Specimen Song (21 page)

I don’t even like cars, Du Pré thought. You can’t talk to them when you ride somewhere.

But he got in his and drove out toward Benetsee’s. He parked and got out and went to the front door of the old man’s shack and knocked. No answer. He went around back.

Benetsee was digging a grave for one of his old dogs. The dead animal was on the ground, near a bull pine. The old man was chiseling away at the hard soil.

“Hey,” said Du Pré, “I am sorry about old…”. He couldn’t remember the old dog’s name.

“He was a good dog,” said Benetsee, “but he got old and died.”

“You want some help there?” said Du Pré.

Benetsee stopped digging and put both his hands on the end of the shovel handle.

“When I get old and die, then you can help,” he said.

Du Pré looked at Benetsee; the old man looked back. Then they laughed.

Du Pré smoked while Benetsee dug a hole for his dog.

“All that matters, those moccasins,” said Benetsee, “is that they are very quiet, you know.”

What I get for thinking it is complicated, Du Pré thought.

“This man,” said Benetsee, “he walks like an Indian—toes in, you know.”

“He Indian?” said Du Pré.

“He walks like one,” said Benetsee. He slid the body of his dog into the grave and pushed earth on top of it. Then he began to pile rocks over the turned earth. When Du Pré helped, he didn’t say anything.

The rocks would keep out the skunks and coyotes.

Benetsee whistled something in a pentatonic scale. He put out a hand and Du Pré gave him his tobacco pouch. The old man took four pinches and dribbled them over the grave while he muttered under his breath.

“He was some good dog, yes,” said Benetsee as they walked back to the front of the shack. Du Pré carried the shovel. He saw two nails on the siding about the right height and he hung the shovel up.

“I show you how this man move,” said Benetsee.

And he changed. The old man became coiled and supple. He moved across the littered yard like a stalking fox or bobcat. One foot reached out and gently took the earth, then the other; the old man crouched and his hands were out in front and loose.

He did not spring; he rushed smoothly forward and grabbed his prey rising.

Benetsee had something in his hand—a thong, weighted at the end with a stone.

A garrote.

Benetsee moved his hands a little and a knife appeared in the right one.

“You see?” said Benetsee.

Du Pré nodded. I see plenty good now.

Benetsee walked to Du Pré, like the fox, like the cat. His left hand shot out and grabbed Du Pré’s wrist; his grip was hard, his palm callused.

“You know him now when you see him,” said Benetsee. “Maybe not the first time, but you suddenly know. He will know you know. You better kill him then quick. He sure gonna try to kill you.”

“I hope so,” said Du Pré. He was very angry.

“Don’t be brave talker,” said Benetsee. “You better ask for some help right then.”

“What kind of help?”

“Help for your heart,” said Benetsee. “When fox hunt a mouse, he don’t get mad about it.”

Du Pré nodded.

Benetsee took Du Pré’s arm, led him to his shack, went in, came out with a bundle. He unwrapped the dark brown deerskin. A pair of moccasins with soft, high leggins, soft soles.

“This all I can help you. On that day I sing for you, listen,” said Benetsee.

And then Benetsee was an old man again, bent and weary from digging the dog’s grave.

Du Pré left. He drove back to his house and opened all the windows to air the musty smells out. He found a big can of cinnamon in the cabinet over the stove and put a pile of it in a glass dish, and set it alight. The cinnamon smoldered; the smoke curled through the house.

The telephone rang. It was Maria. She bubbled with excitement.

“I got all sorts of stuff on moccasins,” she said.

“I don’t need it now,” said Du Pré.

“Oh,” she said.

“I am so dumb,” Du Pré said. “I had my answer long time ago, but I couldn’t see it. It is just that the sole is soft.”

“It is that,” said Maria. “Did you know that some Cree use a thong to crisscross-wrap their leggins, that they wore a kind of…bandage of learner from the moccasin top to some way up their calf?”

Du Pré stiffened.

“You find anything maybe they use a little piece of stone on the end of that thong for something?”

“Oh, yes,” said Maria, “a knot stone. The weight kept the knot tight. It had a hole in the middle and the thong was pulled through and then wrapped around to hold.”

“Thank you,” said Du Pré.

“What is this about?” asked Maria.

“Those murders in Washington,” said Du Pré, “I am thinking now that I maybe know who did them.”

“Who?” said Maria.

“I tell you when I really know,” said Du Pré.

“Okay, Papa,” said Maria.

“How you like it there?” said Du Pré.

“I got some way to catch up,” said Maria, “but they have this program, and it’s good. I was whining about how bad the schools were out there and my tutor smiled at me and said maybe I got a lot of something else.”

Du Pré laughed.

“So it will be fine. I am just a little Métis girl from Montana.”

“You are a good Métis woman and smarter than hell,” said Du Pré.

“I love you, Papa,” said Maria. “Be careful.”

They talked a little more and then Du Pré hung up and drove over to Madelaine’s.

I
’VE BEEN TRYING,” SAID
Michelle Leuci, “but the phone’s out up there. The mail plane is going to check, but that isn’t for another week.”

“I am worried about Lucky and them,” said Du Pré.

“The Mounties don’t care to be bothered,” said Michelle.

“It’s just Indians with a broken telephone,” said Du Pré, “so, no, I don’t think that they would care.”

Du Pré sighed.

“Are you okay?” said Michelle.

“Yes,” said Du Pré. “No,”

“I get to where I can’t sleep,” said Michelle, “thinking about bad guys. They rob everybody.”

“Uh-huh,” said Du Pré.

“So you’ll be here in two weeks for the festival?” said Michelle.

“Yeah,” said Du Pré.

“The old man told you the killer would be there?”

“Benetsee,” said Du Pré, “yes, that is what he said. But you have to watch what he says real close, you know. He says what he means exactly.”

“That’d be enough to confuse about anybody,” said Michelle.

“Yeah,” said Du Pré. “You tell that Bart it is pretty out here now and his house is coming along good.”

“His house at the end of the world,” said Michelle.

They said good-bye.

Bart may never have that much to do with his house, Du Pré thought, but then, he was always just hiding out here; his life now that he has one is somewhere else.

Du Pré took his fiddle and drove over to Jacqueline’s, mumbling the names of his grandchildren over and over and hoping he could get them right this time. Jacqueline had wanted to be a mother and she had started very young. There were five now, and she wouldn’t even be twenty-one for a couple of months. She’d married a nice young man, Raymond, who loved kids, and Raymond was coming along, learning how to be a brand inspector like Du Pré, just when the cattle business was about done for.

Jacqueline was frying chicken while Raymond and Father Van den Heuvel rode herd on the brood of kids, the youngest still rocking the crib as hard as he could and Jacqueline pregnant again.

The big blond priest and Du Pré were good friends, even though Du Pré seldom went to church and almost never to confession. Du Pré sat on an old chair on the front porch and fiddled. The little children came and listened for a while and then, bored, began to tussle with one another.

Du Pré watched them getting their clothes dirty and was thankful he’d had just the two girls to raise, though they had pretty much raised him, too, after Du Pré’s wife died so suddenly.

“How was your trip on the river?” said Father Van den Heuvel.

“That is some cold black country,” said Du Pré. “I see pretty much how they think those woods hold the loup-garou up there.

“You learn any new songs?” said Father Van den Heuvel.

Du Pré shook his head.

“No,” he said finally. “I am not sure now what the point was in going. You know that Hydro-Quebec wants to build a bunch of dams up there, ruin the country, kill the fish. I had thought that there was a good reason, maybe get some publicity, it is so far away from anything, but now I have gone down that River of the Whale, I don’t know if anything will come of it.”

“I saw you on television,” said Father Van den Heuvel. “Just for a second. You were standing with Bart off to the side while one of the Indians spoke.”

Du Pré nodded.

“What have the murders to do with that?” asked the priest.

“I don’t know,” said Du Pré. He fiddled for a moment and then let the notes die away.

“You know the story about the various nationalities committing murder,” said the priest. “The Frenchman will explain logically why he has to kill you, the German will weep copiously, and the Englishman will say, ‘Uh, what knife?’

Du Pré laughed. Well, that was how the English were remembered by the older Métis.

Madelaine arrived bearing potato salad and a huge jug of iced tea. She took the salad inside and left the tea on the porch. There was a big chunk of ice in the jar.

“I just wonder who would profit from killing those unfortunate people,” said Father Van den Heuvel.

“I can’t think of anyone,” said Du Pré. “There was this bad, weak, rich man we thought was the one, but there is no reason for him to do it, and he is just crazy and weak, too.”

Madelaine came out and greeted the priest. She kissed Du Pré and then she sat on the porch steps.

“Hydro-Quebec isn’t foolish enough to make martyrs,” said Du Pré. “And to be killing people in America, it’s too risky. They are mean bastards and twenty billion dollars is a lot of money, but there is too much at stake to risk all that.”

“What are we talking?” said Madelaine.

“Trying to think who wins with these murders,” said Du Pré.

“It is some crazy person,” said Madelaine. “Anybody who would kill anyone else is a crazy person.”

Du Pré nodded. He’d once killed a man who was trying to kill him and it was a very crazy few seconds. It still made Du Pré want to puke.

They ate chicken and potato salad and made small talk and then it was time for Jacqueline’s children to nap. Du Pré and Madelaine left, Du Pré dropping the priest off at the little Catholic church, and then Du Pré went over to Madelaine’s. They sat in the soft May sun. The lilacs dripped heavy perfume.

There were heavy black rain clouds in the west.

Her children were all off doing adolescent things. They went to bed in the late afternoon and fell asleep after lovemaking and didn’t wake until dark. The light stayed late now, a little more than a month away from the summer solstice.

The storm struck just at sunset, the wind came up and lightning stabbed down on the plains to the west. Pinkish black clouds roiled around the peaks of the Wolf Mountains to the north. They watched the clouds seethe.

“Come on,” said Du Pré, “I will take you down to the bar, buy you some pink wine.”

Madelaine checked her children. They were at home but the oldest boy, who had a girl and so was hardly ever around, anyway.

“Pretty good kids,” said Du Pré.

“They are that,” said Madelaine. He had seen her be stern with them. Then the kid would slouch off and Madelaine’s face would break out in smiles. So they got instructed but not hurt.

The rain pounded down. Du Pré let Madelaine off right at the front door and he parked a little bit away and ran to the bar, with huge drops slapping his hat.

The place was crowded. Country music on the jukebox and a few couples dancing tightly on the tiny dance floor.

They stayed late.

That night, Du Pré woke up in the deep dark. He could still smell the storm, which had passed.

Who gets what from these murders? Some crazy person.

Who?

What do they want?

He got up and went out on the porch and smoked. He flicked his cigarette butt onto the lawn. They do it because they like it. That’s all.

B
ART’S PLANE FLASHED DOWN
out of the blue sky and onto the runway at the Billings airport.

Du Pré was standing with Madelaine, holding a bag and his fiddle case.

“Pret’ good for some ol’ cowboy from a place in Montana so far from anywhere, we got to pipe in the daylight,” said Du Pré.

They kissed. Du Pré walked toward the plane, which had turned around and was moving rapidly toward the terminal.

The steps came down and Du Pré went up. There would be a few minutes delay, but the pilot had an errand in Rapid City and would refuel there.

Du Pré was alone in the cabin. The furnishings were leather and expensive woods. There was a bank of telephones on one wall and a few complicated machines Du Pré didn’t recognize and wouldn’t care to.

One phone rang. Du Pré picked it up.

“Good afternoon,” said Bart, “I hope you have a pleasant flight.”

“I could have driven,” said Du Pré.

“I’d worry,” said Bart.

“Well, I thank you.”

“I bought a house,” said Bart.

Okay, Du Pré thought. Maybe the White House?

“It’s a nice house, not very big.”

“Servants.”

“Just one,” said Bart.

“A butler?”

“No, asshole, a housekeeper. I never learned to wash dishes. How’s Booger Tom?”

“Haven’t seen him,” said Du Pré. Which was strange, but then, Tom could get an itch and decide he’d like to be an old cowboy in Texas and that would be the last anyone heard of him.

“Is that Paul Chase around?” asked Du Pré.

“Yeah, I guess. They pulled the tails off him, you know. The guy is a crazy weasel, but, hell, not capable of murder.”

“He will be the next one killed, I think,” said Du Pré.

“Good,” said Bart. “Now I must ask why?”

“I just got this feeling.”

“Benetsee give you that feeling?”

“Yes, sort of,” said Du Pré. “I don’t know.”