Two Medicine (35 page)

“Welcome…” she said. She
looked amused. “Come on in.”

I walked in and noticed
the smell of incense. She led me into the main room, a living room,
which had a couch and some chairs and a lot of wood carvings and
glass decorations on shelves. Young people lived here though – you
could tell from how much junk there was here and there: guitar,
tennis racket tossed in a corner, a mountain bike in the foyer, old
CDs piled on the coffee table – the detritus of a certain era in
life.

“One of Clayton’s friends
is a glass blower,” Sky said, watching my eyes. “He made this.” She
walked over and picked up an elaborately shaped glass marijuana
pipe fashioned like a dolphin jumping out of the water. I couldn’t
begin to image how the thing worked to smoke through it.

As I politely admired it,
she gestured over to the couch she sat me down. The house was old,
and the furniture and stuff in the room looked like it came from
Goodwill – all mismatched and thrown together. There were many
Blackfoot-looking artifacts and decorations on the walls and
shelves, however. I also noticed a large, plastic, white sign that
read “Elect James Red Claw” in big block letters – one of those
political signs people stick in their yards. I was shoved halfway
behind a Lazy Boy lounge chair. I also noticed a huge glass bottle
about three feet high with a large amount of coins in it – a note
had been taped to it that read “Harley Fund.” My eye fell upon a
gun resting on the coffee table in front of me – a black, automatic
pistol. That made me nervous.

“
Hi,” Clayton said curtly
as he suddenly walked in, holding two Miller Genuine Draft bottled
beers. He put one in my hand without asking me if I wanted one, and
then he sat in one of the recliners. He reached over and turned
down the Steppenwolf on the stereo. He seemed a little more casual,
less stern now that he was in his home turf.

“
Let me get right to the
point,” he said after taking a swig of beer. “Look, I know you care
about what happened to Alia – you wouldn’t be here otherwise – but
there’s a way of doing things in Browning and a way of not doing
things.”

Sky sat in the other
recliner and just watched us.

“
And you talking to the
rangers and the BIA about it all is not the right way of doing
things.”

“
How do you know I’ve
talked to them?” I asked.

He sat back in the chair
and smiled. He had a thin face that looked slightly malevolent when
he smiled. His teeth were crooked. I noticed that he had an
almost-Hispanic look when he smiled.

“
You don’t think people
talk in a town this small? He gestured a hand out the big window of
the living room to indicate the town. “Especially if the tribe is
involved?”

“
Well,”
I said, “as far as the BIA cop goes, he’s always been the one to
seek me out – I didn’t invite him around – and he probably thinks I
did it anyway. But I actually
do
want the cops involved, to find
who killed her. Don’t you?” I asked him, and I looked to Sky
too.

“
Sure,” Clayton said. I
noticed how she took a subservient posture with him in the room;
her usual up-front demeanor was chilled – she was now
watchful.

He took another sip of
beer. “But the right way of doing things is letting the tribe solve
it.”

“
Are they solving it?” I
asked him.

He ignored the question,
and nodded over to the election sign. “My father was the council
leader – the “chief” as you would call it in the old days – and
before he died he had this town running its own way –
perfectly.”

I noticed Sky looked down at the beer in her
hand contemplatively.

“
And,” he continued, “I’m
moving up in the tribe and I’m going to pick up where he left
off.”

“
So your father ran things
here?” I asked, and he looked over at the election sign I had seen
and nodded.

“
Yea,” he said, “But
Council Leader is an elected position. I’m running next year.” I
shifted on the couch a little and sipped my beer, then asked him
again, “The tribe doesn’t seem to be doing anything though. This
Thunderbird guy…”

Clayton interrupted me,
“Thunderbird is just a well-known guy, and talks to everyone, so he
talks with the BIA and the rest for us – but he’s just a…” Clayton
thought about it a moment.

“
A distraction.” I
said.

Clayton’s face showed a
barely-perceptible smile. “Yea. That’s it.” He settled back into
his chair. “The tribe will find out on its own, though, so don’t be
going around and getting the cops involved. That’s what I invited
you here to tell you.”

“
How would the tribe even
get involved; I mean what authority do they have when it comes to
murder?” I asked, irritation unintentionally seeping into my
voice.

Clayton looked at Sky a
moment, then said, “The Blackfoot say ‘never be afraid to talk
matters over with those you disagree’ and I wanted to have you here
to talk matters over. You don’t know anything about this place –
you don’t know anything about us – and you didn’t really know
Alia.”

“
I knew her better than
you think,” I blurted out, “well enough to know that she deserves
better than to have been beaten to death and left in the dirt to
die. And then to be buried and forgotten and people just talk about
wanting to find out what happened? I can’t leave it like
that.”

“
She was cremated,” Sky
said.

I looked back at her and
wondered what she was feeling about all of this. She was clearly a
girl with intelligence and guts, and must have her own thoughts
about this entire thing.

“
You
found her out in the woods Sky,” I said. “What do
you
think happened to
her?”

Sky didn’t answer, but
looked at Clayton. Clayton seemed, for his part, to suddenly soften
at my question. His brow furrowed and he searched my face as if
looking for any insincerity, or ulterior motive hidden there. “Look
Will, I know how you feel – I dated her for two years and she lived
here with us. But you don’t know how things work here. So let the
tribe handle this and stay out of it.”

“She lived here until she
broke up with you,” I said.

“No,” Sky cut in. “She
lived here until she was killed.”

This was a bit of a shock.
I looked to Clayton. “You mean she lived here with you two, while
you are dating, after your breakup?”

“Yep,” he nodded. “We were
close – all of us – we were a family. The Blackfoot are like
that.”

This took a moment to
process. I stared down at the carpet, then up at Sky.

“Can I see her room?”

Sky nodded.
“Sure.”

She led me
down the hall while Clayton stayed in the other
room. The hall way had three doors – two bedrooms and a bathroom, I
guessed – and it was a very narrow space with not much room to
stretch out. Sky led me to the last door on the right and pushed it
open. I walked in and immediately smelled Alia – that subtle,
sugary perfume. I felt like she was just around the corner. I
stopped in the doorway and looked around; and I saw a room that was
small, square, and had only bed and a dresser in it, with an old TV
in the corner and a small stereo sitting on a shelf. Posters of
Marylyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails were taped to the
wall.

“We boxed up most of her
stuff and gave it to Goodwill already,” Sky said from the doorway,
looking in over my shoulder. “There was no one to send it to, as
you probably know.”

I walked over to the bed
and pictured Alia’s little frame sleeping there. I thought back to
our night together, holding each other like we did as we slept in
my bed. I wondered if her sheets still smelled like her but I
resisted the urge to bury my face in them in front of Sky who was
still standing in the doorway, watching me. I walked over to the
closet and pulled open the sliding door.

“There’s still a few
things in there...” Sky said.

I saw some small shoes on
the closet floor and a jacket on a hanger. A black, long-sleeve
Jack Daniels t-shirt was hanging there too, and I ran my hand over
the material. I breathed in through my nose but didn’t detect her
fragrance here. It had been too long, and the clothes had lost her
essence, hour by hour.

I saw a picture in a frame
over on the dresser, showing a little, dark-haired girl with a
tall, thin woman, smiling in the sun at some farm. They were
standing next to horses, which had their heads down grazing. I
picked up the picture.

“
That’s her mom – and
Alia,” Sky said. “I didn’t know what to do with that pic. She’s got
no family to send it to; and I have no idea where her mom is now.
It didn’t feel right to give it to Goodwill, or throw it
away.”

“
Just keep it,” I said,
and I set the picture back onto the dresser. “Sky,” I said looking
over to her, “why were you out in the woods in the middle of the
night when you found her? Why don’t you just tell me?”

Sky just looked at me for
a moment.

“You were looking for her,
right?” I asked.

“Actually no,” she said
after another moment’s pause, “I was looking for
Clayton.”

“What was Clayton doing
out there?”

“Clayton didn’t kill her,
Will, if that’s what you think.”

“Then why were you out
there looking for him?”

She finally stepped from
the doorway and walked over towards the dresser. She reached for
the picture and put it into my hand. “You take this, keep
it.”

I stared at the picture again.

“
She was a good person,
Will,” Sky said quietly, looking around the room. “She was just
trying to get by, working a shitty job, working the diner – trying
to make a life, hoping to get out to L.A. someday.”

“
She told me.”

Sky breathed a sigh and
said, “She had this way of… connecting, with people.” She looked at
me. “She said you and her connected instantly.”

I kept staring at the
picture of her as a little girl, wondering if she was happy in that
moment, at least.

“That necklace meant a lot
to her,” Sky said, nodding at my necklace. “It was her ‘lode
stone,’ which means it was her connection to the spirit world, in
the Blackfoot way. She got it at one of the powwows – I think after
her mom left.”

Sky looked down to my
wrist, at the leather strap wrapped there. “Who gave you
that?”

“Thunderbird.”

She nodded, as if that was
expected. “Yeah, he gave her one just like it, long time ago. He
was like an uncle to her – a big, weird uncle.” Sky smiled to
herself.

“Who killed her, Sky?” I
asked, looking up at her.

Sky looked at the picture
in my hand and shook her head. “If you can find out, Will, do it –
that’s why I brought you here. I think people have already started
to forget about her… So keep that photo and find out what happened;
her spirit will be at rest then.”

Sky turned and
left the room – leaving me standing alone in the
center of Alia’s world. Was there something here that could
actually tell me about her last days? I looked around the room
again and spotted a small spiral notebook. I walked over and picked
it up, it was brand new looking, not used at all. What was more
tragic than a diary never used?

I flipped it open to the
first page – nothing. I flipped through all the pages – blank. I
was about to set the book down when I noticed on the very last page
was a girly looking handwriting – loopy characters in pencil with
elaborately dotted and crossed “I”s and “T”s. At the bottom was the
signed name “Alia Reynolds.”

I glanced out to the
hallway, and then turned back to the book and quickly read over the
paragraph of lines written on the page. I felt confused, however,
when I got to the end. It read like a poem, but it was written in
the third person, and didn’t seem to apply to Alia in any
way.

It read:

When she was a little girl, Alia was spoiled
and rich, and had gold and silver poured down onto her bed like a
fountain of light. She bathed in riches and never knew pain or
hunger.

When she was a young woman
Alia was spoiled and rich, and had jewels and luxuries handed to
her by rich men and women, who wanted a moment of her time. She
bathed in riches and never knew pain or hunger.

When she was an old woman,
Alia was spoiled and rich, but gave her gold and silver and jewels
and luxuries to her daughter, like a fountain of life from a woman
everyone wanted. She bathed in riches and never knew pain and
hunger.

Was this how Alia saw her
future, a prediction of success in Hollywood as an actress? Or was
this poetic deception which meant to highlight her poverty and
destitution? Where did her life fit in to this fairy tale? What was
the point?

She had signed it like a
letter. But to whom?

Feeling more uncertain
about her life than when I had started, I walked out of the Alia’s
room back down the hall to the living room. Everything came down to
one question: Of all the people I had met so far, was there any
person in her life that would have killed her, and so
viciously?