Red knife

EIGHT

Thomas Blessing lived with his mother, Fanny, in a one-story frame house that, as long as Cork could remember, had been in desperate need of a new coat of paint. The house was a god-awful purple, something out of a psychedelic nightmare, and Cork had often wondered if one reason Fanny didn’t paint it was that nobody was stupid enough to manufacture the color anymore.

The house stood near a crossroads on the eastern side of the rez. On the other side of the road stood the abandoned ruins of an old gas station, a gray derelict that stared hollow-eyed at the Blessing place. Several years before, a photographer for National Geographic had shot the old place, and the photo appeared in the publication, run with an article about the plight of the rez: the deterioration, the drunkenness, the desperation. It hadn’t been an unfair article, Cork had thought at the time, but it had made the situation on the rez sound hopeless. The Ojibwe may have lacked many things, but they’d never lacked for courage and they’d never lost hope.

Behind the Blessing house was a marsh full of cattails and red-winged blackbirds. In the summer, the marsh was home to great blue herons that waded among the lily pads with awkward majesty and bent with a formal-looking stiffness to snatch at fish and crawdads.

It was Fanny Blessing who answered Cork’s knock. She appeared to be headed out. A big black purse hung on her shoulder and a jean jacket was slung over her arm.

“ Boozhoo, Fanny,” he said, offering the familiar Ojibwe greeting.

“If you’re here to arrest Tommy, I ain’t going to stop you,” she said.

She was a heavy woman. She was also a smoker, had been since she was a kid, and she was paying the price: emphysema. She wore a tube that ran from her nostrils, over both ears, and down to a small green oxygen tank, which she pulled around beside her on a little wheeled cart. She was a couple of years younger than Cork and had been a wild one in her day. Fanny had loved a good time, loved Wild Turkey with a beer chaser, loved dancing in bars and at powwows, and loved men, no-good men especially. She’d had three children by three different fathers. One had died young, a drowning. The middle one, a girl named Topaz, had run away when she was sixteen and, as far as Cork knew, hadn’t been in touch with Fanny since. Thomas, her youngest, was the only one left with her, but she didn’t seem particularly inclined to want to keep him.

“I know whatever you’re here for, he probably done,” she said. “All that crazy Red Boyz shit.”

“I haven’t done anything,” Tom Blessing said from somewhere in the room behind her. “And even if I did, he wouldn’t be taking me anywhere, Mom. He’s not the sheriff anymore.”

“Just here to talk to Tom, if you don’t mind,” Cork said.

“He’s the one you got to convince.” She waved away her responsibility. “You two go at it. Me, I’m heading to the casino.” She let the screen door slam shut behind her and maneuvered past Cork with her oxygen cart in tow.

Thomas Blessing stepped into the light that fell through the doorway into the living room. “I keep telling you,” he called after her, “it’s like taking water from a lake and just pouring it back in.”

Cork figured he was speaking about the checks each registered tribal member received as a share of the profits from the Chippewa Grand Casino, south of Aurora. Fanny took the money then gave it right back at the slot machines.

“What do you want me to do?” she called as she opened the door of her big white Buick, which was parked next to her son’s black Silverado. “Sit around all day listening to the preachers on television? Least at the casino I can smoke without you giving me a lot of crap for it.”

She settled her oxygen tank in the passenger seat, kicked the engine over, backed onto the road, and shot toward Aurora.

Blessing looked at Cork coldly through the screen door. “What do you want?”

“You heard about Alex and Rayette?”

“Nothing happens on the rez we don’t know about it right away.”

“What do you think?”

“I think Buck Reinhardt just bought himself a ticket to hell.”

“You think it was Reinhardt?”

“What are you doing here? What’s with all the questions?”

“You have any idea why Alex-”

“His name was Kakaik.”

“You know why he wanted to see me?”

“No.”

“He asked me to arrange a meeting with Reinhardt.”

That seemed to surprise him. “What for?”

“Said he wanted to offer Buck justice.”

“Looks like Reinhardt decided to deliver his own form of justice first.”

“You have any idea what Kingbird-sorry, Kakaik-might have been thinking of offering Reinhardt?”

“You mean besides a bullet between the eyes?”

“I’m wondering if he was thinking of turning in your cousin, Lonnie Thunder.”

“No way. He wouldn’t do that. He’d never disrespect one of the Red Boyz that way.”

“Seems to me Lonnie had already betrayed the Red Boyz. He dealt drugs here in Tamarack County. It’s my understanding none of the Red Boyz is allowed to do that.”

“Where’d you get your information?”

“It’s what I heard. I want to talk to Thunder.”

“Go ahead.”

“I’ve got to find him first, Tom.”

“My name is Waubishash.”

“If anybody knows where your cousin is, I figure it’s you.”

“Even if I did, why would I tell you?”

“Because it would be in his best interest to talk to me.”

“Yeah? And why’s that?”

“I think a good case could be made that he killed Rayette and Alex.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Is it? What if he was afraid Alex was going to turn him over to the sheriff?”

“I already told you Alex wouldn’t do that.”

“You mean Kakaik.”

“Fuck you.”

“I’ll make a deal with you. Tell Lonnie I want to talk to him. He can arrange it anywhere, anytime he likes, in any way he thinks will make it safe for him. If he’s able to convince me that he had nothing to do with killing the Kingbirds, I’ll stop dogging him. Otherwise, I’ll find him on my own and drag his sorry ass to the sheriff myself.”

“I’d love to see you try that, old man.”

Cork held him with his gaze. “I’m thinking that now Kingbird’s gone, the Red Boyz are going to look to you for leadership. Believe me, Tom, I wish you luck. Talk to your cousin and have him call me. Or call me yourself.” He held out a business card. Blessing made no move to open the screen door and accept it, so Cork slid it into the crack between the edge of the door and the frame. “If I don’t hear from one of you by the end of the day, I start hunting Thunder.”

Cork turned around and headed toward his Bronco. At his back Blessing called, “You come onto the rez, maybe it’s you who gets hunted.”

Cork kept walking.