Scalp Dance: A Sam Chitto Mystery, page 22
part #1 of A Sam Chitto Mystery Series
. . .
As day broke, Chitto peeled the shirt off his back, used it to mop away the sweat, then pitched it aside. As he watched the fire turn to embers, he absorbed the last of its heat, feeling muscles relax, perspiration seep from his skin. Slowly, he became aware that he felt no remorse for what was to happen. No remorse about not preventing it. The Creator chose the prayers he would allow. Who was he to interfere with a prayer being answered? Those matters were outside his jurisdiction.
Sitting next to Sonny Boy, Chitto watched the fire die, listened to round granite stones, millions of years old, groan as they gave up their heat and grew peaceful again. In that stillness, he planned his next steps.
He and Sonny Boy had already discussed a cleansing ceremony. When to meet again to make it happen, where Chitto would spend a few days in solitary confinement.
He would also talk to Tubbe, Sunday, and Murray, sharing with them what he’d learned of the executions conducted across their nations. He would tell them of the decision he had made this night, of the path he had decided to walk, make it clear they had to choose their own. But he could predict what that would be, for they were not just lawmen. They were men of justice.
And that left just one loose end to tie up.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Chitto parked outside a house on a tree-lined residential street. Deep letters cut into the wooden sign out front had been darkened with stain. He read the word Hospice, skipped over the rest, and walked up a pitted sidewalk buckling with age. Recognizing two men walking out the front door, he lifted a hand in greeting.
“Hey, Sam,” Tommy Rideout said.
“How’s she doing?” Chitto asked.
Rideout cleared his throat, then stared at the ground.
Chitto turned to Junior Wharton. “Not too good, huh?”
The K-9 officer shrugged. “We brought flowers and tried to joke with her like we used to, but . . .”
“Okay,” Chitto nodded. “See you back at the office.”
The house had been outfitted with a lobby of sorts. A sofa in one corner faced a fat, cathode-ray TV. Next to it was a magazine rack filled with copies of Oklahoma Today and House Beautiful. A sign above the sofa said No Smoking. Chitto approached a woman with a badge on her shirt that read Volunteer and asked where Wanda Gilly’s room was.
“Down that hallway to the right.” Washed-out hair framed a wrinkled face. “Can’t miss it—looks like a florist’s shop. People coming in constantly. Lots of policemen. Wanda calls them her kids.”
“Thanks.” Chitto turned to walk away.
She pointed through a window. “Little garden spot back there. You want to, you can take her out. We managed to keep the pot plants alive despite the drought.” She attempted a smile. “Seemed important.”
As he walked on, Chitto glanced through the window at the garden. Wooden chairs sat under an oak that looked to be a hundred years old. A mange of Bermuda grass spread across the ground. Plants in flowerbeds had dried to stalks.
He paused at the doorway to Wanda’s room. The scent from baskets of flowers was overwhelming, colored foil around pot plants assaulted the eye, an intimidating guest book demanded signature before entry. A funeral.
Flipping through the book’s pages, he saw his mother and grandmother’s names on the first page. On subsequent pages were names of everyone in the department and most of those in the tribal complex. He recognized other names from across the checkerboard, even from the Texas side of the state line. Closing the book, he walked to where a rag of a woman sat in a wheelchair.
Seeing him, Wanda wheezed a sigh. “Thank God you didn’t bring more stinking flowers.” Though weaker, her voice was still grating. “Go get those Marlboros out of your glove box. I’m dyin’ for a smoke.”
He smiled at that. A nurse’s aide in the corner was not so amused.
“Now, Mrs. Gilly,” she said. “Doctor made it clear: no more cigarettes.”
He walked to Wanda’s wheelchair and kicked the brake off. “How ’bout we visit the garden where we can talk in peace.”
“I stand on the fifth amendment,” she said as he wheeled her out the door. “I don’t know nothin’.”
He grinned. “We both know that’s not true, Wanda.” He pushed her chair through a door built to accommodate the handicapped. “But don’t worry, I’m not wired.”
She managed a chuckle and waited patiently as he positioned her near thick shrubbery that still held onto a few leaves.
“So, where’d I screw up?” she said as he adjusted the pillow at her back.
He thought a minute. “Think it was the missing soap and fabric softener.” Spotting a pot of wilted red geraniums on a picnic table across the yard, he retrieved it and set it on a table next to her. “Didn’t make sense that one of the cleaners would risk his job over something so small.”
Wanda nodded. “Shouldn’t have taken that stuff out of the office. Almost brought it back Monday morning. Figured that would be a bigger mistake. Didn’t want to risk someone spotting me.”
Chitto leaned towards her, sniffing her robe. “You really use Final Touch?”
“Have for years. Hides the smell of smoke on my clothes—” She glanced away, blinking, then looked at him. “That’s what messed me up?”
“How’d you know that stuff was in my office anyway?”
She smiled, dull eyes taking on a sparkle. “Who do you think that guy was that went into the washateria? Practically stripped himself naked, his brother, too, so he’d have something to wash.”
Chitto laughed outright, then rubbed his throat. He’d been that close to his hunters and didn’t even know it. “Don’t suppose their names are Ernest and Bennie.”
She grinned. “My nephews, pretending to be construction workers. When you got secretive, I had them tail you to see what you were up to. About scared the pea wadding out of them that night you emptied your gun on them. They dropped that last envelope off at your desk, too.”
“The last one.” He frowned as if thinking something over. “So you’re the one that dough-popped me in the parking lot?”
“Element of surprise,” she said. “Dumpsters crammed with scrap two-by-fours. Damn crows helped, too. Made so much noise, you didn’t know I was anywhere around.”
Wanda was Hoklonote’she, the telepathic shape-changer. Except she didn’t need to read minds because he’d let her know his every move.
“Pack a hell of a punch for a little woman.” He rubbed the back of his head. “I don’t get it,” he said. “Those boys got arrested for wrecking a tavern because of a girl problem.”
She snickered. “Wasn’t any girl problem. The problem was an old man who developed loose lips when he got drunk. Tried twice to discourage Sonny Boy, but it didn’t work. Only thing left was to close down his watering trough.”
Sonny Boy’s wallet full of money became clear.
“Funny thing is, you helped get them outta jail.” She laughed softly.
“Yeah,” he said. “Real funny.” He rubbed a hand across his face. “Those boys were busy tailing me. That means it had to be you broke into my house.”
“Didn’t break in,” she said, raising a finger in protest. “Mary gave me a key long time back.”
“Jeezuscrise,” he said, thinking Mary’s attitude toward house keys had been overly liberal.
“Wouldn’t have let any harm come to you, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she said.
“So, you’re saying my neck was never on the line?” He raised an eyebrow. “The long guns those boys were carrying said something different.”
“Well . . .” She stared into the distance. “Guess we’ll never know now, will we? If Dan had let Rodriquez take on the case in the first place, would’ve made things simpler.”
“Yeah, I figured that out, too.”
Chitto picked up an Adirondack chair and moved it closer. Easing into the chair, he felt shoulder muscles loosen. Tight neck muscles relax. What was it about Adirondacks that fitted the body so well, he wondered. It was the angles, he decided. Some old carpenter a long time ago had figured out how the human body was meant to bend. Reaching into his pocket, he withdrew his pack of Marlboros and a book of paper matches.
“Oh, good Lord—bless you, Sam.” Wanda’s hand shook as Chitto lit her up. When he handed her the rest of the pack, she slid them into the pocket of her robe and repeated, “Bless you.”
“There’s a cost.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Ain’t there always.” She inhaled, blew a coil of smoke out her mouth. “I’m not giving you names.”
“That’s not it.”
“Then . . . what?”
“This scalp dance ends now. I’m tired of looking over my shoulder, and . . .” He picked up her loose hand. “I expect you to finish the journey. No need for your Shilombish to hang around. I plan to stay on the trail of Bert’s and Dad’s killers, won’t stop looking while there’s a breath left in me.”
She took another drag on the cigarette, looked at him through a whirl of smoke. “You’ve been making noises about giving up this last year, quitting the force.”
“Not anymore.” He looked her in the eye. “Let me take care of things.”
Suppressing a cough, Wanda flipped cigarette ash into the pot of geraniums. “That a promise?”
“You can take it to the bank.” Chitto could read in Wanda’s eyes that she knew he spoke true.
“Well, all right then.” She took another drag on the cigarette, waving smoke away with a hand frail as a dragonfly’s wings. “One more question before I end this dance.”
“What’s that?”
“You could’ve stopped that last one.” She looked at him with eyes sunken in their sockets. “Why didn’t you?”
He laughed softly. “Seemed like a good day to be indigenous.”
About The Author
Lu Clifton writes adult mysteries set in Oklahoma and Texas Panhandle, with a mingling of Native American cultural beliefs and traditions. She became interested in those cultural traditions while tracing her mother’s Choctaw roots. She was born in and spent her early childhood in southeastern Oklahoma, then moved to the Texas Panhandle with her family. She completed an associate degree at Amarillo Junior College in Texas and a B.A. and M.A. in English at Colorado State University. She now resides in Illinois. She has two sons, one that lives in Oregon and the other in Illinois. Her housemate is a gray tabby named Mary Jane that she rescued from an animal shelter.
Writing for adults and children, she is a member of the Oklahoma Writers Federation, Mystery Writers of America, and the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators.
Clifton’s middle-grade novel, Freaky Fast Frankie Joe, received a Friends of American Writers Award for Juvenile Fiction in 2013, and Seeking Cassandra won the 2017 Oklahoma Book Award for Young Adult Fiction.
Topics And Questions For Discussion
Use this guide to facilitate your library or book club’s conversation about the book.
1. Clifton includes elements of American Indian spirituality in her novels. How does spirituality drive the action of the characters in this story? Discuss how the Prologue sets the stage.
2. Chitto’s wife, Mary, has recently died. Clifton devotes many paragraphs to Chitto’s beliefs that Shiliup and Shilombish, inner and outer shadows, are nothing more than superstitions. How do Chitto’s beliefs change throughout the novel?
3. How does Clifton’s description of the Oklahoma landscape enhance the reader’s understanding of the physical and cultural geography of the American Indian people living there?
4. Sam Chitto is not only a lawman but a geologist. Discuss how Clifton uses his collection of worry stones and his introspection about the history of the Earth to enhance the story.
5. Clifton highlights some ceremonial rituals in her novel. What role do these rituals play in the story and in the lives of the characters.
6. Independently governed reservations exist in many western states. The Indian Removal Act, signed by President Andrew Jackson in 1830, was intended to provide other indigenous nations a similar homeland in Indian Territory. However, these boundaries broke down in Oklahoma. As a group, discuss your knowledge of the Removal, the Dawes Commission, the politics that created the checkerboard, and the effect of these problems on the native peoples.
7. In the story, Chitto meets Leslie Anderson, a cultural anthropologist doing comparative research between the old ways and values of American Indians and the resurgence of these ways in contemporary life. As a group, compare the physical removal of the indigenous peoples to Indian Territory with the loss of their history. Which do you think is worse: losing your homeland or losing an identity? Name other groups that have been similarly affected.
8. Though Clifton has Native American ancestry in her family, she is not a member of any nation; however, her portrayal of American Indian culture is central to her novels. Do you think a writer of culturally specific literature needs to be a member of that culture? Why or why not?
9. What is more interesting to you as a reader: the case the detectives investigate, or the life and culture of the American Indian detective?
10. Ask group members to share their experiences with American Indians and/or visits to powwows.
One Last Thing . . .
If you enjoyed this book, I’d be grateful if you would post a short review on Amazon. Your support really does make a difference. I read all reviews and use the feedback to make the next book even better.
Thanks again for your support!
Lu
Website:
http://www.lutricia-lois-clifton.com
Amazon Author page:
https://www.amazon.com/author/luclifton
Lu Clifton, Scalp Dance: A Sam Chitto Mystery
