Page 53 of The River We Remember

Scott didn’t know much about Indians. Mostly he knew what he’d seen in the movies at the Rialto, and if what he saw there was true, an Indian might certainly be capable of exactly what Creasy claimed. Scott knew something else, too.

“Know why this place is called Inkpaduta Bend, Wolfman?” he said. “It’s named after an Indian. He was Sioux or something. Him and his band massacred a bunch of people down at Spirit Lake. They captured lots of white women and went on the run with them. They camped here, and while they were here, they killed one of those women.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.”

“They usually raped the women they took captive, Madman.” Del said this as if he knew it to be God’s truth.

“They say that you can sometimes hear the dead woman crying out here,” Scott offered.

“No fuggin’ way.” Del seemed delighted. “Let’s build a fire.”

“Now? We should be getting home, Wolfman. I’ll be late as it is. Mom’ll be worried.”

“Yours maybe. Not mine. Come on. It’s getting dark, and this place is spooky. A fire’ll be good.”

Scott was already going to be late getting home. And what would a few more minutes add to whatever his mother said or did as a result? Del pulled a cigarette lighter from his knapsack, they gathered sticks from along the riverbank, and in no time at all, they had a small fire burning, giving modest illumination to the scene.

Del gazed up at the sky, at the Milky Way, which was emerging in the growing dark, a vast vaporous highway across the heavens. “I miss Sputnik,” he said of the satellite that had fallen back to earth and burned up months earlier. “It was cool watching it, one little moving light, one little human thing in all those stars. I used to imagine what it would be like, up there in space looking down at the earth. Wouldn’t that be something, Madman?”

Scott said, “I think it would be lonely.”

Del looked down now, at the stained earth on the far side of the fire. “A lot of blood. Creasy says he heard that the Indian put a hole in Quinn the size of Kansas. Probably died quick.”

Scott hadn’t thought about that before, the actual dying. He did now. “Probably,” he said and nodded in considered agreement.

“Do you know how your father died, Madman?”

Scott had a long stick in his hand, which he’d stuck in the fire so that flames had begun to spread up its length. “The plane he was in was shot down. He was the navigator. I guess he couldn’t get out. What about your dad?”

“I don’t know how exactly. Mom told me that him and a bunch of other guys were trying to hold a hill against a whole swarm of Chinese somewhere in Korea. They did it, but most of them ended up dead. He got a Silver Star. Or my mom did anyway. They sent it to her.” He stared beyond the fire at the great black stain. “There’s this guy in The Naked and the Dead. He craps himself when his platoon lands on this island in the Pacific where the Japs are dug in. Goes running down the beach looking for clean pants, gets shot all to hell.”

Scott wondered why Del said this. Was he afraid his father had died like that? Scott had watched his share of war movies, and in them most guys died pretty bravely and pretty quick. There wasn’t a lot of blood, not like that black soaking on the other side of the fire. He hadn’t expected to see anything like this when he and Del came out, and it was working on his thinking in a way that confused him. When his grandfather died of a heart attack, Scott had seen him in the coffin, waxy looking but peaceful. He couldn’t help trying to imagine what James Quinn must have looked like to have spilled all that blood in the dirt. And he couldn’t help wondering what it must have felt like to die that way. Which was something he’d never considered when thinking about the death of his father.

But now he thought about it as he watched the flames on the stick in his hand crawl toward his fingers. To fall from the sky. To be trapped inside the burning belly of a great plummeting bird. How long did that fall take and was his father alive and was he scared? Scott pulled himself out of the imagining, his whole body rigid, his stomach taut, and he realized Del was asking him a question.

“You remember your dad, Madman?”

“He died before I was born. What about you?”

“He was big. Smelled like leather. You know, like from a baseball glove. Mom says he was a star pitcher in high school before he became career army.” Del studied the fire and seemed to be thinking. “Your mom, she never remarried. Why?”

“I don’t know. She just never did.”

“You’re lucky, Madman, let me tell you.” He tore some grass from the ground beside him and tossed it on the fire. “Fuggin’ Creasy.”

“Listen.” Scott held up his hand for silence. “Hear that?”

“Coyotes,” Del said.

“No, I’ve heard coyotes before. This is different.” He listened again. “It sounds like someone’s crying.”

Del gave a low eerie wail. “W-o-o-o-o. I’m the ghost of Jimmy Quinn. I’m coming to get you.”

The crying sound died, but it left Scott feeling unsettled and anxious.

They heard no approach but instead felt the presence behind them. They both turned in the same moment, and there he was, illuminated by the flames of the small fire, surrounded by a dark that seemed unfathomable.