Shadow Prey

CHAPTER 10

The knock came a few minutes after ten o'clock. Sam Crow was washing a coffee cup in the kitchen sink. He stopped at the knock and looked up. Aaron Crow was sitting in front of a battered Royal typewriter, pecking at a press release on the Oklahoma killing. Shadow Love was in the bathroom. When the knock came, Aaron went to the door and spoke through it.

"Who is that?"

"Billy."

Billy. Aaron fumbled at the lock, pulled the door open. Billy Hood stood in the hallway, bowlegged in his cowboy boots, a battered, water-stained Stetson perched on his head. His square face was drawn and pale. He took a step forward and Aaron wrapped his arms around him and picked him up off his feet.

"God damn, Billy," he said. He could feel the stone knife dangling beneath Billy's shirt.

"I feel bad, man," Billy said when Aaron released him. "Man, I've been fucked up all the way back. I can't stop thinking about it."

"Because you're a spiritual man."

"I don't feel so fuckin' spiritual. I cut that dude," Billy said as he walked farther into the room. Aaron glanced once into the hallway and pushed the door shut.

"A white man," said Aaron.

"A man," Shadow Love said from the bathroom. He stood squarely in the doorway, arms slightly away from his sides, like a gunslinger. His cheeks were hollow. His white eyes hooked up at the corners, like a starving wolfs. "Don't make it sound small."

"I don't mean that it's small," said Aaron. "I mean that it's different. Billy killed the enemy in a war."

"A man is a man," Shadow Love insisted. "It's all the same."

"And an Indian man is an Indian man, and that's different, to be one of the people," Sam retorted. "One reason Aaron won't use you is that you don't understand the difference between war and murder."

The two Crows were squared off against their son. Hood broke it.

"Everybody's looking for me," he said. Billy looked scared, like a rabbit that's been chased until there's no more room to run. "Me and Leo. Christ, I heard about Leo and the judge. He took him off, man. Have you heard from him?"

"No. We're getting worried. They haven't got him, but we haven't heard a thing."

"Unless they've got him but they aren't saying, so they can squeeze him," said Shadow Love.

"I don't think so. This is too big to hide something like that," Sam Crow said.

Billy took off his hat, tossed it on a chair and wiped his hair back with his hand. "We've been on the radio every hour. In all the newspapers all the way from New York. Every town I come to."

"They don't know your names," Sam said.

"They connected us with Tony Bluebird. They'll be looking for us here in the Cities."

"That won't help them if they don't know who you are, Billy," said Aaron, trying to reassure him. "There are twenty thousand Indians in the Cities. How will they know which one? And we knew they'd connect you to Bluebird; that was the whole point."

"They'll find out who you are," Shadow Love said. His voice was gravelly, cold. He looked at the Crows. "It's time for you guys to go to the safe house, get out of this place. If you want to live."

"Too early," said Sam. "When we feel some pressure, we go to the safe house. Not before. If we go in too early and there's nothing happening, we'll get careless. We'll fuck around and somebody will see us."

"And they still don't have any names, nothing that will identify Billy or Leo," Aaron said again.

Shadow Love stepped out into the room and put a hand on Billy Hood's shoulder, ignoring his fathers. "I'll tell you now: They'll find your name. And they'll find Leo's. Eventually, they'll get the rest of us. They've got some movies from a camera in the building where you killed Andretti, so they've got your face. The cops'll take the pictures and go around and squeeze and squeeze, and somebody will tell them. And there was a witness who saw Leo. They'll have her looking at mug shots right now."

"You're a big authority?" Aaron asked sarcastically. "You know all the rules?"

"I know enough," Shadow Love said. His eyes were white and opaque, like marble chips from a tombstone. "I've been on the street since I was seven. I know how the cops work. They pick-pick-pick, talk-talk-talk. They'll find out."

"You don't know that…"

"Don't be an old woman, Father," Shadow Love snapped. "It's dangerous." He held the older man's eyes for a moment, then turned back to Billy. "Somebody will tell. Somebody will tell on us all, sooner or later. I met one of the cops doing the investigation. He's a hunter, you can smell it on him. He'll be after us, and he's not some South Dakota sheriffs cousin, some retreaded shitkicker calling himself a cop. He's a hard man. And even if he doesn't get us, somebody will. Sooner or later. Everyone in this room is a dead man walking."

Billy Hood looked into Shadow Love's face for a moment, then nodded and seemed to grow taller. "You're right," he said, his voice suddenly calm. "I should do another while I can. Before they get me."

Sam clapped him on the back. "Good. We have a target."

"Where's John? Is he out?"

"Yeah. Out in Brookings."

"Ah, Jesus, he's going after Linstad?"

"Yup."

"That's a big one," Billy said. He ran his hand through his hair. "I gotta get home, get some sleep. Maybe I'll go up north and see Ginnie and the girl, you know? Tomorrow or the day after."

"Come on down to the river with us," Sam suggested. "We're doing a sweat. You'll feel a hundred percent better afterwards. We got some bags too, and a couple of tents. You can sleep out on the island."

"All right," Billy nodded. "My ass is whipped, man…"

"And we've got to talk about a man in Milwaukee," said Sam. "The guy who's figuring the strategy for attacking the land rights up north. Smart guy…"

"I don't know if I can do the knife again, man. This An-dretti guy, the blood was coming out of his neck like a hose." Billy sounded shaky again and Sam stopped him with a wave of his hand.

"The knife is good because it means something to the people and something to the media," he said, "But it's not the main thing. In Milwaukee, use a pistol. Use a rifle. The important thing is to kill the guy." ~ Aaron nodded. "Wear the knife around your neck. If you're taken, that'll be good enough."

"I won't be taken," Billy said. His voice was trembling and low, but he held it together. "If I can't get away, I'll go like Bluebird."

They talked for another fifteen minutes while Aaron gathered up the dried sage and red willow he used in the sweats. Sam couldn't sleep without a pillow, so he got one off the bed. They were walking out the door when the phone rang.

Aaron picked it up, said hello, listened a second, smiled and said, "Leo, God damn. We were worried…"

Leo Clark was calling from Wichita. Oklahoma City was a war zone, he said. The police and the FBI were crawling through the Indian community. He'd gotten out of town immediately after the killing, hidden at a friend's house the next day, gotten a haircut and then driven to Wichita.

"What's happening there?" Leo asked.

"Not much. But there are FBI agents all over the place. So it's just a matter of time…"

"I wish we'd hear…"

"The media's talking about war, so we got that across."

"Gotta keep pumping…"

"Yeah. Tell me what the judge said just before you took him," Aaron said. He listened intently and finally said, "Okay. I'm going to put some of that in the press release, so they'll know it's for real… and I'll put in a quote from you, like we agreed."

They talked for another minute and then Aaron hung up. "He's on his way in," he said. "He cut his hair. No more braids."

"Too bad," said Sam. "That boy had a good hair on him."

"No more. He's got sidewalls and a flattop," Aaron Crow said, chuckling. "He says he looks like a fuckin' Marine."

The sweat lodge was on the island below Fort Snelling, at the junction of the Minnesota and Mississippi, on the ground that held Sioux bones from the death camp. Aaron Crow could feel them there, still crying, tearing his flesh like fishhooks. Sam Crow held him, fearing that his other half would die of a burst heart. Billy Hood prayed and sweated, prayed and sweated, until the fear and anguish of the An-dretti kill ran out of him into the ground. Shadow Love glowered in the heat, watching the others. He felt the bones in the ground, but he never prayed a word.

Long after midnight, they sat on the edge of the river, watching the water roll by. Billy lit a cigarette with a Zippo lighter, took a drag.

"Killing a man is a lot harder than I thought. It's not doing it that's so hard. It's afterwards. Doing it, it's like cutting the head off a chicken with a hatchet. You just do it. Later, thinking about it, I got the sweats."

"You think too much," said Shadow Love. "I've killed three. The feeling isn't bad; it's pretty good, really. You win. You send another one of them assholes straight to hell."

"You killed three?" Aaron said sharply. "I know two. One in South Dakota, one in Los Angeles: the drug man and the Nazi."

"There's another one now," Shadow Love said. "I put his body into the river below the Lake Street bridge." He gestured at the river. "He may be floating past right now, while we smoke."

The Crows looked at each other, and a tear ran down Aaron's face. Sam reached out and thumbed it away.

"Why?" Aaron asked his son.

"Because he was a traitor."

"You mean he was one of the people?" Aaron's voice rose in fear and anguish.

"A traitor," Shadow Love said. "He put the police on Bluebird."

Aaron was on his feet, his hands at the sides of his head, pressing together. "No, no no no no…"

"Yellow Hand he was, from Fort Thompson," Shadow Love said.

"I can hear the bones," Aaron groaned. "Yellow Hand's people were free warriors. They died for us and now we have killed one of theirs. They are screaming at us…"

Shadow Love stood and spit into the river. "A man is a fuckin' man and that's all," he said. "Just a fuckin' piece of meat. I'm trying to keep you free and you won't even give me that."

Billy Hood never could get his head quite right in the borrowed sleeping bag. After a difficult night, he woke well before dawn with a crick in his neck. While the Crows and Shadow Love slept, he crawled out of the tent and lit the Coleman lantern, moved quietly into the woods, dug a cathole and used it. When he finished, he kicked dirt in the hole and started collecting wood.

A jungle of dead trees stood along the waterline. Hood gathered a dozen limbs as long and thick as his forearm and hauled them back to the campsite. Using twigs and finger-thick sticks, he built a foot-high tepee-shaped starter fire, fanned it, waited until it was going good, then stacked on the heavier wood and topped the structure with a steel grate. The Crows kept a blue enameled-steel coffeepot in their truck, with a jar of instant coffee inside. He got it, filled the pot with water from a jug, dumped in what looked like enough coffee and put it on the grate.

"God damn." Aaron Crow, moving. "Nothing smells as good as cookout coffee."

"Got a couple of quarts of it out here," Billy said.

Aaron crawled out of the tent, wearing a V-necked T-shirt and green boxer shorts. "Cups in the cooler, in the back of the truck," he said.

Billy nodded and went to get them. Aaron looked toward the east, but there was no sign of the sun. He sniffed and the air smelled like morning, redolent of dew and river mud and boiling coffee. When Billy returned, Sam and Shadow Love were stirring.

"John ought to be in Brookings by now," Billy said.

"Yeah." Aaron handled the coffeepot off the fire with a hot pad and poured two cups. "So what are you going to do?"

"Go home, get cleaned up, maybe catch a few more hours of sleep, then go on up to Bemidji and see Ginnie and the kid. I'll give you a call," Billy said.

"Did you think about Milwaukee?" Aaron asked.

"All night." Billy took a sip of the scalding coffee, looking at Aaron over the rim of the cup. "I think I can handle it. The sweat helped."

Aaron looked back at the sweat lodge. "Sweats always help. Sweats'd cure cancer, if they'd give them a chance."

Billy nodded, but after a moment he said, "Don't seem to help Shadow. No offense, Aaron, but that boy is one crazy motherfucker."