Late October 1980
Bobby's drive up to Frank Has No Horses house was uneventful. It was snowy. Like most winter's drives through Minnesota, and it was pretty, and it was a long drive, but otherwise, there wasn't much to say about it.
The drive from his house to the Red Lake Rez usually took him four hours tops, but he'd stopped for a peaceful lunch at some little family restaurant on the way and gotten into a conversation with one of the men there about Reagan and it had taken a little longer. (Both men had agreed the crazy would probably be elected before Carter. Unfortunately.)
So, when he got to Red Lake, it was nearly seven. And Rufus and Frank were already waiting for him.
"The hell took you so long, Singer?" Frank teased as Bobby pulled into the driveway. Frank was a tall man, young too, younger than Rufus or Bobby by about five years, and he near permanently had a smirk on his face and a cigarette hanging from his lips.
"Got stuck," he said. "Some Reaganite was talking about the man like he was the second coming. Shut him down real quick."
Rufus grinned. "I knew you wouldn't like that nutjob, Bobby."
The three men walked inside. Frank poured them each a glass of whiskey.
"You kept sayin' when Bobby got here you'd tell me what the damn case is," Rufus said, taking a long sip of the gold-brown liquor. "Bobby's here. Tell us."
"Just a simple salt and burn," Frank said, laughing a little.
"You called us all the way out here for a salt and burn? I had a date," Rufus grumbled.
"With who, Turner? Your left hand?"
"No," Bobby said, jumping in to join the ribbing, "His right one."
"No. With Annie Hawkins. Now. Why the hell did you call us out here for a salt and burn? Don't tell me you're too stupid to figure out how to dig up a grave." Rufus smirked a little at his friendly jab.
"It's a kid. My cousin's kid, Lia. She died a few months ago. Drowned swimmin' with her cousins. And I couldn't bring myself to do it. But she's pulling shit. Startin' to become vengeful. So, I needed people who weren't close to the thing to do me a favor and dig'er up and burn her."
Bobby quickly finished his first glass of whiskey and began to pour himself a second. "I'm gonna need to be a hell of a lot more drunk for this," he mused, filling his glass about a third of the way up.
"Top me off too, Bobby," Rufus said. And Bobby complied, pouring his friend another glass.
"I hope the two of you finishing my Johnny Walker means you'll do it. Otherwise, I might start chargin' both of you."
"Yeah. Yeah. Yeah," Bobby said. "I'm in."
Rufus downed this second glass of whiskey, then set the glass down on the table with a clink. "I'm in too."
"Do people know what we're doing or-?" Bobby started to ask.
"You honestly think I'd tell people? What? You think just cuz I'm NDN we'll all be okay with grave desecration?" Frank asked. He was still smiling, but it was a warning smile. The smile he gave when he couldn't quite tell who's side you were on.
"I meant the kid's mom. So she could say some words when we're done, you idjiot. Stop trying to make every damn thing I say out to be racist. It isn't."
"We're just keeping you on your toes, Singer," Frank teased. But Bobby could tell he was relieved. "Her mom's in rehab. So, she can't be here."
Bobby nodded. "Heroine's one hell of a drug."
Once Bobby and Rufus were drunk enough, Frank took them in his trunk down to the cemetery. The salt and burn went as good as one with kids ever really went, but it was over comparatively quickly.
They drove back to Frank's house just as the sun started to come up over the horizon, it took awhile for a body, even one as little as Lia's had been, to burn, especially in the winter, and the ground had been hard to dig.
When they got inside, Frank hung up his coat and walked into the kitchen. He turned on the coffeemaker in his small kitchen, only divided from his living room by a piece of wall that jutted out about two feet on each side, and a hanging of macrame and beads. The small, narrow staircase leading upstairs took up more than a fourth of what could have been potential kitchen space.
"Whiskey in your coffee?" he asked both men, not looking at them as he began to root through his avocado green fridge for some acceptable breakfast eats.
"Please," Bobby said, sitting down at the table in the living room. It sat just to the left of the beat up old couch. It looked like it'd been one of those outdoor table and chairs restaurants had, with the legs welded onto the table. Rufus nodded in agreement.
"Bacon, hash, and biscuits okay with you?" Frank asked, this time turning to look at them. "Or you want eggs too?"
"I don't know, Frankie, we been diggin' up a kid's grave all night. I think we need more than just a little bacon and biscuits," Rufus said, grinning. There was more joke than truth in his statement, but Frank took out the eggs anyway. Once he had the food started up, he carried the three chipped cups of whiskey laced coffee, or, more accurately, coffee laced whiskey, setting one in front of each man.
"When you gonna cut that mess of hair of yours?" Bobby teased, gesturing to his friend's long black hair.
"When you gonna lose that beergut of yours?" Rufus teased right back, probably as revenge for Bobby joining in Frank's ridicule of his date the night before.
"I don't know, when you finally get a date with someone who don't have to put a paperbag over your head to sleep with you."
The three men laughed, and when the laughter stopped, Frank looked up, rubbing at his left hand with his right.
"Either of you know anythin' about witches' spells causing bruising or strange marks a while after you kill'em?"
"No, why?" Rufus asked, sipping his coffee.
"Noticed this when I finished with a witch down in Mille Lacs a month ago. It won't go away." He raised his hand and showed the back of it. There was a large, purple spot on the back of his left hand in about the shape of a rounded heart. "Thought maybe she hexed me or something."
"Maybe you should go to the doctor or somethin'," Bobby suggested.
Frank just laughed at the idea. They didn't talk about much else over breakfast when it was finally ready. And Bobby didn't think about that funny purple spot at all after that conversation was over. But later, when he looked back on things, that would be the place where he'd mark the line, between before, and after.