Love Medicine Page 14

  Then she saw the soldier again.

  He was walking quickly, duffel hoisted up his shoulder, along the opposite side of the street. Again she followed. Stepping from her doorway she walked parallel with him, bundle slung from her hand and bouncing off her legs. He must have been a little over six feet. She was tall herself and always conscious of the height of men. She stopped when he paused before a windowful of pearl button shirts buff Stetsons, and thick-nosed pawned pistols. He stayed there a long time, moving from one display to the next. He was never still. He smoked quickly, Littering, dragging hard and snapping the cigarette against his middle finger. He turned back and forth, constantly aware of who was passing or what was making what noise where.

  He knew the girl had been following and watching.

  He knew she was watching now. He had noticed her first in the bus station. Her straight brown hair and Indian eyes drew him, AWL even though she was too young. She was tall, strong, twice the size of most Vietnamese. It had been a long time since he’d seen any Indian women, even a breed. He had been a soldier, was now a veteran, had seen nine months of combat in the Annamese Cordillera before the NVA captured him somewhere near Pleiku.

  They kept him half a year. He was released after an honorable peace was not achieved, after the evacuation. Returning home he had been fouled up in red tape, routinely questioned by a military psychiatrist, dismissed. It had been three weeks, only that, since the big C-141 and Gia Lam airfield.

  He examined the pawnshop window again.

  Enough of this, he thought. He turned to face her.

  Her legs were long, slightly bowed. jeans lapped her toed-in boots.

  She’d be good with a horse. One hand was tensed in the pocket of a cheap black nylon parka. Passing headlights periodically hit her face-wide with strong, jutting bones. Not pretty yet, a kid trying to look old. Jailbait. She stared back at him through traffic. She was carrying a knotted bundle.

  He had seen so many with their children, possessions, animals tied in cloths across their backs, under their breasts, bundles dragged in frail carts. He had seen them bolting under fire, arms wrapped around small packages. Some of the packages, loosely held the way hers was, exploded. Henry Lamartine Junior carried enough shrapnel deep inside of him, still working its way out, to set off the metal detector in the airport. He had been physically searched there in a small curtained booth. When he told the guard what the problem was, the man just looked at him and said nothing, dumb as stone. Henry had wanted to crush that stupid face the way you crumple a ball of wax paper.

  The girl did not look stupid. She only looked young. She turned away.

  He thought that she might walk off carrying that bundle. She could go anywhere. Possibility of danger. Contents of bundle that could rip through flesh and strike bone. It was as much the sense of danger, the almost sweet familiarity he had–Mod with risk by now, as it was the attraction for her that made him put his hands out, stopping traffic, and cross to where she stood.

  He turned out to be from a family she knew. A crazy LamaTtine boy.

  Henry.

  “I know your brother Lyman,” she said. “I heard about you.

  How’d you get loose?”

  “I’m like my brother Gerry. No jail built that can hold me either.

  ” He grinned when she told him her name.

  “Old Man Kashpaw know you’re hanging out on NP Avenue?”

  Albertine took his arm. “I’m thirsty,” she said.

  They walked beneath the cowgirl’s lariat and found a table in the Round-Up Bar. After two drinks there they moved down the street, and kept moving on. Somewhere later that night, in the whiskey, her hand brushed his. He would not let go.

  “You know any bar tricks?” she asked. “Show me one.

  He dropped her hand and she made it into a fist and shoved it in her pocket. She still clutched her bundle tight between her feet, under the table. He got three steak knives and two water glasses from the bartender and brought them back to the table.

  He set the glasses down half a foot apart. Then he inter lapped the knives so they made a bridge between the glass lips, a bridge of knives suspended in air.

  Albertine looked at the precarious, linked edges.

  She was nervous, but she didn’t recognize this feeling, because it was part of a whirl in her stomach that was like excitement.

  When Henry and Albertine left the bar it was very late, past last call, past closing. The streets were quiet. He put his arm around her and she stumbled once beneath its weight.

  A small black-and-white television flickered on a high shelf behind the hotel desk. President Nixon’s face drooped across the screen. The night clerk took Henry’s ten-dollar bill, and threw it -NOW into the cash drawer and sleepily shoved a pen and lined slip across the counter toward him. The clerk was a mound of flesh tapering into a small thick skull. Waiting for the soldier to sign, he yawned so hugely that tears sprang from his eyes. It did not interest him that the man and girl, both Indian or Mexicans, whatever, signed in as Mr. and Mrs. Howdy Doody and were shacking up for the night.

  Whatever. He yawned again.

  Mother fucker, Henry thought, lazy motherfucker, aren’t you?

  Drunk, he had taken a violent dislike to the man. I could off this fat shit, he told himself But Albertine was there. “Advise restraint, ” he said out loud. She didn’t seem to hear. The place was well off the avenue, and the short upstairs hall was quiet. Henry steered her easily before him, touching her shoulder blades through the bunched padding in the nylon jacket. He shook the thought of the fat clerk away, far as possible.

  “Angel, where’s your wings,” he whispered into her hair.

  “They should be here.” He pressed the ends of his fingers hard against her jutting bones.

  Her laugh was high and soft. He fumbled for the key. He was not used to having keys again and always forgot where he put them.

  Groping, patting, he fished the room key from his jacket and put it to the lock. She was poised, half turned from what she might see when the door opened. He waved her in. Once she entered and stood in the hard overhead light, he saw that she was bone tired, sagging from the broad sawhorse shoulders down, her hair wrenched in a clump by the barrette.

  He was drunker than she was. She had stopped after a few and let him go on drinking, talking, until he spilled too many and knew it was time to taper off.

  There was no table lamp. He turned off the overhead light and left on the one over the bathroom mirror.

  “Warma use the head?”

  At first she shook her head dumbly, no, and looked at the floor.

  But then I can close the door and he’ll be out there, she thought.

  ME RING

  ML: She walked past him. He heard water rush into the sink. The other sounds she tried to hide made him smile. Women are so fucking cute sometimes it hurts. It really hurts.

  Don’t ever want to come out of here. She leaned her forehead on cool tile.

  “When angel showers,” he was singing to her closed door, come your way.

  They bring the flowers that bloom in May.”

  He steadied himself on the iron bed rails, tried to pull his boots off, went to his knees.

  “Keep looking for a bluebird and listen… . I know by God is sing in there. I heard you. It sounded like rain on a you were p tin roof Then he was beating his chest lightly, like in the cold mission church he had served in when he was eight.

  “Mea culpa, mea culpa, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof He tried to stand.

  Hearing the sounds of a toothbrush he swayed backward, laughing. It sounded ridiculous. Sitting on the floor, stiff legged, he took off his boots and socks, then stood up warily to ease off his pants, unbutton his shirt. He set the bottle of Four Roses on a chair where he could reach it and turned down the covers on the bed. Then he crawled in and watched the crack of light around all four sides of the bathroom door.

  “it was rehung a size too small
,” he said in a loud critical

  “Or else it shrunk in the frame.” He laughed again.

  voice.

  He is out of his mind.

  She came through the door, put some clothes down neatly folded, and disappeared again. “if I close my eyes and imagine very hard what you’re doing …” He addressed the bottle, then unscrewed the top.

  With his eyes shut he drank the rough whiskey. It left a sweet burn going down, and when he looked again his vision had narrowed.

  He said those men took trophies. Skin pressed in the pages of a book.

  There was often a stage in his drunkenness where his eyesight tunneled, like looking through the wrong end of binoculars. He had to be very careful now to remember where he was. He did not dare take his eyes from the shrinking door. “Please … , ” he urged the dark room, “don’t … ” fearing something might break the concentration.

  But he kept tight control. Advise restraint. Advise restraint, his brain tapped. He began connecting each loud invisible rustle with a very specific movement that the woman must make as she undressed. From top to bottom. He undressed her mentally with slow deliberation and no desire.

  Then suddenly, naked. She had even rolled her socks and stuck them in her boots.

  She should have come out then, but she didn’t. His heart pumped.

  Concentration began to slacken. The image of her fled. He rolled from the bed and started to the door, feeling his way along the edge of the mattress until he lost it and had to cross long steps of endless space, where he thought water lapped his ankles. The rustling stopped.

  Silence warns. He was going to kick and jump aside like in the village back there, but from somewhere he gained a measure of control.

  He gripped the handle. The door swung in. The light seemed to move around her in sheets, and the tunnel widened.

  Oil the tiny square of floor, still dressed, the bundle she had carried opened and spread all around her, she crouched low.

  And he saw her as the woman back there.

  How the hell could you figure them?

  She looked at him. They had used a bayonet. She was out of her mind.

  You, me, same. Same. She pointed to her eyes and his eyes.

  The Asian, folded eyes of some Chippewas. She was hemorrhaging.

  Question her Sir, she is dying, sir.

  “And anyway, what could I have asked? Huh? What the hell?”

  Albertine was looking at him, staring at him. He realized he had spoken out loud.

  The brown hair swung over her face as she bent, smoothing a red handkerchief into a small square. She was wrapping things back into her bundle. He tucked a gray towel around his waist and lowered himself onto the edge of the stool. Her clothing was spread between them. He bent over and picked up a thin longwaisted pair of cotton underpants, doubled them, put them back.

  “I’ll help you,” he said.

  “I don’t need any help.”

  He put his hands in his lap. He wanted cigarettes now, badly, but he didn’t want to go back and look for them in the dark where the bed was.

  “Would you get me my smokes? I’m drunk.”

  His voice caught in his throat. She did not answer or look at him but went out of the room.

  I shouldn’t stay here, she thought. But all my things are here.

  The was talking to himself While she was gone he noticed that his face, hands, chest were cold with sweat. His hands trembled when he lighted the Marlboro.

  Weak, he thought, holding the smoke in his lungs. But now he was used to the shaking, this kind of shaking, which meant that the tightness was lowering, lowering him. He lit one cigarette from another and dropped the ends in the bowl beneath his hip.

  As he watched her, his breathing gradually calmed. The blackness edging his vision dropped away. The movements of her hands were humble and certain. She had a long curved back and those ut ting shoulder blades, like wings of horn.

  How long can I sit here and let him watch me like this? She felt like she was still riding on the bus. Her blood rocked.

  “Please,” he said finally, when she had put everything in order several times, “can we go to bed? I won’t touch you. Too drunk anyhow.”

  “All right.

  He took her hand and led her from the bathroom, half shutting the door.

  “I’m going to leave the light on if that’s okay with you.”

  She nodded silently.

  She took her jeans, boots, socks off, then slid into bed. She was wearing a long-sleeved shirt and underwear. Once beside him, although she had been half asleep as she folded her clothes, she became completely alert, conscious of his lightest movement.

  Good night. I’m going to shut my eyes and pretend to steep.

  But the pretense just increased her sensitivity to his breathing, to the way the sheets scratched against his body.

  The CREDIT sign across the street ticked on by slow stages until the letters completed, flared three times in silence. She turned to him.

  She propped herself on her elbow and unbuttoned her shirt. He took her hand away and worked the cloth off her shoulders. She wore a thick cotton brassiere. He put both arms around her and undid the hook.

  Once she was naked beneath him, he could hold off no longer. In panic, he tried to surge inside of her.

  Her fear excited him so much, though, that he came helplessly, pressed against her, before he was even hard. She was quiet, waiting for him to say something. She touched his face, but he did not speak, so she rolled away from him.

  Henry was not drunk anymore, not in the least. He knew that In a moment he would want her again, the right way, and in this expectation he listened as she pretended to sleep. Her back curved, a warm slope.

  The length and breadth of her seemed edge less He felt wonder and moved closer. She tensed. Her breathing changed.

  She gave off a fetid traveler’s warmth, cigarette smoke, bus-seat smell, a winy undertone from what they’d drunk, the crackery smell of snow melted into unwashed hair, a flowery heat from her armpits.

  He thought of diving off a riverbank, a bridge.

  He closed his eyes and saw the water, the whirling patterns, below.

  He pushed her over, face down, and pinned her from behind. He spread her legs with his knees and pulled her toward him.

  Muffled, slogged in pillows, she gripped the head bars. He pushed into her. She made a harsh sound. Her back was board hard, resistant.

  Then she gave with a cry. He touched her with the cushioned part of his fingers until she softened to him. She opened. The bones of her pelvis creaked wide, like the petals of a wooden flower, and he thought she came. Then he did, too.

  Wobbling then surging smoothly forward, he came whispering that he loved her.

  Afterward, he let her go, put his face in dark hair behind her ear, and was about to whisper love talk, but she rolled out from under his chest.

  She got as far away from him as possible. It was, to Henry, as if she had crossed a deep river and disappeared. He lay next to her, divided from her, just outside and with no way to follow.

  At last she slept. Her even breath was a desolate comfort. He wound his hand in a long Thank of her hair and, eventually, slept, too.

  Near dawn Albertine could not remember where she was. She could not remember about the dull ache between her legs. She turned to the man and made the mistake of touching him in his sleep. His name came back to her. She was about to say his name.

  He shrieked. Exploded.

  She was stunned on the floor, gasping for breath against the “ago L wall before the syllables of his name escaped. Outside their room a door opened and shut. Somewhere in the room she heard his breath, a slow animal wheeze that froze her to the wall. He moved.

  The scent of his harsh fear hit her first as he came toward her.

  In reflex, she crossed her arms b6ore her face. A dark numbing terror had stopped her mind completely. But when he touched her he was weeping.

  THE RED CON
VERTIBLE r ra jr (1974)

  LYMAN LAMAR TINE

  I was the first one to drive a convertible on my reservation. And of course it was red, a red Olds. I owned that car along with my brother Henry junior. We owned it together until his boots filled with water on a windy night and he bought out my share. Now Henry owns the whole car, and his younger brother Lyman (that’s myselo, Lyman walks everywhere he goes.

  How did I earn enough money to buy my share in the first place? My one talent was I could always make money. I had a touch for it, unusual in a Chippewa. From the first I was different that way, and everyone recognized it. I was the only kid they let in the American Legion Hall to shine shoes, for example, and one Christmas I sold spiritual bouquets for the mission door to door. The nuns let me keep a percentage. Once I started, it seemed the more money I made the easier the money came.

  Everyone encouraged it. When I was fifteen I got a job washing dishes at the Joliet cafe, and that was where my first big break happened.

  it wasn’t long before I was promoted to bussing tables, and then the short-order cook quit and I was hired to take her place.

  No sooner than you know it I was managing the Joliet. The rest is history. I went on managing. I soon become part owner, and of course there was no stopping me then. It wasn’t long before the whole thing was mine.

  After I’d owned the Joliet for one year, it blew over in the worst tornado ever seen around here. The whole operation was smashed to bits.

  A total loss. The fryalator was up in a tree, the grill torn in half like it was paper. I was only sixteen. I had it all in my mother’s name, and I lost it quick, but before I lost it I had every one of my relatives, and their relatives, to dinner, and I also bought that red Olds I mentioned, along with Henry.

  The first time we saw it! I’ll tell you when we first saw it. We had gotten a ride up to Winnipeg, and both of us had money. Don’t ask me why, because we never mentioned a car or anything, we just had all our money. Mine was cash, a big bankroll from the Joliet’s insurance.