes you think I can help
you?" he asked finally, polishing off his beer and setting it on the empty
table beside us. He didn't give me a chance to answer. "What's done is
done," he said, walking toward the back of the bar. I followed.

He leaned against the bar and watched the pool game. The pockmarked kid shot
everything like he was trying to blast it all the way through the table.
Colored balls scattered like a prison break every time he stroked. His
opponent, a squat middle-aged guy with a prodigious gut, merely waited for
everything to stop moving and picked his balls off one at a time.

"The kid shoots too hard."

"I keep tellin' him that, but he don't listen," said Daniel, never
taking his eyes off the game. "That's my son Henry," he said, nodding
at the kid. "Bobby was Hank's friend."

"I know."

"You was in that little green car over in the other lot on Friday
afternoon. A statement.

"And here I thought I was well hidden," I said.

"I seen you," he said. I waited. Daniel Dixon spent words the way
other people spent money.

Hank Dixon wound up and plastered the eleven ball at the corner pocket. He
missed. The ball caromed off two cushions and inadvertently sank the eight ball
at the far end of the table. Cheers and groans filled the area. The kid hung up
his cue and walked over to where we were standing. He ordered a beer.

Daniel leaned over and whispered in his ear. Hank whispered back and then
leaned out and fixed me with an appraising stare before going back to
whispering.

Before the fate of my inquiry could be decided, angry voices from up by the
door rose above the din.

First a female voice, seriously annoyed. " - the matter with you? We
thought you was nice. Where you come from anyway?"

Next a male, also a bit out of sorts. "You some kind of tree hugger or
what? It's traditional. Don't you understand?"

Then, of course, Caroline. "Poor defenseless beasts, hunted to the
brink of extinction, and for what? So someone can hang their pathetic heads on
their pathetic walls it's barbaric. It's - " I lost the rest in the
shouting.

Caroline stood at the center of a closing circle of men and women, gesturing
disgustedly at the collection of trophy heads that adorned the walls. I hadn't
noticed before, but a stuffed cougar prowled along a place of honor above the
bar, a black bear head growled over the entrance, several excellent deer racks
were placed strategically about the walls, and even a couple of skunks served
as artwork in the place.

Whatever goodwill she'd created earlier was now a thing of the past. Time to
circle the wagons.

Daniel leaned over, his eyes twinkling. "You don't get her out of here,
Leo, she's gonna need five friends of her own to make a full set."

"I've heard worse ideas," I said, downing the rest of my beer.

I made my way back up to the front of the bar. Whatever pearls of ecological
wisdom she was presently casting before the assembled masses were lost in a sea
of angry shouts and curses. A finger-pointing session was about to degenerate
into something considerably uglier.

Caroline was attempting to drag a stool over by the entrance, so as to
remove the offending bear head from over the door. several patrons were making
sustained efforts to impede her progress by pulling the stool in the opposite
direction. True to form, she was still babbling as I slung her over my shoulder
and kicked the door open. " - is the twentieth century. How can a noble
people, in tune with nature's forces - " Bouncing her head off the door
frame put a momentary halt to the diatribe.

"You do have a way with people," I said as I set her back on her
feet in the parking lot. The rain had picked up. Driven by a stiff breeze, the
small droplets angled in from the west like angry insects.

"Did you see - ?"

The door swung open again. Daniel and Hank Dixon came out. I turned to
Caroline. "Go get in the truck."

"I most certainly will not. I'm going right backing there and - "

"Get in the truck now, or I'll leave you here when I go," I
growled.

She opened her mouth, shut it, started again, jerked her sunglasses from her
face, turned on her heel, and flounced over to the truck, slamming the door
behind her. We watched in silence.

"What's her name?" asked the kid after the truck stopped rocking.

"Caroline," I answered.

He turned to his father. "She's the one," he said.

The Dixons started across the lot toward the Nova. I followed. Halfway
across the lot, Hank turned to me. "We can't help you, mister. Bobby got
all moony over that sister you got in the truck there, and look what it got
him. No," he said, shaking his head sadly. "We can't help you, mister."

Daniel shrugged and headed for the car. I followed again. They both turned
to face me. "Look," I said, "a friend of mine's dead, too. An
old man. He wasn't much, and maybe I'm the only one who cares about him being
dead, but I don't much give a shit. The same people that killed Bobby Warren
killed my friend. That much I'm sure of." They exchanged glances.
"I'm not going to threaten you or anything, but I'm not going away either.
I'll follow you home. I'll sit in your front yard. I'll come back here every
day. I don't much care what it takes, but I'm following this to the end."

Hank started to leave, but Daniel stopped him with a gentle hand on the
shoulder.

"He means it," said Daniel. We stood in the rain. Two couples
wandered out of the bar, laughing and gabbing. We watched them get into a blue
Plymouth and drive out into the street.

The tiny drops were finding someplace on my collar to mass and form the
rivulets that were pouring down my neck. I stood and waited, wishing for a
cowboy hat of my own.

Finally, Daniel aid, "You need to see Miriam Stone."

"Who's that?" I asked.

"Bobby's grandmother," said Hank. "All Bobby told me was that
he had a line on some illegal dumping that was going on to the reservation. He
said he was going to take it to the Tribal Council. He wanted my father to go
with him. But - " He stopped, looking at his father. Daniel picked it up.

"But I told him that if he was right, then it was probably the Tribal
Council behind it. Or at least a couple of them. Have to be. No way to keep
that kind of thing quiet ‘less somebody on the council was helping."

"So, why his grandmother?'

"Miriam," said Daniel, "is a much-respected woman. She and
Bobby were real close. I figure that whatever he knew, she knew. They were
close," he repeated.

"What did he tell you guys?"

"Just what I told you," answered the kid. He glanced at the truck.
"That and that he'd met this white sister who was going to help him get it
out in the open." Anger filled his eyes. "He was all moony for her. I
could tell. I never seen him like that before. He was - If it wasn't for her -
" He stopped himself.

"Go see Miriam," said Daniel. "She'll know what to do."

"How do I find this Miriam Stone?"

They exchanged glances again, and Hank sighed. "Follow us."

I headed for the truck.

Caroline was curled up against the far door, bundled in her jacket , picking
at her lower lip, in a full snit.

"Where are we going?" she demanded as I fired up the truck.
Without waiting for me to answer, she added, "I insist that you
immediately - " I interrupted and told her where we were going.

"Ooooh, a medicine woman." She sat straight, her eyes now aglow.
"I read a book last year - "