I looked around the table and knew just about everybody, including Lonnie Little Bird, who sat in his wheelchair, so close to my stool that you couldn’t tell his legs were missing. “When is Melissa coming home?”
He smiled so broadly that I thought his head might crack open. “She comes back tomorrow. Um-hmm, yes, it is so.” A product of fetal alcohol syndrome, Melissa was finishing her first semester at a community college in South Dakota. I had known the Little Birds for years. They were important in a case that I had solved less than a month ago and so, every once in a while, Lonnie would wheel himself into the office and give me updates on Melissa’s progress. “She’s liking school?”
“She is liking basketball. Um-hmm, yes, it is so.”
I went back to slicing. I yelled to Brandon. “How small do you want these onions?”
He glanced over. “Halves lengthwise into half-inch strips, Lawman.” I shrugged. For me eating was a necessity, but for Henry it was art, and the coda of his art was ease and originality. I was surprised he was allowing Brandon to do the cooking, but it was under close supervision. I glanced at the Bear and Maggie Watson, and it seemed as if they were sitting awfully close to one another. I stuck the knife out to get his attention above the halting tempo of the numerous Cheyenne conversations. “What are we making again?”
He glanced up. “ Ga xao xa ot.” He looked at my blank face. “Vietnamese.”
I thought about it and continued in a loud voice. “I don’t remember having anything like this when I was over there.”
“That is because everything you ate over there came out of an American can.”
“I had a lot of Tiger beer.”
“I do not think that could be considered a gourmet item.” He reached over and touched Maggie’s arm as she smiled and looked back at him. They were drinking white wine; I didn’t like the stuff. I remembered a French expatriate at the Boy-Howdy Beau-Coups Good Times Lounge who advised me that the stuff was all right for in the morning when you don’t feel well or for the ladies.
I watched her as she talked, the delicate way that her lips moved. They were pretty great lips, really well defined, and they always seemed to have a fresh coat of lipstick even though I had only caught the application a few times. She was positively brilliant now, flushed with the excitement of the exotic, alien surroundings and with the Bear’s stories.
“So, the onions are the first part?” He didn’t answer, but she stopped listening and smiled. “So, the onions…”
The response was a little sharp. “Yes.”
I waited a moment to let him know that he’d hurt my feelings. “I was just asking.” He nodded, sighed, and looked back at Maggie. “Well, I just want you to know that you’ve hurt my feelings.” I leaned toward Maggie so that she could feel my pain. “See… tears.”
She laughed, I sighed and felt a large shadow cast over me from behind; Brandon White Buffalo was a good six inches taller than I. He took the cutting board full of onions with a pair of gigantic hands, and I watched as the plate disappeared. The festivities had started at the Shoulder Blade Elders Center and then had followed Henry Standing Bear home, where the party was always waiting to begin. It was such a wonderful name, Shoulder Blade Elders Center. It sounded like a place where you could go and get a few things straightened out by men and women who had been down the trail you were now traveling, a place where they could lay a leathered hand on your shoulder, look into your eyes through the cataracts, and help make a few things clearer. Things like that happened at the Durant Home for Assisted Living, but they were harder to come by, as there was just no romance in the place’s name and therefore in its consideration.
I glanced down at the photograph Henry and Maggie were studying. It was of a uniformed man in riding boots handing an American flag to a small group of what might have been Indian chiefs. The flag draped between them like something to catch the promises. I noticed the uniformed man’s end swooped lower, allowing anything that might have been inside to escape. The Indians looked at the flag as if they weren’t quite sure what to make of it. The chiefs wore crisp white shirts, woolen vests, beaded moccasins, and a collective countenance of long-standing indifference. I recognized the land behind them, the few trees and the undulating hills that made up the majority of the Northern Cheyenne Reservation’s topography. I could even make out the shadow of the photographer on the legs of another white man in a baggy suit who stood to the right. I noticed this shadow did not touch the Indians, as if they were immune. There was another chief in full war bonnet to the right; his lips were pressed together, and he was the only one looking directly at the camera as it attempted to steal his soul.
I looked at the dynamic people surrounding the table, a people who had been cheated, frozen, starved, and hunted almost into extinction, a people who, with the combined nations of the Brules, Sansarcs, Minneconjous, Hunkpapas, Ogllalas, and Blackfeet, fought the United States of America to a standstill. My money was still on them.
I watched as the giant took the assembled ingredients and retreated to the stove. He added a little oil and the onions to a large frying pan set at medium heat. He tossed in a pinch of salt and some garlic and juggled the handle of the cast-iron skillet without the assistance of a pot holder.
Maggie was talking to Henry again, the only conversation that was in English, but Brandon had brought the cutting board back. “More.”
I continued to toil in the fields and listened to Henry and Maggie, to the cadence of their talk-not so much the words, but the rhythm. It joined with the wonderful language that encircled us, and I recognized echoes of another time and another woman. Not so long ago, I had sat in a kitchen similar to this one and listened to Vonnie’s melodic laughter and, like soundings into a dark, deep, and liquid place, the vibrations were stirring me; they continued to lap like ripples in a strong current. There was a desperate need to make the right choices concerning matters of the heart.
I thought about Maggie Watson. As much as I hated mysteries, she loved them. For me, the cipher was a rosary bead fed through thumb and forefinger, but for her it was catching butterflies. I was an investigator, and she was a fortune hunter. People loved treasure and must have been happy to hear from her; generally, I was not that lucky.
I turned the onions, halved them, and began cutting the half-inch slices, barely avoiding slicing my left index finger as well; Henry’s knives were very sharp. After I finished the last quarter, my eyes were drawn back to Maggie. When I looked, she was looking at me with the sea blue at full tide. She smiled just a little and then turned back to Henry. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair to chase a ghost through someone else’s body, to try and capture a part of someone who was lost by taking someone who was found.
“You’ve cut yourself.” It was a small slice just at the last joint. It wasn’t bad, so I started to stick it in my mouth, but she reached across the island, took my hand, and turned back to Henry. “Do you have any Band-Aids?”
“Bathroom.” He watched us for a moment. “I will get them.”
She turned back to me as he left the room, and I noticed the blue of her eyes was deeper around the edges, like the color was falling from her pupils back into the white ocean. She smiled at all the people around us, finally settling on me. “I’ll apply pressure.”
Boy howdy.
The second bottle was red, so I had a glass. Every so often, Maggie would look over and I would hold up my finger and indicate my wound as an excuse for not joining in the conversation, but she wasn’t buying it. She made a living out of poking into forgotten spaces, and I was an intrigue she couldn’t solve.
I excused myself to go to the bathroom, took care of business, washed my hands, and leaned my arms on the bathroom sink. I looked at my face. It wasn’t a bad face other than needing about eight hours of uninterrupted sleep, a haircut, the loss of about twenty pounds and ten years. My chin was too big, along with my ears, and my eyes were too deep set. I leaned back to my full arms’ reach, and I looked a little better. I still wasn’t sure about the beard, but it hid a lot.