"For a while," Coyote said.
A mile out of town Coyote pulled the Z into the muddy driveway of the Hunts Alone house. "Stay here," Coyote said. He got out of the car and went up the cement steps to the door. Sam looked around, seeing the house like a memory. It hadn't changed much. The house had been painted and peeled a couple of times and there were two horses, a paint and a buckskin, in the back field. An old Airstream trailer was parked by the sweat lodge and there were a couple more abandoned cars rusting in the side lot.
It all felt wrong, to have run so long to end up back where he had started — the danger that he had run from was still here, and now, with Calliope dead, he felt even weaker than the fifteen-year-old who had left so many years ago. As frightening as it had been to leave, it had been a beginning, full of hope and possibility. This felt like the end.
Coyote knocked on the door and waited. A Crow woman in jeans and a sweatshirt, about thirty, answered. She was holding a baby. "Yes?"
Coyote said, "I've brought your cousin home. We need help."
"Come in," she said. Coyote went into the house and came back to the car a few minutes later. He opened the door, startling Sam.
"Let's go inside," Coyote said. "I told the woman inside what happened." He helped Sam out of the car and pointed him to the door where the woman waited. Sam walked stiffly up the steps and past the woman into the house. He stood in the center of the living room, rocking Grubb. Coyote came in the door behind him. "Can I bring her in?" he asked the woman.
The woman looked horrified at the thought of a dead body in the house.
Sam turned suddenly. "No, not in the house. No."
Coyote waited. The woman looked uncomfortable. "You could put her in the trailer out back."
Coyote went back out. The woman came to Sam and pulled the blanket away from Grubb's face. "Has he eaten?"
"I–I don't know. Not for a while."
"He needs a change. C'mon, give." She put her own baby on the couch and coaxed Grubb out of Sam's arms. She spread the blanket on the coffee table and laid Grubb down on his back.
"I've heard about you," she said. "I'm Cindy. Festus is my husband."
Sam didn't answer. She took Grubb's dirty diaper off him and set it aside. "He's at work now, with his dad. They have their own shop in Hardin. Harry works with them too."
"Grandma?" Sam said.
She looked up and shook her head. "Years ago, before I met Festus." She brightened, trying to change the subject and the mood. "We have three other kids. Two other boys and a girl. They're in school — the little one in Head Start."
Sam stared over her head at the elkhorn hat rack hung with baseball caps, an old Stetson, and a ceremonial headdress. An obsidian-point buffalo lance hung beside it, next to an old Winchester and a Sports Illustrated swimsuit calendar.
"He's a strong baby," Cindy said, grabbing Grubb's fidgeting fists.
Sam looked back at her. "Pokey?" He looked down and away, a wave of grief washing over him. He walked to the kitchen doorway and stared at the ceiling, the first tears stinging as they welled up.
"Pokey's okay," Cindy said. "He went into the clinic last week. He almost — He was real sick. They wanted to move him to the hospital in Billings but Harlan wouldn't let them."
Cindy finished diapering Grubb and propped him up on the couch next to her own baby. "I'll fix him a bottle." She walked past Sam into the kitchen. He turned away from her as she went by. "Do you want some food? Coffee?"
Sam turned to her. "She never hurt anybody. She just wanted her baby back." He covered his face. Cindy moved to him and put her arms around him.
Coyote came in the front door. "Sam, we have to go."
Sam took Cindy by the shoulders and gently pushed her away, then turned and looked at Grubb, who was dozing on the couch. "He'll be okay," Cindy said. "I'll watch him." Sam didn't move.
"Sam," Coyote said, "let's go see Pokey."
Heading back through Crow Agency to the clinic, Sam noticed the new, modern tribal building and the new stadium behind it. Wiley's Food and Gas was still across the highway, just as it had been before. Kids were still hanging around outside the burger stand. Two old men shared a bottle outside the tobacco store. A mother led a pack of kids out of the general store, each carrying a bag of groceries.
"I shouldn't be here," Sam said. Coyote ignored him and kept driving.
The clinic was housed in an old two-story house at the far end of town. A line of people — mostly women and kids — waited outside. Coyote pulled into the muddy parking lot next to a rusted-out Buick. They crawled out of the car and walked up to the door. Some of the kids whispered and giggled, pointing at Coyote. An old man who was wheeling an oxygen cylinder behind him said, "Crow Fair ain't 'til next summer, boy. Why you dressed for a powwow?"
"Be cool," Sam said to Coyote. "Don't scare him."
Coyote shrugged and followed Sam into the waiting room, a ten-by-ten parlor with a checked linoleum floor and mint-green walls hung with racks of pamphlets. Twenty people sat in folding chairs along the walls, reading old copies of People or just staring at their shoes. Sam approached a window where a Crow woman was absorbed in scribbling on index cards, intent on not looking at those who waited.
"Excuse me," Sam said.
The woman didn't look up. "Fill this out." She handed a form and a stick pen over the counter. "When you hand it in — with the pen — I'll give you a number."
"I'm not here for treatment," Sam said, and the woman looked up for the first time. "I'm here to see Pokey Medicine Wing."
The woman seemed annoyed. "Just a minute." She got up and walked through the door into the back. In a moment a door into the waiting room opened and everyone looked up. A young, white doctor poked his head out, spotted Sam and Coyote, and signaled for them to come in. Everyone in the waiting room looked back down.
Inside the door the doctor looked them up and down, Sam in his dirty windbreaker and slacks, Coyote in his buckskins. "Are you family?"
"He's my clan uncle," Sam said.
The doctor nodded to Coyote. "And you?"
"Just a friend," Sam said.
"You'll have to wait outside," the doctor said.
Sam looked at Coyote. "Keep it under control, okay?"
"I said I would." The trickster went back into the waiting room.
"He should be in a real hospital," the doctor said. "He was technically dead, twice. We brought him back with the defibrillator. He's stable now, but we don't have the staff here to watch him. He should be in an ICU."
Sam hadn't heard a word of it. "Can I see him?"
"Follow me." The doctor turned and led Sam down a narrow hallway and up a flight of steps. "He was severely dehydrated and suffering from hypothermia. I think he'd been drinking even before he went on the fast. It leached all the fluids out of his body. His liver is shot and his heart sustained some damage."
The doctor stopped and opened a door. "Just a few minutes. He's very weak."
The doctor went in with Sam. Pokey was lying in a hospital bed, tubes and wires connecting him to bottles and machines. His skin was a brown-gray color. "Mr. Medicine Wing," the doctor said softly, "someone is here to see you."
Pokey's eyes opened slowly. "Hey, Samson," he said. He smiled and Sam noticed that he still hadn't gotten false teeth.
"Hey, Pokey," Sam said.
"You got bigger."
"Yeah," Sam said. Seeing Pokey was breaking through his fog, and he was starting to hurt again.
"You look like shit," Pokey said.
"So do you."
"Must run in the family." Pokey grinned. "You got a smoke?"
Sam shook his head. "I don't think that would be a good idea. I hear you're still drinking."