Indian Country Noir Read online

  "Do you know what this is?" he asked.

  The Indian stared at the deer hide pouch. "A medicine bundle?"

  "A medicine bundle," Sheriff Moran agreed. "I thought you'd like to have it. It belonged to your father."

  Lame Elk looked directly at the sheriff. "How come you have it?"

  "Bear Hunter gave it to me before he died. He told me to keep it for you until the time came when you needed it most. I think that time has come."

  Erickson, his back to the two men, scowled. What the hell had gotten into Moran?

  The sheriff held the pouch out to Lame Elk. For several moments the Indian sat immobile, then reached for it. He was unable to control the trembling of his hand. Staring at the beaded borders of the medicine bundle, he thought not of Bear Hunter, but of his mother, Star Woman. He remembered the winter she had sewn those beads on the pouch. It had been a time of brutal cold and heavy snows. Game was scarce and supplies were not getting through to the reservation. Many people died that winter, including his brother and sister. His mother, too, was sick with consumption. The dark spots on the deer hide of the bundle were, he knew, flecks of blood that had escaped from between her fingers when she covered her mouth while coughing. He scraped at them with his thumbnail, but they were now part of the hide, just as his mother's gaunt face was part of his memory.

  "Your father will need this," she had told him. Perhaps she was right. Bear Hunter had survived and become a chief. He, Lame Elk, had survived too, although he often wished he hadn't. Star Woman, the mother he loved, had died before she could see another winter.

  "There's a man you should see today before you go back to the reservation," Sheriff Moran said.

  Lame Elk blinked. He had forgotten he was still in the sheriff's office.

  "His name is Johnson. Hugh Johnson. He's got an office above the hardware store. He wants to meet you."

  ?" "Why•

  The sheriff shrugged. "I'll let him tell you. I told him you'd stop by this morning."

  Leaving the warmth of the office, Lame Elk shivered as the first blast of icy wind hit him. He thrust his hands into his sheepskin jacket pockets and, leaning into the wind, walked down Ashland's main street. Unconsciously, he fingered the medicine bundle, still held in his right hand.

  On this frigid Saturday morning in January, the town seemed deserted. A pickup truck stacked with bales of hay drove slowly down the street, exhaust vapors billowing behind it. The snow crunched beneath Lame Elk's boots as he headed for the cafe, the lettering of its sign blurred by the wind-induced tears that obscured his vision.

  At first, the waitress ignored him. Two white men seated at the counter gave Lame Elk a dirty look when he sat down near them. They picked up their plates and coffees and headed to a booth.

  "Can I get some coffee, please?" Lame Elk said to the frizzy-haired woman busying herself to his left, arranging pie slices on a turntable at the counter.

  She glanced at him with disgust. "You got money?"

  Lame Elk pulled out his wallet and extracted the six dollars it contained. He held the bills up in the air so she could see them. The waitress set a cup in front of him, hard enough so that coffee overflowed the rim and ran onto the counter. Lame Elk sopped it up with a napkin. He stretched his arm out for the sugar container and picked out a handful of packets. Meticulously, he emptied six of them into his cup and stirred the now thick brew. He closed his eyes and sipped the coffee. He nodded contentedly to himself when the bad taste in his mouth finally disappeared.

  Lame Elk's nausea had subsided and he was hungry. The waitress ignored him again when he raised his hand to get her attention and he decided not to ask her for anything else. Standing up, he slapped a dollar down on the counter and walked to the door. The two white men in the booth glared at him when he left.

  Midmorning and still bitterly cold. Lame Elk looked up and down the street, his breath rising in a cloud above his head. He couldn't bear the thought of returning to his hovel on the rez. The sheriff had mentioned someone named Johnson, a man who wanted to meet him. Lame Elk couldn't imagine why. He didn't know any Hugh Johnson. Yet the hardware store was only a block away. Might as well, Lame Elk thought. Got nothing else to do.

  Standing in front of the store, he peered up at the dark second-floor windows. There was no sign indicating what kind of office it was. Lame Elk pushed open the door at the side of the store's display window and trudged up a flight of wooden steps. Black letters were printed on the frosted glass of a closed door. Office of Economic Opportunity. The words meant nothing to Lame Elk. He turned the knob and found himself in a room with a metal desk and three straight-backed chairs. A door at the opposite end of the room was closed. Lame Elk stopped in front of the desk, as if whoever usually sat there might reappear. He stared at a painting hanging on the wall behind it. Mounted Indians on a high bluff pointed at white men approaching in the distance.

  Lame Elk scratched his head, wondering why the sheriff had sent him here, if no one was around. He was on the verge of leaving when a slender man with a neatly trimmed beard entered the room from the inner door. He was dressed in a flannel shirt and jeans, no different from Lame Elk's attire, but the man's clothes were clean. "I thought I heard someone come in," he said. "Secretary's not here on Saturdays. I'm Hugh Johnson."

  "The sheriff said you wanted to see me." Lame Elk became aware once again of the dismal sight he presented with his filthy, foul-smelling clothes.

  "You Lame Elk?"

  He nodded. He wasn't proud of it.

  "What happened to your face?"

  "I don't remember."

  Johnson frowned. "Come inside to my office. We can talk there."

  Lame Elk followed him through the door and into a small office. A bookcase, a desk, a padded chair, and a straight-back chair for visitors comprised its furnishings.

  "Have a seat," Johnson said, easing himself into the chair behind the desk.

  "Sheriff Moran told me you wanted to talk to me."

  "The sheriff tells me you've been having a rough time."

  Lame Elk shrugged, not knowing if he was supposed to answer.

  "Maybe I should tell you exactly what the sheriff told me. If you disagree with any of it, you can say so. He said he was a friend of your father, who was a great chief. After your mother died, you began having a problem with the bottle. Sheriff Moran said he thought many times of trying to help you, but decided you weren't ready for help. Now, for some reason, he thinks you are. Are you?"

  "What kind of help?"

  "Help that will bring back your self-respect. Job, clean clothes, a decent place to live."

  "That takes money."

  "It takes more than money. It takes willpower and sobriety. You know what that is?"

  Lame Elk lowered his eyes. "Yeah, I know."

  "I can help you if you think you're ready."

  "What do I have to do?"

  "The department I work for will find you a place to live right here in Ashland. Just a room, nothing fancy, but clean. And you'll be responsible for keeping it that way. We'll see that you get a job and clothes for work. You can pay the store back for the clothes from the money you make working. And after you've worked for a month you can decide if you want to stay put in the room or move to a different place. If you decide to stay in the room we found for you, you'll take over the rent, which isn't much."

  "Why would you do this for me?"

  "Like I said, the sheriff thinks you're ready for a change. But-" He raised the index finger of his right hand. "There's a catch. You have to stay sober, you have to report to work ev ery day, you have to stay out of trouble, and you have to go to meetings. Staying out of trouble should be easy if you're sober. If you break those rules, it's the end of our agreement. You're out of the room and out of a job."

  Lame Elk tucked his hands in his jacket pockets. He grasped the medicine bundle, rolling it around in his palm. "What kind of work?"

  "You know the feed store on Main Street? Munson's?" />
  Lame Elk nodded.

  "They need someone to receive orders, stack merchandise, wait on customers, clean up at the end of the day. Interested?"

  "Yeah."

  Johnson glanced at his watch. "I'll go over to the store with you and you can pick out some clothes. After you meet everyone, I'll take you to the room where you'll be living. It's a few blocks from the store."

  "When do I start work?"

  "Monday. That okay?"

  "Good," Lame Elk said. He knew if he was busy it would keep his mind off drink. It was the time after his work day ended that worried him. Would he be able to resist temptation?

  "You said something about going to meetings. What kind of meetings?"

  "AA, Alcoholics Anonymous. You heard of it?"

  Lame Elk nodded.

  "They meet every evening at a church here in town. You'll be going to your first meeting Monday when you get out of work."

  Lame Elk's first week was tough. Booze was never far from his thoughts, but he was busy enough to push it from his mind. Trucks rolled in several days a week, their pallets loaded with feed, fencing supplies, stock tanks, all needing to be unloaded. Stacking materials and ordering were daily chores. Lame Elk found himself enjoying the work, and taking pleasure in using his muscles again. What was most difficult for him was standing up in front of the AA group in the evening after work and admitting he was an alcoholic. By the time he got home after buying his dinner at Burger King, he was almost too tired to eat it.

  The second week was easier. Days went by without his wanting a drink. He was able to walk past a bar and ignore the smell of beer and cigarette smoke whenever someone opened the door. The aching in his arms and legs from the heavy lifting at work had subsided. His appetite was better and he was sleeping ten hours a night in a clean room with a clean bed. He'd already paid the feed store half of what he owed for the clothes he'd picked out that first day with Hugh Johnson. And he'd forced himself to write a letter to Russ at the Antlers bar with a twenty-dollar bill inside and a promise to pay the balance for the damage he'd caused. You'll have it all in another three weeks, Lame Elk wrote.

  Hugh Johnson stopped by the feed store during his third week to ask how things were going.

  "Good," Lame Elk said. "Very good."

  "Great. Munson says nice things about you. Come visit whenever you feel a need to talk. I'm in the office most days and two evenings till 9, Tuesday and Thursday."

  Lame Elk nodded. "Thanks."

  He was working outside in the feed store yard stacking fence panels later that week, his gloves doing little to warm his hands in the intense cold of late January. The collar of his Carhartt jacket was turned up around his neck. A stone-gray sky promised more snow by evening. A Chevy pickup truck drove through the yard's open gate and a man climbed out. He examined some panels and gates before walking up behind Lame Elk.

  "I'm looking for a sixteen-foot gate," he called out.

  Lame Elk turned around to encounter a familiar face. The man grinned. "Well, well, look who's here. You seem a little different than the last time I saw you. You stunk to high heaven then. Almost made me lose my breakfast."

  "I have a sixteen-foot gate," Lame Elk said. "I'll get it for you. Want me to load it on your truck?"

  "Hey, that's mighty white of you. That what you're doing now? Trying to be a white man with good manners?"

  "I don't want no trouble."

  "Trouble? Who's making trouble, chief? I'm just making small talk. You know, my friend and I didn't appreciate it that day in the cafe when you ruined our breakfast. Sitting down next to its, stinking of vomit and piss. My friend, he wanted to go out after you when you left to teach you a lesson. I told him a drunken Indian couldn't learn shit."

  "I don't drink anymore."

  "That so? Well, good for you, chief."

  "You want the gate loaded?"

  "I'll think about it. I have some things to get inside. I'm leaving my truck here, okay?"

  "Sure. It'll be here when you come out."

  The man's steely blue eyes met Lame Elk's and held his gaze.

  Five minutes later, the guy reappeared followed by someone else Lame Elk knew, Jesse Harpole, the feed store supervisor. Harpole was a man Lame Elk usually tried to avoid. The manager had taken a dislike to him for some reason.

  "What the hell do you think you're doing?" Harpole asked, his cheeks flushed in anger.

  Confusion covered Lame Elk's face. "What?"

  "Customer says you were rude to him, wouldn't help him find what he was looking for. And when he did find what he wanted, he said you wouldn't help him load it."

  Lame Elk shook his head. "That's not true. I told him I'd be happy to load the gate for him, but he said he wanted to do some more shopping."

  "Go inside and wait for me at the back register. I'll give you your severance pay when I come in. You're fired."

  Lame Elk, unable to comprehend what had just happened, kept turning his head to look at the two men as he walked toward the store's rear entrance.

  "Every time I hire a goddamn Indian, I get burned," he heard Harpole telling the man.

  Lame Elk waited at the register, as Harpole had instructed him. He reached into his pocket and fingered his father's medicine pouch. He pulled it out, sniffed it, and laid it next to the register. He unzipped the Carhartt jacket he'd picked out with Hugh Johnson and dropped it on the floor. Then he unbuttoned his flannel shirt, pulled it off, and let it fall on top of the coat. He bent down and yanked off the boots he'd bought, and unzipped his new Wranglers and stepped out of them. He stood in the emptiness of the back room, his braid a straight black line thick against his spine.

  Lame Elk opened the cash register and counted out his wages for the week and scattered the money like dried leaves on the pile of clothing.

  He walked out the door, oblivious to the cold and to the first large snowflakes coming down. He walked past the hardware store and looked up at the second-floor windows of Hugh Johnson's office. Lame Elk clutched Bear Hunter's medicine bundle in his bare hand and headed home.

  Los Angeles, California

  t wasn't Harry Garson's fault he didn't speak a word of Navajo or Apache or Ute or Hopi or whatever the fuck kind of Indian he was. He didn't know and he didn't give a shit. Never had and he wasn't about to start caring now. Not that he was barking about his genetics, mind you. His classic Indian looks-the rich bronze skin, dark and distant eyes, high cheekbones, proudly bent nose, granite jaw, downturned mouth-had landed him over a hundred and fifty roles, large and small, in A, B, and C oaters dating back to 1938's Forked River, Forked Tongue. As he advanced in years, his classic features, once those of the stereotypical proud brave-"Makeup and Costume, c'mon, get over here and get some fucking war paint and feathers on Harry. He's got a wagon train to ambush. We're losing the light, goddammit! "-had morphed into those of the sage chief. The distant eyes were now achingly sad, the brow above them knitted and furrowed. His cheeks had gone hollow and his angular jaw was now crooked thanks to a bar fight with Lock Martin-Klaatu barada nickto. Yes, that Lock Martin, all 71" of the guy who played Gort in The Day the Earth Stood Still-at Musso and Frank's in'53. Word was that Harry was getting the better of it until the normally gentle giant introduced the leg of a bar stool to Harry's chops.

  "Harry, you're turning my kishkas inside out," said movie agent Irv Rothenberg when he visited his client in the hospi tal. "Who picks a fight with a guy bigger than Mount Shasta, for chrissakes? Lock is a sweetheart. What did you say to him to set him off like that?"

  "I said Patricia Neal told me he had a small shwantz," Harry replied, waving his right pinky at his agent. "Big man, little pecker." Harry even managed a laugh, though his mouth was wired shut.

  "Oy gevalt, you're killing me, Harry!"

  Harry was blessed-Irv would say cursed-with the genuine gift of gab, which he could use for good-like talking his way into a part or into a starlet's bed-or for bad, a la Lock Martin. He also had a facility for doi
ng impersonations. When he was on the set with John Ford, Duke Wayne used to pay Harry to call up the second unit director and give him all manner of insane orders in Ford's voice. It got so bad that Ford had to start giving special code words to his staff so that they could recognize him and not the schmuck pretending to be him. The irony for Harry was that he didn't get his first speaking part until 1956's Red Scout, and then his only line was, "Blue horse soldier with yellow hair like waves, across running river." Not exactly the stuff of Shakespeare, but the speaking parts came more frequently after that and by the mid-'60s, Harry Garson had landed a regular role as Smells Like Bearstein, Chief of the Sosoomee Tribe, on the short-lived series Crazy Cavalry. By the late '60s, as Westerns fell out of favor and parts for aging chief types with a flare for the spoken word grew scarce, Harry settled into an angry semiretirement. The few big roles Harry auditioned for in the late '60s and '70s, he lost to Chief Dan George. That really got him going, especially when reruns of Little Big Man and The Outlaw Josey Wales played on the movie channels.

  "That fucking Canadian prick!" Harry would bark at the screen and imitate Chief Dan George's quiet, monotone de livery. "Every eighteen-year-old in this country ran to goddamn Canada to avoid the draft and this is who we got in exchange? I bet they had to write out his lines in pictographs, the senile old bastard."

  He was a charmer, Harry, but he had the bitterness in him too, and it began to overtake him as the years passed and the parts-those in the movies and those on his body-shriveled up. These weren't the only things shriveling up either. He had never been good with money, especially when it was plentiful. Although he denied it until the day he died, Randy "The Crooning Cowpoke" Butterworth of B-movie and early TV fame, was known to have once told Harry he was "the only redskin who acts like a kike, speaks like Olivier, and spends like a nigger." By the summer of '83, Harry Garson was about tapped out. Fourteen years since his last meaningful paying gig, he was living on fast food and five-buck-a-blowjob drug whores in a SRO hotel in downtown L.A. Then the phone rang in the hall outside his room and that all changed.