the thin, bare clothes she had arrived in.
In those first years, each time, Cash had expected to be driven home. Back to her mom. It never happened. Cash searched each new school for her brother and sister. She didn’t understand. At their mom’s, they always had something to eat even if it wasn’t the full spread the farmers wives put out. Sometimes her mom didn’t have the gas money to drive into town to get the water jugs filled and they would drink the rainwater from the rain barrels next to the house. They all slept curled in one big bed, kept warm by a kerosene stove in the winter months. There was always laughter. No swatting, no shaming. She and her brother climbed trees to the very top. She and her sister made mudpies and fed them to each other, their mom pouring a bucket of rainwater over them to wash them off.
Cash remembered other nights when Wheaton had stopped her mother. Told her she shouldn’t be drinking and driving with kids in the car. Her mom would laugh and promise to get them home safely. He would always say to her as she turned the car back on, “Might be a good idea to stop drinking, you know.” And her mother would laugh, say sure and wave goodbye.
Cash wished she could remember what happened the morning she woke up in jail. She had never gotten the courage to ask Wheaton.
With that thought, Cash threw the Ranchero into park and looked around the Red Lake yard. There were lots of tire tracks. There was a shadow standing in what she assumed was the kitchen. She got out of the truck. It was colder here by the lake than she had expected. She reached back into the cab and put on her jean jacket and stuck the half-empty pack of Marlboros into the front left pocket. She walked up the weathered steps and knocked on the door. A girl child—about seven, black hair, with eyes just as black—cracked the door and looked up at her.
“Your ma home?”
The kid nodded.
“Can I talk to her?”
The girl shut the door and Cash waited, listening to the waves of the lake gently ease to shore. The woman who came to the door was a few inches taller than Cash. She was wearing a pair of black pants and a man’s worn plaid work shirt. On her feet were scuffed penny loafers, no socks. Her hair was black, wavy with strands that had escaped the rubber band holding it back. And her questioning eyes were as black as her daughter’s.
Cash said, “Mind if I come in? I’m from down by Fargo, originally from White Earth, but been living and working in the Valley most of my life.”
The woman said, “My husband is working down there, driving grain truck.”
Cash said again, “Mind if I come in?”
The woman opened the door and pointed with a tilt of her head to the kitchen table. Cash went over and sat down. In the center of the table were salt and pepper shakers, the glass kind you find in restaurants. A melamine plate with pale white commodity butter. A bowl with some sugar. An ashtray with a couple roll-your-own ends stubbed out in it.
Half the table was covered with more melamine plates. Each plate held beads of a different color: red, white, yellow, green. The front piece of a moccasin, half-beaded with a red flower, sat next to the plates of beads.
On the floor was a stack of three birchbark baskets, each with a different size of pinecones in it.
The woman placed a cup of hot coffee in front of Cash and motioned to the sugar bowl. She also set out a plate of smoked whitefish and a piece of frybread. She leaned against the kitchen counter and took a sip of coffee from a cup she had poured for herself.
“Thanks,” said Cash. “I haven’t eaten yet today. I slept along the road last night. By the way, folks call me Cash.” She broke off some of the frybread. Without a word, the woman handed her a knife. Cash put some butter on the frybread.
While she was chewing the woman spoke. “Did you run into my husband down that way? Folks call him Tony O. When he can, he plays baseball. Hits the ball like that Cuban guy, Tony Oliva, that plays for the Twins. You coming with news about him?”
She took another sip of her coffee without ever meeting Cash’s eyes. When she spoke again, there was quietness in her voice that hadn’t been there before. “He’s been working the fields down that way. Driving grain truck. He should be home any day now.”
“How long has he been gone?” Cash asked.
“Little less than a month.”
“Well, I don’t know anything for sure.” Cash said. Picking bones out of another piece of whitefish.
“Sure you do,” the woman said, sitting down at the table and fingering the beads on the half-finished moccasin. “Shoulda been him pulling into the driveway, not a stranger.”
Cash looked at the woman, then back at the girl-child hiding, peeking out from down the hallway. Looked like there was a bathroom and probably three bedrooms that way. A tattered couch that had suffered one too many jumps from some child. A blue-and-white yarn god’s eye hung above the couch.
Cash pulled the pack of Marlboros out of her pocket. Offered the pack to the woman who took one. Cash reached into her back jean pocket and pulled out a book of matches from the previous night’s bar. Lit her own cigarette, then handed the book to the woman.
“You have other kids?” Cash asked.
The woman’s eyes softened for a second and she answered, “Yes, five more. The bigger ones are out in the woods right now gathering pine cones.”
“I saw the stand at the driveway. They sell to white folks?”
“Yeah, those white women paint ’em silver and gold for Christmas decorations. Buy ’em from the kids. The money helps out. Our baby’s sleeping in the back bedroom. She’s the reason Tony O went to drive truck this year. More mouths to feed. Most of the time we just get by with him fishing and trapping. Works on cars sometimes. But this year he decided to go to the Valley. You haven’t said yet whether you seen him or not.”
Cash took a drag of her cigarette. Blew the smoke out before answering. “I didn’t meet him. And I’d hate to tell you something and be wrong.”
The woman’s eyes went back to wariness. “Tell me what you know. Long way to drive for not knowing me or him. Know you didn’t just come for breakfast.”
Cash looked at her and didn’t know of any way to not say what she knew. She had never told anyone before that her husband was dead. She had never been the one to catch someone’s first tears of rage or grief. She didn’t know facts. What she knew was a knowing that had brought her to this woman’s kitchen table. As she sat there and smoked and formed the words she would say, fear and tears built in the woman’s eyes.
“Has he been hurt?” she asked. She stood up from the table and walked to the counter and to the sink and back to the table. “Is he in the county hospital? Is he hurt?”
Cash said, “I don’t know. There was a man killed.”
The woman flung her coffee cup into the sink. It shattered. Out of the corner of her eye, Cash saw the young girl skitter toward one of the back bedrooms.
“What the hell?” the woman yelled. Then she sat back down at the table. Put her head in her hands. Took a drag of her cigarette. Looked at Cash with eyes even blacker with rage, even blacker with fear. “What the hell you got to tell me?” The words breathed
