way far past books now into the stories Mooshum told in his sleep. There were no quotations in my father’s repertoire for where we were, and it was beyond me at the time to think of Mooshum’s sleeptalking as a reading of traditional case law.
So if you hear anything, Joe, said my father.
If I hear anything, yeah, Dad. He’d gotten my attention. There was some relief for me, even, in what he said. But my father was also wrong, and about one thing in particular. He’d said I was now safe, but I was not exactly safe from Lark. Neither was Cappy. Every night he came after us in dreams.
We are back at the golf course in the moment I locked eyes with Lark. That terrible contact. Then the gunshot. At that moment, we exchange selves. Lark is in my body, watching. I am in his body, dying. Cappy runs up the hill with Joe and the gun, but he doesn’t know Joe contains the soul of Lark. Dying on the golf course, I know that Lark is going to kill Cappy when they reach the overlook. I try to call out and warn Cappy, but I feel my life bleed out of me into the clipped grass.
I either have that dream, or one where I see the backyard ghost again. The same ghost Randall saw in the sweat lodge—his sour gaze and rigid mouth. Only this time, like with Randall, the ghost is leaning over me, talking to me through a veil of darkness, backlit, his white hair shining. And I know he’s the police.
As always I woke shouting Cappy’s name. To muffle sound, I’d stuffed a towel at the base of my door. I peered out in the fresh light hoping no one had heard me. I listened. It sounded like Mom and Dad had gone downstairs already, or gone out. I lay back in the covers. The air was cool but I was sweating and still full of adrenaline. My heart was jumping. I rubbed my hand on my chest to calm it and tried to slow down my breathing. Each dream was more real every time it occurred, like it was wearing a track into my brain.
I need medicine, I said out loud, meaning Ojibwe medicine. Old-time medicine people knew how to handle dreams, that’s what Mooshum had said. But his spirit was far away now, trying to shed the body in the cot by the window. The only other medicine person I knew was Grandma Thunder. Maybe we could ask her what to do. Not tell her details, of course, or reveal what had happened. Just get advice about these dreams. Bugger Pourier, of all people, stepped into my thoughts right then. Probably because the last time I’d thought of Grandma Thunder, I sent him to her, and right before that Bugger had stolen my bike. Something about a dream.
I sat up. He’d wanted to see if something he saw was a dream. My own dream’s reality, which always clung to me, and Bugger’s intent drunken fixation fused. What had he seen? I had worked on Bugger’s hunger and turned him around so I could get back my bicycle. But I’d never asked him what he saw. I got up and got dressed, ate some breakfast, and went out. To look for Bugger you looked behind places, starting with the Dead Custer. I searched all morning and asked everyone I met, but no one knew. I finally went to the post office. That was where I should have gone first, it turned out. I didn’t think of it, as poor Bugger hadn’t had an address.
He’s in the hospital, said Linda. Isn’t he? she called back to Mrs. Nanapush, sorting letters.
He busted his foot stealing a case of beer. Dropped it on his foot. So now he’s laid up and his sisters say it’s a blessing in disguise—could dry him out.
I rode over to the hospital to visit Bugger. He was in a room with three other men. His foot was in a cast and rigged for traction, though I wondered if that was necessary for his foot to heal or meant to tie him to the bed.
My boy! He was glad to see me. Did you bring me a drop?
No, I said.
His avid face fell into a pout.
I came to ask you something.
Not even a little flower arrangement, he grumped. Or a pancake.
You want a pancake?
I been seeing pancakes. Whiskey. Spiders. Pancakes. Lizards. Pancakes are