Indian Country Noir

Getting lucky by Lawrence Block

Upper Peninsula, Michigan

He was wearing a Western-style shirt, scarlet and black with a lot of gold piping, and one of those bolo string ties, and he should have topped things off with a broad-brimmed Stetson, but that would have hidden his hair. And it was the hair that had drawn her in the first place. It was a rich chestnut with red highlights, and so perfect she’d thought it was a wig. Up close, though, you could see that it was homegrown and not store bought, and it looked the way it did because he’d had one of those $400 haircuts that cost John Edwards the 2008 Iowa primary. This barber had worked hard to produce a haircut that appeared natural and effortless, so much so that it wound up looking like a wig.

He was waiting his turn at the craps table, betting against the shooter and winning steadily as the dice stayed cold, with one shooter after another rolling craps a few times, then finally getting a point and promptly sevening out.

She didn’t know dice, didn’t care about gambling. Something about this man had drawn her, something about the wig that was not a wig, and she stood beside him and breathed in his aftershave — an inviting lemon-and-leather scent, a little too insistent but nice all the same. The string tie, she saw, had a Navajo slide, a thunderbird accented in turquoise.

Here in Michigan, the slide and its owner were a long way from home.

“Seven,” the stickman announced. “New shooter coming out.”

And the dice passed to the man with the great haircut.

He cradled them in his palm, held them in front of her face. Without looking at her he said, “Warm these up, sweet thing.”

He’d given no indication that he was even aware of her presence, but she wasn’t surprised. Men generally noticed her.

She took hold of his wrist, leaned forward, blew warm breath on the dice.

“Now that’s just what was needed,” he said, and dropped a black chip on the table, then gave the dice a shake and rolled an eleven. A natural, a winner, and that doubled his stake and he let it ride and rolled two sevens before he caught a point, an eight.

Now it became hard for her to follow, because she didn’t know the game, and he was pushing his luck, betting numbers, scattering chips here and there, and rolling one combination after another that managed to be neither an eight nor a seven. He made the point, finally, and the one after that, and by the time he finally sevened out he’d won thousands of dollars.

“And that’s that.” He stepped away from the table, turning to take his first good long look at her. He wasn’t shy about letting his eyes travel the length of her body, then return to her face. “When you get lucky,” he said, “you got to ride it and push your luck. That’s half of it, and the other half is knowing when to stop.”

“And you’re stopping?”

“For now. You stay at the table long enough, you’re sure to give it all back. Luck goes one way and then it goes the other, like a pendulum swinging, and the house always has more money than you do and it can afford to wait you out. Any casino’ll break you in the long run, even a pissant low-rent Injun casino way the hell up in the Upper Peninsula.” He grinned. “But in the long run, we’re all dead — so the hell with the long run. In the short run, a person can get lucky and do himself some good, and it might never have happened if you didn’t come along and blow on my dice. You’re my lucky charm, sweet thing.”

“It was exciting,” she said. “I don’t really know anything about dice—”

“You sure know how to blow on ’em, darlin’.”

“—but once you started rolling everything happened so fast, and everybody got excited about it—”

“Because the ones who followed my play got to win along with me.”

“—and I got excited too.”

He looked at her. “Excited, huh?”

She nodded.

“And now,” he said, “I suppose it’s passed, and you’re not excited anymore.”

“Not in the same way.”

“Oh?”

She allowed herself a smile.

“C’mon,” he said. “Why don’t we sit down and have ourselves some firewater.”

They took a table in a darkened corner of the lounge, and a dark-skinned girl with braids brought their drinks. He’d ordered a Dirty Martini, and she’d followed his lead.

“Olive juice,” he explained. “Gives a little salty taste to the vodka. But I have to say, what I like most about it is just saying the name of it. ‘A Dirty Martini, please. Straight up.’ Don’t you like the sound of it?”

“And the taste.”

“Did you ever tell me your name? Because I can’t remember it.”

“It’s Lucky.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“It says Lucky on my driver’s license. On my birth certificate it says Lucretia, but my parents didn’t realize they’d opened the door for a lifetime of Lucretia Borgia jokes.”

“I can imagine.”

“You can’t, because you don’t know the whole story. Lucretia is bad enough, but when you attach it to Eagle Feather it becomes really awful, and—”

“That’s your last name? Eagle Feather?”

“Used to be. I chopped the Lucretia and dropped the Feather and went in front of a judge to make it legal. Lucky Eagle’s what I wound up with, and it’s still pretty dopey.”

“You’re Indian.”

God, he was quick on the uptake, wasn’t he? You just couldn’t keep anything from this dude.

“My father’s half-Chippewa,” she improvised, “and my mother’s part Apache and part Blackfoot, and some Swedish and Irish and I don’t know what else. I worked it all out one time, and I’m one-third Indian.”

“A third, huh?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Lucky Eagle Feather,” he said. She liked that he was willing to skip the Lucretia part, but still wanted to hold onto that Feather. Made her a little bit more exotic, that’s how she figured it. A little more Indian. And hadn’t he just finished screwing a bunch of Indians out of a few thousand dollars? So why not screw a genuine Indian for dessert?

His name, she learned, was Hank Walker. Short for Henry, but he’d been Hank since childhood. Seemed to suit him better, he told her, but it still said Henry on his driver’s license. And he’d been born in New Jersey, the southern part of the state, near Philadelphia, but he’d moved west as soon as he could, because that seemed to suit him better too. He indicated the Western shirt, the string tie. “Sort of a uniform,” he said, and grinned.

“It suits you,” she agreed.

He lived in Nevada these days, outside of Carson City. And right now he was driving across the country, seeking out casinos wherever he went.

“I guess you like to play.”

“When I’m on a roll,” he said. “But these out-of-the-way places, I come here for the chips as much as the action.”

“The chips?”

“Casino chips. People collect them.”

“You sure collected a batch at the crap table.”

What people collected, he explained, just as other collected coins and stamps, were the small-denomination chips the casinos issued, especially the one-dollar chips. At each casino he visited, he’d buy twenty or thirty or fifty of the dollar chips, and they’d be added to his stock when he got back home. He had a collection of his own, of course, but he also had a business, selling chips to collectors at chip shows — who knew there were chip shows? — and on his website.

“Ever since the government decided the tribes have the right to run casinos,” he told her, “they’ve been popping up like mushrooms. And they come and they go, because not all of the tribes know a whole lot about running a gaming operation. You belong to the tribe that’s operating this place?”

She didn’t.

“Well, nothing against them, and I hope they make a go of it, but there are a few things they’re doing wrong.” She half-listened while he took the casino’s inventory; she had another sip of her Dirty Martini (which, all things considered, sounded better than it tasted) and breathed in his aftershave and an undertone of perspiration.

He finished his casino critique and reached across the table to put his hand on hers. “Now it seems to me we’ve got a decision to make. Do we have another round of drinks before we go to my room?”

For an answer she picked up his hand, lowered her head, and blew her warm breath into his palm. “For luck,” she said without looking up, and then her tongue darted out and she licked his palm. His sweat, she noticed, tasted not all that different from the Dirty Martini.

He had a nice body. Barrel-chested, with a little more of a gut than she might have preferred, and a lot of chest hair. No hair on his back, though, and she supposed he got it waxed at the same salon that provided his million-dollar haircuts.

Muscular arms, muscular shoulders, and that meant regular gym workouts, because he couldn’t have gotten those muscles simply by throwing his own weight around. An all-over tan, too, that probably came from a tanning bed. You could shake your head at the artifice, or you could go with the result — a fit, good-looking man in his late forties, who, it had to be said, was as impressive in the sack as he’d been at the craps table. And if he owed some of that to Viagra, well, so what? He got her hot and he got her off, and what more could a poor girl desire?

And the best was yet to be.

Optima futura — that was the Latin for it, and she knew it because it had been her high school’s motto. It was, she’d always thought, singularly apt, because anything the future held had to be better than high school.

Somewhere along the way, after high school years were just a blur, she’d come across some lines from Robert Browning, and perhaps it was the high school motto that made her commit them to memory, but it had worked, because she remembered them still:

“Part Indian, huh? I bet I know which part is Indian.”

And he reached out a hand and touched the part he had in mind. She put her hand on top of his, rubbed his fingers against her.

“A third Indian,” she reminded him.

“So you said. You know, I was wondering—”

She put her hand on him, curled her fingers around him. She worked him artfully, and he sighed.

“Lucky,” he said. “Man, I’d say I got Lucky, didn’t I? But I think I’m tapped out for this evening.”

“You think so?”

“You drained me to the dregs, babe. About all I can do right now is sleep.”

“I bet you’re wrong.”

“Oh?”

“What we did so far,” she said, “was just a warm-up.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Can I ask you something?”

He raised his eyebrows.

“Have you ever been tied up?”

“Jesus.”

“Just imagine,” she said, her hands still busy. “You’re tied up, you can’t move, and the entire focus is giving you pleasure. I’ll do things to you nobody’s ever done to you before, Hank. You think this has been your lucky night? You just wait.”

“Uh—”

“I’ve got all the gear in my bag,” she said. “Everything we could possibly need. You’re gonna love this.”

Handcuffs, silk scarves, nylon cords. She had everything she needed, and she knew just how to employ them.

The last time she’d done this she’d given her partner a couple of roofies first, and let the pills knock him out before she trussed him up. That had worked fine, but she’d been stuck with a two-hour wait for the son of a bitch to wake up, and who needed that?

This was much simpler. And he cooperated, putting his hands where she told him, spread-eagling himself on the bed. And making little jokes while she did what she had to do.

By the time she was done, he was already semi-erect. She wrapped the base with an elastic band. “Sort of a roach motel,” she said. “The blood gets in and it can’t get out, so you stay firm.”

“Is it safe?”

“Absolutely,” she said. “It’s an old Indian trick. Now you can do something for me, and after that everything will be entirely 100 percent for you.” And she sat on his face and he did what he was supposed to do, and he was pretty good at it too. He didn’t have to be, she was so excited right now that great technique on his part was by no means required, but this made it even better.

“Now that was just wonderful,” she said. She went to her bag, got out the duct tape, and cut off an eight-inch length. “I wanted to do that first,” she went on, “because it’s our last chance for that particular activity.”

And she slapped the tape over his mouth.

Oh, the look in his eyes! Worth the price of admission right there. He wasn’t quite sure whether this was going to make it even more exciting for him, or whether it was maybe something he ought to worry about.

But why worry? What good would it do? What good would anything do?

“See, isn’t this neat? You’re harder than ever. And you’re going to stay that way.” She mounted him, felt him swelling impossibly larger inside her. “Mmmm, nice,” she said. “Oh, yes. Very nice.”

She rode him for a long time. Her climaxes came one after the other, and all they did was pitch her excitement higher. At last she fell forward, her breasts crushed against his chest. A smooth chest would have been nice, but a hairy chest was nice too. Everything was nice when you could do whatever you wanted, and when you knew just how it was going to end.

She got up because she wanted to be able to see his eyes now. “I told you some lies,” she said. “My name’s not Lucky. Or Lucretia, or any of that. My last name’s not Eagle, or Eagle Feather, and don’t ask me how I came up with all of that on the spur of the moment. As far as I know, I haven’t got a drop of Indian blood in me. A third Indian! How could anybody be a third anything? I mean, you’ve got two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents — I mean, do the math. You’re the one who knows all the odds on the craps table, so you would have to know that you can only be half or a fourth or an eighth or three-sixteenths or whatever you are of anything.”

She wagged a finger at him.

“You weren’t paying attention, Hank. Little Henry there was doing your thinking for you. And that’s another lie I told you, incidentally. That it’s safe to wrap you up like that. If you don’t loosen it in time, you can do permanent damage.”

She left the bed, reached into her purse, found the knife. She let him see the blade. She let the tip of the blade graze his cheek as she mounted him one more time.

“God, it’s bigger than ever,” she told him. “You’re in pain now, aren’t you? Oh dear, I’m afraid it’s going to get worse. Well, more intense, anyway. Optima futura, you know. That’s Latin. It means the best is yet to be. For me, that is. For you, well, maybe not.”

She left with close to five thousand dollars in cash and chips, and stopped downstairs at the cashier’s cage to turn the chips into currency. Then she got in her car and started driving.

She’d left his one-dollar chips in the room. She’d left his credit cards too, and a gold signet ring that had to be worth a few hundred dollars. She took the slide from his string tie, just because she liked it, and she took her cuffs and cords and scarves, because it would be a nuisance to replace them. But she left the elastic band in place.

And she took the scalp, tucked away in a plastic bag. It was just such good theater to scalp him, what with having been drawn to his hair in the first place, and then the whole Indian motif of their encounter. Before she was halfway done with the process she regretted having begun it in the first place, because even minor scalp cuts bleed like crazy, and when you scalp a person altogether — well, the Indians probably waited to scalp people until they were safely dead, and disinclined to bleed, but she went ahead and finished what she’d started, and it was almost worth it when she shook the scalp in front of him and let him gape at it.

She’d cleaned up her fingerprints, but she knew she’d left plenty of DNA evidence, and people at the casino could furnish a description of her. But she’d been working variations on this theme for a good long while now, and she always got away with it, so she figured all she could do was play out the string. And she’d ditch his scalp where it wouldn’t be found, and the scalping would guarantee a lot of press, along with a manhunt for some unforgiving Indian seeking vengeance for Wounded Knee.

Yes, she’d just go ahead and play out the string. Because it kept getting better, didn’t it? Optima futura. That pretty much said it all.

Prowling wolves by Liz Martínez

Chicago, Illinois

The Pima Indian huddles on the ground in the foxhole, his M1 rifle propped upright between his legs. He is awake and watchful while his fellow marine, Bill Faulkner, curls up nearby, getting some shut-eye. The darkness is pervasive, and he sees what he thinks might be shadows. Or maybe they aren’t. He keeps his ears open, straining to make sense of the rustling noise. Other marines? The enemy? There isn’t any way to tell.

The most important thing is not to fall asleep. He’s responsible for keeping himself and Faulkner safe. He has to stay awake. It’s not a problem for him, though. If he gets sleepy, he just concentrates on the smell. In the two days they’ve been on Bougainville, the marines of Easy Company have been pinned down in their foxholes in a monsoon, then trapped under the scorching sun. They all stink.

He turns his head, trying to match shapes to the rustles he hears. He can see better in the darkness out of the corner of his eye than by looking at objects straight on. The change of position causes the stench to hit him again. Not just his own rank body odor, but the smell of blood. And guts. And decaying bodies. Already, there are bodies ready to be shipped home. Young men who knew they’d be the lucky ones to make it back to America — but they’d figured on doing so alive.

He glances over at Faulkner. He’s glad his buddy is able to get some sleep, but he can’t figure out how the guy can do it. The adrenaline courses through his own body, keeping him from ever really sleeping. This isn’t new. Even back home on the reservation, he could hardly rack up any sack time. Instead of adrenaline, feelings of guilt, remorse, and shame would torture him in the nighttime. Not over anything specific. Or rather, over everything. A white man’s purposeful slight. A buddy who made a thoughtless remark. Anything, really. During the day, he could find ways to cope. But at night — that was different.

He turns his head again to try to see what’s going on in the darkness around them. He doesn’t hear or see anything, but he strains to listen and penetrate the darkness anyway.

He feels an abrupt thud that reverberates down his arms, and he hears screaming right next to him. The adrenaline courses through his body at full speed. He doesn’t know what just happened, but his rifle seems to have a mind of its own, jerking and pulling out of his hands. He grabs it back by reflex.

All of a sudden, he realizes what’s going on. An enemy soldier tried to sneak up on him, and when he moved to attack, impaled himself on the Indian’s bayonet at the end of the rifle.

He yanks the rifle back, pulling the bayonet out of the Jap’s stomach. He’s running on animal instinct now. He picks up the rifle in both hands and punctures the enemy soldier’s body over and over. He’s stabbing the man with his bayonet, but the man keeps moving. He knows he must kill him or be killed. So he keeps thrusting. Again and again, he heaves the rifle downward, pulls it back, hurls it into the man’s body.

He is so consumed with his own personal combat that he’s in another world. “Chief, stop! He’s dead. You killed him. Knock it off!”

He can hardly hear the other marine over the roar in his ears. He’s barely aware of the guy’s hand gripping his shoulder, shaking him. “Ira. Ira!”

His lids popped open. Sergeant Beech’s fingers squeezed his shoulder at the nerve point, sending the pain radiating down his arm. The Indian twitched to shake the sergeant’s hand off. Beech gripped him by the upper arm to lift him to his feet. The roar of the audience’s applause subsided as Rene Gagnon sat down next to Ira on the dais again. Gagnon shot him a disgusted look and turned back to his dessert.

The Indian stood up, stretched, and opened his mouth in a huge yawn. The audience responded in kind. They looked like a sea of goldfish swimming toward the surface for food. Beech grinned. This gave him a kick every time it happened.

He shoved Ira toward the microphone. “Tell ’em...”

But the Indian knew what to do. He stood before the microphone and confronted the audience of Chicagoans who had turned out to see the heroes. His mouth always got dry at this point. He was never a man to use many words, and his vocabulary seemed to abandon him in front of a crowd.

“I hope you buy lots of war bonds,” he said.

He sat down again.

The crowd in the hotel ballroom erupted in applause and cheering. Ira wasn’t really aware of them. He was busy looking around. Beech knew what he wanted and leaned down to whisper in his ear. “Later, chief.” He patted the Indian’s shoulder reassuringly.

Ira didn’t want to wait until later. He needed some booze now. He was thinking about how to attract the waiter’s attention without attracting the attention of the audience. He barely heard Bradley, now at the microphone, denying they were anything special.

“We’re not heroes.” Bradley gestured to himself, Gagnon, and Ira Hayes. “We just put up a flag. The real heroes are the ones who died fighting on Iwo Jima. Please buy war bonds to honor their memory.”

The crowd went wild. The band started up again, and the room exploded in a cacophony of chatter, laughter, and music.

Beech slapped Ira on the shoulder. “Come on, buddy. Let’s go.”

Ira got up eagerly. Keyes Beech was always ready to bend an elbow.

Gagnon sneered. “What’s the matter, chief? Can’t wait to start drinking again? Fuckin’ drunken Indian.” He muttered the last part.

Ira went cold, then hot. His fists curled.

Then Bradley poked Gagnon. “Hey, come on. Ira’s working as hard as we are. Lay off.”

Beech steered Ira away from the dais, and it was over. “Don’t listen to him. This bond tour is getting to all of us. He’s just blowing off a little steam. Hey, a buddy of mine tipped me about this great bar in the Loop. Let’s go check it out.”

Ira didn’t say a word. He just followed Beech out of the hotel, listening to the sergeant’s nonstop chatter. He had no need to talk. Beech said enough words for both of them.

Ira didn’t feel at home anywhere, but he felt the least uncomfortable in a bar. Just walking inside, inhaling the familiar bar smells — old beer overlayed with cigarette smoke — made the churning in his stomach stop. The act of sitting on a bar stool gave him that relaxed feeling. Then he gripped the glass in his hand, and even before the first swallow, he felt at peace.

The whiskey had just begun spreading its comforting warmth in his stomach when it started.

“Hey, aren’t you that guy from the picture?”

“You’re a hero, man. Lemme buy you a drink!”

“Look who’s here — he’s one of the ones who put the flag up! Bartender, this marine’s money’s no good tonight!”

Beech loved it. His job was to chaperone the three flag-raisers as they toured the country on the 7th War Loan Bond Drive, raising money for the boys overseas. But Bradley was a pretty straight arrow, and Gagnon, with his movie-star good looks, had no trouble fending for himself. Ira was the one he had to babysit. The Indian was likely to wander off somewhere and get into a fight, then not remember how to get back to the latest hotel in the latest city. Or even remember which city he was in.

Not that Beech minded hanging out with Ira. Hell no. The guy attracted attention wherever he went. And he was so modest he hardly said two words in a whole night. So people began talking to Beech instead. Beech was a tech sergeant and war correspondent. He told the war stories that people wanted to hear from Ira, but that Ira would never talk about. After a few drinks, it didn’t matter who was talking. Everyone was a hero by that time. And the booze flowed, so Beech was happy. And Ira was happy.

Except Beech didn’t think Ira was so happy. Oh well. Nothing he could do about it. The only one Ira would talk to was “Doc” Bradley, and Bradley wasn’t really a drinker.

So that left the two of them. Two little Injuns, he thought, and giggled. Snippets of the song ran through his head. Four little Injuns up on a spree / One got fuddled and then there were three / Three little Injuns out on a canoe / One something, something, and then there were two. He couldn’t remember the rest.

“Hey, Ira.” He reached across a man who was in the middle of telling a story and grabbed the Pima by the shirt sleeve. “What happened to the three little Injuns?”

Ira glared at him. Oh boy. He must be drunker than he’d thought.

“Never mind,” he said, trying to pat Ira’s sleeve, placate him. He turned to the storyteller he’d interrupted. “Do you know what happened to the three little Injuns?”

The guy shook him off. “Buddy, I think you’ve had enough.”

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he slurred. Then, “Oh shit.” He got up and tried to get to the restroom before he tossed his cookies all over the bar floor. He didn’t make it.

Then Ira was pulling him out of the bar.

Beech bent over in the street, heaving his guts out. “Must have been something I ate,” he croaked.

Ira didn’t say anything.

After a minute, Beech stood up and wiped his mouth. “You know, I actually feel better.” He could feel a little spring coming back into his step. “Hey! Look over there.” He pointed to the warm glow of another barroom.

But Ira had already seen it and was heading toward the inviting lights.

“Geez, wait up, buddy,” Beech said.

They elbowed their way up to the bar, and the same drama from the other bar — from all the other bars on this tour — started all over again: “Aren’t you the guy from Iwo Jima? I wanna buy you a drink!”

Ira was entering that maudlin stage of his drinking. He couldn’t tolerate company, but he did want the free drinks. He made himself as small as possible at the back corner of the bar. He watched the bartender’s brogans as the man walked back and forth, hustling drinks. He wished he could just curl up on the floor behind the bar, alone with all the liquor bottles. Just sit on the floor. The rats could keep him company. There must be rats, because there was a box of rat poison, the skull and crossbones warning anyone who came near.

That’s not what a real skull looks like, he thought, hunching lower. A real skull has blood on it. And hair. And pieces of brain leaking out.

And there are men screaming all around. And huge explosions as mortar shells rock the island.

The Pima Indian hears a fellow member of Easy Company calling out the password. “Studebaker! Studebaker!” But that’s yesterday’s password. “Chevrolet! Goddammit, I can’t remember! It’s me! It’s me, Early.”

The Indian doesn’t know whether the forgetful marine gets to live or dies because the next thing that happens is three of the “prowling wolves” attack him and two of his buddies. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, the commander of the Japanese forces on Iwo Jima, has given this name to his teams of stalking, crawling night-murderers — the dancing shadows feared by every American fighting man on the island.

The Japs are ruthless. They think it’s a big honor to die in combat. Ira just knows it’s him or them, and it ain’t gonna be him. He shoots the one who’s attacking him in the head. The round smashes the Jap’s face and leaves his teeth lying on the ground.

The Pima marine wants to be sick, but he’s distracted by something even worse than the dead jack-o’-lantern in front of him. A marine is wrestling with an enemy soldier, but he’s losing because they’re not really wrestling. The Japanese soldier is stabbing him.

“Mom, he’s killing me!” the marine cries. “Mom!”

The Indian’s eyes flickered. “I’m coming to help you!” he called. He reached out and grabbed the guy’s arm.

“Easy, easy,” the man told him. “I just got this here tattoo.

It’s a beaut, ain’t it? Mom in a heart, that’s what I wanted. And that’s just what I got.” His jacket was off, his shirt sleeve rolled up to display his newest artwork.

Ira squinted. There were two hearts, its seemed, and two Moms. His heart rate slowed down. “Nice,” he said. Or tried to say. He couldn’t be sure he got the word out. The guy was talking to somebody else now, anyway. It didn’t matter.

He was tired of this bar. In fact, he was sick of this two-bit joint and everybody in it. He pushed up from his bar stool and staggered to the door. Somebody came up behind him, and he whirled, ready to throw a haymaker, let this guy’s teeth wind up on the floor, like the Jap’s.

The man looked frightened. “You forgot your jacket there, buddy.” He held it out to Ira at arm’s length.

The Indian grabbed it out of the man’s hand. Who did he think he was, anyway, following him around? His mom?

He let out a howl, like a wolf in pain. It sounded so good he did it again. It was a mistake, though, because he was attracting attention.

“What are you looking at?” he yelled at the crowd beginning to form outside the bar. “Go back inside.”

He turned on his heel and strode away.

Keyes Beech caught up with him. “Ira, Ira, take it easy, man.”

Ira shrugged him off and kept going.

“Where you heading? It’s cold. Come on, let’s go in here. This looks like a quiet neighborhood joint. Nobody’ll bother us here. See? I’m going in. Come with me,” Beech coaxed. He opened the door and motioned Ira in.

The Indian was going to keep walking, but then he thought, What the hell, and went in.

It was a workingman’s bar. Sawdust on the floor. Men in caps and thick jackets. Men who looked like Mike.

Mike Strank is the best platoon leader a guy can have. He understands his marines, and he takes care of them. The Indian respects him. Reveres him. All Mike’s men do. And even though the Pima doesn’t speak much to anyone, he’s practically a chatterbox with Mike. He can tell Mike anything. Mike doesn’t judge. He just loves his men back by being the best leader he can be and doing everything he can to keep them safe. That’s why they’ll do anything for him.

Mike was born in Czechoslovakia but passed through Ellis Island when he was three. He has the strong bone structure common to Eastern Europeans that keep them looking young, even in their old age. Mike’s most prominent feature is a pugnacious chin.

The Indian walked up to a man standing at the bar, his hands wrapped around a beer glass. The man wore a cap and had a defiant chin. The Indian peered at him. “Mike?” he said in a small voice.

“Look, I don’t know you,” the man said, keeping his eyes on his beer. He had an accent.

Ira’s head snapped back. “Sorry,” he said.

Beech pulled him to the other end of the bar. “What are you doing, huh? You want to get us thrown out of here?” he hissed.

Ira looked down but didn’t speak.

“Here, sit at the table. I’ll get you something.” Beech shoved the Indian into a chair.

The sergeant returned to the table with two beers and drank half of his in one swallow, as though it were his first of the evening, instead of his seventeenth. “We’ll just sit here for a little while, huh, Ira? It’s a good place just to have a few beers.”

It was a quiet place. Every man in there had his own story, and they were all keeping mum. They were just minding their own business after putting in a day’s manual labor at the docks or the slaughterhouses.

Then something happened to fracture the silence. The two marines didn’t know what set it off. Not being regulars, they didn’t know the politics of the place. But somebody obviously stepped out of line because a man crashed into their table, landing with his head practically in the Indian’s lap. As the guy attempted to stagger to his feet, the back of his head slammed into the Pima marine’s chin. The Indian punched his enemy in the stomach.

The guy cries out, bent double. Mike is trying to lead the Indian and several other marines across a dangerous strip of ground. But Boatwright takes a bullet in the stomach. The impact slams him into a shell hole. The others scramble for cover. The sniper fire is unceasing.

Mike bends down on one knee, surrounded by his beloved troops. He’s drawing a plan in the sand to show the marines how to get out of there safely.

But he doesn’t get a chance to speak. A shell explodes, ripping his heart out.

He was lying facedown.

The Indian crouched over him, sobbing. “Oh, Mike! Mike!”

Rough hands pulled him up, shoved him away. “Don’t you think you’ve caused enough trouble, buddy?”

“Just go before you get what’s coming to you.”

Then — “Jesus, Hayes, you can’t even have a beer without all this drama. Let’s get the fuck out of here before we have to take on the whole bar.”

Good old Beech, bailing his ass out again.

It was cold, but the Indian wasn’t aware of the weather. Or much of anything else. He could hardly see straight, and what he did see came in pairs. He felt pretty good, though.

Then he spotted it. It loomed ahead, mocking him. This was the cause of all his troubles. He ran toward it. He was going to pull it out of the ground and get rid of it, once and for all.

The Pima grasps the piece of drainage pipe he and Franklin Sousley found at the top of the mountain. It weighs over a hundred pounds, and they have to drag it over so the flag Gagnon is carrying can be tied to it. Then they all have to hoist up this pole and plant the fucking flag in the ground. Some dumb officer wants to keep the Stars and Stripes that’s already flying for his own personal souvenir of the invasion of Iwo Jima. So now he and some other guys from Easy Company have to drag ass up the hill and take down a perfectly good flag, just to put up a new one.

They’re already on a mission to run telephone wire and batteries up the mountain, so why not have them replace the flag while they’re at it? The brass are always sending marines on stupid errands.

The pole is heavy, but he and Sousley are battle-toughened marines. They can do what needs to be done.

He grabbed the pole and tugged with all his might. This time, he wouldn’t plant the flag. There would be no photograph of him and his buddies sticking the goddamn thing into the top of Mount Suribachi. He yelled as though the pole could hear him, his voice filled with grief. “You son of a bitch! I hate you! I hate you!” Tears streamed down his face.

The copper was walking his beat when he heard a cry. He quickened his step. At fifty-two, John Flanagan was beginning to feel a little creaky. But he couldn’t leave the job. Who would replace him? All the young, able-bodied fellows were off fighting in the European theater or the Pacific or some damn place. The Chicago Police Department needed him. Besides, what would he do with himself? Police work was all he knew.

This hour of night, this part of town, he figured the yelling was coming from some guy who had too much to drink. There was a festive air in town these last couple days, what with the war bond tour and all the Hollywood entertainers who were participating so they could get their names in the papers. Flanagan smoothed his small mustache and pulled himself up to his full five foot six inches.

Sure enough, there was some idiot hanging off a streetlamp, screaming his head off. Flanagan reached down instinctively to check his weapon. He swiped his left sleeve down over his star. He didn’t even notice he was doing it, he’d had the habit so long. Wearing a gleaming star on his chest had been a point of pride since he’d joined the force, and he had developed the unconscious routine of shining it up before any potential confrontation.

“All right, what’s the problem here?” he bellowed. He didn’t know why, but drunks seemed to lose their hearing during the course of a night’s imbibing. He’d learned early on that if you don’t shout at a drunk, you won’t get through to him.

The idiot didn’t respond. Just kept banging his fist against the streetlamp and cursing it out.

As he got closer, Flanagan could see that the guy wore a uniform. Great. Another drunken marine. He let out a small sigh.

Then he realized it was even better than he’d thought. The drunk idiot had a friend with him. Another marine. This one looked three sheets to the wind too, but at least he was quiet. He was crouched on the ground.

Now Flanagan could see what the guy was doing. Why did he always have to get the drunks who puked? He hoped he wouldn’t get any vomit on his uniform this time. His wife would have a fit.

“What’s going on here?” he called out in his best basso profundo. “What did that streetlamp do to you?”

The idiot didn’t pay any attention to him. He sighed again. Louder. Stood with his legs apart and his hands on his hips.

“All right, listen up! Step away from that lamp and you won’t get hurt. You hear me?”

It wasn’t working. The idiot was still lost in his own world.

Flanagan crossed his arms, then almost jumped out of his skin as he realized that the idiot’s buddy was standing right behind him. The guy had sneaked up on him like a thief in the night. He whirled around and dropped his hand to his holster. Then he realized there was no threat.

The sergeant was obviously standing so close to the other guy because he could no longer gauge distance, he was so drunk. He just stood there with a sweet smile on his face, his eyes at half mast, swaying in the breeze. Lovely.

Well, as long as he was upright... “Do you think you can get your buddy to leave the poor streetlamp alone?” Flanagan jerked his thumb behind him. “After all, it doesn’t look like the light attacked him first. Why does he have to try to punch its lights out?” Flanagan played to an audience of one. Himself. He chuckled slightly.

The marine sergeant just stood there with that big stupid grin on his face. Useless.

Flanagan stopped laughing. He tried again. “Listen, pal, if your friend there doesn’t stop his screaming, I’m going to have to lock him up. Let’s try to be civilized about this, okay?”

Something must have penetrated because the guy came to life. Well, he moved a little.

“We’re — marines,” he slurred. “Don’t — lock up. Hafta be back for — grblsh.”

Flanagan could barely understand him. “I can see you’re marines. You want to help your buddy back to camp or wherever you belong, or do you want to spend what’s left of the night in jail?”

The sergeant visibly tried to straighten himself up. “It’sh — okay. Fine. I’ll take him—”

He thought the guy was going to puke again, so he made a rookie mistake. He backed up, forgetting that the other drunk was behind him.

The Pima marine grabbed him by the coat and whirled him around. “You son of a bitch!” He punched Flanagan in the stomach. “You goddamn son of a bitch! It’s all your fault!” Another punch. “I hate you, Rosenthal! Hate you, hate you, hate you!” He underscored every “hate you” with another punch.

Beech revived enough to try pulling him off the policeman. “Ira, enough! Leave him alone!”

Flanagan rolled himself into a ball to make a smaller target. If he could just get to his gun... He managed to unsnap his holster. He touched the grip of his pistol. Almost there... Then, fireworks. Then, darkness.

The adrenaline coursing through Beech’s body rendered him instantly sober. He wrestled with the Pima for possession of the cop’s gun.

The Indian is in the foxhole with Franczik when a flare explodes, lighting up the night. Two enemy soldiers are slashing the guys in the next hole with bayonets. They run over there to aid their fellow marines.

One of the Japs hurls a grenade at them. It’s a dud, but it strikes Franczik in the head, and he goes down. The Indian reaches inside Franczik’s shirt to pull out the .45 he knows his friend keeps hidden there, but the Jap is right on top of him.

He punches at the enemy soldier and wrestles with him for possession of the handgun. Blood covers the gun, and it’s slippery in his hand. He may not be able to hold onto it, but he won’t give up. They go back and forth over the .45.

A tug of war for the gun.

“Ira, stop it! Let go!”

Beech grabbed for the policeman’s gun again. The Indian was still engaged in mortal combat. He wouldn’t loosen his grip. But Beech had sobered up, and Ira’s body hadn’t yet processed all the alcohol he’d consumed that day.

With a final tug, Beech managed to pull the weapon away from the Pima marine. The gun went off.

“Shit!” Beech cried. “Why isn’t the fucking safety on on this piece of shit? You okay, Ira?”

Ira didn’t say anything.

Beech scrambled to his feet and jerked Ira up. “Yeah, you’re okay. Thank fucking Christ.”

Ira looked down at the spreading pool of blood.

“Oh my God,” Beech said. “Oh fuck.”

The blood pools all over the ground. It sinks in, staining the dirt. There are so many dead and wounded that there’s nothing else to smell besides the coppery scent of blood and the stench of decaying bodies.

The Pima Indian crouches down, trying to duck rounds that he can’t begin to guess the origins of. The enemy is hidden, and bullets seem to originate from nowhere and everywhere.

He sees blood pouring out of the man in front of him. He presses the man’s jacket against his chest wound. “You’ll be okay,” he reassures him. But he knows he’s lying.

Out of the corner of his eye, he spots one of the prowling wolves coming toward him. “Over there!” he shouts. He grabs a gun out of another marine’s hands. He hears rounds exploding everywhere. It’s impossible to tell whether what he’s hearing is his own gunfire or not.

“Oh my god, oh my god, ohmygod ohmygod.”

Beech came around behind the Pima and yanked his jacket down to immobilize his arms. “Ira, we have to go. Now.”

He shoved him toward the street, but not before the Indian spotted the two men lying on the ground. “What happened?” he asked, craning his neck to look.

Beech gritted his teeth. “You were here. You know what happened.”

The Indian became desperate. “No! I don’t know. Tell me. Please, please, tell me.”

“The cop got shot,” Beech said shortly. “The other guy saw what happened. Now let’s go.” He shoved the Pima away and frog-marched him down the street.

Beech looked up and saw dawn beginning to peek out of the sky. He had to get this guy back to the hotel and cleaned up for the dog-and-pony show this morning.

As they passed a sewer grate, he shoved the Indian ahead of him and dropped the gun down the hole.

Five blocks later, the Indian asked, “What happened to the other guy?”

Beech didn’t answer.

“Beech?”

“What?”

“What happened to the other guy?”

“What other guy?” He was stalling.

“There were two guys on the ground back there, and I’m pretty sure they were both dead. Who was that other guy, and how did he get that way?”

“Ira, you were there. I was there. There’s nothing else to say.” He stopped walking and jerked the Indian around to face him. “I mean it. You are never to mention this again. Do you understand?”

“No. Why won’t you tell me?”

Beech stared at him. “You kidding me? I don’t know anything that you don’t know. Now, you’re to keep your mouth shut about tonight or we’re gonna have some real problems.” He grabbed the Indian below the collar of his shirt and shook him. “Understand me?”

The Pima just looked at him for a long moment. Then he nodded and said, “Yeah.”

Beech let him go. “Good.”

Outside the hotel, they passed a poster for the 7th War Loan Bond Drive. It was fastened to a light pole and it danced in the breeze. The Indian looked at the photograph of himself and five others raising the flag on Mount Suribachi. He, Gagnon, and Bradley were the only survivors. The other three were killed in the battle that raged on after they planted the flag. Every time he saw the photo, another little part of his heart withered and died. He missed his buddies from Easy Company, most of whom were gone now.

“I wish Joe Rosenthal had never taken that picture,” he said. “Then I wouldn’t have to be on this crummy tour.”

“Yeah, well, he did and you are,” Beech said sourly. “Now you have to get in there and clean yourself up in time to go raise the flag again at Soldier Field.”

“I already raised the flag on Iwo. Why do I have to do it again?”

“Because they built a replica of Suribachi, and you heroes have to reenact the flag-raising so people will buy more war bonds, so the marines who are still fighting have a half a chance of surviving. Get it?”

They entered the hotel in silence. Beech said, a little friendlier now, “I’ll take you up to your room, help you get cleaned up.”

“That’s okay. You don’t have to.”

“I said I’ll take you up.”

The Indian didn’t respond.

Beech checked his watch. “Never mind. We don’t have time anyway. Come on.”

He led the Indian down to the staging area. Gagnon and Bradley both shook their heads when they saw the shape he was in. Bradley looked at Beech, exasperated. Wasn’t Beech supposed to keep an eye on Ira?

Gagnon stepped over to the catering area and came back with a bucket of ice water. He poured it over Ira’s head. “Maybe this’ll sober you up, you fuckin’ drunk.”

“Jesus, Rene. You didn’t have to do that,” Bradley said.

“Yes, I did. Look at him.”

“Enough,” Beech snapped. “The Cadillac that’s going to drive you around Soldier Field is here. Make sure Hayes sits in the middle so he can’t fall out. And Hayes — you drag your ass up that papier-mâché mountain and you plant that flag. And don’t fall down. Do you understand?”

The Pima marine shook the water off himself like a dog and said nothing.

Beech had watched the whole dog-and-pony show, and unless you knew what a mess Hayes was, you couldn’t tell he was out of it. He always tended to be a little on the sloppy side anyway.

And Beech would be the first one to catch any flak if the brass was upset with the performance of any of the heroes. No news was good news.

But that didn’t prevent him from almost having a nervous breakdown. He kept running down to the street to see if there were any extra editions of the Chicago papers highlighting the murder of a policeman and a civilian.

The copper was one thing. Hayes had grabbed for his gun, and Beech had had no choice but to get involved. Too bad the guy bought it, but Beech had to protect Hayes. And himself.

But that other fucking guy had seemed to come out of nowhere. All of a sudden he was standing there, watching the whole thing. It would definitely not be a good thing if the guy shot off his mouth later about seeing two marines and a dead policeman.

And that fucking Hayes, asking him what happened. Hayes wasn’t stupid. He was trying to play it coy, maybe setting the stage to shift all the blame to Beech if the shit ever hit the fan.

Beech developed a splitting headache.

After a few days in Detroit and Indianapolis, the tour returned to Chicago. Beech wanted to rip his fingernails out with his teeth. He hadn’t had a drink since their last night in Chicago. He took Hayes out to bars every night but kept himself in check so he could watch the Indian. He managed to make sure the captain or the colonel saw Hayes in all his glory, returning to the hotels after his nights on the town.

At the Palmer Hotel in Chicago, Colonel Fordney told Beech to bring Hayes into his office. The colonel shoved a United Airlines ticket to Hawai’i into Beech’s hands. “He’s going back to Easy Company. The Fifth Division is training to invade Japan. Hayes is going with them. Make sure he gets on the plane without disgracing the Corps. Dismissed.”

Later, as Beech was getting the Indian seated on the plane, he said, “I’m real sorry it turned out this way, Ira. You’re a good man. Keep your chin up.” He clapped him on the shoulder.

The Pima marine looked at Beech. “What did you do with the gun?”

Beech cupped his hand behind his ear. “Can’t hear you.”

The Indian raised his voice. “The gun. What did you do with it?”

Beech shrugged and waved his hand, indicating there was too much noise for him to make out what his friend was saying. “Have a safe trip,” he called.

The Indian didn’t say anything.

Beech jogged back inside the terminal where he could watch the plane, with Hayes inside, take off.

The war bond tour was raising money, that was true, but it was also a fact that the United States government was broke. That meant a lack of weapons, ammunition, tanks, food — a shortage of everything. With diminishing supplies, there was a hell of a good chance Hayes wouldn’t make it back from combat alive.

He scanned the morning editions of the Chicago papers. There were follow-up stories on the dead policeman and civilian, but all they amounted to were that there were no witnesses and no leads. The only item of note was that the policeman’s gun was missing, but there were no clues and no theories yet.

Beech rubbed his hands together. Now he could relax, have a drink, and get ready to move on to St. Louis and Tulsa with the bond tour.

Quilt like a night sky by Kimberly Roppolo

Alberta, Canada

Going home was the last thing he wanted to do.

In the darkness, Boon Lone Rider walked past Farm Four, a mix of gravel and crusty snow crunching beneath his heavily worn runners. He wished it were summer. He remembered shoes from the past, smaller pairs of canvass ones with rubber soles, dust coating them thinly as it rose in tiny clouds, his child feet dragging patterns like snakes in the road. He thought about stopping at a cousin’s place in Little Chicago, but it had been a long time since he had been back here, and not only was Boon unsure of circumstances — the things that had transpired since his last visit, the details of life, always changing, who was cool with what and with whom, who had been caught with whose woman in the backseat of a pow wow van, what shotguns and odd handguns had drifted across the border into whose hands, whether his cousin was even alive — he also knew he needed to do this.

He thought about visiting his mom and his grandma, but he’d have to go by the cemetery soon enough, he figured. He thought about visiting his dad, but that would necessitate finding him, and Boon wasn’t sure he was willing to spend the last thing he had, his time. And he wasn’t sure if he even had the effort in him to do it. Boon thought about his grandpa and what a good man he had been. He thought about Regina. He guessed she was a woman now, but the girl was the one he held in his mind. He didn’t want to wonder how many kids she had now, who was brushing her skin softly as she slept, caught up in the velvety wonder of it all, who was gently lifting her dark hair away from her face and neck to kiss her tenderly...

With a twitch like he’d seen in horses, Boon shoved his scarred hands deeper into his jeans pockets. He needed more than a hoodie out here in this cold, but at least tonight, the spirits were dancing. He hadn’t seen that in a long time. Boon looked up, his breath rising white into the blackness of night. He scanned the sky for the Lost Boys. This evening, their names suited them a bit too well.

Boon looked up the road. A few houses still had lights blooming softly into the blackness outside the windows. A few more miles west and he would be there.

Boon had been fighting as long as he could remember. The first time he hit someone back, it had been his father. Four years old, Boon’s smooth fists pummeled out, surprising even himself, mad tears streaming down his face. The old man should have never come back around, Boon thought. Boon and his mother had been just fine at Grandma’s. Grandpa had come in later that morning from an all-night smoke, found Boon curled up in the old quilt in his chair in the corner, taken him into his arms, gently reminded him of the pipe in the house, told him that fighting back would do nothing to take away the black eye from his mother’s face, smudged him off, prayed for him. That’s when Boon began walking, walking these very roads when the hurt or the anger got too much, when it had to come out of him somehow. Grandpa was right. Even if the pipe hadn’t been there, the world of men and the wars they fought belonged outside of women’s houses.

Faces he had hit flashed through his mind. Boon didn’t always start the fights, and he didn’t always finish them. There had been plenty of times he had been left lying somewhere, alone and beaten. Some fights he regretted. The guy who had said one thing too much about his sister when Boon was sixteen and drunk. Fair warning, Boon thought, but at sixteen, he hadn’t realized one punch could break someone’s face. Sometimes he clenched back the fistfuls of rage and pain, clenched them back, hugged them to himself, plunged them through his own chest, and hit the person he was really aiming at, but usually it wasn’t too hard to find another Indian as mad at the world and himself as he was. Boon ran his tongue over his top front teeth, tasting the scars they had left there. The guy had been right about Boon’s sister after all, though Boon still missed her terribly.

He saw the outline in the dark. A click or so back from the gravel road, snow drifted in deep piles at the base, further rounding the silhouette softened by time and wind. A frozen tear fell down from the Morning Star, plunged into the snow, blending with the rest of the grinding whiteness, but Boon didn’t notice. Fine as sand, snow sifted into his runners as he walked up where the old path ran beneath it. There was still wood in the woodpile, but Boon ignored it, hopped up on the porch, turned the knob, and worked the door, stuck in its frame, until he could just squeeze in. His eyes adjusted as he made out the old chair, still there, with the blue, tatted quilt, purple yarn dotting it like stars, holding the whole thing together. He pulled the gun from the small of his back. Boon walked over, gently lifting it, folding down the edge, letting it fall around his shoulders, sinking at last into the chair, laying the gun in his lap.

Going home was the last thing he wanted to do.

He’d started smoking that shit while he was still with Regina. As much as Boon tried not to cry, a tear ran down his cheek as he lay curled in the quilt in the empty house. Regina had loved him so much, more than any other woman ever had, but there was something in him, some huge empty wound that made him fuck up everything he touched. He’d done all right for a while, holding down a construction job out on the rez, living with Regina at her mom’s in Laverne. Regina had been so proud of him. Boon felt a sharp pain in his chest, worse than the one far below it. His head was light. He could barely keep his eyes open now. How could he have fucked up so much? Regina had been everything he had ever needed or wanted. She was beautiful, and despite how much he had screwed up as a kid, she loved him anyway, loved him with her whole heart. He remembered her long dark hair, how it swayed down and brushed her breasts when they made love, how she looked at him. That’s what killed him the most, when she stared at him with that total adoration, him knowing he didn’t deserve it.

When Grandpa died, Boon had been fifteen, and he’d just lost it, running the roads, drinking, smoking weed. He and his friends started busting in joints, jacking folks, doing whatever they had to do to get money to get fucked up. But Regina loved him anyway, thought he deserved a second chance in life. Boon was crying harder now, the pain in his chest getting worse and worse. From the waist down, he was already numb. Damn, I should have never left that girl. He wondered now if she would still take him in — a crazy thought, but he wondered anyway. Would she still love him now, even after he’d done this? Boon’s lip quivered. The chinook was howling away outside, eating away the snow, singing through the boards of the old house. Boon shifted in the chair, the wet, sticky quilt clinging to his groin and leg as he moved. The blood was starting to freeze. Even if Regina loved him after all this time, she wouldn’t after she heard the news, he thought. That was the worst part of all.

He ended up homeless with that other one in Saskatchewan because of the crack, because of the meth. Jennifer had been a common whore, not even attractive, but she was good at being on the streets, and she could get some shit from truckers when all else had failed the two of them — shoplifting and pawning crap, stealing from old ladies, whatever. He hadn’t even enjoyed sex with her — all he could think about when he was with her was Regina, and there was no way Jennifer compared to her. Stupid lot lizard, he thought, scurrying from truck to truck giving blowjobs for meth.

If only he’d never left Regina, chasing that glass pipe. It had all started when he was working construction up in Edmonton one winter, building a Mormon church, making pretty good money. At first, Regina had been so proud when he came home for the weekends; even her mother was proud of him. But then that whore Jennifer had taken a room down from his and Trevor’s in the motel their boss had put them up in. She’d been in the bar one night when he was drunk, hitting on him pretty hard. But even drunk, he knew she was a whore and an ugly one at that. At twenty-one, she’d looked forty, easy. He must have left the door cracked when he stumbled back to his room that night, though. In his inebriated slumber, he thought he was dreaming of Regina when Jennifer went down on him. When he awoke, exploding in her mouth, it was too late. He knew Regina would hate him for cheating on her, even if he never meant to do it. He hated himself enough, that was for sure. It wasn’t long before he was picking fights with Regina on the phone, avoiding coming home, trying to make her hate him. Anything was better than admitting to her what he’d done, drinking again behind her back when he’d cleaned himself up for so long. Soon, he was out of a job, living in Jennifer’s room, hitting that pipe with her, walking Edmonton’s cold streets while she was screwing her tricks. When the dealer two doors over from her got busted, he hitched with her back to Saskatchewan, the name of the city they landed in only reminding him more of his pain.

Over the years, he hated her more and more, hated her for making him lose Regina, hated her for making him lose himself, hated her for the whore and the thief she was, hated her even for being ugly, the one thing she couldn’t help, the one thing that had made him feel sorry for her at first. He thought about his old friend Nolan Little Bear. Nolan had tried to save him when he started smoking that crap on the job site up in Edmonton. He wondered if Nolan would come to his funeral now. Nolan was like that, always a good friend no matter what. Boon remembered Jennifer’s body lying in the snow. Maybe not, he thought. Maybe not after this.

The gunshot wound had almost stopped bleeding now. The whore had won in the end, Boon thought. That’s what she’d always wanted — to win. That’s what she had told him years ago, in that Edmonton bar, playing poker. “I’ll win,” she leered, holding her cards where everyone could see them. “I’ll win.” But after he’d done what he did, after his hatred toward her had finally blown up, after they’d come back here, back to his home, where all he could think of was Regina and the loss, he knew it was the only noble thing to do, shooting himself, blasting away the cause of all of his agony. He wasn’t a man anymore anyway, not really, and he didn’t deserve to die as one.

Boon pulled the quilt closer, thought of his grandma, his mom, of Regina, of all the women he loved who loved him, of Grandpa. He pulled the quilt closer, and he floated high into the dark blue sky, reaching for those stars that had eluded him, knowing his real home was up there with them.