“He’s the one you got to convince.” She waved away her responsibility. “You two go at it. Me, I’m heading to the casino.” She let the screen door slam shut behind her and maneuvered past Cork with her oxygen cart in tow.
Thomas Blessing stepped into the light that fell through the doorway into the living room. “I keep telling you,” he called after her, “it’s like taking water from a lake and just pouring it back in.”
Cork figured he was speaking about the checks each registered tribal member received as a share of the profits from the Chippewa Grand Casino, south of Aurora. Fanny took the money then gave it right back at the slot machines.
“What do you want me to do?” she called as she opened the door of her big white Buick, which was parked next to her son’s black Silverado. “Sit around all day listening to the preachers on television? Least at the casino I can smoke without you giving me a lot of crap for it.”
She settled her oxygen tank in the passenger seat, kicked the engine over, backed onto the road, and shot toward Aurora.
Blessing looked at Cork coldly through the screen door. “What do you want?”
“You heard about Alex and Rayette?”
“Nothing happens on the rez we don’t know about it right away.”
“What do you think?”
“I think Buck Reinhardt just bought himself a ticket to hell.”
“You think it was Reinhardt?”
“What are you doing here? What’s with all the questions?”
“You have any idea why Alex-”
“His name was Kakaik.”
“You know why he wanted to see me?”
“No.”
“He asked me to arrange a meeting with Reinhardt.”
That seemed to surprise him. “What for?”
“Said he wanted to offer Buck justice.”
“Looks like Reinhardt decided to deliver his own form of justice first.”
“You have any idea what Kingbird-sorry, Kakaik-might have been thinking of offering Reinhardt?”
“You mean besides a bullet between the eyes?”
“I’m wondering if he was thinking of turning in your cousin, Lonnie Thunder.”
“No way. He wouldn’t do that. He’d never disrespect one of the Red Boyz that way.”
“Seems to me Lonnie had already betrayed the Red Boyz. He dealt drugs here in Tamarack County. It’s my understanding none of the Red Boyz is allowed to do that.”
“Where’d you get your information?”
“It’s what I heard. I want to talk to Thunder.”
“Go ahead.”
“I’ve got to find him first, Tom.”
“My name is Waubishash.”
“If anybody knows where your cousin is, I figure it’s you.”
“Even if I did, why would I tell you?”
“Because it would be in his best interest to talk to me.”
“Yeah? And why’s that?”
“I think a good case could be made that he killed Rayette and Alex.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Is it? What if he was afraid Alex was going to turn him over to the sheriff?”
“I already told you Alex wouldn’t do that.”
“You mean Kakaik.”
“Fuck you.”
“I’ll make a deal with you. Tell Lonnie I want to talk to him. He can arrange it anywhere, anytime he likes, in any way he thinks will make it safe for him. If he’s able to convince me that he had nothing to do with killing the Kingbirds, I’ll stop dogging him. Otherwise, I’ll find him on my own and drag his sorry ass to the sheriff myself.”
“I’d love to see you try that, old man.”
Cork held him with his gaze. “I’m thinking that now Kingbird’s gone, the Red Boyz are going to look to you for leadership. Believe me, Tom, I wish you luck. Talk to your cousin and have him call me. Or call me yourself.” He held out a business card. Blessing made no move to open the screen door and accept it, so Cork slid it into the crack between the edge of the door and the frame. “If I don’t hear from one of you by the end of the day, I start hunting Thunder.”
Cork turned around and headed toward his Bronco. At his back Blessing called, “You come onto the rez, maybe it’s you who gets hunted.”
Cork kept walking.
NINE
Will returned in the late afternoon. Lucinda had finally been able to get the baby to nap, and when her husband came in the front door, she put her finger to her lips.
“She’s sleeping,” she whispered and waved him to the kitchen.
He looked dumbfounded at the plates and pans of food that filled the counters-casseroles, salads, breads, desserts.
“What’s all this?”
“People have been bringing things all afternoon so I don’t have to worry about cooking. It’s been kind of them, but it’s also been hard to get the baby quieted.”
He sat at the table while she made coffee. The whole while he stared at the window above the sink and said nothing.
She’d been numb all day, focused both on the baby, who’d cried most of the time, and on being cordial to the good-hearted people who dropped by with food. She thought the grieving would come when she wasn’t so busy, so tired, and when she was alone. The grieving for Rayette anyway. The grieving for her boy Alejandro had been done long ago. The man who called himself Kakaik-what a horrid sound, like a hungry bird-she didn’t really know. In so many ways, he had become like his father: a stranger to her. Who knew what was in their heads or in their hearts? Frightening, if you thought about it too much, that you could live with a man for twenty-six years and not truly know him. Was she alone in this?
“They’ll release the bodies tomorrow,” Will said when she brought his coffee. “I talked to Nelson at the funeral home. He’ll take care of things. The visitation will be Tuesday evening. The service will be on Wednesday.”
“Thank you for taking care of things,” she said.
He sipped his coffee and stared out the window.
Rayette had told her that Alejandro was a warm, loving man but that she didn’t always know what was going on with him. He would sit for long periods and stare, and where his mind was he wouldn’t share with her. Rayette suspected that in those times he was somewhere in the past, because often he would clench his teeth and his jaw would go rigid. He didn’t talk about the past, she said, except in generalities, and she thought there were a lot of things that had hurt him. Lucinda knew what some of those things were. There had always been tension between Alejandro and Will, often open hostility. Will said it was natural. Sons always challenged their fathers, and it was a father’s duty to prepare his son for the challenges of life. If that was true, then Will was perfect for the job. He was a hard man, a hard father.
“Where’s Ulysses?” Will asked.
She began to wipe the counter. “He left a while ago. He took his guitar. You know how he is. He needed to
