The Windigo

By D.F. Bissonnette

No one ever knew what became of Adam's mother. She'd run off into the night without so much as a word taking his little brother with her. Neither she nor the boy were ever seen again. The Sheriff said she'd gone back to her own people...there was talk of course, in small towns there always is. Folks said Gary Thornton never should have taken a native girl for a wife. Hers were river people, what did they know about the plateau? What did they know about desert winds ripping down the canyon howling death before a wall of sleet and hail? What did they know of sun so hot it withered your crops in the ground? Was it any wonder then that she ran off? If she ran at all...When Adam uncovers a grave on his land, it rips open the racial divide between tribal leaders and the settler families in the small town of Kumaq, Washington and opens wounds so deep in him that they've never healed. Was it her? What if she never left? What if he'd hated her all these years...and loved a monster. And what became of his little brother, Matthew?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Crimson Press
• Release date: Aug 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301394432

D.F. Bissonnette

D.F. Bissonnette currently lives in Seattle Washington in the shadow of Mt. Rainier. Influences include Clive Barker, HP Lovecraft, Cormac McCarthy and Ursula Le Guin.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Lisa stood alone in the small deserted parking-lot at the end of Cemetery Road. As the sun ducked down behind red hills, the east darkened, stars peeked out, twinkling like flecks of gypsum caught on an old horse blanket and the rays of the setting sun scorched the land a deep rust-red, casting the sky above into a ribbon of pink and gold as a warm summer wind blew dust kicked up by a jack rabbit somewhere between old dirt road and never-ending sage-brush. Lisa gazed up into those craggy outcrops where home lay tucked away below the spine of the ridge and pulled her sweater about her as the once sweltering heat gave way to the cool chill of night. The rock-spire, what the whites called Cathedral Rock, towered over the landscape in a single spike of shadow that loomed across the pitifully small town of Kumaq, Washington. Three years ago she’d rolled in to this dusty berg, needing a new alternator and directions and ended up staying. God and government had forgotten Kumaq, time too. When she coasted her car down an unpaved street—Main Street—she’d been sure she’d wandered onto a set of a western. Here and there a few badly beaten old trucks lazed like faithful dogs in the shade of shabby brick buildings thrown up in the 1880’s. It was beautiful, the kind of place a girl could fall in love with; one of those last parts of America the founders would have recognized. Lisa sighed, checked her watch and sat down on one of the white painted rocks outside the Coroner's Office, kicked off her shoes and wiggled the cramps out of her toes. The warm wind brushed them, cooling the sweat, easing the throbbing that pounded with each step. She glared down at those foot binders, modest, prim, lady-like, the kind of thing her grandmother would wear. Lisa pulled one sore foot into her lap and rubbed the red joint of her big-toe. The shoes seemed to smirk back at her like two patent leather bullies she could never stand up in. She had half a mind to leave them there, but everyday she picked them up and gingerly tucked them under the seat in Adam’s or Billy’s truck and set them down just as carefully in the hallway with the dread of knowing she’d have to put them back on the next day. No. No, this time she would leave them and a coyote would take one and chew on it; chew and chew and chew, first the leather and then the heel, then there would be no more shoe, just a gnawed heel and a pile of coyote crap. Lisa smiled, somehow that seemed a fitting end for those shoes. The sun dipped a little lower, the shadow from Cathedral rock grew longer, stretching out into the desert. There was a river, somewhere… Native legend said there was a bad drought years ago, that someone, a chief? No-no-no, it wasn’t the chief, some one in his family though, his son, yes it was his son. She remembered the important stuff, everything else she had written down in one of her journals back at the house waiting to be typed and mailed into American Anthropologist and rejected. Lisa wondered if all those people at death’s door would really have followed a child walking in the shadow of the spire on and on until they found the Columbia River, but there was the rock, and the shadow stretching out across the desert daring her to believe.

This certainly wasn’t the life she’d planned for herself; it wasn’t the life her father had planned for her either. It’d been a blow for him when she’d dropped out of medical school, declared an anthropology major and started using terms like, Indigenous Rights and Repatriation. Sgt. Holland, son of Indian Fighter Captain Black Jack Holland hadn’t said word one to his daughter since the day she decided to stand with the reds. He said it was a family tragedy and good as declared her dead. Times were changing, she’d told him, times were changing and he’d have to get used to it, adapt or die out. Old ideas like his weren’t progressive, they were holding back the cultural advancement of America, the World even. Lisa laughed at herself, she’d been young and maybe she just said those things to get a rise out of the old fossil. She shook her head, pushing out thoughts of her father, because his ideals were so near to those of the men he’d killed in the frozen mud of France and Germany, and as the last rays of the setting sun scorched red hot on her face, a pair of head lights bounced down the road. Only one reason for anyone to be driving past the cemetery so late in the day, it was either Adam or Billy. Lisa couldn’t tell at the distance which one yet. The truck pulled off the road, it was a ’56 Chevy, Adam. He stopped, stepped out of the cab and walked over with that straight tall gait, a little hesitant—never quite sure of himself when it came to her and she loved that about him, more than those deep coffee colored eyes or the handsome face, more even than that rough charming voice. It was who he was, Adam who dropped out of school in the 11th grade to take over the farm when his father died. Adam who’d kept the ranch on his own since he was 17. Adam who’d towed her car to the town’s one and only garage with that very same ’56 Chevy the day she arrived.

Hi honey. Lisa said as she stood on her tip-toes and kissed him. She felt his hands, those strong calloused hands brush the center of her back as he hugged her to him. She looked up into his face, her lip-gloss glinting on his lower lip.

Mich’s ‘sposed to be rolling in sometime ‘round ten or ‘leven, He said, you feel like goin’ dancin’ t’night? Lisa smiled, looked into those dark eyes,

Yea, that sounds like fun.

They pulled onto the road, the tires throwing up dust as they drove away and startled a turkey vulture that pried at the remains of a rattlesnake on the shoulder. Lisa glanced at it in silence as they passed.

So… Adam started, eyes on the road, talking to the windshield as he scanned for deer, How was it today? Lisa pulled her eyes off the vulture,

Heart attack. She said.

Gonna be hard on Gretchen.

Yea… Lisa sighed. In the city things had been so impersonal, she didn't know the people who were laid out there on the autopsy table, it had been easy to separate herself from her work then, but not here where everyone knew everyone-else three valleys over. She was glad she didn’t get called in for those sorts of cases every morning. Deputy Coroner, it was the only position available, she was the only person that applied. The interview had lasted three minutes. Mr. Putnam had her take a seat in his tuna can office, looked over her resume, never raising his eyes to her once as they sat in silence for those minutes. Well you’re hired, he’d said after three minutes of reading, and that was it; shortest interview she’d ever had.

The truck pulled off the main road and began its steady winding ascent into the hills. Lisa watched the landscape roll by outside. Eyes flashed at them from the darkness, probably a coyote. Lisa rolled down her widow, reached under her seat and felt for her shoes. They weren’t there. She laughed.

What? Adam asked.

Forgot my shoes.

Want to go back?

No.

The truck rounded the last corner. Up popped the little house. There was her kitchen garden under the window and Billy’s truck parked outside. Adam pulled up next to it. There was room for one more, Mich’s truck. Lisa climbed out of the cab, her bare feet touched the dry earth, the dust curled under her toes.

Want me to carry you? Adam asked.

Pardon? Lisa asked, reveling in the dust between her toes, she thought that he’d said something else, marry?—no it was carry. Two words, so similar, why couldn’t he drop the C and add an M?

Scorps. He replied.

She hadn’t thought about the scorpions; Lisa shook her head, No, I’ll be careful. Lisa dashed into the house her feet barely touching the ground. Adam came in behind her just as the screen door slammed. Billy washed up in the kitchen. Dinner was on the table, black beans and sausage. Billy put a pot down in the center of the table on a piece of slate left over from when they tiled the floor.

Hope you’re hungry. Billy grumbled, Made enough fer four. Lisa smiled as she took a plate. Billy sat down at the head of the kitchen table, ladled out some beans and a sausage over a bed of corn. Adam helped himself. They both looked tired, dead tired. They’d been doing the work of three people for months.

Gonna have to replace the posts up below the rock this week. Billy said, They’re no good, rotten.

Yep. Adam replied.

And the pump… Billy trailed off as something wriggled over the windowsill behind Adam’s head. Lisa saw it too,

What? Adam asked, turning around. A lizard stared up at him with pointy eyes; puffed itself up to be all thorny and mean, it’s blue belly lying to everything that it was poisonous, strike you dead if you touched it. Adam narrowed his eyes at the lizard and it scuttled off.

Well at least it ain’t mice. Billy sighed as she dug into a steaming pile of beans, hate mice.

The pump? Adam asked, What’s the matter?

Broke. Billy replied between spoonfuls of corn.

That’ll have to wait for Mich. Adam replied, Plumbin’s his department.

Thank God the toilet didn’t break while he was away. Lisa mumbled. Billy stifled a laugh with a mouth full of corn. Adam put down his fork,

What? Lisa asked.

It has. He said,

What has?

The toilet. Billy replied, It’s been broke before.

Oh? Well…what did you do?

Don't suppose they have out houses down there in Seattle. Billy replied.

They do not. Lisa laughed, Half the year your outhouse would be a well.

Billy shuddered. Adam laughed.

Where the hell is Mich anyway? Adam asked.

Billy shrugged her shoulders, Your guess is as good as mine. He called from Wenatchee four hours ago.

Chapter 2

Billy shot pool with Dale and Lyle. Lisa sat at the bar with Adam. A haze of greasy brown tobacco smoke hung just at chest level. Dale's rancid cigar was stinking up the bar. He swore up and down that it was Cuban and dared anyone to call him a liar. Gar was muttering loudly at a couple of farmers in grimy overalls and flannel leaning over the bar in the corner. Larry stood behind the bar with an inch of strawberry blonde whiskers close cropped about his chin and his straw-straight hair falling just below a black collar. He winked at Billy as she sank the four in the left side pocket. Her back was to the door. Billy was Adam’s second cousin. Billy, Adam, Mich, Dale, Lyle, Gar, even Larry, had all grown up together, gone to the same high school, told the same stories and laughed at the same jokes. They were all friends, close as kin and probably were kin if you counted back far enough. Lisa had always wanted friends like that. She’d never had them growing up. Never dated much either, moved around too much (Ft. Brag, Ft. Charles, and finally Ft. Lewis), but it wasn’t just the constant moves, everyone was afraid of her father (classmates, teachers, prospective boyfriends) he’d kept everyone at a distance. The man was a kind of fierce born of a broken covenant between him and god. The world no longer accommodated his kind. Lisa thought he'd been born in the wrong century. He would have been right at home atop a horse screaming down on the Apache and the Sioux, but the west was closed, the Sioux and the Apache lived on reservations now, and the cavalry didn't ride horses and carry sabers anymore. He went through life a man cheated out of his destiny, spiteful; mean; implacable. He had a nickname on base that followed him everywhere he went, Cerberus. Lisa thought about Cerberus snarling with her dad’s face grimacing back at her from each head. She looked over to the pay-phone on the wall, thought about calling her mom; didn’t budge; the phone didn’t work anyway. Billiard balls cracked in the background as Adam ordered them beers.

Aw come’on! Dale whined,

Sounds like Billy just put Dale in the hole. Adam mumbled, Lisa turned to see the exchange.

Pay up, Dale. Billy ordered, hand outstretched. He slapped down 5 bucks. She looked down at it and looked up again with a glare, all of it.

Lyle you got a five?—all I gots’a twenny. Billy cocked her head to the side; crossed her arms and she smiled not a girlish smile, a knowing smile, like she was in on the joke and he wasn't.

Fine, why don’t you go buy the next round and break your twenny at the bar?

Hey wait-on now, the bet was for ten!

Yea, and the extra’s for tryin to welch! Billy scolded. Bet welching was damn near a hanging offense in Kumaq. Grumbling like an old man, Dale moseyed to the bar slow and resentful-like and ordered three more beers and turned back to the table,

Nu’uh, you’re gettin one for Adam’n Lisa too. She barked. Dale grumbled louder, ordered two more beers, handed them off to Lisa and Adam and walked back to the pool table.

She gets him every time. Adam sighed.

Why’s he play? Lisa asked, If he always looses?

Pride. Adam said with a grin behind his beer, And it’s the only way she’ll let him buy her a beer. They went back to their game. Billy sat one out and chatted while Dale mopped the floor with Lyle and won back some of his pride and fifty cents.

The door opened; shouts and cheers erupted from every table. Lisa looked over her shoulder and standing there plain as day was Mich, in a clean white shirt no less—she didn’t know he even owned one—duffle bag on his shoulder, and a new buckle holding up his pants. He looked like he hadn’t eaten a square meal in months. With a big smile plastered across his clean shaven face, he sauntered through, oh and Mich could saunter—been practicing it since he was knee high, watching every bull-rider-come-cowboy that ever blew through town. Mich entered the bar a conquering hero with that coal black hair flashing with the blue of that old-neon sign under his freshly brushed hat. Lyle and Dale laid down their cues and walked over to welcome him back. Billy just stood there, that half-smile on her face that could mean anything. Mich saw her, his big blue eyes sparkling as they caught sight of his girl, seeking praise and adoration from that pink lipped half smile.

Where’s your truck? she asked. Mich dropped his bag, the wind out of his sails.

Broke down outside’a Entiat. He confessed.

Mmhmm. Billy replied, twisting some chalk onto her cue. That was about the warmest welcome Billy ever gave Mich when he came back from rodeo’ing. Mich tucked his duffle under the pool table, he and Billy talked quietly in a corner as Dale played Adam. Lyle sat with Lisa, his eyes ever on Billy…it was plain to everybody in town—except maybe Mich.

So what’s new with you, Lyle? Lisa asked, trying to break the only patch of silence in the bar.

Oh nothin. He replied sheepishly, like she’d caught him staring at the pin-up picture behind the gas station counter, Some trouble up out by Chappacaw.

Lisa perked her ears.

What’s going on? she asked.

Oh you know Jordan Creek’s got himself all fired up protesting the proposed highway going in on the other side Tar Hill, says it’s sacred ground and well you know how he gets. Lisa nodded. She liked Jordan, he had a reputation for viciously defending native land and rights. Having a highway so close to Kumaq and Chappacaw meant new jobs, better pay, more business, and so it was only natural for some folk to get a bit sour on all Jordan’s talk.

Maybe you can, I mean if ya got some time Thursday, maybe you can head on up there with me and Dale and talk some sense into ol’Jordan; maybe make him see how much good havin a highway up here would do?

If you think it will help, I’ll go, but Lyle, you know he won’t listen to me. Jordan and I might be friends and all, but when it comes down to it I’d just be another white face telling him to let go of his land, and Tar Hill is a sacred site.

I know, I know, but what with you being an antha-whats-it and his friend I thought you might be able to talk some sense into him. Lisa sighed. She knew it wasn’t Lyle talking, it was Sheriff Weatherby, sending in a friend to do what he should have done himself, uniform; badge and gun with some authority, Lisa would have said, I would be happy to convey your concerns to Jordan Creek; but it would have been a lie, she would not have been happy. Lisa didn’t want the highway, she knew what highways meant. Highways meant motels and gas stations and tourist traps to pull motor homes full of the blue-hairs and their senile husbands into the town to buy homemade preserves; pies; and taking their pictures in front of the old jail; it meant a way of life, the soul of Kumaq would get carried away on a river of asphalt. But jobs, yes, it would bring jobs, and take everything else.

It was getting late, and Lisa didn’t like being drunk, never agreed with her. She was on beer three, would call it quits after that. The Eagles’ played on the jukebox, Dale fell off his seat trying to pick up the two of clubs, landed on his ass and laughed, Mich snickered as he gave Dale a hand up and both of them ended up on their asses. All the while Lyle was trying to get up the courage to ask Billy for a dance.

Mich’s gonna be worthless tomorrow. Adam grumbled as he checked his watch, it read 1:15. Billy was starting to fade, she was getting that little crease between her eyebrows that spelled doom for Mich’s chances at getting lucky. Lisa was glad she and Adam slept at the other end of the house.

Wanna head home? Adam asked.

Yea. Lisa sighed, her eye lids getting heavy. Adam waved to Billy,

We’re heading home.

We’ll be along in a few— She replied. Adam looked over at Mich and then back at Billy, Well I’ll be along in a few, he can sleep here for all he cares. And she made a face and cuffed Mich in the back of the head.

Night Lyle. Adam waved to him. Lyle waved back. Somehow Lisa had a feeling that Lyle never left work, he was always a sheriff’s deputy, responsible and quiet. Lisa and Adam walked out into the parking lot. There were no cars on the road, darkness out there was real. Four streetlight’s in all of the town and they only got turned on in winter. The dim glow of the juke box and the Budweiser sign in the window, the moon and stars…Larry’s was a little island in the dark. The town was surrounded by mountains on all sides save one, that stretched out to endless plateau where the stars twinkled unbroken by the great ungainly patches of black, like teeth. Lisa wondered if there was any place more beautiful and then felt Adam's fingers engulf her small hand. He was warm--always warm--and she looked up at him and thought about the little crease between his solid brows and the crinkles about the corners of his soft brown eyes. He was thinking about something, something important, but he didn't tell her, never did. Lisa sighed internally, she was closer to Adam than anyone, but he still had doors inside him that were closed to her. Lisa and Adam climbed in the cab. The motor turned over, they pulled out onto the road, took the only left turn and climbed out of the valley. Lisa played the shadow game as they followed the dirt ribbon that passed for a road up into the hills above Kumaq. A rock turned into a wooly mammoth resurrected from the pages of Paleontology Monthly roaming the Great Basin searching for its herd. A patch of sage brush became a group of Paleolithic hunters that had been trailing the mammoth for days, maybe the mammoth was wounded; maybe sick. The hunters were the last hope of their starving clan. They would bring down the mammoth and return conquering heroes, saving the tribe. Up ahead, another shadow quavered in the headlights, this one had long limbs, aspects of human, but not human. The torso was too short, and it swayed unnaturally in the dark like heat shimmers throwing up water mirages on the pavement in the dead-August heat. Lisa sat up, and shook her head. Maybe she’d had too much to drink. She blinked. She looked again and the shadow had changed, it wasn’t standing anymore, it was on all fours. The head light’s caught it for a second, she looked that animal in the eyes and it looked her right back, unblinking and unafraid. A shiver slithered it's way up the length of her spine as the creature scampered into the sage brush.

Coyote? Adam asked.

I don't know. She replied. Lisa didn’t play the shadow game anymore that night.

. . .

Sunrise broke over the eastern red-rocks. Lisa stirred, Adam was already getting dressed. The bed felt empty without him. She sat up, dropped her legs over the edge and reached for her slippers, tapping them out before she put them on to make sure that no scorpion or black widow had taken up residence in the night. She pulled on a skirt and blouse and headed into the kitchen to make breakfast. Billy was already up, a batch of her black-tar coffee setting on the stove. Adam poured himself a cup, grabbed a biscuit and a slice of sausage from dinner to tide himself over until breakfast. A lump on the couch in front of the fire place rolled over and groaned. Billy walked over and handed the lump a cup of coffee. The lump reached up and took it.

There wasn’t a lot of talk in the morning. After this long everyone knew what was expected, even Mich. He would get up in about fifteen minutes, stumble into the bedroom and drag himself out to fix the pump and from there it was out to the base of Cathedral to pull out those old fence posts. Lisa made breakfast, did the laundry, cleaned the house, then sat down at her type writer in the office Adam had converted for her and worked on her paper and opened her little red note-book to the page marked with the red ribbon marker and she pulled out the photo album with the corresponding plate notations and lay photos of the pictographs and petroglyphs she'd catalogued along the face of Cathedral Rock and some of the surrounding faces, the first one she opened to looked like some sort of stick man with a dogs head and he looked like he was eating a child. Lisa tapped her pencil on the desk for a moment and then scribbled in her journal under the plate number Starvation Cannibalism?

Chapter 3

Adam loaded some fence posts into the back of his truck. He knew he needed at least three, but he took five—may as well have some spares. Billy saddled up her paint, Lucky. Soon as she took the cattle down to the lower pasture where the springs were, she’d come back up and help him. Lisa’d fired up the wood stove, smoke billowed out the pipe. Adam smiled, thinking about her making breakfast. Saturdays and Sundays were the best days of the week because Lisa was home, she made them breakfast, brought him lunch. They’d sit out under Cathedral Rock and eat and she’d smile and lay her head in his lap sometimes and stare at the clouds rolling over the valley below and out to Chappacaw in the east. Adam flipped up the tail gate and climbed into the cab and drove up to the fence line. Three sagging poles greeted him, ready to crumble if a strong enough wind came along. He’d been avoiding replacing them. He’d replaced most of the fence at least once. He walked up to one of the sagging posts, worn smooth by wind and sand, and bleached gray by the sun. He put his hand on one. His dad had touched this post, had put it there with his own two hands; a strong man’s hands. The post creaked at the base, rotten. Adam pulled the shovel out of the back and dug around the base. He pulled out the post, pulled up the rotten stump. Something shined up at him from the hole, at first he thought it was termite larvae. He was going to leave them for the birds, but it wasn’t--larvae weren't red and orange. Adam reached down into the hole, picking up a handful of the shiny what-ever-the-hell-they-were and held them in his hands. Beads. They were shell, maybe bone?—It struck him as he held those beads in his hand that this is something Lisa would want to see, but Adam had post holes to dig. He could dig them somewhere else; a ways away from this whatever this was. He knew what the kids found over at Tar Hill; turkey-tail-points is what they called them. Lisa used another name, grave goods. Adam put the beads back down in the hole, looking around for other signs that he might be