The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel Read Free Page A

hill country of Indian Territory. Ma Barker had been part Creek Indian, and John Dillinger’s girlfriend, Billy Frechette, had been a Canadian Indian. Of course Sterling did not go along with what Ma Barker and her boys had done. All the people from Southwestern tribes knew how mean Oklahoma Indians could be. The Bureau of Indian Affairs had used Oklahoma Indians to staff Southwestern reservation boarding schools, to keep the Pueblos and Navajos in line.
    Sterling woke up in the bus outside the Tucson depot. All the other passengers had already got off. Gathering up his shopping bags and bundles at the back of the bus, Sterling tried to estimate Tucson’s heat by looking out the bus’s tinted windows. It was the last day of July.
    In the air-conditioning of the bus, Sterling found it difficult to estimate the outside temperature. He did not think it would be too bad, but when he stepped down the bus steps into the blinding white sunlight, he collided with a wall of desert heat. An instant later, like a cold beer bottle on a hot day, Sterling felt himself covered in an icy sweat. The dampness lasted only a matter of seconds before waves of heat sucked away the sweat, and with it, Sterling’s breath. What he needed right then was someplace cool to sit down to think. He pushed down the contents of both shopping bags to resettle anything that might have shifted on the bus ride. Then he took both bags, threw back his shoulders, and went into the bus depot.
    Sterling looked around for the old black man he’d sat with, but the old man was gone. At least the lobby was air-conditioned. It was two o’clock and the benches were full of people who didn’t look like travelers but refugees from the heat. He didn’t see any depot employees behind the ticket counter. Everyone seemed to be dozing or staring off into space. The effects of the heat. He saw a couple of Indians, but they were the ones stretched out on the benches.
    Sterling pushed his suitcase into the locker with his foot and squashed the shopping bags on top and slammed the door. No siestas for Sterling. He wasn’t going to be like everyone else, he was going tohave a “take charge” attitude. He was going to walk around and see the downtown area. There must be hotels. There must be places to buy a cold drink.
    Crossing the street, Sterling could feel the asphalt sink a little under his tennis shoes. All surfaces—concrete and plate glass—radiated heat. But at the end of the first block, Sterling wasn’t even sweating. Because the heat was so dry, moisture could not even form on his body. The thermometer on the bank building read 103, but Sterling decided he was feeling pretty good considering.
    Downtown Tucson looked pretty much like downtown Albuquerque before they had “urban-renewed” it—and tore down the oldest buildings with merchants who had catered to Spanish-speaking and Indian people. Sterling walked up and down the streets. He liked Tucson’s bright pink courthouse. He put his fingers in the fountain; its water was not as hot as he had expected. He walked past the Santa Rita Hotel and decided it looked too expensive. He rested awhile on a bench in the shade at a park across from the city library. There were a lot of flies. Sterling fanned them away with his hat. A few of the hippies dozing on the grass opened an eye when he approached. But they pulled newspapers over their heads against the flies and went back to sleep again. Hippies in Albuquerque or Barstow pestered Indians with questions about Indian ways. In Tucson hippies were more like regular white people, who ignored Indians. That was all right with Sterling. He had learned his lesson with white people who had questions about Indian ways. A Tucson police car cruised by the city park. The cop looked sleepy, but Sterling was careful to avoid the cop’s eyes. Even if he was well dressed in his black-and-white-checkered slacks and blue short-sleeve shirt, Sterling knew some cops didn’t need