Mean Spirit, page 9
At first, she felt like laughing, but it was just her nerves and she looked at him, deep and serious, and she said, “I don’t feel safe.”
“A knife in your hat’s going to make you safe?” He took hold of her shoulders and turned Lettie to face him directly. “Look, Leticia.” He used her formal name. “What happened to Grace was that she played around with too many bottles and too many men. Your dad says so. Even Michael Horse thinks so.”
Lettie looked away, into the darkness.
“Besides,” he said, “what good’s a knife going to do you up on your head?”
“You don’t believe that about Grace. None of us do. You saw my father. You saw him looking around, looking for signs and traces of what happened. It just makes it easier to try to believe it was Grace’s fault. It’s easier to swallow that way.”
Abruptly, Benoit changed his tone and took her into his arms. “I know. But tonight, remember?” He kissed her. He ran his hands down her shoulder and across her back. “Tonight we are happy.” He touched her hips, as if he were smoothing down a wrinkle, but then he touched her thigh, and he pulled back once again, as if burned, then examined the lump he’d found there. “A gun? Christ Jesus, it’s a gun.”
Lettie began to cry.
* * *
On his way to the ceremony, Moses walked past the revivalist’s green tent. Pentecostal preachers appealed to the lost, cash-filled Indian souls who had been suffering from spiritual malnutrition. Inside the tent, the faithful prayed with closed eyes. Oil lanterns burned through the green canvas walls, so that from a distance the tent looked luminous, like an emerald, and the mostly mixed-blood people inside were sweating and weeping and wiping their eyes with white handkerchiefs. It was here, in religion, that all their sorrow came out. Moses could hear the Indian preacher speak, “And when the spirit touches us, there won’t be any more danger here on earth,” said the evangelist. “No mean spirits walking this land, no smallness in people, no heartaches, no sorrow, nor any pain.” Moses knew the man’s arms were raised up before the sad adults, and he heard the congregation cry out, “Amen,” and in that word they were bound together.
Moses walked on past the pumping oil wells farther down the road. A white sign, visible even in the dark, read “Indian Territory Illuminating Oil Company,” and then, past that, the land stretched out beneath the dark hand of night, and from the peyote tepee in the hilly, rolling country, Moses could hear the drum. It calmed him. It was the song of a deeper life, the beating of earth’s pulse. He stopped on the road to listen before he made his way through the dark to join his people.
* * *
Earlier that same evening, Michael Horse had left his tepee and walked across the land. He traveled by foot, collecting medicinal plants and sassafras. He carried two bags. By the time he reached the peyote ceremony, the bags were filled with herbs. As he neared the lodge where the ceremony was going to take place, he saw Moses standing still on the night road, listening to the drum which was named “The Life of the People.”
Horse called out from the dark trees. “Moses! Where’s your car?”
Horse’s voice brought Moses out of his reverie. He answered, “I’ve been thinking. I always walk when I’m thinking.”
“Oh, I see. What about?” Horse stepped out of the shadows.
“I don’t know yet,” Moses said. They started off together the short way to the tepee.
Horse joked with him, “Neither do I.”
“Well, when you figure out what I’m thinking, will you let me know?”
They both laughed.
The other members of the Native Church were already there, and when Moses and Horse arrived, they all entered the tepee and sat in a circle on the earth. Some of the people gazed with sad faces into the fire. Some were already praying and their eyes were closed. Others were saying what fine ham was served at the encampment above town that payment day. “It really hit the spot, didn’t it?” a woman asked Moses.
He nodded. But his mind was elsewhere.
Moses’s twin sister, Ruth Tate, sat directly across from him. They looked alike and they’d been known to have that link between them that is common to twins. They’d had it since birth. If Ruth fell down, Moses would feel the same pain, the same scraped knee. If Moses lost one of his beloved horses, Ruth would stop by his place and say, “What’s wrong? I feel sad.”
Ruth had a rich, warm voice which she seldom used and black gentle eyes. She was given to chills and female complaints, so she kept wrapped, as she did at home, in a dark blanket, even with the slow autumn heat and the fire she was sitting before. The other people had wondered about Ruth when she married the busy little photographer, John Tate. They seemed ill-suited to one another. Opposites in all ways. But the marriage seemed solid and Ruth had been lonely for many long years.
Moses looked at his sister. The light softened the bones of her face. She looked, as Horse had once described her, “Indian from the heart out.” Her hair was deep black, her skin smooth and brown.
Reverend Joe Billy of the Indian Baptist Church was what they called the road man. The road man shows Indian people the path of life, takes the stones out of their way, and maps out the spirit’s terrain. Joe Billy’s face was rubbed with red clay and yellow ochre, the elements of earth. He wore a red scarf around his neck. His eyes were closed and he was praying, but he was a different man than the one who wore the black suit on Sunday mornings. And even his prayers were different, deeper somehow, more heartfelt, more physical as if they came through the body and not just the mind. He stretched wet buckskin across a small drum, and when he arranged the holy sage all the talkers became silent.
The people prayed and cried that night. The drummer beat the drum. Joe Billy shook the gourd rattle. Every person lit a cigarette, ate the cactus that was their teacher and their healer, and blessed themselves with the smoke of sage.
Young Ben Graycloud sat on one side of his grandfather, his skin fresh and young, and his eyes squeezed shut. On Ben’s other side was a veteran named Keto. It was already late when Keto prayed. This was his prayer:
Now I’m a good Indian, and the best true American on earth. I salute the flag. And I was in the world war.
The listeners nodded and said, “Hmmm.” It spurred Keto on.
But what happened here, I want to know. The judge asks me if I’m happy in my marriage and I tell him I am. He says do I know the difference between a five dollar bill and a twenty. I say that I do. Then they tell me I’m feeble. I can’t handle my own money, they say. They assign me a guardian. He’s a lawyer. Now, I know lawyers are good men. Some of them even went to the war. But this lawyer buys me a big house. I don’t want a big house. I tell him I want to stay in my home where I was born and where my sons were born.
“I understand,” said Joe Billy, softly.
So this lawyer moves his own things in that house, even his wife. Well, holy spirit, please look into this for me. It’s just not right. And forgive me for speaking in English, but like I said, I’m a true American. I went to their war. I fought in it.
After Keto’s prayer, everyone was silent, pondering his words and their truth. They felt defeated and walled in by what was around them. It was nearly midnight. It seemed a long while before Ben began to pray. He wanted to pray in the Osage language, but he began awkwardly and Joe Billy put his hand on the boy’s knee and said, “Son, the heart’s words are all that’s important in the ears of our creator.” And Joe Billy thought how it might have made Keto feel bad to hear a younger Indian, a mixed-blood, speaking the tribal tongue that Keto had not himself learned.
Ben prayed. “Grandfather,” he said, “I don’t have a good feeling these days, either. Ever since Grace Blanket was killed I’ve been afraid. And now with us having to go away to school.”
But then, suddenly, in the middle of Ben’s prayer, an explosion shocked them upright, jolted them wide awake. It rocked the earth like it had been split wide apart.
“Jesus!” Reverend Billy cried out. “What in the hell was that?” His eyes were alert. At the same moment, both Moses and Ruth made for the door flap to go outside and look, but Keto, who worked in the oil fields as a roughnecker, told them, “It’s a new well blowing out at the drilling site,” and his explanation made sense to everyone, so they settled back down. Ruth wrapped the blanket tightly around her.
“Go on, then,” Joe Billy said to Ben, when he’d sat back on his heels. He touched the boy lightly on the thigh.
“We’ve had awful hard times,” Ben said, and his words seemed strengthened by the shock of the blast. And everyone knew he didn’t mean his own bad times. “They put us on this godforsaken land and no one knew what was underneath it, but even with all this oil and money, it seems we can’t come out ahead.”
“Amen,” said one of the listeners.
“Some of us have broken all apart, like the earth just did.”
“Mmm-hmm,” said some of the listeners.
“I’m tired of those landmen coming round to tap the earth for oil.” Ben thought a moment. “We have so much pain, it’s on our faces and in our eyes. It’s in the clothes we wear,” and his words went straight as an arrow to everyone’s hearts. They were moved and touched. One of the women began to sob. Michael Horse’s throat went tight. Moses covered his face with his aging hands, and thought how his grandson had a man’s good heart and a man’s strong words and he was proud at the same time that he was miserable under the weight of their history.
Ben grew suddenly uncomfortable, like one who had not expected to reach so far with his words. “That’s all. That’s all I have to say.”
It was quiet a long time, except for the crying and sniffling of people in the dark circle. Ruth’s tears ran down her face, and Moses felt them as his own. The faint roar of the gas fire could be heard burning in the distance.
After a while, Joe Billy said, “That was a good prayer, son.” The darkness engulfed them.
Joe Billy added, with humor, “For English that is.”
The listeners caught the joke and laughed a little, wiped their eyes, and felt better.
The eagle bone whistle was blown four times and a water cup was passed around the thirsty circle of people.
* * *
The same explosion that had shocked the praying people jolted Lettie and Benoit into upright positions. The sky south of them went red from the fire, and when that sudden blazing light filled the horizon, they saw the Buick parked behind them. The light outlined the blue-black shape of the hood and caught the gleam of metal.
“Give me that gun!” Benoit grabbed the pearl-handled pistol and cocked it as the driver of the Buick started the car, turned on the head beams, and passed slowly alongside Benoit’s truck.
Lettie locked the car door from inside. But the car disappeared down the road.
“Jesus, I’m jittery.” Benoit tried to laugh, but it caught in his throat. He started the engine and drove back to the main road.
“That was a Buick, wasn’t it?” Lettie sounded suspicious.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” he said stubbornly. “Buicks are a dime a dozen. Even your dad drives one.”
By the time Benoit and Lettie reached the Grayclouds’ residence, the firelight had settled down.
Belle was outside the house. All the windows on the south side of the house had been broken out by the midnight blast and she was gauging the damage, picking up the few splinters of glass that had fallen outward.
“I’m sick and tired of oil drillers,” Belle said. “They burn the poor birds right out of the sky.”
The watchers were standing on the south side of the house, talking among themselves.
“Nola woke up twice with nightmares,” Belle said to Benoit. “Rena’s still crying. The chickens fell off their roosts. We won’t have eggs for months. Cups fell off the shelves and broke.” She worked quickly.
Benoit helped pick up the sharp splinters of glass. The indoor light reflected off the broken edges. There was a faint smell of burning trees.
It was nearly daylight when Benoit left for home. Belle and Lettie were cleaning the floors. Belle watched him drive away. “He’s a good man,” she said to Lettie. “He treats you and Sara like queens.” She squatted down and swept the floor with a hand broom. Lettie held the dustpan for her mother and Belle swept the broken glass into it and added to Benoit’s list of attributes that he was good to his mother when she was alive and that he was a clean dresser even though she herself didn’t really like the new styles he favored all that much.
In the first hint of dawn, as Benoit neared his home on South Fremont Road, he thought he’d taken a wrong turn. He was tired, and though he was sure he recognized the landmarks, three cotton-woods were there and the mailbox was out on the road with his name written on it, something was wrong. He slammed on his brakes and stared. He tried to gather himself to think, tried to understand what he saw. Where his house had been, there was only a pile of smoking embers, and gray ash had settled over the grasses. He was stunned, and when he opened the truck cab door, he almost fell out, then he pulled himself up in that weightless, absent way people move when they are unable to believe their own eyes.
A water truck was there, still pouring water on the rubble. It steamed and hissed. Gray smoke rose up and there was a stench in the air.
Benoit’s mouth was locked open. The remains of his house were nothing but smoking embers. Only a single Greek statue stood unbroken, but even that statue had been blackened on one side from the heat and smoke of the explosion.
“Oh God,” Benoit cried out. The life seemed to go out of him. “Oh my God.”
From behind the statue, the sheriff walked through the ash toward Benoit. “Benoit,” he said. “Don’t move, Benoit.”
Even without the command, Benoit was stock-still, looking at the ruins of his home. Then he began to run toward the smoldering house, but the sheriff grabbed his arm. Benoit fell out of his grasp, fell down to his knees, crying again, “My God,” and he put his face against the devastated earth, and it was covered with ash. He did not pull away or struggle when Sheriff Gold took his arm again and put the handcuff on his wrist.
“Sara?” Benoit called out, like a question. “Where is she?” He looked at the sheriff.
“Benoit, I got witnesses,” Jess Gold said.
“What?” Benoit went cold.
The sheriff handcuffed his other wrist and led Benoit toward the car, talking all the while like he was talking to a wild animal, saying, “You know I got no choice, Benoit. It’s my job. You know I’m your friend.”
He put Benoit in the back seat, and as he drove toward town the sky became lighter. A rooster crowed in the distance. Benoit, his face smudged dark, saw the devastation. A mattress was in an oak tree. A shoe was in a bush. A pair of glasses were on the road. Songbirds began to sing.
The sheriff watched Benoit’s stunned face in the rearview mirror. He studied the gray-green eyes, the face that had gone sweaty and pale, the dirty smooth forehead and fine, wide lips. Benoit’s hair was still in place, combed back from his face. His stunned eyes took in his broken world. The debris had scattered for over a mile. Books, once his, lay on the ground with their spines broken open, their pages and printed words open to the sky. Shoes he recognized had landed what seemed like half a mile away. He saw one of his own black leather brogans. A pillow had lost its feathers. Splintered wood found a resting place in trees. The arm of a statue was in a creek and Benoit saw it lying there open-handed, relaxed, as they crossed the bridge. Then it was all gone, as if the blast could not pass over the water, and soon they were in town, and the sheriff parked his car in front of the jail.
* * *
Through some miracle, Mrs. Inman, Sara’s housekeeper, had been thrown clear of the fire. She’d landed in a hedge of bushes and survived with only minor injuries and burns.
Michael Horse, who really wanted nothing more in all the world than to be left alone to his silences and prayers, and to tending the fire, went to Tulsa to visit Mrs. Inman in her hospital room. He was keeping a journal of the fire and the arrest of Benoit. He had come to agree with Belle, that there was danger and that there was a conspiracy and like her, he suspected everyone. He wrote a page on every person he thought might have had a reason to put the nitro fuse in the coalbin of Benoit’s house. He even included Lettie in his list of possible suspects, since he knew that she wanted to marry Benoit, had even wished it aloud on past occasions.
The day after the fire died down, Michael Horse returned and sifted through the ruins. He found a silver ring which he took home and held in his hand, waiting for the story that metal might tell. But he heard nothing and thought the heat of the explosion must have killed the tale that lived in the metal.
The dreadful fire and Benoit’s arrest filled up several pages of Horse’s diary. He wanted to go to the courthouse and find a map that sketched out who owned the lands that adjoined those of the Blanket sisters. He was sure Nola was in trouble, or would be anyway, when she came of age. But for now, Benoit was legally heir to the fortune.
Horse wrote down that he’d seen Lettie and Benoit on the Ferris wheel together early the night of the explosion. Lettie, he knew, would be forced to remain silent about their tryst since the law would certainly think Benoit was a sharp corner in a lover’s triangle, and if they knew the situation, Benoit’s guilt would double in their eyes. In his journals, Horse named the peyotists who’d been at the prayers. He thought he could rule them out.
When Horse arrived at the hospital, Mrs. Inman looked weak and pale. She was without her glasses, so she squinted at him while they talked. The area around her eyes had been protected by her glasses and was unburned and white, while the rest of her face was red and tender.
Sara had been antsy that night, Mrs. Inman said. “But it was the grave-robbers that concerned her. You knew about them, didn’t you?”
