All the Beautiful Sinners. Stephen Graham Jones
don’t know what kind. White-tail, black feet, something.”
He paused, holding the line open so Jim Doe couldn’t say anything. Jim Doe’s father, Horace, was mostly Blackfeet. With papers, he always said when the settlement checks came. Papers like a dog or a horse. But he cashed the checks all the same.
“And?” Jim Doe asked.
“And he’s got one of those damn chicken feathers hanging from his rearview,” Gentry said.
“Eagle,” Jim Doe said.
“Just thought you might want to be there,” Gentry said. “Smokum a peace pipe with him or something. He’s heading your way, up one sixty-eight.”
Jim Doe ran his tongue against his lower lip, side to side.
Terra was waiting for him to say something back to Gentry.
He didn’t. Instead he just asked did Gentry need him there?
“It’s a boring day, is all,” Gentry said. “What is it, Tuesday?”
“Wednesday,” Terra said.
Jim Doe looked at her. He could hear Gentry smiling through the mouthpiece. “I can take it if you want,” he said. “No problem, chief.”
“Chief?” Gentry said. “You getting racist on me, son?”
“Sheriff,” Jim Doe corrected.
It was their usual back and forth.
“Hell, he’ll likely be gone by the time you get her back to school,” Gentry said, his voice strained from some turn he was making, the steering wheel rasping across the gut of his shirt. “From, y’know, wherever you are. Whoever’s clock you’re on, all that.”
Jim Doe shook his head, trying hard to figure how this could have gone any different.
“Town and Country?” he said, signing off.
“Five o’clock,” Gentry said back.
They never made it.
#
Gentry hit the sirens just past the Episcopal church, where the highway flattened out. It was his favorite place. He had his radio locked open—the Nazareth version of back-up.
“Can he hear us?” Terra whispered.
Jim Doe held his index finger over his lips.
Gentry was reading the plates off to Monica, back at the office.
His car was stopped now, too, you could tell. No more road whine, no more wind through the open window, no more sirens. Just the lights, probably. To keep people from rear-ending him, or slapping him with their mirrors.
“Don’t forget the camera this time, Tom,” Monica said.
Gentry laughed, said something hard to catch, and scratched over the steering wheel again, hit the record button. The recording heads under the passenger seat squealed in protest, then rolled, rolled.
Monica read the plates back just after Gentry stepped out.
They belonged to a black farm truck from Nebraska. They hadn’t been registered since 1952.
Jim Doe studied the radio.
1952?
“Look,” Terra said.
Jim Doe did. It was the cloud, opening up. Streaks of blue sifted down like corn pollen, but there were streaks of white, too: hail. Pale and slight in the distance.
“Watch the corners,” Jim Doe said. “The edges.”
That was where the rotation usually started. Like eddies left behind.
But 1952. Jim Doe said it again, in his head, then keyed Monica open, to get her to run the plates a second time, in case she was eating and typing. Beside him, Terra clicked her seat belt open. Jim Doe didn’t even know she’d put it back on again. The metal head reeled across her chest. She leaned forward to see the edges of the cloud, and Jim Doe was watching her but thinking about an old black truck, rambling down the road, past the Episcopal church, one of its tires slinging rubber.
“Tom?” he said into the mike, holding his hand out for Terra not to say anything, and four miles away Gentry looked back to his car, into the camera mounted on the dash, then hitched his pants up on the left side, kept walking.
The longhair’s car was a blue sedan, a 1985 Impala.
Gentry hadn’t needed the cherries, either, the lights—the car had already been slowing, guilty—but had turned them on just for Mary Watkins and her sister Janna, crossing the church parking lot early for choir, like they’d done every Wednesday for twenty-two years. They’d waved to Gentry then tied their scarves down tighter over their heads, leaned inside. Gentry had smiled, raised a finger over the wheel to them, and hit the siren too, just to see the Watkins girls jump, just to hear them later on the horn, complaining about the screamers. It was their word. Gentry liked it.
Behind him, on the dash, he’d drawn a black cross on the notepad suction-cupped to his windshield. It meant he’d stopped at the church again. He liked to take them as far as the litter barrel, to empty his ashtray, but this Indian had too much candy in his pockets to even make it that far. Gentry smiled, leaning down the slightest bit to be sure the chicken feather was still there, on the rearview, impairing vision, endangering the lives of every other motorist for miles around. It was.
The Indian stood from the Impala when Gentry was still even with the bumper.
“—no, no, son,” Gentry said, his elbow already cocked out, the butt of his service revolver set in his palm.
The Indian was a longhair in faded jeans, a blue sleeveless flannel shirt open at the chest, a concert T-shirt underneath. Def Leppard. It figured.
“You want to be careful now,” Gentry said. “This isn’t Nebraska, now.”
The Indian just stood there.
Gentry smiled.
Maybe he was one of those mutes. Kawliga.
“You know you can’t do that,” Gentry said, hooking his chin in at the rearview.
The Indian just stood there.
“Got some identification, then?” Gentry said.
The Indian raised his head as if just hearing, just tuning in, then shrugged, leaned down into the car, across to the passenger side. Gentry stepped forward, shaking his head no, saying it—“Son, no, you can’t”—his elbow cocked again, but then the Indian stood, holding something out to him. It was white like registration and insurance should be, but it was wrong, too: a snub-nose revolver wrapped in masking tape or some shit.
He was pointing it at Gentry.
Gentry took a step back, lowering his hip to get his revolver out faster, but it wasn’t enough: the Indian stepped forward, pulling the trigger.
Gentry shuddered, felt the grill of his car digging into his back, heard his gun clatter to the ground, wondered what the Watkins sisters were singing just now—for him—and said his wife’s name: Agnes. And that he was sorry.
Then he raised his hands, just to see what his insides looked like after all these years.
His hands were clean.
He looked at his shirt.
It was clean too. Dry.
The driver’s snub-nose had misfired. They were both looking at it now. Tape on the hammer, something like that.
Gentry’s hat touched the hood once when it blew off his head, the storm pushing in, and then it was gone.
He grubbed around in the gravel for his gun, came up with it, walked behind it to the driver, the longhair, and calmly took the snub-nose, set it on the peeling vinyl