It was easier when there was a case to distract me, but with Charlie Nurburn alive and Mari Baroja having died of apparently natural causes, there wasn’t any corner of my mind in which to take refuge. Just the same, when I got back into town tomorrow morning, I would have to make sure I called Bill McDermott and the courthouse. Something still wasn’t squaring up somehow. I suppose my next step would be to go to the Durant Home for Assisted Living again. Common sense told me to just let it go, but I had never regarded that voice as being either common or sensible.
I thought about Maggie and how passion was a difficult thing to sustain, but that friendship had a pace that could go on forever. I guess it was that moment that I firmly decided she and I would just be friends. It was disappointing but a relief. I had made a decision. I stepped out of the bathroom and was greeted by my best friend.
“How is your finger?”
“I think I’ll live.”
He took a deep breath. “I followed you here to talk you into what you are in here attempting to talk yourself out of.” The dark hair, the dark skin, the dark eyes, it was like he was carved out of mahogany. Some golem of the Northern Cheyenne, but I knew the heart that rested there.
“You make it sound like a new car.”
He waited as someone slipped by us and went into the bathroom. “Are you sure you are okay?”
I told him about the dream, which had featured Mari Baroja.
He listened quietly and nodded periodically. At the end, he smiled. “It would appear that you now have an advocate in the Camp of the Dead.”
My knowledge of the intricacies of Indian religion was spotty, but I knew about the camp, a place where the Cheyenne tribal ancestors gathered in the afterlife. The elders in the Camp of the Dead sought the society of interesting people in this one. There were items that carried their touch, like the old Sharps buffalo rifle that Lonnie had given me a month ago that stood in the corner of my bedroom. I could see that rifle as we stood there, the long, heavy barrel glowing with a ghostly sheen, cold to the touch like a dead body. I could see the beaded dead-man’s pattern on the fore grip, the ten distinct notches at the top of the stock, and the way the gray feathers ruffled even when there was no discernible breeze, messages from the dead on the wings of owls.
We waited as the person from the bathroom passed us with a smile. “Any more advice?”
“You should be able to figure the rest out for yourself.” He was silent for a moment. “If you cannot, then we are going to need more time than this conversation will allow.”
On the way back, I stopped off at the massive refrigerator, took out a beer, and paused to look at a few of the photographs lying on that end of the center island. The top one was of three boys, one standing and the other two seated. They wore what looked like military uniforms, and the relaxed quality of their posture was only belied by the tension in their eyes. I knew why; their hair had been cut by the teachers at the Indian boarding school from which, if they were lucky, they got to go home for a visit every two years. I slid it over and looked at the next.
Willy Fighting Bear and Zack Yellow Fox were standing between a couple of ornery-looking Appaloosas and were wearing two of the most enormous cowboy hats I had ever seen, the kind from an earlier period that must have been meant to protect the wearer from meteor showers. Willy and Zack looked comfortable, even though they had probably been in the saddle a good fourteen hours. My dad knew them and had said they were two of the finest horseman he had ever seen. I slid this one over and looked at the next.
I knew Frank White Shield. He was in full Cheyenne chief ’s regalia and was standing between his two sons, Jesse and Frank Jr.; they were in their army dress uniforms, circa 1943. Frank Jr. died in Okinawa, while Jesse went to Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands with the Seventh Infantry Division as a sniper. He became famous for tying himself high in the trees so that if he were shot the Japanese would never know if they had scored a hit. They finally did, but never knew.
I looked at the next few photographs. There was one of a group of men and women standing around with the church in the background, and there was one of a young man with beaded leggings standing on a makeshift baseball field. I looked at the broad smiling face and the delicate way the nimble, dark hands held the ball. I could hear the snap when it hit the pocket and the catch phrase of a man without legs, “Um-hmm, yes, it is so.”
The words had escaped my smiling lips before I was aware. I looked at Lonnie Little Bird who was involved in a whimsical conversation at the other end of the kitchen. I tried to imagine him playing professional baseball before losing his legs to diabetes. Lonnie with legs. I took a deep breath along with a swig of beer and made my way to the other side of the kitchen where my romantic fate awaited.
She was leaning on the counter with one elbow, the palm of her hand supporting her chin. “ I thought only women went to the bathroom together.”
She shifted to the other palm and was suddenly a lot closer. “He’s a good friend.” I squeezed in and popped an elbow on the table and rested my chin in my own palm only a little ways away from her face. “I’m beginning to think that you are, too.” I smiled and looked down at the table. The flame of the candles shifted like the owl feathers on the Cheyenne Rifle of the Dead. There was something bothering me about something I’d just seen, an inkling of sorts, but nothing I could pin down. Was it something in the photographs or something Henry had said? I looked back up to Maggie just as Henry came back in, and I’m sure I looked like I had just broken a vase. Maggie, on the other hand, leaned back in her chair, reset a pixie chin on the palm of her hand, and batted the blue like a signal. “How’s dinner coming?”
He smiled and joined Brandon at the stove. I sat there for a moment and stared into her eyes, but it became too much, so I glanced out the window. I watched the flakes fly at the pane and momentarily pause before slipping away. It was as if they were trying to drift through the glass and remind me of something that skipped like a stone on smooth water.
The photographs, it was something in the photographs.
I stood quickly, made my way around the room, and threaded through the crowd until I was standing over the assorted snapshots. They were as I’d left them. I studied the one of Lonnie with the beaded leggings that encased the now missing legs and could see him sweeping through the infield like a red-tailed hawk, the top grain leather sailing toward first like a war lance; but it was the car that was parked to the side along the foul line, a large convertible, fancy for the period in two-tone paint that had pricked my thoughts.
I slid the photo aside and looked at the next. A small group of Indians were gathered around the same car. The automobile was closer in this shot, and I could make out the buffalo hood ornament and the letters running down the chrome.
Maggie had followed me and placed her hand on my arm. “Is there something wrong?”
“There is.” I let my heart slow back to normal and looked at the photo again. “Let me ask you.” I placed a finger on the picture for clarification. “Does that look like a 1950 Kaiser?”
She leaned in and inspected the car in question. “I’m not so sure about the year, but the front emblem says Kaiser.”
There was only one white man in the photograph, and I was pretty sure who he was. Henry had come over to my other side, and I shifted my finger. “Does the name Charlie Nurburn ring a bell?”