Mighty Chief Dan Chappose stared at the tumbler of deep treacle-colored liquid next to him. The ice cubes in the glass glistened in the casino lights and reflected nearly every wavelength in amber hues. His nose registered the woody, almost toffee-like smell even from three feet away. Parasympathetic saliva secreted from his glands filled his mouth, and he found himself swallowing back a small flood more than once.
It was, in a word, tempting.
Thank God the man next to him grabbed the glass and walked away, looking for another slot machine.
"Sixteen days," Dan whispered. "Sixteen."
He pulled out his wallet a reached for a twenty-dollar bill. He sighed. Of all the sixteen-day periods in his life of thirty-eight years, this stretch had been the hardest. The years before had grayed the black of his shoulder-length braids and deepened the wrinkles around his brown eyes. Even his once-firm and sculpted six-foot-six-inch frame seemed to have withered away, leaving his red skin loose. The bald eagle tattoo on his left bicep looked more like a faded sparrow hit by a car.
The last sixteen days, though, had decayed his soul.
He had told himself he would recover, be himself once again. Sixteen days ago, that damned boss of his had given him an ultimatum. All he had done was wake up late with a wicked hangover, stumble into the garage when the work was piling up and threw up in the oil well. His boss had looked him over once, let the yellow-colored saliva drip a little onto Dan's overalls and called him into his office.
"You are a drunk," he had said. It was more than just a matter-of-fact statement. It was a challenge, echoed both in the words and in the deep eyes of the Mescalero Apache who had given him work after prison.
Dan Chappose knew he was a drunk. Hell, he'd been one for most of his free life and certainly for the last two years. Work was a means to get the money to buy the alcohol, and when money was tight, the casinos were more than happy to give him drinks for every nickel or quarter he dropped in a slot machine. For the price of a shot at the local pub, he could drink all night—assuming his luck that day was good.
The challenge meant something, though. For the first time in his life (at least that he could remember), someone had called out his unscrupulous behavior—someone who was a little like him.
Now, though, he was running for cover through a battlefield populated by bewildered souls. He'd lost battles before but never felt he was so actively engaged in loss. His boss had asked him to come to a meeting that night—just a place for drunks like him to talk.
"Not my style," he had said as another roll of his stomach sent his head spinning. Besides, those meetings were more for the haikuu—the white man—not the Ute. The Juwitaa didn't belong. "I'll do it myself."
"Fine," his boss said. "One more day drunk on the job and you might as well find work elsewhere."
A balding woman who reeked of old lady perfume wafted past Dan, stood by the machine next to him and dropped in three quarters. Mixed in with the sickening scent of roses and baby powder was the distinct smell of beer. She had to be over seventy.
After two tries at the machine, the woman mumbled something incomprehensible and moved on, carrying the sweet smell of hops away.
This was a bad idea.
It was only three in the afternoon, and although the windows in the Spanish Mustang were festooned with posters extolling the loosest slots in town, slivers of a November sun shone through. Dan had come back to the casino hoping he was strong enough to gamble without drinking. Within twenty minutes, though, he was convinced peace only came in a bottle or a glass and the loosest slots in town were only loose to those who drank from the appropriate fountain. The whole place reeked of whiskey and beer and unfinished glasses of sweetened schnapps.
Not only that, he had already lost sixty bucks.
"Fuck it." He stood up and walked to the nearest bar. This battle was lost.
The house stood on the side of one of the lower ridges, buried in sagebrush and alpine grasses. Two open windows looked out toward the town, framed by disintegrating timber. It was a gray house, the siding rotted. A beam that once held up a corner of the porch leaned precariously against the front wall. The roof looked as if a giant thumb had pressed down, warping the boards, leaving gaping holes where they had once joined with the outside walls.
Along the foundation—ancient rocks mortared together with what appeared to be adobe—boards, rusted iron pots and other detritus of a forgotten life lay strewn about. An aluminum milk can, its sides dented, was half sunken into the ground next to a pile of decomposing firewood. Within the shadow of the porch, the first snow of the season remained virgin white.
Were it another season, the small stand of aspen to the left of the house might have added a splash of yellow or green in sharp contrast to the siding. Now, though, the trees were nothing more than dead white sticks that fit in well with the sheer desolation of the place.
Inside the house, an old dining table lay on its side, two legs broken. The chairs were gone, no doubt looted at some point. Across the wooden floor, grasses poked up through cracks and in the corner an old newspaper, yellowed and brittle with age, lay crumpled. Next to the newspaper, and just as crumpled, Mighty Chief Dan Chappose groggily awoke from slumbering away the last of the bottle of Wild Turkey whiskey that lay on its side next to him.
It took him a moment to register a scuffing noise as something not conjured by his still-drunken mind. It came from the left, toward what looked like an ancient kitchen. He opened one eye followed by the other. Light from a dour morning leaked in through cracks in the walls and ceiling, illuminating dust motes just enough for them to sting like brilliant glass shards. He closed his eyes against the onslaught of light then opened them again.
The noise was loud. Christ, it was loud.
Against a sudden wave of nausea and a rawhide drum beating out a Sun Dance inside his head, Dan stood up. He found the wall, braced a hand against it then tentatively took a step forward. The room spun, a vortex of rotted wood and debris that momentarily purloined his balance. He leaned against the wall and waited.
The scuffing noise continued unabated. It seemed to grow louder with each abrasive scratch until the drum in his head began matching the beat. With a great effort, he inched around the wall toward the kitchen.
A boy of maybe eight or nine sat on a step leading off what was left of the back porch, his back to Dan. The door to the kitchen hung on a hinge at an angle, a remnant screen clinging to the frame. The boy moved his foot back and forth along the rough step while scraping something with a small stick, all the while remaining oblivious to Dan's presence.
"What are you doing?" Dan asked, squinting against the brilliant light from outside.
The boy stopped his incessant scuffing and turned around. He was thin in the face, dirty and freckled. His eyes were large blue orbs buried under protruding sockets. A dry tongue licked cracked lips.
"Just waitin', mister."
The boy turned back around and, rather than scrape the stick on the step, beat it against the frame of the door. The sound was worse than the scuffing.
Dan reached for his head. "Can you stop that?"
"If you want me to."
"Yeah, I do."
The beating of the stick stopped and the boy turned back around. His eyes settled on Dan for a moment. "Are you an Indian?"
"I'm a Ute."
"You ain't an Indian?" The boy's eyes seemed to ask other questions, as well.
"Well, I . . . ."
"That's good, I suppose."
Dan stood still as he tried to put together the vague shards of memory from the last few hours. As he recalled the first drink, salty bile welled at the back of his throat. He must have given up trying to give up, passed out someplace that wasn't his. God knows he'd done that before. As his thoughts swirled, he realized they wouldn't coalesce into something comprehensible; there were just too many empty spaces to fill.
"Who are you?" Dan asked. He spat out a bullet of yellow bile and saliva he'd just collected in his mouth. "And where am I?"
The boy didn't answer. Dan stood still a moment longer then turned, unsure of what he was going to do but damned sure he wasn't going to remain the object of this brat's eyes. The wood creaked under his weight as he stepped through the living room toward the front door. Each crack of the floorboards felt like a nail driven into his eyes and his stomach roiled with each step. He couldn't help but notice a distinct smell in the house, like wet dog and piss—unpleasant, unavoidable.
As he reached the door, the boy called out. "What's a Ute, anyway?"
Dan's stomach heaved. With his body bent over and a fierce spasm, he threw up, pushing the contents of last night out of his mouth onto the floor. He remained hunched over, breathing in the hot vomit fumes until he finally felt like he had some control. What the hell did he drink?
The boy no longer sat on the step in the back of the kitchen; he stood in the middle of the living room. Dan cocked his head to the right.
"A Ute," Dan said, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth, "is just people, like me."
The boy didn't say anything for a moment, digesting each word. Finally, he spoke. "So . . . not an Indian."
Dan looked at the boy, both irritated and a little amused. He'd never really cared for kids, especially bratty kids who looked like they'd played all day in the mud and kept moving their mouths like it was some inalienable right of theirs to pester. But there was a strange innocence about this boy he found captivating.
He staggered to the corner of the room on weak legs. He saw the bottle of Wild Turkey, felt another wave of nausea, steadied himself and sat.
"What's your name, kid?"
"Joey."
"Well, Joey. Do you know any Indians?"
Joey nodded. His head bobbed up and down like a spring was buried in his neck. The sudden burst of animation was unsettling. "I seen one before. Came through town with a crowd of people, all dressed up like they was going to prison or something."
Dan squinted. "Prison?"
"Yeah. A bunch of lawmen was taking what looked like twenty or so down to Florence. They was all chained up. There was a red man in the middle. Had a long scar across his face like he been cut up real bad."
Dan felt a gnawing at his stomach much different than the gnawing of the alcohol. Hairs on his arms pricked up, listening. "Go on."
"I asked my mama why that man was red. She said he was an Indian, probably done something real bad, too. She said all Indians do bad things."
There was a pause, uncomfortable. The dust motes illuminated by the light creeping through the deserted house seemed to be frozen in space around Joey like a frame of untethered history. Rather than wince at the boy's uncomfortable stereotype, Dan found himself focused on the tone, the words he spoke.
"Where are you from, kid?"
"Kansas City, but my daddy moved out here to work them mines. He said we'd all be rich and I could have a horse if I wanted to. He even said I could have two horses."
"Two horses?"
Joey nodded vigorously. "I'm gonna be sheriff!"
Dan smiled despite the gnaw in his stomach and the prickle of hairs on his arms. "What would you do with two horses?"
"Kill me some Indians, dead!" The boy raised his hands, an imaginary rifle pointed at the wall. "Bam! Bam! Ain't no good Indian but a dead one, my daddy says."
The smile fell from Dan's face as the gnaw in his stomach turned into the ravening bite of a bear. He glanced at the door, feeling a sudden urge to go somewhere—anywhere but here. The garage would be a nice place to be, even.
Shit, he thought. What time is it?
"Hey, mister." Joey turned his imaginary rifle toward Dan. "You ever see a dead Indian?"
A beat-up 1973 Chevy Impala with a rust-colored hood sat in the garage untouched. Dan Chappose reclined in a metal folding chair opposite Gerald Morgan, two Native Americans whose distant ancestors hated each other and whose parents probably did, too. Tension hung in the air between them—some ancient, most present. The three hundred pounds of the Mescalero who had given Dan a job two years ago seemed content to let the weight of the moment press down on the Ute.
Dan stopped reclining and sat up straight. He shifted a little to the left, hoping his butt cheek would find comfortable purchase on the cold chair. Failing that, he shifted to the right. The chill from the November afternoon that had so permeated the garage with the door wide open now permeated his dirty jeans and t-shirt. Maybe this form of counseling was effective after all. Hell, you couldn't sit in the freezing mountain air and not want to admit your wrongs as quickly as possible just to get to a fucking heater.
Gerald said nothing, though. It wasn't his style, and Dan knew it. He'd been counseled before—last time in the warmth of the office, though—and he expected nothing less from his boss. He was cruel, like his people. If torture was legal, Dan knew he'd be strapped naked to the hood of the Impala while a thousand scorpions looked for meat on his body.
It was time to break the silence, apologize and make for the heater. "I'm sorry."
Gerald tilted his head to the right and continued to stare at Dan. His face was ancient, weathered. Deep black eyes buried under a single eyebrow glinted with—perhaps—a little disappointment. Shoulder-length black hair framed the canyons and crevasses of his face. With the button-up plaid shirt and hands on his thighs, he looked more like he was posing for one of those obligatory government portraits after the Great White Father had made yet another promise of land or rations. He certainly didn't look like he was about to fire anyone . . . or feed anyone to scorpions.
"I slipped up, yesterday." Dan shifted in his chair again. This time, his butt cheek screamed. "It won't happen again."
Gerald still said nothing.
"I can work overtime tonight and tomorrow. I won't even take a lunch break."
The silence between spurts of apology was annoying. Maybe scorpions would be better, Dan thought.
Gerald finally spoke. "Do you know the Ute creation story?"
Dan blinked. "What?"
"The Ute creation story. Do you know it?"
"Um . . . yeah, I remember my grandmother telling it to me. Why?"
"Tell it to me."
Scorpions. Maybe a few snakes for good measure.
"I'm not sure I understand why you're asking. You're not Ute."
Gerald removed his hands from his thighs and clasped them together. A small smirk had appeared on his face, cracking a few of the canyon-like wrinkles. There was another gleam in his eyes; this time, though, it wasn't disappointment. It was more sinister.
"Tell it to me."
Dan crossed his arms and leaned back on the chair. "Well, Coyote let the rest of the world go and dumped the Utes in a sacred place. That's it."
"No. That is not it," Gerald said. "Tell me the whole story. Pretend we are sitting around a fire and you are talking to everyone gathered. Pretend."
Dan looked down at his crossed arms, aware of a pressure on him he didn't like. He really didn't remember much of the story; he'd been told it several times when he was growing up on the reservation in Utah, but after his father left and his mother moved to Denver, the stories ceased. Mother wasn't Ute; she was a pedigreed American mutt, a combination of Mexican and some other Indian tribe she'd never named. She hadn't grown up on the reservation like his father had, and when he left, she wasn't welcome.
He sighed. "I don't understand."
"I am not asking you to understand," Gerald said, his voice tainted with something less menacing than Dan had expected. "I am asking you to tell me the Ute creation story, as it was told to you by your grandmother and as she was told the story by her ancestors."
Dan didn't look up. Instead, he closed his eyes and tried to recall. "Before there were people in the world," he began, "only Sinawav and Coyote existed. One day, Sinawav told Coyote to take a bag of sticks to a certain place and dump it out. 'Don't open it before you get there,' he warned."
"Who is Sinawav?"
"The Creator."
"Go on."
"Anyway, Coyote kept wondering what was in the bag. By the time he was over the first hill and out of sight, he stopped. All he was going to do was peek in the bag. When he untied it, though, people rushed out. They yelled and hollered in strange languages, and no matter how hard he tried, Coyote couldn't get all the people back in the bag. By the time he had tied it up again, only a small amount of people were left. So he went to the sacred land where Sinawav had told him to go and dumped out the people. Those were the Utes, the chosen ones."
Gerald nodded. "And what happened to Coyote?"
"Sinawav was pissed. He made Coyote walk on all fours from then on and let him know those who escaped would forever war with the Utes. They would be the tribes which will always be a thorn in our side."
"And the Utes. What will they be?"
"Forever small in number but mighty and valiant of heart."
There was a pause as Gerald shifted in his chair. He leaned his massive frame forward and put his hands back on his thighs. Dan felt uncomfortable, open, ashamed. It wasn't enough he had slipped last night and drank his way to oblivion. It wasn't enough he had to endure a day of both a wicked hangover and the thoughts of that boy in the abandoned house he finally escaped from. It wasn't enough he had been late to work. Now he felt like Coyote, about to be admonished and made to walk on all fours.
Finally, Gerald spoke. "You are not the chosen."
At this Dan sat up straight, a knife formed from words stuck in his spine. "Excuse me?"
"Your mother was not chosen. Your father was. You are made of two worlds and you will never belong to either one of them."
"I—"
"You have a choice," Gerald interrupted. "You can be angry at the Northern Ute Tribal Council for not allowing you membership because of your mother, or you can be angry at the rest of us because we jumped out of the bag Coyote opened. Either way, you will be angry. If you continue to be angry, Dan, you will continue to hurt yourself."
Dan stood up. "I don't have to listen to this."
"I know. That is why you drink and why you will not stop."
With a flush of anger deepening the red of his face, Dan turned to go. "You do not know why I drink."
Gerald didn't move, his hands still on his thighs, his back straight, his eyes buried deep into Dan's soul. An uncomfortable silence descended on the two, chilling the already cold air even more.
With a sigh, Dan grabbed his denim coat from a hook on the wall and left the garage.
The bar was crowded. Dan sat on a cushioned stool, his hand wrapped around a glass of Crown Royal and Coke. To his left, a man hunched over a glass of beer looked close to falling asleep. His head was down. Brown hair covered the features of his face. His lips were barely parted, just enough to breathe and get the beer into his mouth with less effort than—God forbid—having to open his mouth fully. The aroma of the man, like charcoal and acetate, mixed in with the heavy pall of smoke that hung in the air with humid warmth.
"So you got fired," the man said.
Dan took a long drink from his glass and looked across at the mirrored wall in front of him. He really didn't like the way he looked. "No. I don't think so."
"But your boss, he didn't say back?"
"What?"
The man looked over, irritated. "He didn't tell you when to come back?"
"No. I just left. I'll go back in the morning and see what he says."
With a grunt, the man lifted the glass of beer and aimed it at his mouth with a practiced hand. "You got fired."
Dan frowned at the man's reflection in the mirrored wall and said nothing. Conversations with idiots were only entertaining when you had reached the same level of idiocy. Since this was only his second drink, he was far from matching wits with the witless.
The man finished his beer and waved the bartender over. "Another." He swung his head to the right in an exaggerated motion. "And one for Tonto, too."
"You know I hate that, Mac," Dan said.
Mac waved off the comment and tapped his empty glass as he waited. "So what's with the boy?"
"I have no idea. I woke up in that abandoned house off Bison Street and there he was. He was like . . . ancient."
"You mean old."
"No, ancient. He talked funny."
Mac nodded as the bartender replaced his empty beer with a full one, the head of it perfectly domed and spilling over the side of the iced glass. The bartender removed Dan's empty glass and turned to refill it with practiced fluidity.
"What was the kid wearing?" the bartender asked.
Dan looked up at her. "Overalls and a dirty t-shirt. He didn't have any shoes, either."
"You still got your smokes?"
Dan shook his head. "You know that's bullshit. First off, I don't smoke, and second, that's your ghost."
The bartender smiled. Yellowed teeth glowed between thin lips. "Well, I don't know how many Joeys we got in Cripple Creek, but you're describing the Joey we got here."
"Who said he was a ghost?" Mac asked. "Could've been some kid from Victor out playing."
"Kids from Victor," the bartender said, brandishing a full glass of Crown Royal and Coke Dan hadn't even noticed she'd filled, "are never around here. And they wear shoes."
The idea of a ghost sent a chill up Dan's spine. He hadn't considered it at first, waving off the questioning brat as nothing more than an intrusion to his day, like a bad case of the shits before work. It was an intriguing idea, however, but one that was nonetheless unsettling.
"You ever see Joey?" he asked the bartender.
"Once, about a year ago. He was dressed like you say. I closed the bar up for the night and sat down to smoke. Put my pack right here." She tapped the bar next to Mac. "Next thing I know, Joey was next to me, asking for a smoke. I told him to go away."
"Did he?" Mac asked.
"No. He stood right next to me, looking like I just told him Santa Claus wasn't real. I looked away for a second and he was gone."
"You still have your smokes?"
"No."
Dan laughed, despite the humorless expression on the bartender's face. "You should have told him cigarettes kill."
Bennett Avenue was quiet. Only a few tourists and night owls walked between the casinos. The iron gaslights illuminated the two or three cars that lined each side of the street, their frost-laden windows white. The noise that was so pervasive during the day was gone. There were whispers between the few smokers who stood outside the casino doors, as if to talk loudly would upset the balance of the night. It was both eerie and unsettling, and Dan tried to ignore it as he put one foot in front of the other in a drunk's attempt to make it home.
With his back hunched, hands buried in his denim jacket and clouds of condensed breath hovering around him like tiny fog banks, he kept his eyes on the path in front of him. It wouldn't do well to fall down here, on the main drag, where one of those damned cops would pick him up and stuff him in a jail cell. They'd done it a few times before. On one occasion they'd caught him before he'd fallen asleep. On another, they'd let him lie in his vomit for an hour before plucking him from the alley behind The Spanish Mustang where he'd just lost a good day's wages on Blackjack and another day's wages at the bar because the damned waitresses there were never around when the drink was gone.
He'd meant to write a letter about that.
Dan took another step and felt his balance waver. The sidewalk before his eyes moved to the right then back to the left, like a little earthquake under his feet. His head felt like it had fallen asleep—a warm numbness he loved all too well. The blanker the mind, the less thoughts would come . . . and he had many thoughts, many regrets, many goals that would never come to fruition. His boss didn't know why he drank, and if he did, maybe he'd be more accepting. After all, a hard life needs medication, does it not?
Stupid Mescalero. Of all the people he'd met in Cripple Creek after leaving prison two years ago, Gerald was the only one who'd given him a chance at becoming someone. It wasn't much of a job, but it was work and it both paid the bills and gave him drinking money. The casinos sure wouldn't hire him—something about integrity and how convicted felons have none. Not that they would have given him a chance, anyway. He was Ute and while his people had been confined to reservations decades ago, it seemed the people of this town, at least, still didn't trust a red man.
And now he was on the verge of being fired.
Or had he been fired?
He stopped, shook his head and tried to refocus on a blank mind, not one crowded with past failures and fat bosses who liked to lecture. With a deep breath, he moved his left foot out in front of his right and focused on maintaining some semblance of balance.
It wasn't easy.
From his coat pocket, he withdrew a plastic bottle of Kentucky whiskey, a six-dollar special from the bottom shelf of the liquor store. He'd tasted plenty of whiskies in his day, but lately they'd all started to taste the same. Maybe it was the growing numbness of his taste buds or perhaps all whiskey was the same. The expensive twenty-four dollar bottles were not for him, especially when he could drink a whole bottle in a day. For that price, he could stock up on three bottles and feel the same medicinal effects.
No, four. Damn, his math wasn't good anymore.
Dan leaned against a lamppost. He took a swig from the bottle then peered inside. It was nearly empty. With a frown and an exaggerated look to the right, he saw he was no longer among the casinos and tourist traps. He had passed them all and stood near the last of the buildings before the street opened up to the hills beyond and the way to Victor.
He sighed. Still another mile or so to go before he reached his house and another bottle of whiskey to wash away the fog left in his mind. With a wobbled step left, he turned from the lamppost and headed through a parking lot to the distance beyond.
He looked up as he crossed the asphalt, forced the miasma from his eyes and found himself regarding a wall. A door led from the second floor of the back of the building, surrounded by heavily-scarred brick. Ancient tar marks where a roof or patio had once joined the wall dripped down among the uneven brickwork. Rusted pipes and conduits led up, right, left, down and into holes drilled next to windows. Between a single yellow light attached to the wall and the door leading nowhere, the parking lot felt oppressive, more like jail than a wide open nothing.
He blinked away the thought and returned his focus to the daunting task of placing one foot in front of the other.
A searing pain shot across Dan's cheek and cut through the inebriation. Through a sudden and strange buzzing in his head, he barely made out a nasty, evil, guttural scream. Something connected with his ankle, throwing him off balance. Without any awareness of sequential events, he found himself flat on his back, his chest heaving with effort as he desperately tried to suck in deep breaths of air. He winced at tiny pebbles from the asphalt that dug painfully into his back. A darkness mottled with bright sparks of light closed in around his wide-open eyes, threatening to take away both his sight and consciousness.
"Hey, Tonto," a voice above Dan said. It was clear, but distant, like bleating sheep on a hill far away.
Dan closed his eyes tightly against the onslaught of darkness and opened them again. Above him, shadowed in that yellow light, stood a stocky man, probably a few years younger. Massive fists were balled at his side. A Denver Broncos windbreaker clung to him like cellophane. The man's face contorted into a sick smile, one that portended pain yet to be inflicted, pain that was given, not received.
"You damn Indians are all the same," the man sneered.
A well-placed kick in the ribs sent Dan over onto his side. He felt a well of bile rise up in his throat, adding fire to the inferno in his side. Dan heard, rather than thought, words from his grandmother as they sat around a fire. "They would be the tribes which will always be a thorn in our side."
The man grunted out a bizarre laugh. "Always thinking you're something special."
Another kick in Dan's back arched him over. He instinctively reached for his spine and screamed. What was happening? Why was he on the ground, unprotected and in pain? The whiskey certainly didn't help numb the searing sting.
"You ain't shit—nothing but a drunk who belongs in a cage."
Dan looked up at the man who had overwhelmed him. He opened his mouth, but a rush of bile mixed with the coppery taste of blood blocked his attempt to speak. He leaned his head to the side and spat. A silvery red puddle glistened in the dim light.
"You should have listened to your gut, Iron Horse," the stocky man said, his voice thick with menace. "You should have returned to the reservation after prison, instead of coming out here."
Prison. Dan shook a memory from his jarred head. Iron Horse. He replayed the man's voice, the inflection, the words. It was all familiar, even after two years out of the big house and on parole, the voice was familiar . . . chilling. Synapses connected, neurons engaged, electric impulses flashed across Dan's brain, coalescing into a twisted vision of a thickset man festooned with Aryan tattoos across his chest and arms, a scowl that never failed to reveal yellowed teeth, a hideous scar from a burn that covered half a shaved head. The twisted vision of the man resolved into a yard bounded by a tall fence and concertina wire, by guards with their backs turned, by unfocused figures jeering and taunting and yelling and forming a ring of no escape.
"Marquez," Dan whispered.
"Good guess." The man named Marquez stomped on Dan's right hand with a black leather boot. Dan screamed and tried to pull his hand away.
"When . . .," Dan grunted through his teeth. The pain cut off the rest of his words.
"When did I get out?" Marquez pushed down on his boot. "About a month ago. I saw you in that bar and I couldn't resist."
"Resist?"
"We never finished what you started, Injun." Marquez slowly intoned the last word. "In-jun."
Dan pulled his hand again. He felt anger surge through his veins, pushing back any remaining numbness from the alcohol. With a grunt, he pulled his hand back and rolled to the right. Within seconds, he was on his feet, the dim parking lot swirling around his head, the browns and reds of the brick coalescing with the black of the asphalt. In the center of the spinning kaleidoscope of structure, Marquez stood with his hands and teeth clenched.
"You got away once, red man." Marquez spat on the ground. "Not this time."
A rush of black and skin distorted Dan's clear view of the skinhead. Something silver in the man's right hand caught the yellow light and glinted fiercely as it carved an upward arc.
Dan turned to the left and dodged Marquez's charge. "What the hell is wrong with you, man?" he screamed. "That was three years ago."
Marquez spun around and faced Dan. He was no longer bathed in shadow; his face displayed hate. "There ain't nothing better than a dead Injun." He sneered. "Except, maybe, a dead nigger."
With an animalistic scream, Marquez leapt forward, the knife poised at an upward angle. Dan moved his body right, but a burning sting across his stomach forced him to arch his back and cover a wound. He staggered a few steps then fell to his knees.
In less than a breath, Marquez had Dan pinned to the ground with a heavy boot on his back.
"I thought Injuns could fight." His breath was raspy, filled with phlegm and exertion. "I guess they get soft when they drink."
Dan tried to roll over, but the cut in his side screamed in protest.
"I should let you bleed it out. Ain't no one coming to the aid of a savage red man."
Dan's body suddenly relaxed. He closed his eyes and pushed back the pain in his side, in his spine, as Marquez dug the heel of the boot into his flesh. In the darkness, myopic lights danced furtively.
Christ, he thought. It's cold out here.
A sudden gust of wind, bitter and strong, blew pebbles across Dan's face. He felt the boot on his back lift, heard Marquez scream and listened to the sound of flesh smack against the asphalt next to him. The chill of the wind sent needles through Dan's cheek. It dug deep inside and filled him with a cold he never knew existed.
He tightened his eyelids, hoping to shut out the cold and escape into the darkness. The wind continued to scream from the depths of Hell. Through a rush of blood in his ears, a thousand voices merged in a cacophony of pain. No sound in life could have prepared Dan for the agony that suddenly filled him from inside. He reached his hands up to cover his ears, but there was no way to block out the screams, no way to push it all away.
In an instant, the wind stopped. The cold lifted from Dan's body and silence descended on the parking lot—a comforting blanket of warmth.
He slowly opened his eyes and turned his head. A crumpled figure dressed in black lay on the asphalt, bathed in yellow light and swimming in a pool of glistening blood. He watched the figure's chest rise in an attempt to get air. Heat from the pool of blood condensed into steam in the cold night air and rose around Marquez's body like ghostly fingers reaching up from the ground to claim a prize.
"You okay, mister?"
Dan lifted himself up on his arms and looked to his right. Joey stood in the shadows, his hand buried in his pockets.
"You almost got dead."
Dan stared at Joey as his mind attempted to process whatever had just happened. Before he could speak or make sense of anything, the cut in his side flared, a hot branding iron in his flesh. He winced and covered the wound with his hand; warm blood welled up between his fingers. Fog and numbness returned, no longer from the alcohol.
Before he collapsed and the world went black, Dan saw Joey take a step forward.
"I need your help, mister. You ain't dead, yet."
Dan woke to the sound of Nirvana in his ears. He took a moment to register the fact he was no longer in a parking lot but on a couch—his couch—with earphones clamped around his head. His head pounded, his mouth was full of a nasty, slippery taste. His legs and arms and sides and back and neck throbbed in protest to his every move.
He needed a stiff eye-opener.
The cut in his side burned fire. Dan lifted his soiled and torn shirt to examine the wound. Dried blood surrounded a six-inch-long gash, but a wad of soaked toilet paper was crammed inside. He tried to recall whether he'd done it and soon realized he couldn't remember anything at all. The last image was of Joey, darkening, taking slow steps toward him. And then nothing.
The boy had said something. What was it?
With a grunt, he stepped into his small kitchen and rummaged through the drawers for some sort of bandage other than toilet paper.
"I couldn't find any towels," a voice said behind him.
Dan turned. Joey stood in the middle of the living room, his overalls dirty, his face as sunken as ever, eyes imbued with curiosity and something unknown.
"What are you doing here?" Dan asked. His head pounded with each word. Where was that bottle of whiskey?
"I need your help, mister."
"Not until I find my bottle, kid." Dan turned back to the kitchen and opened one cabinet after another. Finally, he took a flask down and unscrewed the plastic cap. A quick shot of whiskey burned down his throat. Much better.
"What do you need?" he asked.
"What did that man mean when he said you was an Injun?"
Dan blinked. That man. Marquez. "What happened to him?"
"I pushed."
The word "pushed" registered with Dan in a strange way. He thought back to the wind, the cold, the scream, the sound of Marquez's body crumbling onto the asphalt. That was some push.
"I . . ." Dan stumbled with a response. "Is he dead?"
"No. His head will hurt when he gets up."
Dan nodded. "Thank you."
"I thought you said you was a Ute," Joey said.
"I am."
"Then what did he mean 'Injun?'"
Dan took another quick shot from the flask and walked past Joey to the couch. With a grunt and a flaming stab of torn flesh in his side, he sat down. "What do you want?"
"I need your help."
"You said that. How?"
The boy said nothing but remained in the center of the living room, his body rigid, almost statuesque. Dan regarded the boy with a little more attention than he had before. His arms were like sticks, elbows protruding, hands absent of muscle and form. Dirt clogged long fingernails like he'd been digging in the mud. His blonde hair was just as dirty, maybe even more so; it was plastered to his head.
"Look, kid—I don't know what you want. I just got my ass kicked by a skinhead and I have a freakin' gash the size of a Buick in my side. My head is pounding, my body hurts like hell and I don't know if I'm late for work again or if I even got a job anymore." Dan sighed. "What do you want?"
Joey looked down, and in the light from the kitchen, Dan noticed a tear on his freckled face.
Damn it, Dan thought. A crier.
He leaned back against the couch and took another two shots of the whiskey, each time wincing at the pain in his throat but happy to feel the rush of numbness return to his body. Of all the things that he'd had to deal with in the past few weeks, this was quite unnecessary. He looked at a clock on the wall and watched the seconds tick by. Sunrise was still an hour away.
"I need you to help me find my mother," Joey said. His voice was quiet, sad, desperate.
Dan looked back to Joey and saw his lips quiver. "What happened to your mother?" he asked.
"She was taken by some Indians. That's what my sister said, anyway."
Dan swallowed back a strange lump that had formed in his throat. "Taken where?"
Joey shrugged, still looking down. "I dunno. She was there one day, gone the next. Sissy said the Indians came into our camp and took lots of people. She said they did that sometimes and said I should always be looking over my shoulder for the red man."
Dan sat up a little straighter. His skin crawled. Somewhere in the back of his mind a thought took shape, carved with the sharpness of the events of yesterday. He suddenly felt the urge to run, but he knew he was too beaten to get very far. He was stuck, in pain and staring down the barrel of what could only be described as a spectral catch-22.
He pushed the fear from his mind. "What color am I, Joey?"
"You're a red man," he said. "But you said you ain't an Indian, so I ain't scared of you. I just want you to help me find my mother. I been looking forever."
"What makes you think I can help?"
Joey looked up from the floor and set his sunken blue eyes on Dan. "Because you can see me and no one else can."
Gerald stared hard at Dan, his ancient Mescalero features both menacing and fatherly. "You have one choice."
Dan shifted in the cold metal folding chair. At least his butt was numb. He couldn't face his boss any longer, and he was out of arguments. Besides, the idea of a ghost invading his life overwhelmed all other thoughts. He knew he was out of a job if he didn't listen, but the last fifteen minutes of Gerald's sermon had been shut out by Joey and this quest for a mother.
Another ghost? Dan thought.
"You will go with me to the meeting tonight," Gerald said. Dan heard that and knew it wasn't really a choice. If he wanted to keep his job—and there was no denying he needed the money—he was going to have to make a sacrifice. At the same time, however, he was assailed with curiosity and something close to fear.
Dan sighed. Where do I start?
St. Andrew's Episcopal Church stood on an incline on Carr Street, just off well-worn Bennett Avenue. The simple rectangular brick building was ornamented with an offset projecting vestibule, a high-pitched red tile roof and lancet windows with ornate stained glass. Four distinct gables crossed the roof below a snow white Celtic cross. Built in 1896, it was reminiscent of the revival of the former mining boomtown after a devastating fire, much like the meeting inside its sanctuary was reminiscent of the revival of the humans who had suffered their own disasters.
Dan sat in a wooden pew at the back of the church, his face a stoic mask which hid his confusion, the still throbbing pain in his side and abject irritation. Gerald sat next to him, equally stoic, but apparently much more comfortable in his surroundings. Dan's arms had been crossed for the last half hour and now cramped. A drink would be better than this. Hell, waking up with a hangover in the middle of a snow-covered hill and puking all day would be better than this.
A heavy-set man stood. Gray hairs stuck out in random directions, accenting a plaid shirt with a bolo tie and a pair of faded Wrangler jeans. He was the third to speak. The first two had cried, and Dan felt a twinge of hope this one wouldn't succumb to the same wimpy ways. They were all serial killers and child molesters, anyway. There wasn't a sane person in the room. Christ, were all alcoholics bad dressers, too?
"My name is Bill," the plaid-shirted man said, "and I'm an alcoholic."
Not another, Dan thought. The first man to stand up was named Bill, as well. Maybe I'll be a Bill, too. He smiled at his own thought then forced his mind to listen to what Bill had to say.
"I have been sober for only three days," he started.
Another man in the room spoke up. "Don't say 'only,' Bill. Three days is a good start."
Dan looked over at the man who had spoken. The handlebar mustache was pathetic, and who was he to interrupt an obviously nervous Bill?
Bill continued. "I have been sober for three days. I came here because alcohol has ruined my life, and I know I have a problem. First, my wife of twenty-three years left me, and she took my two sons with her. I thought that was the end of the world, so I started to drink more. What else could possibly happen at that point?"
What else, indeed, Dan thought.
"Last month, I lost my job. I would get up in the morning with a nasty hangover, take a few shots of rum then go into work."
There were a few knowing groans in the audience. Dan looked around again and noticed for the first time just how many people were there. There had to be close to thirty. Thirty losers.
"I was just drinking at home—before work and after work. I figured if I didn't drive drunk and I didn't go to bars, I didn't have a problem. But then I ended up carrying a flask. Lunchtime was the perfect moment to put the rum in my Diet Coke and no one would know any different."
Bill paused. His face betrayed his shame, and his eyes seemed a little too glassy.
Don't cry, Dan pleaded in his head. Please.
"I had a little too much Diet Coke one day, and I made a mistake."
A tear fell from a glassy eye.
"I tripped over some power cables and I pulled a table saw over."
He paused again. Tears flowed freely now. The audience was absorbed, like captive theater-goers waiting for the climax of a thriller. Dan silently wished the tears would stop.
"The saw was still running when it caught one of my coworkers."
There was no collective gasp. Dan wasn't sure if it was because the climax wasn't exciting enough or if they'd all been there before—one mistake, inflicting pain on someone else because they'd been drunk. Sucks to be them, he thought.
"I realized . . . ." The man choked on his words then straightened up. "I realized I had a problem and I needed help. I'd just cut a man's finger off because I was careless. I could have killed him."
A man sitting next to Bill stood up and wrapped his arms around the huge and quivering body. No one moved. There were no whispers like one might expect in a crowd. There was no consolation, either.
Dan uncrossed his arms and looked carefully around the sanctuary. Was he the only one who didn't really care if this guy couldn't handle his liquor? How much longer was this meeting anyway? He'd only had a chance to down two shots before he'd left his house. There was still a good amount left in the bottle on the kitchen counter.
Gerald moved slightly in the pew next to Dan. His face was still a mask, but Dan saw the glassiness in his ancient eyes. Something had touched the man, but Dan was at a loss as to exactly what. It couldn't have been the story just told; Bill was a product of the Great White Father, and like most whites, he was as worthless as they come. In fact, the room was filled with worthless people—whites, Mexicans and that sniveling little Japanese man in the corner. They were all thorns in his people's side, and—lately—thorns in his side. What could Gerald have felt that moved him so much?
The next two speakers were equally as boring, and Dan noticed his eyes closing on more than one occasion. Perhaps he could skip the rest of the bottle tonight and just go to bed.
He yawned and looked up at the ceiling. Large lacquered beams crossed the vast expanse of the sanctuary, framing the stained glass windows. One of the lancet windows caught Dan's attention; it depicted a miner in a blue shirt holding a cross. He stood next to a donkey laden with supplies. The richness of the colors and the way the miner looked at Dan captivated him, and he struggled to find a reason why. Miners represented those who came to this part of the country and took the land from his forefathers. Miners represented the greed that fueled massacres of his people. Miners represented the raping of the good Earth, the carrying out of its vast treasure. Why was it so prominently displayed in a church?
Dan's eyes drifted downward, past the miner and the donkey. In the shadows under the window, Joey stared back at the Ute. His eyes reflected the chandelier above the altar. Dan's pulse raced as he felt a cold chill cross his body, hairs on the back of his neck stand up, sweat bead on his forehead.
What do you want? Dan thought, hoping his words would cross the sanctuary and enter Joey's ears. I don't know where to look for your mother.
Joey didn't move. His eyes remained fixed on Dan in a cold stare.
Suddenly, in the back of Dan's mind, a thought formed like a blossoming weed. It sprouted in the fertile soil of his brain and took root—first a stem, then a node, then leaves opened up.
Indians took my mother.
"What did you think?" Gerald took a sip of his coffee and looked across the table at Dan.
Dan hadn't touched his coffee. He directed his eyes away from Gerald and out the window, down to Bennett Avenue. The café his boss had suggested after they'd left the meeting was not crowded, nor was it easy to get to. Above the Spanish Mustang on the second floor, the café was more like an afterthought, as if some developer had decided they had enough offices and hard and soft count rooms and now needed to do something with that left over space.
The chair Dan sat on was as uncomfortable as the metal folding chair where he'd been counseled so many times at work. Now, with Gerald across from him and his butt sore, he felt the same was happening again.
"I didn't like it," Dan said, his eyes not moving from the street below.
"Why not?"
"Those people have problems."
"And so do you."
Dan glanced at Gerald then turned back to the window. "They are not Ute. A Ute doesn't have problems, we have solutions."
There was a pause as Gerald shifted his weight in his own chair. "And what is your solution?"
"I was able to quit on my own for sixteen days. I can do it again."
"You are only half Ute. I do not think so."
With a flush of anger, Dan turned away from the window and stared at his boss. "You don't know what I can do."
"I know that you are troubled by something other than your job, other than your inability to gain acceptance into the Northern Ute tribe. I know you are afraid of what happened in prison, and I know you think you will go back there if you do not change your ways. I know you—"
"You don't know!" Dan growled through bared teeth. "You don't know what else might be going through my mind."
Gerald didn't respond. He stared at Dan quietly, sipped his coffee a few times then looked out the window. The night was brightly lit by a full moon, reflected in both the windows of the buildings and the piles of snow on the side of the road. A few cars drove up and down the street, while a few pedestrians walked from casino to casino on their way to supposed riches.
"Who is the boy?" Gerald finally asked.
Dan swallowed hard and looked down at his untouched coffee. "You see him?"
"I do."
"I don't know who he is, but he keeps following me."
"You did not look pleased to see him in the church. Why is that?"
Dan finally lifted the coffee to his lips and took a sip. It was bitter but good. All of a sudden he felt the need for a cigarette. "He asked me to help him find his mother."
Gerald nodded. Something in that nod set Dan on edge. "When did she disappear?"
There was another pause as Dan tried to reason though a good answer to that question. He could tell him what he thought, but that would mean accepting Joey as a ghost. It still hadn't set well with him nor, did he think, it ever would.
"She was taken years ago," Dan said. He took a longer sip of coffee and let the heat burn his upper lip. "The kid said Indians took her."
Gerald didn't move. His eyes were still directed out the window. His silence was unnerving.
"I think—" Dan cut himself off and looked at Gerald through the reflection in the window. "Wait a minute. How can you see him?"
Gerald hesitated then returned Dan's gaze. There was a pause then he said: "Because we are both accused of the sins of our grandfathers."
"I don't understand."
Gerald sighed. "How much do you know the history around here?"
"Very little. Gold was found. There was a fire. The town rebuilt."
The Mescalero nodded slowly then continued. "There was a fire, yes, but during that time there were also numerous raids. Most of the miners and their families lived in tents or small houses that offered little in the way of protection. Bandits and Indians and Mexicans and anyone else with a weak motive ran through town, captured or killed people and generally made themselves a nuisance."
"My ancestors didn't raid any town."
"That you know of, Dan. The Nuchu moved to the reservation in the late 1800s. Your father is Uncompahgre—full-blood Ute. Your mother is not. Do you know your mother's history?"
"She is half Mexican."
"And the other half?"
"She never said. I don't know much about my mother. She died when I was seventeen." Dan couldn't look at Gerald any longer. It was possible that he was descended from a half-Mexican, half-Ute woman, and her reluctance to ever name the tribe—sometimes feigning ignorance, sometimes simply ignoring the question—left room to wonder. Had she claimed her Ute heritage, she would still not have been accepted into the Northern Ute tribe. Had she been anything other than Northern Ute, she would most certainly have never been accepted. Utes were not a historically unified group. Instead, they consisted of nomadic bands who maintained tenuous friendships with their neighbors. To be a Ute was not to be a Ute. A Ute was Weminuche, Uncompahgre, Uintah.
"What is the point of this?" Dan finally asked.
"I am not saying you are not your father's son. I am suggesting that maybe you are your mother's son, and she is her grandfather's daughter, and he is his father's son—a nomad, like my great grandfather, who took up arms in the time of the Great Suffering. You yourself wrestle with mixed blood."
Dan thought back to the moment in the sanctuary when he'd heard his own conscious plant a seed of possibility: "Indians took my mother."
With a cringe and a quick gulp of coffee, Dan stood up. "You act like I'm to blame for this."
Gerald looked up at Dan, his features more ancient than ever before. "The boy thinks so."
Dan swallowed hard against the thought. He stood at the table, locked in a gaze with his boss. If Joey was a ghost—and neither of them said any different—then how could he possibly get out of this? The sound of Marquez hitting the asphalt came back to him in an instant. All the boy had said was that he'd "pushed." If that's pushing, Dan didn't want to be pushed.
He slowly returned to his seat and looked out the window. "What do I do? I can't possibly find his mother."
Gerald's reflection in the glass nodded once, almost imperceptibly. "He would not leave me alone, either. That is until I told him to look somewhere else. That is why I am saddened by his arrival in your life. It is a cycle for the boy—the ghost boy. To find his mother—his family—he must search for those who took her. He knows both she and her captors are long dead. He also knows there are many generations that have passed since the raids. He is aware of this, and yet he cannot stop. He is like Coyote reaching for the berries he sees in the water. No matter how hard he tries, he cannot get them."
Dan smiled slightly at the story, the same story his grandmother had told many times while sitting around the fire. "Coyote needs to look up, not down."
Gerald took his eyes from the window and looked back at Dan. The expression on his face was kind, almost fatherly. "You need to get the boy to look up, my friend. That is the only way."
"And how do I do that?"
"That is up to you. We all reach for berries at some point in our lives."
Dan sat on the step leading from the kitchen of the abandoned house where he'd first met Joey. The coming winter had turned the landscape into death, a riot of twigs and dormant grasses that stretched over hill after hill. In the distance, the newly snow-capped peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains shone in the bright afternoon sun. To his right, tight against the horizon, Mount Pisgah rose like a perfect cone. The view from the top of that mountain was majestic and framed Cripple Creek in a light that was nothing less than scenic, hiding the dirty and rundown parts of the town behind the prominent century-old structures. From this vantage point, however, the town was a mess of overhead power lines, decrepit buildings and pot-holed roads.
Two vistas, opposing views.
Dan didn't know if he would find Joey in the house, but he had nowhere else to look. If the kid wanted help, he was sure to stick nearby. If he'd shown up in the parking lot and the church, he would likely show up wherever Dan was at the time. The wait was excruciating, though. Thankfully, Gerald had given him the day off to think about how to "make Coyote look up."
A day off was just what Dan felt he needed. That, and a bottle of whiskey at his side.
He unscrewed the cap to the half-empty bottle of Wild Turkey and took a drink. He'd been at the house for over an hour, and already he was feeling the warm numbness of the alcohol take control of his body. He knew if he stood up, the world would spin away. Thankfully, there was no need for such action. A drink and a step and a picture-perfect day would be enough. If Joey never showed up then he could be thankful he had the day off.
And so what if he drank? It wasn't like Gerald was going to catch him. Still, he could hear the man's voice in the back of his head: "You have a problem."
"No, my Mescalero friend," Dan said to the air around him. "I have no problem."
"What problem?" Joey's voice echoed in the empty house.
Dan turned and saw Joey against a kitchen wall. He wore a more determined look on his face than before.
"I didn't hear you come in," Dan said.
"I didn't want to disturb you."
Dan rose and noted the rush in his head as he stretched his frame out. The world did spin, but only for a moment. He grabbed the side of the doorframe and steadied himself.
"Did you find her?" Joey asked.
Dan shook his head. "No. Um . . . I mean, not yet." Dan considered his words. "Can I ask you something, kid?"
"Sure."
"What makes you think your mother was taken by Indians?"
"Sissy said so."
Dan stared at Joey for a moment as possible tactics bantered about in his head. How was he going to get Coyote to look up?
"What's your name?" Dan asked, a little unsure of how this tactic would work when he didn't even know what tactic he was using.
"Joey."
"Last name, I mean."
"Barker." Joey knelt down on the kitchen floor and picked up a stick. He started beating it against the wall slowly.
Dan took a drink from his bottle, decided it best to have a seat himself and lowered to the floor. He leaned his back against the doorframe, his mind reeling with a buzz, too many tactics and no way to proceed. He considered asking the most direct question possible, discarded that idea . . . then finally decided to try it anyway.
"You realize you're not alive, right?" he said.
"Yes." Joey's answer was quick, almost like he had expected it. Had he been told this before?
Dan took the answer as a good sign and pressed. "What year did you die? Do you remember or do you know?"
"1901."
Fear boiled in Dan's stomach and he found himself unable to look at the boy, at the century-old ghost in his midst. He took two more drinks and looked out toward the town. "How?" he asked.
"I fell down a mine shaft just over that ridge."
Dan swallowed hard. The very notion of being told how this boy of eight or nine died added a bitter taste to his mouth in addition to the roiling in his stomach. It felt like acid. Maybe it was.
"Did you live in this house?" Dan finally asked.
"Yes. My daddy built it."
"When did he die?"
"He killed himself a year after I died."
Dan took a large drink of whiskey and turned to face the boy. So much death. "You saw this?"
"Yes."
A black bird flew through one of the open windows on the other side of the house. It landed on floor amongst the debris of yesteryear, pecked at something, looked up at Dan then turned back to peck. Dan watched the bird move, hop forward, dip its sinuous black head. It wasn't a huge bird, but it was larger than he would have expected to fly through the window. It tilted its head to the right to look at a piece of something on the floor then pecked at it.
Joey must not have noticed. He sat on the floor, beat the stick against the wall continuously and seemed lost in thought. There was nothing Dan could have said at that moment to empathize with his loss . . . and to have lived with it for so long. Ironic that this boy—this ghost—was "living" with his past at all.
Dan considered the boy's search and what he was really looking for. His mother would be dead, by now, and if Indians did take her when he was little, they wouldn't have been too kind. Was his search locked in time, like a penance for some wrongdoing, or was it all metaphorical—the mother as the berries and this boy, as Coyote, looking in the wrong direction? It was futile.
What was it Dan's mother had said before she'd passed away? "I am sorry, son," she had said. Dan had never understood what that meant, but he'd certainly thought about it since. Even when he drank the grief away, it always returned, ever present, ever confusing. Was she sorry for his lot in life? Sorry for the way she'd left him? Or was she sorry she'd taken Dan away from the reservation, away from his heritage, hoping to open his eyes to the rest of the world and see—just maybe—that not everyone who wasn't Ute was going to be a "thorn in our sides."
Dan took another sip from the bottle and regarded the bird again. It continued to peck in the same spot, over and over. Finally, with a flutter of large black wings that disturbed the dust motes that hung in the air like frozen snow, the bird lifted up and out the window.
Dan turned his attention back to the boy, but found himself almost too drunk to open his mouth. He knew his words were slurred, now. "How long have you been . . . looking for her?"
"Since I learned she was taken by Indians."
"And who have you talked to?"
Joey looked up and to the right in deep thought. With his head in that direction, Dan noticed an area of matted flesh and blood behind his left ear. He hadn't really taken a good look before, or maybe Joey had always faced him and hidden the mechanism of his death.
Dan took another drink and looked at the bottle. Still a good amount left, he thought.
"There was a red man who came here a few years ago," Joey finally said as he snapped his head back to look at Dan. "He was like you—drunk all the time."
Drunk? The image of Gerald in the sanctuary with glassy eyes came back to Dan. "Anyone else?"
"A few. Here and there. Red men are hard to find."
Dan shook his head. The feeling was wonderful, but deep down he knew the hangover was going to be worse than normal. Not only that, the whiskey didn't sit well in his stomach . . . and there was a gnawing in that stomach which portended the edge of something unseen, unknowable.
He decided to switch tactics.
"What's the difference between a red man and an Indian?" Dan asked.
"An Indian gots scars and does bad things. That's what my mama said, anyway."
Dan nodded. "What if I told you I was an Indian?"
There was a brief pause before Joey replied, confusion evident in his eyes. "I wouldn't believe it. Beside, you said you was a Ute and a Ute is a people."
"Yes, I am a Ute and a Ute is a people," Dan repeated. "But a Ute is also a Native American. Do you know what that is?"
Joey's eyebrows furled. "No. I didn't go to school like my mama wanted. She was always arguing with daddy that I should learn me something so as I didn't turn out like him."
"Like him?"
"A miner."
"Ah." Dan weighed his words against the possibly of disaster. He really didn't want to be "pushed" like Marquez had been pushed. The scales of his reasoning, however, swam in alcohol, and his chosen tactics had all but failed.
"A Native American, Joey," Dan said, "is also called an Indian."
Joey looked at Dan with a squint and an incomprehensible line on his lips. "But you said you was a Ute."
Dan nodded. "A Ute is an Indian."
Anger flashed across Joey's face. In that moment, Dan felt something he didn't expect—empathy. Here was a child looking for his mother, a mother who had been taken from him by Indians, by Native Americans, by those who may or may not have been Ute. He saw confusion and fear and sadness and isolation, a boy always reaching for the berries in the water that were not there. In that glimpse of anger in the boy's eyes, he saw his own reflection—abandonment by his mother through death, a mother who had lost her heritage by the man she'd married. He saw himself reaching for berries in the bottom of a bottle, refusing to look up, to look for who he might have been.
"You took my mother!" he screamed.
"No. No, I didn't." The words were quiet and hard to speak.
"Then your daddy did!"
Again, Dan shook his head, although the boy was closer to the truth than he could ever know. His brain bounced between the sides of his skull. His heart beat faster. His side ached. Where was the numbness? Where was the relief? Where were the berries?
Joey's lips quivered. Tears filled his eyes. He stood rigid in the center of the room, his little fists balled. Dan saw edges of black appear on either side of his vision, Joey's body outlined in a hazy glow.
"Where's my mother?"
Dan wobbled his head to the right, away from Joey. He looked out at the vast expanse of Colorado, toward the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and their outline against the azure sky. "She's dead. Like you," he whispered. And then, even quieter: "Like I will be soon."
There was realization, something Dan never expected. Joey would always be looking for his mother. There was nothing Dan or Gerald or anyone else could do about that. The reason Dan could see the boy in the first place had nothing to do with the quest.
He is like Coyote reaching for the berries.
But the boy was not Coyote.
An Indian gots scars and does bad things.
Dan was Coyote.
She's dead, like I will be soon.
The world darkened, and Mighty Chief Dan Chappose passed out from alcohol for the last time.