I'd called Madbird earlier to tell him I was temporarily off the hook, and he'd said he'd swing by. When I rode back into my place toward dusk, he was sitting on my steps drinking a Pabst. There were a couple of empties beside him along with a bag of store-bought ice. He fished in that, pulled out a fresh one, and tossed it to me. If he guessed where I'd been, he didn't say so.
I sat down beside him, opened the beer, and took a long, long drink.
Before we had a chance to say a word, the black tomcat came stalking into view and started yelling at me for being gone so long and letting strangers come on his turf. He'd probably heard the popping sound of the can's top and was running a guilt trip on me to score some brew for himself. Madbird crumpled an empty can in his fist, folding up the edges to make a crude saucer. He set it on the steps and poured a little beer in. The cat sniffed it, tasted it, sneezed, then started lapping it up. Bits of hay and leaves clung to his fur, and a raw red patch was scabbing over behind his left ear.
Madbird leaned back against the wall. He looked relaxed, like this was Friday afternoon after work and we were talking about maybe going fishing tomorrow.
'Hey,' he said, and gave my boot a kick. 'When that John Doe fuckwad had the gun on you back there at the camp-you didn't really think I'd sold you out, did you?' His teeth showed just slightly, in the beginnings of that grin.
My face got warm and my gaze shifted away. I reached down to scratch the base of the cat's bent tail. He arched his rump against my hand, but kept slurping busily.
'I guess I did,' I admitted.
Madbird nodded approvingly. 'You're picking up them Indian lessons pretty good.'
That was about as pleasing a compliment as I'd ever gotten.
Overall, I had the sense that this was the culmination of a long series of events-that when I'd gotten my eye busted that night at Rocky Boy years ago, it had rung the death knell of the self that had lived in the familiar world of my youth, and lit the spark of another self, approaching a different world-the one where Madbird had been my guide. I'd never be at home there like he was. But I knew already that he was right about nothing ever being the same again. The immersion of the past few days had been a baptism, and the alchemy would keep working in hidden ways toward whatever came next.
I didn't have a clue as to what it might be. But if it managed to announce itself a little more sedately, that would suit me just fine.
