OMAHA, NEBRASKA

NOVEMBER 1973

Aggie slept the whole six-hour bus ride from the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota to the Greyhound station in the center of Omaha and could have easily slept six more if the bus driver hadn’t shaken her shoulder. She donned the red coat she’d been using as a blanket, grabbed her overnight bag, and wound her way through the cavernous station out into a clear fall day.

She had closed her eyes amid rolling plains and pine groves and opened them onto a bustling city. The air threatened winter. She flattened her back against the wall of the bus depot and pulled out a wrinkled piece of paper. Denise. A friend of a friend. Back home, almost no one was a stranger. But she was personable, bright-eyed, and generous with her smiles. She’d be okay.

Aggie straightened her spine and followed the directions that would take her the three miles to Denise’s address. She stopped every few blocks to catch her breath. The gasping was why the doctor had given her the X-ray. When he first saw the spot, it had looked like nothing more than a white smear, no bigger than a thumbprint. He had told her she’d need to have it looked at, and the closest facility was Omaha.

Aggie found Diane’s address as the tall buildings of downtown trailed off to bungalows shadowed by the last of the blood-colored foliage of the maples. Diane worked odd hours as a nurse and had left a key under an empty terra-cotta flower pot on the front porch.

Aggie slipped off her shoes, stepped through the ribbons of amber afternoon sunlight unfurling across the hardwood floors, and sat on a couch in yet another empty house.

Her Patrick had taken just one step too many outside the lines, and now he was gone to prison for a good long time. She had been good at loving him, reveled in the noise and clutter of being a mother, even when seven kids seemed impossible on a cop’s salary and in a tiny clapboard house. She and the girls had smelled the pillowcases dried on the line in the morning sun before folding. Pat had been proud when he bought her the washer.

How can a person be opposite things at the same time? That was what messed her up. He was funny and wild and romantic. And he damn near beat her to death. Too many times. Then he really did kill someone and got put away in Valentine.

She had thought about telling him about the lung spot, but why? The kids were farmed out one by one as she tried and failed to get a position as a maid two hours south, attempted to get a job mucking stalls, a job anywhere. Half her babies had gone off to boarding school. The others were with relatives or in foster homes on the res.

Joyce, Pattee, Peter, Ernest, Mona Lisa, naughty Billy, baby Jack…

Someone else getting a paycheck to feed them. Someone else kissing their feverish foreheads. Someone else telling them bedtime stories. Someone else making the food stretch—extra sauce and extra rice did the trick. Just until she got back on her feet, got stronger.

Except when you didn’t have breakfast to cook and hair to braid and a line of little shoes by the door, why would you even get out of bed? You do it because you have to do it, and then you figure out a way to stretch a dollar and smile through. Not the other way around.

How had she wound up in room after room alone? She pulled her good coat around her diminutive frame. She was barely five feet to begin with and hadn’t been eating much since there had been no one else to cook for. A plaque above the front door read BLESS THIS HOME AND ALL WHO ENTER. She’d take a blessing.

Aggie lay her head on the forest-green velour, reciting the same prayer she always did when her eyelids grew heavy. The same she’d recite the following day when they inserted a needle through her rib cage and extracted a sample of lung tissue.

Hail Mary,

Full of grace,

The Lord is with thee.

Blessed art thou among women,

And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Holy Mary, Mother of God,

Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.

Amen.

Aggie had no right to feel sorry for herself in the shadow of the pain of the Virgin Mother, but hers was somehow still so acute it doubled her over. The stain wasn’t on her lungs; it was on her heart.

“Here’s a pick-me-up!”

Aggie opened her eyes. A white lady with blue-red lips, teased blond hair the texture of cotton candy, and a midnight-blue velveteen jumpsuit held a fat tumbler of whiskey under her nose.

“Are you…?” Aggie searched for the name, pulling herself out of a swamp of dreams.

“Denise? I’m Phyllis, the roommate. Denise won’t be home for hours. Got the night shift, poor thing. Don’t worry. I’m way more fun,” she said with a flowery laugh. “You must be the Buffalo Gal.”

Not the first time Aggie had heard that one, but she liked the woman and was happy to have the warmth of the whiskey in her belly.

“You know that song was about a bunch of old-timey hookers? My grandma used to sing it to me, bless her heart. I don’t think she knew, but you never know the secrets those old biddies keep. Hey, I’m part something or other Indian too, y’know. Chippewa I think.”

Phyllis clacked across the floor.

“I’m starving, you? Jesus, you look like you haven’t eaten in a year. Come on in here and sit down.”

Agatha stood and followed her, leaning in the doorway and watching as Phyllis pulled containers out of the fridge and sang, “Buffalo Gals, won’t you come out tonight and dance by the light of the moon?”

Was this how single women lived?

“When’s your thing?” asked Phyllis.

“Biopsy?”

Phyllis covered her ears with her hands. “I don’t like that word. Just say they’re checking you out.”

“Okay. Then they’re checking me out tomorrow.”

“You’ll need a drink after that. I work for the phone company, but I get off at five. Wanna meet me and go grab a drink? If Denise is off, she can come meet us too.”

Phyllis put a yellow-flowered plate with a couple of cold chicken thighs and some potato salad down on the trestle table.

“Siddown, would ya?”

Aggie ate like a convict and washed it down with the whiskey.

“We’ll give you a proper adventure tomorrow. White Buffalo really your name?”

“Married name,” said Aggie through her chicken.

“That’s a mouthful.”

“It was even longer. It was White Buffalo Chief, but Pat’s parents shortened it.”

“What were you, some kind of chiefs or kings?”

“Back when.”

“Neato.”

“It’s a famous story too. The White Buffalo woman brought the peace pipe. White buffalos are sacred. We’re Catholic, you know. The kids like the old stories though.”

“Right, sure,” said Phyllis. She looked up at the orange plastic owl clock on the wall. “I could use a peace pipe right about now. Oh shit, we’re missing Columbo.”

Aggie approached the Happy Bar the next night. Its glowing yellow sign with a line drawing of a foamy mug of beer was a beacon in the bruised twilight. Phyllis and Denise perched on bar stools. A few stragglers milled around.

Aggie eased herself onto a stool. The numbing shot they’d stuck in her side was wearing off, and so was the Valium they’d given her when she freaked out.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

She popped a painkiller and sucked down two drinks while Phyllis and Diane gossiped about mutual friends. The words washed over Aggie. She was happy to not be alone. A few guys in flannels and work boots huddled in the corner of the bar, where a small TV played a grainy UNO football game. The after-work crowd from both the downtown businesses and the warehouses nearby began to trickle in.

Phyllis clocked the door. “Never seen that face before. I’m sure I’d remember.”

The man surveyed the bar with cat eyes that reminded Aggie of the swirly marbles she’d liked best as a kid.

“Lipstick on your teeth, babe,” Diane said to Phyllis. Phyllis ran an index finger over them and straightened her skirt.

Diane rolled her eyes. “Three, two, one, and…”

Phyllis approached the man with a flip of her hair but turned around fast.

“He asked if you were a real Indian. Whaddaya look like, a wooden one? Says he wants to meet you. Never met a real Indian before.”

“He buying?”

“Not for me, but he’s buying.”

“He seem okay?”

“A little pushy. Asked me all manner of shit right up front. Where did I work. Did I have family around.”

Aggie was out of money, and every time she breathed, the soft hollow between her jutting ribs hurt like she was being stabbed. She wanted another drink like she wanted air. She stood and her knees nearly buckled. The neon beer signs on the wall swam and blurred.

She walked over to the stranger. He studied her through the cat’s-eye marbles.

“You a real Indian? Where your feathers?”

They should put her behind glass in a museum. “Left them at home,” she said.

The man stroked the front of Aggie’s neck.

She flinched. Look what had become of her. Some days, she wished she hadn’t woken up at all.

“What did you say?”

Had she spoken out loud? She was confused. Must be the medication.

“You don’t want to wake up?” He bellowed with laughter. “Is that what you said? Hell, you came to the right place. I’ll kill you right here!”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“You ain’t no buffalo. You look like a pretty little brown kitten to me. Where’s your whatchacallit…tribe at?”

“Oh, way up there. South Dakota. Where I live. I got no people here. Going back on the bus tomorrow.”

Her tongue sounded thick and far away.

“Tomorrow’s a long time from now. I got a nice warm room. I’ll drive you to the station in the morning.”

“I don’t gotta do anything I don’t want to.”

“No, no. No, ma’am. You just need to relax and let Mr. Sam do all the work. You deserve a little rest. Plus, I got a bottle of good stuff. We don’t need this overpriced well swill.”

She weighed her options. Another lonely night on Denise’s couch, another walk to the bus station. She was out of money. For all she knew, she might be out of time. What the hell.

Aggie let her friends know she was going with the guy. Phyllis shot her a sharp look.

Denise said, “Oh, don’t be all sour grapes.”

“It’s not that. It’s…something.”

Phyllis trotted to Aggie, caught her by the arm at the door.

“You have our address on you, right? You have our number? In case you need it.”

“She don’t need nothing,” said Sam. “I got her from here.”

Sam opened the door of his white T-Bird and practically tossed Aggie inside. The car was moving before she could lift a hand to wave goodbye.