Every Cloak Rolled in Blood

Chapter Fifteen

Jeremiah McNally is at my house at 8:37 a.m. I open the door and let him in after looking past him to see if anyone is in his vehicle. I close the door behind him. “What’s up, partner?” I ask.

“I’m going out on a limb. You’d better have an explanation for dropping those guns in the parcel chute at the post office.”

“Who says I did anything at the post office?”

“Only you would do something like that,” he replies.

“You went out to Ruby Spotted Horse’s place and gave her a bad time, and you used me to do it.”

“Wrong,” he says. “Spotted Horse can’t accept the death of her niece and needs to see a psychiatrist. I hate to say this, Aaron, but I think you’ve got the same problem.”

“Get out,” I say.

He looks at the couch. “Is that an M1?”

“What about it?”

“I think you’re a threat to yourself.”

“Really? Take a walk with me,” I say. “I’ll get my coat.” He can’t make up his mind. “Afraid?” I say.

The sky is blue, the sun warm, the frost on the barn roof sliding in sheets off the edge. We walk up the hill, Jeremiah behind me, his breath fogging, his irritability growing. “No more of this,” he says, “I’ve got to get back to work.”

There’s a rectangular flat rock in front of us, wet and striped with lichen. “Have a seat,” I say.

He’s wearing an expensive overcoat. He remains standing. “Has this got something to do with Fannie Mae?”

“Maybe. I’ve seen her up here. I saw fires here last night. And Indians being killed.”

“I think I’ll head back to the office now.”

“See the snow in the trees? I was there last night. I burned two clips on the back of a United States army officer from the nineteenth century.”

“Yeah, there are a lot of those kinds of guys running around these days.”

I walk another twenty yards up the slope to the stand of trees where I knelt and aimed through iron sights at an officer I believed was Major Eugene Baker. “Take a look.” My brass casings are scattered in the snow, half-buried, gleaming in the sunlight.

“You did some target shooting here? That’s the big story?”

The sun is shining on the clearing where I saw the massacre of the Indians and the burning of their wickiups and their clothes and blankets and bearskins. I walk to the spot where the biggest fire was and pick up a stick and start gouging the dirt. The stick breaks and I get another one and dig harder. “Come look,” I say.

“This is embarrassing, Aaron.”

I get down on one knee and scoop up a handful of dirt and hold it up to him. “Smell it.”

“It’s carbon. You know how many forest fires we’ve had here?”

I bring the dirt up to my face and blow on it. “Look.”

“Those are berries,” he says.

“No, they’re beads.”

“I think you should see a counselor, Aaron. I’m going now.”

I get down on both knees and scoop up with two hands what looks like particles of wood and bone and ash and antler and animal hide that have calcified into stone, all of it mixed with black silt.

“Give me your hands,” I say.

“No.”

“Do it, Jeremiah. Honor your namesake.”

“What?”

“Shut up and do what I say.”

The pain in my hands is more than I can bear. My eyes start to water. “Take this or I’ll rub it in your face.”

He turns up his palms. I drop everything from my hands into his. His eyes pop. “Jesus!” he says. He flings his hands into the air, then stares at them, his palms and the undersides of his fingers puffed with welts. “What are you messing with, Aaron? What in God’s name have you gotten into?”

“I think we’re standing on dead people.”

But he’s already halfway down the hill, his necktie streaming over his shoulder.