“Yeah? You know what we call North Dakotans?”
“I’ll tell you one thing,” Lester put in. “There ain’t a restaurant in the whole damn state of Montana where you have to wait this long to get waited on.”
Frank changed the subject. “How’s the food here? She’s not going to try to poison us, is she? Just because we’re from Montana.”
Without looking in their direction the tall girl said something that sounded to Wesley like “Ah-nish-ah-pahn-ta,” and her friend laughed.
“What the hell was that about?” Lester asked.
“She said—” she had to wait until her laughter subsided—“she said it’s good enough for cowboys.”
“What was that?” Frank asked. “Sioux?”
The tall girl turned their way once more. “Lakota,” she said sharply.
Lester asked, “Is she ever going to take our order?”
Frank slid his chair over to the girls’ table. “Say something else,” he said. “In Lakota, I mean. I like the way it sounds.”
Wesley was amazed. He couldn’t believe how gentle, how soft-spoken his brother was. He had seen Frank around girls before, at school, at football games, at the drugstore counter, and Frank was always louder and funnier and bigger and bolder than anyone else. Girls couldn’t stay away from him—because he was handsome, yes, but also because there was something dangerous about him. They had to keep an eye on him. And they were right. Wesley had heard the way his brother talked about girls, as if he could tear chunks from them, get “a piece of ass,” “a little tail,” “some tit,” or how he could punish them with sex, make them “moan” or “squeal” or “beg for more,” or how he’d reduce them to animality and have them “crawling on their hands and knees.” Now Wesley saw this courtly young gentleman who seemed more interested in the Indian language than ... than what Wesley knew his brother wanted from these girls.
The girl did say something else in Lakota, another phrase that sounded to Wesley like a little run of soft sighs punctuated with sudden stops of consonants. She did not speak to Frank, however. She addressed her friend.
“What is it? What did she say?” asked Frank.
The plump girl scowled. “Not for you, she said. We don’t speak our tongue for you to listen.”
Lester pointed to his companions. “Do you know what you want to eat? Should I just go back there and tell her what we want? Me, I’m going to have a fried ham sandwich. Maybe some soup.” He leaned toward the plump girl. “Hey. How about that tomato soup. Is it the kind made with milk?”
She looked at Lester as if he were the one speaking a foreign tongue.
Tommy nudged Frank’s chair with the toe of his boot. “You going to ask ’em?”
Frank ignored him. “I wasn’t making fun of your language. Really. I just like to hear you talk it.”
Tommy kicked Frank’s chair again. “Tell them about the whiskey.”
“What’s he talking about?” the plump girl asked.
Frank gave Tommy a dark look and mouthed the words “shut up.”
“What?” she asked again.
“My partner here was hoping—I mean, we were all hoping—since our hunting trip is all fouled up we were hoping you could cheer us up.”
The plump girl turned to her friend with an expression that seemed to Wesley to be beseeching. She wanted to, Wesley knew, but her friend wouldn’t have anything to do with them.
“I was going to ask you to show us around town,” Frank said. “But I better not. You’re just too damn unfriendly.”
Tommy squirmed in his chair and began to protest over what Frank said. Didn’t Tommy know? thought Wesley; didn’t he know what Frank was doing?
“Who’s unfriendly?” the plump girl asked indignantly.
“You haven’t even told us your names,” Frank answered. He said it as though he were pouting.
The plump girl looked around as if she were afraid of the punishment that might come to her if she gave their names to these four boys from Montana.
“I’m Anna. This is Beverly.”
Lester got up and angrily pushed his chair back to the table. “Enough of this shit. I’m going to see if we can’t get some food out here.”
“Last names,” said Frank. “What are your last names?”
Anna pointed to her friend. “Tuttle.” She put her hand up by her throat. “Tall Horse. Anna Tall Horse.” Wesley noticed a blush rising to her cheeks when she said her name. Only when she spoke her name did her smile diminish, as if the act of naming herself required all the seriousness she could summon.
Tommy said, “Tall Horse, huh. I believe I could ride a tall horse. Get those stirrups adjusted and it don’t matter how high or low the horse is.” He burst into laughter. Then he lifted his boot high enough for everyone to see. “But I ain’t wearing spurs. You got nothing to worry about.”
“Jesus, Tommy,” Wesley said.
“Jesus yourself. You ain’t getting us anywhere. Why don’t you go with Lester and see about getting the grub.”
Wesley looked over at Beverly Tuttle. If she heard him try to intercede on behalf of her and her friend, she gave no sign. She kept right on staring out the window, though Wesley knew there was nothing for her to see but blowing snow and a late afternoon that couldn’t hold its light against all the forces that wanted to shut it down.
I’m not like them, he wanted to say. They’re just after you to see what they can tear off you or stick in you. They don’t even see how beautiful you are; they don’t even care. But I—I’d be happy to just stare at you. I don’t want to hurt you or take advantage of you. You can trust me. You can talk to me.... But hot on the heels of those thoughts came these: Wesley knew he wasn’t going to speak to Beverly. And he knew she wouldn’t see him as any different from his brother and his friends. Why should she? For although he held these noble impulses toward Beverly he also wished that she would come back to the hotel with them, that she would drink so much of their whiskey that she would let them—Wesley included—do what they wanted to her. Wesley closed his eyes and dropped his head into his hands, wishing he could squeeze from his mind all but the nobler thoughts.
When he lifted his head and opened his eyes, Tommy was putting the matter directly to Anna. “You come back to the hotel with us and we’ll give you a drink of whiskey. What do you say to that?”
She was shaking her head no, but Wesley thought her smile said she was not entirely averse to the proposal.
By now Frank had slid his chair over so that he was sitting closer to the girls’ table than his own. “What are you saying?” he said to Tommy. “These are Sacred Heart girls. Sacred Heart girls don’t drink whiskey.” He smiled wickedly at Anna. “Do they?”
“You
