Killshot

another, still drinking as he ate his dinner and the river and the trees outside turned dark. The guy would look up at the running lights of a freighter going by or stare across toward Walpole Island where he probably lived—look at him—had a job up at the oil refinery for good money, got paid and came over here to spend it, the only Indian in the whole place. It’s nice to be nice, Richie thought, staring at the guy and working himself up to what he was going to do. But I got news for you . . .

Armand drank Canadian Club, doubles, good ones. He told himself it was to keep his mind alive, thoughts coming, as he had a conversation with himself and made some decisions. He asked himself, Why would you want to live here? Answered, I don’t. Asked himself, Why do you want Lionel or anybody to want you to live here? That one, facing it, was harder. He took a drink and answered, I don’t. I don’t care or want to live here or ever come back. He knew that but had to hear it. No more Ojibway, no more the Blackbird. He knew that too. What was he losing? Nothing. You can’t lose something you don’t know you have. What would he get out of being Ojibway? He watched a down-bound ocean freighter, its lights sliding through the trees, and thought, Learn to do the medicine and turn yourself into a fucking lion, man, or anything you want. That ship, tomorrow sometime it would be going by Toronto, then going by Kingston, and imagined his brother seeing the ship from a window in the prison. Armand had never visited his brother; he didn’t know if you could see the lake or the St. Lawrence River from the prison; but the ship had made him think of his brother and that life they were in, beginning from the time they were young tough guys and liked having people afraid of them. He raised his glass to the waitress for another drink and looked around at people eating, nobody alone, nobody afraid of him. There was one person alone over there, a guy with long hair staring at him, a guy making muscles, it looked like, the way his bare arms were on the table, something written on his shirt, a guy who’d be at home at the Silver Dollar. He’s trying to tell you something, Armand thought, and turned to look at the river again, through his own reflection on the glass, not interested in anything the guy had to tell him. The guy was a punk. The ship was gone, down in the channel now through the flats, all that marsh and wetlands for the big-shot duck hunters from Detroit. He could go back that way tonight, keep going fifteen hundred miles south and spend the winter in Miami, Florida. There were Italian guys there if he needed something to do for money. Finding work was easy. And thought in that moment, You didn’t get rid of the gun. Anxious to come here and see the grandmother. It was under the front seat as he came through the tunnel from Windsor to Detroit and told the customs guy he was visiting and got waved on. If the customs guy had wanted to look in the car for any reason and found the gun, it would have been a problem, yes, but the car was still registered to the son-in-law and the gun was registered to no one. The Browning with two shots fired. Throw it in the river when you leave. It was on his mind now to do that. Still, he took his time and had two more drinks with his deep-fried pickerel and ate every bite of the fish and French fries with a big plate of salad. It was good and he was feeling good as he left the restaurant, looking over at the punk’s table but the punk wasn’t there.

He was outside standing by the Cadillac, wearing a work jacket now over the T-shirt with the words on it. Waiting to give you some shit about Indians, Armand thought. But could he be that kind of punk? He wasn’t big enough. He said, “I’m looking for a ride.” Starting to grin.

“Good luck.”

“No, you say, ‘What way you going?’ And I say, ‘Any way I want.’ Look it here.” He held open his jacket to show the grip of a revolver sticking out of his pants. A checkered-wood grip on a nickelplate Armand believed was a .38 Special made by Smith & Wesson. He saw the gun and saw it’s nice to be nice on the guy’s T-shirt, beneath the jacket held open. The guy was older than he had appeared in the restaurant, maybe thirty years old or more, with that tough-guy stare and a diamond pinned to his ear, things that told you he was a punk. Armand walked past him to get in the car and the guy went around to the other side.

When they were both in the car and Armand looked at him again, the guy was holding the nickelplate on his thigh. It was a Model 27 Smith & Wesson with a four-inch barrel. Armand had used a blue-steel one like that one time and liked it, it was a good gun. The guy held it with his hand resting on his crotch. Armand dropped his left hand from the wheel to push a button. The front seat moved back with the hum of the electric motor and the guy said, “What’re you doing?”

Armand looked at him again as he turned on the ignition. “What’s the matter, you nervous? You gonna hold that thing pointing at me, I hope you not nervous. You want this car? Take it.”

The guy said, “I’ll tell you what I want. I’ll tell you my name too, in case you ever heard of me, Richie Nix, N- i-x, not like Stevie Nicks spells hers.”

Armand shook his head. He’d never heard of either one.

They drove through Algonac away from the river, the guy, Richie Nix, saying turn here, turn there, like he knew where he was going and maybe wasn’t so nervous, though he could still be a punk.

They passed lights in windows of houses, then pretty soon there were only trees, once in a while a house. They were going toward a road that would take them to the freeway. Armand began to think the guy wanted to go to Detroit. They’d get there and the guy would get out. That would be okay, it was the way you had to go to get to Florida. It was strange the way the guy said the word as Armand was thinking of it.

“I was driving up from Florida one time,” Richie said. “I picked up this hitchhiker coming onto Seventy-five from Valdosta. I’d spent the night there. The guy was kind of dark-skinned like you only he was Mexican, I think. You’re an Indian, right?”

Armand glanced at him. “No, I’m not Indian.”

“What are you then?”

“Quebecois,” Armand said, “French Canadien,” giving it an accent. Why not? Half of him was.

Richie said, “Don’t you wish. Anyway we’re driving along the interstate, this Mex tells me how he’s been picking oranges half the year and how he’s going up to Michigan to pick sugarbeets. We’re getting along pretty good, I bought him a Co’Cola we stopped for gas, so then pretty soon he’s telling me how much money he made picking oranges and how he saved a thousand bucks and is gonna send it home once he gets to Michigan and sees there’s work there. You believe it, telling a stranger he’s got all this money on him? Shit, I start looking for the next exit sign, get the guy off someplace on a back road. We’re moving along about eighty, I see this Georgia state trooper parked at the side of the road. Shit, it wasn’t even my car, I picked it up in West Palm ...a Buick Riviera, if I remember correctly. Anyway I go, ‘Hey, you want to drive?’ to the Mex, and got him to trade places with me while we’re moving, the guy laughing, having a good time. Till he looks at the rearview and goes, ‘Uh-oh,’ seeing that state trooper coming up on us with his gumballs flashing. We get pulled over, the guy tells the trooper it’s not his car, it’s mine. I go, ‘My car? This fella picked me up, Officer. I don’t even know him.’ It was funny there for a while and I almost made it, but we both got taken in. Shit, they find out there’s a detainer out on me and I’m fucked. Next thing, I get charged with attempted robbery and kidnapping. I go, ‘Kidnapping, you think I was gonna hold this fucking migrant for ransom?’ Here’s this Mex, he don’t even know what’s going on. Had no idea, or prob’ly even to this day, I was gonna take him out’n the woods and shoot a hole in him, it hadn’t been for that trooper sitting there at the side of the road. That’s what you call one lucky Mexican, huh?” Richie stared through the windshield and said, “This road coming up looks good. Take a left.”

So they weren’t going to Detroit, Armand decided. They turned onto a gravel road, white in the headlight beams, and could hear stones hitting under the car, no houses in sight. They’d be stopping pretty soon.

Armand said, “So you been to prison.”

“Three different ones,” Richie said. “After I got out of Reidsville they sent me back to Florida on the warrant, but I beat that one, an armed robbery, on account of they couldn’t locate any their witnesses. Then I got sent to a federal joint for one of the banks I did. That was where I killed a guy and then some guys tried to kill me, so I was put in this federal protection program where you change your name and was transferred to Huron Valley. But, shit, I still got made, even with a different name. Some guys I was working with in the kitchen tried to poison me to death, so I was taken out of the population till I got my release. That was about two years ago. ...Hey, this’s good. See? Where that road is, less it’s somebody’s drive. No, it’s an old wore- out dirt road. Pull in there a ways and stop.”

Armand slowed and made the turn, headlights sweeping the corner of a plowed field and coming

to rest in a tunnel of trees.

“Okay, now lemme have your wallet.”

Armand leaned against the steering wheel to dig it out of his hip pocket, brought the wallet along his thigh and let it drop on the floor. He reached for it with his head turned, seeing the guy past his shoulder. The guy wasn’t