Loyal thought hitchhikers were coming out of the woodwork on the first warm day. He’d driven a thousand miles without seeing anybody thumbing, and here were two of them within a couple of miles.
‘You know him?’
‘Naw. He walked past me yesterday afternoon, stopped and talked for a while. He just got out of the Army. He’s some kind of different, but he comes from right up the road here. He’ll liven things up. That’s the reason you pick up hitchers, right? Liven things up, tell a few stories, show you where they’re tattooed sometimes.’ He winked at Loyal, the little left eye disappearing behind the fatty eyelid, the sticky lashes.
Loyal slowed as he came up to the man, looked at him in the rearview mirror. He saw black hair combed like Clark Gable’s, a broad face with the skin tight over the cheekbones, a tweed jacket, dirty jeans and a pair of snakeskin boots.
‘Looks more like a lawyer with that coat than a Indian to me,’ he said.
‘Thanks.’ The Indian got into the backseat, nodded two or three times. His cheeks were smooth and he smelled of some spicy after-shave lotion. But there was an animal feeling in the car. The Indian’s black eyes went to the sailor. ‘Heyo again,’ he said.
‘Goes to show that you never know how things is goin’ to turn out, Skies. This here good Samaritan is anonymous so far.’
‘Loyal,’ he said. ‘Loyal Blood.’
‘Third Mate Donnie Weener,’ said the sailor, ‘and he’s Blue Skies, no shit, that’s his name.’
‘Skies for short,’ said the Indian. ‘Don’t sing the song, please.’
The thought occurred to Loyal for the first time that the pair might be in cahoots, close as a pair of nickels in a pocket, tight as two corks in a bottle, as single-purposed as a pencil sharpened at both ends. He didn’t like the Indian sitting behind him in the backseat, didn’t like the way sailor Weener had one arm over the back of the seat, and was half-turned toward him as if he was getting ready to grab the steering wheel. He pulled out onto the highway, steering north, but all the sweetness had gone out of the day from the minute the Indian got in.
The Indian said he was heading for the White Moon Reservation, fifty miles south of Cork Lake.
Weener said he would drive if Loyal wanted, but Loyal said no, he’d drive his own car. He kept the window open against the heat that began to shimmer up from the road.
‘Damn nice farmland,’ said Loyal, looking over the richest soil in the world, a million years of decomposing grass layers, unrolled in earthy floors on each side of the road. The farms by in great squares, each with its phalanx of windbreak trees sheltering the house.
‘These fields is so level,’ said the Indian, ‘you can stand on your running board and see from one end to the other. But you oughta see it if the floods come, if the river goes over the banks. Everything, it’s like a mirage, houses, tractor sheds sticking out of the water, it’s like the ocean, no place for the water to go but spread out. A little wind riffles it you see it move along for a mile.’
‘Must be some kind of mud,’ said Loyal.
‘I known people fell in it and never get up.’
‘That’s right,’ said Weener. ‘Drowned in mud, choked in mud, find you in the fall plowing like some old stick.’ He told jokes. The Indian sat quiet in the backseat, chain-smoking.
Late in the morning they could see thunderheads bunching up behind them in the southeast. Loyal pulled into a Texaco filling station in Little Falls around noon.
‘Fill ’er up?’ The attendant rubbed at the windshield with a dripping rag. His arms were too short to reach the center of the glass. His shirt pulled out of his pants, showing a hairy belly creased with grimy lines.
‘Yeah. And check the oil and water.’
Loyal paid him with a five but before he could pull back onto the highway the sailor told him to wait a minute, opened the door and got out.
‘Tell you what,’ said Weener in a quick gabble, ‘I’m just gonna run over to that café and get some grub. We can save time, get some ham sandwiches and beer and eat it on the road. I’ll get it. My contribution.’ He ran across the street and into a storefront café. Raised letters spelled out THE LONE EAGLE and below an eagle and an airplane were painted on the glass, flying toward a setting sun.
Loyal and the Indian waited for a few minutes at the pump. When a truck drove in behind them for gas Loyal parked on the street where Weener could see them when he came out. They sat in silence. After a while the Indian opened his suitcase and took out a notebook. His fingers flivelled the pages. He scribbled.
‘What the hell is takin’ him so long? He’s been gettin’ them sandwiches half an hour,’ muttered Loyal.
The Indian turned a page. ‘Gone. See him come out the side door right after he went in the front. Ducked up the street.’
‘You mean we’re sittin’ here and he’s took off? Jesus Christ, why didn’t you say something?’
‘Thought you see him, too. Thought you had your reasons to sit here.’
Loyal got out of the car and went across the street. He was inside the café before he thought about the keys in the ignition. He ran back outside, but the car was sitting there with the Indian in the backseat. He went into the café again. A thin man whose lips curved down on one side in an expression of distaste was slicing a cake behind the counter. His thick hair was parted low on the left, the rest of it heaped into a massive pompadour on top of his head. His great glassy eyes were of a blue so pale they seemed colorless. He gripped a serrated knife with a broken blade. There was a pyramid of sandwiches wrapped in cellophane under a glass dome, red stripes of ham, grey tuna.
‘A sailor come in here fifteen, twenty minutes ago?’ said Loyal, swiveling his head to look at the car and the Indian. ’Big, heavyset fella. Named Weener.’
‘A sailor come in, don’t know his goddamn name. Right out d’odder door. People takun a short cut. I put sign on door, NO EXIT, but it don’t do no good. Still do it. Had enough. Like highway in here but nobody buy. Tonight I board a goddam t’ing up.’
Loyal looked out the window. The Indian was sitting in the car. He decided to get rid of him as soon as he could.
‘You give a guy a ride and he takes off. What the hell, give me two of them sandwiches. Give me one of the ham and a tuna.’
‘Ain’t tuna. Chickun salad.’
‘Yeah. Give me one of each of them. Two pieces of cake. You got Dr. Pepper?’ He’d feed the Indian, then get rid of him. No hard feelings that way.
The thin man wiped his hands on his apron and slowly laid the sandwiches in a white bag. He wrapped the slices of cake in waxed paper. He rang it up on an ornate old cash register that must have been in the café since Woodrow Wilson, Loyal thought.
‘Come to one sevendy.’
Loyal reached into his right pants pocket for his money and as be did he knew why sly sailor Weener had disappeared.
‘The son of a bitch took my money. He fucking robbed me.’
The thin man took the wrapped pieces of cake and the sandwiches out of the bag. He shrugged, not looking at Loyal.
The Indian was still in the backseat, his head down, intent. Reading something.
On the sidewalk Loyal plunged his hands into all his pockets feeling again and again for the thick wad of money, most of the six hundred dollars he’d saved over the winter, the grubstake, the new start, his traveling money. It was gone. He got into