"Yeah. I went to some meetings. They said I needed to get a higher power if I wanted to quit. I told them that a higher power was why I was drinking in the first place."
"He's outside now. Waiting."
Pokey nodded and closed his eyes. "I had a couple of visions about you meeting up with him. All those years he's quiet, then I get a bunch of visions. I thought you was dead until I had the first one."
"I couldn't come home. I shouldn't have…."
Pokey dismissed the thought with a weak wave of his hand. "You had to go. Enos would've killed you. He checked on us for years, lookin' in our mailbox for letters, watching the house. He drove himself plumb crazy. He give up on you when Grandma died and you didn't come home."
Sam had listened to the last part of the speech sitting on the edge of the bed with his back to Pokey. His knees had given out at the news that Enos was alive. He stared at the door. "I don't feel anything," he said.
"You okay?" Pokey said, trying to grab his nephew's arm.
"There's nothing. I'm not even afraid."
"What's wrong?"
Sam looked over his shoulder at Pokey. "I thought I killed him."
"You busted him up real good. Broke both his legs and an arm sliding down the face of the dam. Tub a lard didn't even have the manners to drown."
"I been running for nothing. I…"
"I should of never give you that Coyote medicine," Pokey said. His breath was starting to come in rasping gasps. "I thought if I got rid of it I wouldn't be crazy no more."
"It's okay." Sam patted Pokey's arm. "I don't think you had a choice."
Pokey continued to breathe heavily. "I saw a shadow that said you were going where there was death. I didn't know where to find you. I told Old Man Coyote. He said he knew." Pokey gripped Sam's arm. "He said he knew, Samson. You got to get away from him."
"Calm down, Pokey." Sam stood and put his hands on Pokey's shoulder. "It's okay, Pokey. It wasn't my death. Do you want the doctor?"
Pokey shook his head. His breathing started to calm. Sam took a pitcher of water from the bedside table and poured some into a paper cup. He held it while Pokey drank, then helped the old man lie back. "Whose death?" Pokey asked.
Sam put the cup down. "A girl." He looked away.
"You loved her?"
Sam nodded, still looking away. "She had a baby. Cindy's watching him."
"When did it happen?"
"This morning."
"Was Old Man Coyote with you when it happened?"
"Yes."
"Ask him to bring her back. He owes you that."
"She's dead, Pokey. She's gone."
"I been dead twice in the last two days. I ain't gone."
"She was shot, Pokey. A bullet went through her spine."
"Samson, look at me." Pokey pulled himself up on the bed so he could look Sam in the eye. "He owes you. There's a story that Old Man Coyote invented death so there wouldn't be too many people. There's another story that his wife was killed and he went into the Underworld to get her. There was a shade there that let her go as long as Coyote promised not to look at her until he got back to the world, but he looked, so now no one can come back."
"Pokey, I can't do this right now. I can't listen to this."
"He stole your life, Samson."
Sam shook his head violently. "This just happened to me. I didn't make any of it happen."
"Then make it happen now!" Pokey shouted. Sam stopped. "In the buffalo days they said that a warrior who had counted coup and had an arrow bundle could move in and out of the Underworld. He could hide there from his enemies. Go, Samson. Old Man Coyote can help you find your girl."
"She's dead, Pokey. The Underworld is just old superstition."
"Mumbo jumbo?" Pokey said.
"Yes."
"Crazy talk?"
"That's right."
"Voodoo?"
"Exactly."
"Like Coyote medicine?"
"No."
"Well?"
Sam didn't answer. He was gritting his teeth, glaring at his uncle.
Pokey smiled. "You still hate it when I talk about the old ways. Try it, Samson. What do you have to lose?"
"Nothing," Sam said. "There's nothing at all."
The doctor opened the door and said, "That's enough. He needs to rest."
"Fuck off, paleface," Pokey said.
Sam said, "Just one more minute, please."
"One minute," the doctor said, holding up his finger as he backed out of the room.
Sam looked at Pokey. "'Fuck off, paleface'?" He laughed. It felt good.
"Be nice, Squats Behind the Bush. I'm sick." Sam felt something moving through him as he grinned at Pokey — something warm, like hope. "Now, quick, before you die again, you old fuck. Where do I get an arrow bundle?"
Sam came striding out of the clinic and grabbed Coyote by the arm, pulling him away from a group of kids he was lying to. What had been a paralyzing grief had changed to purpose. Sam felt incredibly alive.
"Let's go. Give me the keys."
"What's going on?" Coyote said. "Why the hurry? Did the old man die?"
Sam climbed into the Z and fired it up. "I've got to get to a phone, and I've got to get some clothes."
"What happened in there?"
"You knew she was going to be killed, didn't you?"
"I knew someone would."
"Pokey says that you can go in and out of the land of the dead?"
"I can? Oh, the Underworld! Yeah, I can. I don't like to, though."
"We're going."
"It's depressing. You won't like it."
"Pokey thinks you can bring Calliope back."
"I tried that once; it didn't work. It's not up to me."
"Then we're going to talk to whoever it's up to."
"Aren't you afraid?"
"I'm a little past that."
"Why do you need clothes?"
"We're going to Billings first, to get something."
"It's depressing. You won't like it. There's a big cliff in Billings that was a buffalo jump, but our people never drove the herds over it. The buffalo used to go up to the edge and say, 'Oh, no, it's Billings, then they'd just jump over out of depression. Nope, you don't want to go to Billings."
Sam pulled into the Hunts Alone driveway, shut off the car, and turned to Coyote. "What's in the Underworld? What are you so afraid of?"
CHAPTER 32
A Doctorate in Deception
According to Pokey, at the time the white men came, there were seven sacred arrow bundles. Each had been made by four medicine men who had the same vision at the same time. Once the bundles were made, the medicine men vowed never to gather again, afraid that if their combined power were stolen by one, he would become invincible and abuse the power. These bundles contained the most powerful of warrior medicine, able to protect the carrier from an enemy's weapon, give him the ability to travel swiftly, and escape to the Underworld in an emergency, to return later, unharmed. Of the original seven bundles, two had been destroyed by fire, two by flood, two were locked away in museums in Washington, and the last to leave the reservation was in the hands of a private collector in Billings, who had bought it from a family who had been converted to Christianity and thought the bundle might jeopardize their salvation.
At first Sam suspected Pokey's story. His choice finally to believe it was based more on heart than logic. Whether the story of the bundles was true or not didn't matter as much as the hope it inspired. Action based on hope just felt better than the paralysis of certainty.
When Sam came through the door of the Hunts Alone house, Cindy hardly recognized him. When she had first met him he seemed weak, wasted, and without reason to live. Now he was moving and talking with purpose. Sam said, "Cindy, I'm sorry about before. I don't want to impose."