CHAPTER 1
Brown Dog
JUST BEFORE DARK at the bottom of the sea I found the Indian. It was the inland sea called Lake Superior. The Indian, and he was a big one, was sitting there on a ledge of rock in about seventy feet of water. There was a frayed rope attached to his leg and I had to think the current had carried him in from far deeper water. What few people know is that Lake Superior stays so cold near the bottom that drowned bodies never make it to the surface. Bodies don't rot and bloat like in other fresh water, which means they don't make the gas to carry them up to the top. This fact upsets working sailors on all sorts of ships. If the craft goes down in a storm their loved ones will never see them again. To me this is a stupid worry. If you're dead, who cares? The point here is the Indian, not death. I wish to God I had never found him. He could have drowned the day before if it hadn't been for his eyes, which were missing.
These aren't my exact words. A fine young woman named Shelley, who is also acting as my legal guardian and semi-probation officer, is helping me get this all down on paper. I wouldn't say I'm stupid. I don't amount to much, and you can't get more ordinary, but no one ever called me stupid. Shelley and me go back about two years and our love is based on a fib, a lie. The main reason she is helping me write this is so I can stop lying to myself and others, which from my way of thinking will cut the interesting heart right out of my life. Terms are terms. We'll see. Shelley believes in "oneness" and if we're going to try to be "one" I'll try to play by her rules.
I'm a diver, or was a diver, for Grand Marais Salvage Corporation, which is a fancy name for a scavenging operation. You'd be surprised what people will pay for a porthole, even though they got no use for it. An old binnacle is worth a fortune. We sold one last July for a thousand dollars, though Bob takes three quarters because he owns the equipment. Bob is a young fellow who was a Navy SEAL, the same outfit that lost the hero, Stethem, who was beat to death by the towel-heads. Bob is still damned angry and hopes to get revenge someday.
"Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord," I quoted.
"Do you believe that, B.D.?" he asked.
"Nope. Can't say I'm sure. But if you believed it, it would save you from going way over there and having the Arabs shoot your ass off."
Bob is a hothead. A salvage bunch up in Duluth owed him a compressor so we drove over. The three of them were sleeping off a drunk so we took two compressors, and three portholes for interest. Two of the guys woke up punching but Bob put them away again. I'm not saying Bob is a bully, just a bit quick to take offense.
I've been reminded to get the basis of my salvation out of the way, to start at the beginning, as she says. Shelley is twenty-four and I'm forty-two. That means when I'm one hundred she'll be eighty-two. Age is quite the leveler. She is a fair-size girl by modern standards, but not in the Upper Peninsula where you would call her normal-size, perhaps a tad shy of normal. In a cold climate a larger woman is favored by all except transplants from down below (the southern peninsula of Michigan where all the people are) who bring girlfriends up here who look like they jumped right off the pages of a magazine. Nobody pays them much attention unless the situation is desperate. Why take a little girl if you can get a big one? It's as simple as that.
Anyway, on a rainy June evening two years ago Shelley came into the Dunes Saloon with two fellows who wore beards and hundred-dollar tennis shoes. They were all graduate students in anthropology at University of Michigan and were looking for an old Chippewa herbalist I was talking to at the bar. They came over and introduced themselves and Claude announced it was his birthday.
"How wonderful," said Shelley. "How old are you? We've driven three hundred and fifty miles to talk to you."
Claude gazed at the three of them for a full minute, then sped out of the bar.
When the screen door slammed Shelley looked at me. "What did we do wrong?" she asked.
"Goddammit, we blew it," said the redheaded fellow with a big Adam's apple.
"You missed your cue. When Claude says it's his birthday you're supposed to ask if you can buy him a drink. If someone else is buying he drinks a double martini," I said.
"Is there a chance we can make up for this?" said the third, a blond-haired little fellow in a Sierra Club T-shirt. "We were counting on talking to him."
Shelley pushed herself closer, unconsciously using her breasts to lead. "Are you related? I mean are you an Indian?"
"I don't talk about my people to strangers." Now I'm no more Indian than a keg of nails. At least I don't think there's any back there. I grew up near the reservation over in Escanaba and a lot of Indians aren't even Indian so far as I can tell. What I was doing was being a little difficult. If you want a girl to take notice it's better to start out being a little difficult.
"We're really getting off on the wrong foot here. I didn't mean to intrude." She was nervous and upset.
"How the hell could we know he wanted a double martini," whined the redhead. "You don't push drinks on an old Indian. I've been around a lot of them."
"What do you know about my people, you shit-sucking dick-head?" I yelled. The three of them jumped back as if hit by a cattle prod.
I moved down to the end of the bar and pretended to watch the Tigers-Milwaukee ball game. Since we are much farther from Detroit than Milwaukee there are a lot of Brewers fans up here. Frank, the bartender, came over shaking his head.
"B.D., why'd you yell at those folks when the lady's got beautiful tits?"
"Strategy," I said. "She'll be down here with a peace offering pretty soon."
The three of them were huddled by the window table, no doubt figuring their next move. I began to question my yell. In fact, I'm not known to raise my voice unless you set off a firecracker right behind me. Finally she got up and walked down the bar toward me with a certain determination.
"I'm Shelley Newkirk. Let's start all over again. The three of us have a great deal of admiration for Native Americans. We love and respect them. That's why we study them. We want to offer you an apology."
I stared deeply into my glass of Stroh's while Frank darted into the kitchen. When she spoke I thought he was going to laugh, but he's too good of a friend to blow my cover.
"The name's B.D.," I said. "It stands for Brown Dog, my Anishinabe name." At this point I wasn't bullshitting. Brown Dog, or B.D., has been my nickname since I was in the seventh grade and had a crush on a Chippewa girl down the road. I played ball with her brothers but she didn't seem to care for me. Their mother called me Brown Dog because I was hanging around their yard all the time. Once when she was slopping their pigs this girl, Rose by name, threw a whole pail of garbage on me. I actually broke into tears on the spot though I was fourteen. Love will do that. Her brothers helped clean me off and said they guessed their sister didn't like me. I didn't give up and that's why the name stuck with me. I was sort of following her around before a school assembly to see where she was going to sit when she hit me on the head with a schoolbook and knocked me to...
