Shadow Prey

Lucas. “Except that Bluebird was a man looking for religion.”
    “Religion?”
    “He was looking to be saved. Maybe he found it,” Dooley said. He sighed and moved close behind Lucas and finished the trim with a few final snips. He put the scissors down, brushed cut hair off Lucas’ neck, unpinned the bib and shook it out. “Sit tight for a minute,” he said.
    Lucas sat and Dooley found his electric trimmers andshaved the back of Lucas’ neck, then slapped on a stinging palmful of aromatic yellow oil.
    “All done,” he said.
    Lucas slid out of the chair, asked, “How much?” Dooley said, “The regular.” Lucas handed him three dollars.
    “I haven’t heard anything,” Dooley said soberly. He looked Lucas in the eyes. “If I had, I’d tell you—but I don’t know if I’d tell you what it was. Bluebird was the Indian people, getting back some of their own.”
    Lucas shook his head, sensing the defiance in the old man. “It’s hard to believe you said that, Mr. Dooley. It makes me sad,” he said.
     
    Indian Country was full of Dooleys.
    Lucas quartered through it, touching the few Indians he knew: a seamstress at an awnings shop, a seafood broker, a heating contractor, clerks at two gas stations and a convenience store, an out-of-business antique dealer, a key-maker, a cleaning lady, a car salesman. An hour before Bluebird’s funeral was scheduled to begin, he left his car in an alley and walked across the street to Dakota Hardware.
    A bell over the door jingled, and Lucas stopped for a moment, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. Earl May came out of the back room wearing a leather apron and flashed a smile. Lucas walked back and watched the smile fade.
    “I was about to say, ‘Good to see you,’ but I guess you’re here to ask questions about Bluebird and that killing in New York,” May said. He turned his head and yelled into the back, “Hey, Betty, it’s Lucas Davenport.”
    Betty May stuck her head through the curtain between the back room and the store. “Lucas, it’s been a while,” she said. She had a round face, touched by old acne scars, and a husky voice that might have sung the blues.
    “There’s not much around about Bluebird,” said Earl. He looked at his wife. “He’s asking about the killings.”
    “That’s what everybody tells me,” Lucas said. Earl was standing with his arms crossed. It was a defensive position, a push-off stance, one that Lucas had not seen before withthe Mays. Behind her husband, Betty unconsciously took the same position.
    “You’ll have trouble dealing with the community on this one,” she said. “Benton was bad, Cuervo was worse. Cuervo was so bad that when his wife got down to his office, after the police called her, she was smiling.”
    “But what about this guy in New York, Andretti?” Lucas asked. “What the hell did he do?”
    “Andretti. The liberal with good accountants,” Earl snorted. “He called himself a realist. He said there were people that you have to write off. He said that it made no difference whether you threw money at the underclass or just let it get along. He said the underclass was a perpetual drag on the people who work.”
    “Yeah?” said Lucas.
    “A lot of people want to hear that,” Earl continued. “And he might even be right about some people—winos and junkies. But there’s one big question he doesn’t answer. What about the kids? That’s the question. You’re seeing a genocide. The victims aren’t the welfare queens. The victims are the kids.”
    “You can’t think this is right, these people being killed,” Lucas argued.
    Earl shook his head. “People die all the time. Now some folks are dying who were hurting the Indian people. That’s too bad for them and it’s a crime, but I can’t get too upset about it.”
    “How about you, Betty?” Lucas asked. He turned to the woman, disturbed. “Do you feel the same way?”
    “Yeah, I do, Lucas,” she said.
    Lucas peered at them for a moment, studying Earl’s face, then Betty’s. They were the best people he knew. What they thought, a lot of people would think. Lucas shook his head, rapped the counter with his knuckles and said, “Shit.”
     
    Bluebird’s funeral was . . . Lucas had to search for the right word. He finally settled on peculiar. Too many of the gathered Indians were shaking hands, with quick grins that just as quickly turned somber.
    And there were too many Indians for one guy who wasn’tthat well