Coyote Wind (18 page)

The detective waved to a uniformed patrolman. The patrolman came over slowly.

“I need to have you hold on to this horse,” said the detective.

The cop looked at the horse, the horse looked at the cop. Neither was favorably impressed. The cop moved a hand slowly toward the bridle.

The horse’s eyes got big.

“Look,” said Du Pré, “this will not work. This horse, he needs someone who talks horse. I don’t think you can talk horse. So, I maybe hold him till you find the owner or something.”

Du Pré saw a young man in jeans and boots and a sleeveless T-shirt coming toward them. Kid had on a straw cowboy hat that had seen hard use.

“Jerry!” said the young man. He had a blond ponytail and a woven horsehair belt buckle. The horse shuffled a little and tossed his head. This was someone he knew.

“Thanks,” said the kid. He took the horse’s bridle from Du Pré and he stroked the animal’s neck. “Got to get you to some water,” he said to the horse.

“Whose horse’s this?” said the detective.

“Van Orden Stables,” said the handler. He pulled a sweated wad of business cards from the hip pocket of his jeans and offered the detective one. “Miss Price called from the hospital.”

“Lady who found the body,” said the detective.

The handler nodded.

“Christ,” said Du Pré. “A
body
?”

The detective nodded. “You’ll be here for the festival?” he said to Du Pré.

“Yeah,” said Du Pré. “You need me, the office is in that striped tent over there. They will know where I am playing. I don’t hardly go to the hotel, you know. We sit here after dark and play music. Too hot to sleep, anyway, and I hate air conditioning.”

“Thanks for catchin’ old Jerry,” said the handler. “He musta been some lonely.”

“Where you from?” said Du Pré.

“West Texas,” said the young man. “Can I please take him? He needs water real bad.”

The detective nodded; the handler led the horse away.

“What is this about now?” said Du Pré.

“If I need to talk to you, I’ll find you,” said the detective. He tucked his notebook into his sweaty linen coat. Du Pré got a glimpse of the butt of a gun under the man’s arm. He nodded to Du Pré and walked away.

Du Pré made his way back to the stage. He saw his rawhide fiddle case against the back curtain, near the cables snaking under toward the sound booth out front. There was a band playing old-time music at the microphones. Du Pré waited until they finished their piece and the applause started, then he went as quickly as he could to his fiddle, popped the case open to make sure the instrument was in it, went to the side of the stage, and dropped down to the grass. There were sandwich wrappers and empty Styrofoam cups everywhere about. The grounds had garbage cans every few yards, but some people just would not use them.

Du Pré went to the festival offices in the striped tent. It was little more than a phone-and-message bank for the performers. Three young women wearing as little as they could sat wearily on folding chairs, sipping huge glasses of iced tea.

“You know where Paul Chase is?” said Du Pré.

The women glanced at one another. “He’s…at an appointment,” she said finally.

“I know the police found a body,” said Du Pré. “Is he talking to them?”

More glances. Finally, one nodded.

“Do you know when he will be back?”

More glances. Then the women looked past Du Pré. Du Pré turned, to see Paul Chase, looking like he was making his face brave, coming toward the tent.

Chase nodded to Du Pré and went on to the three young women and spoke in a low voice. Du Pré couldn’t hear the words. They looked hot and weary and frightened.

Chase turned. His face was gray.

“I found some horse,” said Du Pré, “so I had the police talking to me, too.”

Chase nodded. “Woman who discovered the body was on a bridle path over that way”—he waved his hand—”wouldn’t have seen it if she had been walking. The extra height, you know. She got down and looked in the shrubbery, and then she screamed and the horse panicked. So did she. She had a terrible asthma attack.”

“Okay,” said Du Pré. “So who was killed?” Madelaine was right about this Washington, D.C.

“A young Cree woman from Canada,” said Chase. “She was here as part of a singing group. Someone stabbed her to death. It’s just terrible.”

A telephone rang; one of the women answered.

Chase stood still, shaking his head after a minute.

“I don’t need this,” he said suddenly, his voice savage.

First they get shocked, then they either choke up or get mad, Du Pré thought.

“I needed to talk to you about another matter, anyway, Mr. Du Pré,” said Chase. “I need to think about another matter. Any
other
matter. We here at the Smithsonian would like very much to tape your versions of some of the old voyageur ballads, the ones you play and sing so competently. Could you possibly stay over a few days after the festival?”

“No,” said Du Pré. “I don’t like this place much. So I will be happy to tape what you want, but I do it at home. My daughter, she has a tape recorder.”

“Uh,” said Chase, smiling, “I hardly think that will do. We will need a studio, you see. Recording is very difficult.”

“Okay,” said Du Pré. “We got recording studios in Montana. Maybe not so fancy as you got here, I don’t know. But we got them and they have to do. I stay here till my plane out Sunday night, but I sweat enough for the rest of my life.”

Chase nodded. “The land upon which Washington, D.C., is built was largely swamp when the sundry states donated it. Since then, the swamp has risen, I often think.”

“Besides,” said Du Pré, “I got to go to a powwow, been planned long time.”

“Play fiddle?” said Chase.

Du Pré shook his head. “No,” he said, “both my father and grandfather were canoe builders, and I still got some of their tools. I am not all that good, but lots of that stuff got forgotten, so I try to remember.”

“Canoes,” said Chase. “What sort of canoes?”

“What the voyageurs called ‘big bellies,” said Du Pré. “They were kind of little freighters for the fur trade. They had a couple funny things about them—you know, way the struts and braces were fitted. Used bone joints where things were twisted a lot, like that. I have made a couple since for a museum up in Calgary, but they weren’t very good. You know how you got to do something a lot before you know it.”

Chase was thinking.

“So you give me a list of these songs you want, you get hold of a recording studio—there are several in Montana—pay them, I go in and make that music for you,” said Du Pré. He felt a little proud. Besides, once the music was safely here at the Smithsonian, it maybe wouldn’t get lost.

“You’ll hear from us,” said Chase.

The telephones started ringing. Du Pré looked out in front of the tent. There were a bunch of reporters headed their way.

Du Pré slid out the back way, through a slit provided for ventilation.

Some damn thing, he thought. Always.

M
ADELAINE WAS WAITING
for Du Pré at the bottom of the elevator stairs in the airport. Du Pré was carrying his fiddle. They went to the baggage carousel and soon his battered old leather suitcase crashed out onto it from the cargo room.

Du Pré had bought the suitcase in a pawnshop for ten dollars. It was covered in stickers from ocean liners. The ocean liners were all gone now, but the leather suitcase remained.

Like out in my shed, I got these brass tacks from the stock of a black powder rifle I found in the attic of an abandoned cabin, thought Du Pré. The steel was all rust and borers had eaten all the wood, but that brass stayed on. The gun had been so badly rusted that it didn’t even clean up enough to tell what it was.

“So you get the clap, all those groupies in Washington, D.C.?” said Madelaine.

“Probably won’t know for a while,” said Du Pré. “That clap, it takes some time to come on, you know.”

Madelaine kissed him. She was wearing some faint perfume—violets. She had rubbed the flowers behind her ears, he guessed. Sometimes she made tea. Du Pré thought of cool June mornings and the scent of violets and Madelaine. He was very glad to be back.

“So I see a girl singer got stabbed there,” said Madelaine. “I told you they kill each other a lot there in Washington, D.C.” She grabbed Du Pré’s arm. She had about worried herself sick, Du Pré knew. He should have tried to call her, but it was hard to find a telephone.

“It was hot and wet,” said Du Pré. “I don’t think I do that again. I like this dry Montana air.”

They walked out to the parking lot. Madelaine had brought Du Pré’s old sheriffs cruiser with the patches on the doors where the decals had been. Good road car, though. On those long, straight stretches of Montana road, Du Pré drove maybe 120. Had to slow down for some towns. Once a highway patrolman had stopped him, but Du Pré said call the sheriff in his home county of Charbonneau, told him he was on an errand and needed to make time. When the cop went back to his car, Du Pré smoked it, getting back up to speed. He never heard anything more about it.

Du Pré tossed his suitcase and fiddle in the backseat. He felt dirty from the city air and all the miles of flight. He itched.

He held Madelaine for a moment. Murmuring.

“We go home and in a while we both find out I got the clap or not,” said Du Pré. She looked shocked—for a moment.

“So everybody is all right?” said Du Pré. It seemed he’d been gone a long time, but it’d been only five days.

“Yeah,” said Madelaine. “That Bart, he is working so hard on his house and that ranch. Old Booger Tom run him around and Bart don’t say nothing to the old bastard, and Bart
owns
that place. Booger Tom, I saw him in the bar the other night and he say he try every way to make Bart blow up or quit or whine and Bart just won’t do it. I think that Booger Tom kind of likes Bart for that,”

So do I, Du Pré thought. Poor Bart Fascelli, rich boy, horrible family, then he is in his late forties and suddenly realizes that though he owns that ranch, “Booger Tom owns
himself
. Bart, he wants to own himself, too. I like that man. Hope he don’t never drink again.

“Bart is so very nice to Jacqueline and Maria,” Madelaine went on. “Like a good uncle, you know. He is always very correct.” Jacqueline and Maria were Du Pré’s daughters. Bart had helped out Maria a lot and was going to pay for a college education for her. Since Du Pré’s father had murdered Bart’s brother, Du Pré thought that was pretty tough of Bart. He’s probably a pretty tough man, don’t know how much yet.

They were headed east to pick up the two-lane norm to Toussaint. Du Pré looked down at the speedometer. Ninety. He slowed to seventy. Can’t go fast on the expressway, he thought, but I want to get home. Take a long hot shower. Feels like my soul and half of my ass is still in Washington, D.C.

That detective, he never came to ask me more questions, Du Pré thought. I only caught the horse. Don’t even know the name of the woman who was killed. Cree, though, like some of my people.

Madelaine fiddled around in a little cooler and brought out a can of beer for Du Pré and a wine cooler for herself. She popped the can open and handed it to him. Du Pré took a long swallow.

“That’s pretty good,” he said.

He saw the exit north up ahead. Get off this four-lane mess and back on a two-lane road. I am a two-lane man in a four-lane age. And they are welcome to it.

Du Pré glanced up at the bluffs above the Yellowstone as he turned round the exit ramp. The Roche Jaune of the voyageurs. They had been here so long ago, no one really knew how long. Tough men, could cover some country.

A huge hawk flapped up from a kill in a field across the highway. It held something small in one talon. Du Pré couldn’t see what it was. The big bird turned in the air and locked its wings and floated on. Du Pré grinned. Home, it sure felt good.

“So, this Washington D.C., what was it like?” said Madelaine.

“Hot and sticky,” said Du Pré. “But I met some nice people, some Cajun people from Louisiana. They talk some French like ours, only some different. Call it Coonass French.” Du Pré spoke Coyote French. Well, those Cajuns had been descended from Québécois deported by the English over two centuries ago to Louisiana. And we didn’t talk so much after that. Du Pré’s people were Métis—French, Cree, Chippewa, and some little English no one wanted to admit to—who were the voyageurs and trappers of the Company of Gentlemen Adventurers of Hudson’s Bay. Or the Hudson’s Bay Company. Or the Here Before Christ.

“They invite us down some winter to get away from the cold,” Du Pré went on. “They play some fine music, accordion, fiddle, washboard. Call it zydeco.”

“What they do with this washboard?” said Madelaine.

“Guy plays it; he puts big thimbles on his fingers, brushes them over that washboard,” said Du Pré. “It sounds good. Anyway, they say we come down eat crawfish, drink orange wine.”

“Orange wine sounds good,” said Madelaine.

Du Pré looked at his watch. His sense of time was off. It must be the middle of the afternoon. Of course it was; his plane hadn’t got to Billings until 2:30. Four o’clock and change. Du Pré was starving of a sudden.

“This next roadhouse, we get a cheeseburger,” said Du Pré. “I am hungry enough to have supper with a coyote now.”

It was still close to the longest day of the year, a little over a week ago. The light would remain past ten o’clock, and Du Pré figured if he pushed the old Plymouth, he could make Toussaint before sundown.

Up ahead, he saw a crossroads and the peeling white sign of a roadhouse that he knew and liked. He turned into the parking lot.

Christ, I am hungry, he thought.

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