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By Root 257 0

then bent to the wheel in concentration and tried to get the engine to turn over. “C’mon, c’mon,” he said, “ninimoshe, c’mon baby.” He cranked the engine and each time gave a squirt of gas; he had some method by which he slowly brought the frozen block to life, but it took a while and in that time Ira began to know something. There grew in her a feeling that her children weren’t all right, they weren’t asleep. Hungry, well, she knew that already. She began to think that she should have taken them along with her to town because at least they could have crashed someplace together, somebody’s couch. Now their situation was not good; she could feel it in her gut, a crawling sensation that made her act desperately. Later, she regretted very much that she put her hand out, touching Morris. At the time she even knew it was wrong, because he looked at her as the engine groaned. Even though his face was dark in shadow, the whites of his eyes gleamed out, and there was something awful in his look.

“Gegaa, gegaa,” he shouted, and then, at last, the motor caught with a roar and the cab shuddered. Morris whooped and pounded the wheel. He was sort of too excited, thought Ira, as though he was on some drug, but maybe it was for his eyes. He could be on some medication. Morris backed the truck from the snowy yard and said, “Which way?”

“I live out by the border at the old treaty signing.”

“Way out there!” Morris marveled as they pulled into the road. “You guys are true-life bush Indians.”

“My dad was. He still hunted and trapped all year but there wasn’t a living in it. He has died since.”

“You got a job?” Morris’s eye rolled wildly at her and he grinned, his teeth big and sharp in the dashboard’s reflected lights.

“I did until my dad went, then I didn’t have no one to take care of my kids. So I get by, you know, I sell my beadwork and stuff. If I moved into town, I guess I could do pretty well.”

“Oh, I’d say,” but when he looked sideways at her, Ira thought he meant something else.

“Not that way,” she stated, without laughing. Now was when she began to wish she hadn’t touched him.

Morris gave a little hoot. As the heat came on, the cab of his truck began to smell like blood.

“You hunt yourself?” said Ira.

“Do I hunt myself ?” Morris asked. “I’d like to see that.”

“I mean, do you hunt, just hunt?”

Morris didn’t answer, so Ira said, “You can’t shut your eyes for real?”

“Yeah. They will not close. I put drops in. Take the wheel.”

He quit steering and Ira slid over beside him to keep them from going in the ditch. He plucked a little squeeze bottle from his breast pocket and tipped back his head. “Ah,” he screwed the top on the bottle, dropped it back in his pocket, took the wheel with one hand. He grabbed Ira with the other and hauled her close to him. “I liked that.” The truck swerved.

“You got to keep both hands on the driving,” she said, unhooking his arm from around her shoulders. She slid back to her side of the truck. “Look, it’s iced up bad out there. Really, it’s very dangerous.” The road was plowed recently enough so that beneath the new and fluffy snow there was a hard, slick finish. “The conditions are definitely no good. Hey,” she tried to shift the mood. “How do you sleep?”

“I never do sleep,” said Morris. “That’s why I’m crazy.”

“You don’t seem too crazy,” Ira said.

“The VA sent me everywhere, all around the world, I been to Singapore. They couldn’t do shit. I can’t have sunlight or any light. Mostly I live inside listening to TV. Tapes. I got a million tapes. Cassette tapes. Nobody wants their cassette tapes anymore. The church gives ’em to me. People give ’em to me. I sit indoors and listen. So I know everything. All there is to know. It’s all on tapes. It comes through my ears.” He tapped the side of his head.

His ears look normal, Ira thought.

“My brother is the good talker. He’s the one who charms the ladies. He told me all about you.”

“What about your tapes? What are your tapes about?”

“Every kind of music, you would not believe. I got opera tapes which I can’t make out the language, Mötley Crüe tapes,