Shots Fired Page 17

  Marcel fired the blanks and the targets exploded by remote control. Annie pretended to be impressed, and escorted Marcel from the arena. He waved to the crowd like a soccer player who’d scored the winning goal.

  Jimmy stepped back into the shadows as Annie led Marcel past him, thanking him in French for being such a good sport and saying he would receive a special marksmanship certificate with his name on it. She had him write out his name on a slip of paper, and told him to wait a moment while she delivered it to the calligrapher.

  Jimmy took no chances, thinking Marcel could very well have a gun beneath his jacket, and hit the man as hard as he could in the back of the head with a Sioux war club. The sound it made was a hollow pock, and Marcel staggered forward, crashing against the wooden chute panels. Jimmy threw the club aside, opened the gate, and shoved Marcel inside and closed it. Just in time for Buffalo Bill’s announcement, in the arena, that “the scariest thing that can happen out on the plains is when the buffalo stampede!”

  On cue, the arena lights went off. Fake lightning crackled. Children screamed. And forty-eight buffalo came thundering down the chute, their hooves shaking the earth beneath Jimmy’s feet. And as he did twice a night, he slammed back the steel chute gate to the arena to let them out. He thought he heard Marcel moan, “Merde” (shit), seconds before the herd stomped him into the sand. Blood flecked Jimmy’s shirt and hands.

  • • •

  SOPHIE CAME BACKSTAGE before the buffalo stampede act was over, showing her pass to the man guarding the door, telling him, Jimmy assumed, that she was looking for her husband.

  The first thing he noticed about her when she came into the area was the diamond necklace and diamond ring, a huge one, the biggest he’d ever seen up close.

  “Jimmy,” she said, gesturing through the room. “Marcel?”

  “He’s gone.”

  She looked at him, puzzled.

  Jimmy raised his hands so she could see the blood. “Gone,” he said bitterly. “Did you forget who I was?”

  She gasped, fist to her mouth, her eyes wide. She staggered back.

  “Come with me,” Jimmy said, leading her down the length of the chute, through the corrals, into the sultry night. She stumbled in her fine shoes in the muck of the corrals, so he kept a tight grip on her elbow so she wouldn’t fall.

  “Which one is yours?” Jimmy asked as they entered the VIP parking area. She stopped at the gleaming white Citroën C6.

  “He’s been spending some money on you, I see,” Jimmy said, opening the door for her and firmly helping her onto the passenger seat.

  • • •

  THEY ROARED out of the parking lot into the night, raindrops on the windshield, puddles on the road that he shot through.

  “Are you going to kill me, too?” she asked in that baby-talk French.

  “Non.”

  “What will you do?”

  “As long as you’re carrying my baby,” Jimmy said, “I’ll take care of you. After that, you’re on your own, lady.”

  She shook her head violently, either not understanding or not wanting to understand.

  “We’re going to America,” he said. “South Dakota. You can live with me and my mom until the baby comes. Then to hell with you. You can come back here, or get a job in a whorehouse in Deadwood . . . I don’t care. I don’t want my baby born here or to be with you in this place I don’t understand.”

  “Jimmy, no . . .” she whined.

  “I’ve got two tickets for a flight tomorrow from Charles de Gaulle. We can go to your house and you can pack tonight.”

  “I’m not leaving,” she said defiantly.

  “Sure you are.”

  “No!”

  He would have backhanded her pretty mouth if she wasn’t with child. His child.

  “So old Marcel decided to start paying attention to you, huh? Is that what this was about?”

  She clammed up and stared out the window.

  “You don’t understand my English?”

  She refused to answer him.

  “You got pregnant so you could show him, huh? And not just any kind of baby, either. A child of nature, to show what a rebel, what a free spirit you are. Was that it?”

  He realized that in his rage he had taken several turns and exits and was now on a secondary highway. He saw a sign for Champs-sur-Marne, another for Lagny-sur-Marne.

  “I don’t know where we are,” he said.

  “The baby,” she said, “we got rid of it.”

  He didn’t react. Kept driving, increasing his speed, trying to pretend he didn’t hear what she’d said. Hoping he had heard her wrong.

  “Jimmy,” she said, “the baby is gone.”

  “So that’s why he bought you this,” Jimmy said calmly, dead calm, caressing the dashboard of the new car, “and the jewelry. You made a deal with him, then?”

  “A deal?” she said, curling her lip.

  “Boy or girl?”

  “Oh, Jimmy, no . . .”

  “Boy or girl?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. Then: “It was for the best.”

  “My son might not agree,” Jimmy said.

  Sophie seemed to be burrowing into the passenger door, keeping as far away from him as she could. Her eyes were on him, cautious, scared, waiting to see what he did.

  “Jimmy, don’t be angry,” she said.

  “I’m not angry,” he said, a cold tumor growing exponentially in his chest. “I understand. I come from a broken nation, too, the Lakota nation. That’s what we have in common, Sophie, the only thing. We’re both on the wrong side of history. The only difference is you can’t see it.”

  • • •

  “YOU’RE SCARING ME, JIMMY.” She pronounced it Jee-mee.

  He looked over at her and laughed bitterly. “I’m scaring you?”

  She screamed, “You must turn around, Jimmy! Jimmy!” Jee-mee! JEE-MEE!

  He read the sign as he they passed it: Clichy-sous-Bois. No Man’s Land. She had seen it, too, screamed again for him to turn around.

  But too late. Stunted trees gave way to low-slung buildings on both sides, broken windows, Arabic graffiti on the plaster walls illuminated by the flames of burning cars.

  Jimmy hit the brakes and swung around the charred skeleton of a tiny car, clipping it with a fender, slowed down before he plowed into a large group of people in the middle of the street who had appeared from nowhere.

  “Don’t stop,” she screamed. “Go!”

  He stopped as the group closed in around the car, the white Citroën with the now-damaged fender. He saw dark faces in the undulating firelight, second-generation Arab faces, men and boys of the night in a suburb the police wouldn’t even enter, the men dressed in the same kind of grunge clothes the college demonstrators had worn, probably their hand-me-downs.

  The car began to rock. Sophie screamed. A back window smashed in, spraying glass across the seat and floor. Someone kicked the passenger door. Gobs of spittle hit the windshield.

  “JIMMEE! JIMMEE!” she screamed. “Go! Drive!”

  Instead, he hit the button that unlocked the doors.

  “They don’t want me,” he said to her as they opened the door, dragged her out, brown hands gripping her white arms. She kicked out, threw a spike-heeled shoe that landed on the dashboard.

  He said, “It’s for the best,” and eased away, the crowd parting to let him go, and was soon clear of them. He couldn’t see her clearly in his rearview mirror, but thought she was on the street on her back, surrounded, kicking up at them.

  Kept his head down as he drove through Clichy-sous-Bois, wipers smearing the spit into rainbow arcs across the glass, driving fast enough that most of the thrown bricks missed him. He thought he heard a gunshot as he turned a corner, but couldn’t tell if the bullet had been aimed at him.


  And somehow made it through to Livry-Gargan and the N3, which would take him to Paris. He parked well short of the exit, at a bus stop, wiped his prints off the steering wheel and gearshift, and left the car with the keys in it, doubting it would make it through the night.

  • • •

  JIMMY TWO BULLS drank coffee with a trembling hand at a twenty-four-hour roadside restaurant and gas station near the exit to the N3. It took over an hour for his breath to come normally and not in shallow gasps. He tried to eat but couldn’t. The black tumor inside him had stopped growing but was still there. He doubted it would ever leave.

  He’d never know his son, but he now knew why the boy asked who his mother was. Jimmy couldn’t answer the question in the dream, and couldn’t answer it now. He had no fucking idea who she was.

  They didn’t bury aborted babies, did they? He doubted it. Probably burned them with the other medical waste in a clinical incinerator, the flames no different than the fire of a burning car.

  There was a tap on his shoulder.

  “Parlez-vous français?”

  He turned. She was in her thirties, attractive, blond. It was obvious she’d been drinking, the way her eyes sparkled. Her girlfriend sat in a booth watching the exchange, a wolfish expression on her face. A pair of straw cowboy hats sat on the table between them—they’d been to the Wild West Show. Gotten all heated up, he guessed.

  “Ni glasses toki ye he?” Jimmy said in Lakota. “Ni TV Guide toki ya he?”

  She was obviously thrilled. He knew he could go home with them. Instead, he tossed one of the plane tickets in a trash can outside the door.

  No, he explained with hand signals, he didn’t want to go home with them. He wanted to go to the airport. He held out his arms so they looked like airplane wings. They agreed, reluctantly, to take him there, obviously disappointed.

  Although they were talking over each other to him in French and he found himself recognizing a few of the words, his eyes were to the east, toward the dark maw of Clichy-sous-Bois, lit only by isolated fires, wondering how long it would take the flames to reach those who remained.

  Fourteen-year-old Hattie Sykes was awake when her grandfather cracked the bedroom door ajar and said, “Ready to hit the river?”

  Because he was deaf he spoke loudly, assuming everyone else was deaf as well. She could see he was wearing his fly-fishing clothes: old chest waders held up by suspenders, a thick red shirt, a fishing vest, a short-brimmed Stetson.

  She said, “It’s not even light out yet.”

  “Hell, I gave you an extra thirty minutes.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Five forty-five. Damned late.”

  Hattie moaned. The room smelled of her brother Jake in the next bed. Nothing smelled as awful as a sixteen-year-old boy in a closed room.

  “Anyone else coming?” he asked.

  “No, they said they’d rather sleep in.”

  “I’m not surprised!” he boomed.

  • • •

  SHE WATCHED as he missed with the egg. Instead of cracking it into the pan, the runny yolk and white slithered onto the burner. He cursed, caught himself, and said, “Sorry.”

  “Let me do it,” she said, getting up from the table.

  “My eyes don’t work until they’re warmed up,” he said, stepping aside.

  While she scrambled eggs on a clean burner and cleaned up the mess, he shuffled around the kitchen with a cup of coffee. She didn’t like coffee but she liked the smell of it in the morning, especially in her grandfather’s lodge. Especially before they went fishing.

  Her two older brothers, Jake and Justin, were still sleeping downstairs. Justin was the oldest and landed the spare bedroom to himself. Her parents were in the master bedroom on the top floor. Her grandfather had given them that room because he no longer liked climbing the stairs. Plus, they liked to sleep late after a night spent emptying the liquor cabinet.

  The sun broke over the mountains and lit up the dew on the grass like sequins. Her grandfather walked haltingly toward the river with his fly rod and she followed. He was a tall man with wide shoulders, but from the back he seemed to be caving in on himself. She’d seen photos of him when he was young, before he started his company, married her grandmother, raised her mother, and got rich. He was brash and dashing, with jet-black hair and high, almost Indian cheekbones. Those high cheekbones now made his face look skeletal, and his once-sharp eyes were filmy. A fleshy dewlap under his jaw swayed as he walked. Since her grandmother died the year before, he’d turned into an old man and he preferred to live at his lodge on the river rather than at his big house in town.

  “I wrote a story at school,” Hattie said. “I called it ‘Fishing with My Grandpa.’”

  “Did I catch a lot of big fish in it?” he asked.

  “Well, one.”

  “I hope you got an A.”

  “I did.”

  • • •

  IN THE CAR on the way to the lodge her parents had talked softly, assuming the three children were all sleeping. Hattie was faking it, and listened.

  “I won’t miss this annual pilgrimage to visit the old coot,” her father said.

  “I know,” her mother agreed.

  “This is probably the last year we can make the boys come,” he said. “With no Wi-Fi or video games, what are they supposed to do? It’s ridiculous.”

  “Jay . . .”

  “Every year we pay homage,” her dad said. “I hope to hell it’s worth it for us in the end. Just another year or two, I think.”

  “It means a lot to him,” her mother said.

  “It better mean a lot to us.”

  “Hattie still likes it.”

  “She’s going to grow up, too. And then what?”

  • • •

  SHE WATCHED as her grandfather struggled to tie the tippet to the leader of his line. His fingers were long and bony, the backs of his hands mottled with spots. He couldn’t see well enough to make a knot.

  “Can I help?”

  “Do you know how to tie a blood knot?”

  “Yuck,” she said, taking the two strands.

  He laughed. “There’s no blood involved.”

  He told her how to cross the lines over each other, twist the ends around the opposite length, and pull the tips through the loop to secure it. She was surprised at how well the knot turned out.

  “It’s not about blood,” he said, thanking her, “it’s about the knot.”

  He cast gracefully. He told her fly-fishing was an elegant sport, and she agreed. There was a V-shaped braided current in the river created by a rock. There was usually a fish there, but he wasn’t presenting the fly far enough upstream.

  She said, “More to your right.”

  He shifted his feet and squared his shoulders, cast again, and the fly drifted through the braid. She saw the trout come up out of the depths and take it.

  “Fish on,” he said, raising the tip of his rod to set the hook. She clapped her hands and was surprised when he handed the rod to her.

  “Bring it in, Hattie,” he said. “You can do it.”

  After landing the rainbow trout—it looked metallic and beautiful in the morning sun—she released it back into the water. She was thrilled, and when she stood up he slipped his fishing vest over her narrow shoulders.

  “It’s yours,” he said. “The rod, too. Now catch another one.”

  As they walked back to the lodge at midmorning, her parents were out on the deck drinking coffee in their robes. They looked disheveled. Her brothers weren’t to be seen.

  Her grandfather said, “The lodge needs to be stained every five years. The decks need to be painted every three. All the paperwork is in my desk.”

  She stopped and squinted at him.

  “The keys are in the pocket of the vest,” he said
. “Maybe your mom and dad will come visit you once a year.”

  Hattie realized what was happening, but she couldn’t speak. Her eyes stung with tears.

  “It’s not about blood,” he said, brushing her cheek with the back of his hand. “It’s about the knot.”

  On an unseasonably warm fall day in the eastern foothills of the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming, game warden Joe Pickett heard the call from dispatch over his pickup radio:

  “Please meet the reporting party on County Road 307 at the junction of County Road 62. RP claims he was attempting to cross public land when shots were fired in his direction. The RP claims his vehicle was struck by bullets. Assailant is unknown.”

  Joe paused a moment to let the message sink in, then snatched the mike from its cradle on the dashboard.

  “This is GF-24. Are we talking about the junction up above Indian Paintbrush Basin?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “I can be there in fifteen minutes,” he said, glancing at his mirrors and pulling over to the side of the two-lane highway five miles west of Winchester. The highway was clear in both directions with the exception of a hay combine lumbering westbound a mile in front of him. His tires had been scattering loose stalks of hay since he’d turned off the interstate.

  Joe drove into the borrow pit and swung the truck around in a U-turn. He knew of an old gravel two-track that would cut across swaths of public and ranch land and emerge on the crest of Indian Paintbrush Basin. The shortcut would save him twenty minutes as opposed to backtracking to the interstate and going around. If the sheriff were to respond, it would take at least forty-five minutes for a deputy to get out there from town.

  Before the call had come, Joe was patrolling the northern flank of his district, keeping an eye out for a local miscreant named Bryce Pendergast, whom Joe had arrested the year before on assault and felony narcotics charges. Pendergast had been convicted and sent to the State Honor Farm in Riverton, but had recently walked away and was last seen climbing into a rusted-out white van driven by an unknown accomplice. A BOLO had been put out for him, and Joe surmised that Pendergast might visit his grandmother in Winchester, but it turned out he hadn’t. The old woman said not only had Bryce not been there, but that he owed her $225, and if he showed up without it she would call the cops. Joe liked the idea of putting Bryce in jail twice.