Rock Springs by Richard Ford Page A

do?” Claude said. “Are they a bunch of cheddar-head Swedes?” He seemed to expect everything she said to make him mad.
    â€œHe farmed,” she said. “Then he worked in a tractor shop in Leader. In the fall he cleans geese. He’s up to that right now.”
    â€œWhat do you mean, he cleans geese?” Claude said. He smiled a mean smile at her, then at me.
    â€œHunters bring geese they shoot. It’s just out on the open prairie there. And they leave them at our garage. My father dips ’em to get the feathers out, then guts ’em and wraps ’em. It’s easy. He’s an American. He’s from Wyoming. He was against the draft.”
    â€œHe plucks ’em, you mean—right?” Claude said, driving. “Is that what you mean he does?”
    â€œThey smell better than this car does. I wouldn’t have known you two were Indians if it wasn’t for this car. This is a reservation beater is what we call these.”
    â€œThat’s what
we
call them,” Claude said. “And we call those motels where you were at whorehouses.”
    â€œWhat do you call that guy I was with?” Lucy said.
    â€œDo you think George looks like an Indian?” Claude said. “I think George is a Sioux, don’t you?” He smiled at me. “George isn’t a goddamn Indian. I am.”
    â€œAn Indian’s a bump in the road to me,” she said.
    â€œThat’s true,” Claude said. And something about her had made him feel better. I didn’t believe that this girl was a whore though, and I didn’t believe she thought she was, or that he did. Claude’s father did, but he was wrong. I just didn’t know why she would come over from Havre in the middle of the night and end up out here with us. It was a mystery.
    We started down the steep car path to Mormon Creek bottom, where the water was high but not too muddy to shine. Across the bridge and a hundred yards downstream was a sawmill that had made fence posts but had been wrecked. Behind it was a pitch clay bluff the creek had cut, and beyond that were shallows and a cottonwood swale. On the near side was a green willow bank and a rusted car body that had been caught in the willow roots. It was a place Claude and I had fished for whitefish.
    â€œNot much of a lumber place,” Lucy said.
    â€œThat’s why the sawyers did so great,” Claude said.
    â€œWhich way’s west?”
    â€œThat is,” I said, pointing to where the white peaks of mountains could just be seen above the coulee rim.
    She looked back the other way. “And what’re those mountains back there?”
    â€œThose’re hills,” Claude said. “We keep them separate in this country.”
    â€œIt is a nice atmosphere though,” she said. “I like to be oriented to the light.”
    â€œYou can’t see light with those glasses,” Claude said.
    She turned to face me. “I see George here. I see well enough. He’s nicer than you are so far. He’s not an asshole.”
    â€œWhy don’t you take those glasses off?” Claude said. We were crossing the low bridge over Mormon Creek. The Buick clattered and shimmied on the boards. I looked down. I could see through the clear surface to gravel.
    â€œWhere does
this
water go?” Lucy was looking around me.
    â€œUp,” I said. “To the Milk River. It goes north.”
    â€œDid Sherman bust you, is that the trouble?” Claude said. He stopped us right on the bridge, and grabbed at the glasses, tried taking them off Lucy’s face. “You got a big busted eye?”
    â€œNo,” Lucy said. And she took off the glasses and looked at me first, then Claude. She had blue eyes and blond eyebrows the color of her hair. And what she was hiding was not a black eye, but that she had been crying. Not when she’d been with us, but when she woke up, maybe, and saw where she was, or who she