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I leave the truck where it is, blocking both lanes of the road and jump out to go check on the lifeless couple.
“Hey! You can’t park here,” one of the men on the sidewalk yells, or more like, slurs in my direction. I ignore him.
The woman is rail thin, wearing a pair of cut off jean shorts and a baggy t-shirt. Her long dark brown hair is matted into full-on dreads in some places, and completely missing in others. The guy is super thin too, and his short black hair is thinning in the back of his head.
“Are you alright?” I ask, shaking the woman’s shoulder. “You need to get out of the road.”
There’s no response. I do the same with the guy and he’s just as dead to the world as the woman.
“They’re so drunk, they can’t move,” a man slurs beside me. He’s hunched over and shaking all over, clutching a nearly empty, 40 ounce bottle of beer in his hand as he sways beside me. He’s probably right, for what it’s worth. There’s no blood anywhere, and they don’t appear to be injured, just sleeping.
“We have to get them out of the road,” I say and stand up. “Help me.”
The man smells rancid, of sweat and worse, and dirt is caked all over his face and arms. His clothes are stained with it too. Two more guys approach, neither in much better shape than the first.
“Who are you? I haven’t seen you here before,” one of them says. He might be my age or he might be closer to my dad’s. Most of his teeth are missing, the lines around his eyes are deep and dark, but something tells me he’s not all that old.
“Come on, help me move them,” I say, crouching down to grab one of the woman’s arms.
“What’s the point?” another man slurs, and I give him one of those hard, dark looks I learned from my dad. He actually recoils, then mutters something and grabs the woman’s other arm. Together, we half carry, half drag her to the closest building and rest her against its side. The other two carry the man, or more like drag him, since both him and the woman are basically dead weight.
The woman stirs and mutters something incoherently as we release her, and the guys eyes are open as I look at him, but I don’t think he can actually see me.
“Are you alright? Should I call an ambulance?”
The peals of laughter from the helpers is jarring and rough. “What ambulance? From where? They wouldn’t come all the way out here just for a couple of drunken Indians.”
The rest of them laugh even harder at this.
“They just need to sleep it off,” another guy says, the one I think is about my age. “Don’t worry about it. Who are you?”
“Lily,” I say. “Lily Eagle Feather. You?”
“Robert Hunts Bear,” he says, just as another, the oldest among them, says, “You’re Rose’s daughter? Frank and Celia’s granddaughter?”
I nod.
“You were a child the last time I saw you,” he says, his eyes soft and unfocused like he’s remembering that now. Then they turn hard. “Why did you come back? You got away, why come back?”
He sounds very angry as he says it, enough to make me take a step back instinctively. “Why wouldn’t I? This is my home.”
“There’s nothing good here,” he says. “Turn back and drive away now if you know what’s good for you.”
I’m not gonna do that. If nothing else, the couple we dragged off the road are showing every sign of alcohol poisoning.
“They need a doctor,” I say.
The man with the forty shakes his head. “Nah, Nora and Burt will be just fine. We’ll take care of them.”
I look around skeptically. There are at least thirty bad drunks around us and who knows how many more in the bushes beyond the row of houses and elsewhere not visible from this spot. No one seems to be taking care of anyone around here, least of all themselves.
My people.
I was sort of prepared for this by what my relatives form the reservation told me, and what Cross told me, and what I remember. But this is so much worse than what I remember. I’m almost afraid to go further in. What else am I going to see?
There’s got to be a doctor on the reservation and I’m just about to ask them to help me get the passed out couple into the back of my pickup when the screeching of brakes followed by incessant honking interrupts my train of thought.
Two cars—a truck and a sedan of some sort—clearly very nearly drove right into my pick-up then into each other as they stopped.
