Montana (12 page)

Lola thought of the oxfords she’d seen on Johnny’s feet at the funeral, the ostrich-skin boots he’d worn to the breakfast. She guessed Johnny’s footgear alone was probably worth nearly a month’s pay for most people on the reservation. She remembered the campaign pamphlet. “What’s TMResources?”

“No idea.”

“It’s got to be some sort of political issues group. By law, they’re not allowed to coordinate with candidates. But at least candidates have to list their donors. The groups don’t. They can throw all kinds of money around.”

“I know how they work.” Wilson’s words came on a fading breath, as though he’d run out of steam. He gathered himself for a last effort. “Maybe Mary Alice was wondering about some of those same things.”

No shit, Lola very nearly said aloud. Even if Mary Alice hadn’t fixated upon them on her own—and she almost certainly had—then someone like Wilson had probably put those very same questions into her head, talking to her then just the way he was talking to Lola now. Needing to raise the questions but hoping someone else would do the dirty, disrespectful work of digging up the answers.

“Those are good questions,” she said. “Thank you for talking with me.”

“You think those are good questions?”

Her hand was on the door. She stopped. “Sure.”

“Then maybe you want to ask Johnny yourself. He’s home today, first time in a long while. That’s what that phone call was. Renata said that outfit of his went by a little while ago, heading north. He stays out to his gran’mother’s house sometimes. If you’re not in too big a hurry, I can tell you how to get out there.”

CHAPTER NINE

w
ilson’s instructions were simple. “Go north. Look for that white outfit. You’ll see it before you see the house.”

The road ran fast toward Canada. From a distance, the surrounding grasslands looked deceptively smooth, all sweep and roll, but the gravel road quickly devolved into a two-track, rocky and carved with ruts, challenging the rental car. Lola tried to imagine traversing it in the rain. The landscape swelled for mile after empty mile. Even the cattle disappeared, leaving nothing but sky and clouds and tall grass endlessly bowing and kneeling before the invincible wind. Lola felt lost in it, lightheaded. She wondered how Johnny Running Wolf had made the adjustment from Chicago to a world where the horizon was the only delineation. Then she saw the Suburban, looking more consequential than the house itself, which was the standard swaybacked reservation model, siding peeling in lazy curls away from the plywood frame. Lola pulled up beside it and cut the engine. Johnny Running Wolf’s bulk filled the narrow doorway. He shaded his eyes against the sun and waited. “Should’ve guessed. You’ve been following me around all day.”

“I’ve got a dead friend and a sheriff who won’t let me leave town until he figures out how she got that way,” Lola snapped. “I was hoping you could help me.”

He stepped aside to let her in. The kitchen’s thin cotton curtains with their cabbage rose pattern were drawn against the harsh prairie sun. The wind caught the door and whapped it hard against the frame. Lola jumped.

“I was going to offer you coffee,” he said, “but it looks like you’re already pretty wired.”

“Coffee would be great.” Her voice clanged in the claustrophobic kitchen, its half-sized appliances crouching beneath a ceiling so low it nearly brushed her head. She took a seat at the small wooden table.

Johnny filled a saucepan with water and set it on one of the stove’s two burners. The smell of gas filled the air, then the burner caught. “Hope you don’t take cream. All I’ve got out here is powdered. But there’s sugar.” He joined her at the table and lifted the lid from a china bowl whose fading lavender splotches might originally have been flowers.

“Black is fine.”

He got up again and dumped instant coffee into two mugs. He splashed in some of the water from the saucepan, stirred the contents with a knife, sat one mug in front of Lola and held the other in his large hands. He picked up a sugar spoon, the souvenir kind sold at highway filling stations, and measured two heaps into his mug.

Lola looked across the kitchen into the living room, all doilies and Jesus pictures and sweet-grass braids on the windowsills, the walls giving off the faint smell of grease and kerosene that she associated with poor people’s homes the world over. Her gaze flicked to his face, the spreading mass of nose. She looked away. “When did your grandmother die?”

“Long time ago,” he said. “Before I came back.” Johnny gave his coffee another stir. An enamel shield topped the sugar spoon. It showed a green mountain and brown bison. Lola was pretty sure bison stuck to the prairie. “She was a great lady,” Johnny said automatically, the way Lola imagined him saying it to people he’d meet on the campaign trail: “I knew your mother. Your sister. Your aunt. She was a great lady.”

Lola sipped at her coffee, predictably awful and tepid besides.

Johnny rested his arms on the table. The backs of his hands bore the telltale pointillist pattern of a recent shave. Vain, Lola thought.

“You didn’t come out to talk about my grandmother,” he said. “You came out here to see me.” He stretched his legs and spread them wide, a classic invitation. His teeth flashed.

“I came out here to talk to you,” Lola corrected. “Because I’ve heard that Mary Alice was writing a lot of stories about you.”

“Nothing unusual about that. I’m running for governor. A ‘historic campaign,’ I believe she called it.”

“Speaking of your campaign,” Lola said, “what’s TM-Resources?”

He did an approximation of a drum roll with the sugar spoon. “From the sound of it, I’d guess that it’s a resource company.” He winked.

“Cute. But what’s TM stand for? Two Medicine? Who runs it?”

He took the brochure she held out and scanned it. “Is that who’s paying for this? Nice to know I’ve got fans. Listen, these groups put out all sorts of campaign literature. You know I can’t coordinate with them. I’m just lucky this one likes me. Not all of them do.”

Lola snatched it back.

“When did you get so interested in the campaign?” he asked.

“I’m not. But Mary Alice was and I’m interested in Mary Alice.” She thought back to her conversation with Wilson. “And Frank.”

Johnny didn’t so much as blink. “Here I was hoping you’d come in search of me. Knowing we’d be alone together. All the way out here. You don’t even have that dog with you today, do you?”

It was the funeral all over again, Lola thought, the silky threat in the guise of normal conversation. Nothing but bluff now, both of them knowing that he had the upper hand if things went beyond bravado. Lola hefted the heavy ceramic mug. She took a long, leisurely swig, the Nescafe grainy on her tongue, and wondered how much damage she could do if she bounced the mug off his head. She calculated distances, to the door, to the car, the unlikely possibility that she could get through one and into the other before he caught up with her. He shifted, the chair creaking beneath him, and she gripped her mug tighter. Her pitching arm wouldn’t do her much good in such a cramped space. She’d just have to smash the mug against him, going for the weak spot on the temple. Or maybe the ruined nose. Throw the coffee into his face first to get him off balance. Wondered if he’d made it lukewarm on purpose. Outside, a dog barked. Another one joined it.

“Rez dogs,” Johnny said. “I don’t know where they come from or how they know, but whenever I show up, they come around, looking for food.”

Shut up about the damn dogs, Lola thought. “It seems strange,” she said, “that all those years in Chicago, you never even heard from your grandmother.”

“When I came back here,” he said easily, “I heard that she’d tried to get in touch with me, over and over again. But my stepdad didn’t want my mom to have any contact with her family. Sent all those cards and letters right back to my grandmother, hung up on her when she called long-distance. Didn’t want anything to lure my mother back here, I suppose. Those whitemen may love their Indian princesses, but they don’t want ’em too Indian, you know what I mean?”

Lola didn’t know and didn’t much care.

“Mind if I use the bathroom?” she asked.

L
OLA CLOSED
the door behind her. She stood at the sink and turned both the hot and cold water handles as far as they would go. She opened the medicine cabinet, hoping it would yield more information than the conversation. It contained only minimal signs of occupancy. A toothbrush, the bristles still stiff and straight. Deodorant. Some disposable razors. A box of condoms. She opened it. It was only about half full. She wrapped her hand in toilet paper and ran it through the contents of the trash can. A small, colorful cardboard box lay mashed beneath some stained paper towels. She retrieved it. It was a box of hair dye. She looked at the fanciful label. “Dark of Night,” and recollected the shaved knuckles. She wondered at what age men turned to such foolishness. She dropped the box and reached for the little plastic squeeze bottles in the trash. Some of the color leaked and stained her fingertips. She let the bottles fall back into the trash, and held her hands under the water and dried them on the paper towels in the trash can. She’d forgotten to pee. But she’d already taken too much time. She flushed the toilet and turned off the water, and went back into the room with her hands in her pockets so he wouldn’t see her discolored fingers.

H
E WAS
at the door when she returned, holding it open. The extra light did the room no favors.

“I guess that’s my cue,” Lola said. She stepped outside and nearly trod on a couple of dogs of indeterminate parentage. They sat hard by the door, disturbing the dirt with ratlike tails.

Johnny kicked at them and they sidled just out of reach, then turned and stared, tongues a startling pink in the dusty landscape. “I wish I could help you with this Mary Alice business,” he said. “If I think of anything, I’ll be sure and call Charlie.”

“Thanks,” Lola said.
For nothing,
she thought.

Some of his hair came loose and blew across his face, kinked from the braid, curly as a girl’s. He reached and pulled it away from his eyes, his nose.

“That must have hurt,” Lola said.

“What?”

“Your nose.”

“You know what they say. You should see the other guy.” He dropped his hand and the wind lashed his hair across his face again. He turned away. The wind carried his words back to her. “Taught him not to mess with an Indian.”

More posturing, Lola thought. Not wanting her to know it was just a stupid childhood accident. “You sure showed him,” she said, playing along.

A cloud scooted over the sun, dropping the temperature a good ten degrees. Lola got into the car and turned on the heater. Another gale-force gust swept through, shaking the car on its axles. Johnny slapped the hood. “Sure you won’t stay? Saw you with Verle at the funeral. I’d be quite the change of pace.” He threw back his head and laughed. The sun flashed through the clouds. His throat was pale in the sudden light.

Lola threw the car into reverse, wishing she could run over Johnny Running Wolf. She hit the dog instead.

T
HERE WAS
a thud and a yelp and the ugly lift and drop of the tires. Lola stopped the car and stepped out into a fading howl. One of the dogs lay partially beneath the car, hindquarters collapsed and indefinite, front legs stretching for some sort of purchase. Its mouth opened and closed, making that sound. Blood flowed darkly, clumping in the dirt. The other dog circled, eyes avid.