I grazed back across the buffalo hide and grabbed the war lance, dragging it back to me.
“I’m glad to see you.”
The direction of the voice had changed, and he was now to my right.
“We’re the only ones that they speak to, you and I.”
To the left.
I raised myself up, aiming the head of the spear into the gloom.
“I can’t believe you’re still alive after all the times I’ve killed you.”
Continuing left.
“You must be dead.”
Right.
“Hell, I don’t even have any bullets left. No bullets. Do you believe that?”
No.
“You probably have bullets left in that rifle of yours, even if I shot you a few minutes ago, huh?”
Maybe.
“No blood though. That concerns me; no blood.”
It was quiet for a moment, and I took the opportunity to slip the goggles back up over my eyes. The way he had positioned himself, I was looking directly into the storm and the barrage of darting flakes.
“Are you a ghost now, Sheriff?”
I struggled onto my knees with the duffel between my legs.
“I sometimes think that I’m a ghost; that I wasn’t really meant for this world. It’s been that way ever since I was young and especially since I killed the boy. I think I knew what I was at that point, and what it was that I would become. There is no shame in it, becoming what your nature says you must be.”
The spear in my hands felt like a telephone pole as I swung it slowly to where the voice continued speaking.
“Why are you here? I would have thought that you would’ve given up, but I suppose these same demons chase you. What is it you have done, Sheriff?”
I didn’t move and still could see nothing except the shifting shadows of wave after wave of the snow in the air. It seemed as if the wind was lessening again and the flakes were now taking advantage of the situation to move in the air in patterns of their own, making it even more impossible to see.
“I think they answer to a terrible need-what is your terrible need?”
This time his voice came from my left and sounded closer. I planted my knees so that I could move quickly to the side.
“I have not finished my work. I must bury this boy here among the forever snow and ice, leaving his spirit behind so that mine may continue onward. It is like that; sometimes you must cut a part of yourself away so that you may grow. I was not sure if I needed blood sacrifice for this medicine, but I brought the woman along for that purpose. When I saw that you were determined to follow me, I changed my plan. I could see that the demons wanted you here, or why else would they keep dragging you back from the grave?”
“Maybe I’ve just got friends in high places.” As I said the words, I pivoted to the right and dragged the duffel with me; the. 223 fired high but still sliced through the sleeve of my jacket.
One shot, and then I heard the telltale click of the empty magazine; unless he had others for this particular weapon, he was out. He could still have one of the semiautomatics from the Feds, but to be honest, I was beyond caring.
Maybe I was beyond everything.
I raised myself up on my feet as silently as I could, propped my legs against each other, and prepared for whatever was coming next. Teetering there like a tree ready to fall, I held out my lone branch in an attempt to keep the demon at bay.
I stood like that, breathing the air through my collar and listening for anything. He’d gotten quiet, having played his main gambit, and now it was just going to be a battle of his nerve against mine.
My breathing was taking a toll on my equilibrium, and I found myself billowing back and forth with each breath, almost in a hypnotic state.
I was looking north, ever north at the house. It was as if I were the house, shuddering in the arctic wind. I felt the broken dishes in the sink and the emptiness of the exploded canning jars in the cellar. There were shoes by the bed, large, steel-toed workboots with the toes curled where they have sat for almost a year. There was a bottle there, empty and broken at the neck. It was lying on the floor, the glass shrouded by dust.
His last thoughts are of him, the boy; of what will become of his son.
There is no firewood left, no food, no water, nothing, just winter sunshine.
The touch of the white man’s Indian woman clung in the floral design of the paper peeling away from the bedroom walls like dried leaves and the oilcloth-covered shelves. Tattered dishcloths and rags were stuffed in the cracks of the windows, frozen solid with the seeping moisture and dreadful cold.
The Indian woman left him and the child.
What will become of the boy?
This far from the lodges, the powwows, the meeting places, and the warmth of human interaction, a fire glowed in the darkness of an open closet door; a small set of eyes peered over the pulled-in knees at the warmest spot in the otherwise abandoned house.
What will become of the boy?
In a place near the arctic tundra all those silent months, the psychologists said that he spoke to him, keeping a running monologue that had mirrored the conversations that they had had when the man was alive and troubled in his mind.
What will become of the boy?
The mummified body of the old man did not smell any longer, a blessing that he died in the winter, holding off the creatures that would return him to the earth. The boy did not allow that when they came, fighting them till his fingers bled from the nails that he dug into the doorjambs. He had become one of those animals, and the social services people commented on the butcher knife that rose from the father’s chest and how ferocious were the two eyes that would someday become one.
I stared at the flourishes on Virgil’s weapon moving with the wind. The small, delicate feathers hidden among the brass beads were owl and, according to both the Cheyenne and the Crow, the messengers of the dead. Transfixed, I watched the tiny feathers. They were the only things on the spear that didn’t move.
It arrived slowly, that finger-up-the-spine feeling, but when it struck me, I became completely alert with a shudder that took what little breath I had. My lungs constricted, and I twisted the war lance the way Virgil had shown me. It had seemed so important to him then, and I hadn’t understood-but now I did.
Rolling the heavy lance over my shoulder, flipping it, and then wrapping my hands around it like rawhide sinew, I arched back and careered it with my entire weight.
It struck something solid with a liquid thump. It was good that it did because otherwise the momentum would’ve carried me over the east face. The end of the spear disappeared into the whiteout.
I could see the coyote jaws at the base and the leather wrapping, the red felt, the deer toes, the elk teeth, and the wisps of horsehair that were swinging with the wind and the momentum like the tails of an entire remuda. The painted decorations on the coyote skull were somehow more vibrant in the darkness and snow. The owl feathers remained motionless.
Hand over hand I pulled it back to me like a fisherman pulling in his catch and, emerging from the mist, there he was. The force of the blow must’ve cracked his sternum like a chicken bone, and the lance had driven all the way in to the hilt. His head was hanging down, the long hair hiding his face completely.
With each pull, he took unsteady steps toward me, and it was only when I got him within four feet that I could see the blood that spilled like an open spigot. His arm started to rise, and I saw the steak knife in his hand. He swung it faster than I would’ve thought possible, and the blade missed me by the closest of fractions.
It was all he had, and his next move was a groping, loose-limbed gesture that I caught with my open hand. I fastened what little grip I had left on his forearm and held him there. Slowly his head began to rise, and it took so long, I was sure that he wouldn’t make it, but he did.