Lame Elk’s nausea had subsided and he was hungry. The waitress ignored him again when he raised his hand to get her attention and he decided not to ask her for anything else. Standing up, he slapped a dollar down on the counter and walked to the door. The two white men in the booth glared at him when he left.
Midmorning and still bitterly cold. Lame Elk looked up and down the street, his breath rising in a cloud above his head. He couldn’t bear the thought of returning to his hovel on the rez. The sheriff had mentioned someone named Johnson, a man who wanted to meet him. Lame Elk couldn’t imagine why. He didn’t know any Hugh Johnson. Yet the hardware store was only a block away. Might as well, Lame Elk thought. Got nothing else to do.
Standing in front of the store, he peered up at the dark second-floor windows. There was no sign indicating what kind of office it was. Lame Elk pushed open the door at the side of the store’s display window and trudged up a flight of wooden steps. Black letters were printed on the frosted glass of a closed door. Office of Economic Opportunity. The words meant nothing to Lame Elk. He turned the knob and found himself in a room with a metal desk and three straight-backed chairs. A door at the opposite end of the room was closed. Lame Elk stopped in front of the desk, as if whoever usually sat there might reappear. He stared at a painting hanging on the wall behind it. Mounted Indians on a high bluff pointed at white men approaching in the distance.
Lame Elk scratched his head, wondering why the sheriff had sent him here, if no one was around. He was on the verge of leaving when a slender man with a neatly trimmed beard entered the room from the inner door. He was dressed in a flannel shirt and jeans, no different from Lame Elk’s attire, but the man’s clothes were clean. “I thought I heard someone come in,” he said. “Secretary’s not here on Saturdays. I’m Hugh Johnson.”
“The sheriff said you wanted to see me.” Lame Elk became aware once again of the dismal sight he presented with his filthy, foul-smelling clothes.
“You Lame Elk?”
He nodded. He wasn’t proud of it.
“What happened to your face?”
“I don’t remember.”
Johnson frowned. “Come inside to my office. We can talk there.”
Lame Elk followed him through the door and into a small office. A bookcase, a desk, a padded chair, and a straight-back chair for visitors comprised its furnishings.
“Have a seat,” Johnson said, easing himself into the chair behind the desk.
“Sheriff Moran told me you wanted to talk to me.”
“The sheriff tells me you’ve been having a rough time.”
Lame Elk shrugged, not knowing if he was supposed to answer.
“Maybe I should tell you exactly what the sheriff told me. If you disagree with any of it, you can say so. He said he was a friend of your father, who was a great chief. After your mother died, you began having a problem with the bottle. Sheriff Moran said he thought many times of trying to help you, but decided you weren’t ready for help. Now, for some reason, he thinks you are. Are you?”
“What kind of help?”
“Help that will bring back your self-respect. Job, clean clothes, a decent place to live.”
“That takes money.”
“It takes more than money. It takes willpower and sobriety. You know what that is?”
Lame Elk lowered his eyes. “Yeah, I know.”
“I can help you if you think you’re ready.”
“What do I have to do?”
“The department I work for will find you a place to live right here in Ashland. Just a room, nothing fancy, but clean. And you’ll be responsible for keeping it that way. We’ll see that you get a job and clothes for work. You can pay the store back for the clothes from the money you make working. And after you’ve worked for a month you can decide if you want to stay put in the room or move to a different place. If you decide to stay in the room we found for you, you’ll take over the rent, which isn’t much.”
“Why would you do this for me?”
“Like I said, the sheriff thinks you’re ready for a change. But—” He raised the index finger of his right hand. “There’s a catch. You have to stay sober, you have to report to work every day, you have to stay out of trouble, and you have to go to meetings. Staying out of trouble should be easy if you’re sober. If you break those rules, it’s the end of our agreement. You’re out of the room and out of a job.”
Lame Elk tucked his hands in his jacket pockets. He grasped the medicine bundle, rolling it around in his palm. “What kind of work?”
“You know the feed store on Main Street? Munson’s?”
Lame Elk nodded.
“They need someone to receive orders, stack merchandise, wait on customers, clean up at the end of the day. Interested?”
“Yeah.”
Johnson glanced at his watch. “I’ll go over to the store with you and you can pick out some clothes. After you meet everyone, I’ll take you to the room where you’ll be living. It’s a few blocks from the store.”
“When do I start work?”
“Monday. That okay?”
“Good,” Lame Elk said. He knew if he was busy it would keep his mind off drink. It was the time after his work day ended that worried him. Would he be able to resist temptation?
“You said something about going to meetings. What kind of meetings?”
“AA, Alcoholics Anonymous. You heard of it?”
Lame Elk nodded.
“They meet every evening at a church here in town. You’ll be going to your first meeting Monday when you get out of work.”
Lame Elk’s first week was tough. Booze was never far from his thoughts, but he was busy enough to push it from his mind. Trucks rolled in several days a week, their pallets loaded with feed, fencing supplies, stock tanks, all needing to be unloaded. Stacking materials and ordering were daily chores. Lame Elk found himself enjoying the work, and taking pleasure in using his muscles again. What was most difficult for him was standing up in front of the AA group in the evening after work and admitting he was an alcoholic. By the time he got home after buying his dinner at Burger King, he was almost too tired to eat it.
The second week was easier. Days went by without his wanting a drink. He was able to walk past a bar and ignore the smell of beer and cigarette smoke whenever someone opened the door. The aching in his arms and legs from the heavy lifting at work had subsided. His appetite was better and he was sleeping ten hours a night in a clean room with a clean bed. He’d already paid the feed store half of what he owed for the clothes he’d picked out that first day with Hugh Johnson. And he’d forced himself to write a letter to Russ at the Antlers bar with a twenty-dollar bill inside and a promise to pay the balance for the damage he’d caused. You’ll have it all in another three weeks, Lame Elk wrote.
Hugh Johnson stopped by the feed store during his third week to ask how things were going.
“Good,” Lame Elk said. “Very good.”
“Great. Munson says nice things about you. Come visit whenever you feel a need to talk. I’m in the office most days and two evenings till 9, Tuesday and Thursday.”
Lame Elk nodded. “Thanks.”
He was working outside in the feed store yard stacking fence panels later that week, his gloves doing little to warm his hands in the intense cold of late January. The collar of his Carhartt jacket was turned up around his neck. A stone-gray sky promised more snow by evening. A Chevy pickup truck drove through the yard’s open gate and a man climbed out. He examined some panels and gates before walking up behind Lame Elk.