Death Where the Bad Rocks Live (46 page)

Willie parked the Durango on the hill overlooking Marshal’s house. “You sure you’ll be all right, with that arm? And you’re still gimpy from the cat. By the way, you never mentioned what you did with him.”

Manny rubbed the itching leg as if the cat were clawing
him right this moment. “He got better and just left the garage last night.”

“Left or was helped?”

“Let’s just say if Elvis were here, he would have been the one helping the cat out the garage.”

“Elvis, as in Tony Lama Elvis?”

Manny nodded and got out of the Dodge, holding his arm in a sling from where the bullet had shattered it. “And I may be stoved in, but Marshal just got out of intensive care last week. He’s on the mend worse than I am. Besides, he called me because he wanted to show me something, not to ambush me.”

Manny started to close the door when Willie stopped him. “Just so you know, I appreciate it.”

“Appreciate what?”

“The help. I would have fallen on my face…”

Manny started to speak, but Willie held up his hand. “Let me say this while I can. Thanks for steering me right. If I’d have stumbled, Lieutenant Looks Twice would have replaced me. Even if Janet wasn’t in the picture anymore.”

Manny smiled. “Call it selfish on my part. The better investigator you become, the less I have to do.”

Manny stumbled on popcorn gravel along the trail leading to the Ten Bears cabin. Marshal watched him from his porch, sitting in an Adirondack chair and smoking a briar pipe with a copy of
Cowboys and Indians
open on his lap.

Manny nodded to the magazine. “Ever think what it would have been like to be one of those cowboys instead of an Indian?”

Marshal pointed to the bandage encircling his torso. “Couldn’t have been any less painful, what with getting this old shack ready to move across from Billy Mills Hall.”

“I heard you decided to donate it for the Cultural Center. I figured you’d eventually want others to see where your Grandfather Moses lived and did his work.”

“And could have been rich if he’d wanted.”

Manny nodded. “Could have been quite wealthy, from what art historians say about his works.”

“Well, someone will be wealthy.”

“How’s that?”

Marshal used the arms of the chair to stand. “I’ll show you.” He paused a moment to catch his breath as he rubbed his stomach and the bandages constricting his chest. He led Manny into the cabin and chin-pointed to the wall that Moses had covered with wood, the wall that had held out the mighty west wind. Manny squinted, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dim light. Marshal lit a kerosene lamp and handed it to Manny. “There.”

Manny stepped close to the wall and held the light up. Paintings, some on canvas, some on deer or elk hides, had been sandwiched between the outer wall and the inner wood layer. Other paintings had been laid on the bunks. Moses’s visions.

“When I decided to donate it to the tribe, I decided I’d like them to have it in the condition Grandfather originally had it—with no inner walls to hold out the wind. Grandfather had nailed up scrap wood over the inner walls, but the wood had rotted and came away with little effort. Grandfather used the paintings people didn’t want for insulation.”

Manny nodded, thinking of Sophie’s shack with newspapers stuffed inside the walls, and the cabin he and Unc lived in when Manny was a boy. “People used most anything they could back in the day to keep out the wind.” He played the light around the pictures. “These must be all the missing Ten Bears paintings. They’re worth millions. You’re rich.”

Marshal shook his head, a smile crossing his weathered face, a smile Manny had not seen before. “I’m going to donate them to the tribe, with the caveat they display them. So people can get insight into Moses Ten Bears the sacred man.”

“I thought that’s what you wanted—enough to live comfortably?”

“When I was laying in that hospital room, unconscious, I could hear things, could think things, even though I couldn’t move. I got to appreciate the life I had before Sophie High Elk shot me. I swore if I ever recovered enough that I could live life again—really live—that money wouldn’t be my main pursuit.”

Manny had his own revelation, mending in the hospital with Clara doting over him. He made an appointment that day—or rather asked Clara to make it—and, between his diabetes medicine and the little blue pill, he was confident that his relationship with Clara would work out.

“The paintings would have the potential of bringing the tribe great wealth. Enough that they won’t have to even consider money from uranium mining.”

“Oh I don’t think they have to worry about that, not with Hamilton remaining on the federal bench.”

“You know about his decision to withdraw his name?”

Marshal nodded. “We both decided on our walkabout that we’d prefer the Stronghold left just as Grandfather Moses wanted it—untouched and unscathed by the
wasicu
.”

DECEMBER 1944

Moses, cramped in the seat beside Ellis Lawler, wriggled to get comfortable. He couldn’t. They just didn’t make cars to fit him.

“When the hell are we going to get to the center of the deposit?”

Pissy little man.
“Too soon. Did you know that men do not come back from where the bad rocks live?”

“Like, nothing leaves the Stronghold?” Ellis took another pull from his mason jar of whiskey. “Another of your silly Oglala legends?” Ellis laughed, but Moses detected nervousness in that laugh. “We’ll just get this trip over and done with, and you and me won’t have to go anywhere else together again.”

Moses wanted to clap, but he held his emotions. A sacred man must always hold his emotions. Even for pissy little men.

The Buick hit a rock that threatened to ram through the
floorboard. “Damned godforsaken country. If this wasn’t so lucrative, I’d have told Clayton to shove it. Just can’t figure out why you’re here—Clayton tells me you don’t want any money.”

“He is my friend. And for everything he has done to destroy our friendship, I trust him.”

“Then you trust a snake.” Ellis turned his attention back to driving the game trail.

“There.” Moses pointed to a path leading between two tall buttes, making the area look like a saddle on a pony.

Ellis slowed the car and double-clutched into a lower gear to get them onto the floor of the Badlands in one piece.

“Stop here.”

Ellis stopped the car in a clearing. “This where Clayton’s supposed to meet us?”

“It is.” Though Moses knew better. For the past two years, Clayton had been planning for outside companies to mine uranium in the Stronghold. Moses had known Clayton since that first night of that barn dance fight in Imlay, through all the years of peddling booze to the Oglala, and for promises made, promises broken, promises from Clayton that he’d help the tribe. But hadn’t.

Moses had no illusions about the uranium mining. He’d shown Clayton and Ellis the place where the bad rocks live, and obtained mining permits. And regretted it. He knew Clayton had been biding his time until he could arrange for Moses to be out of the picture.
His
vision had told him that.

“This isn’t part of the bombing range, is it?”

Moses shook his head. “Used to be. But they have not used this part for over a year.”

As if to call attention to Moses’s statement, the throp-throp-throp of a large aircraft cooking off speed filled their ears as it neared.

“I don’t like the sound of that.”

But Moses did. His vision had told him Clayton would be in that bomber. Told him that soon he and Ellis would be left to the winds in the Sheltering Place. And Clayton would roam the Stronghold, roam the place where the bad rocks live, the greatest concentration of uranium in the west lying just feet under the ground. Close enough they would also claim Clayton. Soon.

As the B-17 made its final run toward the car-target, Moses shut out Ellis’s screams. Wakan Tanka
accept me in this place. This Oonagazhee. This place where I’ll die and with me, the place where the bad rocks live.

The bleachers at the powwow grounds groaned under Willie’s weight when he leaned against them. “Took me long enough to find you here, dark as it is.”

“Quiet this time of night.”

“Can’t argue there.” Willie sat beside Manny and followed his gaze up to the sky. “I like it best when there’s no moon. Makes the Old Ones wink so much brighter.”

Manny turned away and ran his shirtsleeve across his cheeks to dry them. “The
Wanagi Tacanku
has got one more free spirit up there tonight.”

“I heard Morissa Friend Of All passed this afternoon.”

Manny fought to control the shake in his voice. “I failed her.”

“She knows you did a lot for her and all the others that will come after her here on the rez.”

Manny turned to Willie, giving up hiding his sorrow. “And just what did I accomplish? The little girl is dead and nothing’s been done.”

Willie leaned over and grabbed a pebble. He skipped it across an imaginary pond in front of the bleachers. “Judge High Elk has ordered an investigation of water quality in the Cheyenne River.”

“So he said.”

“And the tribe’s appointed a man to start up a unit to investigate pollution and hazardous complaints on a tribal level. Someone Lt. Looks Twice knows he can count on.”

Manny recognized the smile on Willie’s face, that same smile he had when he bragged that Lumpy had appointed him tribal criminal investigator. “You?”

Willie nodded.

“Guess we won’t be working together on other cases.”

Willie shook his head. “Oh, we’ll be working together again.”

“But I thought you said…”

“I said I was to head up an environmental enforcement unit. But that’s in addition to my criminal investigator duties.”

“Be harder for you to drink, what with all the time you’ll spend working.”

Willie looked down at his feet. “You know about that?”

“I do.”

“Did Lt. Looks Twice tell you I was drinking my way into oblivion?”

“Didn’t have to. It was obvious.”

“Did he tell you I’ve been going to AA meetings in Hot Springs?”

“No.”

“Sometimes when I was supposed to be working?”

“That where you sneaked off to sometimes when I couldn’t get hold of you?”

Willie nodded. “The meetings. Other times to a shrink in Rapid I’ve been seeing for my depression.”

Manny patted him on the back. “Well, between the meetings and the shrink, something’s working.”

Willie smoothed his shirtfront, a starched double-breasted Western shirt. Even in the darkness the faux pearl snaps twinkled. The old Willie was back. “I take things one day at a time now. Lt. Looks Twice is determined to keep me too busy to think about Aunt Lizzy and too busy to backslide.”

Manny caught a shooting star out of the corner of his eye.

“Now all you got to do is patch things up with Doreen.”

“I did.” Willie grabbed his Copenhagen can and pinched a lip full. “Lt. Looks Twice got hold of her and said I’d insisted Janet get into some other line of work away from the rez.”

“So you lied to her?”

“Lt. Looks Twice lied to her. I just didn’t tell her otherwise. Regardless, Doreen thinks I’m a hero for sending Janet packing. And speaking about packing, I see you’ve packed your bags and moved out of my apartment. Going somewhere?”

“Back to Clara’s. After I saw the doc and got on medication for my diabetes, I figure the libido will come sneaking back. We think we’ll be able to make a go of it.”

They sat in silence, Manny’s attention returning to the night sky, wondering which winking star was the little girl from Cheyenne River.

Willie seemed to read his mind. “You know, what you did for the Morissas on Pine Ridge won’t go unnoticed. You brought attention to the pollution here. Doreen and I will one day have children and not worry if pollution or radiation sickness will kill them prematurely.”

Manny nodded, the tears drying, looking skyward. “There.” He smiled and pointed to the Milky Way. “Let’s say that bright one’s Morissa.”

“Sure.” Willie draped his arm around Manny’s shoulder. “Let’s say it is.”