Montana 1948 (12 page)

My mother tried to interrupt him. “Wesley.”

But my father's reverie continued. “On foot? Truck wasn't working. Truck was parked down the street at another patient's house. Gloria dropped him off.”

“Stop, Wesley.”

My father gently rapped his knuckles on the window. He stood like that for a long time, tapping the glass and staring out at the night.

My mother rested her hand on my shoulder, and I took advantage of that kindness to ask, “Is this bad?” I still couldn't reveal what I knew about Uncle Frank, but again I wanted my parents to let me in. I wanted to know that what I was doing was right and that I wasn't simply ratting on my uncle. But my
mother didn't answer me. She patted my shoulder reassuringly, and it was my father who finally said, “Bad enough.”

I pushed a little harder. “Does this mean—”

My father cut me off. “Does anyone else know? Are you sure no one else saw him? Did you tell anyone else?”

“I didn't tell anyone, but. . . .”

“But what, David?”

“Maybe Len saw him.”

My father took a backward step as if he were trying to avoid a punch. “Len?”

I nodded.

“Oh, God. God
damn.
Len saw Frank.”

“Maybe. . . .”

My mother asked me, “What makes you think Len saw, David? ”

“He said ... I don't know. He was acting funny. I just think he might have.”

“That tears it,” said my father. “If Len saw Frank. . . .”

“It doesn't change anything,” my mother said. “Not a thing.”

“Oh really? Maybe. If Len knows, he'll keep his mouth shut if I ask him. Or if Dad asks him. But he'll know. There he'll be, day after day. With that look. I'm not going to live with that look.”

My mother turned on the lamp beside the bed. In its sudden brightness the first thing I saw was my father's bad knee. He was wearing boxer shorts and a T-shirt, and his knee looked inflamed, swollen, scarred, and misshapen, as if his kneecap
had been put back in the wrong spot. I saw my father limping every day but I seldom saw the reason. I realized the pain he must have been in constantly, and that pain seemed strangely to connect with the anguish he felt over his brother.

As if he were suddenly self-conscious in the light, my father put on his trousers.

“One more thing, David,” my father said as he buckled his belt, the only bit of western regalia he wore—a hand-tooled ranger belt with a silver buckle and keeper. “Why didn't you say something before?”

“I don't know.”

“Well, you can go back to bed. Now
you
can get some sleep.” In his voice I thought I heard both jealousy and resentment.

Unfortunately, I couldn't sleep well either. Half-asleep and half-awake, I lay in bed and thought about Indians. In my daily life in Montana I saw Indians every day. There were Indian children in school, their mothers in the grocery store, their fathers at the filling station. Objects of the most patronizing and debilitating prejudice, the Indians in and around our community were nonetheless a largely passive and benign presence. Even the few who were not—Roy Single Feather, for example, who seemed intent on single-handedly perpetuating the stereotype of the drunken Indian and who, when drunk, walked down the middle of Main Street lecturing passersby, cars, and store windows on the necessity of giving one's life
over to Jesus Christ—were regarded as more comedic or pathetic than dangerous.

But that night Marie's death and too many cowboy and Indian movies combined to bring me a strange half-dreaming, half-waking vision....

To the east of Bentrock was a grassy butte called Circle Hill, the highest elevation around. It was treeless, easy to climb, and its summit provided a perfect view of town. That night I imagined all the Indians of our region, from town, ranches, or reservation, gathered on top of Circle Hill to do something about Marie's death. But in my vision, the Indians were not lined up in battle formation as they always were in the movies, that is, mounted on war ponies, streaked with war paint, bristling with feathers, and brandishing bows and arrows, lances, and tomahawks. Instead, just as I did in my daily life I saw them dressed in their jeans and cowboy boots, their cotton print dresses, or their flannel shirts. Instead of shouting war cries to the sky they were simply milling about, talking low, mourning Marie. Would they ever come down from Circle Hill, rampage the streets of Bentrock, looking for her killer, taking revenge wherever they could find it? My vision didn't extend that far, and finally I fell completely asleep, still watching Ollie Young Bear and Donna Whitman and George Crow Feather and Simon Many Snows and Verna Bull and Thomas Pelletier and Doris Looks Away and Sidney Bordeaux and Iris Trimble all walking the top of Circle Hill.

Three

W
E had planned, of course, to attend Marie's funeral, but when my father asked Mrs. Little Soldier about when and where it would be, he was told that Marie would not be buried in Montana. Her family was coming from North Dakota and they would take Marie and her mother back to their home in North Dakota. When my father told my mother about this conversation, he said, “I tried to tell Mrs. Little Soldier that this was Marie's home also and that we thought of her as a member of the family, but she didn't want to hear. She wants to get out of Montana as quickly as possible.”

My mother nodded knowingly. “Try to find out where we can send flowers. It's the least we can do. And we have to do something.”

Quietly my father replied, “I am doing something, Gail. You know that.”

I knew what he meant. In the days right after Marie's death my father was working all the time. He left early in the morning, and he did not return until late at night. When he was home, he was on the phone. (He left his office a few times to come home and use the telephone; there were some matters he didn't want to discuss in his office.)

His work habits were familiar enough to me that I knew what was going on: he was building a case, and my father did this the same way he ran for reelection—by gathering in friends and favors. I suppose he was collecting evidence as well, but that part was never as obvious to me. What he seemed intent on doing—just as boys at play do, just as nations at war do—was getting people to be on his side.

Earlier in the year there had been a controversial arson case. Shelton's Hardware Store burned to the ground, and my father suspected Mr. Shelton, a well-liked businessman, of setting the fire himself to collect the insurance money. While my father conducted his investigation I was amazed at the change in him. I saw him on the street or in the Coffee Cup, telling jokes and laughing at the jokes of others. He passed out cigars like a new father. He inquired about families; he asked if there were favors he could do for people. Then, when he felt he had garnered enough good will, he made his arrest, exactly at the moment when his popularity was highest in the county. Naturally the consequent community feeling was, “Well, if Sheriff Hayden says it's so, it must be so.” That feeling frequently carried juries as well. Mr. Shelton was convicted of arson and sent to Deer Lodge State Penitentiary for five years.

In short, rather than become grim and dogged when closing in on a suspect, my father became good-humored and gregarious. He became charming. He became more like his brother.

In the few days following Marie's death there was one significant change in this usual pattern....

Three days after my mother found Marie dead in our home, around four o'clock on a rainy Thursday afternoon, my father brought Uncle Frank to our house. I had had something planned for the day with my friends, but the rain changed my plans, so I passed the day indoors, working on a balsa-wood model of a B-29 bomber. When my father and Uncle Frank came in the back door, I was at the kitchen table, my fingers sticky with glue and a hundred tiny airplane parts spread out on a newspaper in front of me. Uncle Frank walked in first, and he greeted me jauntily. “Good afternoon, Davy me boy. Wet enough for you?” He was carrying a small satchel, but it was not his medical bag.

He saw what I was doing and asked, “What's that you're working on?”

I showed him the box the model came in. “B-29.”

“The B-29,” he said. “I saw a few of those overhead. Always a welcome sight.”

My father came in right behind Frank, and about him there was nothing of Frank's good cheer. Unsmiling and mute, my father simply pointed toward the basement stairs, and the two of them crossed the room and descended, my father closing the door behind them.

They were down there a long time, but I didn't move
from the kitchen. I strained to hear what was going on in the basement, but I heard nothing. Finally, when slow, heavy steps began to climb the stairs, I pretended to be concentrating on my model, though I hadn't fitted a single piece since they came in.

My father came through the door—and he came through alone. He closed the door tightly behind him.

He looked exhausted, as though climbing the stairs had taken all his energy. His face was pale, and he simply stood still for a moment, his back against the basement door. Then he went to the cupboard under the kitchen sink, rummaged around for a moment, and came out with a bottle of Old Grand-Dad. He took a juice glass from the shelf, poured it half full of whiskey, then held the glass to the rain-streaked window as if he were examining the liquid for impurities. He tilted his hat back on his forehead, raised the glass to his lips, closed his eyes, and took a small sip.

I watched him and discovered that adults could, like kids, be there yet not be there (as I often was in school). As my father took another drink of whiskey, this time a longer one that shuddered through him, I could tell that he was making a long journey while he stood in our kitchen. I waited until I thought he was back and then asked as softly as I could, “Dad?”

He put his finger to his lips. “In a minute, David. All right? Your mother will be home soon, and I only want to tell this once. We have a new development here.”

So my father and I remained silent. He continued to sip
his whiskey, and I packed up all the tiny pieces of my model plane. The rain clattered and gurgled through the gutters around the house. Once—only once—I thought I heard a noise from the basement that could have been Uncle Frank moving around.

But was that possible? How could Uncle Frank make any noise when my father had killed him?

I almost believed that.

I almost believed my father had taken his brother to a corner of the basement and—and what? Strangled him? Clubbed him? Shot him with a pistol equipped with a silencer? He had somehow killed him soundlessly. My father had tried to find a way to bring his brother to justice for his crimes, but finally, inevitably, unable to do that, he had opted instead for revenge. He had taken his brother into the basement and killed him. What else could explain that look on my father's face?