Watershed, page 3
A young man behind me who smelled of garlic and beer asked the woman for a pack of filterless Pall Mall cigarettes.
“Where can I find their house?” I asked.
The woman pointed out the store and toward the intersection where a suspended amber light flashed. “South, seven mailboxes, after the trailer what has no roof.”
My father read to me when I was a child. What he read was Lewis Carroll’s Symbolic Logic. He would read me a passage about existential statements, look at the expression on my face, and then laugh. I would laugh too and we would recite syllogisms together—if a then b, if b then c, therefore if a then c—and he would have me insert statements for a, b, and c until I was brain-tired and fell asleep. My father taught me to be a smart-ass and it became a thing I couldn’t help; throughout my life I was said to have “an attitude.” And so I did, I suppose. A crop of attitude planted by my father and encouraged by my grandfather.
In seventh grade I was asked by a science teacher, a Mr. Yount, who looked very much like his name, to tell the class what I thought venereal disease was. I said, “I believe it is a shaft infection.”
2
I lost count of the mailboxes and though I spotted the topless trailer, it was the yellow-and-white paramedics’ vehicle and the accompanying flashing red lights that led me to the Yellow Calf home. I thought to keep driving, but I saw Louise standing in the yard. She was the same height as several, obviously frightened, children. I parked on the road; my car was leaning severely as it was next to the drainage ditch. I had to push hard against the door to close it.
Louise turned and raised an awkward, absent wave. She seemed to take a second to recognize me, and having done so seemed conspicuously unimpressed.
“Can I help in some way?” I asked.
“It’s my mother,” Louise said, stoically. “She’s old.”
At that moment, the medics brought the old woman out onto the porch on a stretcher, her body held in place by red-and-yellow straps. She was in obvious pain, her head was rolling from side to side and her eyes were shut tightly, but she made no sound. The light of the day was fading and the flashing red lights of the ambulance seemed brighter, sweeping over a larger area. “It’s okay, kids,” Louise said to the children. A large man, a young obese woman, and an elderly woman came out of the house after the stretcher.
“Do you know what’s wrong?” I asked, feeling stupid, not knowing really what to say, not knowing why I had actually stopped after seeing the ambulance.
“She’s old. The pain is in her stomach.” She stepped away from me and announced to the other adults, “I’m riding with Old Woman in the ambulance. Robert here will drive the rest of you.” She turned to the children. “You run over to Irene’s. Go straight there.”
The children ran on.
The big man and the big woman sat in the bed of the truck, their backs to the cab, their heads in my view when I glanced at the mirror. The elderly woman sat in the cab with me.
“My name is Robert,” I said, glancing at her and then through the windshield at the flashing lights of the ambulance that was disappearing ahead of us.
“My name is Mary Brown,” she said without looking at me. “My brother’s wife is ill.”
I sat in an orange molded plastic chair that hurt my back in the waiting room of the Rivertown Hospital. The large man who had ridden in the back of my truck from the reservation was named Big Junior Brown, and he was now seated across the magazine-covered coffee table, sharing a bag of corn chips with his obese wife, Della. Della was missing the tip of her right index finger and she played constantly with the smooth end of it while she ate. I couldn’t watch her because of that. Mary Brown was standing at the window and looking out at the parking lot two stories below. Louise was at the curved nurses’ station, trying to get some piece of insurance business ironed out. I didn’t know what to do with my hands, so I picked up a magazine and began to thumb through it.
“You’re a friend of Louise?” Big Junior asked. He didn’t have any teeth in the front of his mouth.
I nodded. “Actually, we just met the other day.”
Big Junior tossed in another handful of chips. “What year is your truck?” I told him it was a ’78 and he said he liked riding in the back of it and that he’d noticed that it was a four-by-four and asked me if I wanted to sell it. When I told him I didn’t, he said, “It’s a nice truck. Della likes it, too.”
Louise came over and sat next to me, but she attended to the others. “They have to do some tests,” she said. “They want to scope her and do a biopsy.”
Mary Brown had turned from the window to listen to her niece’s words, but they obviously meant nothing to her. “Does she have to stay here?” the old woman asked.
“For a while,” Louise said.
Mary Brown looked at Della. “Tomorrow, you go by Georgie Head’s and tell him I’ll be coming by to see him.”
Della nodded.
To Big Junior, Mary Brown said, “Go out to that little store and buy me a carton of cigarettes.”
It is not uncommon for gallstones to cause intestinal obstructions (see Brockis and Gilbert: “Review of 179 Cases,” British Journal of Surgery, 44:461, 1957 and Kirkland and Croce: “Gallstone Intestinal Obstruction,” Journal of the American Medical Association, 176:494, 1961). However, the cause is often slowly recognized. The occurrence of gallstone ileus is nearly without exception due to binary-enteric fistula formation, the most usual locations of the fistula being the duodenum, colon, jejunum, and stomach. A case was reported where complicated cholecystitis with accompanying gastric obstruction appeared as carcinoma of the antrum of the stomach due to gallstones (Kavetz and Gilmore, “Cholecysto-Gastric Fistula Masquerading as Carcinoma of the Stomach,” Annals of Surgery, 159:461, 1964).
“They think she might have cancer,” Louise said. She drank from her steaming cup of coffee. There was a white-haired woman sitting in the booth behind Louise. The expanse of head and hair served to frame Louise’s face with a bleached halo.
I caught a passing waitress. “Can we get some bread here, please?” To Louise, I said, “That’s pretty tough.”
Louise shrugged, rubbed at the corners of her eyes with a knuckle. “I was certainly surprised to see you tonight.”
“Well, I’m sorry I picked such a bad time.” Feeling ravenous, I eyed the packages of honey in a bowl by the napkin dispenser. “I haven’t eaten today,” I said.
“My mother’s a tough bird,” Louise said.
“I can imagine,” I said. “If she had anything to do with raising you, she would have to be.”
Louise laughed. “I’m sorry I gave you such a hard time the other night.”
“That’s all right, but I’d still like to know what you thought you were doing up there.”
“I was just looking around.” She peered across the room toward the closed salad bar. “I’m glad you did show up tonight though,” she said as her little fingers ripped a napkin into strips.
“Why is that?”
“You turned out to be useful. I guess the polite way to put it would be ‘helpful.’ You know, driving Mary, Big Junior, and Della to the hospital. I want to thank you for that.”
I nodded. “Would you like me to drive them back to the reservation?”
“No. Mary’s going to stay at the hospital with me and Big Junior’s brother is coming to get him and Della.”
The waitress glided by and deposited a basket of cold bread on the table. I offered some to Louise first, and after she declined, I took a roll and bit into it. “I hate being hungry,” I said.
“Coming here instead of staying at the hospital commissary was a good idea,” Louise said. “That place is really depressing. I’ve spent too much time there recently.”
“Cancer, eh?”
Louise looked at her pile of napkin tearings. “It would be no surprise, but it’s not cancer.”
“It’s not? How do you know?”
“Hiram Kills Enemy told us last week. He came by and looked at my mother and said she should drink some tea made from the root of sweet flag.”
“Did your mother do it?”
“No, she’s afraid of Hiram. I mean, really afraid of him, says he fools around with powers, stuff like that.”
I nodded. I didn’t understand, but I nodded.
“You think this is weird shit,” Louise said.
I nodded again.
The symptoms of Wanda Yellow Calf, an eighty-one-year-old Plata Indian woman, when admitted were progressive nausea, anorexia, weight loss, gastric pain, and postprandial vomiting. It was reported by the daughter that the pain was nonradiating, was increased when eating, and relieved by regurgitation. Although the symptoms had been observed in the home for a period of two to three weeks, this was the first medical visit. The patient was observed to have an enlarged nodular liver and a low-grade fever. Liver functions were observed as normal. It was reported by the family that the patient did not drink alcohol.
The serum cholesterol of the patient was 141 mg/100ml. Serum-glutamic-oxaloacetic-transaminase was 65 units/100ml. As well, urine specific gravity was 1.213 and 7-10 white blood cells per high-powered field were found. Blood urea nitrogen was 39.7 mg/100 ml when admitted and later 19 mg/100 ml.
Initial diagnostic speculation was carcinoma of the stomach with possible metastases to the liver. Because of retained secretions, upper gastrointestinal X rays were inconclusive. Following extended gastric suction, X rays disclosed a stenosing antral lesion. Interpretation of subsequent film substantiated the earlier conjecture of carcinoma.
I went home thinking it was all weird shit. It was about two in the morning and the cold sky was as clear as it could be. The stars were big. I thought about the name Kills Enemy and wished I had a name like that. I remembered the name of a man I saw in an old photograph once. His name was Old Man Afraid of His Horses. In the picture he stood next to the unfortunate man whose name was Unidentified Indian.
At the store a few days later, there because I’d ripped a hook through my finger and didn’t have antibiotic cream at the cabin, I heard a couple of fellows talking. They talked about the “damn Indians” and one said they didn’t need the “fuckin’” water “no way” and that they were just trying to be militant and get even with the “Great White Father.”
I was leaning over in front of the shelf, trying to decide between a cream and an ointment.
Clara walked by me. “Hey, ugly.”
I chose a product because I liked the color of the box and because it was the only antibiotic cream there. I walked to the counter to pay, grabbing a bag of chips along the way.
The two men by the door stopped talking. One of them looked at me, then said, “You’re a hydrologist, right?” He didn’t wait for a response and raked under his nose with the back of his hand, saying, “What do you think?”
“What do I think about what?” I asked.
“About the water. Whose water is it?”
“I just study water. I don’t know whose it is.”
“You gotta have an opinion,” the other man said. He was truly ugly. His face was pocked with scars and his nose was bent to one side between bloodshot, pale blue eyes.
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
“But you gotta,” the man said, stepping closer, and I could detect the slightest trace of alcohol in his breath. He made me nervous. He seemed mad and that confused me and then I got angry because I didn’t like being confused like that.
“I don’t ‘gotta’ have anything,” I told him, looking at his tired, sick eyes.
“Them Injuns, they just want all the water for themselves,” he said. “They’re just fuckin’ greedy.”
“Well,” I said, “what they want it for won’t use it all up either. Seems to me there’s a lot of water. Besides, the treaty says it’s theirs. They were here first.”
“See, I knew you had an opinion. You’re on their side.” He stepped closer to me.
“If I have to be on a side, I guess it won’t be yours.”
“I need that water.”
“Pay them for it,” I said.
“That’s enough,” Clara said.
Another man came running into the store, out of breath, leaning over to catch up with himself.
“What the hell is it, Dixon?” Clara asked him.
“They just found two FBI men dead up at the lake.”
“No shit,” the sick-eyed man said.
“Yeah,” Dixon said. “The deputy, Hanson, found them. Shot to death. Both of them. Shot dead.”
The three men left the store together, piled into one of their pickups as though they were important and needed to see the scene, and sped away up the mountain in the direction of the lake.
Clara whistled.
Article 3. The lands retained and to be held by the members of the Plata Indians, under and by virtue of the first article of this agreement, shall, to all intents and purposes whatever deemed and held to be an Indian reservation, and the laws which have been or may hereafter be enacted by Congress to regulate trade and intercourse with the Indian tribes, shall have full force and effect over and within the limits of the same; and no persons other than the members of said band, to be ascertained and defined under such regulations as the Secretary of the Interior shall prescribe (unless such as may be duly licensed to trade with said band, or employed for their benefit, or members of the family of such persons) shall be permitted to reside or make any settlement upon any part of said reservation; and the timbered land allotted to individuals, and also that reserved for subsequent distribution, as provided in the first article of this agreement, shall be free from all trespass, use, or occupation, except as hereinafter provided.
The news of the murders spread through the valley. The radio buzzed crazily with it and everyone had a theory. A teenager called in to say he’d recently seen a spaceship and figured the agents were up the mountain making contact. A woman who claimed to be a geophysicist, but who wouldn’t say where she lived, stated for a fact that the government was going to build another super-collider on the big mountain, and she said, before hanging up abruptly, “And you know what’s next.” But no one seemed really to know what had brought the agents up from Denver in the first place. It was shocking news, but I didn’t know the men and so I didn’t much care beyond the fact that perhaps a killer was loose in my backyard. The agents’ names were Begay and Toliver and they were relatively young.
Hanson, the deputy from the sheriff’s office, was a nice kid who had been a state wrestling champion, his mother had told me in the store one day as her son rolled by in his squad car. I could tell he was still shaken from having found Begay and Toliver face down in a scummy, shallow cove on the east side of the lake. His young face showed distress and his husky voice was unsteady as he said, “These fellers from the state police want to ask you a few questions. This here are Jacoby and Taylor.”
The state police were wearing western suits and striped ties and cowboy hats. I stepped back to let them enter. They wiped their black cowboy boots and did.
“Live here alone, do you?” the larger man named Jacoby asked.
“Yes,” I said.
Hanson, the deputy, sat by the stove and warmed his hands.
Taylor walked across the room, scrutinizing things, peeking around things on tables and touching things with one finger as if that allowed him to see more. He stopped at my fly-tying table, touched the vise. “Do a lot of fishing, do you?”
Jacoby sat on a stool in the kitchen and looked into the mug from which I’d just drunk tea. “I’m sure you’ve heard about the FBI men, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
Taylor made another pass through the room. He was like a bat whispering through an attic.
“You didn’t happen to see them, did you?” Jacoby asked.
“No.”
“You remember the last time you went fishing, do you?” Taylor asked, rounding the stove.
“Like it was yesterday,” I said. They stared at me and I stared back at them. “It was yesterday. Afternoon.” I looked at young Hanson.
“You didn’t see anything odd, did you?” from Jacoby.
“I fish the creeks,” I said. “I seldom get over to the lake.”
“He didn’t ask you where you fished, did he?” Taylor.
“No.”
“Go by the lake, did you?” Jacoby.
“No. I just told you that.”
“See anybody around here, did you?” Jacoby.
Jacoby looked at Taylor and said, “Remember when the coroner put the time of death, do you?”
“He put it at over a week ago, didn’t he?” Taylor said.
“See anybody in the woods around here last week, did you?” Jacoby asked me.
Their questions were starting to get me confused and so I started to go with the flow.
“Just the usual, I did,” I said.
“Gonna tell me who’s usual, are you?” Jacoby.
“I saw Hanson and I saw the Fish and Game officer, I did.”
Jacoby and Taylor exchanged glances. Taylor frowned at me. “Making fun of us, are you?”
“No, I’m not, am I?”
“Cut it out, will you?” Jacoby said.
I looked again to Hanson. “Deputy, hear me doing anything, do you?”
“See the FBI men, did you?” Jacoby.
“Saw them, I didn’t.” Me.
“See anyone unusual or strange, did you?” Taylor.
I looked at the state police, then said, “I didn’t see anyone except Hanson and the warden.”
The officers seemed to breathe more easily. Jacoby got up and gave me a card. “Call us if you think of anything, will you?”
Came to the Hills in 1833 seven of us DeLacompt, Ezra Kind, G.W. Wood, T. Brown, R. Kent, Wm. King, Indian Crow. All died but me Ezra Kind. Killed by Indians beyond the high hill got our gold in 1834. Got all the gold we could carry our ponies got by Indians I have lost my gun and nothing to eat and Indians hunting me.
That night, after the visit of the state police and my probably ill-advised mocking of them, I fell asleep in my chair as I did so many nights, feeling a little lonely as I did so many nights but thinking that it wasn’t so bad, thinking that it was actually pretty good. My head was throbbing and I counted the throbs until I was asleep and there in my sleep I saw the face of an old Indian man. I realized there in the dream that it was Unidentified Indian and I asked him why he was in my dream and he said, “Shut up and keep dreaming.” I woke up.
