“Oh,” Lucy said, and went back to her cereal.
“Sorry, Sheridan,” Joe said. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking.
“If I could do what she did,” Sheridan said, “I wouldn’t waste my talent like that. Why didn’t she keep playing, Dad?”
“I don’t know. She’s the only one who could answer that.”
“What was wrong with her?” Sheridan asked. “Didn’t she know how good she was?”
Joe couldn’t answer that one, either.
He drove to Dull Knife Reservoir after breakfast and watched as divers in thick winter dry suits chopped Jessica Lynn Antelope’s body out of the ice. When they pulled her free, her body was dark and limp and lay on the surface of the lake like a wet rag until the EMTs loaded her onto a gurney. Her frozen arm stuck out of the blanket like an antenna. The ambulance stayed until they could determine whether there were any more bodies.
It took half the day to hook up the pickup and winch it through the ice onto shore. The ice broke with the sound of explosives as they pulled it through.
Joe hung back, watching closely as the sheriff looked in the cab of the pickup.
“Dead men everywhere,” McLanahan declared loudly, and a hush fell over the workers, EMTs, and sheriff’s office personnel.
Then McLanahan reached through the broken-out side window and showed everyone an empty sixteen-ounce Budweiser can. “At least two six-packs of dead men in there,” he said, nodding at the can. “The official beverage of the Wind River Indian Reservation.” Everyone laughed.
Joe sighed and left the scene. He hated McLanahan’s casual racism. Worse, he hated the fact that in too many instances, McLanahan was right.
On his way to the hospital, Joe called Nate Romanowski on his cell phone. Nate lived alone in a stone house on the bank of the Twelve Sleep River, where he flew and hunted falcons and lived well with no visible means of support. Joe trusted Nate even though most feared him, and Joe knew Nate was intimate with the tribal council of the reservation as well as many of the Shoshone and Northern Arapaho who lived there.
Nate had already heard about the discovery of Jessica Antelope’s body.
“Did they find anyone else?” Nate asked.
“Not yet.”
“That surprises me,” Nate said. “I can’t see Jessica and her brother out together by themselves. They were always surrounded by other people.”
Joe told him what the sheriff had said about Alan.
“Smudge,” Nate said, and Joe could picture him nodding.
“Why do they call him that?”
“When he was a little boy, his face was always dirty,” Nate said. “His grandmother called him Smudge. It stuck, because his face is still always dirty.”
“Hmm.”
“I’d see if Smudge will talk to you,” Nate said. “He’s Jessica’s only brother, although he’s a real meth head. She’s got a sister, too, named Linnie. I’d check to make sure she’s all right. Linnie and Smudge hang out with Darrell Heywood. There might have been more than the two of them in that pickup.”
“I hope not,” Joe said, imagining other bodies drifting in Dull Knife Reservoir, their lifeless bodies bumping up against the thick shield of ice.
Joe strode down the hallway of the hospital, found the door with a placard on it that read ALAN ANTELOPE, and went in to find Smudge awake and alert and trembling violently.
Smudge was slight and dark and reminded Joe of a ferret. He had a huge blade-shaped nose and furtive eyes that didn’t hold on Joe for more than a second. His head was abnormally small, perched on the end of a long neck like a balled fist.
“I thought you were supposed to be in a coma,” Joe said, closing the door behind him.
“I wish I was,” Smudge said, his voice a buzz-saw timbre. “I’m a fucking hurting unit, man.”
Joe looked Smudge over, saw no wounds.
“I need something,” Smudge said.
“You’re withdrawing from meth,” Joe said, as much to himself as to Smudge. “That’s what hurts.”
Smudge’s face screwed up into a petulant fist. “Yeah, man, that’s what hurts. Go tell the nurses I need something. They don’t even know I’m here.”
“They know,” Joe said. “They just don’t know you’re awake. How long have you been conscious?”
“Shit, I don’t know. Not long.”
“What do you remember about getting here?” Joe asked.
Smudge thrust his fist of a face toward Joe to show his impatience. “I don’t remember anything,” he said.
“You don’t remember being in a pickup with Jessica? Out at Dull Knife?”
Smudge sat back as if he’d been slapped. Joe watched his eyes. Smudge was recalling something.
“We were in my truck,” Smudge said slowly. “Out by the lake…”
“That we know,” Joe said. “What else?”
Smudge shook his head. “It was dark, I know that.”
Joe rolled his eyes.
“Next thing I remember, I was getting pushed out of a car in front of the hospital.”
“Who pushed you?” Joe asked. “Who else was in the truck when it went into the lake?”
Smudge started to speak, then stopped himself. “Nobody. Just me and Jessica.”
“So someone asked you to keep your mouth shut. You do remember that, then?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, man,” Smudge said, shaking his head from side to side in an exaggerated way.
“Sure you do,” Joe said. “Who told you to keep quiet? Who else was in the truck?”
“No one, I said. Man, could you get me a nurse?”
Joe tried not to glance at the call button hanging on a cord near Smudge’s shoulder.
“I’ll get you the nurse when you tell me who else was in the truck when it went into the lake.”
“That’s extortion,” Smudge said.
“Yup,” Joe said.
“I need something,” Smudge said, rubbing his arms with his hands as if killing ants that were crawling on his skin. “I need something bad.”
“Your sister didn’t make it,” Joe said. “Remember her?”
Smudge looked up, stopped rubbing. His eyes glistened. “Jessie?”
“Yes. She tried to swim to the top, but she didn’t make it.”
Smudge nodded. He knew.
“She was the best basketball player I ever saw,” Joe said. “My daughter worshipped her.”
“Yes,” Smudge said. “She was good, man.”
“She was more than good,” Joe said, remembering what Sheridan had said that morning. “Why didn’t she keep playing?”
Smudge shrugged. It was as if Joe had asked him why Jessica liked chocolate over vanilla.
“Didn’t she ever say?” Joe asked.
“Why are you asking me about her basketball?” Smudge asked angrily. “She didn’t care about that so much. Why are you asking me? Get a nurse.”
“Did she ever know how good she really was?”
“You white people. All you care about is how good she was at a stupid sport.”
“Better than keeping her down with the rest of you, like you did,” Joe said in a flash of rage.
Smudge said, “Fuck you! Get me a nurse. I’m dying here.”
Joe was across the room before he even realized it, his fingers squeezing Smudge’s windpipe, Smudge turning red, his eyes bulging.
“Who was in that truck with you?”
Smudge told him.
“That’s who I thought,” Joe said, releasing him.
The door to the room flew open, an angry nurse filling it.
“What are you doing to him?” she demanded of Joe.
“I thought he was choking,” Joe said, backing away, not quite believing what he had done, how angry he had been. “I think he’s all right now.”
It was dark, already fifteen below. Joe cruised his pickup on the gravel roads of the Wind River Indian Reservation. Less than half of the streetlights worked. Woodsmoke from the chimneys of tiny box houses refused to rise in the cold and hung like London fog, close to the ground.