unusual love, become stronger in their devotion to Jesus, or to their own favorite saint, or attain an unusual communion of some sort in their families. I have seen it in people who go their own ways, your traditionals, and never come to mass except for funerals. I admire them. They come to the wakes. Even if they are so poor they have nothing, they give the last of their nothing to another human. We are never so poor that we cannot bless another human, are we? So it is that every evil, whether moral or material, results in good. You’ll see.
I stopped walking. I looked at the field, not at Father Travis. I shifted the book he’d given me from hand to hand. I felt like throwing it. Gophers were popping up and down, uttering their cheerful tweets.
I’d sure like to shoot some gophers, I said through my teeth.
We won’t be doing that, Joe, said Father Travis.
Our dusty old midsummer reservation town sparkled all washed clean as I rode down the hill, past the BIA houses, up the road past the water tower place toward the Lafournais spread. There were three Lafournais allotments bordering on one another and although they were divided many times they never did go out of the family. The houses were connected by threads of roads and trails, but Doe’s was the main house, the ranch style closest to the road, and Cappy was there leaning on the deck rail with his shirt open and a set of free weights on the decking by his feet.
I stopped, sat back on my bike seat.
Any girls come by to watch you pump iron?
Nobody came by, said Cappy. Nobody worth this vision.
He pretended to rip his shirt open and pounded his smooth chest. He was better since last week—he had got two letters from Zelia.
Here. He made me come up on the deck and lift his weights for a while.
You should get your dad to buy you some weights. You can lift in your bedroom until you’re presentable.
Presentable like you think you are. Is there any beer?
Better than that, said Cappy.
He reached into his jeans pocket and took out a sandwich bag rolled carefully around a lone joint.
Hey, blood brother!
Me sparkum up, kemo sabe, said Cappy.
We decided to smoke it on the overlook. If we walked along the spine of a small wooded ridge down Cappy’s road we could climb to a higher spot from which we could see the golf course from close up, though we were hidden. We had watched the earnest players before—Indians and whites—as they wiggled their hips, gave shrewd looks, swung well or disastrously. Everything they did was funny: puffing out their chests or smashing down their golf clubs. We always watched the arc of the ball in case they couldn’t find it. We still had our bucket full of golf balls. Cappy put some bannock, two soft apples, pop, plus a lone beer in a plastic bag and tied it to his handlebars. We rode off, dragged our bikes into the brush at the turnoff, and walked up the hill and along the ridge to our lookout spot.
The ground was almost dry. The rain had been sucked into the porous leaves and thirsty earth. The ticks were mostly gone. We leaned our backs against an oak tree that gave perfect shade. I held the joint too long. Quit chiefin’ it, said Cappy. I’d got lost in my thinking. The weed was harsh and stale. We drank the beer. A little party of big-bellied men in white hats and yellow shirts, a team of some sort, came into view and we laughed at every move they made. But they were good golfers and didn’t lose any golf balls. There was a lull after they passed. We smoked the roach and ate the tar bits with our food. Cappy turned to me. His hair was so long now, he flung it back with a certain head shake. Angus and Zack were already trying to fling the hair from their eyes, but couldn’t bring off the imitation. It was a gesture sure to drive girls crazy.
How come you went to mass and took catechism from that asshole?
News flies fast, I said.
Yeah, said Cappy, it sure does. He wouldn’t let up. Why? he asked again.
Wouldn’t you think, I said, a guy whose mom suffered what she did and the skin of evil shows up.
The skin of evil, oh yeah, the tar guy who killed Yar. So, Lark.
For no reason. The skin of evil shows up in the fucking grocery and his dad has a fucking heart attack trying to kill him. Wouldn’t you think that a kid who witnessed all this would need spiritual help?
Cappy looked me over. Nah.
Right. I brooded down at the clipped green for a while.
Nah, he said again. There’s something else.
Okay, I said. I needed practice shooting. Like I thought he’d let me help shoot the gophers. But he just gave me a book.
Cappy laughed. You dumb-ass!
Yeah. I imitated Father Travis talking:
Yeah.
Butt-fucker. If that was true, all good things would start in bad things. If you wanna shoot, said Cappy, you coulda gone to your uncle.
I’m off Whitey.
Better me. You shoulda come to me. Anytime. Anytime, my brother. I been hunting since I was two. I got my first buck when I was nine.
I know it. But it wasn’t just shooting gophers. You know that.
I might. I might know that.
You know what it is. What I’m talking about.
I do. I guess I do. Cappy nodded, looking down at a new set of golfers, Indian ones this time, who didn’t match.
So if you know, you also know I won’t implicate anybody else.
Implicate. Big lawyer word.
Should I define it?
Fuck you. I’m your best friend. I’m your number one.
I’m your number one, too. I do it alone or I don’t do it.
Cappy laughed. He reached around to his back pocket suddenly and took out a squashed pack of his brother’s cigarettes. Shit, I forgot about these.
They were crumpled but not torn apart. This time I noticed the matches had Whitey’s station on them.
Now he’s got matches, I said.
My brother got ’em. I never went there. But Randall said he’s moving on, he’s gonna rent out movies. Anyway, back to the subject.
What subject.
I don’t need to know. We’ll take my dad’s deer rifle out and practice, because, Joe, you can’t hit the side of a truck.
Maybe not.
And then where would you be when the side of the truck gets pissed off and runs you down? Shit outta luck. I can’t let that happen to you.
Except his rifle. I can’t use his rifle.
Just to practice. Then Doe’s gun gets stolen while we’re gone. While the house is empty. We hide the gun, the ammunition. And we’re not here anyway to laugh at geezers, are we.
No.
We’re scouting.
In case he comes along. I know he golfs, used to anyway. Linda told me.
Everybody knows Lark golfs, which is good. Anyone can miss a deer and hit a golfer.
We rode back to Cappy’s and went out back where Cappy had started practicing when he was five years old.
