Every Cloak Rolled in Blood

Chapter Thirty-Five

I wake in the morning on the couch. The sun is shining through the windows. I walk into the kitchen, perhaps expecting to see Fannie Mae. But the house is empty. I open the back door and walk into the yard. The grass is green, the breeze warm, the horses playing in the pasture. The suitcase of meth is a circle of ash. The chickens have reestablished themselves inside the chicken house, the destroyed floor is as I left it, and the gold bars still reside in the ammunition cans.

I walk to the hillside and back again. None of my fences are broken. I continue to the front of the house and the secondary barn and the dirt lane where I first met Ginny Stokes, Leigh and John Culpepper, and Ruby Spotted Horse. Downstream, I can see the concrete bridge over the Bitterroot and traffic going back and forth. The surface of the sandbar where Major Baker swore at the world is smooth and damp and clean and unmarked by any impressions except the feet of birds. My front lawn is immaculate, and there is no sign or tire print of Ginny’s Ford F-150.

I search through the house a second time and open up all the windows, calling Fannie Mae’s name, then Ruby’s. The only sound I hear is the wind. I know the present date and the present year and the name of the new president. I know where I’m standing and who I am and what I am and what I am not. I open the cap on my prescription bottle and pour its contents down the drain. I swear to myself I will not let the events of last night drive me mad.

Then I hear a scraping sound under the house. I go out the front door, to the end of the veranda, and lean over the rail and peer down the side of the house just as Jack Wetzel crawls out from under it.

“What are you doin’ there, partner? You look like a chimney sweep.”

“Where is everybody?” he asks, blinking in the sunlight.

I determine not to participate anymore in the grief of others. “Don’t know what you’re talking about, bub.”

“Everybody’s gone. Miss Ginny, too.”

“You want something to eat?”

He looks at the empty yard and the river and the sandy bank and the stretch of water where dozens were drowned or shot. “I guess,” he says.

I hold the door open until he comes inside. He smells like grave dirt and gunpowder. “Was that hell we were in?” he asks.

“I suspect that depends on how you look at it.” I start coffee in the kitchen.

“I changed my mind,” he says. “Forget the food. I’m gonna do like she says.”

“Like who says?”

“Fannie Mae. She told me I got lucky and I’d better not blow it.”

“When did you talk to her?”

“A couple of hours ago. I was too scared to come out.”

“That’s all she said?”

“No, she said to tell you goodbye. She didn’t want to wake you up.”

My legs are so weak I have to sit down in a chair.

“You okay?” he asks.

“That’s what she said? She didn’t want to wake me up?”

“She said it wasn’t her choice or something like that.”

“Think.”

“I am, Mr. B. It’s not my fault.”

No, it is not his fault, and shame on me for indicating that it is. “Give me a few minutes, Jack, then we’ll take a walk.”

I go into the bathroom and sit on the side of the tub with my head in my hands, then finally get up and shave and brush my teeth and rejoin him in the kitchen.

“You look okay, Mr. B.,” he says. “I didn’t mean to sass you.”

“You didn’t. You’re a good kid.”

“No, not really.”

“If I say you’re a good kid, you’re a good kid.”

We go out in the backyard. The sun is high in the sky now, and our shadows are short and seem somehow diminished and unimportant on the grass. I retrieve a gold bar from one of the ammunition cans and wrap it in a paper bag and hand it to Jack. “This is worth around sixty thousand dollars. You do with it whatever you wish. Just don’t let anyone take it away from you, and don’t buy dope with it. I’m also giving you this set of keys. They belong to that old Toyota pickup down by the barn. I’ll take care of the paperwork. Call me and I can mail you the title or you can come by the house.”

“You’re giving me all this?”

“Like Fannie Mae said, don’t blow it.”

“The fuck,” he says. “I don’t believe this.”

“Don’t use profanity on my property, if you don’t mind.”

After he’s gone I load the Avalon with my camping gear and a rackful of winter and summer clothes and a lever-action Winchester and Grandfather’s Peacemaker and the ammunition and boxes of canned goods from Costco. I leave one gold bar and a note for my wrangler caretaker in the kitchen and put the other gold bars in the Avalon’s trunk and drive up Evaro Hill and onto the res.

In my time on earth I’ve learned nothing. The mystery of creation and its beginning and end remain a mystery. I believe the great sin is to depart the world without discovering the raison d’être for one’s existence. I love Ruby Spotted Horse, but I believe she was an ethereal entity before I met her and, for good or bad, wanted me to become one of the “Guardians.” Unfortunately I don’t believe that’s the answer for people like Major Baker. He’s not the problem, the people above him are, and few of them will ever be brought to task.

I follow the Jocko River up to Ruby’s house. The March winds are up, and the air is filled with huge clouds of cinnamon-colored dust that seem to rise from the ground to the heavens. Through the windshield I can see the pumpkin field next to her house, the irrigation rows eroded and blown away. The ruins of the house are like an amber-tinted photograph taken during the War Between the States.

I park the Avalon in the trees and get out. I can smell the ash, the charred wood, the heat-cracked bricks, the cloth furniture and mattresses and clothes that are half-burned or ruined by fire hoses and the cans of food and preserve jars that have exploded in the flames.

The animals are gone, and tumbleweed is already bunching up inside the outbuildings. Much of the house’s second story has collapsed on the stairwell that leads into the cellar. I suspect machines with big claws will tear down the remnants and load it into trucks, and bulldozers will flatten the rest and pack the cellar with wreckage and dirt. The men operating these machines will have no idea of the subterranean world they are burying. And when all is done, birds and night animals will peck and scratch at the dirt, and rumors and legends about supernatural occurrences will spread through the indigenous community, but few whites will pay attention to them, just as few whites pay attention to the ghostly appearances and sounds that have occurred at the site of the Baker Massacre.

I want to call out to Ruby, but I know she’s not here. I was supposed to take her place. I didn’t. And she left, and that’s it. I get back in my car and drive to the nightclub located close to the spot where Clayton Wetzel was ripped to pieces.

The rodeo-rider bartender is sitting on a stool at the bar, eating a hamburger. He sets it down and wipes his mouth with a paper napkin. “How you doin’, Mr. Broussard?”

“I’ve never gotten your name,” I reply.

“Mangas Coloradas Dunlevy. Just call me Mangas.”

“That’s an Apache name.”

“My old man thought Salish names weren’t warlike enough.”

“I need a favor.”

“You name it.”

“Drive me and my car up in the Missions, then keep my car for me.”

“It’s still pretty cold up there.”

“I’ll pay you two hundred dollars.”

“You don’t have to do that. When do you want to go?”

“Now.”

I let him drive. In no time it seems we cross miles of meadowland and find the dirt road that takes us high up into the Missions, where the clouds are so dense and wet we have to turn on the wipers. I mention the rapid passage of time because with each breath I draw, I feel that another part of my life is behind me, gone so quickly I cannot remember what it looked like. We pop out on a piece of broken, rock-scattered road that overlooks the valley and the teardrop lake where Ruby Spotted Horse and I made our troth.

“Jesus Christ,” Mangas says.

“Yeah, it’s a special place.”

“How’d you find it? I’ve hunted in the Missions since I was a boy. I didn’t know it was here.”

“Keep it special, will you? Like it’s a private club.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I’ll do that.”

We descend into the valley, past rockslides and splintered and rotted tree trunks, then we’re in bumper-high green grass that rakes under the Avalon like a hairbrush. Mangas helps me unload and put up a tent. When we’re finished, he starts to leave.

“Hold on.” I take two hundred-dollar bills and a business card from my wallet.

“How about an autographed book instead?” he says.

“Are you and your friends still running a rehab program for teenage addicts?”

“Yeah, and we’ll be doing it for a long time.”

“This is my attorney’s card. He’s going to transfer the Avalon to you. Behind the spare, you’ll find several gold bars. Those are for your program. Regarding the gold bars, I’d go easy on the paperwork.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. Take care, bud.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“That’s the second time today someone used profanity because I gave him something.”

I watch him drive away, then ascend the dirt road that barely clings to the side of the mountain. In a few minutes he disappears inside in a cloud, rivulets of gravel tumbling from the edge of the road.

I unfold a canvas chair and start a fire and erect a grill and put a can of beans and two bean patties on it and watch the beans bubble in the can. This is the place where Ruby and I swore we would return if one became separated from the other. But she’s with her people now, and I don’t begrudge her the decision she may have made. The real issue is Fannie Mae. In a short story written by Andre Dubus, the protagonist says God had a son, but He never had a daughter. I have thought about that statement many times. It says something that language cannot. It defines the undefinable. It also suggests a level of pain for which no human solution seems applicable. In this instance, I feel deserted by her. Poor Jack could not remember Fannie Mae’s final words with any exactitude. That means I will go over his words again and again, trying to find solace in a conversation that was written on the wind.

At sunset the frozen waterfalls in the distance look like they’re on fire. The shadows on the cliffs, the haze on the lake, the insects clouding over the cattails, the trails of webbed-foot creatures swimming across the surface somehow become a reminder of death, and I wonder if I have made a mistake by bringing firearms with me. I may have struck Jack and Mangas with the impression that I am in control of my destiny. The opposite is true. I have no plan except for the possibility of striking out for the north country, hiking through an unsecured ravine into Canada, and disappearing north of Jasper, where the animals are as big as cars and the creation of the planet is still unfinished.

It’s not a fantasy. It’s there, and the despoilers of the earth would like to get their hands on it. So to be a defender of the earth seems a fine way to go out. I put on my canvas coat and walk out on a sandbar in the lake to wash my pan and cup and fork and spoon. As I bend over on one knee and skim the surface with my hand, I see Fannie Mae’s reflection rather than mine.

You’ve been hard to find, Pops, she says.

I drop my pan, which settles to the bottom without disturbing her reflection. “Are you determined to scare me to death?”

I wanted to leave you something.

“You’re leaving again?”

I’ll be around one way or another. Then one day you’ll see me forever.

“I wish you’d stay.”

The party is just getting started, Pops. You’ve got to have faith.

“Do you see Ruby?”

She’s standing right behind you. That’s where I’ll be. You just won’t see us.

Then she’s gone. That fast. I wade into the lake, calling her name. The walls of the canyon are royal purple, the snowy peaks of the mountains blazing in the sun’s last rays. The water is as cold as death, and my feet are sinking into the silt. I call her name again and again and hear it echo in the distance. Then I give up, defeated and forlorn, trembling inside my clothes, wondering if indeed I’m delusional and cannot deal with the permanent loss of my daughter.

The campfire is whipping in the wind. I kick it and topple the grill and send ashes and sparks flying into the gloom, then go inside my tent. On my cot is an old album of Janis Joplin’s songs, one I gave to Fannie Mae on her thirteenth birthday. Dated with today’s date and written with a felt pen across the cover are these words:

You are the best dad in the world. I’ll love you forever.

Your daughter,

Fannie Mae Holland Broussard