“My little brother taught me.”
I wasted ten minutes trying to figure if he was kidding. It was stupid. If you don’t know anything about people how can you tell when they’re exaggerating? With Lydia, her face stays straight but she moves her hands when she lies. You couldn’t tell squat from studying Hank.
“What do you do when you aren’t at our house?”
Hank slowed down to pass a hawk tearing at a dead lump of fur. I couldn’t tell what the fur used to be. “I get by. Unemployment now, peel logs in the spring, fight fires some summers. My family is on the Kiowa roles so a government check comes every few months.”
“Lydia said you’re a Blackfoot.”
He nodded. “No money in Blackfoot blood. My grandfather was wise, he traded a bottle of moonshine to get listed as Kiowa. Wish he’d done the trade with a Navajo. Navajo’s the best-paid minority in the West. Get all the girls too.”
“Maybe I can be Navajo.”
He glanced at me. “You’re short enough.”
At the dump, we walked around awhile, looking at the neat stuff. It was like mostly garbage with a second- hand store scattered around. Hank told me that people who dumped something usable would set it away from the muck so other folks could take it home. I saw a lamp I could have used, but dump stuff seemed a little weird at the time. It might have had germs or something. There was a perfectly good Christmas tree.
“Why would someone dump a Christmas tree right before Christmas?” I asked.
Hank shrugged. Sometimes Hank talked like a regular person, then all of a sudden he’d catch himself and go back to
The day was way clear, but below zero, which is cold no matter what anyone tells you about humidity and wind chill and all that kind of crap. I had on six layers and a sock hat and I was still cold. Hank wore a jeans jacket over two wool shirts. He kept his hands in his pockets and made me carry the Ruger.
“Where do you live?” I asked.
He pulled a hand from a pocket and pointed north, up the Dubois road.
“In a tipi?”
Hank’s shoulders moved up and down in that silent laugh of his. “Twelve-foot Kozy Kamper. Freeze your butt off in a tipi in winter.”
“Have you ever lived in a tipi?”
“Slept in a Cheyenne lodge at the Sun Dance couple years ago. Guy owned it got drunk and knocked down a flap pole, filled it with smoke. I crawled out the side and slept on the ground. That won’t happen in a Kozy Kamper.”
“Do Blackfeet get drunk a lot?”
Hank didn’t answer. He stepped across some partly burnt mattresses and picked up a blackened bucket. He carried it to a pile of trash down in a gullylike place and set it on a dead washing machine. “Big target. You won’t miss.”
“What if somebody comes along?”
“No law against shooting buckets.”
“The dump road’s back there.”
We walked over and looked behind the line of junk at the plowed out road twisting between dump piles. There was an incredible number of dead cars. They were everywhere. It was like an end-of-the-world movie.
“Any misses’ll go over a pickup,” Hank said.
“What about a dump truck?”
“No dumps on Christmas.”
Hank showed me how to pop out the magazine thing and load cartridges. “Butt first, see. Hard to get it wrong.”
“Can these kill elk and moose?”
He shook his head. “Squirrels, chiselers, beaver if you’re sixty-seventy feet in. People. Kill people dead.”
“But not elk.”
“Lung shot might do it, but they’d run a ways and be in pain. The harmonious man kills the animal without hurting it.”
“Like with the rifles in your gun rack?”
He nodded and snapped in the magazine. He pulled back the bolt, down, up, shoved it forward. “Safety here, red line means it’s off.”
“It won’t fire with the safety on?”
“That is why you call it a safety.”
He handed me the rifle. I felt kind of like I did following Maurey into the bedroom the first time. Sort of. I’d fantasized women’s breasts often, but I’d never fantasized firearms. Most of my violent daydream short stories involved hand-to-hand battles, although if the other guy deserved it sometimes I’d pick up a baseball bat and pound his head. Only real fights I’d been in were nothing like movies or books—more wrestling, less pounding.
“Shoot the bucket,” Hank said. I raised the rifle to my shoulder. The barrel end wouldn’t be still.
“Sight down the bottom of the V.”
I sighted and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.
“Safety’s on,” Hank said. “Remember I told you about the safety.”
I lowered the rifle and pushed the safety button.
“Don’t point at me,” Hank said.
“Sorry.”
I raised the rifle again and waited for the bucket to come into the V.
“Squeeze the trigger instead of pulling.”
I squeezed, the gun jumped and powed in my ear.
A bad
“Shit,” Hank said.
I threw down the rifle and ran forward. Soapley’s dog, Otis, was on the road, scream-yelping and dragging himself after the truck. Soapley hit the brakes and jumped out. “He never fell off before.”
Hank was at my side. “We shot him off.”
“You shot my dog?”
“I didn’t do it on purpose.”
Everything kind of froze up on me. Hank was suddenly at the dog, bending over with his bandana out. Soapley looked at me, then he was there too. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to go back and start the day again. They worked over Otis’s back end. Soapley said “Aw, hell” once.
After a few seconds Otis quit yelping and lay there helpless, which was even worse than the noise. I got down and held his head so he wouldn’t flounder around. His eyes couldn’t understand. They were scared and hurt and trusting and it was my fault.
“Think he’s gone?” Soapley asked.
Hank’s hand held fur under the right hind armpit. There was a lot of blood. “Vet might save him. Worth a try. It’ll cost a lot and you might lose him anyway.”
Soapley looked at the head under my hand. “I’m real attached to the old guy.”
“My grandfather’ll pay any bills it takes to save him,” I said, hating myself for saying it. “I’m real sorry.”
Soapley’s face held what I took as disgust. I don’t know, I’d be disgusted if I was a grown-up and some snot-nosed kid shot my dog and said his grandfather would pay to fix it. I was no better than Pud doing it on purpose.
“Let’s load him in the truck,” Soapley said.
They held arms under Otis and lifted him careful as they could, but he was in pain, you could tell. His tongue was way out and he trembled bad. I ran ahead to open the truck door and help get him in.
I hate it when things happen to me that really matter. I mean, it’s so easy to roll through the days, enjoying the irony of a weird mom or a school full of half-wits, exploring growing up with Maurey. The Kennedy-death thing
