Lori Armstrong - No Mercy

I gave her a droll stare. “Comparing me to a dog to see if I bite? You must be bored.”

“Curse of the elders. Got nothing to do but stir up trouble.” Her wrinkled face brightened, and she waved to someone across the way.

“Well, have fun mixing things up. I’m going home.”

“Wait.” Sophie grabbed my sleeve. “There is someone here who wants to talk to you.”

Visions of Sophie’s (bad) matchmaking attempts twisted my guts into a knot. “Who?”

The song ended. A round of applause broke out.

Jake sidled up behind Sophie and squeezed her hunched shoulders. “Ready for that dance, Unci ?”

“Afraid you’re too late, takoja . I’m off to sit with some friends. But Mercy told me she would like to dance.”

Talk about stirring up trouble.

I opened my mouth to protest, but Jake led me to the dance floor. Tempting to glare at Sophie, but her genuinely happy smile doused my burning look. Plus, if I stuck around, she’d probably fix me up with someone worse than Jake.

One dance. What could it hurt? It’d probably be something fast like the “Cotton-Eyed Joe” anyway. But the singer belted out the mournful, slow ballad, “A Thousand Miles from Nowhere” by Dwight Yoakam, and I ground my teeth.

Jake put his hand in the small of my back, pulling me close. I set my free hand on his shoulder and pretended this was no big deal. Like we danced together every weekend, not once every two decades.

We started to move, a slow, one two three, one two three. I shut my eyes for a moment as we fell into the familiar rhythm. But when I couldn’t see him, my other senses kicked in. The feel of his rough palm on mine. The heat from his hand on my spine. Clean cotton, tangy lime aftershave, male musk, and the underlying hint of horseflesh. Scents that were uniquely Jake and hadn’t changed in twenty years. Scents I’d spent a lot of time trying to forget.

His smoothly shaven cheek grazed mine. “Sorry. I’m probably the last man you wanted to dance with tonight, eh?”

“It’s fine.”

“Then relax. I remember when you used to think this was fun.” He twirled us into the middle of the dance floor.

I’d relaxed when he blew it all to hell by softly whispering in my ear, “Are we ever gonna talk about it?”

“I haven’t made my decision on the ranch yet.”

“You know that ain’t what I meant.”

His disappointed tone grated on me but proved I wasn’t any more anxious to spill my guts now than I’d been years ago. “Drop it.”

He did.

During the slide steel guitar solo, we’d glided to the outskirts of the dance floor again. Soon as the song ended, I pushed away from him and made tracks for the exit.

The balmy evening cooled the sweat on the back of my neck. In the darkness, I stopped to get my bearings, angry about the resurgence of memories. Of me as a hopeful teen. Of Jake. Of what we’d had and what we’d lost.

When footsteps shuffled behind me, I snapped, “Go away. I already told you I didn’t want to talk to you.”

“Sorry. I thought Sophie said…”

I whirled around. Not Jake forcing me to face my demons and our past. It was Estelle Yellow Boy.

“I’m sorry, Estelle. I thought you were someone else.”

Sophie sidled up beside her. “Estelle wants to talk to you about something.”

Sophie’s meddling knew no bounds.

Estelle sidestepped the bluish circle of light next to the doors and hid in the darkness. “Bet you think it’s weird, me wanting to talk to you, hey?”

“Maybe a little.”

“It’s about Albert.”

I figured as much.

Estelle spoke to the ground. “I ain’t gonna lie to you. Albert was going through a rough patch. Running off all the time. Growing up on the rez is hard. We thought it was a phase and he’d straighten out. He won’t get the chance now. So, I wanna know if you’ll help me find out who killed him.”

“Run that by me again?”

“That’s why I come here. To see if you’d help me.”

Happy people milled past, laughing, joking, living, as we lurked in the shadows. Sobering, that Estelle wasn’t at the dance to kick up her heels, to forget about her sorrow for a while, but for the express purpose of talking to me. “What do you think I can do?”

“Anything you’d be willing to do would be something. As it sets, the acting sheriff, Dawson, ain’t done nothing. He ain’t talked to none of Albert’s friends. He ain’t even really talked to us. If I ask him questions, he looks at me like if I’da been a better mother, Albert wouldn’t be dead. Looks at me like I’m wasting his time. Acting like my boy is just another dead Indian.”

My feeling of disquiet grew.

“Your father was a good man and a good sheriff. Fair. If he was still alive, he’da done everything to find who done it.”

“Though I appreciate that you thought so much of my dad, I honestly don’t know how I can help.”

“I can give you the names of them kids he’d been hanging with. They started some club. Albert didn’t talk much about it, which makes me think them boys might of had something to do with him getting killed.”

“Estelle, I don’t know the first thing about-”

“I don’t expect you to do it for free. I ain’t got no money, but I can give you this.” She withdrew a piece of white flannel from her jacket pocket and carefully unfolded it.

Nestled in her palm was an elaborately beaded necklace. Beautiful primary-colored beads surrounded a simple circular design. Pieces of polished bone attached the medallion to the chain, which looked to be a thick black braid fashioned from the hair of a horse’s tail. Red, black, yellow, and white beads-colors attributed to the Earth’s four directions-dangled from curly buffalo leather strips below the pendant.

I touched it. I couldn’t help it. It was magical.

“This belonged to my great-great-great unci ,” Estelle said. “Been in my family longer than the Gunderson Ranch has been in yours.”

“I can’t possibly-”

“You have to. I need somebody’s help, and only someone who’s lived through a buncha horrible things knows what I’m going through.”

I bristled, expecting her to mention specifics about the woes that’d plagued the Gunderson family for generations: death, death, and more violent death with a dash of crazy stirred in just to spice things up.

Instead, her voice broke. “His neck was snapped like a twig. Whoever done this left his body like it weren’t no more’n a deer carcass. I can’t forget about it and move on like everybody wants me to.”

Shiny tears skimmed the pockmarks before dripping down her brown face. “Paul don’t know I’m here talking to you. He thinks we oughta stay out of it.” She sniffled. “I tried, but I just can’t.”

Maybe it was the crack in her stoicism. Maybe it was because I’d seen broken and forgotten bodies scattered all over the world-more than most people could imagine. Maybe it was a need to connect with another woman to band together against men’s indifference. Whatever it was, something inside me shifted. The theme song from Underdog began to get louder and louder inside my head.

“Okay. I’ll see what I can find out. No promises though.”

Estelle’s chin dropped to her chest. “Thank you.”

“Do you have a list of his friends? A place for me to start?”

“Estelle? Where are you?”

She looked up. Panic flitted through her eyes. She hastily swiped her tears and pressed the flannel into my hand. “I’ll call you. Or get the list to you somehow. Please don’t say nothing to nobody about this.” She hustled away to deflect Paul’s suspicion.

Before I could give the necklace back to her, she vanished. So I hid the package in my boot. Desperate for a cold beer, I wove through the cars and trucks. Tripped over my own damn feet when I didn’t see a pothole because of my altered vision. I probably looked like just another drunk. Or maybe the guilt of taking that family heirloom even temporarily added extra weight to my imbalance.