“My name is Vinnie,” he said. “I’m from the Bay Mills Reservation in Michigan. This is my friend Alex.”
She looked over at me without smiling.
“Maureen sent us,” I said.
“Bay Mills?” she said, looking back at Vinnie.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Please come in,” she said. She stepped back to let us into the house. There was a small living room, with barely enough room for a couch and a chair. The carpeting needed replacing even more than the outside needed the paint. The curtains were closed, and a television cast a pale blue glow over the room.
“Can I get you something?” she said.
“No, thank you,” Vinnie said.
“Then please sit down.”
She turned off the television and sat down on the chair. Vinnie and I sat on the couch.
“Your son,” Vinnie said. He apparently had no trouble believing this was his mother. “He works at the lodge on Lake Peetwaniquot.”
“Sometimes,” she said. “When they need a guide.”
“Do you know when he’s going to be home?”
“No,” she said.
“Excuse me for asking,” I said. “How old is Guy?”
She looked me in the eye for an instant, and then looked down. I remembered something Vinnie had told me, about how some Indians consider looking you right in the eye to be rude.
“He’s nineteen,” she said.
“Do you happen to know if he was out at the lodge yesterday?” I said.
“He was gone yesterday,” she said. “But I really don’t know.”
That was something else Vinnie had told me-this business of not interfering in other people’s lives, even your own son’s. It always seemed a little contradictory to me, how the Indian culture was so centered on family, and yet they believed that you chose your own path in this life, and that nobody should try to change it.
Don’t try to understand it, Vinnie had said. That’s just the way it is.
“Can we leave a message for him?” Vinnie said. “A number he can call when he comes home?”
“You can do that,” she said.
I had a pen in my coat pocket. I took it out and gave it to him, along with the receipt from the gas station. He wrote my cell phone number on the back.
“My brother is missing,” Vinnie said as he gave it to her. “He was last seen at the lodge. I was hoping maybe your son might have some kind of information to help us find him. That’s all.”
There was a noise in the room behind us. It sounded like something bumping into the wall.
“That’s Guy’s grandfather,” she said. “I thought he was asleep.”
“I hope we didn’t come at a bad time,” Vinnie said.
“No, not at all,” she said. She stood up. It was our cue to do the same.
“Please have Guy give us a call,” I said. “We’d really appreciate it.”
“Of course,” she said. She didn’t look me in the eye at all this time. Not for a second.
As she showed us out, I couldn’t help noticing the coats hung on hooks beside the door. One of them was blue and white, with the Toronto Blue Jays emblem. I didn’t say anything. I left with Vinnie and thanked her again. We watched her struggle with her sticky door. Then we left.
“Did you notice the coat?” I said when we were back in the truck.
“Yes.”
“Did that whole conversation strike you as a little strange?”
“I’m not sure it even qualified as a conversation,” he said. “But yeah, you’re right.”
“What do you think? Was she lying?”
“Indians make terrible liars,” he said.
I drove south, away from the heart of the reserve, back toward Calstock. I was going very fast, because I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to leave.
“What do we do now?” I said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’d like to find out what’s going on with Guy.”
“Maybe he just didn’t want to talk to a white man.”
Vinnie looked over at me.
“Maybe he saw me through the window,” I said.
“Yeah, you are pretty scary-looking.”
“I’m just saying, this might not mean anything at all.”
“I suppose.”
“We can look up the number for the tribal center,” I said. “If we don’t hear from Guy in a couple of days, we can give Maureen a call and see if she can help us.”
“Yeah.”
“Indians make terrible liars, huh? If I said something like that, you’d hit me in the mouth.”
“It’s true,” he said. “As a general rule.”
“Whatever you say.”
“What? You don’t agree?”
“I’m hungry, all right? Let’s stop somewhere. I thought I saw a place in Calstock.”
“Okay.”
We drove by the last of the houses. The sign told us we were leaving the reserve. “They could use a casino,” I said. I shouldn’t have said it.
“Why’s that?”
“This place looks like Bay Mills before the casino,” I said. “That’s all.”
“They’ve got tiny little houses. So what?” he said.
“So maybe they wouldn’t mind having bigger houses. And a new school, and a health center. What’s the matter? I’m just saying-”
“Never mind,” he said.
We were back in the trees again. The sunshine was obliterated. It was so dark it felt like the end of the day.
“I know, Indians don’t care about money like white men do. Just like they can’t lie.”
“You’re saying that, not me.”
“Yeah, just like the tribe in Saginaw. They’re putting on quite a show.” The Detroit News had done a whole series on them, and the fights they’d been having over the casino money. One word against the tribal leadership and you were out of the tribe forever. With no way to appeal.
“Money makes an Indian act like a white man,” he said. He looked out the window. “I’m not denying that.”
“You mean money makes everyone act the same,” I said. “It proves we’re all exactly alike.”
“Alex, wait…”
“Look, we don’t have to-”
“Alex, stop!”
I slammed on the brakes. “What is it?”
“Back up,” he said.
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
I put it in reverse and turned around to see where I was going. It was a good thing we were on one of the loneliest roads in the world. I backed it up about fifty yards before he told me to stop. The wheels were still rolling as he threw his door open and jumped out, the door catching him in the arm as he headed for the woods.
I pulled the truck off the road and killed the engine. I stepped out into the cold air. There was a silence in the trees. All the birds had already left for the winter.
“What’s going on, Vinnie?”
“Come down here,” he said.
I took a few steps over the gravel shoulder and stepped down into the drainage ditch. Vinnie had already pushed his way through the brush. There was a gap maybe ten feet wide in the line of trees.
“What is it?” I said. “What do you see?”
As I got closer, I saw for myself. There was a vehicle back in the thick undergrowth. To the right of it a small pine tree was leaning over at an angle.
It was a black Chevy Suburban.
Vinnie had already fought his way through and was standing on the driver’s side with his face pressed against the glass. I caught up to him and looked inside. In the dim light I could make out sleeping bags and boxes and long, leather cases that must have contained rifles. Vinnie was breathing hard next to me, making fog on the glass.
“Do you think this is it?” I said.
He didn’t answer.
I pushed past him and tried the driver’s side doors. They were locked. Inside, I could see the keys hanging from the ignition. I moved around the front of the vehicle, feeling the sudden sting of thorns on my face. I ducked under the branch and got around to the other side. These doors were locked, too. I could see an empty beer bottle lying on the front passenger’s seat.
I started to feel a dull sense of dread. This looked bad, and it didn’t even make sense. Why would the vehicle be here, miles off the main road? Unless-
Before I could finish the thought, I heard the sound of breaking glass. As I looked through I could see Vinnie raising the rock in his hand again, and smashing it into the driver’s side window.