Dog Run Moon (5 page)

“It's very important to do this correctly,” he said. “Come here and watch this. You've got to put five scoops of grounds in the filter. Okay? Five. Your mom makes coffee and she puts in four, on a good day. We're men. Right? We want strong coffee. Five scoops. Got it?”

Serious nods.

“Okay. We need mugs. Lots of Cream. Lots of Sugar. When you get older you'll drink it black. But this is how you start. It's how my dad used to make mine. You don't want to go right to the hard stuff.” They sat at the kitchen island. Each with a mug in front of him.

“Now what?” one of them asked.

“We drink our coffee. We talk about the weather.”

“It stopped raining,” one of them said, looking out the window.

“Yep,” Dale said. “I think it's going to be a nice day.”

“It's been raining a lot.”

“I like snow better than rain.”

“I like it when it's sunny.”

“You guys are naturals at this,” Dale said.

Jeannette came in the back door. She had the blanket wrapped around her shoulders and her eyes were puffy. She stopped when she saw them sitting there, Dale with her two boys. He could imagine the way it looked to her. The scene almost the way it should be, one note off. If she was jarred by it, she hid it well.

“Dale made us coffee,” one of the boys said. “And we're talking about the weather.”

Jeannette sat down. “Girls allowed?”

“I guess.”

She reached for Dale's mug. I can't believe I slept for so long,” she said. “Jesus. My back. I'm too old for sleeping on porches.” She was squeezing his knee under the counter, smiling at him.

“We didn't flood,” Dale said.

“I noticed. I'm going to bake your dad a pie or something. My god, this coffee is horrible. Are you boys actually drinking this?”

“It's good,” one of them said.

“Because we're men,” said the other.

The summer progressed. Dale studied for his test. He ran in the mornings when it was still cool. Sometimes there was fog coming off the river, and when this happened he found himself picking up the pace, unable to see more than an arm's length in front of his face, a headlong feeling. Less like running, more like falling.

He did a few more ride-alongs. A few minor incidents, nothing like that first night. He was there for a shooting. An accident, two kids playing with their dad's handgun. The one kid shot through the leg, a puckered purple hole, his face white. Dale helped carry the stretcher and load the kid into the ambulance. “My dad is going to be so pissed,” the kid was saying. “Is this expensive? It is, isn't it? He's going to kill me.”

“You're all right, man,” Dale said to him. “Your dad's just going to be happy that you're going to be fine. Don't worry.”

He was feeling quietly confident about the test. About things in general. He'd made flashcards and sometimes Jeannette quizzed him, lying on the couch in the evenings after she'd put the boys to bed. She'd have her bare feet in his lap so he could rub them.

“What are the two types of cerebral vascular accidents?”

“Embolic or ischemic strokes and hemorrhagic strokes.”

“Correct-o. You're going to kill this.”

“I don't know. We'll see.”

“Nonsense. You know all these forward and backward.”

“Until I sit down in that room with the clock.”

“Just imagine everyone else in the room naked. Right? Isn't that what you're supposed to do?”

“That's if you're scared of public speaking.”

“It might still help, though.”

“I'll try it and let you know.”

The morning of the test, Dale rose early. Jeannette, a soft, sleep-warmed shape next to him. He hadn't seen his own bed in weeks.

She'd recently told him that if he wanted to move his stuff in, that would be fine with her. It actually sounded like a pretty good plan. He was spending so much time there anyway, it made sense. He'd be able to help with money too, just as soon as he passed the test, and the fire department could formally hire him. They'd already given him a verbal agreement. The test would make it official, and then he'd be making a decent wage.

He laced up his shoes in the dark, the house silent. He drank a full glass of water and then closed the door behind him quietly. He hit the sidewalk, his legs nearly twitching with pent-up energy. He was going to fly through this run, and then get another quick half hour of studying in before the test time. He was going to kill the goddamn test, and then his life was going to unfold in a solid, meaningful way with Jeannette, kids and all. You never can tell, he thought. You can't predict these things.

The sun was starting to come up over the hills just outside of town. He was cruising down the river path now, breath coming easily, occasionally reaching out to brush his fingers over the deep furrows of the cottonwoods that lined the trail. Just before the 9th Street bridge, there was something—a blur on his periphery—a figure in a hooded sweatshirt holding something, coming at him in mid-swing, a stick, a bat. And then Dale was running, but his feet weren't on the ground. Fog creeping in off the river, black fog, and Dale plunging right into it.

Ken hadn't gone to coffee with the guys in a long time. He didn't know if he was up to it or not, but he had to get out of the house someway. Last night the leaves had been blasted from the trees in one brutal windstorm. He'd gone to bed and woken up to bare limbs. Clouds forecasting snow. It had been months since he'd come down to the Albertsons like this. He went to the self-serve kiosk and got his paper cupful, pushed fifty cents into the slot in the counter. He sat down at the table, and Greg Ricci, who'd been talking, barely broke stride. He nodded at Ken. “And then I told him, I says, you have to premix the damn oil and gas. I knew this kind of stuff when I was a little kid, and this is a guy with a college education. He'd never mixed up oil and gas for a lawnmower in his whole life. I don't know. It's a changing world. I'm sometimes glad I'm on my way out of it.”

“Oh, hell.”

“I'm serious. You go to a bar and no one's talking to each other. Everyone's looking down at their phone, or whatever. I went down to Denver to see my kid. I was in the airport. The bars in the airports have all got those damn iPods. Right in front of the stool so you can't move them. I try to order a beer with the bartender and he tells me he can't take my order. I have to punch it in on the iPod. I says, what the hell are you standing back there for then, if you can't take my order? And he says, well, someone still has to twist the top off it, and I says, well, watch your ass because they'll figure a way to get around that too.” He stopped to take a sip of his coffee. “How you been, Ken?”

“Okay, considering.”

“I hear you. Nice to see you.” Nods all around.

“Yep. A bit blustery this morning.”

“No shit. My old lady is going to be on me to start raking.”

“Goddamn raking.”

“Hell with it, this might be the year I pay someone to do it.”

“Oh, bullshit, you're too much of a tightwad.”

“We'll see. Hey, I saw the bench they put up on the river trail for your boy, Ken. Looks like they did a real nice job.”

“It's just a bench.”

“I know. But it's in a good spot there. A person could sit there in the shade and see the river.”

“I don't even know who came up with that idea. I had nothing to do with it.”

“I think it was the folks at the fire department. The other paramedics down there.”

“They never asked me.”

“Well, it's a real nice bench. There's a plaque and everything.”

“It's just a bench.”

“Looks well made, though. Comfortable.”

“It's just a fucking bench. Okay? Can we all agree on that?”

“They should have asked you.”

“We could go down there and tear the bastard out.”

“I don't want to tear it out. It's only a bench, and it means nothing to me. Dogs will be pissing on it long after we're dead and buried.” Ken took a sip of his coffee. He checked to see if his hands were shaking and they weren't. This was recent, something he'd never had to do before in his life. “You hear they're going to start issuing wolf tags?” he said. “I think we should all go get one.”

“Kill one wolf, save a thousand elk.”

“Shoot, shovel, and shut up, that's what I always say.”

“Goddamn right.”

They said that he was on his way to get her. That's what the cops said, and she had to believe they were right. She didn't truly think he would have harmed the boys. But who's to say? Obviously she didn't know him anymore and maybe she never had. She'd been saved by a traffic stop of all things. He was driving too fast through the park, and when the trooper hit his lights, Tony had sped up going the other way. He was going almost eighty, they said, when he hit the berm along the river. His car came up and over and landed in the water upside down.

Sometimes in the early morning she came awake with the feeling that a hand was on her hip, a male presence at her back. If she was still half asleep she might remember the dream she was having. Sometimes it was Dale, kind and considerate and serious, and when this was the case she woke up sad. Sometimes it was Tony, the old Tony, the one who knew her better than anyone, and on these occasions she woke up flushed and hating herself.

After it happened, weeks after the funeral, she stopped by Dale's father's house. She brought him a pan of lasagna. He stood in the doorway. Made no move to let her in.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I don't know what to say.”

“There's nothing to be sorry about,” he said. His eyes saying just the opposite. “I'll bring your pan back to you tomorrow,” he said. “And I'd appreciate if you never did anything like this again. I'd just as soon you didn't.” He shut the door carefully and Jeannette walked home. She had to sit on the front steps for a long time before she'd found a face she could present to her sons.

They'd gotten a big snow overnight and school was canceled. Their mom had stayed home from work and made them hot chocolate. His little brother had the hot chocolate, but he told her he'd rather have coffee. He made sure she did it correctly, five scoops. He put a lot of cream in it and sugar and a little hot chocolate too and that was pretty good. They sat drinking in the kitchen watching the flakes come down fat and white as the pom-poms on a Christmas hat.

“Let's get all our warm stuff on and go out to the park,” his mom said. It was her cheerful voice, the one she used a little bit before but seemed to use a lot now.

He shrugged.

“We could build a snowman,” his little brother said.

His mom was stirring her coffee. “That sounds like a good idea,” she said. “Let's do it.”

On the way to the park, someone passed them on skis, going right down the middle of the street. The trees were coated in a thick, white blanket, the pines with their branches weighted down and sagging, so that if he bumped them they'd shed their load and spring up in a shower of fine crystal.

They made a snowman, but they hadn't thought to bring a carrot for a nose or coal for eyes, so they just used sticks but it didn't look quite right. He and his brother karate-kicked its head off.

He got the idea that he might like to build a snow fort. Kind of like an igloo, but also with some sticks, like a tipi. He enlisted his brother's help. His mother helped for a while, too, but then she said she was tired and went to sit on a bench. There were some trees over there, and he could just see the river behind her. She was wearing a bright-red Livingston Fire Department hat that used to be Dale's, and he had the thought that if snowmen had blood, their insides would look like a cherry snow cone.

When he looked up again a short time later, he saw that there was a man, sitting on the bench next to his mother. They were at opposite ends, and he was too far away to see if they were talking. It didn't look like they were. It looked like the bench was too small for the two of them, like they didn't want to be on it with each other. The man was wearing a bright-orange hunting cap. Neon orange. His mom had her bright hat on, and this man had his on, and everything else was white snow or gray tree trunks or black river. He stopped working on his fort wall and started to walk over. His mom thought he was a little kid still, but he wasn't. He was ten years old now and he'd picked up a fallen cottonwood stick as big around as his wrist, and he was stomping fast through the deep snow, watching his mother the whole time.

When he got closer, he could see his mother wiping at tears, smiling. This was fairly common now too. She had her cheerful voice and then her even more cheerful wiping-away-tears voice.

“It's fine,” she said. “I'm okay, honey. Say hi to Ken. We were just talking.”

“Hi, Ken.” He still had his stick resting on his shoulder. Ken's eyes were red rimmed, and his nose was running. He was leaning over doing something with his hands in the snow next to his leg. He threw the snowball with almost no warning. “Batter's up, kid,” was all he said.

Probably Ken thought he'd miss, but his dad had taught him how to hit a long time ago, and he was ready even though it looked like he wasn't. He swung his cottonwood stick as hard as he could, and the snowball evaporated into a mist of cold white powder that slowly filtered down over all three of them. He could feel it melting on his neck under his collar. It turned to wet drops like tears under Ken's cheeks. It coated his mom's dark hair so it looked like she'd instantly gone old and gray.

“Hot damn,” Ken said. “What a cut that was. You might make the big leagues yet.”

A
t the last rest stop before Crow Agency, Perry pulled off and donned the uniform in a stall in the men's restroom. Navy-blue wool pants and high-topped leather riding boots. A navy-blue wool tunic with gaudy chevrons and large gilt buttons. Elbow-length calfskin gloves. A broad-brimmed hat with one side pinned up rakishly. He smoothed his drooping mustache and ran his fingers through his long blond hair. When he got back into his car, he had to take off the hat. He was tall, and the crown crushed against his Camry's low ceiling.

Out over the Bighorn range the sky was going red, a red shot through with sooty black tendrils of cirrus horsetail. He came in fast, pushing the Camry up to ninety down the last hill into the Little Bighorn valley. It felt like a charge, headlong and headstrong, brash, driving hard into the final waning moments of a lurid sunset. He put the windows down to feel the rush of air. Only in this place, Perry thought, could the sky look like an expanse of infected flesh. What was the saying?

Red sky at night, sailors take fright?

Red sky at night, keep your woman in sight?

How about: red sky at night, bad men delight?

He'd gotten his usual room at the War Bonnet Motel and Casino. There was a king-sized bed and an ironing board that folded down from the wall and an unplugged mini-fridge. The first thing he did was plug in the mini-fridge. The second thing he did was take off and hang up the uniform. Then Perry stretched out on the bed in his boxer shorts and undershirt and fell asleep.

When he woke an hour later it was full dark. He drank a beer and flipped through the channels until he found the weather and was pleased to see the weekend forecast called for high eighties and almost no chance of rain. It was going to be hot and dusty out there but better that than rain. Nothing like rain to ruin a reenactment.

Perry called home. It was only nine, but Andy sounded sleepy when she answered.

“Did I wake you?”

“No. It's okay.”

“It's only nine, I didn't think you'd be asleep.”

“It's okay. It's just I had a feeling like I wasn't going to be able to sleep tonight so I took something, and then there was this documentary about meerkats on PBS, and I started watching that and fell asleep and was having these absolutely insane rodent dreams. You know, that's the problem with when you take something, you fall asleep and then you dream so hard it's like you have a full day or sometimes it seems like a year, and then, just as you are ready to lay down for sleep, you wake up. You know what I mean? You take something and you sleep, but you're not rested. Anyway, how was the drive?”

“Fine. Long. I got an audio book at a truck stop in Sioux Falls. It was about this guy in New York who tried for a year to follow the Bible exact. Did you know that the Bible says you shouldn't wear clothing that is made of fabric that mixes wool and linen?”

“I had no idea.”

“Seriously. Also you shouldn't trim your sideburns, and the corners of your garments should have tassels.”

“Tassels?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I'm not sure. But, according to the book, there's a store in New York City that sells nothing but tassels. Tassels Without Hassles.”

“What?”

“That's what it's called. The store. Tassels Without Hassles.”

“Huh. Why was this guy doing this? Trying to follow the Bible exact, I mean, what was his reason outside of trying to come up with an idea for a book?”

“To awaken his spiritual side I guess. Connect to his Old Testament ancestors.”

“Is he Jewish, the author?”

“Yeah. In the book he went to a Hasidic dance in Crown Heights in New York, which, from what I gather, is like an Indian reservation but for Orthodox Jews. There weren't any women there—they didn't allow them to come to the dance. It was a life-changing experience, he said.”

“Sweet, sounds fun.”

“Yeah.”

“I think if I were a Hasidic woman I'd have a big problem with not being allowed to dance.”

“Perry, I think I'm going to go to bed now.”

“Sounds like it might be a good idea. I'm tired myself from all the driving.”

“Love.”

“Love.”

Perry drank another beer, then put on the uniform and headed down to the War Bonnet Lounge. He was surprised to see a new bartender this year, a young guy with a black goatee and a spiderweb tattooed over his elbow. “Well,” the bartender said when Perry bellied up, “looks like the reenactment is in town. Either that or you're lost. In the wrong century.” He laughed.

“Maybe both,” said Perry. “Where's Nolan?”

“He died.”

“No shit. When?”

“April.”

“How?”

“He was old. And diabetic. And Indian. How do you think he died?”

“I was accustomed to seeing him here. We were kind of friends. I didn't know. How old was he anyway?”

“I have no idea, old enough to die and not have it be much of a surprise to anyone that actually knew him.”

“Okay, fair enough.”

“Beer?”

“PBR with a shot of Evan.”

Perry shot the Evan and chased with a small sip of Pabst. He scanned the slot machines. When the bartender came around, Perry asked about Kat.

“Kat who?” the bartender said, narrowing his eyes. “Kat Realbird?”

“Yes, Kat Realbird. She been around tonight?”

The bartender leaned his elbows on the bar and spun an empty shot glass around on the bar top.

“Not tonight. Last night, though.”

“How was she? I mean, how did she seem? How did she look?”

“What do you mean, how did she seem? She came in and played nickel slots with her old grandmother. She had two Coronas with lime. She looked fine. She wore pants. And a shirt. And she had black hair. And she looked Indian. I mean what the fuck do you want from me here?”

“Nothing. That's it. That's all I wanted. Thank you.”

Perry finished his beer, and when he did, flagged down the bartender.

“Another?”

“No, I'm done. But a quick favor for me, if you would. When you see Kat Realbird give her a message for me. Tell her the General is back in town.”

That night Perry fell asleep waiting, nursing a beer, still in full uniform on the king-sized bed. When the knock on the door came, he thrashed awake and spilled the beer down the side of his tunic.

She stood in the shadows thrown by the motel vapor lights. She was in full regalia—a turkey-bone breastplate, a fawn leather breechclout—her hair braided and adorned with a single raven's feather. Her paint was different this year, the left side of her face starting below the eye was chalk white; the right side was unpainted except for a red, quarter-sized circle on her high cheekbone.

Crossing the threshold she was on him hard, her hands twisted in his tunic, her lips dampening his full mustache. She drove him back onto the bed and her smell—a mixture of leather, bear-grease face paint and knockoff Chanel No. 5—came over him. He breathed in where her neck met her shoulder and it was like a return home after a long journey fraught with uncertainty and peril.

“I think about you,” he said. “Back home at work I sometimes put on my uniform and imagine this. I'll sometimes spend whole days downstairs in my office, in full dress. I do conference calls in my hat and gloves and cavalry pants. It makes me feel closer to you—to this.”

He was still on the bed. She was in the room's small bathroom washing off the face paint and rinsing the grease from her hair. She came out toweling her hair, her face clean and bare. He could see the faint pockmarks on her cheeks.

“I have to wash that stuff off, or I break out terribly.”

“Kat, did you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“And? Do you think of me? During the year, in your real life?”

“I do. But it doesn't change anything, so I try not to.”

She got in bed and put her body tight next to his, her face on his bare chest. She twisted a lock of his long blond hair between her fingers and then put the ends in her mouth, wetting it to a tip like a paintbrush. She traced invisible designs on his chest.

“You painted your face different this year,” he said. “I almost didn't recognize you.”

“Oh? You have a lot of half-naked Indian women in traditional dress coming to your hotel rooms these days?”

“Of course. But I send them all away.”

“Sha, you know no one but me is crazy enough to do this with you. Just so you know, I wasn't going to do it this year, the reenactment. But when I came to the War Bonnet, and heard you were back I just couldn't not come. I gave John some half-assed excuse and came up to my cousin's. You realize that I just snuck out and walked a mile across Crow Agency in the dark in a breechclout with no panties or bra?”

“Thank you. You were beautiful. You
are
beautiful.”

“Sha, yousay. General?”

“Hm?”

“I've had a bad year.”

The first day of the reenactment went as well as could be expected. They did three shows each day of the weekend, and the first was always the roughest. There were always logistics to be straightened out. Horses that acted up. That was Perry's least favorite part about the whole thing. The horses. Inevitably he got stuck on some knobby nag that wanted to stop mid-battle to take a mouthful of grass or take a shit right were Perry was supposed to lie after being killed.

As had become their custom, on the first day Perry waited on Last Stand ridge until Kat had time to get there and kill him. He knew it pissed some of the guys off, the way he refused to go down until Kat came flying up the ridge and vaulted from her horse with a piercing war cry—but so what, tough shit for them. She would run at him and he would fall under her weight. As she pretended to slit his throat she always gave him a full kiss on the lips, her body shielding this from the people watching in the grandstands. He never wanted her more than right then. Pretend dead on his back in the dust and the horseshit, an erection straining the front of his blue cavalry trousers.

This year was different, but only a little. Perry staggered and gestured as if he were in agony. The field was littered with the bodies of the fallen, and he could sense their annoyance. Fucking go down already, man, one of the dead bluecoats lying in the dust near him muttered. It's hotter than hell out here. Show's over. Warriors on horseback were circling and Perry stumbled and then rose slowly to his feet. The crowd was clapping and cheering, and he was scanning the ridgeline for Kat. And then she came and it was a sight to see. She and her horse were cast from the same mold. Her brown thighs rippled and tensed, echoing, rhyming the muscled brown haunches of her mount. Everything was black streaming hair, black flowing mane. He turned to face her and when she swung one leg and sprung from the horse he caught a fast glimpse of taut inner thigh. His heart hiccupped. She rushed him and tackled him full force. He tried to get a quick feel of breast as he went down but she made a show of pinning his arms as she straddled him with her knife between her teeth. She brought the dulled blade across his throat theatrically and when she leaned in close for the kiss he thought he saw tears smearing the paint on her cheeks. It could have been sweat. But then he saw her sad smile.

There were no good restaurants in Crow Agency—actually no restaurants at all if you didn't consider fast food a viable option—so he bought steaks and they grilled them on the small fenced patio off the back of his hotel room. It didn't matter, about the lack of restaurants, because they couldn't have been seen like that anyway, out together. The reservation was small. Word would have traveled.

Perry got the beer she liked, Corona, and they drank them while he messed with the steaks. Kat painted her toenails, her knees drawn up to her chest. Over the top of the warped vinyl patio fence Perry could just make out a ragged flock of turkey vultures circling over the battlefield, searching for stray hot dogs and partially eaten Indian tacos left by the tourists.

“Do you mind if I call my wife quickly?”

“You know I don't.”

“Okay, we'll eat soon.”

He went into the room and left the door open behind him. He sat on the edge of the bed and called.

“Andy. Hi, it's me.”

“Oh, hi, I was just loading the dishwasher, just a minute.” Perry heard the phone being fumbled. He could see her fumbling it, her hands wet with soap.

“Okay, I'm back. How did it go today?”

“Pretty good. Hot and dusty. But we put on a good show. I think the people were happy. During the second act the guy that finally killed me was a little rough with the takedown. I've got some bruises.”

“Geez, my poor banged-up man. What do these guys think? It's not your fault how everything worked out, you know, the scope of history and all that. They won the battle; we won the war. No need to take it out on you. Actually, I don't know how you do it. I think it would start to get to me, you know, dying every day. It's like you're a sacrifice.”

“Or a martyr for the greater American conscience.”

“Yeah, that's it, Jesus H. Custer dying for our sins. Three times a day.”

“Whose sins exactly, do you suppose?”

“I'm not sure, everyone's, I guess. What are we even talking about?”

“I don't know either, never mind. How are you feeling today? Yesterday you seemed tired.”

“Yeah, to tell you the truth I hardly remember our conversation. I was a little whacked-out. This new stuff they've got me on is potent.”

There was a pause, her sharp intake of breath, and a soft laugh that couldn't mask what lay underneath.

“Jesus, I feel like shit.”

“I'm sorry. Maybe I shouldn't have left.”