Indian Country Noir (Akashic Noir) (26 page)

Ignoring the two men in the room, the man took off his
coat and hat and hung them on a rack in the corner. He
smoothed back his thinning gray hair and rubbed his hands
briskly together.

"Mighty cold," he said, acknowledging the deputy for the
first time.

"He's ready to go." Erickson gestured toward the Indian.

"Hello, sheriff," Lame Elk mumbled, unwilling to meet
the man's gaze. Instead, he stared at the star pinned on the
guy's shirt.

The sheriff squeezed behind his desk and sat down heavily
in a swivel chair. The deputy had picked up the signed form
off the floor and placed it in front of the sheriff, who ignored
it.

Lame Elk took his belongings from the desk and awkwardly put on his jacket. The sheriff regarded him thoughtfully. Whenever he saw Lame Elk, he thought of the Indian's
father, Bear Hunter. The same broad shoulders and barrel
chest. Long black hair and piercing eyes. The difference was
that Bear Hunter had been a chief of the Northern Cheyenne,
a man who commanded respect, not a drunken saloon Indian. It was the memory of Bear Hunter, a man he considered
a friend until his death, that tempered his disgust when he
looked at Lame Elk.

"Wait," he called out as Lame Elk reached the door. The
Indian hesitated, turning to face the sheriff. The deputy, busying himself at the file cabinet, also paused and swung his head
around.

The sheriff pointed to the chair in front of his desk. Tyler Erickson, disgusted by the stink of puke and alcohol fumes in
the office, grimaced and turned back to his files. Lecturing
these Indians was, he knew, a waste of time, but he wasn't
about to tell the sheriff that. If Moran hadn't learned that in
his twenty-two years as sheriff, he hadn't learned anything.

Lame Elk sat down but refused to meet the man's eyes.
The sheriff rummaged through his desk drawer before pulling
out a small object from the very back.

"Do you know what this is?" he asked.

The Indian stared at the deer hide pouch. "A medicine
bundle?"

"A medicine bundle," Sheriff Moran agreed. "I thought
you'd like to have it. It belonged to your father."

Lame Elk looked directly at the sheriff. "How come you
have it?"

"Bear Hunter gave it to me before he died. He told me to
keep it for you until the time came when you needed it most.
I think that time has come."

Erickson, his back to the two men, scowled. What the hell
had gotten into Moran?

The sheriff held the pouch out to Lame Elk. For several
moments the Indian sat immobile, then reached for it. He
was unable to control the trembling of his hand. Staring at
the beaded borders of the medicine bundle, he thought not
of Bear Hunter, but of his mother, Star Woman. He remembered the winter she had sewn those beads on the pouch. It
had been a time of brutal cold and heavy snows. Game was
scarce and supplies were not getting through to the reservation. Many people died that winter, including his brother and
sister. His mother, too, was sick with consumption. The dark
spots on the deer hide of the bundle were, he knew, flecks of
blood that had escaped from between her fingers when she covered her mouth while coughing. He scraped at them with
his thumbnail, but they were now part of the hide, just as his
mother's gaunt face was part of his memory.

"Your father will need this," she had told him. Perhaps
she was right. Bear Hunter had survived and become a chief.
He, Lame Elk, had survived too, although he often wished he
hadn't. Star Woman, the mother he loved, had died before she
could see another winter.

"There's a man you should see today before you go back
to the reservation," Sheriff Moran said.

Lame Elk blinked. He had forgotten he was still in the
sheriff's office.

"His name is Johnson. Hugh Johnson. He's got an office
above the hardware store. He wants to meet you."

?"
"Why•

The sheriff shrugged. "I'll let him tell you. I told him you'd
stop by this morning."

Leaving the warmth of the office, Lame Elk shivered as
the first blast of icy wind hit him. He thrust his hands into his
sheepskin jacket pockets and, leaning into the wind, walked
down Ashland's main street. Unconsciously, he fingered the
medicine bundle, still held in his right hand.

On this frigid Saturday morning in January, the town
seemed deserted. A pickup truck stacked with bales of hay
drove slowly down the street, exhaust vapors billowing behind
it. The snow crunched beneath Lame Elk's boots as he headed
for the cafe, the lettering of its sign blurred by the wind-induced
tears that obscured his vision.

At first, the waitress ignored him. Two white men seated
at the counter gave Lame Elk a dirty look when he sat down
near them. They picked up their plates and coffees and headed
to a booth.

"Can I get some coffee, please?" Lame Elk said to the
frizzy-haired woman busying herself to his left, arranging pie
slices on a turntable at the counter.

She glanced at him with disgust. "You got money?"

Lame Elk pulled out his wallet and extracted the six dollars it contained. He held the bills up in the air so she could
see them. The waitress set a cup in front of him, hard enough
so that coffee overflowed the rim and ran onto the counter.
Lame Elk sopped it up with a napkin. He stretched his arm
out for the sugar container and picked out a handful of packets. Meticulously, he emptied six of them into his cup and
stirred the now thick brew. He closed his eyes and sipped the
coffee. He nodded contentedly to himself when the bad taste
in his mouth finally disappeared.

Lame Elk's nausea had subsided and he was hungry. The
waitress ignored him again when he raised his hand to get
her attention and he decided not to ask her for anything else.
Standing up, he slapped a dollar down on the counter and
walked to the door. The two white men in the booth glared at
him when he left.

Midmorning and still bitterly cold. Lame Elk looked up
and down the street, his breath rising in a cloud above his
head. He couldn't bear the thought of returning to his hovel
on the rez. The sheriff had mentioned someone named Johnson, a man who wanted to meet him. Lame Elk couldn't imagine why. He didn't know any Hugh Johnson. Yet the hardware
store was only a block away. Might as well, Lame Elk thought.
Got nothing else to do.

Standing in front of the store, he peered up at the dark
second-floor windows. There was no sign indicating what
kind of office it was. Lame Elk pushed open the door at the
side of the store's display window and trudged up a flight of wooden steps. Black letters were printed on the frosted glass
of a closed door. Office of Economic Opportunity. The words
meant nothing to Lame Elk. He turned the knob and found
himself in a room with a metal desk and three straight-backed
chairs. A door at the opposite end of the room was closed.
Lame Elk stopped in front of the desk, as if whoever usually
sat there might reappear. He stared at a painting hanging on
the wall behind it. Mounted Indians on a high bluff pointed at
white men approaching in the distance.

Lame Elk scratched his head, wondering why the sheriff
had sent him here, if no one was around. He was on the verge
of leaving when a slender man with a neatly trimmed beard
entered the room from the inner door. He was dressed in a
flannel shirt and jeans, no different from Lame Elk's attire,
but the man's clothes were clean. "I thought I heard someone come in," he said. "Secretary's not here on Saturdays. I'm
Hugh Johnson."

"The sheriff said you wanted to see me." Lame Elk became aware once again of the dismal sight he presented with
his filthy, foul-smelling clothes.

"You Lame Elk?"

He nodded. He wasn't proud of it.

"What happened to your face?"

"I don't remember."

Johnson frowned. "Come inside to my office. We can talk
there."

Lame Elk followed him through the door and into a small
office. A bookcase, a desk, a padded chair, and a straight-back
chair for visitors comprised its furnishings.

"Have a seat," Johnson said, easing himself into the chair
behind the desk.

"Sheriff Moran told me you wanted to talk to me."

"The sheriff tells me you've been having a rough time."

Lame Elk shrugged, not knowing if he was supposed to
answer.

"Maybe I should tell you exactly what the sheriff told me.
If you disagree with any of it, you can say so. He said he was
a friend of your father, who was a great chief. After your
mother died, you began having a problem with the bottle.
Sheriff Moran said he thought many times of trying to help
you, but decided you weren't ready for help. Now, for some
reason, he thinks you are. Are you?"

"What kind of help?"

"Help that will bring back your self-respect. Job, clean
clothes, a decent place to live."

"That takes money."

"It takes more than money. It takes willpower and sobriety. You know what that is?"

Lame Elk lowered his eyes. "Yeah, I know."

"I can help you if you think you're ready."

"What do I have to do?"

"The department I work for will find you a place to live
right here in Ashland. Just a room, nothing fancy, but clean.
And you'll be responsible for keeping it that way. We'll see
that you get a job and clothes for work. You can pay the store
back for the clothes from the money you make working. And
after you've worked for a month you can decide if you want to
stay put in the room or move to a different place. If you decide
to stay in the room we found for you, you'll take over the rent,
which isn't much."

"Why would you do this for me?"

"Like I said, the sheriff thinks you're ready for a change.
But-" He raised the index finger of his right hand. "There's
a catch. You have to stay sober, you have to report to work ev ery day, you have to stay out of trouble, and you have to go to
meetings. Staying out of trouble should be easy if you're sober.
If you break those rules, it's the end of our agreement. You're
out of the room and out of a job."

Lame Elk tucked his hands in his jacket pockets. He
grasped the medicine bundle, rolling it around in his palm.
"What kind of work?"

"You know the feed store on Main Street? Munson's?"

Lame Elk nodded.

"They need someone to receive orders, stack merchandise, wait on customers, clean up at the end of the day.
Interested?"

"Yeah."

Johnson glanced at his watch. "I'll go over to the store
with you and you can pick out some clothes. After you meet
everyone, I'll take you to the room where you'll be living. It's
a few blocks from the store."

"When do I start work?"

"Monday. That okay?"

"Good," Lame Elk said. He knew if he was busy it would
keep his mind off drink. It was the time after his work day ended
that worried him. Would he be able to resist temptation?

"You said something about going to meetings. What kind
of meetings?"

"AA, Alcoholics Anonymous. You heard of it?"

Lame Elk nodded.

"They meet every evening at a church here in town. You'll
be going to your first meeting Monday when you get out of
work."

Lame Elk's first week was tough. Booze was never far from his
thoughts, but he was busy enough to push it from his mind. Trucks rolled in several days a week, their pallets loaded with
feed, fencing supplies, stock tanks, all needing to be unloaded.
Stacking materials and ordering were daily chores. Lame Elk
found himself enjoying the work, and taking pleasure in using
his muscles again. What was most difficult for him was standing up in front of the AA group in the evening after work and
admitting he was an alcoholic. By the time he got home after
buying his dinner at Burger King, he was almost too tired to
eat it.

The second week was easier. Days went by without his
wanting a drink. He was able to walk past a bar and ignore the
smell of beer and cigarette smoke whenever someone opened
the door. The aching in his arms and legs from the heavy lifting at work had subsided. His appetite was better and he was
sleeping ten hours a night in a clean room with a clean bed.
He'd already paid the feed store half of what he owed for the
clothes he'd picked out that first day with Hugh Johnson. And
he'd forced himself to write a letter to Russ at the Antlers bar
with a twenty-dollar bill inside and a promise to pay the balance for the damage he'd caused. You'll have it all in another
three weeks, Lame Elk wrote.

Hugh Johnson stopped by the feed store during his third
week to ask how things were going.

"Good," Lame Elk said. "Very good."

"Great. Munson says nice things about you. Come visit
whenever you feel a need to talk. I'm in the office most days
and two evenings till 9, Tuesday and Thursday."

Lame Elk nodded. "Thanks."

He was working outside in the feed store yard stacking
fence panels later that week, his gloves doing little to warm
his hands in the intense cold of late January. The collar of his
Carhartt jacket was turned up around his neck. A stone-gray sky promised more snow by evening. A Chevy pickup truck
drove through the yard's open gate and a man climbed out.
He examined some panels and gates before walking up behind
Lame Elk.

"I'm looking for a sixteen-foot gate," he called out.

Lame Elk turned around to encounter a familiar face. The
man grinned. "Well, well, look who's here. You seem a little different than the last time I saw you. You stunk to high heaven
then. Almost made me lose my breakfast."

"I have a sixteen-foot gate," Lame Elk said. "I'll get it for
you. Want me to load it on your truck?"

"Hey, that's mighty white of you. That what you're doing
now? Trying to be a white man with good manners?"

"I don't want no trouble."

"Trouble? Who's making trouble, chief? I'm just making
small talk. You know, my friend and I didn't appreciate it that
day in the cafe when you ruined our breakfast. Sitting down
next to its, stinking of vomit and piss. My friend, he wanted
to go out after you when you left to teach you a lesson. I told
him a drunken Indian couldn't learn shit."