Molly smiled softly. “Poor things. She loves those little babies so much we tease her that she’s gonna love them to death.”
As if that were possible.
TWELVE
Late the next morning I made the trek to the Eagle River Reservation. The scenery was spectacularly diverse. Flat land, which wasn’t quite prairie and therefore not conducive to farming, gave way to the scalloped edges of hills outlined with scrub oak and misshapen cedar trees. A few flat-topped buttes, colors ranging from butterscotch to vanilla, were interspersed among the desertlike stretches. Sagebrush, sweetgrass, and yucca were prevalent. Cattle grazed. The occasional deciduous tree peeked out from a ravine, a shimmer of green in an otherwise monochromatic landscape.
In the two hours before Sue Anne’s shift ended, I figured I’d scope out the rec center, the ice-cream joint, and other places where Levi’s friends hung out.
As I closed in on the town of Eagle River, clusters of houses appeared. Abandoned cars stood next to piles of garbage and bald tires. Old mattresses, busted refrigerators and stoves. Most homes looked worse than junkyards. Surprising that diseases like the bubonic plague weren’t running rampant, since dead dogs and cats were discarded and left to rot on the side of the road.
Geneva’s four-bedroom house crammed with six kids and two adults was nothing compared to the housing situation in Eagle River. Not uncommon for a dozen or more family members to live in a two-bedroom, one-bathroom house. Indians had lived together like that for thousands of years.
Although I had some Indian blood, that lifestyle was a foreign concept to me. My mother hadn’t been raised that way.
After my Minneconjou Sioux grandmother, Caroline Longbow, married my white grandfather, William Fairchild, he’d removed her from the reservation. Their only child, my mother, Sunny, cared little about her Indian heritage. She hadn’t enrolled in the Minneconjou tribe and hadn’t seen the point of enrolling her daughters. She’d taught us the Gunderson lineage was the only one that mattered.
Why hadn’t that ever bothered me?
Several sprawling buildings housed the multitude of tribal offices. Most people employed on the reservation worked for the tribe, for the state, or for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Others worked at the Indian Health Services Hospital. In addition to early childhood development programs, there were two colleges.
Yet few young kids who’d graduated with marketable skills ever found jobs on the reservation, since there was zero economic development. A small number of businesses survived, a couple of convenience marts, the fast-food joints, a grocery store. The funeral home. Luckily the tribe funded the community center and rec center, or neither would’ve lasted.
As I drove through town, it saddened me to see little had changed in twenty years. Same decrepit buildings. More cheap housing.
I passed several groups of kids, some as young as four and five, running around unattended. Many didn’t wear shoes. Their clothes were tattered, their faces dirty, their hair matted and uncombed. I had to look away.
I’d seen some of the worst areas on the planet. Ghettos in big cities. Barrios in third-world countries. War-torn cities where death and destruction is a part of everyday life. This was somehow worse. Since we were the most prosperous nation on Earth, there was no excuse for such poverty and hopelessness. Shoving aside my morose thoughts, I pulled into Taco John’s parking lot.
The lunch crowd had dwindled. Sue Anne worked the register. She didn’t look at me as she asked, “Can I help you?”
I glanced at the menu. “I’d like a Taco Bravo, a large order of Potato Olés, a large Diet Coke, and an Apple Grande.”
Sue Anne poked the buttons. “Would you like sour cream on the Taco Bravo?”
“Please. And on the Apple Grande.”
“Is this order for here or to go?”
“To go.”
“Your total comes to seven twenty-nine.” The register spit out my ticket, and she grabbed a pen.
I handed her a twenty.
“Your name?” Sue Anne asked as she passed back my change.
Taco John’s still asked for a first name on every order? I remembered in high school my friends spent way too much time thinking up kooky names. Mine was odd enough. I said, “Mercy,” and waited for her reaction.
She finally looked at me. “Omigod. I’m sorry. I can’t believe-”
“Sue Anne. Order!” the line cook shouted.
She turned away, dropping a napkin and a plastic cup of hot sauce in the paper bag on the counter. She slid my order under the metal tab and called out, “Virgil?”
An Indian man around sixty snatched the bag. He didn’t look me in the eye as he shuffled out. Not a snub. Typical behavior for a Lakota man when faced with an unknown white woman.
But you aren’t white.
Ignoring my racial identity crisis, I rested my shoulders against the back wall and waited for my order.
A large red wax cup appeared. Sue Anne bagged my food. “Mercy? Your order is ready.”
The moment of truth.
“Can I get you anything else?”
I said softly, “Yes. I need to talk to you.”
“I can’t. I’m working.”
“Please. This is important. It’s about Levi. You name the place and I’ll be there.”
She squinted at the clock. “I’m off in thirty minutes. I’ll meet you out back at the picnic table.”
“Thank you.”
Half an hour later Sue Anne slid across from me. I noticed she’d removed the ugly polyester hat and changed her clothes, yet she smelled of taco meat, fryer grease, and powdered sugar. She dumped out five tacos from a carryout bag. “I’m starving.”
I purposely shifted my focus to the cars on the main drag. Seemed like only a minute passed and she was crumpling spent wrappers.
Sue Anne sipped from a supersized cup. “I’m really sorry about Levi. He was… great.”
“Thanks. I didn’t see you at the funeral.”
“I had to work.”
Uncomfortable silence descended, broken by the hum of the air-conditioner compressors kicking on at the rear of the restaurant.
“Why do you wanna talk to me?”
“Because I’m trying to find out who killed my nephew.”
“I don’t know nothing.”
“That’s where I think you’re wrong.”
She finally looked at me.
“When was the last time you saw Levi?”
“The night before he… at the Custard Cupboard.”
“Who was Levi with that night?”
“Me. Then Bucky showed up, and he and Levi got into a shouting match.”
“About what?”
“Some stuff about Albert.” Sue Anne slid the elastic band from her hair. “Levi was pissed when Moser stepped in and wouldn’t let Bucky talk to him anymore. After them guys left, Levi quit talking to me and called for a ride home.”
“Who’d he call?”
“Pretty sure it was his mom. Looked like her car anyway. That was the last time I seen him.”
I knew Hope hadn’t picked him up. So who had?
“Is that it?” she asked tightly.
“No. Tell me about the group.”
“What group?”
“The Warrior Society. Albert was in it. But Levi wasn’t. He wanted to be a part of it so bad.” I watched her closely. “Were you in it?”
“Yeah.”
“So what is this group, Sue Anne?”
She twisted the hair band around her index finger. “Nothing big. Started as a way to celebrate our heritage. We’re all like fifth- and sixth-generation rez kids. Ain’t none of us jocks. Or druggies. Or none of them crusading no-sex, no-alcohol religious freaks. We’d get together and talk about learning Lakota. We even built this sweat lodge in the grasslands and had an inipi, which was way cool. We did a couple of ceremonies.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“Moser. Little Bear. Albert. Bucky Two Feathers. Randall Meeks. Lanae Mesteth. Me.”