She responded by opening the door, and we watched as more than a hundred and fifty pounds of assorted canine lineage vaulted from the front seat and circled around to the ’63 three-quarter-ton beast, first going to Lonnie. The Northern Cheyenne chief reached his wrinkled hands out the door and around Dog’s head, running a thumb over the bullet furrow and holding him as if giving a blessing. “Ha-ay, big rascal.”
I went around the back and lowered Rezdawg’s tailgate, pinching my fingers in the chains in the process. I waited till Dog noticed me and came around. He looked at the derelict truck and promptly sat.
“Vic needs the Bullet. Come on, we both get to suffer.”
He jumped in the bed and I closed the tailgate twice because, of course, the first time it didn’t line up.
Vic rolled down the driver’s-side window of my truck. “You’re going to be all right up here playing cowboy with the Indians?”
I joined her at the door. “I think so.” We both watched as Henry put Lonnie’s blanket over his lap, folded up the chief’s wheelchair, and placed it in the bed with Dog. “I’ve got a good scout.”
“Uh huh.” She hit the ignition and fired up the V-10 and then sat there, rumbling. “I’ll call you from Nebraska.” She thought about it and pulled the three-quarter-ton down into gear. “Fuck it, what else is there to do?”
It was only a mile up the road to Lonnie’s place, which was good because that was about the distance that Rezdawg could make without breaking down.
In the numerous conversations I’d had with Henry concerning his pickup, I’d asked him why, as meticulous as he was with every other aspect of his life-his house, his business, his car-why it was that he didn’t get his piece-of-crap truck really fixed. His answer, as we’d waited by the side of the road for another of Rezdawg’s rest periods to pass, was that the truck was a holy relic of his life and that replacing parts would alter its spirit. I retorted that it seemed to me that the junk pile’s spirit was in need of a little repair, but he’d ignored me like he always did.