“Peter William Levesque,” Aunt Jean repeated, “you bring shame to our People. You attacked a guest in our lodge. You attacked a woman. Once, twice, three times you attacked her. Your mother raised you as a son of our People. You know our ways. You know the meaning of my house. Vraiment, you know how this must end.”
Susan watched, frozen, as the old woman raised her hand and pointed one finger at his forehead, almost like a gun. Her hand shook, not fear or even rage, Alice had said it was Parkinson’s, Susan thought it must be horrible to be such a dynamic woman and grow old and weak and fall to pieces.
“Aunt Jean . . . .” The man stammered, still sitting on a tattered sofa that had been cheap and shabby when it was new, fit furnishing for the cheap and shabby and beat-to-hell rotting atmosphere of the old trailer. The place smelled like a fire in a rope factory, they must have a ton of hemp stored in the bedrooms. Mary Jane. A scattering of half-burned joints lay in an ashtray, and the guy looked flat-ass stoned. At least the pushers in D.C. had the sense to stay off their own dope . . . .
“Shut up, boy. Bad enough you should break the whiteman laws and spread poison among your People. Do you have to be a fool? This woman follows Eagle. She has nothing to do with drugs or with police. Nom de un imbécile, you were warned, you have seen our words on her car and house.”
The young man scowled, focused at nothing and then speaking slow disjointed words in drug-stupor concentration. “Nothing to do with drugs . . . Aw, come on, Aunt Jean . . . We saw her out there, that telescope thing aimed right at us . . . Held a radio up to her face and talked to it . . . Weren’t five minutes before one of them damn helicopters came over and checked us out.”
Damned lobster boat got in my way, right between me and an eagle feeding on the shore, trying to ID the bird. Scared the bird away. Don’t have a radio, that was the fucking tape recorder I use for field notes . . . .
Aunt Jean just glared at the guy. “Fools. Still you attack her. She is kind, much kinder than I would be. She wounded you, fired warning shots instead of killing. If she had been what you thought she was, you would be dead and in a grave of shame and the ones who hide behind you would be in jail. Fools, fools all of you.”
“Aunt Jean . . . .”
“Shut up, I told you. I know what I know. It is sufficient. You will leave. You will leave our People, you will leave our lands, you will leave our spirits and our ways and the roots that give us strength. You are no longer Naskeag. Go to the whiteman cities and live the whiteman ways and sell the whiteman poisons.
“Three days. I give you three days, and if you still piss on the floor of our lodge, on the fourth day I take what I know to the whiteman police. I give you this time to spare our People more shame. I would not have strangers read of Naskeag fools in the newspapers, see Naskeag fools on trial on the whiteman television. This would be bad for our People.”
The man paled and sank back into the cushions, away from the old woman’s wrath. She just stood there, pointing, glaring at him, breathing heavily with the length and bitterness of her speech. The man’s hand crept toward that gap between sofa cushions, toward a gun, dammit, even Susan had figured that out, and then crept away again. Susan shivered, she wasn’t sure whether it was the cold wind through the open door behind her or the curse of shunning Aunt Jean laid on the man or her memories of the pushers she’d known on the streets.
Killers. The whole drug scene was killers. Those punks that shot Mom, those were small-time pushers and users stealing the money for their next fix. Killing meant nothing to them. How much weight does Aunt Jean swing with guys like that, just backed by tribal lore and legend?
Aunt Jean nodded to herself and dropped her hand. The guy hadn’t pulled his gun out yet, hadn’t killed them yet. Susan began to hope she could get out of this alive.
Why the hell hadn’t she listened to Carlsson, why the hell hadn’t she listened to Alice and Aunt Jean? They’d told her not to come along on this. Now she was a witness. Drug punks killed witnesses. She started to back toward the door.
Aunt Jean’s hand grabbed Susan’s wrist, strong through the tremors. “Stay, my daughter. Evil must be faced. Fools must be faced. Turn your back on this fool and he might shoot you. Face to face, he isn’t brave enough to shoot an old fat woman even though my hands shake too much to hold a gun. He has lost his ancestors and his spirit guide and lost his balls with them. Do not fear him.”
Oh, God. She’s going out of her way to make him shoot us.
But the man didn’t move. His hand didn’t move toward that gun. He sat there, pale, sweat on his brow. Susan could almost feel his heart racing with fear. Aunt Jean holds that much power in her land?
Aunt Jean nodded to herself once more. “Tell your deputy-man to leave, as well. Three days. I have the old floor mat from his truck, Charlie did not throw it away when your deputy-man brought his truck into the shop to be cleaned. That bloodstain, that is not rabbit’s blood, oui? Any whiteman lab could tie it to you, tie him to you and to that bullet in your leg. Another fool.”
The trailer creaked, Susan thought it was wind, and then creaked again and she knew someone walked across the floor but none of them had moved.
And then the man did move, his hand clawing at the gap between sofa cushions and missing and trying again and finding what he wanted, finding the gun he wanted, and he brought it up in a drunken waving swing that carried the cold terror of its black muzzle across Susan, across Aunt Jean, and it spat flame and thunder. Aunt Jean didn’t flinch. He’d missed. Five feet away, he’d missed. Stoned. He swung the pistol back again, at Aunt Jean, at Susan, beyond, back, she felt the blast again, saw fire and felt the heat of the burned powder, didn’t hear anything, ears stunned.
The gun fell loose from his hand. He flopped back against the sofa, something wrong with his head, blood pouring down on the back cushion of the sofa. Blood and brains, the sofa, the wall behind him, two holes in his forehead, his eyes bulging.
Another man appeared in the hallway from the bedrooms. She knew his face. Sommers. Deputy Sommers, the cop that had shown up at her trailer that night. That gunshot night. He must have shot the pusher.
No. He’d taken her gun. He’d burned her trailer. He was part of the gang.
He had his own gun. He held it in both hands, pointed first at the open door, seeking a target. He didn’t look stoned. He didn’t look like he would miss. He wasn’t here to save them. He was here to kill them.
He started to swing the gun toward Aunt Jean and the floor creaked again and Snap! Snap! metallic like a door lock clicking loud behind Susan and his head bulged and stuff flew from the back of his skull and his eyes popped out and his gun blasted fire past her cheek and he dropped the pistol and collapsed back against the wall and slid down it to the floor.
Someone else was shooting. Someone behind her.
Susan turned. Alice stood behind her, holding a pistol—not her custom automatic but something else, something squat and square and evil and black with a fat black cylinder on the muzzle, thin smoke curled out of it, must be a silencer, Susan had seen them in the movies but thought they were just props, not something real.
The kid had just shot both men.
Holy Mary Mother of God. They set this up. Aunt Jean was goading them, making them attack us. How the hell did Alice hide from them?
The kid was shaking. “I couldn’t do it. I froze. I saw him going for the gun and I froze!”
Aunt Jean looked down at the dead cop and shook her head. “We are both alive. We are not hurt. Next time, you do better, oui? And this way, there is no question of what they wished to do.” Then she looked up at Susan. “C’est très mal to be both evil and stupid. If you ever need to break the law, plan better than these did. Think more ahead. Now, if you need to vomit, please hold it long enough to go out to the car and use one of the bags from under the front seat. We do not want to leave evidence.”
Susan looked around in shock. Two dead men lay in spreading pools of blood, stinking as if they’d shit themselves in dying. She wondered which one had butchered her poor dog. That was all she could think about, Bitch killed and gutted and skinned and left as an obscenity on her bed. Which one of them had murdered her eagles and hung their mutilated bodies from a spruce? That was what she thought about—dead animals, not dead men.
The gun lying on the sofa by the dead man there . . . the wear through the blue finish next to the muzzle, showing silver, the crack on the left hand-grip and the chip missing from one corner . . . . “That’s mine! That’s my Walther!”
“Leave it, my daughter. Alice will take it. Evidence. It will vanish. We do not wish anything to tie you to this. This fool never turned it over to the state crime lab. In his report, he said it was lost in the fire. You have the receipt, with his signature. You checked the serial number to make sure he had it right. He hangs himself. Imbécile.”
“I think I need a cigarette.”
“Go and sit in the car. Do not throw your match out the window. Do not drop ash outside, do not throw your butt away. Remember evidence. You are much smarter than these.”
Susan noticed that Aunt Jean still held her cigarette. It had gone out—must be hand-made, without those chemicals to keep the tobacco burning. “Go and sit in the car, my daughter. Sit and smoke and remember the things that these . . . men . . . did to you.”
She paused and stared into Susan’s eyes. “They deserved to die. Le bon Dieu made them decide to die.”
The way she’d paused told Susan that she had considered other words, words a lady of her age would not use. At least, not use outside her own thoughts.
Evidence. Susan walked out of that room, out of that trailer, touching nothing. They wore gloves. All three of them wore gloves, she’d thought it was just the cold. They’d walked in a trodden path, almost ice. She glanced down at her boots, at the faint tracks she left, at the other tracks they’d made walking in. Alice’s tracks covered Susan’s, covered Aunt Jean’s, giving sequence. But she hadn’t seen Alice. Could the kid just vanish, turn invisible? Susan fumbled with the door handle, got it open, climbed into the old Jeep.
Cigarette. Her hands shook. She finally got the lighter flame to connect with the end of the tobacco.
Carlsson knew what was going to happen. He’d warned her. Probably half the fucking county knew those guys were doomed. You couldn’t keep secrets in a place like this. The smuggling wasn’t a secret. Aunt Jean knew just who to ask, exactly where to look. She hadn’t cared about simple whiteman laws, until the idiots threatened someone under her protection. Then the Haskell Witch had to act.
Act according to Naskeag law, no appeal.
Susan concentrated on her cigarette. Hot, raw, bitter smoke stinging her eyes, tightness of smoke in her chest, she could think about that and not the hot, raw, bitter power she’d just seen. She caught a vision of Eagle swooping down to grab a salmon. Deadly. Merciless.
Aunt Jean climbed down from the trailer door, heavy, weary, eyes on the sky—dark cloudy sky, sunset out there somewhere behind the next storm. How the hell has it gotten so late without my noticing? Don’t time fly when you’re having fun.
Alice followed. She pulled the door closed and tested it, making sure that it was locked. Susan wondered what they’d been doing. Talking about the kid freezing at the crisis? Picking up the empty cartridge cases, for sure, picking up the Walther. Planting evidence, rearranging evidence, as well as removing it? Making sure the deputy had some drugs on his body?
She’d smelled cured marijuana before. She’d been in college, for God’s sake. She’d smelled it heavy again in the rank air of that trailer, heavy behind the smell of the burned dope. The smugglers must have used that hide-away to store their product, break it down for distribution.
Aunt Jean opened the driver’s side door and then glanced up at the sky again. “Rain, maybe two hours, maybe less. That is good. That is lucky.” But Alice still dragged her satchel behind her, looking down and sweeping it back and forth, destroying tracks.
Lucky, hell. Aunt Jean must have expected rain when she came out here. Knew rain would destroy evidence, keep people off this steep twisty so-called road. The bodies probably wouldn’t be found for days. Maybe weeks. Maybe not reported then, depending on who found them, with all that dope in there. More rain, more snow.
Aunt Jean climbed in. She turned to Susan. “I think you should ride in the back. I think Alice will need you.”
Alice? Need me? That kid needs my help like a fish needs a fucking bicycle.
But Susan climbed out and climbed back in, changing seats. She tapped her cigarette ash off in the car’s ashtray first. Maybe rain, maybe not. No reason to add any possible evidence. Would Alice walk down the driveway, walk down it twice, sweeping out the parallel tracks of the tires?
No. She climbed in. She threw her satchel in the back, heavy metallic thump, not caring if she broke something. Susan hoped she’d unloaded those guns, ‘cleared the weapons,’ that was the language, as alien to Susan as Vietnamese. Carlsson would know that language, the language of killers.
No. The language of fighters. Different thing. Those had been killers, inside. Now they were dead, and she could go on living. Because of the fighters.
Aunt Jean started the car and set it rolling quietly down the so-called road, no headlights in the gloom. Alice hadn’t buckled her seatbelt yet. The kid just sat there, a lump, staring at nothing. Chewing on her wad of gum. A kid. She looked a lot younger than fourteen. Then Susan knew why Aunt Jean had wanted her in the back with Alice.
She reached out and touched the girl on the shoulder, got a reflex angry shrug and retreat for her effort, touched Alice again. “Thank you.”
And then she had an armful of girl, of shaking girl, face buried in Susan’s shoulder. Susan didn’t know if those were adrenaline shakes or sobs, too quiet, but she held Alice. She caught Aunt Jean’s glance in the rearview mirror, a nod, then the old witch concentrated on the bad road and the ice and snow that covered it, turning, shifting gears, braking with deft touches, driving a dark car down dark roads under the dark trees. No witnesses.
Hot wetness soaked into the shoulder of Susan’s blouse, Alice burrowing her face inside the collar of Susan’s jacket, shaking. Sobs, then, but absolutely silent. The kid gave nothing away.
Susan held her, one hand smoothing her hair, talking to that hair. Words came out of her past, Latin words, Pater Noster, Susan hadn’t been to Mass since she was maybe twelve or fourteen but the prayer came back when she needed it. People had always looked at them funny in church back in South Boston. Gooks were supposed to be Buddhists or some other kind of Godless heathen, not pretending to be honest Catholics. South Boston’s Heaven had a sign saying “Whites Only” at the Pearly Gates.
Alice whispered along with her, Susan could feel her breath on the damp cloth. She realized she was still holding her cigarette, hot against her fingers, nearly burned down to burning her. She stubbed it out and went back to concentrating on the kid. The kid who knew her prayers in Latin, old-style Catholics still holding to their heritage and to hell with Vatican II.
Old-style brownskin Catholics. I wouldn’t stand out like a sore thumb around here, would I? Not where Naskeags make up half the congregation? Brownskin is “normal” around here, not the Irish/Polish/Italian whiteskin Catholic “normal” where we felt like trespassers every time we stepped inside the church. Where blonde Mary and the Christ on the crucifix didn’t show a trace of Jewish genes. Where God was white.
Whispered words breathed on her collarbone, not Latin. “I want to heal people, not kill them. Everyone has different magic, and that’s mine. Healing.”
The words cut like a knife. A scalpel—an analogy flashed across her brain, sharp as that scalpel, help for her as well as for Alice. “Sometimes you have to kill in order to heal, kid. Cancer. Think of those men as cancer, something living that has to be cut out and killed to save the rest of the body. There is a time to kill and a time to heal. This was a killing time. Aunt Jean gave them the choice.”
And she had. Susan realized that, for all her thoughts earlier. Those men could have left. Alice hadn’t shot until well past the last safe instant. Even the cop, the second death, Alice hadn’t shot him until he started to aim his gun.
Both men had chosen death for Susan, for Aunt Jean. Instead, they’d found it for themselves.
The car stopped in darkness, yellow glows ahead, warm lamp-light in the kitchen windows offering welcome and safe haven. They had electric lights but the oil lamps gave a softer, comforting radiance. The shadowed bulk said Aunt Jean’s house, the Haskell House, black against the night. Fortress.
Home to ruthless power.
A shudder ran down Susan’s back. Now those windows had turned into yellow eyes burning with inner fire, the glare of a dragon waiting in the darkness. She couldn’t handle this. She couldn’t. Alice had just killed two men.
She couldn’t walk into that warm welcoming wood-stove kitchen after what they’d just done, couldn’t sit down to hot onion soup and fresh home-baked bread that she could smell all the way out here inside the car. That peace had to be an illusion, the House weaving its own spells to draw her in and soothe her and seduce her.
It pushed the wrong buttons. If she tried to eat right now, she’d puke.
Alice had pulled away, had reached back behind their seat to get that satchel, that satchel with the guns inside. Susan heard the ring of empty cartridge brass rattling when it moved. Evidence, probably headed for the bay or even the open ocean. Alice climbed out of the car and headed toward the house.
Susan climbed down from her side of the old Jeep, icy wet splashes hitting her face—that promised rain already starting. She turned to her car. Shivers took her and her teeth started to chatter, not cold, but fear. She couldn’t stay. She opened the door, she sat down, she slid the key into the ignition. Aunt Jean loomed out of the darkness into the dim glow of the Dart’s dome light.
“Stay with us, my daughter. You should not be alone.”
Susan just shook her head. She couldn’t trust words right now. She couldn’t trust that House right now.
Aunt Jean touched her, a gentle hand on her cheek as if she wiped away the tears Susan didn’t dare to show. “It is hard, ma petit. But we cannot let men do those things. We have no choice. They made the choice. Now it is over, and you must go on living. We can help with that. Come inside.”
Susan shook her head again. “I can’t. I need some time to think. I still have a room up in Naskeag Falls. I’ll go there.” She had to get away from here.
Aunt Jean’s faint smile showed that she saw the lie and wouldn’t challenge it. “Be careful, my daughter. This rain will turn to ice, a few miles inland. Those roads will be bad or worse than bad. Stay here.”
She was right, of course. Dammit, Aunt Jean was always right. And the House would be warm and dry and above all safe, always safe, always welcoming. Seductive. She couldn’t trust it. She couldn’t trust anything. She’d learned that, the hard way.
Aunt Jean nodded as if she’d read all those thoughts. “Then go with God, my daughter. Drive carefully.” She paused, old lined sagging face suddenly showing a sadness that wiped out any pretense of a stoic Noble Savage.
“Always remember, they tried to kill you. They would have kept trying. You sat in the same car with that deputy for an hour. The only reason he did not kill you with your own pistol was the police radio log. People knew he was there. He was afraid of that.” Aunt Jean shook her head.
“Come back to us, Doctor Tranh. Alice needs you. She needs a friend, and I am far too old. She needs an older sister. The one who God and her mother gave her follows a different trail. Elaine is a fine child. She’ll lead our People when she’s old enough, so Alice can’t talk to her about this day and other things. Important things that our People must keep separate from our public leaders. Their hands and memories must be clean. Mine can never be.
“Come back to us when you feel you can or must, my daughter. Any time of the day or night, the House will let you in.”