“And you have an annoying habit, O’Connor, of breathing,” he shot back.
“Think about it, Uly,” she said.
He didn’t answer. He turned away in Gallagher’s company and drifted off. Why did Uly hang with someone like Gallagher? she wondered. But she knew the answer: Being alone was worse.
“Are they in there?” Stevie asked. He nodded toward the polished, closed caskets at the other end of the room. His black eyes and the bandage over his nose made him look like he’d gone through hell, which he had. Jo had taken him to see Dr. Barron that morning, and the repair procedure had been scheduled for Thursday. At the moment, Stevie didn’t seem much bothered by his broken nose.
“Not them,” Cork said. “Only their bodies.”
“I know that. Their souls are gone and stuff. I meant are their bodies really in there? It’s not just for show?”
“They’re really in there. Why wouldn’t they be?”
“They were pretty messed up, right?”
“That’s probably one of the reasons the caskets are closed.”
Stevie stared at the two coffins as if trying to imagine Alexander and Rayette Kingbird lying inside on the soft satin, their bodies ripped apart by buckshot.
Lucinda Kingbird stood near the caskets talking with a constant stream of people. Cork spotted Will Kingbird standing alone a good distance from his wife, his hands clasped behind him, looking like a soldier at parade rest. Although he’d been born and raised on the Iron Lake Reservation, he hadn’t made an effort to reconnect with his Ojibwe roots when he returned to Tamarack County. The Shinnobs who’d come to the visitation, Rayette’s relatives mostly, spoke to him only a moment before moving on. It was the same with the others who’d come, many of whom were parishioners from St. Agnes. Kingbird wasn’t the kind of man who invited long conversations.
“See Annie by the poster board over there?” Cork said to his son. “Why don’t you go keep her company for a few minutes?”
Once Stevie had gone, Cork headed toward Kingbird.
“Will,” he said in greeting.
They shook hands, firmly and briefly.
“I just want to say how sorry I am about Alexander and Rayette.”
Kingbird’s eyes were dark-his Anishinaabe heritage-and they were difficult to read. Also an Anishinaabe trait. But there was something that made Kingbird’s eyes different from other Shinnobs. The Anishinaabeg loved to laugh, and in their eyes there was always a spark of humor. Not in Kingbird’s eyes.
“You know,” Kingbird said, “you were probably the last person to see Alex alive.”
“No, that would have been whoever killed him.”
“I can tell you who killed him. Buck Reinhardt.”
“A lot of good law enforcement people are looking hard at that possibility, Will, and they’re not finding any evidence.”
“Looking hard? An investigator name of Rutledge came to my shop yesterday. I told him about the customized Robar shotgun I sold Reinhardt. He said there wasn’t much they could do with that. Said you can’t prove anything with buckshot the way you can with a bullet. He told me Elise Reinhardt swears her husband was home when Alex was killed. Know what I told him? Give me an hour with Reinhardt and I’d get the truth out of the son of a bitch.”
“This isn’t that kind of war.”
“Once the shooting starts, there’s only one kind of war.”
Cork kept his voice low, not wanting to disturb the others at the visitation, and said, “Will, I’m sorry about what’s happened, I really am, but I don’t think it helps to think of any of this in military absolutes.”
“I’ll tell you about the military. When I was a kid, didn’t matter if I did a thing right. If my old man had it in his head to hit me, he’d hit me. The corps, you do a thing right, it means something and they remember. You think I’m rigid. I think I’m consistent. I see the world in terms of consistency. Reinhardt killing my son is entirely consistent with the man Buck Reinhardt has always been.”
“I’m not going to disagree with you, Will, but your thinking seems a little narrow to me. Reinhardt wasn’t Alex’s only enemy.”
“He’s had enemies for a long time. It wasn’t until Buck Reinhardt lost his daughter that somebody killed him. You’re going to tell me that doesn’t prove anything. That’s because you see yourself as a reasonable man and reasonable men don’t rush to judgment. You have any idea how many times I’ve seen reasonable men stand by and do nothing while the worst shit you can imagine goes down?”
Cork didn’t reply. His attention had been grabbed by a contingent of the Red Boyz who’d appeared in the hallway outside the viewing room. He knew them all: Tom Blessing, Daniel Hart, Elgin Manypenny, Rennie Decouteau, Jessie Hanks, and Bobby Oakgrove. Most were young, eighteen or nineteen. They’d dressed neatly, in clean dark pants, white shirts, some colorful vests. They all wore their hair long. Some had braided it, others let it fall loose beneath a leather band or a folded bandanna bound about their heads and adorned with an eagle feather. In the Ojibwe culture of long ago, the eagle feather signified that a warrior had killed another in battle. What it meant to the Red Boyz, Cork didn’t know.
Will Kingbird saw where Cork was looking. He turned, and both men waited for the Red Boyz to drift in.
Lucinda Kingbird did not want to be there. She did not want to have to talk to these people who offered her kindness in a time they believed must be terrible for her. She did not want to feel bad for not being full of the emotions they expected. The cordial smile she wore wearied her. She wondered, as she had from the beginning of this whole tragic mess, if she truly was different from other people; if, because she did not feel like grieving for her son, something was terribly wrong with her.
She had never fit in. She had never felt as if she was somewhere she could call home. In Aurora, people were pleasant to her, but it was clear that she was an outsider. She was not white, nor was she Ojibwe. She was Latina; she spoke with a slight but noticeable accent. In Tamarack County, no one seemed quite certain what to make of her. Although Will had grown up here, he’d made no effort to reestablish his connection with his people. He was comfortable as an outsider. Lucinda believed she should have been, too. When she’d married a career marine, she’d become a nomad, a chronic outsider. Over time, she should have adjusted. But she’d never grown used to feeling different, feeling watched. She’d only grown accustomed to feeling alone.
“There shoulda been a wake.”
Lucinda turned at the sound of the old voice and found Tillie Strangeways staring at her in accusation. Tillie was Rayette’s great-aunt, an old woman who reminded Lucinda of an apple long fallen off the tree: leathery, bitter, shriveled to a little ball of wrinkles. She was a caustic old woman who referred to Lucinda as “that Mexican.” She was accompanied by Ginger, Rayette’s cousin.
“Good evening, Tillie,” Lucinda said, and put on her cordial smile.
“Why didn’t you hold a wake?” the old woman croaked. “They don’t do that in Mexico?”
“Grandma,” Ginger said.
“All I’m saying is there shoulda been a wake. Two, three days. With singers.”
Lucinda hauled up as much graciousness as she could summon. “My husband made all the arrangements.”
The old woman squinted and scanned the room. “Where’s the baby?”
“I told you, Grandma,” Ginger said. “Justine’s taking care of Misty tonight.”
Tillie Strangeways seemed shocked, though Lucinda suspected it was all drama. “Justine? That girl don’t have the sense God give a retarded cow.”
Ginger offered Lucinda an apologetic look and said to the old woman, “Come on, Grandma. Let’s go see Uncle Leonard. He’s talking about making fry bread for after the funeral tomorrow.”
“Leonard? Fry bread?” Everything seemed to shock Tillie. “That boy couldn’t fry a rock.”
Whatever that meant.
As soon as the women left, Lucinda saw Jo O’Connor coming her way. She was tired, but once more tried to smile.
“Lucinda, I’m so sorry.” Jo hugged her gently.
She and Jo worked on the education committee for St. Agnes and helped with the Christmas pageant every year. In a hopeful sort of way, she felt close to Jo.
