CAREY PROMISED ME HE would be in touch if he dreams my name. I feigned interest but really, if his magic dreams do work and he finds my “true name” he can keep it. Right now, as I drive away from Turkey Feather and back toward Languille Lake, there’s only one thing I care about.
Not Basil. I do care about him, but I’m not worried about it. He’ll be fine.
When I’m agitated, sometimes I don’t take notice of my surroundings as I drive and it feels like no time has passed even though one hundred miles later I’m pulling back into my driveway in Half Lake. Shannon’s truck is waiting on the street.
“You really wanna date a woman that can’t take care of a dog?” I say as he steps out. He is wearing a dark red flannel shirt and tight blue jeans.
“Shut the fuck up, Marion. Just stop. We can fight after you show me where your dog is.” He takes off his sunglasses, revealing bloodshot eyes, and rubs his temples. “Ya know, I don’t believe you. There’s a thousand places he could be on the rez and you just automatically think you know where he went?”
“Yeah, he’s my dog. Of course I know.”
“You’re such a fuckin’ asshole!”
“Why?”
He throws his arms up and shakes his head. “You just don’t even care. Supposedly you love your dog, he runs away, and you don’t give a shit.”
I start to laugh, which doesn’t impress him. “I’m not worried because I know exactly where he is. If you don’t believe me, follow me and find out. And if he’s not there, then your girlfriend can buy me a new dog.”
“Just get in.” He rolls his eyes and doesn’t say another word. I get in his truck and try to hide my smile.
I’m annoyed at him for hiding the girlfriend and not telling me. I’m upset, I can’t hide that. But it’s useless wasting the energy in being mad, so instead I decide to tease him.
“Did you tell her it was your boyfriend’s dog she lost?”
He says nothing and puts his sunglasses back on.
“Does she know you like to suck cock?”
I expect some show of anger, but instead he just turns the radio up and focuses on the road ahead of him. We travel nearly halfway to Geshig before I can’t handle the silence.
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. Can you turn down the music so we can talk?” In the few times I’ve been inside this truck, whether it was for sex or not, I’ve been afraid to touch anything inside of it except the seat belt and buckle.
Shannon turns down the music and sighs. “I’m already nibbling by bringing you there, but I’ll bite more. How the hell is it that you think you know where your damn dog is?”
Now seems like as good a time as any to hit him with the truth. Though he is initially confused about where I choose to start the story, it’s truly where all this begins.
In the 1890s, a man of French descent named Baptiste Lafournier bought a small tract of woodland from the First Geshig Bank and held a mortgage with them until just shy of his death, at which point the ownership went to his only non–blood related son, Tomas Lafournier.
There’s an interesting abstract of title by a local titling company that shows all this, although I think the average person might not use that word to describe mortgages.
When Baptiste was an older widower with two children already out of the house, he saved a baby from a nearby house fire that claimed the lives of Sophie and Homer Haltstorm. Baptiste adopted the baby Tomas and later let him claim the name Lafournier as his own.
So, the mortgage papers show that Baptiste passed down his land and the hand-built red pine cabin to Tomas, but later Tomas added a woman named Sophie Bullhead to the deed. Sophie wasn’t her real name. My grandmother Eunice told me that her mother only ever went by Awaazisii, or Bullhead to those who couldn’t say it, but she needed a legal name to marry Tomas and qualify for certain enrollee benefits.
When Bullhead died, Tomas brought her ashes back to her home up by Blackduck and not long after, he himself died and left everything to Eunice.
The red pine cabin deteriorated over the years, going from wood to tar paper by the time my mother was born. It’s almost like the more Indian the ownership became, the worse it got in condition.
I explain all this to Shannon, who just nods impatiently until we are close to our destination. The Quarry Way cemetery, where all of my family is buried. And just shy of a half mile from the spot where Tomas’s cabin stood.
“So, what does all that have to do with your dog?”
“I had a vision of the cabin in a sweat lodge.” Even I start laughing at that. “I have no further explanation besides I really think this is where I need to go.”
“Since when do you go to the sweat lodge? You told me before that you thought Indian beliefs were stupid.”
“I did not!”
“That’s the exact word you used. Stupid.”
“Oops. Well, maybe they’re not. I went there because of—” I almost don’t tell him because of how crazy I’m already sounding. “Because of Kayden Kelliher.”
The rows of headstones come into view and Shannon parks on the grass, away from the rows at a respectful distance. He stares at me and rubs his fingernails through his greasy stubble. “You mentioned him before. Why?”
Instead of telling him directly, I open the door, jump out of the truck, and smile. “Come find out.”
Without waiting to see if he follows, I lead the way past the rows of dead family and onto a small trail into the nearby woods. I hear his footsteps behind me on the crunching leaves, but I don’t turn back. I wait for him to catch up and speak.
“Did you know Kayden?” he asked.
“Barely. Our mothers were best friends but I was always too young and shy to have playdates or whatever. I hated basketball and that’s all he ever did when we went over.”
“So, you remember him?”
“Kind of? Maybe in a forced kind of way, like, I know for a fact we went to his house a lot so it just makes sense that I would’ve seen him there but I don’t remember ever talking or playing with him specifically.”
“What’s he got to do with this then? He’s dead.”
“Officially, yes. But I’m not so sure he’s gone.”
Before I can explain, we walk into the clearing where the cabin used to be.
“Are you fucking serious?” Shannon’s doubts have been smacked upside the head.
Basil is sleeping right in the middle of the clearing. And just a foot away, as if holding vigil, is the Revenant.
“This is why you should never question me,” I chide. “I know my shit.”
“But what’s up with the other dog?”
I take a few slow steps toward the Revenant. “It’s not a dog.” I kneel and hold my hand out. “It’s a wolf boy.”
The Revenant opens its red maw and lunges forward. I feel the warm jaws clamp onto my hand as Shannon screams and my eyes fill with dusk.
I OPEN MY EYES and I see it is one thirty in the morning on my computer screen. It has been hours since I began reading through pages and pages of tribal court documents, trying to piece together a solid case against Levi Dotson, the most crooked member of the tribal council.
There is a knock on the door. Years ago, I might have been afraid of such a thing but at thirty years old, I don’t scare easily. Plus, I know this reservation like the back of my hand. There are plenty of unattractive and insidious parts of the land, but so far, I have survived three decades of it.
Outside the door, leaning against the wooden railing is a teenage boy. He is wearing a dark hoodie and baggy jeans, and half of his face is hidden. The other half is distressed, sobbing, in pain.
“Are you okay?” The boy shakes his head. “Are you hurt?” He nods his head up and down hard. The boy’s arms are tight around his midsection, as if he’s trying to hold himself together on trembling legs. “Come in. I’ll get some help.”
The boy staggers inside and collapses on the kitchen floor.
“Just stay strong. I’m going to call for help . . .”
“You don’t need to call,” the boy says. His voice is low and breathy, like he hasn’t slept in days.
“What?”
“Please don’t call anyone.”
The computer monitor fades away into a dark screen saver and the only light that remains appears dimmer than just moments before. “I have to do something. You’re bleeding!”
I didn’t notice it when he was standing out in the dark, but on my bright linoleum floor the blood soaking through the hoodie is evident. “Don’t worry. I don’t have much left anyway. Most of it drained on the way here.”
That can’t be true. Otherwise the boy wouldn’t still be moving. “You still have time! I just need to call . . .”
The boy wheezes out a laugh. “No more time.”
I try to place a call but the phone is stuck on the lock screen. “Work, you piece of crap!”
“It won’t.” The boy climbs to his feet and staggers over to the couch. “No more time.”
Time. I look at the screen’s clock display and see it is not counting up. The setting was supposed to show the count of seconds and milliseconds, but it has stopped at 01:31:33.333.
“I told you, no more time. No more time—” The boy’s voice breaks on the final word. “No more . . . Can I ask you a favor before I die?”
“Of course, anything.”
“Tell me about your daughter. And her mother. Please?”
“Maya?” I say. My head throbs. Something is wrong. This is not my voice. “She’s great. She just turned thirteen. They say the teenage years are the hardest.”
The boy laughs. “Yeah, I’ll bet. I didn’t make it out of them.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Be happy. I wanted to be but it’s too late. Does Maya love you?”
“Yes. She tells me every night before she goes to bed.”
“And Maya’s mother?”
“We haven’t been together for a while. But we spend every birthday and holiday together. My family and hers.”
“So, you have a different girlfriend?”
“I have a wife. And twin boys. They were just born last year.”
The boy lets out a pained howl and weeps thin, red tears. “So, you’re pretty happy, aren’t you? This life, do you think it’s been good?”
I know it’s not my voice that replies. “Yes. It’s been a great life.”
“I can’t feel my body anymore. I can’t taste the blood on my tongue or smell it on my clothes. But I can hear you. Please, hurry and tell me more.”
I sputter out a collection of rambling sentences about my life with Maya, and my new wife, Patricia, the new boys, and my ex-wife, Gertrude. By the time I have nothing more to say, there are tears running down my eyes and I am shaking. The boy unzips his sweater, revealing a white-and-red basketball jersey soaked in blood. He removes it and there are multiple wounds on his body. “That fucker. He got me eight times and then he just left me there. Ran away like a little bitch. I can’t believe she had to see me like that.”
“I really should call someone, kid. I can save you. I want to help you.”
The boy stares into my eyes. His are filled with red. “Not me. Help my daughter. Help her mother. Tell them I’m sorry. Will you do that?”
“I promise.”
He stands up and walks out the door. Before he leaves he turns back. “What was the best moment in your life?”
The tears burn through my face as they fall. “When I held a baby for the first time.” The picture burns bright in my mind. A young Native boy, no more than four, holding an infant boy in his hands. “This is Marion,” a motherly voice whispers on the wind.
The bloodstained young man wipes his face and laughs. “Figures. I used to think it was when we won the state basketball championship. We were celebrating again tonight. Bad idea.”
“Wait. Where—where exactly are you going?”
“Going to the Gizhay Manido Chapel. Come see me. I could teach you a lot, Marion.”
As soon as the door shuts behind him, I fall to the floor. My body convulses and burns. I don’t know who I am. But I know I don’t belong here. I know I am not him.
THE DAYLIGHT COMES BACK and I feel my body collapse. In the distance in front of me, a dog is running away. At first I hear the rustling of the leaves under its paws but suddenly they stop, and I know I will not see the Revenant again.
I look up at Shannon. “What happened?”
“Dude, you let that mongrel lick your hand and then you fainted. What the fuck is wrong with you? I had to shoo it away because you were just sitting there!”
Basil wakes and runs to me. He rolls onto his back next to me and starts to lick my face. He is whining and panting. I’ve never felt so missed before. I pet him a few times and hold him until he is calm, and then I stand up to face Shannon, who looms over me like a Paul Bunyan statue.
“Total disclosure, I have no idea how to explain any of this.” I lean into him and rest my body against his bulky frame. The smell of cigarettes and lake water fills my nostrils from his flannel. “I wish you had told me you were dating women again.”
He wraps his hands around me and squeezes my back with his big hands, just a little too rough but just how I like him to do it. “I can’t, Marion. I can’t.”
The tight embrace ends and he leaves. I watch him walk all the way up the trail, away from me and my sore back and hurting heart, and the engine of his truck is loud and booming as he starts it up and drives away.
Basil sits in front of me, tail wagging like crazy, and waits for me to pet him again.
“Come on, boy. Let’s go for a walk.”
It’s five miles back to Geshig. By the time we get into town and find a ride home, we’ll both need lots of sleep.