“Carlotta’s been sober for six years,” said the old man.
“Yes, I know. That’s one of the reasons I came here.”
“She told me you drank a lot of soda pop. Said it was your substitute addiction.”
Shaking his head, Low Man found a snack bar, ordered a large soda, finished it with three swallows, and then ordered another.
When he was working on a book, when he was writing, Low Man would drink a six-pack of soda every hour or so, and then, hopped up on the caffeine, he’d pound the keyboard, chapter after chapter, until carpal tunnel syndrome fossilized the bones in his wrists. There it was, the central dilemma of his warrior life: repetitive stress. In his day, Crazy Horse had to worry about Custer and the patriotic sociopaths of the Seventh Cavalry.
“Okay,” said Low Man. “Now, tell me, please, Raymond, how long has Carlotta been planning on getting married?”
“Oh, jeez,” said Raymond. “She wasn’t planning it at all. But Chuck showed up a couple days back, they were honeyhearts way back when, and just swept her off her feet. He’s been sober for eleven years.”
“One more than me.”
“Oh, yeah, but I don’t think that was the reason she married him.”
“No, I imagine not.”
“Well, I better get going. I got to pick up my grandchildren from school.”
“Ray?”
“It’s Raymond.”
Low Man wondered what had happened to the Indian men who loved their nicknames, who earned their nicknames? His father had run around with indigenous legends named Bug, Mouse, Stubby, and Stink-Head.
“You’re an elder, right?” Low Man asked Raymond.
“Elder than some, not as elder as others.”
“Elders know things, right?”
“I know one or two things.”
“Then perhaps, just perhaps, you could tell me what, what, what thing I’m supposed to do now?”
Raymond scratched his head and pursed his lips.
“Maybe,” said the elder. “You could sign my book for me?”
Distracted, Low Man signed the book, but with his true signature and not with the stylized flourish he’d practiced for years. He signed it: Peace.
“You’re a pretty good writer,” Raymond said. “You should keep doing it.”
“I’ll try,” said Low Man as he watched the old Indian shuffle away.
Low Man began to laugh, softly at first, but then with a full-throated roar that echoed off the walls. He laughed until tears ran down his face, until his stomach cramped, until he retched and threw up in a water fountain. He could not stop laughing, not even after three security officers arrived to escort him out of the airport, and not even after he’d walked three miles into town and found himself standing in a phone booth outside a 7-Eleven.
“Shit,” he said and suddenly grew serious. “Who am I supposed to call?”
Then he laughed a little more and wondered how he was going to tell this story in the future. He’d change the names of those involved, of course, and invent new personalities and characters — and brand-new desires as well — and then he would be forced to invert and subvert the chronology of events, and the tone of the story would certainly be tailored to fit the audience. Whites and Indians laughed at most of the same jokes, but they laughed for different reasons. Maybe Low Man would turn himself into a blue-collar Indian, a welder who’d quit a good job, who’d quit a loyal wife, to fly to Missoula in pursuit of a crazy white woman.
And because he was a mystery writer, Low Man would have to throw a dead body into the mix.
Whose body? Which weapon?
Pistol, knife, poison, Low Man thought, as he stood in the phone booth outside the Missoula 7-Eleven.
“Chuck?” he asked the telephone. “Who the fuck is Chuck?”
The telephone didn’t answer.
Low Man’s last book, Red Rain, had shipped 125,000 copies in hardcover, good enough to flirt with the New York Times best-seller list, before falling into the Kingdom of Remainders. He belonged to seven frequent-flier clubs, diligently tossed money into his SEP-IRA, and tried to ignore the ulcer just beginning to open a hole in his stomach.
“Okay,” said Low Man as he stood in the telephone booth. “Crazy Horse didn’t need Tums. Okay? Think.”
He took a deep breath. He wondered if the world was a cruel place. He checked the contents of his wallet. He carried two hundred dollars in cash, three credit cards, and a valid driver’s license, all the ingredients necessary for renting a car and driving back to Seattle.
He doubted they were going to let him back into the airport, a thought that made him break into more uncontrolled laughter.
Jesus, he’d always wanted to be the kind of Indian who didn’t get kicked out of public places. He played golf, for God’s sake, with a single-digit handicap.
Opening the phone book, Low Man looked for the local bookstores. He figured a small town like Missoula might have a Waldenbooks or a B. Dalton’s, but he needed something more intimate and eccentric, even sacred. Low Man prayed for a used bookstore, a good one, a musty church filled with bibles written by thousands of disciples. There, in that kind of place, he knew that he could buy somebody’s novel or book of poems, then sit down in a comfortable chair to read, and maybe drink a cup of good coffee or a tall glass of the local water.
He found the listing for a bookstore called Bread and Books. Beautiful. He tore the page out of the directory and walked into the 7-Eleven.
“Hey,” said Low Man as he slapped the yellow page on the counter. “Where is this place?”
The cashier, a skinny white kid, smiled.
“You tore that out of the phone book, didn’t you?”asked the kid.
“Yes, I did,” said Low Man.
“You’re going to have to pay for that.”
Low Man knew the telephone directory was free because merchants paid to advertise in the damn things.
“Fine,” said Low Man and set his suitcase on the counter. “I’ll trade you this yellow page for everything inside this suitcase. Hell, you can have the suitcase, too, if you tell me where to find this place.”
“Breads?”
A good sign. It was a place popular enough to have a diminutive.
“Yeah, do you read?” asked Low Man.
“Of course.”
“What do you read?”
“Comic books.”
“What kind of comics?”
“Not comics,” said the kid. “Comic books.”
“Okay,” said Low Man. “What kind of comic books?”
“Good ones. Daredevil, Preacher, Love and Rockets, Astro City.”
“Do you read mysteries?”
“You mean, like, murder mysteries?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“No, not really.”
“Well, I got a mystery for you anyway,” said Low Man as he pushed the suitcase a few inches across the counter, closer to the cashier.
“This is a suitcase,” said Low Man.
“I know it’s a suitcase.”
“I just want you to know,” said Low Man as he patted the suitcase, as he tapped a slight rhythm against the lock. “I just need you to understand, understand this, understand that there are only two kinds of suitcase.”
“Really?” asked the cashier. He was making only six bucks an hour, not enough to be speaking metaphysically with a total stranger, and an Indian stranger at that.
“There is the empty suitcase,” said Low Man. “And there is the full suitcase. And what I have here is a full suitcase. And I want to give it to you.”
“Mister,” said the kid. “You don’t have to give me your suitcase. I’ll tell you where Breads is. Hell, Missoula is a small town. You could find it by accident.”
“But the thing is, I need you to take me there.”