“I only sell trees wholesale,” he said. “I don’t do no business with the public.”
“We didn’t come to buy trees, Mr. Roanhorse. I’m Sara Jacoby, the city manager at Port Martin. We’re here to talk about Max Novak.”
Roanhorse paused in mid swing, then straightened slowly, looking them over. Coldly. Like a cougar eyeing game that had strayed onto his hunting grounds.
“Who are your friends, lady? Some kind of cops?”
“We’re working men, like you,” Puck said. “I’m Paquette, he’s Shea. Our crew is handling the construction at Nineteen Sixty-Nine Main Street.”
“The freakin’ hippie memorial?” Roanhorse spat, resting the ax head on the log. “I seen about it on the TV. So? What do you want with me?”
“We know you were involved in the Christmas break,” Sara said. “We’d like to know what happened.”
“You’d like to know?” he mimicked her sarcastically. “Why? What’s it matter after all this time?”
“We’re building a monument to those years, Mr. Roanhorse, and you were a part of them. The monument will be here long after we’re gone. We’d like it to be true.”
“Truth?” Roanhorse snorted. “I seen a movie once, lady, some punk asks Jack Nicholson for the truth. Know what Nicholson says?”
“He says, ‘You can’t handle the truth,’ ” Shea said. “But he tells it anyway.”
“That’s right.” Roanhorse nodded, looking away, over his wasted acres. “He does tell it, doesn’t he? It’s almost funny. For years after it happened, I expected the law to come for me. I laid low out here, waitin’ on ’em, always watchful. And after a while, waitin’ and hidin’ were all I knew. When I heard about the nineteen sixty-nine museum, I thought somebody might come around. Or the cops would, finally. Seems like I’ve been waiting for you people most of my life.”
“We’re not the police, Mr. Roanhorse, and we already know much of the story. We know the breakout was rigged, and you were hired to guide Max Novak across the ice to Canada. All we want to know is what happened.”
“Fair enough,” he said, smiling faintly, “here’s the truth. See if you can handle it. You gotta understand how it was in them days. Back then, being Métis was almost the same as being black. People treated me like dirt. Except for the hippies. Freaks didn’t mind hangin’ with me, sharin’ their dope, their women. It proved how emancipated they were.”
“And you resented it?”
“Hell no, I grew up in foster care, lady, no family. Drifted down here, livin’ hand to mouth, peddling weed and speed to stay afloat. I’d take any friends I could get. Even punk-ass college kids who wanted a half-breed mascot.”
“So you weren’t political?”
“Dead wrong. All Native Americans were political back then. American Indian Movement. Alcatraz, Wounded Knee. There was serious shit in the wind, those days. Revolution. I was Métis but I could spout the rhetoric with the rest, power to the people, all that nonsense. But when the trouble with Red Max Novak came up, I found out real quick where my place was.”
“How do you mean?”
“I was strictly the hired help. They offered me five thousand bucks to sneak that dirtbag egomaniac across the big ice into Canada. Five grand was a lot of bread in those days, but they had no idea what they were asking. Even with a snowmobile, it’s more than a hundred miles across territory rougher than the back of the moon, and just as empty.”
“But it can be done,” Puck offered.
“Sure it can. My people have been crossing that lake for ten thousand years. For five grand I would’ve carried Max Novak across on my back whistlin’ Dixie all the way.”
“Yeah?” Shea said. “And what would you do for an extra ten grand?”
“Ah, so you heard about that part.” Roanhorse nodded. “The blood money.”
“We know Joel Kennedy’s father offered you money to kill Max Novak,” Puck said bluntly. “Is that what happened?”
“Not exactly. Joel comes to me, begs me to help his friend, like we’re all buddies, revolutionary brothers, you know? Then his old man tops Joel’s offer with another ten. He asks me to do murder. For money. Like I was some kind of animal.”
“And did you?” Puck asked.
“Jesus, Pops, you just spit it out, don’t you?” Roanhorse grinned wolfishly. “Hell no, I didn’t do it. I’m not a damn savage. I’m Métis, Cree Nation. The first Americans. Besides that, Max Novak was one desperate sonofabitch, paranoid as hell. He was packing a gun and I wasn’t. I figured earning the five for getting him to Canada would be money enough.”
“What happened?” Sara asked.
“The big ice is treacherous that early. Floes shift, ice bridges collapse. One wrong step can drop you into a hundred feet of water so cold you sink like a rock. And we had to travel by night, no lights. With a snowmobile, I figured we could make it in two, three days. But the trip was even rougher than I expected.”
“Let me guess,” Puck said. “Poor Max had an accident?”
“You’ve got it exactly backwards, Pops. I’m the one who took the fall. Dropped a runner through an air pocket, dumped the damn snow machine. We went flyin’ across the ice, which was lucky because the snowmobile broke through the ice, disappeared in half a second, leavin’ us stranded about halfway across.”
“How far out?” Puck asked.
“Maybe fifty miles, give or take. No way to be sure. And I was in rough shape. That damn machine rolled on my leg, broke it. Tough luck, Max says. But since the revolution was more important than either of us and I obviously couldn’t keep up, he’d have to leave me. Which he damn well did. Pulled his gun on me, took my compass, took the water and food from my backpack, then headed north on his own.”
“Do you know what happened to him?” Sara asked.
“Lady, I had other things to worry about, like dragging my ass across fifty miles of ice on one leg with no water and no compass. The only break I got, other than my leg, was a clear sky so I could navigate by night. From the stars, I knew I was closer to the Upper Peninsula than Canada, so I turned west. Crawled four days, maybe more, I lost track. A trapper found me. An Odawa. I stayed with his family a few months. Healed up.”
“And Novak?” Sara asked.
“Yeah, that’s really the bottom line for you people, isn’t it? What happened to the great Red Max? Truth is, I’m not sure. I know they claim that was him at the press conference later that spring, but...”
“But?” Shea prompted.
“Even with food and water, it was a damned long hike across that ice.”
“You made it.” Puck pointed out.
“I’m Métis.” Roanhorse shrugged. “Max Novak was a city boy, didn’t know squat about surviving on that ice. He should have thought of that before he left me to die. My guess is, he likely drowned or froze to death the same night he ditched me. But the God’s truth is, I don’t know what happened to him. And don’t much care. Screw Max Novak. And the rest of you, too.”
“Interesting story,” Puck said, “but you left out the part where you came back. And collected Kennedy’s blood money.”
“You’re right, I did. But not for killing Max Novak,” Roanhorse said grimly, peeling off his gloves. To reveal blunt paws with stumps in place of fingers. Sara gasped.
“Frostbite,” Puck said softly.
“I can barely hold a salt shaker, mister, or work a cell phone. That sonofabitch destroyed my hands, my whole life, really. As for Kennedy’s blood money, I earned every cent of it. I’ve said my piece, told you the flat-ass truth. Now I’m done with it, and with you.” Roanhorse shifted his ax to port arms, hefting it in his maimed paws. “Unless you people want to buy some trees, you’d best get steppin’. I’ve got work to do.”